Have you ever spent years thinking you weren’t smart enough, that you were lazy, or that you simply needed to try harder?
Maybe school seemed to come naturally to other people, while you had to work twice as hard to keep up. Perhaps you struggled to concentrate, organise your thoughts, remember instructions or get started on tasks. Maybe you became very good at hiding those struggles because you didn’t know how to explain them.
For many late diagnosed neurodivergent adults, understanding ADHD or another learning difference can change the way they see their entire lives.
It doesn’t erase the difficult experiences. It doesn’t mean every struggle suddenly makes sense. But it can offer a new explanation, one that makes room for understanding rather than blame.
In my latest episode of That AuDHD Teacher, I spoke with Marvie Corbett, a licensed clinical social worker, therapist and author, about discovering ADHD and dyscalculia later in life, the impact of years of misunderstanding, and what it means to develop a kinder relationship with ourselves.
Our conversation touched on something I think deserves much more attention: how easily a difference in the way someone learns, thinks or functions can become a story about their character.
When you grow up thinking you’re not smart enough
Marvie shared that her ADHD was identified after she experienced postpartum anxiety and depression following the birth of her second child. Once those difficulties were being treated and her anxiety and depression improved, her executive functioning difficulties remained. Further assessment led to her ADHD diagnosis and the identification of dyscalculia.
Dyscalculia is a learning difference that affects mathematical processing. For Marvie, maths had been difficult for much of her life, and she described how she struggled academically despite putting considerable effort into her education.
She explained that she had spent years believing she was successful because she worked so hard. She read more, put in extra hours and developed systems to help herself manage.
Learning about her neurodivergence helped her understand that the difficulties she had experienced weren’t evidence that she wasn’t intelligent. That part of our conversation really stayed with me.
I know what it feels like to grow up believing you’re somehow behind everyone else. I wasn’t diagnosed with ADHD and autism until adulthood, and looking back at my own experiences has helped me understand things I couldn’t explain when I was younger.
Sometimes you can spend so long trying to work out why something is difficult that you stop questioning the assumption that everyone else is finding it easy. You start believing that you are the problem.
But struggling with a particular skill doesn’t tell us everything about a person’s intelligence, potential or ability to learn.
Sometimes the way something is being taught doesn’t work for that person. Sometimes they need different strategies, more time or additional support. Sometimes an unrecognised learning difference is making an already difficult task much harder.
And sometimes, as in Marvie’s experience, a person has been working incredibly hard without knowing why they need to.
The impact of “just try harder”
One of the most relatable parts of our conversation was our discussion about attention and the advice neurodivergent people often receive.
“Just focus.”
“Try harder.”
“Why haven’t you started yet?”
These comments can come from people who genuinely want to help. They may have no idea what it feels like to struggle with attention, task initiation or executive functioning.
But when someone is already trying as hard as they can, being told to try harder doesn’t necessarily give them anything useful to work with.
It can leave them feeling misunderstood, frustrated or ashamed.
Marvie reflected on how difficult it can be for people without attention difficulties to conceptualise what that experience is like. We also discussed how strange it can feel to discover that other people don’t necessarily have to mentally rehearse conversations, manage constant distractions or put elaborate systems in place to get things done.
We can assume that our own experience of the world is universal. Until we discover otherwise, we may not even realise that there is another way to experience it.
For someone who has spent years struggling, this can create a painful cycle: they find something difficult, they are told they aren’t trying hard enough, and they begin to believe that the difficulty reflects something bad about them.
Over time, that message can become part of how they see themselves.
This is one reason understanding neurodivergence matters. It gives us the opportunity to consider other explanations and find support that addresses the actual difficulty.
Executive functioning is not a character test
A key theme in our discussion was executive functioning. Executive functioning describes a range of skills involved in managing tasks and actions, such as planning, organising, initiating activities, remembering information and regulating attention.
People can have different profiles of strengths and difficulties across these skills. Someone might be highly organised but struggle to start an unfamiliar task. Another person might be excellent at thinking through a problem but find it difficult to switch between activities.
These differences can be misunderstood when we interpret them as evidence of someone’s character.
Marvie explained that when she works with children and families, she tries to move away from interpreting behaviour through the lens of oppositionality or personal failure.
Instead, she explores which skills are difficult, which are strengths, and what strategies might help.
