Dis/Illuminations of ADHD: Self-Discovery and Deferral Through Technologies of the Extraordinary Self

Introduction

For people with neurodevelopmental disabilities, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), 2021 was a year of public visibility. Discussions about living with the condition surged on TikTok and Twitter (Joho 2021; Jennings 2021), creating what we call a “neuro-algorithmic archive” of knowledge about these unique forms of embodied selfhood and struggle. This resulted in people “discovering” their ADHD on the platform on a massive scale. Self-discovery and sometimes self-diagnosis of neurodivergence on TikTok is a form of biographical illumination mediated by algorithms (Alper et al. 2023). The TikTok algorithm is based around the “For You” page which curates a stream of videos for the user, starting out from generic content to gradually build a profile from how you scroll by or ‘like’ some videos (Abidin and Kaye 2025; Kaye, Zeng and Wikström 2022; Bhandari and Bimo 2022; Nilsson and Tanderup Linkis 2025). ADHD-related content circulates in this environment as short, highly shareable videos that are tagged (for instance, with #ADHDTok and #adhdinwomen), stitched, and recommended through the same feedback loops that drive the platform as a whole. Through the recommendation logic of such loops, the app then starts reflecting “you” back to “you” through your interests, thus engendering particular means for self-knowledge and sometimes for self-diagnosis. Accordingly, one young woman among many, the journalist Matilda Boseley, reported on discovering her ADHD on TikTok: “For 23 years my parents, my teachers, my doctor, my psychologist and my own brain all missed the warning signs, yet somehow it only took that app’s algorithm a few days to accidentally diagnose me” (Boseley 2021). In admitting that the “profile is scarily accurate sometimes,” she concluded: “It genuinely knew me better than I knew myself.”

The video-sharing platform TikTok was launched on Western markets in 2017. Its owner is the Chinese company Byte Dance, and it has, at the time of writing 1.99 billion users globally. In 2026 in the United States, it has 136 million monthly active users, and in the EU the corresponding figure is 169 million users. 18–34-year-olds make up almost 50% of the audience. Debates have been raging as regards the Chinese ownership structure and its geopolitical consequences for data security, user integrity, and the fate of democratic societies. These topical themes have preoccupied critical scholarly interest in media and internet studies of TikTok (Gray 2021; Lin and de Kloet 2023). In a cultural studies perspective, what was initially highlighted was instead that TikTok was a meaningful cultural place for youth to dance as well as fertile grounds for memefication due to the length of the videos (Ask and Abidin 2018; Kaye, Zeng and Wikström 2022; Nilsson and Tanderup Linkis 2025). As Nilsson and Tanderup Linkis (2025, 19) conclude, today the platform can be understood as a chaotic medium and an assorted playground. With its raw, authentic, and silly content, it is a place of escapism and “fun” (Lin and de Kloet 2023; Schellewald 2023); a phenomenon interpreted as an upshot of pandemic isolation and its propelling of needs for a flight into feelgood entertainment and distraction. “TikTok trends” typically involve more than the virality of particular popular discussions; they also have to do with the technical features that entail the reuse of sound sequences and the tagging and stitching of parts of videos, which implies the reproduction, reinvention and thus appropriation of sound and visual memes in creative ways.

Hence, in this context and in the middle of “the pandemic moment” in 2021, many were reflexively discussing the unique multimodality of TikTok, which enabled “consuming, circulating, and creating media about mental health and disability from a first-person perspective” (Engel 2022 cited in Alper et al. 2023; Frankart Henterly 2021). This occurred in a context in which co-productions of medical knowledge and self-diagnoses are growing exponentially (Riggare et al. 2017; Wicks 2018; Tempini and Teira 2019). Representatives from the medical community have increasingly begun to recognize that social media can be a tremendously powerful tool for increasing, for example, mental health literacy. However, debates are also running high as regards to the risks of, for example, rabbit holes within algorithmic cultures of self-diagnosis in a society of potential overdiagnosis overall (Lupton and Southerton 2025; https://www.rochesterregional.org/hub/adhd-diagnosis-tiktok) and relatedly, the misinformation that may be involved in the mediation and sharing of knowledge about the condition (Oliveras nd.; cf. Yeung et al. 2022). Another young user named “Freja” connected to an NGO in Stockholm for neurodivergent people spoke deeply in defence of TikTok, and wanted to push back on the risks of rabbit holes of self-diagnosis, as she exclaimed: “how else could I have known about my diagnosis, and get a proper evaluation, without all these stories, experiences shared that then pushed me to seek help…?” (cf. Ferrari 2021; Sandhu and Cope 2022).¹

Through such examples, we gained our cue to zoom in on moments of self-knowledge about ADHD via the app in a range of testimonies across other media forms.

