I Could Do All the Things—Until I Couldn’t
What a late ADHD diagnosis taught me about work, shame, and building systems that actually fit my brain
By Tiara Bostock, MSW, LSW | Founder & CEO, InnerBeing Counseling
Hey, friend.
Welcome back to the InnerBeing Journal—a space where I share honest reflections on mental health, leadership, burnout, motherhood, entrepreneurship, and becoming. Today, we need to talk about ADHD, repetitive work, and the years I spent believing a struggle in my brain was a failure in my character.
I could do all the things. So why couldn’t I do that thing?
I could help people. I could solve complex problems. I could respond immediately to a crisis and somehow become calmer when everything around me was on fire. Give me a problem that needed creativity, strategy, or a quick decision and I was your girl.
But copying and pasting? Repeating the same conversations? Giving the same feedback? Making the same mind-numbing decisions over and over again? Those tasks could leave me stuck, staring at my screen—or heading straight to my girl TikTok to scroll and never return to the work again.
I was so understimulated that I became overstimulated.
I did not have language for what my body and brain were trying to tell me. I only had judgment. All adults have to work, so why couldn’t I seem to do my job the way everybody else appeared capable of doing theirs? Clearly, I was lazy. Scatterbrained. Flighty. Maybe I simply did not want to keep a job. It absolutely could not have been that my brain needed a different environment, a different kind of support, or a different system.
The signs did not begin in adulthood
In high school, I would do my best to pay attention to instruction and somehow end up somewhere else entirely. Sometimes I was thinking about creating. Sometimes I was wondering when I could get online to read fan fiction. Sometimes I was writing a whole story in my head that would never make it to paper. The storyline flowed. The creativity ran rampant. I could stop mid-story when an annoyed teacher—who had probably called my name 30 times—pulled me back into the room, then return to the exact same spot once I escaped into my thoughts again.
Homework was an even tougher battle. I had to start it, which was already asking a lot, but first I had to remember the book and the worksheet. Did I even know where the history book was? Had I left it in science after stopping to chit-chat about the football game?
Home looked similar. I could be told repeatedly to start my chores and still feel unable to get up and do them. Somewhere along the way, my mother recognized that I needed an incentive. The rule became, ‘Ain’t nobody going nowhere to do anything—no football game, no friend’s house, no movie theater, no mall, no dinner with friends—until this bathroom is cleaned and these rooms are vacuumed.’
One thing about me: I could never pass up a good time. That external motivation helped while I lived at home. When I left for college, that structure and incentive went right out the window.
Achievement can hide a lot
First, the bed stopped getting made. Then laundry was shoved into buckets. Then I was forgetting meetings and class requirements, arriving 10 to 15 minutes late, and lying in bed theoretically paralyzed because I had so much to do that I could not start any of it. Sometimes I sat outside a classroom having a panic attack because I had forgotten the reading and the professor loved a cold call.
Somehow, I blinked and college was over. I made it out with a decent GPA and a plan for graduate school after a year with AmeriCorps. Making it through reinforced the idea that I was fine. The panic, lateness, forgotten responsibilities, and paralysis were simply the private price I was expected to pay for appearing successful.
AmeriCorps gave my brain something many later jobs did not. I worked with students, created new ideas, addressed academic and behavioral opportunities for growth, and always had a flaming fire to put out. I was in a new city with new friends, new places to shop, and new foods to eat. Me, my brain, and my tummy were BUSY!
Graduate school and my early career followed the same pattern. I struggled behind the scenes, prevailed in public, and interpreted every accomplishment as proof that I did not really need help. Work that offered novelty, urgency, creativity, and meaningful human connection lit me up. Work that was repetitive slowly shut me down.
Then the mask started falling
After working in a hospital during COVID while pregnant, then becoming a new mom—yikes—I wanted a work-from-home position that offered flexibility and more time with my baby. When a large organization offered me the most money I had ever made to work from home, I cried tears of joy.
Within three months, I was practically screaming BORING every time I clocked in.
I stayed because my supervisor was supportive, my team kept me entertained, my bills were paid, and the benefits were good. I took PTO when the boredom almost overtook me. The longer breaks made the job feel new again—but only briefly. Within a day or two, the brain fog returned.
I moved into another role that sounded more meaningful and high stakes. It was not the answer. The copying, pasting, repeated conversations, and repetitive decisions were even more embedded in the work. At the same time, my partner became unexpectedly ill. I was working from the hospital, answering emails within moments, making detailed presentations to leadership, and overexplaining every decision so everybody would know I was thorough and on top of it.
Professionally, I looked responsive, dependable, and highly organized. Privately, everything was hitting the fan—spiritually, emotionally, and physically. I had headaches, neck and shoulder pain, extreme brain fog, anxiety, irritability, overeating, and days when I wondered how much longer I could carry all of it. I worked from sunup to sundown to compensate. The periods of task paralysis grew longer. Work stopped getting done. Mistakes happened.
The mask was falling off. I waved my white flag, called the disability line, and took time away to figure out what was REALLY happening.
