Is it generally considered a bad idea to share with others that you have been diagnosed with ADHD? How have others handled sharing diagnosis information with friends, family, work, etc?
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I’ve told a small handful of people. Most of the responses are either nothing at all, or pointless platitudes about how it’s made up or “everyone has ADHD these days lol”. You’ll probably know when to share or not, and just lean on not sharing as a safe fallback. It’s still a subject that has stereotypes attached and even the smartest, well-intentioned people will either make it about themselves, or look down at you. Err on the side of silence.
A great many people, including even some of the most well-intentioned friends and family, and including many people who are in most ways intelligent, educated, and caring – will still find it impossible to prevent themselves from changing their image of you. And their expectations and guesses about you will follow to some degree. You may find people forming unspoken predictions that you will not listen well, that you will interrupt, or that you will only talk about your own stuff at any length.
And it won’t be everybody, thankfully; just many. There will also be some people you may grow closer to because they already understand and now they’ll find it easier to interact with you directly about ADHD-related things.
I don’t mind people knowing but I don’t like telling people because it makes any conversation awkward. I tell people they can share as they want, I don’t care. I’m happy to talk to people about it if they ask. If people talked about it more it wouldn’t have taken so long for me to realise I had it.
On the other hand, one of my bosses knows I have it and straight up doesn’t care. He wants gratitude for anything he’s done to help me (very little) and constantly tells me to be more stop doing things that are obviously happening because I have ADHD. Apparently now I know I have ADHD I should have all these coping mechanisms in place to make it irrelevant, even though I don’t have access to meds (temporary problem).
One thing to consider is if you’re on medication people may want
Found out two weeks ago and don’t have a diagnosis yet, but I’ve been very open about it.
I struggled hard at work before and my boss is excited that I now know why and very keen on helping me deal with it. Unfortunately those kinds of bosses are rare and we’ll be parting ways in a few months, so I’m unsure about how I’ll handle it next time.