This article offers a curiosity-driven philosophical exploration of the complex entanglements of technology, selfhood, and disability by focusing on testimonies to these loops of self-discovery (and sometimes self-diagnosis) of ADHD on TikTok. To achieve this, we undertake a qualitative, theory-motivated existential-hermeneutic analysis of experiences of finding out about one’s ADHD via the video-sharing platform. As we will delve into in our analysis, these testimonies encompass themes such as increased awareness and self-identification; a strong sense of belonging, community, and support; concerns about misinformation and self-diagnosis; gender disparities in ADHD diagnosis and discomfort and unease. Importantly, we conceive of these testimonies as reporting on moments of both clarity and confusion in the “digital limit situation” (Lagerkvist 2022) of being thrown, so as to find out “truths about oneself” via the machine. By means of a specific historization of the need to “know thyself” in both Antiquity and in today’s datafied lifeworlds, we also seek to problematize the ideals of transparency and self-knowledge through these platforms. We are thus interested in what we can learn about the experiential field of self-discovery of ADHD through practices of self-making in an algorithmically curated space; and in what we call “algorithmic loops of desire,” that is, the cyclical recommender-driven returns of content that both shape and respond to users’ wishes to know themselves. By also acknowledging the relationality or interdependence of subjects and technologies, and a digital dynamics of potentially dis/in/enabling repercussions (Goggin and Newell 2003; Hamraie and Fritsch 2019), we seek to capture multivalent experiential registers of self-knowledge and opacity, in the face of the massive datafication of the lifeworld.

As we see it, there is a tension between the idea of biographical self-illumination and the existential understanding of the self in which there is a sense of deferral or unknowing at heart. The existential stance thereby implies conceiving of self-knowledge through algorithms as, in effect, a form of “unknowing”—involving also, for example, confusion, unease, liminality, hesitancy, hurt, dependency, and coercion. But even more profoundly, this form of technologized self-making may also both assist in and/or obstruct, what the late critical disability and media studies scholar Jonathan Sterne brought to the fore, namely that the (disabled) self is always already obscure to itself, and thereby “deferred” (2022).

Our argument is twofold: first, that the ADHD channels on TikTok can productively be conceptualized as a “technology of the extraordinary self” (expanding on Foucault 1982; Foucault 1988, cf. Nilson 1998) within its historical genealogies, and as such a means of both self-knowledge and self-care. We here suggest that there are similarities between the practices of knowing and caring for oneself through technologies in the ancient past and of today—and that this has specific inferences for people with disabilities. Yet we will also, second, problematize the inclination to one-sidedly focus in both Antiquity (or in Foucault’s appropriation of it) and in datafied cultures, on the able and knowable self whose modus operandi is all about optimizing, nailing “truths,” improving oneself, through the use of technologies of the self, such as in, for example, received definitions of “the quantified self” (Lupton 2016). As we will argue in this article, existentially speaking, the self is actually never fully known; it is deferred and opaque (Butler 2005/2025). From this point of departure, we are concerned with the following questions: What can we learn about knowing or unknowing oneself through the machine in testimonies about self-discovery on TikTok? Can we trace examples of deferral and opacity also to the very discovery of the ADHD self—that is what we call the dis/illumination afforded through the algorithm? And finally, what can attending to historical resonances between technologies of the self in the past and today bring to our quest?

We write as scholars in existential media and critical disability studies with expertise in the humanities and also in classical historical scholarship; we also write with lived experience of neurodivergence and approach these testimonies from a theory-driven, interpretive hermeneutic position, rather than as clinicians or experimental psychologists. The core of our investigation concerns hearing out intimate testimonies about discovering ADHD on TikTok. We focus on brief stories, voices, and testimonies appearing in blogs, newsletters, or journalistic feature articles in the press that manifest the experiential process of self-discovery via TikTok. We began constructing this corpus in early 2023 by systematically searching Google with combinations of terms such as “ADHD TikTok self-diagnosis,” “TikTok made me realise I had ADHD,” and “discovering ADHD on TikTok,” and we continued updating it through 2024 and the corpus has continued to evolve since. In practice, we included texts that contained first-person narrative accounts of aha-moments or self-recognition via ADHD TikTok (for example, feature articles, blog posts, NGO newsletters, and clients sharing their story via psychiatric clinic posts), resulting in a bounded yet analytically rich corpus. We excluded purely clinical opinion pieces and very short comments that did not offer sustained reflection on self-discovery. Following Michael Quinn Patton (2014), our study used a purposeful qualitative sampling strategy in order:

to construct a corpus that is bounded yet analytically rich. Purposeful sampling is well suited to interpretive research aiming to explore how meaning is constructed across institutional and media discourse […] The sampling strategy is designed to maximise conceptual relevance, rather than representativeness, in line with qualitative research traditions that prioritise information richness over breadth … (Patton 2014)

Furthermore, inspired by work on “crip authorship,” we juxtapose different materials to offer conceptually, philosophically, and historically motivated hermeneutic interpretations in a bricolage mode. Thus, we are setting out from the undisciplined sensibilities of what Mills and Sanchez define as the “patchwork or partial” affordances (McRuer 2023; Mills and Sanchez 2023, 5) of crip authorship here offered as a bricolage of historical lineages, philosophical inferences, and personal testimonies woven together. For the testimonies in particular, we also conducted our own version of existential-hermeneutic “thematic analysis” with the aim to be theoretically pawing these materials with philosophical sensibility (Ryan and Bernard 2003; Willig and Billin 2011). Our approach can also be described as abductive since it enables new conceptual insights through the iterative movements between theory and empirical materials (Timmermans and Tavory 2012, 180) rather than relying on open coding or the testing of a “hypothesis.” In line with Patton’s discussion of theory-driven qualitative analysis, our approach treats these testimonies as occasions to work with concepts such as “biographical illumination,” “technologies of the self,” and “deferral,” rather than as data to be coded into pre-existing categories. This conceptual work hopes to offer new figurations of and thereby ways of understanding the phenomenon at hand.