The question that changed everything
During that time, I stopped asking, ‘Why am I like this?’ and started asking, ‘What is making this difficult?’
My partner had long believed I had attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder—ADHD—and internally, I did too. But I was not claiming it out loud, which meant I was not doing anything about it. I finally called my primary care provider and walked her through the entire journey that brought me, at 32, into her office asking about ADHD.
Even as a clinician who knew ADHD in children, I did not have a clear picture of what it could look like in a Black woman in her 30s. The examples I had seen most often were boys or men diagnosed during childhood. I knew ADHD was not exclusive to them, but I did not have a data set that looked like me.
Research helps explain why that matters. ADHD is a neurodevelopmental condition—not a character flaw—and clinicians describe inattentive, hyperactive-impulsive, and combined presentations. Girls and women can be overlooked when their struggles are less disruptive, more internalized, or hidden behind perfectionism and compensatory effort. Racial disparities add another layer: a recent national study found that Black girls were the least likely group in its cohort to receive an ADHD diagnosis. [American Psychiatric Association][Young et al., 2020][Attoe & Climie, 2023][Shalaby et al., 2024]
Then add the expectation that Black women should be competent, strong, dependable, self-sufficient, and able to carry everybody else without complaint. Of course difficulty can become invisible. Sometimes we hide it from other people. Sometimes achievement helps us hide it from ourselves. [Parks et al., 2024]
After a referral, evaluation, and diagnosis, I felt relief. I was not crazy. I was not lazy. I was not incapable. My brain needed support and systems that might not look typical—and it was time to stop treating ‘typical’ as the price of being a grown professional adult.
My house was telling the rest of the story
At work, I answered quickly, stayed late, overexplained, and made myself overly available. At home? Whew, friend.
We had moved into our home two weeks before my partner became ill. Five months later, kitchen items were still in boxes. Daily clothes might be in the garage, basement, laundry room, under the couch, or on top of the computer desk. Laundry was never really done; it simply changed locations. Dishes piled up. Bathrooms, mopping, and vacuuming happened sporadically. Somewhere in my mind, I had decided that if the kitchen was clean, the whole house was clean. Please do not ask me to explain the math.
I had a calendar on my phone, a digital calendar on the wall, a paper calendar to carry, and alarms to remind me to remember the reminder. None of those tools could do the part I actually needed: reduce the load and help me initiate the work.
The difference between my professional image and my home created deep shame. I worried that if coworkers or friends saw how I actually lived, they would think I was a fraud—or disgusting. I did not want company. Comments from people close to me did not create motivation; they made the shame heavier.
The answer was not another planner
My treatment plan included therapy, medication, and something more practical: no more buying gizmos and gadgets that created a beautiful schedule in theory but did not work in the actual logistics of my life. I needed systems that validated my lived experience and worked with my brain instead of against it.
The answers came with another round of shame because they required help from actual people. I called a cleaner. I scheduled a mobile detailer. I used meal-prep support. For laundry, I stopped forcing myself to fold everything the way a ‘proper’ adult supposedly should. We use baskets for each person and separate items by type and use.
Mama and Grandma may have done it differently. I can honor what they taught me without forcing myself to recreate their lives inside my body. They are not me. They do not live in my brain, manage my responsibilities, or experience the fallout when I try to perform somebody else’s version of competence.
Besides, if everybody did everything the same way, how boring would the world be?
You can be competent and struggling
That is the truth I needed earlier: you can be brilliant and unable to begin a repetitive task. You can be dependable and exhausted from the systems you use to appear dependable. You can lead, parent, care for others, build programs, solve crises, and still need help with laundry, meals, time, transitions, or follow-through.
Needing support does not cancel your competence.
A diagnosis did not suddenly organize my house or remove every difficult task. This is still a work in progress. What changed was the story I attached to the struggle. Instead of assuming I am the problem, I can get curious about the task, the environment, the support, and the system.
That shift is also part of why I offer ADHD coaching through InnerBeing. Coaching is not about turning you into the person who can finally use the planner everybody swears by. It is a collaborative space to understand how your brain works and build practical supports for task initiation, follow-through, time, routines, organization, overwhelm, and accountability. It is especially meaningful for adults who have spent years looking successful while privately wondering, ‘Why can’t I just do it?’
ADHD coaching does not diagnose ADHD or replace therapy, medication management, or crisis support. It can sit alongside those services and help translate insight into everyday action.
If you recognize yourself in this story, you do not have to earn support by falling apart first. InnerBeing ADHD coaching offers practical, affirming support for building a life that works with your brain—not one you are constantly trying to survive. Explore ADHD coaching with InnerBeing.
You are not lazy. You are not a fraud. You are allowed to ask what is making life difficult, ask for help, and create systems that fit the person you actually are.
Until next time, keep choosing you, keep becoming, and remember—you do not have to do it alone.
With gratitude,
Tiara Bostock, MSW, LSW
Founder & CEO, InnerBeing Counseling
