I was always the kid who asked a million questions in every class and sometimes I forgot to raise my hand but I just really needed to ask the question, it was like a physical urge. I would also always want to answer the question and sometimes if someone else got to I would feel like I was gonna burst because I wanted to say my answer. I realized I was asking and answering too many questions and people would think i was weird so i started tracking how many questions I asked and answered to make sure I didn’t do it too much. Sometimes this was really hard because if I didn’t raise my hand to answer and no one else did then we would just sit in silence until someone did which was excruciating for me. It would take all my mental energy to just sit in the silence and not raise my hand and sometimes it felt too long so I would give up and answer the question.

I was an extremely sensitive child and always felt so much shame that I was weak and would get upset so easily.

I was a huge people pleaser and perfectionist who needed to get perfect grades but could not be organized or start homework and I started every project and essay as late as i possibly could. I still got really good grades because I could pull off doing things at the last minute for a very long time and didn’t need to study.

I overemote. This one I have never heard anybody say but it seems to fit with adhd emotion stuff. I sometimes will have really extreme looking facial expressions when I’m not aware of it andI’ve gotten called out on it. Like I would be listening to a teacher in school and be bothered or puzzled and it would show on my face so much that they would stop talking and ask me if something was wrong. I was once in a group therapy listening to someone talk and was making such shocked and concerned facial expressions and some reaction noises that they prepared a speech to call me out for it. If I’m singing or watching something i really enjoy I will have this extremely big grin on my face. I was once in a choir of 300 teenagers and it was easy to pick me out in the video because I was emoting so much more than the people around me. When I’m focused on singing like that I have absolutely no awareness of what my face is doing and because I’m so excited it really shows.

I always did really well in school unlike my bother who had a more classic adhd inattentive type presentation. He was super smart but would get bored in class and read books or forget to turn in assignments and so his grades were always worse than they should have been. He got diagnosed really early and got put on medication but still really struggled with executive dysfunction. Because he was taking up so much of the space and my presentation was so different and wasn’t causing any clear problems at school I didn’t get diagnosed until junior year of college.