Psychology · A systemic view

Adult ADHD: when forgetting turns into a misunderstanding

By Julien Besse · Psychologist and systemic psychotherapist

You read a message and tell yourself you will reply in two minutes. Someone talks to you, you put your phone away and move on to something else. A few hours later, you are reproached for not replying. You are surprised: in your head, you had already planned what you were going to write.

To you, it was something you forgot. The person waiting, on the other hand, may have understood that you did not feel like replying to them. And if they saw you spending time on your phone in the meantime, your explanation may not seem very convincing to them. ‘You forgot my message, but you remembered to watch your videos?’

I use this example in my video on adult ADHD because it helps to understand a common difficulty in our exchanges: we see what the other person does, far less what they are trying to do. We then fill in what escapes us with an explanation about their intentions. ADHD can lead us to revisit some of these explanations. To do that, we first need to know what this diagnosis refers to.

Adult ADHD: difficulties that have a history

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is one of the neurodevelopmental disorders. This means that its manifestations are part of the person’s development from childhood onwards, even when the diagnosis is made much later. Assessment looks at their persistence, at their consequences across several settings and at other difficulties that might explain them or be associated with them (NICE, NG87).

In everyday life, inattention can look quite ordinary: reading a page and realising you have retained nothing, losing the thread of a conversation, or starting a task without seeing it through. Hyperactivity can take the form of restlessness, a need to move. Impulsivity shows, for example, when an answer comes out before the question is finished, or when you interrupt someone while knowing full well that it will annoy them.

Recognising one of these behaviours is not enough to draw a conclusion. Any of us can find it hard to concentrate during a period of tiredness, stress or anxiety. To understand what is going on, we need to look at how often the difficulties occur, how long they have been there and what they concretely prevent in the person’s life.

Someone who occasionally forgets their keys and someone whose forgetfulness regularly disrupts work and family life may use the same words to describe themselves. The consequences, however, are very different. That is why a list of symptoms tells us rather little until it has been connected to a life story.

How can someone concentrate for hours and forget an important task?

This point is often hard for those around the person to understand. Someone can stay absorbed for a long time in an activity they enjoy, then struggle to fill in a form or make an appointment. If we look only at the time spent concentrating, it is easy to conclude that they could do the same for everything else.

We need to distinguish between several operations. Taking an interest in a subject, starting a task, keeping the goal in mind, following the steps and stopping to move on to something else all call on different abilities. A difficulty at any one of these points can derail something the person did fully intend to do.

This is what I begin to explain in the video with executive functions. The term refers to the abilities we use to organise our actions: deciding where to start, planning what comes next, holding an instruction in mind or holding back a response that comes to us spontaneously. Take the message from the beginning. Wanting to reply, remembering to do so at the right moment and actually sending the reply are three different things.

You can also know that a piece of paperwork is important, think about it for several days and still struggle to get down to it. All the while, it keeps preying on the person’s mind. The reproach ‘if it mattered to you, you would have done it’ does not therefore necessarily describe what they are going through.

Moments of intense absorption, often called ‘hyperfocus’, are part of this discussion about attention. On their own, they do not make it possible to identify ADHD. What interests us here is understanding why success in one activity does not tell us enough about the difficulties encountered in another.

Why do some difficulties remain barely visible for so long?

A person may have built a very precise system to limit forgetting. They write everything down, check their diary several times and leave far too early to be sure of arriving on time. At the end of the day, they have done what they had to do. Anyone watching sees an organised person; they do not necessarily see the time spent checking and catching up.

We speak of compensation when a strategy or a support helps someone cope with a difficulty. The support may come from the person themselves, but also from their surroundings: a job with regular hours, clear instructions, a very present parent, a colleague who reminds them of priorities. In a qualitative study of 32 adults receiving care for ADHD, Canela and colleagues describe several strategies of this kind, already in use before diagnosis. These are accounts gathered from a small group, not a measure of what all the people concerned experience (Canela et al., 2017).

Now imagine that the schedule changes, or that the person close to them who used to remind them of deadlines is less available. Difficulties become visible that had until then been partly absorbed by everyday organisation. Those around them may get the impression that the person is making less effort, at the very moment they are making more of an effort to try to keep up.

To understand this situation, then, we need to look at what has changed around them. We can start very simply: how did they manage not to forget before? Who stepped in? At what cost to them, and to others? These questions make it possible to identify the supports that have disappeared and to look for what might replace them.

How does forgetting turn into a couple problem?

Let us take another example, constructed to follow what happens in the exchange. A person has promised to make an appointment and has not done so. Their partner thinks: ‘I’m going to have to deal with it myself, yet again.’ The partner gives a reminder of what needs doing, then checks the next day. For their part, the person who forgot thinks: ‘I know perfectly well I have to do it. Why am I always spoken to as if I were incapable?’

At this stage, the two of them are already no longer quite responding to the same problem. One is trying to get the appointment made. The other is trying to defend themselves against what they hear as a judgement about them. The discussion becomes tense; they may justify themselves, get irritated or avoid bringing it up again. Their partner sees this as one more reason to check.

