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amyintherapy · 8 months

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ADHD & Me

I was diagnosed with ADHD in 8th grade after a teacher realized I was depressed and had the school counselor talk to me, and the school counselor feeling like I needed to be seeing a therapist rather than just talking to him at school. It was basically the depression at that time that they had picked up on, but it eventually resulted in me getting evaluated by a psychiatrist and ADHD was among the things I was diagnosed with.

I was pretty seriously depressed, cutting myself, I was diagnosed with PTSD, and had bad anxiety although I didn't really recognize it as anxiety at the time. It's almost like the depression numbed out the anxiety.

Anyway. My psychiatrist and therapist seemed to focus a lot more on my mental health issues than the ADHD. That makes sense to me, my mental health was in a really ugly place and really needed to be a top priority.

But, I really wasn't taught much of anything about my ADHD. Despite only being 13 at the time, I thought I knew what ADHD was...I knew multiple people who were diagnosed with ADHD. I knew what traits they associated with their ADHD and saw the similarities in those kids. They often seemed hyper, they were disruptive in class, they were always "on the go", they were often loud. I didn't share most of those similarities, so I didn't think ADHD was me.

In 4th grade, I was assigned a seat up against the whiteboard next to a kid who had ADHD. Just my desk and his, while all the other kids' desks were in pods of 4 and were several feet back from the whiteboard. That kid had to be separated from most other students to avoid being distracted by them or distracting them, yet it wasn't seen as acceptable to make him be alone...so the teacher picked a kid who would be the least likely to distract him, I guess. And that was me. So...how could I be ADHD, I thought. Also, I was put on ADHD meds that seemed to make my anxiety a lot worse, but my psychiatrist wasn't good at listening to me about my own experience - so she thought I should stay on them. I just quit taking them as they were clearly hurting more than they were helping. I tried again several years later, but again found myself feeling extra anxious while on them, and the therapist I saw at that time (for all of like...3 visits) said that people with anxiety often can't be on ADHD meds, so if I felt anxiety was the bigger issue, I just shouldn't be on ADHD meds. So, I thought my options were no ADHD meds, or anxiety and I quit trying ADHD meds for years. Ps - that guy was wrong, lots of people have ADHD and anxiety and can find meds that don't make their anxiety worse.

As I got a little older I read about how anxiety and/or depression can make it harder to stay focused. I thought maybe I was just misdiagnosed as having ADHD because of my mental health issues impacting my focus? People had called me 'spacey' and 'air headed' a lot although I had never really felt that way myself. I always felt like when people said "hellooo..." or similar to get my attention that they were implying that I was not thinking of anything. And I was always focused on something, I wasn't sitting there with nothing on my mind. It just wasn't focused on them. My mom had also said that she thought ADD made more sense for me. And I was diagnosed with ADHD inattentive type, which *is* essentially what ADD used to be, and I knew that. But I thought ADD meant that you just sit around thinking of nothing. And I knew people perceived me as being 'air headed' in that way. But I knew I wasn't. So that didn't add up to me.

So...from 13 to 30, I really wasn't sure if I thought I had ADHD or not. I had started getting ADHD tiktoks which I could relate to a little more, and that made me think maybe the diagnosis was correct, but I still felt really uncertain.

A little over a year ago, I restarted therapy for the first time since I was 17 or so. At the intake appointment, I was asked if I had ever been diagnosed with anything, and if so what. So I shared with her my previous diagnosis' and she asked me if I felt these diagnosis' were still accurate for me. I told her that I didn't think I had depression anymore, and that I was always unsure about ADHD.

I never really intended to learn about ADHD via therapy, but my therapist is well versed in ADHD and occasionally suggested that some of what I was talking about was ADHD related. Things I had never heard of being associated with ADHD before. Things like...

Being unable to tell stories that go from start to finish in a simple chronological order verbally. I can sort of do this in writing thanks to editing, but it's not very instinctual for me. I am a "webbed thinker" and "bottom up thinker" rather than a linear thinker. I'm all about side tangents and extra details. I see patterns or connections in things that don't always make sense to other people. I get 'off track' all the time. My siblings used to say things to me like "Get to the pointttttt" but I couldn't just take that short-cut. I only knew the long way around when talking out loud.

Struggling to find the word I'm wanting to use.

Memory issues. I was the kid who would do their homework but forget to turn it in. Or I'd turn it in, but I'd forget to put my name on it. If an adult told me 3 things they wanted me to do, I'd do 1 or 2 and totally forget the rest. I was the kid who always left their snowpants or hat/gloves at school. I was labeled as irresponsible and careless, but I was desperate to please the adults in my life as a kid. I knew adults thought I wasn't trying hard enough, but I thought I was trying really hard. It was just confusing, I never had an explanation for that discrepancy.

Losing my train of thought mid-story or sentence.

Regularly screwing up dinner because I am trying to flip the grilled cheese or stir the dish or whatever, at a set pace, and I regularly lose track of time because I get invested in a conversation, go to text someone back, nearly any little thing that grabs my attention for "just a second" can suddenly make me lose track of time. And I don't mean that I get so invested in the new thing I start doing that I forget I was cooking until I smell it burning. Although, that happens too. More often, it's that I feel so sure it's only been about 2 minutes since I last stirred the pot, so i'm shocked that everything is stuck to the bottom now. How/why did it suddenly start cooking so fast? It's almost as if someone cranked the heat on the burner up, except that didn't happen. This kinda thing genuinely felt like a mystery to me. How/why did it suddenly cook so fast? Until I realized this is time blindness. When I get interested in something, I lose my sense of time. So while I would have bet $100 it's only been 2 minutes since I last stirred this pot, it's probably been 10.

