Understanding the Common Symptoms of ADHD in Adults
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or ADHD is a common chronic condition that is predominantly associated with kids. While ADHD is rather easy to spot the symptoms in kids, older people usually show subtle symptoms that make the diagnosis of ADHD in adults slightly complicated. Statistically, almost 5% of the adult population in the US may have ADHD.
While most adults with ADHD may discover about the disease only after being a parent to a child with the condition, many of the adults remain undiagnosed.
Some of the common symptoms of ADHD adults may display are listed below.
- Problems in being organized
Adults who have ADHD often exhibit issues related to managing and organizing routine tasks like handling bills, managing children, and performing managerial duties at the workplace. When the responsibilities of adulthood may seem problematic to certain individuals, it can be determined that they may have the ADHD condition. The inability to fulfill these duties become more pronounced when children with undiagnosed conditions grow up. - Reckless driving
Since ADHD majorly causes attention issues in patients, complex tasks that need you to concentrate and focus more may often become hard to carry out. Most adults with ADHD may not be able to pay enough attention while being behind the wheels, causing frequent episodes of over speeding, traffic accidents, and reckless driving. - Marital discord
One of the most striking symptoms of ADHD in adults exhibit is indifference, poor listening skills, and dishonoring commitments. An adult diagnosed with the condition can, therefore, be taken as an insensitive partner resulting in tumultuous relationships, frequent strife, and overall marital disharmony. While the partner may feel that the patient with the condition doesn’t care, the patient may continuously feel nagged and blamed. - Distraction
Adults with symptoms of ADHD may feel inept while trying to manage simple things on a daily basis as they may be more susceptible to getting distracted easily. Distraction in adults can lead to serious consequences like under-performance in professional life. lack of attention. and also visual tunneling. - Poor listening
Poor listening skills often cause patients to miss important details about the home and work commitments. People who zone out during important meetings and exhibit recklessness in terms of keeping their appointments may have to bear unfavorable consequences. - Restlessness
The most noticeable symptom in children with ADHD may be hyperactivity but when it comes to the symptoms of ADHD in adults, these often get displayed differently. Most adults with ADHD may feel an innate sense of restlessness and a constant inability of being able to relax and be at peace. Most ADHD adults may usually come across as edgy and tense. - Inability to initiate a task
Quite like children who are natural masters of procrastination, adults diagnosed with ADHD often seem rather disinterested in starting a task from the scratch. This usually has adverse effects on their personal and professional life. - Lack of Motivation for Punctuality
People with ADHD are the ones who are usually always late to all important events. This generally is a result of being distracted and unfocused. These people may also have the inability to gauge the time a particular task would take to complete. - Difficulty managing anger
Adults with symptoms of ADHD also face serious issues while controlling their emotions. Often, symptoms of ADHD in adults gets reflected by their tendency of creating a ruckus over a minor issue. What is also common among ADHD patients is that their anger vanishes as quickly as it had flared up. - Difficulty prioritizing
Patients with ADHD often struggle to prioritize and doing it right. Many ADHD patients wrongly prioritize most crucial events, spending several hours on accomplishing something completely insignificant. This affects their credibility to meet important obligations. - Excess of focus
While the conventional opinion about an adult with symptoms of ADHD is that they can get easily distracted, several adults with the condition tend to have hyperfocus. This causes them to be engrossed in something to the extent of being completely unaware of their surroundings. This makes adults with ADHD lose track of time and make people around feel ignored. - Issues with time management
While this problem may be closely related to not being able to prioritize, adults with symptoms of ADHD tend to be disorganized to the extent of wasting valuable time in completing a task. - Impulsiveness
Patients with ADHD make rash and impulsive choices that can have several long and short-term effects. Often, people with impulsive shopping habits have a higher chance of being diagnosed with the condition. Other impulsive behavior can be determined by observing their conversational, social and problem-solving activities. People with the condition, often tend to interrupt conversations, be socially inept, rush through important tasks, and show little to no consideration to consequences. - Poor self-image
Adults with symptoms of ADHD are seen to be too harsh on themselves, and often show hypercritical behavior. This feeling of being inadequate stems from their inability to concentrate at home and at work.