Parking fines, late payment fines, speeding fines - please help, we're not fine!
End the ADHD Tax - a petition...
Okay, so I impulsively started a petition yesterday to end the ‘ADHD tax’, could you help me make it real?
Sign the petition
By ADHD tax, I mean the neurodivergent tax of having to pay hard cash for executive dysfunction errors. By end I mean go some way to cut down the amount of late fees and parking fines neurodivergent people receive as a result of significant executive dysfunction challenges. Apply reasonable adjustments, if you will.
To make it official, I need five people to sign it - can you help?
End 'ADHD tax' Waive late fees for neurodivergent people under the Equality Act 2010
ND individuals face fines, late fees + penalties because we struggle to manage administrative deadlines, often due to executive dysfunction. This unfair burden, commonly referred to as the “ADHD Tax,” compounds existing financial disadvantages + disproportionately penalises vulnerable UK residents
ND individuals often face lower lifetime earnings, higher debt rates + increased financial penalties due to executive dysfunction. These fines are not due to neglect or intent to avoid obligations - they result from systemic barriers that exacerbate financial inequality.
Enacting this reform would reduce discrimination, align with Equality Act principles + offer practical support to those facing hidden, avoidable costs.
I am currently waiting for the outcome of a parking fine appeal after I accidentally added the wrong car in the app and got a ticket.
This is my fourth ticket in the last few months.
Other mistakes I've made to incur fines:
Forgetting to get the ticket at all
Forgetting to get a ticket until I've found the meeting place thus getting a ticket in the delay of getting the ticket (one time appealing this actually worked but generally it doesn't)
Misreading the sign in a panic because I've not left enough (ok, any) time for parking and hoping I'm allowed to park when I'm definitely not (this one happens a lot)
Tell me yours!
Positive illusory bias
One of my infuriating ADHD-related traits is leaving no time to prepare or transition between tasks (i.e. park)
Also inexplicable habit of telling self ‘it'll be fine’, even though all the evidence points towards it not being fine in similar situations (like when I tried to leave the house to do something yesterday).
I only recently found out this has a name: positive illusory bias.
I learned of this on my new fave podcast ADHD Adults.
Positive illusory bias is a fancy way of saying we sweet, delusional ADHDers often think we’re better at stuff than we actually are.
Apparently, we can overestimate how well we did on a test, how prepared we are for a task (this is me every day) or how quickly we’ll get something finished (also me).
It’s not arrogance - it’s (yet another) executive functioning issue. The self-monitoring circuits that should tell us “hmm, you might need more time for that” aren’t firing properly, so we forge ahead with more confidence than is strictly logical.
It might be connected to the rejection sensitivity dysphoria that we are plagued by.
As in positive illusory bias can act as an emotional buffer. When you’ve had years of messing up deadlines, forgetting things and feeling like (and often being told) you're failing, your brain throws up this overconfidence to stop you drowning in shame and thus keep going.
The trouble is, it can also set you up for frustration when reality doesn’t match your absurdly unrealistic expectations. You can beat yourself up extra for your inability to be realistic. Why did I think I could do that? After all the similar experiences that prove I cannot!!!??!
It's a strange, and honestly, exhausting experience.
Positive illusory bias comes into play with parking fines for me, because my brain tells me that ‘it will be fine’ and I can write for a little longer (it's always hyperfocus on writing/inability to switch tasks that prevents me leaving on time).
My executive functioning is so challenged that it doesn't fully even occur to me that I will need to think about parking until I am out the door
By which time, generally, I'm in a blind panic as I now finally understand all the steps included in Doing The Thing that I have until now conveniently forgotten, i.e. putting on shoes, gathering things, transport, parking, navigation.
I am not horribly aware that not only is time not malleable at all, but rather ticking down, sometimes audibly, and I am now uber aware of the fact that parking is real and, oh god, I have forgotten to plan where to park again (or check bus times) and, oh god, I don't navigate well.
To get anywhere on time, I need more time than your average person, but my ADHD brain cannot retain this simple fact. In spite of learning it the hard way, thousands of times.
My inability to learn this lesson alone - so inexplicable and daft, given my intelligence elsewhere - convinces me that ADHD is, a) real and b) a disorder.
The ADHD/neurodivergent (ND) tax shows up in many other ways.
Speeding tickets when I haven't noticed the speed limit signs chane.
Late payment of tax fines when I haven't noticed the date.
Fine for filing tax return late when I have either not noticed the date or forgotten to press submit after filling out my return.
Buying new things to replace lost things.
Not cancelling unused subscriptions.
Missed train tickets.
Etc. etc. And so on, and so forth…
Help me extend the list by adding your ND tax items/stories in the comments.
The worst superpower of all time
ADHDers are some of the most optimistic people around, and I guess that's part of what makes some people believe it’s a superpower.
Superpower really has to be used very loosely here to make any sense though, surely. I mean, what would have happened if Superman kept forgetting his glasses when he went to work?
I like myself well enough and my ADHD friends and family are some of my favourite people in the world, but I could really do without quite such a large serving of executive dysfunction. Here’s the fabulous Fern Brady sharing her thoughts about Autism being a superpower.
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Thanks for reading and don't forget to sign the petition!
Also, remember to add 20 minutes transition time if you have to Do A Thing today : D
📚 Chelsey Flood is the author of award-winning novels Infinite Sky and Nightwanderers, and a senior lecturer in creative writing at UWE. She is currently working on a book for Jessica Kingsley Publishers about the connection between undiagnosed neurodiversity and addiction + her first domestic noir. 📚
Yes! Yes. So many times yes. And I’m dying over that clip. I didn’t know about Fern Brady, I’ve got to watch her special.
Signed!