The Real-Life Risks and Rewards of Disclosing ADHD at Work

5 Comments: The Real-Life Risks and Rewards of Disclosing ADHD at Work

1. I’m going to continue to be totally honest here. You’ve probably figured me out by now. I was diagnosed with both BP No. 2 and ADD five years ago. I need a forum to express my anguish. This revelation was enlightening but not liberating. I now know the names of these disorders that have been dwelling inside my head like sleeper cell agents since I was 6 years old. It’s analogous to buying an expensive car and discovering that it has two design defects. The manufacturer refuses to fix it under warranty and the dealer refuses to take it back. Who wouldn’t be upset?

   My other motivation is that I truly care about ADD/ADHD sufferers and when I see what I believe is ill-considered advice, I must speak out. I think that publicly revealing one’s diagnosis is completely wrong-headed and, if followed, will result in job applicants experiencing a steady drumbeat of rejections. I know what I’m talking about because I’ve seen it happen to others and felt the sting of it myself. I want to use my history to spare others of these disappointments.

   In one of my earlier posts I told about getting fired from my first job and getting ghosted by a couple I hoped to develop a friendship with. I can cite some other examples of bad outcomes because of ADD/ADHD but some reader’s minds seem to have drifted off to Lalaland. I direct the following 5 paragraphs to aspiring job seekers.

   Let’s pretend that you (like me years ago) are an engineer and are applying for a job. You have to jump over a couple of hurdles. Your first stop is the HR manager. He confirms your bona fides, looks at your grade transcript and verifies your work history and references. So far, so good and he passes you on to the VP of engineering. He quizzes you on detailed technical topics and you have made a positive impression. You are elated!

   But then you are set up for the most nerve-wracking meeting of all, with the sales manager! He has a very different agenda. Despite not being charged with a sales quota, you will nevertheless be giving technical presentations in front of customers. He will focus a highly critical eye on your interpersonal skills. He will be especially observing your comportment, your ability to think on your feet and your diplomatic acumen.

   If he suspects that you have ADHD, your hopes are dashed. If you have good street smarts and keep your wits about you, you might squeak by over this last hurdle. If you are impulsive and reveal your ADHD, you will have done his vetting for him and removed all doubt.

   Next week you will receive in the mail a thin envelope containing a one-page letter that reads:

   “Dear John:
   “Although your credentials are highly impressive, we are informing you that we selected another candidate whom we feel better reflects the values and traditions of our company.

   “We wish you well in your [so far unsuccessful, Ed] job search.

   “Sincerely, …… “

   Some people are utterly clueless about the merciless job market and are possessed of a Pollyanna-like naivete. See my point? So, do you want to take a risky gamble and reveal your ADHD? A martyr complex is the most profound form of self-harm!

   I AM impressed with the familiarity of American history from some of ADDitude’s foreign subscribers. Although her name was not specifically mentioned, Civil Rights icon Rosa Parks was referenced. I have an engineering degree but I’m also an above-average student of history. I am a part-time history lecturer at a local museum. Let me fill you in on more details about Rosa Parks, so sit your tushie down and open your textbook to Chapter 14, The Civil Rights Era. History class is now in session!

   As a carefully selected point person in the fight against segregation, Ms. Parks was groomed and prepared for her crucial role. She had no “pressure points”. She owned her own home, so no white supremacist landlord could evict her. She was self-employed and there was no bigoted boss who could fire her. She had no dependent children who could be beaten and bullied at school. And apparently she didn’t even have a car payment. (Maybe that’s why she took the bus, huh?). A calculated reasonable risk with a good chance of success and minimized danger.

   But now let’s talk about YOU. Do YOU have any pressure points? Really? Do you have 1 million Yankee dollars or 823,810 Pounds Sterling in your retirement account? No? Aren’t you worried? How about your mortgage payment due next month? If you miss too many of those the bank can foreclose! And what about your property tax bill? If you get too far in arrears, the County can seize your property and force the sale of your home! Have kids in college? Too bad if they have to withdraw and try to finish later. A car payment? You better get a map of bus routes.

   Because some ADHD minds in our live studio audience seem to have raced off off-topic, I repeat my point about the legitimate and sensible practice of keeping personal secrets secret. It’s none of anyone else’s damn business if you have a low credit score, a kid out of wedlock, child support payments past due, a contentious divorce, your car repossessed or any of the wonderful myriad forms of mental illness. I would be more concerned about KEEPING a secret than REVEALING a secret.

   Even though there was not a name for my ADD which began in 1st Grade I gradually devised work-around strategies that worked. I had to work harder but I achieved my major goals. I am now fully retired as a Gentleman of Leisure and no longer have to endure grueling job interviews or the daily combat of the workaday world. I’ve made it to home plate and I did not get there by being reckless, careless or stupid.

