Inspiring Poems about ADHD

⭐ Featured Poem

A note from the poet, Flo Seymour:

I wrote this poem about my experiences with ADHD. It was meant for myself as a cathartic exercise and wasn't intended to go much further. However, I've received overwhelmingly positive responses from people I've shared it with, and I hope others will resonate with it and find it helpful in some way.

Too Much 

by Flo Seymour

'You're just too much Flo'
My existence interrupted their lesson plans
A distraction, 
Something difficult to be managed,
Handled, 
Or ideally silenced. 

You're too weird.
Quirky. 
A maverick mind. 
Chaotic by design. 
Be normal they said. 
Like my independence was a threat to the status quo

You're a bit cocky 
Stop showing off. 
Not serious enough to count for anything. 
Just one bit of dopamine would make my life

You don't care enough Flo. 
Despite caring so much it physically hurt me though. 
Caring so much I'm still here writing about how all these things can still hurt now

You need to sit still
As if swinging on my chair wasn't helping me focus or the most interesting thing about their mundane lesson. 
Concentrate Flo. 
Stop looking around
As if all that energy wasn't an abandoned animal seeking to be nurtured. 
Not wandering everywhere considered out of bounds
A mind running marathons of ideas and creations without any guide 
Locked away at the mercy of lesson plans, the syllabus and Ofsted 
Too much in my brain. Too hard to contain. 

You ask too many questions.
You don't need to know that. 
Too curious.
Too much.
But when my mind needed answers or I daydreamed really it was sprinting in twelve directions at once.
What if they just satisfied my need to understand? 
Show your workings but it was all written outside the box. 

They said I blag things.
Do the bare minimum and mess around.
If only they'd seen how rapid my mind was behind the clown
Thoughtless. Despite being consumed by thoughts. 
Unfocused. Despite craving a time when there was just one thing to focus on.

They called me random.
Unpredictable.
Too lively.
Too loud.
As if I was as catastrophic as the energy crisis. No tariffs or restrictions. 

You're rubbish at English. 
Ironically I have no words for that. 
Just a letter and a symbol
A*. A*
Remarked. Remarked
A*. A*

You are entertaining. And funny. 
but not dependable. 
And incapable.
That I only worked hard for some
and not for others.
As if motivation and consistency were choices and not luxuries.

You're a bit too sensitive. 
The irony that my lack of care and loudness was actually contributing to my overwhelm. 
That everything felt louder.
the mood of the room,
the pain behind a jokey quip, 
the small details, 
the noises from outside and in.

They said I was lucky.
A fluke.
Like anything I achieved slipped past me by accident. Like I didn't fight for it in ways they never noticed.
Like I didn't have a head like a sponge that remembered everything it was ever told. 
Making me exhausted. Depleted. Run down. And depressed. 

Too much. 
And slowly. 
I believed them.
I would try edit myself.
To swallow ideas before they escaped my mouth. 
To mistrust my instincts because they were 'unpredictable'.

I learned that weird meant wrong.
That quirky meant unprofessional.
That chaotic meant unreliable.
That maverick meant problematic.
That too much actually meant less than. 
That too much actually left me feeling lower than. And that I didn't have too much to live for. 
That too much actually meant I didn't want to be here. Because everything was too much for me. And it was me who didn't have enough to deal with it all. 
Too much to cope with. I'm glad they weren't all there later to give too many more labels. 

But here's what they never told me:
I was overwhelmed and overstimulated in a system allergic to difference and change.
I might have been random. But I was spotting patterns at speeds they couldn't handle. 
Maybe. chaotic. But I was adapting in real time to make a boring world bearable. 
I wasn't too lively. The bar for interest and opinions and energy was just horribly low. 
Was I unpredictable? I was a child with a brain constantly battling, trapped and keen to express. 
I wasn't careless. I could never be. I cared deeply, painfully, sensitively. Just not silently. 
Only once did I not care. That's when life got too much for me. 

Too loud? Yet it's me sat here trying to silence their voices. 
Rejecting the labels stuck to me since. 
Shifting from truth to opinions spoken with confidence. 

I wasn't lucky. 
I was trying.
Again.
And again.
And again. 
But without a behavioural manual everyone else seemed to get.
I am not a fluke.
I am not "too".
I am intense.
I am curious.
I am alive in ways that aren't there to be convenient.
And if that is too much for people. Maybe I was never the problem.
Maybe they were too much of a barrier for me. 

But thank you to those who let me write outside the lines. Who paused. 
Paused and thought about how they could embrace creativity with me. 
Those who gave space. Gave me grace. Let me run with things at my own pace. Those who saw my real feelings behind the entertainers' face. 
For cutting me some slack instead of cutting me down. 

Thankfully, my intensively sensitive, jampacked brain does remember you too
The start of a very long journey to understand that too much isn't always true.