In the following, we first introduce this theoretical framing, which intends to precisely offer such a re-figurative conceptualization by bringing about a conversation between critical disability studies/crip theory and existential media studies coupled with historization. First, we outline a philosophical and historical framing of selfhood and technology—and the state of the art of datafied selfhood broadly—to then briefly describe previous research on neurodivergence, media technology, and selfhood. This is then followed by our interpretations of intimate testimonies about self-discovery of ADHD—or of what Amanda Lagerkvist calls “the extraordinary self” (Lagerkvist 2026)—on TikTok. At the center of our analysis sits the “aha-moment,” as it were, through which we will finally arrive at a concluding discussion. Our aim is additionally to place people with disabilities centrally for an emergent media theory of the self in general, while also problematizing any idea of a neat and non-ambiguous self in “self-discovery” through technology.

Technologies of the (Extraordinary) Self and Landscapes of Datafied Selfhood

Looking at diverse bodies and selves, our contribution here is thus to offer a nascent theorization of the extraordinary self in our age of media. We set out from existential media studies, which explores the place of the singular–plural “person” (as per Søren Kierkegaard and Jean-Luc Nancy in conjunction)—“the coexister”—as an emergence of technical, vulnerable, situated, and relational being (Lagerkvist 2017; Lagerkvist 2022; Lagerkvist and Andersson 2017; Lagerkvist and Smolicki eds. 2026). The approach pays attention to how human originary technicity intersects human originary vulnerability: that is, how does the fact that we are technological beings from the onset relate to the fact that we are frail and mortal? Toward a crip sense of selfhood, we combine this with approaches to the self in critical disability studies that describe how every media form is constructed around assumptions about humans and the nature of their bodies (Goggin and Newell 2003; Mills 2011; Mills and Sterne 2017; Sterne 2022). We also expand upon Rosemarie Garland-Thomsons’ concept of extraordinary bodies, inspired by her notion of “the extraordinary,” which “highlights the exceptional status that disability confers” suggesting “superabundance rather than lack…”. By this token, we speak about extraordinary selves, since we wish to harness the word extraordinary in a way that “gestures softly toward…the generative potential of disability, the world-making work of disability as a concept and a cultural force” (1997/2017, xi).

Furthermore, we link the notion of the extraordinary self to Foucault’s concept of technologies of the self (1982). Foucault used his own readings of the classical tradition as a symbolic system for analyzing the construction of the self. His concept of technologies of the self can therefore be seen as a strand of classical reception rather than an interpretation of ancient literature and culture per se (Detel 2005; Hardwick and Stray 2011). For us, his approach to technologies of the self in Antiquity—which consisted of writing, for example, letters and notebooks—provides a comparative dimension to today’s social media environment of self-help, self-improvement, and self-diagnosis. As we will return to, the everydayness of TikTok and the mobile phone is a counterpart to Foucault’s technologies of the self, which explores the historical context and evolution of taking care of oneself from ancient times through the Hellenistic and Roman periods. Deeply rooted in ancient traditions, writing played a crucial role in self-examination and reflection. In Foucault’s account, self-care evolved into a universal principle, independent of political life, emphasizing lifelong practice.

Foucault’s technologies of the self provide a framework for understanding how privileged individuals engaged in practices to shape and transform themselves, both physically and morally. They refer to the techniques and practices that individuals use to effect transformations on their own bodies, minds, and souls. These practices allowed them to attain certain states of being, such as happiness or wisdom, through self-discipline and self-care. They were aimed at achieving states of perfection and were deeply embedded in the cultural and philosophical contexts of the time. The portrayal of Classical culture as the foundation of Western civilization by Foucault and his contemporaries has faced criticism for its Western-centric, masculinist, and exceptionalist stance (James and Dillon 2015; Porter 2024; Dyer and Surtees 2020; Telò and Benjamin 2024; Umachandran and Ward 2024). Recent scholarship has highlighted that our understanding of ancient Mediterranean societies has been significantly shaped by the perspective of able, literate, citizen men who authored most of the surviving literary sources. These sources therefore reflect the concerns, anxieties, and ideologies of Athenian literate men (Ollier 1933/1943). In Ancient Greece, the concept of the self was deeply intertwined with philosophical inquiries into the nature of existence, knowledge, and ethics. Greek culture and society explored the self through various lenses: the phrase “Know thyself” (Greek: Γνῶθι σαυτόν, gnōthi sauton) is a well-known ancient Greek maxim that has been attributed to various sources over time and has been received in many contexts. Greek philosophy often viewed the self as a rational and moral agent, capable of achieving knowledge and virtue through introspection and ethical living. The ideal of the self in Antiquity was, however, multifaceted, encompassing notions of virtue, rationality, and physicality. While traditionally thought of as a patriarchal agricultural society that valued physical abilities and military prowess, these ancient societies in fact had complex views on the body, identity, and societal roles. Yet, it must be stressed that in Antiquity, the ideal of the self was closely tied to notions of physical and intellectual excellence. Philosophers like Plato and Aristotle emphasized the importance of a harmonious balance between the body and the soul, advocating for a virtuous life guided by reason.

