Brynn's Adventures

On ADHD, Cheat Codes, and Finally Playing the Game on Medium

I was diagnosed with ADHD fairly recently, in adulthood. And to be honest, the road there was a bit of a mess. A mix of systemic issues in Canadian healthcare and the persistent hesitancy to recognize ADHD in adult women meant I didn’t get the answers I needed for a long time.

First came the anxiety diagnosis. Then the anxiety meds that didn’t work. Then came bipolar 2 diagnoses, antipsychotics, tranquilizers… You can imagine what that does to someone who doesn’t need them. Obviously I didn’t feel better, I felt scrambled. Disconnected from myself in a way that was deeper than the symptoms I was trying to ‘fix’.

Ironically, the thing that finally made something click was TikTok (as it always seems to be these days). My algorithm started feeding me videos about ADHD in adult women; executive dysfunction, time blindness, emotional dysregulation. It felt like someone had literally secretly recorded the inside of my brain. I found a specialist in late-diagnosed ADHD, and for the first time, I felt like I had a name for what I’d been moving through my whole life.

But here’s the thing about getting diagnosed with ADHD as an adult: it’s not just relief, it’s grief too.

Sure you get clarity, you get language. You get to understand the ‘why’ behind the quirks, the chaos, and the near-constant internal monologue that won’t shut off. But you also get the slow, aching realization that you’ve spent most of your life thinking you were broken. Lazy. Too sensitive. Too disorganized. Too much.

It’s like you’ve been trying to play a game set on hard mode, and you just assumed everyone else was playing it the same way, only they were better at it. But the truth is, they weren’t. They were just playing on normal. And you never knew that the difficulty setting had been cranked up for you from the beginning.

The kicker to all this? You don’t get to change the setting. No one does. But what you can do is find your cheat codes.

For me, that’s the reframe that changed everything: cheat codes. The little hacks, routines, rituals, whatever you want to call them, that help level the playing field. They’re not a ‘cure’, and they don’t magically make ADHD vanish. But they soften the edges and help me play the game with a little more ease.

Here’s the thing about cheat codes, they’re deeply personal. There’s no universal “crtl+shift+c MOTHERLODE” that works for all of us. You try what worked for someone else, and sometimes it flops. You think you’ve cracked it, and then a week later it’s falling apart again. But every now and then, you find something that sticks.

Here are a few of mine, simple, maybe obvious, but transformative when I actually do them:

• Morning movement, even when I don’t feel like it. Especially when I don’t.
• 30g+ of protein with breakfast. My brain thanks me by noon, seriously.
• No phone for the first 30 minutes of the day. Torture at first but necessary.
• Habit stacking, like doing a facemask while I wash the dishes.
• Happy, upbeat music as often as possible. It’s like pre-workout for my brain.
• Getting ready even if I have nowhere to go. I follow old-school sorority rules here, 2 out of the 3: hair, makeup, outfit.
• Time in the sun. I call it lizard time. It’s like…butt-chugging an Alani Nu for the soul.

Yes they might just sound like regular wellness tips. But with ADHD, it’s never that simple. I can’t just decide to have a morning routine. I have to trick my brain into wanting it. I have to gamify my life to make it work. Thinking of these rituals as ‘cheat codes’ gives them power. It makes them feel like tools I can pull out of my pocket at any time, even after I’ve fallen off my routine (again).

Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that forgetting a part of your routine doesn’t have to ruin your whole day, even though it often feels like it does. It’s just part of the game. So just ignore the glitch, try out a new cheat code, and keep going.

Got your own cheat codes? Drop them in the comments, let’s build the list together.