My battle with self-perception

by Daley Jones
Co-Chair | ADHD Alliance

One of the biggest fights I battle with every single day is self-esteem. More specifically, the terrible way I perceive myself and my inability to recognise my achievements professionally and in my personal life.

What follows is a list of things that I have achieved, or contributed significantly to, since I was diagnosed with ADHD. I’d like to be clear – this is not me boasting. The point will become clear…

• Co-Founder and Co-Chair of the ADHD Alliance, the national ADHD support group for police officers and staff. As of February 2025 (our third anniversary) we have 1,721 members nationwide.
• Co-written ADHD in Custody with the amazing people from Neurodiversity in Law. The guide has been adopted by Cumbria Constabulary and is present in their custody centres. It is also an educational resource by the national appropriate adult network (NAAN).
• Completed over 100 hours of ADHD/neurodiversity awareness sessions – reaching thousands of people both inside and outside of policing.
• In 2024 I won the NPCC Disability in Policing Disability Advocate of The Year Award and won the Disability Category in the Metropolitan Police Diversity and Inclusion Awards in the same year.

There are other things, but you get the point. I’ve done quite a lot. And I am proud.

But let me tell you, I still think very poorly of myself. At this point in my life, thinking poorly of myself has become second nature. I will give you some examples.

A good friend of mine has been helping me prepare for an internal interview. He said to me, “Oh and another thing, I know it’s very ‘you’ but try to cut down on the self-depreciation whilst in interview, you are supposed to be selling yourself”. My initial reaction was, “Good advice that, I do this often”. But when I stopped for a moment and thought about it, I was hit with a wave of sadness.

“This is what people see. And what I put out to the wider world.”

I often meet officers of senior rank. I sometimes leave these meetings with the genuine belief: “These people don’t care what you have to say, why would they?” I’ll moan to friends, saying “They don’t take me seriously”. I am grateful that some of these friends who have been present in said meetings will tell me: “I don’t know why you think that. What you were saying made sense, and I’m pretty sure the others were listening to you quite intently.”

My default position in life. The voice that always turns up first in my head and says: “YOU ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH”.

You might ask why this might be? Especially when there are numerous occasions where there is no actual evidence for my poor self-perception. Well. I’m no expert. But this is my theory.

I wasn’t diagnosed with ADHD until I was 36. I was further diagnosed with dyspraxia (DCD) at 37. I’ve lived the majority of my life not understanding why I was not necessarily able to do the things my neurotypical friends and colleagues could do with relative ease. At school I was frequently told off for mucking around. At university, I was incapable of doing any of my coursework until about a day before it was due. This led to all-nighters and often missing deadlines. It didn’t help my self-image that my friend and housemate did the same course. We’d both get the coursework, get the books from the library, and sit down to start the work weeks before the deadline. Except my brain said, “Mate, you’ve got ages… pub?” I’d see him relaxing around the deadline and ask, “Why can’t I do this? I must be lazy, incompetent, and stupid.

I often tell people that I think my dyspraxia has probably caused me even more self-esteem damage than my ADHD. I love taking part in sport and competition. But if there was technique involved in anything, I was incapable of getting it. I tried and failed, tried and failed. It got to a point where I stopped trying. I called in sick for three sports days in a row because I’d always be put forward for the high jump. No one else wanted to do it, and I was ‘tall’. But anyone who’s tried the high jump knows it’s the technique that’s the key – something I could never master.

I love and have always loved playing football. I still do, but if you were to play with me, you’d hear me mutter or shout at myself “Stupid”, “You idiot” and “How did you miss that?” As I say, I’m tall, six feet five inches. Therefore, in football there’s a perception that I’ll be good in the air and able to make a decent keeper. But I can never get my timing or sequencing right. And would frequently find myself unable to judge a header. I often joke, that when I play in goal, by the time my brain has worked out where a ball is travelling and have got my body to react accordingly, the ball is already in the net.

Immediately after being diagnosed with ADHD I started to meet fellow ADHD-ers. Amongst the many shared experiences, I kept meeting people who are incredibly creative. Artists, painters, graphic designers. It started to make me feel there was something wrong with me. My fine motor skills are appalling. If you have ever been lucky enough to have received a present from me, you would probably and quite naturally assume I had gotten one of my children to wrap it. Sellotape everywhere, too much paper here, not enough there. Once, famously, on a cruise, I stood in front of a mirror trying to do up a bow tie, with a YouTube video on showing how it was done. I eventually had to call room service, and a very kind member of hospitality staff came and did it for me.

I can’t do technical DIY tasks. I’m not a believer in ‘men’s jobs’ and ‘women’s jobs’, but society still seems very keen to categorise them. Trust me, I’m lucky that my lovely wife is a dab hand. We often laugh when we’ve had workmen in the house. They always make a bee-line for me to explain the technical stuff. I sigh and point them towards my wife. “She’s the practical one mate” I sigh.

I am afraid all of this has had its effect over time. And this conditioning and experience of my life is what I am fighting against. I’ve always said that my ADHD and dyspraxia diagnoses are ranked in my list of ‘happiest days of my life’. It’s because in those moments, I was finally able to say, “It’s not all your fault buddy”.

To end this on a slightly more cheerful and hopeful note – my perception of myself now, following my diagnoses, is CONSIDERABLY better than it has ever been.

After being diagnosed I finally got to a point where I felt ‘worthy’ of applying for positions I had previously thought I wasn’t good enough to apply for. I also put myself forward for my sergeant’s exam. I have been successful in both.

I have recently been attending a self-esteem support group run by NHS Buckinghamshire Talking Therapies. Whilst I am still unsure of CBT as a concept, for me it has been invaluable in helping me to realise I am not alone in my experiences. What is hard for friends, family and colleagues to understand is that rationally I am fully aware of my achievements, my strengths and the immense good I try to give daily.

It’s a cliché, but I feel I am on a journey. I can see the progress I have made in these four years. I am hopeful I can continue this trajectory. And maybe one day I can think of myself as the person that people continue to tell me I am. A good person. Who is loved, and respected. ∎

This blog was originally written for the ADHD Alliance – it is reproduced here with kind permission of the author