This genealogy of technologies of the self brings out important theoretical and historical dimensions of the complexities of knowing oneself also today, as technology is embedded in the process of self-discovery and self-diagnosis for people with disabilities. As our era relies also on an inflated ideology of transparency of selves and the virtues of self-knowledge as “improvement” (Coeckelbergh 2021)—we note that this has roots in Antiquity. Importantly, this transparency ideal contrasts with a central position on selfhood expressed by continental philosophers who have long purported that the self itself is always existentially deferred. For example, the German existentialist philosopher Karl Jaspers, a man with disabilities, declared a kind of void at the heart of a relational understanding of self: “To come to myself as I perish is the phenomenon of self-being” (1932/1970: 44) but that our deep relationality also fills that vacancy, as there is no self that is a self onto itself alone. We become selves through each other.

Relationality is also underscored by Judith Butler, who stresses the unknowingness about oneself, the opacity of self and the impossibility of giving account of oneself. This means that the self always crafts itself (in relation to an injunction) as an open question. Her ethical theory of subject formation thus sets out from the limits of self-knowledge and acknowledges that:

The opacity of the subject may be a consequence of its being conceived as a relational being, one whose early and primary relations are not always available to conscious knowledge. Moments of unknowingness about oneself tend to emerge in the context of relations to others, suggesting that these relations call upon primary forms of relationality that are not always available to explicit and reflective thematization. If we are formed in the context of relations that are partially irrecoverable to us, then that opacity seems built into our formation and follow from our status as beings who are formed in relations of dependency. (19–20)

This theme has also been discussed in critical disability studies by, for example, Mara Mills and Jonathan Sterne (2017), who strike a balance between acknowledging the importance of lived experiences of disability and a stress on the fact that the self is always non-transparent and non-available to itself, and in that sense remains an enigma. This we argue is actually in tension with the idea of biographical self-illumination through algorithms and data. We seek to grapple with this by adding to the relational understanding of self a relational understanding of technology (Lagerkvist & Smolicki eds. 2026). These entanglements of (disabled) selves and technologies we term technologies of the (extraordinary) self.

The naming of TikTok as a technology of the self is not far-fetched. The focus on self-discovery converges with an overarching ambition of the video-sharing platform to offer itself up precisely as a means for self-knowledge. In its 2024 campaign “Discover yourself,” TikTok states: “Every search on TikTok brings people a little closer to their true selves. Our platform’s unique space offers users vast and diverse content that empowers them to uncover new hobbies, interests, and ultimately embrace their unique identities. This journey of self-discovery is the driving force behind the latest campaign.”² It must be noted that in algorithmic cultures more broadly, the self plays a leading role. This is variedly the case in extractive practices of data mining and personalization; in the prevalence of datafied, quantified and biometric selves and data derivates; in performances of a persona online and in the ventures of neoliberal entrepreneurial selfhood (Amoore 2006; Cheney-Lippold 2017; Frosh 2018; Lupton 2020; Lagerkvist and Smolicki eds. 2026; Lury and Day 2019; Pooley 2020; Skeggs and Yuill 2016). Recent developments have generated conceptualizations of a post-anthropocentric algorithmic self as a processual “temporal or ad hoc assemblage of information and meaning” (Markham 2021, 1564) within a digitally networked ecology of relationships formed by “massive and animated tangles of nodes and lines” (ibid: 1567) constituted by human and non-human actors.

In alignment with this observation, we maintain that the person emerges today, in fact, as a recombinant self in becoming encompassing an entanglement of flesh and data (Ajana 2013; Ajana ed. 2018). Therefore, beyond the above-mentioned post-humanist acumens of algorithmic selves, we argue that we need a sustainable crip sense of selfhood for an age of datafication that is situated in diverse understanding of bodies and souls in combination with an existential focus on being human in the world, with a particular emphasis on the loopings of the ADHD self on TikTok. This historization shows that today’s neuro-algorithmic archive not only repeats but also reverses key aspects of ancient technologies of the self: it relocates practices of self-care from elite, able-bodied citizens to disabled and neurodivergent subjects, while also exposing the limits of any ideal of full self-transparency.

The phenomenon of gaining self-knowledge on TikTok, specifically about neurodivergence and other disabilities, has attracted attention among researchers. Deanna Holroyd’s work focuses on how the ADHD community on TikTok creates an authoritative vernacular diagnostic framework that disrupts and supplements traditional forms of mental health care. ADHD TikTok is conceived as a serious and meaningful cultural form (cf., Ask and Abidin 2018; cf. Nilsson and Tanderup Linkis eds. 2025), having “real-world consequences on people’s behaviour, social identity, and comprehension of themselves in the world” (Holroyd 2024, 41). Abigail Leveille has discussed the processes of self-discovery through TikTok in terms of “identity performance” (2024). In a seminal contribution, Meryl Alper and colleagues have discussed self-discovery and diagnosis of autism on TikTok in terms of “algorithmically mediated biographical illumination” (Alper et al. 2023). They conclude that TikTok serves as a space to discuss the diagnosis, to refine one’s sense of self, but that this would be impossible without the affordances of the technology itself, and therefore biographical illumination is contingent upon algorithmic mediation. Providing a pertinent analysis within social psychological or culturalist frameworks, grounded in ethnographies online, they offer empirical and conceptual contributions to the analysis of self-diagnosis of neurodivergent conditions on TikTok. They problematize the idea that being diagnosed with neurodivergence is immediately felt as a disruptive “loss of self” (ibid: 2). By contrast, as they demonstrate, there seems to be a flurry of subject positions and selves emerging through the use and affordances of TikTok in the aftermath of diagnosis. They discuss three types of selves in particular. First, the self-explanatory self is introspective and reflective, and feels the need to explain themselves to others in the aftermath of a diagnosis. Second, the liminal self is tenuously identified with autism, and expresses experiences of barriers and hesitancy in relation to (self-)diagnosis. Third, the mediated self is indistinguishable from the platform logic itself.

