Explaining ADHD to My Family: How We Finally Started Talking

From one ADHDer to another, let's make our lives better.

For most of my life, my family saw the storm but never what was going on inside it. They saw me go quiet. They saw me snap over something small. They saw the things I forgot and the plans that changed overnight.

What they could not see was the noise in my head that came before all of that. And honestly, neither could I. I did not have the words until I was diagnosed with ADHD at 45.

This post is about how we started talking about it at home. It is my story, not a script, and every family is different. But if you are wondering how on earth to explain your brain to the people you love, maybe some of this will feel familiar.

Why explaining ADHD felt so hard

When I first tried, I made a mess of it. I said things like "it is just how my brain works", which is true, but it sounded like an excuse. I could see it landing that way, so I would get defensive and the whole thing would turn into another row.

The other problem was timing. I always tried to explain in the middle of a storm, when I was already flooded. That is the worst moment to find calm words about anything.

What changed for us

The turning point was writing it down when I was calm. Not a long letter. Just a few short notes about the moments my family found hardest, what was going on in my head at the time, and what tends to help me.

Things like this. When I go quiet, I am not sulking. My head is full and I am trying not to say something I will regret. When I snap, it is usually after a long run of small things that have built up all day. When I forget, it is not that I did not care. It just fell out of my head the moment something else came in.

Reading those out on a calm evening was a completely different conversation from trying to explain myself mid storm. For me it was the first time it felt like I was letting my family in rather than pushing them away.

Turning those notes into cards

Those notes became the Why I React Like This cards. There are 24 of them, each one a real moment from my life, like "When I go quiet" or "When I snap", with what was going on inside and what helps me. There are blank ones too, because your moments will not be the same as mine.

We pick a card, read it out and ask each other: does this sound like you? It turns what used to be a row into a conversation.

A family guide you fill in together

The cards were a start, but I wanted something that covered the bigger picture. So I made Living With My Storm, a fill in guide you complete about yourself and then share with your family.

It has pages about your brain, your storm signals from calm to building to full storm, what helps and what does not, and what your family needs from you too. I wish we had something like it years ago.

What I have learned about these conversations

Short and calm works better for us than long and heated. A five minute chat over a cup of tea does more in our house than an hour of explaining after a bad day.

It goes both ways. Once I started sharing what was going on for me, I got better at hearing what my ADHD was like to live with from the other side. That was not always easy to hear. It was worth it.

And it is never finished. Some weeks we talk about it a lot. Some weeks not at all. The cards stay put until someone needs one.

If you are just starting out

If you have been diagnosed recently, or you are still waiting, you might not have the words yet either. That is okay. I did not have them for 45 years. I wrote about those first few months in my post on being diagnosed with ADHD at 45, and there is a shorter piece on finding out as an adult.

From one ADHDer to another, the people who love you probably want to understand. Sometimes they just need a way in.

My lived story. Not advice, not therapy, not medical guidance.

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