Tags: ADHD, Mental Health, Baking, Divergify, Late Night
Reading Time: 3 minutes
This started as oatmeal cookies.
It was around 2 a.m., during a snowstorm. I couldn’t go anywhere, hadn’t been to the store in a few days, and the house was asleep. My brain absolutely was not.
If you have ADHD, you already know this moment. Maybe not a snowstorm. Maybe not being stuck inside. But it’s late, you can’t go anywhere, and the craving isn’t optional. You don’t just want sugar. You need it. And once that switch flips, sleep is off the table.
That was the headspace I was in when I got into the kitchen convinced I was making oatmeal cookies.
That was the plan.
The Glitch
Then I started pulling ingredients out and realized I didn’t actually have what I thought I had. This is usually where the spiral starts. Not because of the recipe, but because of the story we’ve been taught to tell ourselves when plans don’t work.
Why didn’t I check first. Why can’t I do simple things. Why does this always happen.
That reaction didn’t come from nowhere. For a lot of us, conformity was imposed early. Sit still. Stop tapping. Don’t fidget. Don’t interrupt. Don’t be "so much." So we learned to hide it. We learned to mask. We learned how to look normal.
Masking works. But it’s exhausting.
The Pivot
This time, I didn’t go there.
Instead of stopping, I pivoted. I looked at what I did have:
Butter
Brown sugar
Sweetened condensed milk
Peanut butter
Chocolate pudding mix
Oats
Instead of following a rigid recipe, I followed patterns.
I know how flavors work. I know how textures behave. I trusted my wiring. I adjusted as I went. More peanut butter when it didn’t feel right. More condensed milk when it needed softness. The plan changed, but the process kept moving.
At some point, this stopped being cookies and turned into something else entirely. Dense. Intense. A two-bite dessert that absolutely requires milk and silence.
And you know what? It worked.
The Reframe
That’s the part that matters.
ADHD isn’t a lack of discipline. It’s adaptive thinking. It's pattern recognition. It's the ability to connect things that don’t obviously go together and make something functional out of them. We’re taught to suppress that because it doesn’t always look neat, but it’s not wrong. It’s just different wiring.
Reaching our potential doesn’t come from fighting how we’re wired. It comes from embracing it and learning how to work with it in the real world.
If this dessert had turned out bad, would that actually have meant anything about me? Or would it have just meant I made some mediocre oatmeal cookies?
That’s the reframe.
Divergify is built around this idea. Not fixing you. Not sanding you down. But designing systems that work with your operating system instead of against it. Turning what we’ve been taught to see as negatives into strengths we can actually use.
The Spiral Bar (Official "Recipe")
Ingredients: Whatever is in the cupboard that looks right.
Method: Trust your gut.
Rules:
Serve this in very small squares.
Pair it with milk or sweetened coffee.
Stop making eye contact after two bites.
This is normal.
This is Divergify.
We don't fix you. We build systems that fit your OS.