Here, they stress that “sociotechnical co-construction occurs, whereby biographical illumination shapes TikTok as a platform, and TikTok informs biographical illumination as a psychosocial process, leading to what we call ‘platformed diagnosis.’” Importantly, inspired by crip techno-science, this scholarship deems the platforms to be a space of self-formation that is entangled with and co-productive of the algorithms themselves. There is reason to suggest that there are thus elective affinities between the condition and the app itself (cf. Pinchevski and Peters 2016). As scholars have stressed (Holroyd 2024), the platform’s short-form video format seems particularly appealing to those with neurodivergence, since it makes information more accessible and engaging, and since the short format itself fits the particular and limited attention span that is part of the condition. However, there is also, as we stress here, a loop quality to this “mediated self.”

To explore this theme further, we set out from the work of Bhandari and Bimo (2022) who have suggested that TikTok forces the user to mainly interact with the personalized algorithm, “which repeatedly confronts them with various aspects of their own personas” (ibid: 9). This produces what they coin the “algorithmized self,” which is a reflexive engagement with one’s self. The prevalence of the algorithm sets TikTok apart from other platforms. Elsewhere, one interacts with other selves either by direct self-disclosure or other methods, but TikTok users occupy “the precarious position of dually engaging with an external and internal entity; they engage with versions of themselves, as mediated through the algorithm” (ibid). The algorithm thus loops and reflects the self back to itself, reinforcing a particular self-image, as Andreas Schellewald has also shown (2023). We suggest terming the temporality involved in this process “algorithmic loops of desire,” referring to the fact that as much as the feeds and reels are built to cajole you to return, they return—just as desire itself—in a cyclical manner with information about oneself. These loops thus invoke circular time as what conditions knowing and accounting for one’s algorithmized ADHD self. In the next section, we detail what this experience involves.

Loops of Knowing Thy ADHD self

As we saw from the outset, users like “Freja” report that the TikTok videos in themselves helped them recognize ADHD symptoms, which led to self-identification and, in some cases, seeking formal diagnoses. A series of other testimonies about discovering ADHD on TikTok bear this out. In what follows, we present five existential-hermeneutic themes that emerged from our theory-driven reading of these testimonies about discovering ADHD on TikTok.

First, we notice the overarching theme of increased awareness, self-identification, and self-care. TikTok has admittedly become a platform for raising awareness about ADHD, particularly among women and adults who may have been previously undiagnosed (Borhani 2021; Dolan 2024; Murphy Kelly 2023; Yeung et al. 2022; Williams 2025).³ Because the aha moment of self-discovery sits at the heart of our investigation, we will dwell on the first theme at some length. One example is a woman called Valerie Hardt, who has several psychology degrees but who, for years, experienced symptoms that fell under the radar. She discovered she had ADHD at age 34 after seeing relatable content on TikTok. In an article that features her story, the caption explains in a language that resorts to enlightenment metaphors that: “TikTok accounts are now shining a light on these symptoms to new audiences” (Stone 2022, emphasis added). TikTok is also described as enabling illumination and thereby as a medium, literally, to seek out more professional help, an official diagnosis, etc. Furthermore, when the article deals with the discovery of the condition thanks to videos by a health professional, there is similarly a sense of illumination: “Hardt said she finally gained clarity” (ibid) on TikTok after she began following mental health professionals who shared informative videos about the signs and symptoms of ADHD.

Sam Spadafore, a non-binary trans man diagnosed with ADHD, also bears witness to the aha-moment following the use of TikTok, on a psychiatric blog belonging to a private health care provider. Their struggles had been ongoing: “While my symptoms escalated, my ADHD remained mostly invisible. That is, until I stitched that video” (Spadafore 2021). In a way that underlines a strong sense of illumination, they talk of the “ah-ha!” moment, which was followed by the realization: “I’m not alone and neither are you.”

When I was finally able to process everything, I finally had that “ah-ha!” moment. So much of my life just… clicked. In many ways, my story became our story — because I wasn’t alone anymore.

I and so many other ADHDers have been trying to navigate a neurotypical world as neurodivergent people without even knowing it: constantly feeling like we are behind, like we are struggling, like everyone around us knows what’s happening while we are left in the dark.

It can be debilitating. (ibid)

In “connecting the dots,” they also felt biographically illuminated as their painful histories became clear and: “Everything crashed into me all at once. I recognized that the rejection sensitivity I struggle with was rooted in my childhood and was ADHD-related. I realized the ‘mental breakdowns’ I frequently had were from ADHD burnout.” And they were enlightened about the small struggles of the everyday: “These are things like: always losing my phone, keys, or glasses, feeling the need for peace and quiet while I’m working, or becoming overstimulated when I hear loud noises or I’m around overlapping voices.” Sam Spadafore, whose position aligns with the self-explanatory self identified by Alper and colleagues, is thankful for the people they followed who taught them so much: “I could not be more thankful for these creators pushing their followers to empower themselves with knowledge. I feel so much more self-aware. I’m excited to learn more about myself and neurodiversity.”