Hyperfocus. Despite the name, ADHD isn't always a deficit of attention, it's more of an attention/focus regulating disorder. That might mean we can't stay focused on the thing we want to focus on, but it can also mean that we get SO focused that we struggle to switch to something new. *this* is the core reason why people call me spacey or air-headed. They come in and start talking to me, and I say 'huh?" and they think this means I am an air head. In reality, I Was so focused on what I Was doing or thinking that I couldn't process what they said until I gave myself time to switch my focus on to what they were saying. Lots of people experience this when invested in a dramatic scene in a movie or video game. I do this constantly. I'm sending a friend a text, doing the dishes and thinking about what to make for dinner, I'm playing with my cat - ti doesn't really matter. It doesn't have to be something exciting for me to be deeply locked into my own thoughts and need time to switch my focus.

Sensory issues including auditory processing issues. I remember having wet sleeves on my shirts in elementary school because I'd bite/suck on them so much. Or when I didn't have long sleeves, I'd suck on my hair. Shockingly, I wasn't bullied for this somehow. As I got a little older I became a pencil/pen cap chewer until a kid expressed disgust at it. I've always repositioned myself in my chairs a lot. I'm a picky eater and a lot of that is sensory related. I have auditory processing issues. While not directly ADHD, lots of people with ADHD have sensory processing disorder, and auditory processing disorder specifically.

My over-reaction to feeling judged has various causes, but part of it is rejection sensitive dysphoria, a common element of ADHD. I had read about rejection sensitivity before, but I thought it meant being actually rejected as in...shunned? My therapist explained that 'rejection' doesn't have to be nearly that extreme, that feeling judged is a mild form of feeling rejected, so having a big reaction to feeling - or even anticipating, being judged causing a really big emotional response can be rejection sensitive dysphoria.

Hyperfixations. Somehow, I totally didn't realize that most other people don't discover some new 'thing' and then feel like that thing is nearly all they want to do, think about or talk about for weeks. I guess I just thought it was normal to get really exciting about discovering something new that you liked. And I think it is...but I didn't realize that the degree to which I get fixated on a new interest is not the norm.

Clumsiness. I've always been clumsy, regularly running into things, dropping things, etc. I had no idea this was a sensory thing, which his why I'm not including it under the sensory bulletpoint even though this is a sensory thing. Proprioception is our sense that lets us know where our body is in space. If you struggle with processing propriception, it's common to be clumsy.

I no longer doubt my ADHD diagnosis at all. I'm so grateful that I found a therapist who understands ADHD well enough to help me to understand what it has looked like in me, even if it's different from how it looks for some others. There's some sadness with it as well, but overall, it's been such a relief to finally have a deeper understanding of some of my struggles. It's easier to empathize with myself for some of my struggles when I understand their causes. It's also helped me to get more help. I'm on meds that help a fair amount and don't make my anxiety worse, and just recognizing that I definitely do have ADHD has made it easier for me to accept accommodations, even ones that I make for myself.

For example, I have finally accepted that my memory is poor, and I struggle with time blindness. After I accepted that fully, I was able to start using 'tricks' like setting timers to remind me to stir the skillet meal I'm making every 2 minutes, so I can't lose track of time. Fully recognizing that my memory really does stink and it's not something I "should" be able to just force myself to somehow magically get better at, I use more to-do lists, use google notifications to email me about upcoming events, set alarms for more things, etc.

I know it's still a thing for parents to hesitate to get their kids diagnosed as they fear that a diagnosis will give them an 'excuse' to not try as hard. I've found the opposite to be true. I mean, I already had the diagnosis - but really having it confirmed? It hasn't given me a reason to not try as hard as I always have. Instead, it's given me "permission" to feel like it's really okay to utilize tools that will help me.

I don't mean to suggest that I needed a confirmed diagnosis to use the tools that help me. I absolutely should have always felt like I could do whatever I needed to do to be successful, diagnosis or not. But the reality is that until I really understood and accepted my ADHD diagnosis, I expected myself to be capable of functioning like a non-ADHD person, without these extra tricks or tools to help me. But I couldn't just force my memory to get better, for example. "trying harder" to remember wasn't a solution for me, but it's what I kept trying for years because I thought that's what 'should' work. Once I realized that wasn't the case, I was able to look for other tools or resources to assist me with remembering. Even with extra tools, my memory is still inferior to that of many others. I am not trying to function exactly like a neurotypical person would as I know that isn't realistic for me. But I'm able to find some ways to improve my functioning as much as I reasonably can.

Once you understand what your barriers are, they're easier to try to work around. I don't know why it's so common to think that not telling your kid they have a barrier - not telling them they have a diagnosis or symptoms of a condition, is so comonly believed to help them overcome the barrier. It doesn't make the barrier go away if you don't tell your kid it's there. It just makes them confused about why they keep running into a barrier that nobody else seems to believe is there.

Since I gained an understanding of my ADHD, I see the barrier, so I can try to build steps to help me climb over it now. In the past, I was just trying to believe the barrier wasn't there so I kept running into it head-on.

#adhd #inattentive adhd #late diagnosed adhd #neurodivergence #girls with adhd #women with adhd #my posts

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