Isn't Everyone a Little Bit ADHD?

No, and Here's Why That Question Misses the Entire Point

Sep 11, 2025

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I have had so many experiences, trying to explain my diagnosis to others. I had finally summoned the courage to name it, to give voice to the whirlwind I’d lived with all my life. I would say about 60 percent of those I’ve told have responded with a version of: “Oh, well, we’re all a bit ADHD, aren’t we?”

They were not trying to be cruel but that sentence, that casual dismissal, lands like a stone in my stomach every time. The years of self-denial and when I finally come to face my ADHD the world wants to hide me back where I once was.

The “Everyone’s a Bit ADHD” Myth

It’s become a cultural reflex: you mention ADHD, and someone jumps in with, “Me too, I forget where I put my keys!” or “I’m always distracted at work, must be a little bit ADHD.”

Yes, everyone experiences symptoms that overlap with ADHD. That’s true. But that doesn’t mean everyone has ADHD. A bit like someone with a runny nose may have allergies or maybe a cold. Same symptom, different cause and different trajectory, treatment and impact on life. There’s a crucial difference between having an occasional scatterbrained moment and having a nervous system that is developmentally wired to operate differently across every domain of life.

We don’t say someone is “a bit epileptic” because they sometimes zone out. And yet with ADHD, a recognised neurodevelopmental condition with a heritable genetic profile and clear neurobiological underpinnings, people somehow feel entitled to minimise it.

If ADHD were a spectrum that everyone sits on, it wouldn’t be diagnosed based on functional impairment. The spectrum exists, yes but it stretches from “no clinical significance” to “severe and disabling.”

So no, you can’t be a little bit ADHD, just like you can’t be a little bit pregnant. The threshold matters.

The Fire Alarm

Let me offer a different metaphor.

I was once (well this has happened more than once!) cooking dinner and left the oven on too long. Smoke began to waft through the kitchen, and my fire alarm went off. I leapt up, startled, and began flapping a tea towel around like a deranged wing flapping bird. When telling a friend they said. “Oh, I hate when that happens. I’m so ADHD like that.”

Except she told me she calmly told me she had noticed the smell, checked the food, and turned the oven off. I, on the other hand, had not even realised the pizza was burning until my nervous system registered a threat loud enough to pierce through the white noise of my scattered attention. I had no awareness I had been cooking something as my focus had become the task in front of my eyes. My executive function hadn’t just lapsed it wasn’t tracking the environment at all. What she experienced as a mild inconvenience, I experienced as a full-on adrenaline spike followed by shame.

This is the difference: it’s not the event, it’s the impact and the pattern.

It’s in the Wiring

ADHD isn’t just a cluster of behaviours. It’s rooted in well-documented neurological differences that affect how the brain processes information, manages time, responds to stimuli, and regulates emotion.

Dopamine dysregulation in the prefrontal cortex affects reward sensitivity, motivation, and focus (Volkow et al., 2009).
Delayed cortical development impacts planning, impulse control, and working memory (Shaw et al., 2007).
The default mode network, often associated with mind-wandering, is more active and less well-regulated in ADHD brains (Castellanos et al., 2008).

This means that someone with ADHD doesn’t just “feel distracted.” Their brain doesn’t filter, sort, or prioritise information in the same way. Attention isn’t just scattered, it’s unregulated. Motivation isn’t just low, it’s biologically inconsistent.

It’s not about effort. It’s about access. The road is blocked and takes a whole lot of effort to go around the long way or shift the boulders in the way.

Why People Feel the Need to Minimise ADHD

So why do people do it? Why do they feel compelled to diminish a very real diagnosis?

Because if they can convince themselves that ADHD is something light, quirky, or optional, they don’t have to face the discomfort of having missed it in someone they love, or in themselves (and this is a thing - often the ones quick to minimise may benefit from exploring their own functioning).

Minimising ADHD tries to serve the function of everyone staying in denial. It avoids confronting the grief of years misunderstood. It sidesteps accountability for systems (schools, workplaces, families) that weren’t built to support neurodivergent minds. And minimising someone else’s struggle is often easier than sitting with the weight of empathy.

There’s also the cultural undercurrent, that we should just “cope,” smile, and get on with it. So when you name your ADHD, it disrupts the narrative that struggle should be silent.

