I felt the same when I discovered I was a Gemini. Come on - someone has created a category which describes a group of people in a fairly self-consistent way. Of course a large number of people will spot it and say: "Finally! The agency lies outside of me! My struggles are no longer my fault!"

But they never were in the first place, and being in a category doesn't change your responsibility to do the best with what you've got.

At least star signs don't medicalise you.

There are plenty of other ways of characterising this - Ayurvedic medicine or the Humours - in fact, those are so effective that they've been taken by business coaches and turned into "colour personality types". And they describe the same thing.

You have a deficiency of phlegm and black bile. Ask ChatGPT about how to treat it, and it'll essentially suggest a permanent dopamine fast.

"This thing that medical professionals say is real isn't real, and you can tell that because astrology isn't real either".

The reality is that, for a lot of people, their struggles aren't "their fault". People with visual disabilities aren't as good at playing darts, people who have issues with gross motor skills aren't as good at baseball. That's all accepted, but as soon as you get into invisible disabilities everyone leaps to say "I can't see it so it doesn't exist". It's a load of BS, and it's why so many people who do have these issues struggle - because they're being told, by people who don't care to understand what they're going through, that it's all their fault because they're just shitty people who need to try harder.

One of the things that people spouting nonsense like yours seem to miss is that these issues that people with ADHD have aren't just laziness; it's not just "I don't want to do work". People will find it impossible to do anything, even things they enjoy. It's not just slacking off from chores and playing video games instead, it's not being able to bring yourself to do chores but also not being able to bring yourself to play video games, or read a book, or go get groceries. It's a fundamental inability for you to direct your executive function, and until people like you stop spouting uneducated nonsense and start actually listening to people's experience it's going to continue to be an uphill struggle for people who have to go through what you're dismissing.

Where did I say I was absolved of responsibility to do my best? In real life, I’d told fewer than 6 people about the diagnosis. I haven’t told my bosses and have no plans to. I’m not looking to game the system to lower the bar for myself. I was simply looking to understand myself better. I even said it was probably good I didn’t know when I was younger, as it forced me to not use it as an excuse.

I ran into situations countless times where I have things that had a big negative experience on my life and when talking to others, people just looked at me weird; they couldn’t relate. My sister was the only one who ever got it (her doctor has suggested she get tested, but she hasn’t done it yet). When I stumbled across people talking about their experiences with AuDHD, for the first time in 40 years I heard other people saying the same stuff I was trying to say, when others just looked at my like a weirdo. It’s not about looking for what to blame, it was about finding out I wasn’t the only one dealing with some of this stuff, which is how it felt for the vast majority of my life.

What a bunch of nonsense