2. You don’t have complete control over your life. Never claimed that.
   You do, however, have control over how you react, and the power to take ownership.

   I have never used my ADHD as an excuse for a missed deadline: it is up to me to manage my health, and part of that means making sure I meet my deadlines. If I am struggling, then I can ask for help, but only if I do so before the deadline has passed. This has enabled me to make better use of my abilities, and I have become more productive at work – to the benefit of my employers. If employers can’t understand the simple concept that a happy employee is a better employee, and more valuable to them therefore, then they really are suffering from short-term thinking. If a whole nation has such intolerance (and this applies to much of the world, especially authoritarian regimes) then ultimately, they will not prosper.

   We remove barriers to prejudice by confronting them. Thee are times when raising one’s head above the battlements is foolhardy, self-destructive and unhelpful to anyone, but there are times when taking a stand involves nothing more than standing up and being open. Memorably, this can involve nothing more than sitting on a bus in the “wrong” seat. I am old enough to remember the “n-word” being used even in a children’s book written by a churchman, then it becoming apparently acceptable as a badge of honour amongst some sections of the community to which it was applied. If it’s wrong, it’s wrong, and nearly everyone accepts that now. Why? Because people said it was offensive and unacceptable. It has taken maybe a couple of generations, and sure, it could have happened quicker and sooner, but that’s always the case when increasing tolerance and understanding: there will be social inertia, there will be backlashes, and even now, there are still people with such outdated and ridiculous views peddling hate to get votes because they are bright enough to understand that people dislike “otherness”. But that’s no reason to not take a stand.

   Mental health is a complicated issue, with 1 in 4 people suffering from chronic poor mental health at least once during their lifetime, and it being the leading cause of death amongst young men. It is not immediately observable, unlike skin colour or gender or sometimes, religious affiliation. Because it is not simple, it requires time and effort to understand it, but it doesn’t require much time and effort to get your head around the idea that not everything works properly for everyone all of the time. If you feel uncomfortable raising the issue directly at your workplace, engage with your local and national politicians. Ask them what they are doing to address this. Ask them why healthcare research into mental health is less than 1% of what gets spent on physical health, yet increasing our understanding of how to manage and support conditions which will affect large swathes of the population will help more people, at less cost, and ultimately lead to more people being able to successfully look forward to the pursuit of happiness and prosperity – which is always to the good of everyone. Otherwise the “American Dream” (which I love, but it isn’t restricted to Americans:who wouldn’t want to have “an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative”?) is denied to many of the people. Not just those with chronic mental health conditions, but those who are part of their lives, and might be unaware of why their loved ones are not doing well.

   Ultimately, if you concede to bullies, you are no better than them, and freedom means having the freedom of being able to divulge and celebrate our differences, and the freedom to speak out – and to run the risk of causing offence by so doing.

3. This is an addendum to my earlier post. Some people are fortunate enough to work in ivory tower businesses where virtually all of the employees are urbane, sophisticated, educated and wear suits and ties.

   I have had a very different career experience, working for over 40 years as an engineer at several companies that design and manufacture sophisticated electronic equipment. Their employee demographics are much broader. They have factory workers who have an 8 Grade education and all the way up to senior managers who have an MS in Electrical Engineering.

   The people who run these places have 0 tolerance for missed deadlines, mistakes or any form of mental illness. Job applicants who are assumed to have these traits are not hired. Those who are already on the payroll who make these transgressions are summarily fired.

   I remember well my first job out of college. There was a deep recession at the time but I got lucky and landed a coveted position as an engineer. Soon afterward, our respected and well-liked boss got fired and was replaced by an implacable, nasty SOB. Here’s how the real world works, my friends. Forget about sympathy, understanding and sensitivity! He had all the sweetness and affability of a military drill instructor. In a get-to-know-you meeting I said something stupid and a week later I was fired. Back then the term ADHD had not been coined but the personality type was well-recognized and such people were dismissed as “social morons”.

   At the low ranks of the employees there were legions of 60 year old white men who had only a high school diploma, packed a firearm and typically held ultra-reactionary political opinions. These guys are not a uniquely an American phenomenon; the rest of the world is full of them.

   These rednecks do not always work on the factory floor; there might be several of them in cubicles adjoining yours. So, you want to be a blathering idiot about your private mental health information? Let’s assume that you are relatively young, bright and educated and you just received the promotion that he aspired for. He is now your sworn enemy. In your face he will be sullen, rude and passive-aggressive; behind your back he will trash your reputation all over the company.