What to Say When People Minimise It

Here are some comebacks to minimisation that land with both grace and clarity:

"You may feel distracted sometimes. I feel it all the time, at work, in relationships, even trying to sleep. That’s the difference."
"I was diagnosed by a psychologist after hours of clinical interviews and testing. If this was about being forgetful, I wouldn’t need that process to understand why I might be forgetful."
"I’ve adapted my whole life around this condition. If you haven’t had to, it’s probably not the same."
"Would you say you’re a little bit blind because you need glasses? "
"The fact that you can say you feel 'a little bit ADHD' means you probably aren't. Because those of us who live it don’t get to dip in and out."
"ADHD affects me in ways you can’t see. In the energy it takes to mask. In the effort to stay present. In the shame that lingers even when I do my best."
"If everyone had ADHD, we wouldn’t need disability accommodations, extended time, or therapy to function in a world that wasn’t built for our brains."
“You might get distracted sometimes. I lose hours of my life.”
“The fact that you notice your distraction and can course-correct quickly means your executive function is working. Mine doesn’t work that way.”
“If you can be ‘a little bit ADHD,’ can I be ‘a little bit neurotypical’? Because that sounds like a nice break.”
“ADHD is diagnosed based on brain development, dopamine function, and significant impairment across domains of life. If you haven’t had to restructure your life around your focus issues, it’s probably not ADHD.”
“A clinical diagnosis isn’t based on how often you lose your keys. It’s about patterns, persistence, and impact on daily life.”
“We all get anxious sometimes too. That doesn’t mean we all have Generalised Anxiety Disorder. Feeling a symptom doesn’t equal living with a condition.”
“If I told you I had asthma, would you say ‘I get out of breath too’? Or would you ask if I’m okay and how it affects me?”
“You might experience storms around you but ADHD is like living in one”.
“When you minimise my diagnosis, I know you probably don’t mean harm. But it makes it harder for people like me to be believed, supported, or taken seriously.”
“Imagine spending your whole life thinking you were lazy and incapable as your house is a mess or your finances are not good, only to finally get a diagnosis, and have someone sa,y ‘oh that’s nothing.’ That hurts more than you think.”

Comebacks are the boundary-setting, clarity-offering responses you say to others when ADHD is minimised, misunderstood, or judged. They're for the world, not just your inner voice.

Everyday ADHD Reframes

Reframes are how you shift your own perspectiveto soothe shame, claim your truth, or change your narrative. They're for you, not them. Some key ones you might want you use are outlined below:

Finances
Old narrative: “I’m terrible with money. I must be irresponsible.”
Reframe: “My ADHD affects executive function and impulse control. I’m using tools like delayed spending apps, visual savings goals, and accountability to build habits that work with my brain.”

Social Commitments
Old narrative: “I always cancel plans last-minute. I’m flaky and unreliable.”
Reframe: “I often hit sensory overload or emotional crash when the time comes. I’m learning to commit only when I have capacity, and to check in with my nervous system before saying yes.”

Messy House or Car
Old narrative: “I’m lazy my home and car are chaos.”
Reframe: “ADHD affects task initiation and object permanence. If I don’t see it, I don’t deal with it. I’m building systems like ‘body-doubling,’ 15-minute resets, and clutter zones instead of all-or-nothing cleaning.”

Leaving Petrol to the Last Minute
Old narrative: “Why do I always wait until the red light comes on?”
Reframe: “ADHD brains often need urgency to act. I now habit stack it with something else I need to do en route and when I need something in the shop, so I don’t wait until I’m in a panic.”

Work & Deadlines
Old narrative: “I’m just lazy I always leave things to the last minute.”
Reframe: “Time blindness and task inertia mean I don’t feel deadlines until they’re urgent. I now use reverse scheduling (Instead of planning forward from a start time, you work backwards from a non-negotiable end point.), visual countdowns, and soft starts ( a ramp up so a small part of something e.g get out gym clothes before being ready to exercise ) to activate sooner.”

Relationships
Old narrative: “I talk too much or interrupt I must be annoying.”
Reframe: “My processing is fast and impulsive, but I’m working on mindful interruption recovery: ‘Oops I jumped in, finish your thought?’ It keeps connection open without self-blame.”

Emotional Regulation
Old narrative: “I’m too sensitive I overreact to everything.”
Reframe: “My nervous system reads the world in high definition. I’ve stopped trying to dull it I’m learning to ground, name, and move through emotion with skill instead of shutdown.”

Not an Excuse: A Translation

One of the hardest things about ADHD isn’t the forgetting or the fidgeting it’s the explaining. The pressure to justify why we operate differently. The shame that creeps in when someone says, “You’re just using it as an excuse.” But ADHD isn’t about escaping responsibility. It’s about learning how your brain works, so you can take responsibility in ways that actually work. These aren’t excuses. They’re translations of how a neurodivergent nervous system moves through a world that wasn’t built for it. Here’s how some of the most misunderstood ADHD patterns sound when we reframe them with compassion, neuroscience, and real-life tools.

