Challenges
12 terms
ADHD Tax
The extra costs in money, time, and energy that people with ADHD pay because of executive function challenges in a world designed for neurotypical brains.
Auditory Hypersensitivity
When your brain's sound filtering system doesn't work properly, causing everyday sounds to register as painful, overwhelming, or unbearable. Not about disliking noise—experiencing sound as physical assault that triggers genuine pain responses and fight-or-flight reactions. Like living with all volume knobs stuck on eleven and no way to turn them down.
Auditory Processing Disorder (APD)
Your ears work perfectly, but your brain's sound-to-meaning translator is glitching. You hear everything—too many things, actually—but understanding speech is like assembling a jigsaw puzzle while everyone waits for your answer. Not a hearing problem; a sound-interpretation problem.
Executive Dysfunction
Difficulties with the brain's management system for planning, organizing, initiating, and completing tasks. Like having all the pieces but struggling to assemble them in the right order at the right time.
Hyposensitivity
Reduced responsiveness to sensory input, requiring more intense or prolonged stimulation to register sensations that others notice easily.
Misophonia
A neurological condition where specific sounds trigger intense emotional reactions, often including anger, disgust, or panic, along with physical responses.
Neurodivergent Masking Fatigue
Exhaustion and stress that build up after prolonged masking of neurodivergent traits.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
A neurodivergent condition characterized by intrusive thoughts (obsessions) and repetitive behaviors or mental acts (compulsions) that significantly impact daily functioning.
Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria
Extreme emotional pain triggered by perceived or actual rejection, criticism, or failure. A neurological response common in ADHD where minor criticism feels like physical injury and imagined rejection becomes unbearable agony.
Sensory Overload
When your brain receives more sensory input than it can process—like a computer with too many programs running until it crashes. Lights become painful, sounds pierce your skull, textures feel like sandpaper, and your nervous system screams for escape.
Sensory Processing Disorder
A condition where the nervous system has trouble receiving and responding to sensory information. People may be over-sensitive, under-sensitive, or both to different sensory inputs.
Time Blindness
The difficulty sensing how much time has passed or accurately estimating how long tasks will take. Living in an eternal "now" where time flows unpredictably—five minutes can feel like an hour, or three hours pass in what seems like moments.