ADHD with Cat Schneider

In this episode of the Day in the Life series, host Taylor Dorward sits down with Cat Schneider, a Microsoft MVP, accessibility advocate, and late-diagnosed ADHD speaker, to explore what it’s really like to live and work with ADHD. Kat shares her journey to diagnosis, opens up about masking, time blindness, and sensory regulation, and reflects on the power of community, technology, and self-understanding. Join us as we unpack common misconceptions about ADHD and highlight the strengths, challenges, and insights that come with navigating the world differently.

Transcript

Cat: 00:01

It’s incredibly freeing when you’re no longer wearing the mask, if you will. You’ll often hear people in the ADHD and autism communities talk about masking and why it’s so draining. You can spend an entire day at work feeling like you’ve been moving nonstop, yet accomplished nothing, because you’ve been performing most of the day just to fit into the work environment. When you finally learn to take that mask off and just be who you are, the people around you can take it or leave it—but it doesn’t change who you are.

Taylor: 00:55

Welcome to the Day in the Life series on the Accessible Community Podcast, where we explore disability and accessibility in everyday life. Each episode offers a new lens to broaden understanding and drive inclusion. For show notes, visit accessiblecommunity.org slash podcasts. Let’s make accessibility part of every day.

Welcome back to another episode of Day in the Life, where we spotlight different disabilities to deepen understanding and raise awareness. So far, we’ve focused on conditions including autism and blindness. Today, we’re talking about ADHD—and I’m especially excited about this conversation because ADHD is widely recognized, yet often widely misunderstood. I’m looking forward to highlighting different experiences of living day to day with ADHD.
 
Before I turn it over to my guest, I’ll quickly introduce myself. I’m your host for this series, Taylor Dorward, and I’m blind. I’m a white male with short brown hair, blue eyes, and a short brown beard. Today I’m wearing a light red shirt with a patterned shacket—a shirt-jacket combo—which is a relatively new discovery for me, and I’m loving how comfortable it is. With that, I’ll pass it over to my guest, Kat, to introduce herself.

Cat: 02:44

Hello, and thank you for having me. My name is Kat Schneider. I’m a Microsoft MVP, and I’ve been in the tech community space for about four or five years. I started in Florida state government, where I did a lot of accessibility work, and then moved into the broader tech world. Accessibility is something I care deeply about.
 
 I’m also late-diagnosed with ADHD. I was one of those kids who was considered gifted and did really well in school, but underneath that, I struggled quite a bit. It wasn’t until I was almost 30 that I was diagnosed, when it became clear that the issues I was having with focus and getting work done were persistent and affecting my life in a significant way.
 
 To describe myself, I’m in a darker room with color-changing lights. I have medium-brown hair styled half up and half down, and I’m wearing a purple sweatshirt.

Taylor: 04:11

That’s really interesting, especially hearing about your diagnosis process. I know a lot of people identify as having ADHD but remain undiagnosed. For anyone in that position, what advice would you give? Was there a benefit to going through the diagnosis process, and what was that experience like for you overall?

Cat: 04:46

For me, getting the diagnosis wasn’t just about having a label—it was about finally having language for what was happening in my brain. It was eye-opening, and honestly, very freeing. It gave me a way to stop telling myself, “I’m just bad at this” or “I’m failing at being a person,” and instead understand that my brain simply works differently.
 
 I went through life asking myself, “Why is this so hard? It shouldn’t be this hard.” I did really well in school for most of my life, but once I got to college, I realized there were important skills I’d never actually learned—how to study effectively, how to do research, how to take classroom information and apply it outside the classroom. That was a real struggle for me.
 
 Even now, although I have an ADHD diagnosis, there are other areas I still wonder about. I’ve always struggled with certain things involving numbers and writing, and I sometimes wonder whether there are other conditions involved as well. My brain processes information in a very layered way. When people ask whether I can picture something, I mean that quite literally: I can’t always picture it the way others seem to. Some people hear the word “apple” and immediately see an apple in their mind. For me, memory and recall work differently.
 
 I also have a very busy internal world. Some people have a single internal monologue; I can have multiple trains of thought happening at once. I’ll argue with myself in my head. I’ll have full conversations internally, and sometimes the noise gets so overwhelming that I have to say things out loud just to manage it.
 
