Katherine Mengardon

Musings: What ADHD is… And what it isn’t

By

Karuski

What ADHD Is… and What It Isn’t

ADHD has suffered for decades from terrible PR. Say the word and most people still picture a disruptive 9 year-old-boy, an adult who can’t keep track of their keys, or someone who just needs to “try harder.” None of this comes close to describing what ADHD actually is.

Before we go any further, I need to say something important about language — something that underpins my entire approach to neurodivergence.

I don’t refer to people as neurotypical. Ever. Because the word suggests a “normal” way of having a brain — as though human cognition has a default factory setting. It doesn’t. There is no normal. There are only neurotypes.

So instead, I talk about neurocompliance: the people whose brains happen to match the expectations society was built around. They glide through school because classrooms were designed for them. They thrive in offices because office culture was shaped for them. The world fits them like a custom glove.

And sometimes, when I’m feeling particularly provocative, I’ll say neuroboring — a tiny, cheeky rebellion against decades of being pathologised, shamed and misunderstood. (Said with love. Mostly.) With that out of the way, let’s get to the heart of it:

ADHD is not what you’ve been told.
And to understand what it is, we have to start with what it absolutely isn’t.

ADHD is not a deficit of attention

Most ADHDers don’t have too little attention.
We have too much — flowing in from every direction, all at once.

The trouble isn’t that we don’t notice things. It’s that we notice everything. The tone in someone’s voice. That flickering light overhead. This funny memory from 2012. The worry we can’t quite place. That weird sound outside. The emotion shifting in someone’s face. The colour of the underside of the teacup. The connection between two seemingly unrelated factoids on the news.

We’re not lacking in attention. We are lacking in filters.

The ADHD brain is a “more” brain — not a “less” one

To understand ADHD properly, you have to go all the way back to how the brain develops in the first place.

We’re all born with about 100 billions of neural pathways. Between birth and age three, that number skyrockets and more than doubles. The young brain is an explosion of possibility.

Around three, the brain begins its long, elegant editing process called neuronal pruning: strengthening the pathways we use and trimming back the ones we don’t by about a half. It’s how the brain becomes more efficient, more streamlined, more specialised. This continues until full maturity — around 25 for neurocompliant people, and closer to 30–31 for neurodivergent brains like ours.

Here comes the good part:

ADHD brains prune differently — they prune less.

Which means our brains retain more pathways, more possibilities, more sensory input, more associative thinking, more “what if,” more creativity, more intensity… more everything.

This gives us astonishing strengths — but it also means we hit overwhelm faster. Not because we’re less capable or deficient, but because we’re processing life in high-definition while others are still on standard settings.

So if the diagnosis lists aren’t describing ADHD itself… what are the actual traits?

This is where the lived-experience community has been years ahead of the textbooks. Trauma Geek has beautifully articulated what so many ADHDers intuitively recognise in ourselves, and this list captures the neurotype as it exists before overwhelm, outside of distress, and regardless of masking.

The Innate ADHD Traits (Before Distress, Before Masking, Before Shame)

• Neural hyperconnectivity — a brain that spots patterns and links ideas quickly and intuitively, when others see…noise.
• Monotropism — not difficulty focusing, but the ability to drop into deep, immersive, almost meditative attention for things that truly matter to you. Yes, that’s hyperfocus.
• Holotropic sensory gating — a richer, more detailed sensory world; you perceive more, feel more, notice more.
• An interest-driven dopamine system — motivation follows meaning, not obligation; “shoulds” simply don’t access the chemistry required to act.
• A need for novelty and variation — not restlessness, but a neuroceptive pull toward stimulation, creativity and movement.
• Flexible, associative processing — thinking in spirals, leaps, metaphors and connections; ideas breeding ideas.
• A wider perceptual lens — what others call “distractibility” is simply the truth of your brain: more data available, more of the world arriving at once.

None of these are pathological. None of these are deficits.
They are neutral traits — powerful when supported, painful when suppressed.

Everything else — the overwhelm, shutdowns, impulsivity, emotional storms — are distress symptoms, not the neurotype itself.

Distress symptoms are not ADHD — they’re the fallout

The behaviours clinicians diagnose (inattention, hyperactivity, impulsivity, emotional dysregulation) are what happen when an ADHD brain is forced into neurocompliant environments without support.

They appear when demands exceed capacity, when the nervous system is overfiring, when sensory input is relentless, or when shame has been layered on for years. They are the smoke — not the fire.

And the beautiful thing is: distress symptoms can soften.
With the right support, they often do.
But the traits underneath don’t change — nor should they.

So what is ADHD, really?

It is a way of being in the world that is intuitive, creative, perceptive, emotional, associative, imaginative and intense.
It is a brain that sees connections where others see chaos.
A nervous system that feels deeply.
A mind that leaps, invents, strategises and feels alive in possibility. It is not disorder. It is difference.

Yes, it can be exhausting. Yes, growing up neurodivergent in a neurocompliant world is often painful. Yes, many of us reach adulthood carrying the scars of misunderstanding.

But none of that is because of who we are. It’s because the world was built for compliance and convenience, over the values we hold that are so fundamental that we don’t even question them: clarity, efficiency, logic, fairness, authenticity, connection. And that’s why we hit our heads against societal walls from the get go.

If you’re reading this and wondering… “Could this be me?”

Ask yourself the simplest question:

Is life harder for you than it seems to be for everyone else, even though you’re trying incredibly hard?

If the answer is yes, you deserve to explore that feeling — not for a label, but for clarity, compassion and understanding.
Self-awareness doesn’t trap you. It opens keys to finally working with your brain, not against it.

And gently closing

ADHD isn’t a broken version of a normal brain. Normal is a myth. Only the wiring you have — the wiring you inherited, the wiring that makes you creative and perceptive and full of beautifully inconvenient intensity.

When you understand the difference between your traits and your distress, shame melts. Your past makes sense.
Your present softens. Your future becomes yours to shape.

You are not too much. You are not a problem to correct.
You are not a disorder to manage.

You are simply — gloriously — not neurocompliant.
And the world is far more interesting because of it.

Further Reading & Trusted Resources

For the curious, the question-askers, and the late-night Googlers…

Brain Development & Synaptic Pruning

ADHD & Brain Connectivity

Neurodiversity & Lived Experience

ADHD Self-Exploration & Screening

(Not diagnostic — just a starting point, like trying on glasses at Boots.)

Creativity, Neurodivergence & The Brain

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