How achievement hides struggle, and why masking as excellence delays understanding
[ADHD Awareness Month Myth 2: Success and ADHD]
If you looked at my early school record, you’d never guess I had ADHD. Effortless grades, high praise, no visible signs of struggle - until suddenly, everything collapsed.
That’s the problem with how we measure “doing well.”
We mistake performance for stability, and discipline for ease. But for many with ADHD, success isn’t proof of control, it’s a mask built from adrenaline and panic.
The Achievement Bias
From the start, ADHD was defined by dysfunction - a fidgety child, the underachiever, the one who couldn’t sit still.
So, when someone performs well, it disrupts the narrative. “If you can succeed,” people say, “you can’t really have ADHD.” But ADHD doesn’t erase intelligence or ambition — it scrambles access to them.
You might deliver brilliant work today and completely derail tomorrow, not from apathy, but because the mental fuel that powers you simply disappears.
It’s not an inability to do — it’s an inability to do consistently.
The Hidden Cost of Functioning
I grew up in 1980s South Africa, where ADHD was something “other children” had - loud, hyperactive boys who couldn’t sit still. Inattentive ADHD wasn’t even on the radar.
My own schooling looked effortless until it wasn’t. I was the student teachers praised; until I quietly fell apart. No one understood why a potential A-student had faded into mediocrity. No one noticed the sleepless panic before exams, or the endless loop of “next time I’ll start earlier.”
Teachers mattered - when they taught, when they didn’t, and when they (un)knowingly reinforced the shame of slipping standards.
By the time I reached varsity, I’d become another first-year statistic. Nobody said, “Maybe this is ADHD.”
They just called it disappointing.
No one knew what burnout looked like back then - especially not in someone who seemed to have so much promise.
In our world, failure becomes the default early on - it seeps in quietly, long before anyone calls it by name. It defines how we measure ourselves, how we interpret effort, how we learn to expect disappointment.
It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy — not because we stop trying, but because we never stop believing we’re supposed to fail.
Rethinking “Success”
The myth that success disproves ADHD comforts those who don’t understand it.
It turns high achievement into a weapon against recognition — and makes collapse feel like moral failure.
Real success for people with ADHD isn’t about perfect performance. It’s about sustainable functioning.
It’s learning how to align our environment with how our brains actually work, not fighting our wiring until it breaks.
Sometimes, success isn’t about rising higher. It’s about finally stopping the fall.
Closing Reflection
We don’t outgrow ADHD; we outgrow our ability to hide it.
And for many of us, the real moment of success isn’t the award or the promotion - it’s the quiet realization that we can stop performing and start understanding.