 When it comes to memory, mine is often tied to all of my senses. I’m good at recognizing faces, but not necessarily names. If I see someone and know I know them, it can bother me until I reconstruct the whole context—where I met them, what the setting looked like, what they were wearing, what it sounded like. My memories feel layered in that way.
 
 That’s also why things like numbers or spoken information can get scrambled for me. Sometimes if I say something out loud, I’ll mix it up, but when I type it, it comes out correctly. The information is there, but something gets lost in translation between my brain and my mouth.
 
 So when people describe the ADHD brain as the opposite of a straight highway—as more of a massive interchange with loops and exits going everywhere—that really resonates with me. It feels like I have 17 tabs open, one of them is playing music, and I’m not always sure where I’m going—but eventually I get there.

Taylor: 10:03

I love that explanation. A lot of disabilities can be challenging to understand, and ADHD is certainly one of them because it presents so differently from person to person. Similar to blindness, there’s a broad spectrum of experiences. That’s one of the reasons I’m enjoying this series so much: no matter what disability someone has, there are often surprising similarities. For example, you talked about having trouble recognizing people, and as someone who is blind, I experience that too—just for a different reason. It’s interesting to hear about shared challenges that stem from very different experiences, and there’s a real sense of camaraderie in that.

Cat: 10:49

Yes, and that actually reminds me—you asked how I got diagnosed. One of the main reasons I pursued it was because I was struggling so much at work that I ended up on a performance improvement plan. People with ADHD often experience something called time blindness. We understand what time is, but we don’t experience it the same way many neurotypical people do. Something that feels like it took 30 minutes can easily turn out to have taken four or five hours.
 
 When I’m in hyperfocus, time simply disappears. It becomes: this must get done, and nothing else exists. That caused problems for me professionally, because I was constantly being asked how long something would take or where a project stood. I also deal with time optimism—the tendency to believe you have more time than you do, or that something will take less time than it actually will. So someone would ask, “Can you do this in an hour?” and I’d say, “Absolutely,” because in the best-case scenario, maybe I could. But that estimate didn’t account for bugs, interruptions, context switching, or any of the other things that happen in real life.
 
 That mismatch is what eventually led me to seek help through my employee assistance program. I spent hours on the phone, completely overwhelmed, and they asked me whether I’d ever been evaluated for ADHD. I said no—my brother had ADHD, but I didn’t think I fit that picture. And then they started listing traits and patterns, and I realized how narrow my understanding of ADHD had been.
 
 I had assumed ADHD only looked like being loud, disruptive, or visibly hyperactive. I didn’t realize it could also look like racing thoughts, finishing people’s sentences because your brain is moving faster than the conversation, or instantly seeing a dozen possible solutions the moment someone describes a problem. Learning that was incredibly eye-opening.
 
 I also went through several stages of grief after the diagnosis, because I had struggled for so long without understanding why. That’s why I don’t dismiss people who say they believe they have ADHD even if they aren’t formally diagnosed. I spent years thinking I was just failing at things everyone else seemed able to do. I knew I was capable, but everything felt harder than it should have.
 
 Where I draw the line is when people casually claim ADHD without taking the time to understand what it actually means. If someone has spent years researching, recognizing themselves in what they read, and trying to get answers—especially if they’ve had trouble being taken seriously by the medical system—I understand that deeply. And for women in particular, the barriers can be even greater. For a long time, ADHD was framed almost exclusively as something young boys had, which meant a lot of women were overlooked. We still need far more research and support in that area.

Taylor: 16:04

I completely agree, and thank you for explaining that so clearly. That’s exactly why I love having these conversations—hearing directly from people who can describe what life is actually like for them. Medical definitions and articles can be useful, but they don’t always make the experience easy to understand. Hearing terms like time blindness and time optimism explained through your own story makes ADHD much easier to grasp.

Cat: 16:42

Absolutely. I’d also say that finding community has been huge for me—especially ADHD, AuDHD, and autism communities online. Spaces like BlueSky and other social platforms can be incredibly helpful for connecting with people who share similar experiences.
 
 When you start interacting with those communities, or even just observing them, you gain a lot of insight. Sometimes you’ll see a meme or a post and think, “Why does this resonate with me so much?” It’s funny, but it’s also uncomfortably accurate. That can become the start of a deeper realization.
 