This is an important distinction.
If a child repeatedly struggles to start an activity, simply telling them to be more responsible doesn’t necessarily help them develop the skill they need. If an adult consistently forgets tasks, criticising them for being unreliable may not address what is making those tasks difficult to manage.
That doesn’t mean expectations or accountability never matter. It means that we need to understand what is happening before deciding what a person needs.
As Marvie described in our conversation, a person might have strong metacognition, the ability to reflect on their own thinking, while finding task initiation much harder.
Recognising that difference gives us somewhere useful to start.
Instead of seeing a person as a collection of failures, we can look at their individual strengths and support needs.
Why one ADHD strategy doesn’t work for everyone
There is no single strategy that works for every person with ADHD. This is especially important when we talk about children.
Marvie shared that she has ADHD and that her oldest child does too. Even so, the strategies that work for her do not necessarily work for him.
It can be tempting to assume that if something helps us, it should help someone else with a similar diagnosis. We might recommend the same planner, routine, reminder system or organisational technique. But a diagnosis doesn’t tell us everything about a person.
Their environment, sensory experiences, interests, strengths, demands and individual executive functioning profile all matter.
A strategy that makes one person’s day easier might create more work for someone else. A visual reminder might be helpful to one child but become background noise to another. A routine might provide security for one person while another needs more flexibility.
The goal is not to find the one perfect ADHD hack. It is to understand the person and experiment with supports that fit their needs.
In our conversation, Marvie described using timers and reducing digital distractions to help her focus. She also spoke about how the systems that work for her sometimes need to change.
That is a useful reminder for adults too: needing to adjust a strategy doesn’t mean you’ve failed. Sometimes the strategy needs to change because your circumstances, responsibilities or needs have changed.
Why ADHD can be missed in girls and women
We also talked about why ADHD and autism can be overlooked in girls and women.
Marvie reflected on how girls’ experiences can be interpreted through assumptions about their personalities. A child might be described as bossy, difficult, overly particular or dramatic, without anyone considering whether there is a neurodevelopmental explanation for some of those behaviours.
She also discussed how hyperactivity can be less externally obvious in some girls, with more of the activity happening internally.
Not every girl or woman presents in the same way, and these experiences are not exclusive to one gender. However, when someone’s difficulties don’t match the picture adults expect to see, important support needs can go unrecognised.
Some children are also able to compensate for their difficulties in ways that make their struggles less visible. They may be quiet, compliant, academically capable in some areas or highly organised.
A person can appear to be coping while expending enormous effort to do so.
This is one reason it matters to look beyond appearances and consider a person’s experiences over time, rather than relying on stereotypes.
For adults who receive a diagnosis later in life, this can also mean revisiting childhood experiences with new information. Things that once seemed unrelated may begin to make more sense.
That process can bring relief, but it can also bring sadness about what might have been different if someone had recognised their needs earlier.
Both feelings can exist together.
Understanding behaviour without shaming children
As an early childhood teacher, I found our discussion about supporting children particularly meaningful.
Children’s behaviour is often interpreted through the expectations adults hold about what they should be able to do.
When a child struggles to follow instructions, transition between activities, wait, remember something or begin a task, it can be easy to focus on the behaviour we can see.
But behaviour alone doesn’t always tell us why something is happening.
We need to consider the context, the demands being placed on the child, their communication, their development and the support available to them.
For neurodivergent children, this also means being careful not to interpret every difficulty as defiance or a lack of willingness.
Marvie talked about helping families develop a different framework for understanding behaviour and identifying the skills that might need additional support.
I think this is a useful reminder for educators and parents alike.
Rather than asking only, “How do I get this child to stop doing this?”, we can also ask:
- What might this child be finding difficult?
- Is the expectation appropriate for this child in this context?
- What strengths can we build on?
- What environmental changes or supports might help?
- How can we preserve the child’s dignity while supporting them?
These questions don’t provide an instant answer to every situation. But they encourage us to look for understanding rather than jumping straight to judgement. They also remind us that neurodivergent children are individuals, not a checklist of traits.
Diagnosis, self acceptance and looking back at your younger self
For Marvie, learning about ADHD and dyscalculia gave her a kinder explanation for experiences that had previously been associated with feeling unintelligent. That is one of the things I find so powerful about late diagnosis.