People with ADHD often experience what looks like a contradiction and interestingly, that maps on to how the Criminal Justice System may evaulate veracity or truth. I often analyse the veracity of testimony in police interviews as part of my Expert Witness work and people see inconsistency as a marker of lack of credibility. It can be but it does not have to be. You have to understand the underpinning of why the consistency is there. As psychologist Vredeveldt et al (2014) notes, “inconsistencies especially in emotionally charged or self-reflective stories may actually indicate a higher level of authenticity rather than deception. The brain doesn’t always retrieve lived experience in a neat timeline, particularly when emotions are involved.” So in ADHD the fact that inner conflicts and inconsistencies are present lends support to this being a real frustration and challenge, as if this were an excuse for laziness or incompetence wouldn’t we always present in the same way to look like we have a problem?

A regular inner conflict is that we need silence and zero interruptions to hyperfocus... but we don’t want to feel alone. It’s not that we’re antisocial, it’s that once our brain locks into deep focus, even the smallest distraction can suddenly eject us completely and be a shock to the body. That’s the intensity of our attention system. But at the same time, we may want others close by, working quietly in the same room, sharing space, just being there. This can be confusing for partners or friends: “Do you want me here or not?” The answer is: Yes but please don’t talk. It’s about co-regulation, not conversation. We feel safe when others are nearby, but our nervous system can’t handle divided attention once we're in the zone. It’s not mixed signals it’s mixed wiring.

And when the people we love misunderstand that and quietly leave maybe to give us space we often feel it as abandonment, not support. Enter Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD), a common ADHD trait where perceived disconnection feels like emotional rejection. You weren’t trying to hurt us… but the silence left behind feels like a cold void. Suddenly, we’re no longer focused, we’re spiralling, wondering what we did wrong. It’s not rational, but it’s real. That’s why communication matters: “I’m just going to make tea, I’ll be back in ten, and actually coming back in ten” can prevent a neurodivergent brain from crashing out of connection and into self-doubt and shutdown.

The Role of Trauma, Burnout, and Stress

It’s also important to note that many people who feel “a bit ADHD” are often dealing with something else entirely:

Trauma creates hypervigilance, memory fragmentation, and executive dysfunction.
Anxiety mimics distractibility due to overactive threat scanning.
Burnout depletes focus, patience, and working memory (your brain’s mental “sticky note” the system that holds and manipulates information in the short term while you're using it..

ADHD can coexist with these conditions but they’re not the same. That’s why a full diagnostic process includes developmental history, behavioural tracking, collateral information, and psychometric testing to allow a differential diagnosis process to ensure it is not something else.

If your symptoms appeared after a major life event, or alongside complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder it may not be ADHD. Or it may be ADHD plus something else. Either way, the assessment matters.

Why This Article Matters

Because for so many of us, especially women and late-diagnosed adults, this minimising commentary erases years of struggle. We need to minimise the minimising. The misdiagnoses, the self-blame, the chaos that looks like capability from the outside. The effort it takes to hold it all together. And the grief when we finally realise we weren’t incapable and the sadness that we did not feel safe enough to show our struggles.

So I reiterate, NO, not “everyone is a little bit ADHD”. But many people do need to rethink what ADHD actually is. And how they speak to the people who live it, every single day.

Most people with ADHD spend a lifetime minimising it, through masking, over-functioning, and trying to “just cope.” We become chameleons, shape-shifting to fit in, to avoid shame, to survive systems that were never built for our brains. When we finally find the language, the courage, and the diagnosis to explain what’s really been happening, please don’t respond by asking us to put the mask back on. Don’t tell us “you’ve always managed fine.” Because the truth is, we didn’t manage, we performed. And that performance often came at the cost of our nervous system, our relationships, our health, and our self-worth.

Click the image below to get my free ebook with some tips on coping with Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria

I was privileged to talk on the HerStory Podcast recently - have a listen below.

Paid subscribers can scroll down to the “ADHD or Burnout?” printable decision chart and a Differential Diagnosis Comparison Chart (not diagnostic, for guidance purposes to help you formulate a narrative to your health professional) this can help you clarify whether it’s time to seek a diagnosis, or explore other causes and what to bring to your health professional.

I have a coaching programme for women with ADHD coming up soon if you would like to take a look. Click the image below to find out more.