These are clear-cut illuminations of self, in a process of becoming and learning. The judgment on this algorithmically driven process is often euphoric and all-out positive. The sense of Kairos—that serendipitous moment of revelation—is also a moment of increased self-control, outsourced to a platform, as Sam Spadafore stresses: “My best advice? Never underestimate the power of social media, self-diagnosis, and your own ability to take control of your mental health. It might just change your life.” Self-discovery thus often seems to be piqued by certain words or prompts that also light up the situation, and enable clarity of sight. Disability is here about discovery: it’s a digital limit situation through which a “truth” about the self is coming to light through the machine while also entailing a turning-point quality: a disruption of known parameters (Lagerkvist 2022). Video-sharing platforms are technologies of the algorithmized and performative self, but as we also stress, of the extraordinary self involved in self-love. The act of performing, publishing, and sharing becomes a “care of the self” (cf., Holroyd and Lagerkvist, forthcoming).

The technologies of the self in Antiquity consisted of writing, Hypnoemata, that is notebooks, letters, and missives, in which one wrote down quotes and actions one had witnessed, alongside reflections and reasoning that served as guides for conduct. These also served as memory aids. Just like the apps and social media platforms today, the notebooks were also supposed to be used dexterously: “Near at hand, then, not just in the sense that one would be able to recall them to consciousness, but that one should be able to use them, whenever the need was felt, in action.” They “constituted a material record of things read, heard, or thought, thus offering them up as a kind of accumulated treasure for subsequent rereading and meditation” (Foucault 1982, np.). Personal testimonies of discovering, finding, and cultivating a “true self” on platforms like TikTok, we suggest, echo Foucault’s account of ancient practices where Greek technologies of the self (e.g., notebooks, letters) served a similar function to today’s video sharing. In Antiquity, however, such self-cultivation is found in accounts of elite “normate” individuals, as seen in Marcus Aurelius’s letters, which Foucault describes as detailing everyday acts of self-care and mundane “nonsense,” contrasting with Cicero’s focus on important matters. The ideals of the self were often tied to physical and intellectual excellence, which could implicitly marginalize those who did not meet these standards.

This also brings to the fore one of our key caveats. The most significant difference between technologies of the self in Antiquity and those of TikTok has to do with the fact that what we have inherited as ancient accounts derives from able-bodied elites within a slave economy who cultivated ideals. In the present the accounts of self-discovery and care often stem from marginalized younger people from many social strata. And yet in resonance with today these practices of self-care among elites through ancient technologies of the self, according to Foucault, foregrounded the minutiae of daily life—bodily health, emotions, trivialities—despite the era’s soul-oriented philosophy, revealing an ambiguity about the body’s importance. This historical paradox resonates with how today’s disembodied screen cultures coexist with the visible, relatable, and vulnerable bodies of users from many walks of life, who in intimate settings share personal ADHD stories on TikTok (cf. Timm Knudsen and Stage 2015).

Second, and as part of this self-discovery, many users express relief and validation in finding others who share similar experiences. There is a strong sense of belonging, which has a positive impact on community and support (Ball 2023). ADHDTok can be described as an existential medium of care, and a lifeline for people struggling with the condition (Holroyd and Lagerkvist forthcoming). TikTok has thus created a supportive community for individuals with ADHD, allowing them to share experiences, coping strategies, and feel less alone. Sam Spadafore testifies similarly to how they found a sense of belonging on ADHD TikTok (“I found my people”):

Social media seems to be bringing communities of neurodiverse people together where we can share knowledge, tips, and support. I’ve had the honor of learning from some incredible educators on TikTok…I could not be more thankful for these creators pushing their followers to empower themselves with knowledge. I feel so much more self-aware. I’m excited to learn more about myself and neurodiversity. (ibid)

Just as the technologies of the self in the ancient past, the neuro-algorithmic archive, and the many short video log entries with performances, memes, dances, and jokes, such as for example “The Official 14 or 5 ADHD Symptoms” or hashtags such as #“Post-diagnosis Denial” or general pedagogical stories under the hashtag #adhdinwomen are directed to a like-minded audience, a community. They offer up a virtual face-to-face. In these mundane settings, individuals impart an ADHD self in becoming, manifesting, and performing it before itself and also before others. Importantly, this can again be connected to Foucault’s unpacking of the practices of self through technologies of the self in relation to askesis in Stoicism. He describes this not as a renunciation of self (as in Christianity) but as “progressive consideration of self” and as exercised between the two poles: meleté and gymnasia. The first pole involves a dialogue and training in thought, and the second involves practising and acting out in reality what was imagined. Searching for self in ADHD content and cultivating it through the platform can be seen as an exercise unfolding between meleté and gymnasia, but now in the hands of ADHD TikTok users whose practices of self-care complicate the ableist premises of ancient self-cultivation.

A third theme deals with concerns about misinformation and self-diagnosis (Demuth 2022). Here, our interest lies less in adjudicating clinical accuracy than in understanding how users experience the uncertainty and ambivalence produced by algorithmically circulated ADHD content. While TikTok has been helpful for many, there are concerns about the spread of misinformation and the risks associated with self-diagnosis (Demuth 2022; cf. SVT 2024).⁴ Mental health professionals caution against relying solely on social media for diagnostic information, emphasizing the importance of professional evaluation. For instance, one woman describes how she became convinced she had ADHD after repeatedly encountering #ADHDTok checklists, only to have a clinician later diagnose anxiety and depression instead; she recalls feeling ‘both relieved and oddly bereft, as if the label I had lived with online no longer belonged to me.’ A psychiatrist interviewed in another article notes that such cases are increasingly common in clinical practice, urging that ‘TikTok can be a useful starting point, but not an endpoint, for understanding one’s mental health.’ Some experts worry that the algorithm-driven nature of TikTok may lead users to over-identify with ADHD symptoms, potentially leading to misdiagnosis or overlooking other mental health issues (Bobby and Sandhu 2023; Demuth 2022; cf. Yeung et al 2022). This includes experiences aligned with what Alper and colleagues call a “liminal self” that is in tenuous identification with the disability.