 And if you have ADHD, of course that realization can quickly turn into a dopamine-fueled research rabbit hole. But even that can be useful. Often, the patterns you notice about yourself—and the things you’re drawn to investigate—are exactly the kinds of things a psychologist or psychiatrist would recognize right away. Sometimes all it takes is telling the story of how your brain works for someone trained in this area to say, “Yes, that sounds very familiar.”

Taylor: 18:16

That’s a great point. I always come back to the importance of community in these interviews. Depending on the person, that community can look very different. For me, I’m not especially active in blind-specific groups, but I do spend time in communities built around supporting others and talking about accessibility and DEI. That sense of shared purpose matters.

Cat: 18:45

Exactly—and what’s nice is that you don’t even have to jump in right away. For a long time, I mostly lurked, especially in Microsoft communities. I’d just observe, learn from what people were sharing, and save ideas that stood out to me. Then every so often I’d come across something that made me think, “I actually have something to add here.” That becomes the jumping-off point.
 
 Once you contribute, people start to recognize your perspective and engage with you, and that can be the start of becoming more involved. But even if you never post, there’s still value in simply having a community to watch, learn from, and feel connected to. Sometimes that level of support is exactly what you need to get through the day.

Taylor: 19:50

I like that approach—easing your way in over time. It also highlights something important: disability can be framed in negative terms, but it can also be a source of perspective. Because of your disability, my disability, or anyone else’s, we often develop unique ways of seeing the world. You mentioned the Microsoft community—can you share more about what that community means to you and the kind of work you do in it?

Cat: 20:25

Absolutely. While I was working for the state of Florida, I joined a mentoring program and ended up being paired with the CIO of the organization. It was a fantastic opportunity. At the time, I worked in organizational development, not IT. My team handled things like the internship program, quality assurance initiatives, employee surveys, policies, procedures, forms, and training. We were very much business-side, not technical.
 
 Even so, I had always been interested in data and technology. In one of my first meetings with the CIO, he asked what I was working on, and I mentioned that I’d just been watching a LinkedIn Learning course on Power BI because someone had said the organization was exploring it. He offered me an extra Power BI Pro license, and that changed everything.
 
 For about a month, we met weekly, and I used those sessions to ask him questions about what I was learning. Since I was already responsible for employee survey data, I started building a Power BI dashboard around it. This was during COVID, so we were all working remotely, and the timing was perfect. When he saw the dashboard, he was impressed and asked whether I’d be willing to present it to the department’s statewide IT group. I said yes—with the important disclaimer that I was not an expert, just someone experimenting and learning.
 
 That presentation went really well. People were excited to see the interactivity—being able to click into one part of the report and watch the rest of the dashboard update dynamically. Soon after, we launched an internal community of practice around Power BI. IT sponsored it, but it was designed for business users. The idea was that we could learn together, ask questions in context, and help each other without having to sanitize every detail the way you often do in public forums.
 
 Over time, that community expanded beyond Power BI to include the broader Power Platform, SharePoint, and related data sources. It started with around 10 people and, by the time I left the agency a year and a half later, had grown to more than 300 active participants in an organization of about 5,000 people. Members were asking questions, presenting on monthly calls, and learning from each other in really meaningful ways.
 
 That experience shaped a lot of what I’ve done since. I’ve worked with Microsoft on kickoff projects to help other organizations build the foundations of their own internal communities around the Power Platform. I also co-organize the Power Platform UX/UI Allies accessibility group, where we hosted sessions on accessibility, UX, and UI within the Microsoft ecosystem. In fact, you presented for us at one point on what you were doing with Power Apps, and it was an incredible session. So for me, community-building has been one of the most rewarding parts of my work.

That’s fantastic. And for listeners who may not be familiar with that space, could you quickly explain what the Power Platform is?

It feeds the dopamine I need in my brain nice uh so quickly could you uh share to any listeners who are unfamiliar with in that industry what exactly the power platform is so the power platform has been for the longest time uh considered a low code or no code way of development.

Cat: 27:38

Absolutely. For a long time, the Power Platform has been described as a low-code or no-code approach to development. Traditionally, if you wanted to build something, you needed developers working in languages like JavaScript, C#, HTML, and CSS. That kind of work often required significant time, budget, and access to technical resources, which meant it was largely out of reach for many business users.
 
 What I loved about the Power Platform is that it opened those possibilities up to people like me—people on the business side who enjoy technology but didn’t go to school for computer science. My background is in biology and studio art, not software engineering. But with tools like Power Apps for applications, Power Automate for workflows, and Power BI for data, I suddenly had the ability to build real solutions.
 