   For me personally, ADD (I do NOT have Hyperactivity, dammit!) has always been a handicap and an embarrassment in both my professionally and personal lives. I had a reasonably successful career as an engineer. My IQ is a few points shy of Mensa qualification but it took me 4 ½ years to get my BS degree when normal brains do it in 4 years. Having enough smarts and pure bulldog determination got me to where I am. I did this IN SPITE OF but BECAUSE OF this ADD $#!+.

   Recently, as newcomers in our new neighborhood, we had a budding friendship with a couple whom we (thought) have much in common with. Then I stupidly revealed my ADD plus my bonus prize of BP No.2 to them. They recoiled in shock and horror. They remain outwardly civil but no longer want to have anything to do with us. And get this: they are retired psychiatrists!
   My wife still berates me over this. So, if psych professionals find guys like me off-putting, how can anyone expect lay people treat you any better?

   You folks in the EU are fortunate to have comprehensive personal privacy protections but American mega-corporations, with their American traditions and attitudes (not to confused with ADDitude!), are being hauled into EU courts.

   And haven’t you heard? Here in the US of A we are in the Era of Small(er) Government. Fully half of the American electorate distrusts and despises their own government. This “get-the- government-off-the-people’s-backs” mentality has resulted in banks running amok, trains running off the rails, coal-fired power plants poisoning the air and homeless mentally ill going without health care. You Brits have your NHS; we have I-Don’t-Care. So, any Yanks want to file a claim under the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act)? Good luck with that!

   So, you’re going to explode from inner turmoil if you don’t reveal your personal mental health condition to the world? This is a sure indication of a Pollyanna-like naivete. Better to suck it up than try to live on a meager unemployment check. What if you have had a personal bankruptcy, a stint in drug rehab, a wife-beating incident (where the charges were dropped) or you have a dose of an incurable STD? Would you feel an uncontrollable urge to overshare that news with peers (you wouldn’t do that, would you?) or your employers (what, are you stupid?).

   Let’s say that you are unhappy with your work environment and you want to up and leave? Right now in the USA, the unemployment rate is super-low and you can probably get away with it. In my 40+ year career I have weathered many recession storms, like the one in 2007. In those conditions you just might decide to endure a job and coworkers you don’t like. Forget about “growing and thriving”. So, as some suggest, go ahead, lose your temper and run out the door? This is incredibly bad advice, IMHO, especially if you have a family to support.

   The point is that you actually do not have complete control over your life, especially with the people who have control over you. In order to survive you have to have at least a modicum of common sense. Spill your guts about ADD/ADHD and you will pay a terrible price. There is a well-defined boundary line between high-minded principle and …. inspired stupidity and some people cannot tell the difference.

4. I work, in the UK, in financial services. Last year I worked for a mutually-owned organisation, known over here as a Building Society, but most places elsewhere as a “buildings and loans” firm. It was basically a retail bank, with capital reserves largely generated historically out of retained earnings – no shareholders, just membership based upon making an investment (either savings or taking out a home-purchase mortgage). These tend to be slightly more compassionate organisations than some banks, but other than having members rather than shareholders, thee is no real difference to the daily operations and the requirements for how it is run are the same.

   After I had been offered the job, but before I actually started, I was diagnosed (finally) as being ADHD (inattentive type), and this goes back to various events which I can recall, suggesting it has been a life-long condition. I am in my late 50s, so it has been some time coming. I was unsure about revealing the diagnosis, but uneasy about the inherent dishonesty in this. Also, my boss was a really decent person, and the firm was very proud of the efforts it was making towards inclusion and diversity, so I decided after a couple of months to tell him. I was glad I did. His response was very supportive and understanding, and basically boiled down to, “Wow, that’s a really big deal. What can we do as a firm, and what can I do as an individual, to help you?” My simple answer was that I didn’t know exactly how to support me, but the simple acknowledgment of me being neurodivergent would be a great start: it’s not all bad news, as I told him – there is a creative side to my ADHD. I can see connections and patterns well before most others, sometimes connections that others cannot even detect. I then decided to tell my immediate team at the next team meeting: same response, followed by the wider team – having first discussed with my boss’s boss. Same warm reaction. So I went online and used the internal blog to “come out”.

   The response was great: nothing but positivity. Sometimes it was a “like”, sometimes a public comment, sometimes a private email, and sometimes a passing comment – even from the CEO – about how pleased they were to see someone being open about it. I even had emails from managers who had staff with ADHD, asking how to better support their team members.