A fourth theme in these testimonies about self-discovery has to do with highlighting gender disparities in ADHD diagnosis. TikTok has played a significant role in highlighting the underdiagnosis of ADHD in women and girls. Women report discovering their ADHD later in life through social media, leading to discussions about gender biases in traditional diagnostic criteria and the need for increased awareness among healthcare professionals. One late-diagnosed woman recounts that after months on ADHD TikTok, she realized the “lazy, messy” girl she had been punished for being was actually masking symptoms no one had taught me to recognize. Similarly, a non-binary creator explains that seeing ADHD content that explicitly addressed gender diversity finally made sense of why they never fit the boy/girl scripts of ADHD. This has sparked conversations about the different ways ADHD may present in women/trans queer and non-binary persons compared to the stereotypical hyperactive male presentation. These themes illustrate the complex role TikTok plays in ADHD awareness and diagnosis. While it has undoubtedly helped many individuals recognize and seek help for their symptoms, it also raises important questions about the reliability of social media as a source of medical information and the potential risks of self-diagnosis (Spadafore 2021; Stone 2022; Libby 2022; Laura 2023). In summary, testimonies repeatedly underscore gendered and queer pathways to recognition, with women and trans or non-binary people narrating late or missed diagnoses and challenging masculinized diagnostic norms.

A fifth theme also concerns hesitancy in the shape of fatigue at over exposure. In her critical assessment “Why everyone’s talking about ADHD right now and why it’s kinda annoying” Jess Joho (2021) interviewed Arielle Crawley, who is a registered nurse from Philadelphia, who got her diagnosis at the age of 27. Crawley had received over 180,000 views and countless comments relating to what she referred to as “her most obscure ADHD confessions.” She was happy about the 11,000 followers at first: “I found my people. I found my tribe.’” This was followed by hesitance and critique, because then “Crawley’s For You Page became overrun with ADHD TikTok. While many posts were eye-opening and validating, even she grew weary”:

There’s a lot of negative emotion attached to having ADHD, finding out you have it, especially for those of us diagnosed late in life. So when it’s being shoved down your throat like that, with all of the ‘relatable content’ — I’m just finding more and more ways that my ADHD has invaded every area of my life. So it’s depressing sometimes,” she said. “I’m glad we’re all relating. But also, like, please leave me alone.”

Other ADHD TikTok users echo this ambivalence, describing feeds that oscillate between feeling “seen at last” and being “suffocated by content that constantly reminds me of everything that’s hard.” The writer Austin Harvey (2022) who has the diagnosis also argues that while it is good that TikTok raises awareness of ADHD, and contributes to “recognizing it as a very real medical condition” there are many downsides: “it can often inadvertently trivialize ADHD and reduce it to a set of limited stereotypes for the sake of ‘relatability’” (cf. Hanafi 2024). In opposing this reductionism and also warning against finding all their knowledge and information about ADHD on TikTok, he concludes importantly: “…we are more than our condition. We’re human, first and foremost. That includes the nuances and differences any two humans would have, with the addition of our ADHD struggles on top.” Some also report deliberately muting ADHD hashtags or taking “ADHD detox” breaks from the app to reclaim a sense of privacy from the algorithmic gaze. To sum up: several accounts reveal fatigue and ambivalence in the face of overexposure, as feeds saturated with ADHD content come to feel intrusive or exhausting even for those who initially experience algorithmic biographical illumination. The experiences of Crawley, Harvey, and others offer us cues for concluding our discussion, returning us to the intersection of critical disability studies, existential media studies and to the lessons of historization.

Dis/Illuminations of Self: Concluding Reflections

Through theory-driven qualitative analysis and patchwork approach to self-discovery of ADHD, our aim in this article has been to highlight how technology renders the extraordinary self “readable,” as it becomes a means of self-discovery. In the course of doing so, it exemplifies a modern technology of the mediated self. We have discussed how the self, disability, and the video-sharing platform are interlaced in complex ways involving a looping of attention, desire (to know) and a sense of algorithmic biographical illumination. As we have shown personal testimonies today about receiving knowledge and means for self-diagnosis via an app resound and recall the contexts and histories of self-cultivation through technologies of the self in Antiquity, which offered means for self-growth and care. Placing ADHD TikTok in this long genealogy helps us to see it not just as a site of “information” or “misinformation,” but as a contemporary technology of the extraordinary self where illumination and deferral are structurally intertwined.

