ADHD Challenges Are Actually Opportunities

ADHD challenges are real — but they’re not a burden. Owning your life, creating opportunities, & making it work for you? That’s your specialty.

TL;DR Summary:

ADHD doesn’t need to be fixed — it needs to be understood, honored, & used as fuel.
I explore how ADHD shows up in my life through impulsivity, stimming, feedback sensitivity, & working memory struggles.
PTSD amplifies many of these challenges, but awareness and self-designed systems help take your power back.
Social media often reduces ADHD to shame and dysfunction (burdens) — but we can reclaim it through identity, language, & connection. You choose how you look at your ADHD; ultimately, life is what you make it.
You’re not alone & you’re not weak. ADHD can be the blueprint for building a life that works for you.

ADHD doesn’t always look like hyperactivity or forgetting your keys. Sometimes it looks like rebellion. Like impulsivity. Like dancing to stay grounded or freezing when someone gives you feedback. It shows up in your nervous system, in your memory, in the way you organize your digital files (or don’t).

Lately, I’ve seen people talk about ADHD in ways that strip it of joy, pride, and power. It’s all framed as shame, brokenness, dysfunction. And while yeah, ADHD can suck, that’s not the whole story. You are not just your symptoms. You’re a whole, complex person navigating a world that wasn’t built for your brain.

That’s why I created Focus in Flux.

Because the system wasn’t made for us. It was built around neurotypical definitions of success, productivity, discipline — and we were expected to fit into it without question. But we’re done bending. We’re building something better. We’re a movement of self-leaders with the awareness to recognize what was never built with us in mind — and the clarity to dismantle it, rebuild what works, and burn the rest.

This isn’t about fixing ourselves. It’s about understanding ourselves — and designing a life that works for us. That starts with naming what we’re dealing with. With learning the language. With having the courage to stop blaming ourselves and start building new systems instead.

And we don’t have to do it alone.

Here’s what I’ve learned after looking at my own life — after tracking the patterns, the challenges, the hidden strengths — and choosing to rebuild in a way that supports me. It’s not some insurmountable obstacle. It’s possible. And we can learn from each other as we do it.

Three women walk arm-in-arm through a wooded path, representing the power of support in facing ADHD challenges and building something better for themselves and together. — Photo by Ryani Jayasundara on Unsplash

Impulsivity & Rebellion

Impulsivity and rebellion aren’t separate forces in my life — they’re the same instinct in different outfits. I don’t sit around weighing pros and cons. I just do it. The rush of dopamine, the sense of accomplishment, the thrill of pushing against a rule — it’s addictive. And yeah, my brain knows the boundary. It just doesn’t care. Because it’s not wired to operate by society’s rules. It’s wired to chase interest, urgency, and the intoxicating sense of autonomy.

I’ve done things that shocked people — and sometimes they’ve shocked me, too. Once, early in my communications career, I announced a public community program without approval because I was too excited to wait and those benefiting from it needed help ASAP. But there were backend deals still being finalized by my boss. It got pulled immediately. I learned from it — and I haven’t made that mistake again, especially as I climbed into roles where confidentiality was everything. I’ve worked with global brands like McDonald’s, Kraft Heinz, Mondelez, and many others — where acting on impulse isn’t just a bad idea, it’s a liability.

Money was another battlefield. I spent impulsively and racked up debt I was ashamed of. Growing up poor, I never learned delayed gratification — when I had money, I used it. My husband and I have paid off more than $50K in credit card debt, but only because we got brutally honest about our patterns. That was rebellion too — rebelling against generational scarcity, against a system that never taught us how to build wealth slowly.

Ironically, the time in my life when I was least impulsive was during the military. However, deciding to enlist was the most impulsive thing I’ve ever done. But once I was in, I had no choice but to shut that part of me down. The consequences of impulsivity in that world were life-or-death. I bottled up everything and poured it into exercise — ran a half marathon, lifted like my life depended on it. I also found quiet ways to rebel. I went vegetarian for a year, vegan for six months. I made my own toothpaste and shampoo. I became crunchy — not because it was trendy, but because it was something different I could control in a system built on uniformity. Also ironic (but makes sense in retrospect) that once the PTSD began, I stopped moving and started eating anything I wanted, whenever I wanted. Here’s how I’m coming back from that.

The all-or-nothing habits sound familiar?

Here’s the thing I don’t see enough people saying: ADHD might make life harder, but it can also make you sharper. It teaches you things other people aren’t prepared for when life flies off the handle. You’ve had to adapt faster. Recover quicker. Had to build a life around instincts most people are taught to suppress.

And if you harness that? If you stop fighting it and start shaping it? It becomes power.

So, my instincts led me to:

Join the military
Channel everything into physical fitness
Pursue a bachelor’s degree at the same time PTSD ripped through my mind
Put nothing into my physical fitness
Finish my master’s degree at double speed while juggling internships and nonprofit work
Walk away from a career I spent over a decade building
Start this blog with every skill I fought to earn

Some of these instincts I acted on didn’t sense to anyone, not even me. But they felt right — and they were.