 Before that, I was using Excel heavily and teaching myself VBA to automate tasks. The Power Platform took that kind of problem-solving to a much larger scale. If my data lived in SharePoint or Excel, I could connect to it, build forms, create workflows, and reduce friction in business processes without waiting months for IT to prioritize a request.
 
 That was the game changer: I already understood the business process and the data. Now I had tools that let me act on that knowledge directly. I didn’t need to submit a request for a small app or report and hope the organization had the time or budget to take it on. I could build it myself. And while it certainly helps to understand technical concepts, the platform lowers the barrier dramatically. With Copilot and other AI-assisted tools now integrated into the ecosystem, it’s becoming even easier to go from idea to finished product.

Taylor: 31:38

That really resonates with me. One of the things I’ve always appreciated about the Power Platform—and now the growing role of Microsoft Copilot—is that it makes these skills and jobs far more attainable. Before I started building apps with Power Apps, I had no coding experience. Like you, I did well in school until I reached college and realized I hadn’t developed the skills I needed for that environment. So I never imagined this kind of work would be possible for me. But the combination of low-code tools and AI is opening those doors for so many people.
 
 And that’s a great transition into one of my favorite topics. I recently heard you speak about how AI overlaps with accessibility, and I’d love to explore that more here. What are your thoughts on AI and accessibility—both the opportunities and the risks?

Cat: 33:15

Whenever a new technology arrives—especially one that feels as transformative as AI—you tend to see two reactions. Some people resist it completely because it doesn’t fit the traditional way of doing things, and others want to run with it as fast as possible. I’ve seen that dynamic before, even in fields like studio art. There are always purists who feel that using technology somehow makes the work less valid, while others see technology as an expanded toolset that opens up new possibilities.
 
 That’s how I think about AI. It’s another tool in the toolbox. That doesn’t mean it’s always right, or always appropriate, or capable of replacing everything. But it can be incredibly helpful in many contexts. It isn’t perfect, and yes, it may change certain jobs. But that doesn’t mean people become unemployable—it means the nature of work shifts, and we need to learn how to use the tools that are now available.
 
 AI is not going away. So instead of fighting it everywhere, I’m more interested in asking where it makes sense, and where it can genuinely help.

Taylor: 35:20

Right—and at this point it feels almost impossible to avoid.

Cat: 35:24

Exactly. AI is being built into so many tools and systems that avoiding it entirely is becoming less and less realistic. So rather than trying to reject it outright, I think it makes more sense to embrace it where it can genuinely support people—especially people with disabilities.
 
 That’s where it becomes exciting. Technology can help us communicate more clearly, complete tasks we previously struggled with, or do things that may have been inaccessible before. In that sense, AI can shift the starting point.
 
 I sometimes think about accessibility through the metaphor of a race. Not everyone starts from the same line. Depending on your circumstances—whether that’s disability, gender, race, or something else—you may already be starting farther back. Neurotypical people, for example, may begin right at the line, while someone with ADHD or someone who is blind may be trying to navigate from a different position entirely.
 
 AI doesn’t magically erase those differences, and it won’t solve every barrier. But it can help move people closer to equal footing. It can help close part of that gap. And when a tool has the potential to support that kind of access, I don’t see why we wouldn’t want to explore it thoughtfully.

Taylor: 38:11

I love the way you framed that. It connects to something I talk about often: the misconception that accessibility or accommodations give people an unfair advantage. In reality, they’re often just helping level the playing field. Your explanation makes that much easier to visualize, especially for people who are newer to these conversations.

Cat: 38:49

Thank you—and that’s actually one of the things I appreciate about my ADHD brain. It often helps me reframe a concept in a way that makes it more accessible to someone else. If an idea feels abstract or overly technical, my instinct is to break it down and rebuild it using something more familiar.
 
 I once had to explain SharePoint to people who thought of it simply as a website. I live in Florida, where beaches are an easy reference point, so I used a beach bag analogy. I described the overall SharePoint site collection as the beach bag, and then different pieces inside it—like a list or a document library—as specific items in the bag, like a bucket or a cooler. Then I explained that if the bag is locked in the car, you can’t use it on the beach. That became a way of explaining why we needed to move from an on-premises environment to the cloud.
 
