The Hidden Strength in Slowing Down: ADHD, Unmasking, and True Success.
✨ TL;DR:
Late ADHD diagnosis often leads to a perceived decline in executive functioning.
This isn’t failure; it’s the result of unmasking and beginning to meet your true needs.
High achievement was a survival mechanism, not your authentic self.
Redining success may involve doing less, earning less, but living more happily.
Building a supportive community and embracing slower progress can lead to genuine fulfillment.
Unmasking ADHD: Embracing Skill Regression as a Path to Healing
⏰ Read Time: 7 Minutes
What If Doing Less Is Actually Healing?
You used to be the high achiever. The dependable one. The one who juggled a full-time job, a side hustle, and remembered birthdays. You were praised for your productivity, your leadership, and your “potential.”
Maybe you even believed that your ability to do more than others made you who you are.
And now?
You can barely string together four solid hours of executive functioning. You hit a wall by noon. You’ve forgotten three appointments, your inbox is a war zone, and you’re sitting in a pile of laundry wondering if you’ve somehow become lazy.
Let me be clear: you’re not lazy. You’re unmasking.
Unmasking comes with grief, disorientation, and - yes - what feels like skill regression. But it’s not failure. It’s recalibration. It’s healing.
Why It Feels Like You’re Falling Apart After Diagnosis
When you’re diagnosed late in life with ADHD or another form of neurodivergence, you don’t just gain answers. You lose a version of yourself.
It could be a version who achieved her way into love and belonging, a version who ignored burnout signs and called it grit. This version made her identity out of being competent, reliable, and hyper-functional in a world that rarely gave her room to be anything else.
And now, suddenly, she can’t perform the way she used to.
That’s terrifying and destabilizing, but it’s also the truth cracking open so something more authentic can grow.
Achievement Was a Survival Strategy, Not a Personality Trait
If you’re like me, you learned young that being useful was the safest way to be seen.
You chased gold stars, over-delivered at work, and built systems to keep the chaos at bay. You believed if you could just be excellent enough, you’d finally feel okay.
For neurodivergent folks, this often leads to overfunctioning as a form of masking. And when the mask starts slipping - either because you’re burnt out, diagnosed, or finally trying to meet your real needs - it can feel like you’re losing your edge.
But what if that edge was never sustainable?
The Grief of Realizing There’s No “Fix”
One of the first things many of us do after a diagnosis is go after a solution... stimulant medication.
Don’t get me wrong, medication can be life-changing. It can help clear the noise in your head, take the edge off of emotional dysregulation, and reduce task paralysis.
But here’s the part nobody prepares you for:
It won’t make you neurotypical.
It won’t make you love your job.
It won’t make multitasking easier.
If you’re someone who built an identity around being high-achieving despite your struggles, it can feel devastating when meds don’t return you to that version of yourself. When you realize they’re not a magic pill that makes productivity effortless again.
This, too, is grief. Grief for the idea that there was a fix.
Grief for the belief that you could keep everything the same, just with better focus.
ADHD isn’t something that gets solved. It’s something you live with.
And that doesn’t mean giving up on growth. It means redefining growth when rooted in self-respect, not self-abandonment.
Yes, it might mean a pay cut. A smaller apartment. A less linear path.
But it could also mean less dread, more joy, more authenticity, and finally doing the things you genuinely care about.
My Dad’s Story: When Pushing Through Stops Working
My father - a brilliant, undiagnosed autistic man - spent his entire adult life climbing corporate ladders. He made good money and provided well, but it came at the cost of everything else. He had no hobbies, few friendships, and rarely time for his kids. He just worked.
At 55, I watched him crash. His brain said “no more,” and he couldn’t push through anymore. Suddenly, everything that defined my father was gone. It was devastating to witness... but it was also the beginning of something better.
Today, he works with airplanes, his childhood special interest. He smiles more. He rests more. He’s not the man he used to be. But it’s the best example he ever set.
Why Doing Less Might Mean You’re Actually Healing
Modern capitalist society doesn’t want people to thrive... it wants us to perform. It values our productivity, not our personhood. So it’s easy for neurodivergent folks to feel less than when we can’t produce at the “expected” rates.
But the truth is, when we’re operating in our zone of genius, not burning out trying to do all the things, we’re unstoppable. We’re creative, resourceful, often hilarious, and deeply passionate.
We’re the ones who start movements and dream outside the box.
But we can’t access any of that when we’re stuck surviving.
Doing less isn’t giving up — it’s often the first real choice you’ve made in years that aligns with who you are.
Letting Go of the Person You Had to Be
Past you did what she had to do to survive. She pushed through. She people-pleased. She overachieved. She kept the lights on.
But you don’t owe her your entire future.
It’s okay to whisper: Thanks for everything, but I need something different now.
You’re allowed to change. To downshift. To stop trying to hold it all together and just be. This version of you might make less money, do fewer things, and take up less space on LinkedIn, but she might also be a hell of a lot happier.
And that matters more than anything.
What Success Looks Like Now (Hint: It’s Slower, Softer, and Shared)
I remember the thrill of being the person who could do it all. I was constantly juggling, always saying yes, always outperforming. And when I couldn’t anymore, I panicked. Who was I if I wasn’t impressive? If I wasn’t the one people could always count on?
In the end, I’m grateful for my downfall:
→ Now, success feels like finishing a project I care about without abandoning myself to do it.
→ It feels like having a workday that starts at 10 am and ends after lunch, and not feeling guilty about it.
→ It looks like saying no instead of running on fumes.
And even better? There’s this thing no one tells you about moving slower: the relationships get richer.
I’ve traded email management for ADHD coaching, built systems in exchange for graphic design work, sent voice notes instead of emails, cried on coworking calls, and let people see me, like, really see me.
Most people, especially other neurodivergents, aren’t looking for polished. They’re looking for permission to be real, to work weird hours, to trade skills, and to make less money for a while so they can breathe again.
This kind of success isn’t built on output. It’s built on alignment.
It’s built on asking: What am I best at when I’m not trying to be everything?
I’m not saying it’s always easy. There are still days I grieve the version of me who could grind for twelve hours and not flinch. But I also remember what it cost me. And I wouldn’t trade the clarity and calm I’ve built now... even if it comes wrapped in uncertainty and slower progress.
Because now I have a village.
Not a team I lead. A village I belong to.
People who understand that bartering is powerful, rest is sacred, and slow success is still success.
And that? That feels like freedom.
🌶 🧠 How to Find Your Version of Success
If you’re navigating this weird in-between — post-diagnosis, mid-burnout, and wondering who you’re supposed to be now — I see you. You’re not alone.
Let’s build a version of your life that actually works for your brain. I offer 1:1 Momentum Mapping and Accountability Support designed for neurodivergent entrepreneurs learning to do things differently.
Learn more here →
