Reply To: Does my ADHD give me positive traits too?

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Hi, I’m a 22 year old Asian female with ADHD. I wanted to mention the asian part because most of the people in the asian community doesn’t believe in mental illnesses like ADHD, Depression, or Social Anxiety. In which I have all 3 (and I’m pretty sure the feed off of each other).

So I’m constantly reminded of my short comings and rarely do I ever get praises when I am creative or spontaneous or even humorous.

I just recently found out that I had a passion for photography that I displayed since young. You will find what makes you calm and immediately good at when your ADHD fuels it.

I found myself always distracted during conversations because things would catch my attention and I would whip out my camera and take the picture.

And risk taking, I’ll tell you about how I stopped on the freeway (on the side, with hazard lights on ofcourse.) And took a picture of what looks like the mist engulfing the cars on the freeway.

The spontaneous no filter mouth that I have also, it both made me lose friends and gain many.

Lost the friends I accidentally offend and gain many friends who thought I was hilarious even when I don’t mean to be.

But I KEPT many friends with my ADHD as well. Because I’m extremely honest about my conditions and tries my best to be aware of my surroundings and the feelings of the people around me. My real friends would be patient with me and understand me. They hold my hand and help me improve.

Just because someone has ADHD doesnt mean that they only have positive or negative. It manifests differently and influenced by the people in your life (family background) and people you choose to keep in your life (friends) and yourself.

I have doubts literally every second of my life, even when I’m taking pictures. Something that I love will calm me but the insecurities of it not being good in others opinions still scares me.

You’ve listed “good traits”.

Being creative doesn’t necessarily means good because of some tasks we have to do as human. We live in a society that needs structure and instructions. I get yelled at for not following the instructions all the time due to my “creative” mind.

And I already told you about the risk taking, there’s a reason why they’re called risks. Honesty is a great quality too. But know how to use it because not everyone wants to hear the ugly truth.

My advice is to try to look at your shortcomings from both sides. You didnt really list any except being insecure.

Being too insecure is an issue but insecurities do keep you aware. More aware of your surroundings to protect yourself or protect others.

Overthinking drives from being insecure. Too much will hurt, but overthinking gives you the ability to plan out different scenarios to a problem to guess/estimate how it’ll turn out if you try A or B.

Everything has a downside. Oh look, my pessimistic mentality is coming to play. But the secret is to try and keep it balanced.

Too little water will give you kidney stones but too much water, you can literally die from water poisoning. (Google it! It’s real, a person who won a radio contest died from drink too much at once.)

What I do is:
1. Sit down in your room with no music or anything.
2. List down at least 3 of what you think are your bad qualities.
3. And think and try to remember of a time when you used each one in different situations that ended up helping you. (By the way, a thing about ADHD individuals is that we always do things for no reason and figure out why later. So don’t fret. And just be patient. Which is another problem we have, impatience.)
4. Think of at least 3 good traits you believe you don’t carry while ADHD individuals do. And think of how in 1 way it does apply to you. (I’m creative but at the same time not really. Everyone I know can draw whatever they imagined in their head. But I can’t. Too much will run through my mind. I can only draw what’s given to me. Or something I can physically see. I then realized because I loved architectural and landscape photography. Something that is given right infront of me in physical form right there for me to capture at whatever angle I think is beautiful. That my friend was my creativity.
I can’t write. I’m not good with flowery words. Which is not creative, but I can make up stories and fictional fantasy stories to entertain my baby sister as quickly as a snap of a finger.
What’s art? It’s a variety of things. Whats beauty? It’s in the eye of the beholder. What’s being creative? Its subjective.

What matters is that YOU need to view SOME of your flaws as positive things. (But if one of your flaws are forgetting to refill the toilet paper roll. Then you should fix it…there’s nothing positive about that.)

And keep your mind open to the possibilities that one day you’ll find what your mind is creative about. Because if your don’t and keep your head dow feeling sorry for yourself. You just might miss it when opportunity comes your way.

Sorry I wrote too much. If you need any type of encouragement or need someone to vent. I’m happy to help anyone who’s struggling or just need a friend who has the same problems.

Trust me, I know how hard it is on college…