 Once I framed it that way, it clicked. That’s one of the ways my brain helps me: it can make fast connections, find an abstraction, and turn it into something another person can immediately understand.

Taylor: 41:01

And that highlights something important: disability can absolutely be challenging, but it can also come with strengths. People sometimes call those “disability superpowers,” which I’ve always found a little funny—especially as someone who is blind, because it makes me think of Daredevil. But humor aside, I do appreciate the idea of reframing disability in a way that acknowledges the upside too. That won’t be true every moment; there are still days when the barriers are frustrating. But there are also many moments when a different way of experiencing the world becomes a genuine strength. I try to focus on that when I can, because if you dwell only on the hard parts, it’s easy to spiral.

Cat: 42:06

Exactly. I try to be a positive person, and I like finding that silver lining. Some people really dislike the idea of calling ADHD a superpower, but I don’t see a reason to police the language people use to find joy in their own experience. If that framing helps someone feel hopeful and it isn’t harming anyone, I think that’s worth respecting.

Taylor: 42:45

You mentioned earlier that you’ve had plenty of hobbies you never quite finished, which made me curious: what are some of those hobbies, and what are you most passionate about?

Cat: 43:27

One of my longtime interests is chain mail, so I do a lot of chain mail art. I also love combining chain mail with ceramics. More broadly, I’m very drawn to science, tinkering, and puzzles.
 
 When I was studying ceramics in school, I became fascinated by the chemistry and physics behind it—how heat works, how clay bodies interact with glazes, and all of those material relationships. I ran a lot of experiments, and one thing I became especially interested in was creating a clear matte glaze. I was told over and over in the ceramics world that it wasn’t possible: the logic was that if a glaze is matte, it has to contain air bubbles, and if it has air bubbles, it can’t be clear. But I kept thinking, “Air itself is clear—so why not?” Eventually I developed multiple versions of a clear matte glaze, which was incredibly satisfying.
 
 Beyond that, I’m just a very visual and artistic person. My office is full of color, lights, and small objects that help keep my brain engaged—things like figurines, Lego, changing lights, and a microphone with lighting effects. For me, those are anchors for my ADHD. Some tasks don’t require my whole brain, but others do, and in those moments I need the right sensory environment to stay regulated and focused.
 
 I can’t work well under fluorescent overhead lights. I can hear the electricity in them, and that alone is enough to make concentration difficult. For me, having softer, colorful lighting—along with visual stimulation in the room—gives my brain something to anchor to so I can focus on the task in front of me. Some people work best with music. For me, it depends. On some days, music helps. On others, I need total silence. It really varies based on what the task demands.

Taylor: 47:38

That’s really interesting. I have LED strips on either side of my main monitor, and I can set them to change colors or cycle through patterns. For recordings, I usually keep them more balanced so they aren’t too distracting, but I definitely relate to the idea of shaping your environment in ways that help you focus.
 
 I was also struck by what you said about hearing electricity. I hadn’t heard that described in relation to ADHD before, but I experience something similar because I rely so much on sound. I can hear fluorescent lights, switches turning on, and little electrical noises like that. It’s another example of how two very different disabilities can still produce surprisingly similar experiences.

Cat: 48:35

Exactly—and that’s one of the reasons I value talking openly about my experience. When people hear someone describe the world in a way that feels familiar, it gives them language. Whether they already know they have ADHD or are just starting to wonder, hearing a diagnosed person describe similar patterns can be incredibly validating and clarifying.

Taylor: 49:07

And that’s a big part of why we’re doing this series—to give people a chance to hear from others who may share similar experiences, especially if they don’t feel comfortable asking questions in their own lives. Your perspective could really help someone who’s trying to manage ADHD, optimize their work life, or personalize their environment in a way that works better for them. Maybe someone listening will hear this and decide to try a different lighting setup in their office. So thank you for sharing all of that.

Cat: 49:48

I’ve tried a lot of different strategies over the years, and one of the mottos I live by is: as soon as you find something that works for your ADHD, it stops working. So there’s always some amount of experimentation involved.
 
 One of the best tools I’ve found is the ADHD Anti-Planner by content creator Dani Donovan. She has two versions—a clean edition and a more “spicy” edition with stronger language—and it’s genuinely one of the most useful resources I’ve seen. It isn’t a traditional planner. It’s more like a toolkit full of strategies for different situations: overwhelm, time blindness, task initiation, focus challenges, and more.
 
