For 29 years, I Thought I was broken. | by Vincent Park | Aug, 2025
I have ADHD and I’m an HSP (Highly Sensitive Person), buy I only learned this less than a year ago. Before that, for my entire adult life, I just thought I was broken.
After quitting my job to preare for a working holiday abroad, a conversation with a mentor finally started untangling the truth. he asked.
“you don’t really know who you are, do you?” “Do you think things will magically change just by going abroad?”
That question hit me hard because it exposed the on truth I didn’t want to admit: I was running away. To me, going abroad wasn’t just a trip; it was a desperate hope that a new environment could magically fix the parts of me I thought were broken. His words forced me to realize that I couldn’t outrun myself. For the first time, instead of planning an escape, I started searching for an answer.
That search is what started a journey that led me to a diagnosis. The reason I struggled to focus, the reason I was so sensitive to the world around me — it wasn’t a personal failing. It was the unique wiring of my brain.
But before I knew that, I truly despised myself.
My inner monoluge was a relentless loop of self-criticism. “Why are my emotions always on a rollercoaster? Why can’t I just sit at my desk and learn like everyone else? Why can’t I focus for even a minute before a thousand other thoughts rush in?”
At my last job, this wasn’t just a feeling: it was a daily nightmare. A simple task, like creating thank-you cards for customers, would become an impossible mountain to climb. I’d get interrupted by other duties, by customer questions, and most of all, by the constant storm inside my own head. The focus I needed was always just out of reach. I’d often take work home, only to finish at 7 AM, exhausted and defeated.
Every unfinished task, every forgotten detail, led to the same crushing question: “Why can’t I get anything right?”
All I wanted was to succeed. I used to plead with the universe for the kind of focus that could achieve anything. I just didn’t know I was fighting a battle against my own brain. That moment of despair was my rock bottom — the solid ground from which I would eventually begin to climb.
