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“I Never Felt Like an Adult. A Late ADHD Diagnosis Explained Why.”

“Grown-ups don’t pull their phone-charger cable out while chatting and distractedly plug it into their mouth. They hardly ever go to bed with their keys left hanging on the outside of the door, and I very much doubt that they have 14,000 unread emails. Grown-ups absolutely do not tell someone they’ve just met that their underwear is stuck up their bum.”

By Lynda Breakwell Updated on May 7, 2025
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I’m 48 years old, but I don’t feel like a grown-up.

Grown-ups write a weekly meal schedule on a Sunday and do careful calculations before drilling holes. They make sandwiches the night before and remember to take them to work.

Grown-ups quell their transient urges in the pursuit of long-term goals. They commit, they save, they resist, and they toil. They get where they were planning to go.

Tedium does not torment the regular grown-up. If a boring job needs doing, they simply get on and do it. They are not hijacked by the urgent need to be anywhere else but the present.

Grown-ups don’t pull their phone-charger cable out while chatting and distractedly plug it into their mouth. They hardly ever go to bed with their keys left hanging on the outside of the door, and I very much doubt that they have 14,000 unread emails. Grown-ups absolutely do not tell someone they’ve just met that their underwear is stuck up their bum.

So, nope. Not much grown-uppery going on around here.

Even motherhood has failed to rebirth me as a convincing adult, if I’m honest. I love with abandon, but I do not have the skill set of an executive PA, despite what my children’s school might assume.

I’m the parent with the kid in full uniform on wear-whatever-you-want day and no cash for the cash-only book fair. I’m the mum at the bounce party who demos an illegal maneuver and then watches as a 6-year-old copies and knocks out his tooth.

[Read: Diaries of “Adulting” (or Not) with ADHD]

I Don’t Feel Like an Adult: The Fallout from Falling Short

Like lots of people acutely aware of their flaws, I’ve learned to jump in and laugh at myself before others can take a shot. But I still feel small when I fail to measure up to societal norms, no matter how many jokes I churn out at my own expense.

I am also reduced to jelly by the ice-cold dead eye of those proudly logical humans repulsed by malfunctions of common sense. I see their disdain as a sign of deep self-loathing, but I nonetheless crumble at their condemnation of me and the faults I may well never fix.

My lack of adulting acumen has cost me. Failure to plan, persist, and apply what I learn from experience has thwarted my ambition and harmed my self-trust. It limits my capacity to meet my potential and avoid repeating mistakes. It hurts.

Why Can’t I “Adult?” It Was ADHD All Along

I cannot describe how I felt when I read about the symptoms of inattentive-type ADHD in women. I ticked almost all of the boxes and made sense to myself for the first time ever. A single condition explained what I had always viewed with quiet shame as manifestations of immaturity, weak character and sloth.

I waited 30 months for an assessment and then sobbed the whole way through it. When my diagnosis came, it felt like a big “welcome home” by people who finally got me. You are not alone! Come on in! Sorry about the mess. It was truly the biggest relief of my life.

[Take This Self-Test: ADHD Symptoms in Women]

Now I’m busy learning how my traits and behaviors conspire to keep me feeling like a child.

Of course I have trouble resisting temptation. My brain yearns for dopamine to bolster its fragile supply. And I leave things to the last minute not out of preference or bravado but because concentration evades me until a deadline is so close I can smell it.

There’s a reason too why I struggle to stay on-task when a job is neither urgent nor appealing. My filter for blocking out irrelevant stimuli has the authority of wilted spinach. Distracting noises and thoughts roll in freely while I’m trying to focus and the effort it takes to ignore them leaves me feeling drained and frustrated.

I am not devoid of reason (though I never really thought I was). My prefrontal cortex is clear-thinking and analytical. But when my lizard brain floods with emotion, the rational part of me doesn’t carry sufficient clout to talk it out of a spiral.

It’s empowering to have language and insights about ADHD to help me understand and convey to others what I’ve always known but lacked the words or concepts to explain.

Learning How to Be an Adult

My ADHD diagnosis hasn’t magicked me into a grown-up. But it has made me feel happier and more in control of my choices. I’ve grieved for lost dreams and stopped beating myself up all day long. Decades of self-castigation, it turns out, yield little positive change.

And ADHD is not all bad, let’s be honest. My neurodivergent strengths and leanings make life a lot more fun. They predispose me to creativity, which brings me joy and flow. It can feel like the meaning of life itself when ideas spill forth with apparently mystical ease. I’m entertained by my daydreaming too, which helps me spot links and patterns that don’t always jump out at others. I’m flexible and adaptable and I come alive under pressure. I’m pretty sure ADHD makes me more tolerant as well. Being aware of my own annoying quirks makes it natural for me to cut others some slack over theirs.

I’m not sure I’d swap any one of these traits for an immaculate car or the ability to tell you what I’m having for dinner next Tuesday.

Will I ever feel like a grown-up? Never completely, I hope. I’m pleased my diagnosis has helped me find ways to manage. But I plan to grow more than just upwards. I intend to grow outwards, inwards, and in any direction that my passion and curiosity take me. That is the most authentic, and surely therefore the most grown-up thing I can do.

“I Don’t Feel Like an Adult:” Next Steps

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