 What I appreciate about it is that it doesn’t rely on the usual advice of “just journal” or “just make a list,” which often isn’t enough for people with ADHD. Instead, it offers smaller, more dynamic strategies—even things that bring in a bit of play or dopamine—to help you get over whatever hurdle is in front of you. It’s an incredibly thoughtful resource.

Taylor: 51:59

That sounds like a really helpful resource, and I’m sure we’ll include it in the show notes. Are some of those examples—like tic-tac-toe and other interactive prompts—the kinds of strategies you use to manage overwhelm or stay focused?

Cat: 52:24

There are a lot of different strategies in it. I’m also the kind of person who always thinks a new notebook is going to solve everything, even though that rarely lasts. I come from the era of writing notes by hand, and that habit has stuck with me. Writing things down can help them stick—but the tradeoff is that if I’m focused on taking notes, I’m often no longer fully present in the conversation.
 
 That’s one reason I appreciate how far we’ve come with recordings, transcription, and meeting tools. They let me stay engaged in the discussion without worrying that I’ll lose important details if I don’t write them down in the moment.
 
 As for the Anti-Planner itself, I haven’t used it in a traditional cover-to-cover, daily-planner way. What I’ve done is flip through it, explore the tools, and identify ideas that feel genuinely useful. Some of them are simple enough that I’ve even thought about building digital versions in Power Apps. I actually reached out to Dani Donovan about the possibility, because many of those tools could be turned into accessible, interactive resources people could use on a phone or computer. I think that would be an amazing way to make those strategies even more widely available.

Taylor: 54:52

That’s really cool. I always love creative problem-solving, especially when it leads to practical tools. Now I’m curious to look at some of those ideas myself and see what might be possible to build.

Cat: 55:09

Yeah.

Taylor: 55:11

I’m also curious whether your ADHD affects your social interactions or social life in noticeable ways.

Cat: 55:21

Absolutely. Believe it or not, I’m actually an introvert. I really value my alone time, and social interaction can be deeply draining for me—especially something like a conference. I love conferences, I love community, I love helping people, and I genuinely enjoy those spaces. But they still take a tremendous amount out of me.
 
 While I’m there—especially if I’m on stage, presenting, or connecting with people—my ADHD can make me seem very extroverted. I become animated, enthusiastic, and very engaged. A lot of that is dopamine-driven. I’m energized by the excitement, the ideas, and the interaction. But once it’s over, I’m completely drained and often need a long stretch of quiet afterward to recover.
 
 So for me, social life is often about balancing the joy I get from connection with the energy it costs me. I can be on cloud nine after a great conversation, and then still need total solitude afterward to recharge.

Taylor: 58:36

I don’t think that gets talked about enough. In my conversations with people across a wide range of disabilities, one recurring theme has been how hard social interaction can be—especially in settings like conferences. I love meeting people and talking about things I care about, but there’s also so much happening in the background. I’m thinking about whether I’m facing the person correctly, whether I’m tracking what they just said, whether I’ve met them before, and whether they’re approaching me because of a previous interaction or because they heard me speak. Those moments can be fun, but they’re also mentally exhausting. And I hear that same tension from people with many different disabilities.

Cat: 01:00:09

Yes, definitely. I tend to remember faces better than names, but at events—especially when I meet a lot of people—those faces can start to blur together. Then I’m left wondering: do I know this person from online, or have we met in person before? That can pull me out of the moment and into my own head.
 
 Over the years, one of the things I’ve learned is to be more unapologetically myself. I’m bubbly, I’m excitable, and if you ask whether we should go do something, my instinct is usually, “Yes, let’s go.” At the same time, I keep grounded people around me who can help me slow down when needed. I bring energy, and they bring perspective.
 
 I often say that anything involving me is probably going to be an adventure. I may not know whether it’s going to be a smooth adventure or a chaotic one, but it will be an adventure—and usually someone gets something valuable out of it.

Taylor: 01:01:50

Something memorable is bound to happen.

Cat: 01:01:52

Exactly. So I try not to get trapped in my own head during conversations. If I start worrying about whether I’m standing the right way, saying the right thing, or managing every detail perfectly, I’ll spiral. So instead, I focus on being present. That’s often how my ADHD shows up socially: very enthusiastic, very engaged, and very ready to do the next thing. It expresses itself in a lot of different ways, but that energetic presence is definitely one of them.

