If you've ever walked out of a university lecture wondering what on earth you just spent the last 90 minutes doing, you're not alone. You showed up. You tried to pay attention. You even filled several pages with notes. Yet by the time you leave the lecture hall, you can barely remember what was said. For many university students with ADHD, lectures are one of the most frustrating parts of higher education because the traditional lecture format demands exactly the skills that ADHD makes most difficult. But if you are an international student, lectures can be even more challenging.

For years, I thought my son just needed a little more motivation. I couldn't have been more wrong. There are moments when I still catch myself thinking, "Come on, we're leaving in ten minutes!" My eight-year-old son knows exactly where we're going. Maybe it's horseback riding. Maybe we're going to the pool. Sometimes it's an activity he's been looking forward to all week like an amusement park.

Sometimes the hardest part of work isn't being overwhelmed. It's not being challenged enough. You sit down at your desk on Monday morning. There are no urgent deadlines. Your colleagues are friendly. Your manager is happy with your work. On paper, everything looks fine. And yet you can barely make yourself open your laptop. You answer a few emails. Check your calendar. Refill your coffee. Scroll through your phone for "just a minute." Somehow, even the simplest task feels impossibly difficult to start.

After a long day, most of us know what we should do. We should put our phone away, get ready for bed, maybe read a book, take a warm shower, or simply go to sleep. And yet, many of us with ADHD find ourselves doing the exact opposite. We sit down on the couch and start scrolling through social media. We watch one more episode on Netflix. Then another. We fall down a YouTube rabbit hole. And we stay up far later than we intended and we wonder: "Why am I doing this? I'm exhausted."

You used to care. Maybe you were the student who always pulled things together at the last minute. The one who somehow survived on adrenaline, all-nighters, and sheer determination. Maybe you worked twice as hard as everyone else just to keep up even though nobody realized how much effort it took. But then one day, it stopped working.

I give quite a few workshops and seminars every year. One of the topics I return to again and again is how neurodivergent kids can be successful in school. And almost without exception, there’s a group of parents sitting in the room who aren’t just looking for “success strategies.” They’re in complete crisis because their children are refusing to go to school.

“What’s the perfect job for my ADHD brain?” It’s a question I get asked quite often by my clients. And interestingly, most of them don’t expect a clear-cut answer. What they’re really hoping for is something else: a bit of clarity in their mental chaos. A sense that there might be a way to make a professional decision that doesn’t feel overwhelming, random, or doomed to fail.

There’s a particular kind of tension that shows up in relationships where two people love each other deeply - and still feel like they’re speaking entirely different languages. Couples who care, who try, who genuinely want to make things work… and yet find themselves caught in the same arguments over and over again. One partner feels unheard, the other feels constantly criticized. Expectations go unmet.

I remember sitting next to one of my clients, a bright, thoughtful teenager, as she stared at a page of English text. Her highlighter had done its job. Almost every second sentence was marked in careful neon yellow. There were notes in the margins. Arrows. Underlines. She had done everything she was told to do. And yet, when I asked her what the text was about, she looked at me and said quietly, “I don’t know. I read it. But it didn’t stay.”