   I posted a few more times, as I discovered more about my “condition”, particularly about how I manage it, and most importantly about how this management had to be owned by me, not anyone else. I am responsible for being aware of my personal needs, and of managing the situation. I take some medication, I also monitor things more closely and had developed checklists and improved my time-management activities – something I loathe to do, but a few minutes each day made me more effective and therefore happier. Also, by taking ownership of my ADHD, I put myself in control of it: I can reveal or not reveal, but importantly I can also use this revelation as the spring board for informing my colleagues not just about ADHD, but tolerance of other neurodivergent symptoms and indeed all aspects of simply being human. It boiled down to, we all have “invisible” issues that we are dealing with. Sometimes these are a reaction to events, sometimes these are long-term. Sometimes these are genuinely private, sometimes privacy is requested/desired. But always, until someone has chosen to tell you, in the words of Robin Williams, you don’t know what they are struggling with, so be kind: always.

   This isn’t about “rights”, but about taking control. If you wish to control everything about you by not revealing anything, that is your choice. That choice can only be respected, but do not expect to be shown sympathy or support for issues that no one else is aware of.
   On the other hand, if you value respect, and you are aware of the positives as well as the negatives of your diagnosis, then you can control how this is all presented, and empower yourself to drive an agenda of respect for fundamental humanity: of caring for each other. Your “rights” protect you if you chose not to do this, but that does not mean that you have to keep quiet. That’s not the point of those rights. In the UK, and I think within the EU, my ADHD is a “protected characteristic”, giving me the same protections as I have against other forms of discrimination such as gender, sexual orientation, race, age, religion, physical disability, etc. I have “Miranda Rights”, too: but my mental health status is not a criminal thing, and being open about it provides me protection under the law. If I do not disclose this, then if I am struggling because of it, my employers could claim that as I hadn’t informed them, they were not able to respect my conditions and needs and to support me.

   If you think your employers would not be supportive of this and working in such an environment makes you unhappy, then I respectfully suggest finding a different employer: one that wants to get the best out of their employees by encouraging personal growth, rather than a fear of making mistakes. People who don’t make mistakes, don’t make anything, and they don’t grow, either.

   If cranking a handle and doing exactly what you are told, and no more than that, makes you happy, then that’s fine, but it sounds like working for a totalitarian regime, in which case it’s probably best not to reveal anything. But I am able to post like this, and to have revealed my personal situation, because I am living in a free country which is trying – not always successfully, but trying none the less – to embrace and endorse individuality.

   The point is, you are in charge of your own life. You can chose to make everything private, and suffer in silence, or make an informed decision about how much – and to whom – you wish to reveal. There are risks to both: at one extreme you may be gainfully employed but unhappy, and at the other, happy but looking for a better employer or even out of work. I repeat that those are extremes. Individually, we need to gauge our environment: not just our place of work, but our friends, family and indeed wider society, but if we don’t take things out to the world, the world will never understand and never be able to help.

   The choice is yours: so are the consequences.
   Take ownership. Take control.

5. I’m older than most readers of this fine magazine and I’ve seen it all. The only fields of work that understand or tolerate ADD or ADHD are education or medicine. Notice how most of the women in this article are teachers or social workers. The men who posted seem to know better. I worked as an engineer for over 40 years for 6 or 8 companies, all of them for-profit corporations.

   These guys will provide a larger cubicle for a wheelchair person but any hint of a mental illness problem will land your resume in the shredder. An admission of ADD or ADHD will send the HR manager scurrying to the internet and he/she will find the major symptoms of this scourge:
   * Sudden, unexpected requests for “mental health days” off
   * Poor organization skills
   * Poor listening ability
   * Tardiness
   * Impulsiveness, which they will conflate as the tendency to blurt out something stupid in a customer-facing meeting.

   You might get by with asking for cubicle away from the noisy breakroom but they will not give you a private office.

   So, you’re going to file a complaint with your state’s Fair Employment Commission? Don’t get your hopes up! I live in a Red State and those case workers were laid off, deemed as a tax wasting socialist scheme. Picture this: you’ll be sitting at the breakfast table worrying how you’re going to survive on an unemployment check of $300 per WEEK but the company you file your complaint against has lawyers who are paid $400 per HOUR. Who do you bet is going to win? I once had an HR manager brag to me that he could fire or refuse to hire anyone he wanted to and make it all look legit.

   You not only have to worry about harsh bosses but you have to guard against jealous peers. These guys will weaponize this information and trash your reputation all over the organization.
   No law requires you to reveal to employers sensitive personal information such as marital status, the state of your finances, your credit rating, your sexual orientation or your health history. Gang members in handcuffs in the back of a police car do not go spilling their guts, so why would/should you? You have the same Miranda rights as any gangsta plus you have HIPAA. Here are my personal recommendations, so take them FWIW:

   DO seek help from a mental health professional if you need help
   DO follow the treatment plan
   DO read Attitude for its heartfelt advice
   DO NOT reveal details of your mental health, especially to employers and prospective employers

   GBU and best wishes.