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RE: ADHD, depression, and anxiety: A coming out story
I feel there are probably more people than we realise hiding issues which mean they struggle with what we consider "normal" day to day life and they are likely all different in how this affects things. It's like we have a benchmark of what is "normal" and are too quick to judge abnormal behaviour. Let's fit all those round pegs into square holes.
There's also the feeling that if we do speak out about it we could be seen as becoming one of those who use their diagnosis as an excuse to get out of everything.
You nailed it right on the head. Dr. Edward Hallowell, in "Driven to Distraction: Recognizing and Coping with Attention Deficit Disorder", said (and I'm paraphrasing at best) that many non-ADHD simply need to 'snap out of it' and pay attention, which he likened to telling a visually-impaired person they simply need to squint harder.
Likewise, that would also be like saying people with depression simply need to put on a happy face, and those with anxiety should just take a deep breath and chill.
Nobody wants or chooses to live with such conditions - if it truly were as easy as some people think, then these conditions wouldn't exist in the first place.