My friend is forgetful, will get a bit fixated on things, struggles to focus on exams, and used to run around a ton but not since elementary school, but she’s horrible at multitasking and is really slow at doing tasks/learning. She’s wrong but when she looks at me (who does task quickly and am great at multitasking because if my hearing, sight, and touch are not all being stimulated I shut down) she thinks she’s really bad. So, she’s denied that she has adhd and would say the doctor was wrong until the other day when her SO said he thinks she’ll be great in her new job because she “can do 6 tasks over 6hrs but not 1 task 6 times in 6 hrs”. She was talking about how true it was because 1 task gets boring and hard to focus on but if she’s rotating every 10-30 minutes then she never gets bored. I told her that was adhd and she got so excited that she actually did have it.

Moral of the story:

Adhd is different for everyone and don’t deny yours because it’s not the same as someone else’s. Everyone is struggling in their own way and don’t assume because for a person’s adhd looks beneficial that it actually is (I’ve got a ton of anxiety from overthinking everything, but I can finish things quickly because my mind moves fast. I can multitask very well, but I struggle whenever it’s quiet because my mind would rather think about the silence than the exam)

Yeah, it’s possible that you learned coping mechanisms without properly realising it. ( For example, I hardly ever burn/forget about food in the oven anymore, but that’s because I’ve spent years training myself to set an alarm on my phone straight away, before it slips my mind. )

“Mild” ADHD doesn’t exist, because ADHD isn’t a mental illness, it’s a different way of thinking. But some people struggle with the symptoms less, either because they’ve learned to cope or because they live their life in a way that makes it easier for them. ( Or they just mask the symptoms, so while they know they experience hyperfixations and innattention, etc, no one else sees it. )

Yep, you can absolutely have milder ADHD. The DSM lists 3 severities of ADHD, with Mild actually being one of them.

Infact I’d assume lot of people with mild ADHD never get diagnosed cause its never a BIG problem. 

I’m very sure that its the case for my dad for example. He has some very obvious ADHD traits, and my dad’s side of the family has a history of ADHD (all my male cousins on my dad’s side are diagnosed with it), but it was never a big enough problem for him to need to get diagnosed.