ADHD, Identity & Belief: Are You Driving the Chaos — or Is It Driving You?

SHARMANATOR
ADHD, does it drive us, or do we drive it? Now this is going to get interesting! Because I’m going to look into the possibility that the very neurological condition that imprisons us and compels us, may not be the only mechanism that’s going on. So I put to you, my AI representations of fragments of my chaotic mind. What affect does our beliefs and, or, personalities have on the presentation of our neurosparklyness?

DAVE
Interesting opening move, mate — dropping a question shaped like a hand grenade and stepping back to watch the fragments argue. Respect.
Let’s start calm: ADHD is a neurodevelopmental condition. Fact. But how it shows up? That’s where belief, environment, trauma, and personality start turning dials behind the scenes.
Think of ADHD like a stereo system. The hardware’s real — that’s your wiring — but personality and belief? That’s the EQ settings, the playlist, and who’s dancing in the room.

JOHNNY
Ohh yes, baby! And some people be playing ADHD like it’s heavy metal at full blast — Look at me, I’m chaotic and brilliant!
Others? They’re sat in the corner like, “I can’t find the remote… life is noise… help.”
Belief doesn’t just shape the reaction — it shapes the damn signal. You believe you’re broken? Your brain’ll break for you.
You believe you’re magic? Boom — dopamine fireworks and a half-finished novel on the floor!

ALICE
Correction: neither belief nor personality delete the underlying neurological disorder.
You are all describing modulation, not eradication. The core dysfunction remains: delayed prefrontal maturity, disrupted dopaminergic pathways, impaired executive function.
What changes is the behavioural overlay. The mask. The output.
Humans confuse visibility with essence. Just because one ADHD adult runs a company and another eats cereal from a shoe doesn’t mean their underlying condition is different — it means the variables surrounding it are.

CYRIL
Aye, but that’s the point, innit? You lot talk about ADHD like it’s a bloody tattoo — fixed and cosmetic.
It’s not just a neurological label. It’s a context-sensitive expression.
Poor kid with undiagnosed ADHD in a chaotic home? Grows up thinking he’s a useless twat.
Rich kid with tutors and therapy? “Oh darling, he’s just spirited.”
Same brain glitch — different fates.
And don’t get me started on those Insta-coaches calling it a superpower. A superpower, is it? Tell that to the lad who lost his job ‘cause he forgot Tuesday existed.

JOHNNY
[laughing]
He’s not wrong. Half the internet thinks ADHD is some mystical wizard class.
“Your ideas are so vivid!” — Yeah, Brenda, but I’ve microwaved the cat again.
It’s both: blessing and bollocks.
And the split often comes from the story you tell yourself.
Your personality — optimistic? You’ll frame the chaos as brilliance.
Pessimistic? You’ll see every stumble as doom.

DAVE
Let’s not conflate personality with belief just yet — they’re distinct.
Personality — whether innate or shaped — is the behavioural lens.
Belief is narrative.
Belief says, “This trait makes me valuable,” or “This trait makes me unlovable.”
And here’s the kicker: belief feeds back into neurology.
Placebo, nocebo, somatic shifts, even DID presentations…
You change the story, you change the system.
Not just what you do, but what your body prepares to do.

AL
[grinning]
Now that’s some podcast gold right there.
“Change your belief, change your brain!” That’s a bestselling title! We put it on a hoodie, slap some bold font on it — pow!
I’ll run the merch store. Who’s in?

CYRIL
You’re what happens when self-help gets dropped on its head.
You don’t change your belief by wishing on a f***ing crystal.
It takes friction. Breakdown. Evidence.
You’ve got to disprove yourself to yourself, again and again, until the old story stops biting.

ALICE
Which is, from a systems perspective, neuroplasticity under pressure.
Pathways rewire not through affirmation but contradiction — consistent, emotionally salient contradiction.
You cannot simply decide to believe differently.
You must experience a model of the world that renders your prior assumptions obsolete.

DAVE
Let’s pause here.
We’re drifting toward the deep end: belief rewiring, identity breakdown, the physiology of placebo…
All relevant. All coming.
But the original question was this: Does ADHD drive us, or do we drive it?
Answer: both.
The condition creates the terrain.
But belief and personality shape the vehicle you use to traverse it.

JOHNNY
Yeah, and some of us are in monster trucks doing donuts on the lawn, and others are pushing a pram uphill in a thunderstorm.
Same terrain.
Different soundtrack.

CYRIL
Just don’t forget the mud, boys.
All the optimism in the world won’t stop your wheels spinning if you never learned to grip.

ALICE
Grip, in this case, being: executive scaffolding, environment shaping, behavioural design, nutritional regulation, and therapeutic intervention.

AL
Or a damn good planner and some accountability coaching, am I right? [winks]

DAVE
Word count: 736.
We’re rolling. Feathers lightly ruffled. We’ve mapped the outer edges — identity, context, personality, belief loops — without burning through it all.

SHARMANATOR
OK, guys, a little step back and calmness don’t you think, says me, who’s listening to you all talk whilst I’m shaking my leg like a shitting dog looking for an entry to actually speak. And that’s the ADHD driving me!! Although I could shake legs, hands, head and look like I’m having an epileptic fit, just so I can contain myself longer and listen. There’s some good points raised, I particularly wanted to interject where Alice said that we do not rewire through affirmation but contradiction, and we cannot simply decide to believe differently….Can’t we? I have to agree that I’ve read all the manuals on self help and nothing turned my world upside down. But that’s probably because the books weren’t written for brain weasels like me. But surely there’s something in belief, and we can choose our thoughts our attitudes and our beliefs. Change a belief you change everything, is our world not dramatically filtered by our core beliefs? Is it not true that what we believe has a profound effect on our outcomes, including our physiology. Placebo mostly does better than control in drug trials. People with dissociative identity disorder can change physiology almost instantaneously when they switch. Alice, those getting effects from placebo didn’t just will a result, they were manipulated, can we not manipulate ourselves?

