Working when you have ADHD

A post I read on Reddit recently reminded me that there was a part of managing ADHD as an adult, and that is managing others. By this, I am referring to your boss. Everybody knows that there are laws in place to stop an employer from discriminating so you would think that you would be safe to reveal that you have a disorder right?

Well no, you see even though the laws are there enforcing them is very difficult. If a potential employer does not hire you after you reveal that you have ADHD, then you would have to prove that it was because of that, which would be very difficult as they would simply say person B was more suitable. If you are already employed and they find out, then they will simply look for something, anything to terminate your employment.

This happened to me when I found out that I actually had ADHD. I was far too open about this and of course, let my employer at the time know all about it. Soon enough my work started to be reduced from project coordination to simply copy paste jobs, over and over, day after day. When I wasn't quitting the job they searched back through my emails for a 2-year span just to find something incriminating. With that, I was on a final warning so I quit, it was just no point dragging this out any further.

So why do employers have such a big issue with a person with a disorder? The reason is simply down to cost. You see disabilities mean having measures to allow the person to work, and that costs more on budget.  So, of course, it is far cheaper to just not employ people who cost extra.  Business is cold and once you have some experience of this, it is why more and more people with ADHD are going self-employed to avoid the hassle, but what if you haven't got the experience just yet?

Well, you simply need to ensure that you never mention anything and get what you can from them. Trust is something you should never give to someone who is paying you, as the business will always come above you. It isn't anything against you specifically if the business fails then nobody has a job.  So keep your ADHD close to you, they have no need to know if you are managing it yourself, so you do not need the extra hassle. If you are able to manage your day using Outlook and if you are using medications to control the symptoms then what they do not know never hurts.

From the begining

So today I have launched a new page titled what is ADHD for an adult. Something I really should have put in first but I really wanted to put more time and energy in getting this done right. It is still more of a summary but I really wanted to put something which not only gives someone without the disorder an insight into what it is like with ADHD, but also if you a person who is not sure if you have the condition, it might give you something which makes you think, yes I have these issues.

I will in future posts put in more details as to how to check yourself out before having to see a doctor, but for now I just wanted to give an overview. Something I wanted to point out though you may notice sometimes in the article I will switch between ADHD and ADD, there is a reason for this, as adults tend to not be effected by the hyperactive part of the disorder due to the brain development catching up so really as adults we have attention deficit or in Dr Barkleys theory IDD which means inhibition deficit, as self control is one of the biggest issues.

Please have a read and if you have any questions please let me know. 

Energy Drinks and ADHD

This was something I wanted to write about as many a time I have seen the knee jerk whenever someone even see's a picture of an energy drink. However I wanted to give a deep understanding of what is actually inside an energy drink.

Something you will see in the post over and over is in moderation, which I apologies if it gets repetitive, but it is the key thing to remember with energy drinks. If you use them in the same way medication is used it can be a useful method to help out the symptoms.

Check out the full post here

Hello World

Hello and welcome to my blog which will be discussing all the different aspects of dealing with ADHD as an adult. I wanted to write this blog for two reasons. The first was to document what I have learnt along the way since after I was diagnosed I was given just a handful of pills and a book, (more about this in my about me section). The second reason was to share the knowledge I have discovered along the way with everyone who wants to learn.

The many groups and discussions I have been involved in with regards to ADHD has been asking many of the same questions I had when I first found out that I had the disorder, so it made sense to me to create a source of information. Currently the outlook is to update weekly with new content, depending on work commitments. If I can make this full time however the updates will get to daily, so please if you want me to cover anything please let me know in the comments.