So yeah, ADHD sucks. It can be all-or-nothing, like my life’s pattern I just shared. But life is what you make of it. And I’m using mine to build something real and learn from ADHD challenges, hopefully without burning out again.

Stimming

Stimming isn’t talked about nearly enough in ADHD spaces — but it should be. It’s one of the most important ways I regulate energy, emotion, and attention. For me, it’s not just fidgeting or tapping my foot. It’s dancing. Singing. Bursting out into sound and movement because it feels good to let something out.

I’ve always loved to dance and sing. As a kid, I used to stutter, but singing helped me speak without tripping over my own words. There was something about melody and rhythm that made my brain feel smoother — less jagged. That connection never went away.

Dancing is another release entirely. I’ve always leaned into physical humor, and dance lets me be expressive in a way that’s silly and freeing. It’s how I shake off tension. It’s how I make myself laugh.

Even during the military, I found ways to stim. I used to sing Destiny’s Child under my breath in boot camp — especially on hard days. People would chime in sometimes. It was like a little hit of humanity when everything else felt rigid and controlled. My body needed movement. My brain needed rhythm. And stimming gave me both.

Now, my husband and I sing and dance together all the time. Sometimes it’s goofy. Sometimes it’s intimate. But it’s one of the ways he’s learned to connect with me on my wavelength. He doesn’t just tolerate the energy — I think he secretly loves it. He tells me I’m fun, and he means it. That’s a huge part of ADHD no one talks about: we’re often the most fun people in the room because we’re constantly chasing dopamine, novelty, laughter, joy. Our brains thrive on that kind of connection — and when we share it with people we love, it becomes bonding, not chaos.

But not all stims are lighthearted. Some are harder to live with. I’ve picked at my skin and cuticles for years. My fingers are almost always a wreck. I run my hands through my hair so often I’ve caused thinning in some areas. It’s uncomfortable to admit, but it’s part of my reality. I’ve had to learn how to gently redirect those urges — not shame them, just guide them toward things that feel better and do less harm.

Sometimes, stimming looks like stillness. I’ll close my eyes and just listen — to music, to the wind outside, to the quiet under the noise. It’s a way of letting my brain recalibrate. That’s stimming too.

Because here’s the thing: ADHD brains are constantly seeking dopamine. It’s how we stay focused, present, and grounded. Stimming helps satisfy that need. It brings joy, relief, clarity, expression. And when we stop trying to hide it, we start finding ways to work with it.

Young woman dancing boldly in the street with hoop earrings and sunglasses, capturing the rebellious spirit and joyful defiance that often emerge as a response to ADHD challenges. — Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash

RSD & Self-Monitoring

Here’s the double-edged sword no one prepares you for: ADHD can make you incredibly self-aware and totally blind at the same time. You know you’re “a lot.” You know you miss things. But you still need feedback from others to know how much or what part needs adjusting. And that need? It can feel like weakness — especially when your brain already makes you second-guess everything.

In reality, I haven’t stopped seeing feedback as a threat. I’ve just learned to work around that reaction. In public relations — where the saying goes, “It’s PR, not ER,” but it sure feels like ER — feedback often comes fast, sharp, and under pressure. If you don’t adapt immediately, if you don’t keep up, if your brain needs even a second too long to task switch? You risk looking unprepared. Incompetent. Disconnected.

And that’s the hardest part — not the feedback itself, but the speed at which you’re expected to conform.

Yes, ADHD brains can be great with urgency. I thrive in emergencies. I can direct people, take control, keep calm under real chaos. I was a firefighting scene leader in the military. I know how to lead when everything’s burning. But when the threat isn’t physical — when it’s strategic, subtle, long-game stuff? My brain locks up. Not because I don’t care, but because that kind of pressure requires stillness, precision, and an internal clock that doesn’t exist in me.

And if I falter, the feedback comes quick — and hard. Not because I’m doing the wrong thing, but because I’m doing it in a way that’s harder for others to understand.

It doesn’t help that in most professional settings, feedback doesn’t land on your actual self — it lands on a filtered, masked, corporate version of you. You’ve had to twist your thoughts into “business speak,” adjust your tone, your facial expressions, your working style. And when you’re already dealing with internal chaos, now you’ve got to remember which version of yourself you were performing as when you did the thing they’re critiquing.

That’s masking at its finest. And it’s why feedback in corporate life can feel so destabilizing. You’re not just hearing what went wrong — you’re wondering if the version of you they’re commenting on was ever real to begin with.

Sometimes, when you don’t have the energy to filter, it can feel like a lack of discipline. Like you failed to be “professional.” But that’s not what it is. Wanting to show up as your full, authentic self isn’t a failure — it’s a sign you’re tired of contorting. And when you do show up as yourself, at least the feedback you get is rooted in who you actually are — not who you were trying to impersonate just to make it through another day.