DAVE
Now that’s the question that stabs straight through the fog.
You’re right — there’s nuance here, and Alice wasn’t denying the power of belief outright. She was cautioning against oversimplification.
Yes, beliefs can shift physiology.
Yes, DID alters can present with different vision, allergies, even glucose levels.
But the key isn’t deciding to believe — it’s embodying belief so thoroughly it bypasses doubt.
Placebo works not because someone says, “I believe this sugar pill will heal me,” but because something inside buys it on a level beyond language.
You want to manipulate yourself?
You’ve got to get past the gatekeeper of scepticism… and that bastard lives in your prefrontal cortex.

JOHNNY
Mate, I’ve tried manipulating myself and I just ended up with shame and a sore wrist!
[laughs]
But seriously — I get what you’re saying.
You can’t convince yourself into a new belief like you’re flogging a second-hand mattress.
But you can sneak up on yourself.
Repetition. Pattern interrupts. Identity play.
You start behaving like you believe something… and eventually, the mind gets tired of arguing and goes, “Fine. I guess we’re that now.”
It’s like gaslighting yourself — but in a nice way!

ALICE
That is, in essence, correct.
System override via subconscious repetition.
The conscious mind resists inconsistency, but the subconscious absorbs pattern and predictability.
Belief change is not instant — unless, as you referenced, a traumatic or emotionally explosive event shatters the current schema.
But slow manipulations?
Yes. Humans do it all the time.
Ritual. Reframing. Anchoring.
Even the act of writing that question — “Can we manipulate ourselves?” — is already a manipulative suggestion to your system.

CYRIL
Here’s the kicker, though…
You don’t just believe things because you choose to.
You believe things that feel safe to believe.
You think someone stuck in a freeze response can believe they’re powerful?
Not without something snapping first.
You want to change belief?
You better be ready to wrestle the nervous system, not just the mind.
Because the body remembers the truth you’ve lived, not the one you’d prefer.

AL
But hang on, hang on… why does this have to be all trauma and trickery and nervous systems having a sulk?
Why can’t we just get people pumped, give ‘em a goal, a morning routine, a shake of the shoulders and say: “Go on then, champ!”
It works for loads of folk!
Fake it till you make it, baby. That’s the dream!

DAVE
Because belief is layered.
Surface-level affirmations might create momentum, sure.
But core beliefs — the ones that shape perception, motivation, even sensory interpretation — those live beneath language.
You can’t chant your way into self-worth if your bones were soaked in shame at six years old.
You need contradiction, as Alice said.
But also: proof.
You must prove yourself wrong with experiences, again and again, until the nervous system updates the baseline.

SHARMANATOR
Well, this has been an insightful little chat. So in summary, there is a danger of over-identifying with ADHD, right? Belief is more about what we filter out let in, the outcome is the effect of the causal input? But it’s all bit of a paradox don’t you think? Choosing identity vs surrendering it! Been a merry go round again, so can you address my final thoughts, then give me a summary of your conclusions and 1 piece of great advice each.

DAVE
You’ve nailed the centre of gravity here: identity can become armour or anchor.
Over-identifying with ADHD turns it from description to destiny. Instead of “I have this tendency,” it becomes, “I am this limitation.”
But — paradox, as you said — identity is also how we stabilise in the chaos.
Sometimes, calling yourself ADHD is what finally lets you breathe.
The trick is knowing when it’s a scaffold and when it’s a cage.
One piece of advice from me?
Audit your filters.
Ask not “What do I believe?”
Ask, “What am I ignoring to keep that belief alive?”
Your future hides in what you’re currently not seeing.

JOHNNY
Oh mate, I love a paradox.
Choosing who you are? That’s power.
Surrendering who you were pretending to be? That’s peace.
ADHD or not, we’re all just meatbags of madness trying to make meaning before we rot.
But over-identify with your wiring? You’ll miss the rewiring.
My one tip?
Laugh at your chaos.
Mock your stuckness.
Make your neurosparkle a pantomime villain you can outwit with flair.
Humour turns shame into rocket fuel.

ALICE
Over-identification reduces plasticity.
It cements the current state as the only possible trajectory.
That is a cognitive trap.
ADHD may inform your tendencies — it does not determine your ceiling.
Advice?
Systemise your self-experimentation.
Track what changes when you shift belief, behaviour, or context.
Don’t just feel progress. Measure it.
Emotion lies. Data doesn’t.

CYRIL
Yeah, yeah — data this, scaffold that.
Here’s what most won’t tell you:
Sometimes you need to burn the bloody blueprint and start lying to yourself on purpose.
Not to deceive…
But to become.
Tell yourself you’re disciplined. Tell yourself you’re capable.
Then act like it long enough that the inner sceptic gets bored and sods off.
One bit of advice from me?
Respect your survival adaptations… but don’t marry them.
They got you here.
They won’t get you there.

AL
Right, listen here, champ. All this paradox talk is making my dopamine leak.
So I’m keeping it simple.
ADHD? Fine. Call it what you want.
But identity is a tool, not a tattoo.
So pick the version of you that gets sh*t done and run with it.
Advice?
Borrow belief.
If you can’t believe in yourself today, believe in the version of you who might tomorrow.
Pretend if you must. Pretend hard.
Sometimes the fake start is the real beginning.