A Day in a Life with ADD: Living Inside My Whirlwind of a Mind

So, here’s how this all came about: I started my day with a perfectly sensible intention (“I need to write something for the NeuroParenting News Hub”). Naturally, my brain had other plans. One moment, I was thinking about what to write, the next I was overanalysing my to-do list, Googling something completely unrelated, and somehow ended up deep in a rabbit hole about the climbing speed of sloths. At some point during this mental detour, I decided to chat with ChatGPT. It asked me some insightful and rather pointed questions about how I experience ADHD—questions that made me pause and reflect on patterns I’ve lived with for years but rarely stop to analyse. By the end of the conversation, I thought, what if I asked it to describe a typical day in my life based on everything we’ve just discussed? Because, let’s face it, if anyone was going to unravel the delightful chaos of my daily existence, it wasn’t going to be me. And let me tell you, it absolutely nailed it. It captured the nightly flood of ideas that keeps me lying awake, my mind spinning with projects, plans, and reflections that range from wildly ambitious to completely impractical. It described the mornings where even the simplest decisions—like what to wear or eat—feel like trying to solve a puzzle with half the pieces missing. And, of course, it didn’t miss the classic ADHD spiral: starting one thing, noticing ten others, and somehow ending up with a trail of half-finished tasks and no memory of what I was supposed to be doing in the first place. It even got the quirky details right, like how I can’t bear slow WhatsApp voice notes or audiobooks. Life moves fast in my head, and everything else feels like it’s lagging behind. Then there are the tougher parts: the days where exhaustion takes over and I can barely muster the energy to think, let alone do, or the vivid, cinematic dreams that leave me feeling like I’ve lived an entire emotional saga before I even get out of bed. But what struck me most was how it captured the balance of it all—the chaos and the creativity, the frustration and the brilliance. My brain doesn’t follow a straight path; it veers, loops, and occasionally gets stuck in a corner. But in that unpredictability, there’s also curiosity, imagination, and a way of seeing the world that’s uniquely my own. If you’re a parent of a neurodiverse child, or if you live with ADHD yourself, perhaps some of this feels familiar. Maybe you also have days where your mind feels like a whirlwind, spinning faster than the world around you. It’s not always easy—it can be exhausting, overwhelming, even infuriating at times. But within that whirlwind is something remarkable. The way we think, connect ideas, and approach the world may not always fit into neat boxes, but it’s worth recognising—and celebrating—how extraordinary it is. Sharing this felt important, not just to capture my own experience but to remind us all that there’s value in the way we’re wired, even when it feels messy. #NeuroParentingNewsHub #ADHD #Neurodiversity #DayInTheLife