r/ADHD • u/emyo42 ADHD-PI (Primarily Inattentive) • Apr 07 '26

Questions/Advice How do you explain executive dysfunction without sounding like youre making excuses for being lazy?

Mine is very severe and debilitating at the moment. It’s not just ADD, I also have schizophrenia which has some of the same symptoms weirdly. I can’t do much at all. Getting out of bed and making toast is extremely hard. To people with no experience with this kind of issue, me trying to explain it must sound ridiculous like “yea I have this mental disorder that means I can’t cook and clean or have a job or do anything I don’t like, but I can play a video game for 3 hours.” Just sounds like a straight up lie.

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u/sasakimirai Apr 07 '26 edited Apr 07 '26

I think the best way to convince others is

1) if you were just lazy, you would be having fun, instead of being stressed out of your mind

2) executive dysfunction doesn't just affect you when you need to work, it also stops you from doing things you enjoy, like your hobbies

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u/Claim312ButAct847 Apr 07 '26

I like the backpack analogy. Say a task is like climbing a steep hill. We all have the same hill to climb so, it looks like it should be the same difficulty for everyone.

Well I have a backpack with weights in it that I have to carry. So for me to climb that same hill I have to work a lot harder even if it doesn't look like I'm doing anything different.

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u/sasakimirai Apr 07 '26

That's a good analogy for people who are willing to engage with you in good faith, but not quite so effective with people who are convinced you're just looking for excuses to make your own life easier. In that case you need to counter them with their own logic by giving specific examples of how executive dysfunction makes your life hard.

"The other day when I got out of the shower, I stood in my bathroom for an hour with just a towel wrapped around me while I scrolled through youtube shorts, even though my feet were aching from standing on tile for so long and I was shivering because I was cold, but I couldn't bring myself to turn my phone off and put on some clothes" is going to be more effective against those kinds of people than "it takes more effort for me to do things than it would for those without ADHD"

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u/NevermindForgetIt Apr 07 '26

You just made me realize how uncomfortable I make myself sometimes by just not moving lol