Circularity, in systemic thinking, means looking at this sequence. The reminder triggers a reaction, which in turn triggers a new reminder. Each explains their own behaviour by the other’s: ‘I check because you don’t do it’; ‘I can’t stand talking about it any more because you’re always watching me.’

Research on adult ADHD and romantic relationships describes an increased risk of relationship difficulties, while stressing that several factors are involved and that much remains to be studied. The loop above is one way of thinking about an exchange; it does not describe every couple concerned (Wymbs et al., 2021).

Looking at the partners’ reactions does not mean looking for the origin of ADHD in their relationship. We are trying to understand how a difficulty takes up a place in the relationship, and then how the responses it receives can make it more complicated or help people live with it better.

What a diagnosis can change in this discussion

For me, this is one of the benefits of a diagnosis, once it has been established: it can make reframing possible. To reframe is to offer another way of understanding a behaviour. A lapse until then put down to lack of interest can be seen as a difficulty in remembering an intention and carrying it out. We can then look for help better suited to whatever is getting in the way.

For the person concerned, it can also be a relief. Years of blaming themselves for not being serious enough, or of hearing that they could succeed ‘if they just made an effort’, can be read differently. In the testimony of Jérémie Gallen, from the channel Va Te Faire Suivre, which I recommend at the end of my video, this late discovery and the adjustments that followed are recounted from his own experience.

In the couple, the appointment still has to be made. The partner may understand the explanation and still be tired of carrying the reminders. The person who forgets may agree to look for a different way of organising things and need the other to stop systematically questioning their intentions. Both of these experiences need to be able to come into the discussion.

We can return to our example with a more precise agreement: ‘I’ll make the appointment on Thursday at 12.30. I’m setting the reminder now. If I don’t manage it, I’ll tell you that same evening.’ The partner can say what help they are prepared to give and what they can no longer take on. A few days later, the two of them look at what worked and what still caused problems.

This example is not a recipe for treating ADHD. It shows how one can move from a reproach about the person to a discussion about a task, the support needed and each person’s commitments. If that is not enough, the agreement will need revisiting, other forms of support will need to be found, or the matter will need discussing as part of professional support. Adjustments to the environment are among the things to consider with the professional who is following the person (NICE, NG87).

What our times demand of our attention

There is also a question I was keen to address in the video: the conditions under which we ask people to concentrate. We work on a computer that receives messages, emails, alerts. We have to make progress on a piece of work and respond quickly to those who call on us. Then we are surprised that we find it hard to pick up the thread.

An experiment by Stothart and colleagues showed that receiving a notification on one’s phone could disrupt performance on an attention task, even without looking at the device. This finding concerns an experimental situation; it does not allow us to claim that phones cause ADHD (Stothart et al., 2015).

It does, however, give us a reason to look at what interrupts work. If a person finds it easier to finish a task when notifications are switched off and instructions are written down, we already have a useful piece of information for organising their day. It does not settle the whole question, but it is something we can use.

This is also why the systemic view matters to me. The person’s characteristics count, as do the reactions of those around them and the demands of their environment. Depending on where we look, we do not spot the same possibilities for change. Individual support may help on some points; an adjustment at work or an agreement within the couple may be needed on others.

Recognising yourself in a video: what next?

When you hear someone describe precisely a difficulty you have known for a long time, you may finally find a way of talking about it. I fully understand the value of these testimonies. They can make people want to seek help, and that is a reason to give them a place.

The risk begins when this recognition becomes the explanation for everything you go through. Difficulty concentrating can have several causes; not every disagreement with someone close is explained by a diagnosis. You can also end up seeing someone solely through this category, attributing all their forgetting, all their reactions and all their decisions to ADHD.

The quality of what circulates online therefore matters a great deal. In a study published in 2025 on popular TikTok videos about ADHD, two psychologists found numerous claims about symptoms that did not match the diagnostic criteria. This observation concerns a sample of videos. It relates to the accuracy of the information given, not to the legitimacy of the difficulties felt by the people who watch them (Karasavva et al., 2025).

If you recognise yourself, you can start by noting down a few specific situations: what happened, how long this has been happening to you and what the consequences are in your life. A professional trained in adult ADHD will be able to go over these with you. An assessment takes more than a questionnaire or a resemblance to someone’s testimony (NICE, NG87).

This caution about words also applies to our relationships. I discuss it in the article on psychological vocabulary: a term can help us describe what is happening to us, and then stop us from listening to what the other person is still trying to tell us.

Coming back to the person’s life

Once the question of diagnosis has been raised, it remains to understand how this person lives, with whom and under what conditions. What helps them at work does not necessarily help them at home. Someone close can offer a great deal of support and need rest themselves. A way of organising things that used to work may become insufficient after a change of pace.

These are things we can look at together in therapy, even when the person comes alone. In the article on individual systemic therapy, I explain how we can work on relationships and contexts based on what a person tells us about their life.

Let us go back to the message from the beginning. It may be necessary to acknowledge that the wait was hurtful, to explain how the forgetting happened and to look for a way of keeping in touch that holds up in everyday life. The diagnosis can help to open this discussion. To know whether things are moving forward, we will then look at what it changes: do we understand each other better, is forgetting causing fewer difficulties, and can each person talk about their tiredness without the conversation turning back into reproach?