Our discussion has focused specifically on one aspect of these testimonies of self-discovery—the aha moment—to discuss what we can learn about the existential self in a context of massive technological saturation. By sharing videos, individuals collate important information and share good advice about discovering and living as good a life as possible with ADHD. Learning about yourself from these videos—both the vernacular knowledge gained by peers and the more psychiatric or clinical research findings relayed by professionals there—is common for people with ADHD. Knowledge is empowering. We also note that there are different ways of reacting to a self-discovery (as in Alper and colleagues) and also to a diagnosis, whether official or attained through the machine and its algorithmic loops and suggestions. Yet, what many have in common is that the algorithmization of self produced through a machine enables self-knowledge or even self-diagnosis, or triggers the thought to get diagnosed, offering an epiphany—an algorithmically mediated biographical illumination. As we have discussed, it seems that technologies of the extraordinary self thus serve the ultimate goal to Know Thyself—to be shot through with radiance. And for many, self-realization is a moment of delightful self-illumination. Can we thereby conclude that is all good and well and sunny in the technological world of extraordinary selfhood in which many ADHD selves now dwell? In closing, we will offer a problematization of this.

If we describe self-discovery of ADHD importantly as a digital limit situation, it becomes a moment of thrownness—as what was before is shaken and unsettled via the app—and a time when a reorientation occurs (Lagerkvist 2017, 2022). While TikTok is in similar manner as for the elites of the past, an accumulated treasure trove for those who struggle with the disability, it is of course also a veritable treasure trove of digital capitalism, that thrives on the intimate data of algorithmized, mediated selves. Self-discovery on TikTok is thus part of larger contexts of platform capitalism, in which the data produced by content creators and followers within the neuro-algorithmic archive are the “new oil,” heightening existential vulnerabilities. As we have also seen, self-knowledge is entangled with the temporal rhythms of algorithmic loops of desire; as in drawing in others/being drawn in by desirable relatable content. There is thus both an existential and a crip dimension to this vulnerability: knowing oneself through the machine, as the case of Crawley illustrates, also means knowing one’s limits, a process of soul-searching that inevitably also includes more than being “enlightened.” Testimonies also speak about the exhaustion of the compulsory transparency of self through the vernacular knowledge of the condition that is circulated and forged by the algorithms on video-sharing platforms (cf. Holroyd 2024). There is additionally a sense of expectation for creators to always be available to this loop machinery. The loop temporality may thus actualize Ellen Samuels’ ways of looking at crip time, as in effect encompassing pain, confusion, hurt, fatigue, and displacement (2017).

Another related problem is epistemic and concerns a central tension in becoming an ADHD self on TikTok. Here, it is important to note that the discussed testimonies underline that algorithmic cultures invoke objectivity (what is perceived as “true knowledge”), while also relying wholesale on subjective experiences rendered as data and on a system that does not veil its algorithmic loop logic. Instead, it flaunts it. Importantly, while offering support and knowledge, the neuro-algorithmic archive and its loops of desire add the dimension of another agent, producing an externalized sense of knowing one’s inner personal self via data—a system of norms that precedes any individual biography (Butler 2005/2025). Drawing on Bhandari and Bimo, we wish to emphasize the ambiguities at heart of these processes: “The status of the algorithm as the main external entity with which participants interact, in combination with the personifying language participants use to describe it, results in the algorithm occupying a unique role in the TikTok experience” (2022, 6). The external entity can be influenced by the user but this influence is limited. The algorithm furthermore produces a chamber of self-reflection since it “exists solely to present them with access to content that reflects their own internal worlds; content that reflects their interests, likes, and personality, and which might be seen as a curated collection representing their inner ‘self’” (Ibid). In light of this, the self-discovery process on TikTok entails tensions between internal subjective phenomenological first-hand experience and external “objective” self-knowledge through the machine.

Beyond pure illumination, we also return to another different and opposed idea about technology, disability, and selfhood. It dares to contest that selves are essentially knowable. The self, Butler reminds us, is never fully known, is opaque, and this she regards as its ethical condition of possibility. Or as Mills and Sterne have emphasized: subjectivity is always somehow unbeknownst to itself, and thus also beyond the logocentric myths of mimesis, light, and certainty. The very experience of limit situations dislocates and displaces. And yet, there we are in possession of a realism of the margin (Siebers 2008) which includes the holdings of being stripped of something as a unique site of being and knowing.

Our discussion here grounds to a halt, since we see a value in seeking to relieve the ADHD self of an imagined total transparency that is evoked by the idea of mediated biographical self-illumination. Or more specifically, without denying the benefits of self-discovery, the self-empowerment of getting the right help or treatment and finding one’s people, we argue for retaining the mystery of being human—for existential reasons. In his own way Karl Jaspers, whose work sits at the heart of existential media studies, speaks of “self-illumination” but importantly as occurring through the other and through a deep sense of deferral and postponement: “…aberrant from the self, being is the sea of light in which every part of the ego has been submerged and dissolved; as self-being, it is the mutual illumination of souls revealed to one another in present eternity” (Jaspers, 1932/1970, 44–45, italics added).

Finally, we thus situate and retain the self in aberrance in an unkempt and non-transparent field, entangled with technology. We argue that partially hidden from illumination, appearing in “dis/illumination” through the disorderly logic of dis/ability (McRuer 2017) enmeshed with algorithmic culture, the extraordinary self is here both reliant upon and never reducible to today’s hyper-technologized situation. As goes the existentialist’s rallying call: the technologies of the extraordinary self must also be conceived as media of limits, ultimately displaying a sense of not knowing. They are thus revelatory of both their own limits and an unknowing or opacity of self at the core of the human condition. We therefore suggest, in closing, that the knowing machine is a medium of self-deferral. At the moment of self-discovery, the epiphany also implies being beside oneself, where one wafts and drifts into the openness of the unknown.