We may not be able to change what happened at school, the feedback we received or the years we spent feeling as though something was wrong with us. But we can begin to understand those experiences differently.
We can recognise the effort we were putting in, the strategies we were developing and the support we didn’t know we needed. We can stop treating every difficulty as evidence that we are failing as people.
This doesn’t mean that diagnosis explains everything or that every challenge disappears once we understand our brains. Neurodivergent people can still experience significant difficulties, and many need ongoing support. Nor does self acceptance mean that we never want to change anything.
It means that we can work on skills, find strategies and seek support without making our worth dependent on how easily we perform.
We can acknowledge that something is difficult without deciding that we are somehow less capable or deserving because of it.
For me, this is a much more useful starting point than trying to force ourselves into an idea of what we think we should be.
Neurodivergent strengths without dismissing the challenges
We also discussed the idea of ADHD and neurodivergence as a superpower.
I know this is a complicated conversation. Some people find the language empowering, while others feel that it minimises the genuine difficulties that come with being neurodivergent.
Marvie’s perspective was that recognising strengths doesn’t require pretending the struggles don’t exist.
Neurodivergent people can experience creativity, different ways of thinking, intense interests and other strengths, while also needing support with executive functioning, emotional regulation, relationships or everyday tasks. Both can be true.
The important thing is not to insist that everyone sees their neurodivergence in the same way. It is to create room for people to understand their own experiences without being told that they must either see their brain as a superpower or view it only through its challenges.
We deserve a more nuanced conversation than that.
Practical ADHD strategies: building support around your brain
Later in the episode, Marvie shared some of the practical strategies she uses to manage her own ADHD.
These included using timers, breaking work into manageable periods and reducing distractions when she needs to concentrate.
She described discovering how productive she had been during a period when her phone’s Do Not Disturb setting was accidentally enabled. The experience helped her recognise just how much her attention could be pulled away by incoming notifications.
The lesson wasn’t that everyone should turn off all their notifications. It was that small changes to the environment can sometimes make a meaningful difference.
If you’re exploring strategies for yourself, you might consider:
- Using a visible timer to make a task feel more contained.
- Reducing unnecessary notifications during focused work.
- Breaking a large task into smaller, more manageable steps.
- Using external reminders rather than relying entirely on memory.
- Reviewing your systems when they stop working.
- Identifying which tasks are particularly difficult and what support might make them easier.
These are possibilities to experiment with, not universal solutions. What works will depend on your circumstances and individual needs.
Marvie also discussed her experience of ADHD medication and working with her clinicians to find support that helped her. Medication decisions are individual, and anyone considering changes should discuss them with an appropriately qualified health professional.
The broader point is that supporting ADHD often involves more than telling ourselves to be more disciplined. It can mean combining different strategies, environmental adjustments and professional support.
A different way to understand ourselves
One of the strongest messages I took away from this conversation was the importance of language.
When we don’t understand why something is difficult, we often fill the gap with an explanation about ourselves. I’m lazy. I’m stupid. I’m unreliable. I’m not good enough.
When we gain a better understanding of our brains, we can begin to replace those assumptions with more useful questions.
What is difficult for me? What helps? What strengths can I draw on? What support do I need? What have I been asking myself to do without the tools to do it?
Those questions don’t make every challenge disappear. But they can help us move towards solutions that are kinder, more realistic and more effective.
And for parents and educators, the same principle can change how we understand children. Instead of defining them by their struggles, we can look more closely at what they are experiencing and what might help.
Understanding doesn’t mean lowering our expectations of people. It means making those expectations more thoughtful and providing support that gives people a fairer chance to meet them.
Listen to the full conversation
I really enjoyed talking with Marvie Corbett about late diagnosed ADHD, dyscalculia, executive functioning, parenting and the experience of making sense of yourself later in life.
As someone who was diagnosed with ADHD and autism as an adult, I found many parts of this conversation relatable. It was a reminder of how much our understanding of ourselves can change when we finally have the language to describe our experiences.
If you’ve ever felt as though everyone else received instructions you somehow missed, I hope this conversation helps you feel less alone.
A question to reflect on: What is something about your younger self that you understand differently now?
I’d love to hear your thoughts.
This article reflects a podcast conversation and personal experiences. It is for educational and informational purposes and does not replace individual medical, psychological or educational advice.
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