Celebrate neurodiversity with the best listens on living with ADHD

I was 37 years old when I was diagnosed with ADHD. The way I was raised meant that not only was my ADHD not caught when I was young—it was dismissed as an excuse. Refrains of “If you just trained yourself to pay attention to details, you wouldn’t make so many mistakes ...” and “I know you think you’re trying, but if you were really trying, then you’d …” peppered my upbringing, driving me to mask anything about myself I thought undesirable.

Because I am extremely driven and an outstanding masker, my life looked fine from the outside. Only I knew the cyclone of thoughts, the anxiety and burnout that churned inside me. Like many people, it wasn’t until the pandemic hit that I had a chance to sit down for the first time in nearly four decades. This reprieve gave me the space to realize that my experience wasn’t everyone else’s experience.

Through referral after referral, multiple appointments with a psychiatrist, and much testing, I finally was able to name what was going on inside my brain and realize there wasn’t actually anything wrong with me. My difficulties with getting started on boring tasks, constantly replacing lost items, and forgetting details that others didn’t seem to have a problem remembering finally made sense. It took me so long to get a diagnosis because, individually, the symptoms are benign—it’s really not that uncommon to misplace something, get distracted, or grapple with setting priorities. All people struggle with impulse control or poor time management at some point in their lives.

Yet these seemingly innocuous traits can also indicate neurodivergence. Approximately 3.5% of the American population has ADHD, and though that seems a very small percentage, diagnoses in adults are on the rise. Since 2020, the diagnosis rate for adults in the United States has been four times higher than the diagnosis rate for children. Nevertheless, when the world is set up for the majority of folks, for those whose brains work typically, it can be frustrating to navigate the world if you’re in the minority—things that seem obvious to everyone else might elude you, or vice versa, the rest of the world might miss something easily understood by a mind with ADHD. Neurodiversity recognizes that people with neurodivergent brains face unique challenges and also wield unique strengths. These differences in thinking and processing are not deficits—there is no “right” way to think, learn, or behave.

Still, starting on your path of better understanding your neurodivergent brain can be a bit tricky. After my diagnosis, the first thing I wanted to do was learn as much as I could about how my brain worked. (Hyper focus, activate!) Whether you’re in a similar boat or simply looking to learn more, I’ve curated this list of resources to get you started on your own journey. And the best thing about this list? They’re all in audio, which is how I read most of the time—audiobooks and ADHDers are best friends because it gives their busy minds something to focus on while still allowing their bodies to move.