What’s Wrong With ADHD If It’s a Superpower? Everything. Also Nothing.

Everyone talks about ADHD as a superpower. Nobody talks about waiting hours in summer heat because you can’t plug in your own aircon. Here’s both sides — unfiltered, from someone living it at 4am.

Normally, I work around 200–250 hours a month — and when I accidentally overbook myself, that number can climb to 300–400 hours. Mondays to Sundays. Holidays included. I rarely take days off.

Why?

Because days off make me sick. Literally.

Last year, I had a full week off during Christmas season. I spent almost the entire month of January with a fever. Another time, all my students cancelled for the day. I suddenly had nothing to do. The next day, I got the flu.

It sounds dramatic, but it has been a pattern for as long as I can remember.

Growing up, we thought I was just a sickly child because I was absent from school almost every week. Looking back, my doctors and I eventually realized that long periods of inactivity seem to affect me far more than most people. Whether it is my ADHD, the lack of stimulation, or simply how my body is wired, I have learned that too much inactivity is genuinely unhealthy for me.

So yes, I joke that I am allergic to rest.

Please do not recommend it too enthusiastically.

I do rest. I recover. I am an athlete, so recovery is non-negotiable. I simply become restless much faster than most people. If I stay inactive for too long, my brain starts overheating.

Running at full speed is not a choice. It is maintenance.

If I do not use up enough energy, I become sick, irritable, anxious, or depressed. That is not a productivity flex. That is my nervous system asking for movement.

So What Does Full Speed Look Like?

July 2026 has been my favorite month so far. (I say this every month except January, but I mean it this time.)

Three hundred-plus work hours.

• UPOU MODeL courses.
• Tai Chi seminars.
• Weekend classes at Fisher Mall.
• Weekday martial arts sessions.
• Preparation for my Aikido black belt examination.
• Possibly a Wushu Duan examination.
• Possibly a ballet teacher examination.
• Organization work.
• International Wushu competition preparations barely finished.
• Two more competitions already lined up.
• Two demonstrations.
• One small creative project.
• Two major projects I am not allowed to announce yet.
• And, of course, the endless unpaid administrative work that somehow keeps the whole universe from collapsing.

To most people, that sounds exhausting.

To me, my brain finally becomes quiet.

Recently, I have also been fortunate to receive several recognitions. We became a Luzon Finalist in TOUSA and won the Global Women of Influence 2026 award, on top of our Hong Kong campaign and our UAAP opportunities.

Some people call it luck.

I call it ADHD… plus an incredibly supportive community.

Now, before anyone gets angry, let me explain.

I genuinely love my ADHD.

I cannot imagine a version of myself without the hyperactivity.

I love the endless curiosity.

I love becoming obsessed with learning something new.

I love social butterfly mode.

I love the way time disappears during hyperfocus.

My psychologist once joked that I seem almost incapable of envy. Maybe that is because I am too busy running seventeen projects to notice what anyone else is doing.

Blunt honesty and a near-total absence of envy turn out to be surprisingly useful superpowers.

Very counterproductive for drama. Extremely productive for everything else.

But Nobody Talks About This Part

ADHD as a superpower is a great story.

It is also only half the story.

Nobody wants to dissect the downside. So here it is.

I am often dyslexic.

I have almost no sense of direction. I get lost in bathrooms. It took me years to memorize the route to school even though it was practically a straight line. My six-year-old daughter navigates for me because she is genuinely better at it than I am.

I have no natural body clock. Sleep has been difficult for me since I was a baby, and arrhythmia does not exactly help.

It is hard for me to start things.

It is hard for me to finish things.

It is hard for me to stop once I have started.

These are daily struggles. I stay afloat through regular therapy and systems I have spent years building.

I have heightened fear responses to loud sounds, heights, and extreme heat.

I cry on every airplane ride.

Worst of all?

I still cannot comfortably boil water or plug electrical devices directly into a wall outlet because the fear completely overwhelms me.