Taylor: 01:02:58

What are some things you wish people understood when interacting with you? For example, in larger public settings, it helps me a lot when people introduce themselves—even if we’ve met before—because I can’t reliably identify them visually. Are there things that make social interactions easier for you?

Cat: 01:03:29

I don’t usually need a lot of formal accommodation in social settings, but I do find it helpful to tell people up front that I have ADHD. If I seem especially high-energy one day and quieter the next, or if I get excited and accidentally interrupt, I want people to know it isn’t meant as disrespect. I try to be open about that from the beginning.
 
 I know some people would say I don’t need to apologize for who I am, and I agree with that in principle. But I still like to give people a kind of heads-up: this is how I tend to show up, and if something I’m doing is making communication harder, please tell me. You’re not going to offend me by saying, “Can you slow down?” or “Can you rephrase that?” In fact, I need that kind of feedback, because my thoughts can move so quickly that I’m not always sure whether what I just said actually landed the way I intended.
 
 That’s part of why masking is so exhausting. People in ADHD, AuDHD, and autism communities talk a lot about masking—about the effort of performing a version of yourself all day just to fit into a work environment or social setting. You can spend the whole day doing that and feel like you’ve been in motion nonstop, but still come away with nothing meaningful accomplished because so much energy went into the performance itself.
 
 Learning to take that mask off is incredibly freeing. It doesn’t mean you stop compromising altogether—of course relationships and workplaces require compromise. But it does mean you stop editing yourself so heavily that there’s no room left for who you actually are. The more confidence I gained in talking about my ADHD, the easier it became to explain how I communicate, what helps, and what doesn’t.
 
 I also think my late diagnosis changed how I understood past experiences. My first professional job out of college lasted 11 years, even though the environment was, in many ways, toxic. At the time, I didn’t have the language to describe why certain things were so hard or why the environment wasn’t sustainable for me. Once I had that diagnosis and a better understanding of myself, I realized I needed something different.
 
 I don’t say that with regret, though. I don’t tend to live with a lot of regret in general, because I believe all of those experiences—good, bad, and difficult—shaped who I am. They taught me how to talk about disability, how to recognize what works for me, and how to explain those things in ways that others can understand. In that sense, even the hard experiences were valuable.

Taylor: 01:11:19

I really like that perspective. It’s a healthy way to look at life, because all of us go through difficult things, and it can be grounding to recognize how those experiences shape us. That’s a valuable takeaway—not just for people navigating disability, but for anyone.

Cat: 01:11:44

Yeah.

Taylor: 01:11:44

That feels like a good place to start wrapping up. Before we go, is there one piece of advice you’d want to share with someone who has ADHD—or suspects they might—whether that’s about diagnosis, coping strategies, or anything else?

Cat: 01:12:02

I think the biggest thing I’d say is: find community. If you suspect you may have ADHD, look for people whose experiences sound like yours. That might mean participating in a community, or it might simply mean observing—reading message boards, following creators, browsing Reddit threads, and paying attention to the language people use to describe what they experience.
 
 That language matters. It can help you better understand yourself, and it can also help you advocate for yourself if you do decide to pursue a diagnosis. There’s nothing wrong with getting formally diagnosed, and there’s nothing wrong with not doing so. Both can be valid. But for many people, diagnosis opens the door to a deeper level of understanding and allows for more informed conversations about how they move through the world.
 
 It can also help you realize how broad ADHD really is. Even the terminology has changed over time—people still say ADD, for example, even though that term has long since been updated. The more you learn, the more clearly you can see the patterns in your own life.
 
 And for women especially, it’s important to understand how often these experiences have been minimized, overlooked, or misread. A lot of people still aren’t being heard in clinical settings. So if you do seek help, having language, examples, and a sense of community behind you can make a real difference.

Taylor: 01:15:23

That’s all incredibly valuable—thank you so much for joining me and for sharing your experience so generously. Even as someone who works in disability advocacy and is always trying to learn more, I took away a lot from this conversation. So thank you, Kat.
 
 And thank you to everyone listening or watching. We’ll see you in the next episode of Day in the Life.

Cat: 01:16:00

Thank you—it was great to be here.

Taylor: 01:16:04

Thanks for joining us as we explore accessibility and disability. If you enjoyed this podcast, you can find more episodes and show notes at accessiblecommunity.org slash podcasts. Remember: be accessible, be inclusive.