That’s what makes this kind of feedback so painful. It’s not just about performance — it’s about legibility. It’s about proving, constantly, that you can keep up with all this even when your brain doesn’t work like that. And when you already live in that high-alert state, the smallest critique can feel like a threat to your worth.

Because getting feedback doesn’t just make you feel like you’ve done something wrong. It makes you feel even more misunderstood in a world that already doesn’t understand you. It confirms what you feared all along: That you’re playing a game where the rules weren’t written for you — and everyone else expects you to win anyway.

So eventually, I stopped playing. I left the corporate world behind — not because I couldn’t handle it, but because I was done trying to be someone I’m not. And now? I don’t avoid feedback altogether. I just don’t take it from everyone. When I share my work with people I trust — people who know me, or who can see it with fresh eyes and still honor what I’m trying to do — I take that feedback seriously. I take it kindly. Because it’s rooted in clarity, not control. And that’s the difference.

Working Memory

This is the one that cuts deepest for me.

Working memory issues aren’t just forgetfulness — they’re full-on disconnection. It’s walking into a room and forgetting why you’re there. It’s rereading the same sentence five times and still not knowing what it says. It’s remembering you need to look something up, looking it up, and forgetting it again five seconds later… then repeating that cycle a zillion times because your brain just won’t hold onto it.

ADHD makes this annoying. PTSD makes it unbearable.

I was diagnosed with PTSD after leaving the military. If you want to know how, you can read my story here.

It happened in college — at an elite university — after I had already spent four years in the military just to get there. I didn’t come from wealth or access. I grew up poor. I joined the military because I didn’t want to live as hard of a life as my parents and family had while I was growing up. I wanted an education. I wanted to earn more than I had ever seen. I knew the path I was taking would be brutal, but I was prepared — academically, emotionally, and mentally — to fight for a better future.

And then, just when I’d finally arrived, the trauma I’d been holding in slammed into me full force.

Newly diagnosed with PTSD, I started experiencing suicidal ideation, panic attacks multiple times a day, emotional dysregulation, and the constant pressure to perform in a space I had worked so hard to reach. My nervous system was shot, and my brain couldn’t hold information because it was too busy trying to keep me alive.

When your working memory fails because of trauma, it doesn’t just feel frustrating — it feels violating. It feels like the trauma is still taking things from you. Still deciding what you get to keep. It’s not just memory loss. It’s grief.

That’s why I hyperfocus on organizing. It’s not just a dopamine thing. It’s survival. Creating structure — whether it’s a clean room, a color-coded Google Drive, or a perfectly sorted folder of blog drafts — makes me feel like I’m clawing back some control from the chaos. It’s meditative. It tethers me to myself.

Because the truth is, losing even more of my working memory is too painful. Not because ADHD makes it inconvenient, but because PTSD makes it feel like another loss I didn’t choose. Another part of me that trauma tried to erase.

And yeah, ADHD brains aren’t exactly known for loving traditional organization. You don’t want to spend the mental energy to organize things. And when you do, you still might forget where you put the damn thing. But I’ve learned this truth the hard way: you can’t rely on your brain alone. You need external systems. And you need to commit to them, over and over again. Repetition is what eventually makes it stick — not discipline. Not perfection. Just enough self-compassion to try again.

That said, don’t get me started on planners.

I love the idea of planners. I love designing the plan, color-coding it, looking at the structure I created. But once that plan starts telling me what to do? I’m out. The rebel in me shows up and says, “You’re not the boss of me.” Even when I made it my own damn myself.

So I’ve had to find a middle ground. Systems that guide me gently, not command me. Structures that support me but don’t suffocate me. I may never have the kind of memory or organization that neurotypical people seem to take for granted — but I’ve built tools that help me feel anchored in who I am. And for now, that’s enough.

Final Thoughts: ADHD Isn’t a Burden; It’s an Opportunity

ADHD doesn’t show up the same for everyone — for me, it’s been rebellion. Impulsivity. Masking. Burnout. Brilliance. Optimism. It’s shaped every part of how I move through the world — and when you layer PTSD on top of that, it becomes even harder to untangle what’s trauma, what’s wiring, and what’s just me doing the best I can with what I’ve got, putting a positive spin on it all.

I’ve built systems that help me survive and even thrive. I’ve shared some of them here, and I’ll keep sharing more. But sometimes? I just need to write about connection. About the fact that us ADHDers don’t always have the same tools in life as everyone else — but we make up for it in ways we might not even realize.

Learning how to understand myself — really understand myself — with language that supports instead of shames me has been one of the most powerful steps I’ve taken. It’s helped me reclaim the parts of me that ADHD and PTSD tried to flatten. And I hope something in this post helps you do the same. To take the opportunity to really know yourself.

Because you’re not alone. And you’re not on the train tracks anymore, waiting for your ADHD, PTSD, or anything else to flatten you.

Ride inside that train with me instead, where ADHD isn’t a burden but an opportunity.