Even today, my mother still does much of the cooking, the driving, and plugging in electrical appliances. To most people, that probably looks like I am avoiding responsibility.

The reality is far less flattering: there are certain “simple” tasks that my brain still cannot comfortably do.

I am a PWD who struggles with tasks that many people consider effortless.

Imagine working as a teacher while finding reading difficult sometimes.

Imagine explaining to parents why you cannot confidently accompany their child somewhere unfamiliar because you are genuinely afraid of getting lost.

Imagine that picking up one dirty sock feels infinitely harder than memorizing an entire competitive Wushu routine.

Imagine an unscheduled day off feeling less like a vacation and more like a form of torture that ends in actual illness.

Imagine not being able to sleep on command, even with medical help.

Imagine blurting out uncomfortable truths because your brain refuses to filter them.

Imagine your brain constantly searching for enough motivation to function, then suddenly switching into overdrive once it finally finds it.

Imagine sitting in summer heat with an unplugged air conditioner because you are too afraid to plug it in yourself, waiting for someone else to come home and do it for you.

When I cannot do something simple, people get disappointed.

They think I am stubborn.

Lazy.

Dramatic.

Or worse… faking it.

They assume I refuse to comply, when the truth is that I am unable to comply because something invisible and significant is in the way.

I cannot simply grow a sense of direction.

I cannot read on command.

I cannot sleep on command.

I cannot magically become comfortable plugging something into a wall.

I cannot simply “do it later,” because later often becomes never.

I cannot always “just start now,” because the brain fog can feel like hollow blocks stacked on top of my skull.

I cannot go out if the tag on my shirt or a tiny hole in my tights is screaming at my nervous system.

I cannot pick up a sock because there is genuinely no neurological reward for picking up a sock.

But somehow I have built routines and rehearsed workarounds that make me look completely normal — until you ask me for directions or hand me a plug.

What I Thought Was Normal

I honestly believed all of this was typical until I was an adult.

I thought I was lazy.

I thought I was just bad at directions.

I thought everyone listened to one song on loop for an entire month.

I thought it was normal to get physically sick from doing something you dislike.

I thought I just hated travel and rest.

I thought I was picky.

I thought I was wasting my own intelligence.

I thought I was just a scaredy-cat.

It turns out my brain was simply wired differently.

I can feel the burn before getting burned.

I have crashed a plane in my head a hundred times for every hour I have actually spent in one.

I avoid horror films because my episodic memory will file one scene and replay it uninvited, in public, without warning.

When you put it all together, there is a lot going on.

And a lot of effort goes into fighting the chaos quietly enough that nobody notices.

ADHD Is Extremely Destructive

It is a silent battle that many of us did not even realize was specific to us.

It is 4:00 a.m.

I have an important class in a few hours.

My brain told me to write this instead of sleeping.

I negotiated with it for twenty minutes and lost.

So here you go, brain.

I hope you are happy.

Good luck having energy later.

Having ADHD means parenting your brain, fighting your brain, tricking your brain, and eventually thanking your brain.

The ADHD brain and the thinking brain feel like two completely different people.

Sometimes they work together beautifully.

More often, the ADHD brain is a wild squirrel on a pogo stick harassing the responsible adult until she cries.

Every. Single. Day.

Maybe that is also why I believe so strongly that movement should be for everybody.

You never really know what invisible battle someone is fighting. Sometimes the strongest-looking person in the room is simply the one who has learned to hide it best.

I may have lost my original point somewhere in here — but I think I made several along the way, and I think that counts.

The bottom line is this: you may not know what an ADHD PWD is fighting. You may not want to know, because the list is long.

This is just half of July.

Here is to more chaos.

If you want to see the tip of the iceberg — the part where ADHD actually wins — visit:
https://sites.google.com/view/teacherarra 

The other 90%?

There is no way I am documenting every episode, spasm, breakdown, awkward silence, paralysis loop, and struggle.

Just know that the 10% you see is what I choose to let define me.

It took everything I had to build that 10%.