I’ve told a small handful of people. Most of the responses are either nothing at all, or pointless platitudes about how it’s made up or “everyone has ADHD these days lol”. You’ll probably know when to share or not, and just lean on not sharing as a safe fallback. It’s still a subject that has stereotypes attached and even the smartest, well-intentioned people will either make it about themselves, or look down at you. Err on the side of silence.

A great many people, including even some of the most well-intentioned friends and family, and including many people who are in most ways intelligent, educated, and caring – will still find it impossible to prevent themselves from changing their image of you. And their expectations and guesses about you will follow to some degree. You may find people forming unspoken predictions that you will not listen well, that you will interrupt, or that you will only talk about your own stuff at any length.

And it won’t be everybody, thankfully; just many. There will also be some people you may grow closer to because they already understand and now they’ll find it easier to interact with you directly about ADHD-related things.

Only you know what ADHD means to you. There’s so much difference in symptoms, and severity, there is no concrete definition, so when you label yourself ADHD, you automatically become whatever THAT person thinks ADHD is.

If you told me that, I’d assume we’d get along well, and I’d expect you to relate to a lot of the stuff that others don’t understand. Others, however, might just think you’re a lazy spaz that doesn’t listen.

I think you’d be safer casually mentioning symptoms, like, “if I don’t write things down, I’ll forget,” this way they’ll understand that this is a part of who you are, instead of making assumptions.