For those (like me) who want a TLDR; to cut to the chase…
- I was diagnosed with ADHD in my 30s.
- I have combined subtype ADHD (i.e. both inattentive and hyperactive symptoms).
- I am medicated.
- Not an expert – in any way. Just here to share my perspective.
Quick intermission to answer the question every psychiatrist keeps asking me…
“What made you think you have ADHD? After all this time…”
Call me an idiot, but I’ve always knew I had all of the symptoms of ADHD that I have, literally nothing has changed on that front.
I just thought these things were normal. I thought the things I felt and experienced were common to all people. Or at least the vast majority of people.
I realized after stumbling on ADHDinos comics that I’d seen these things a BAJILLION times, and always laughed and thought “relatable,” but somehow my brain did not register the fact that it is literally a comic about being ADHD. That in itself is the most ADHD thing to say ever. If only my brain could keep track of context a little better.
That paired with the fact that I literally did not understand what the terms “impulsivity” and “hyperactivity” meant in psychology. These do not mean what they mean colloquially. And those stupid lists online that are supposed to describe symptoms, but instead describe behaviours that result from having symptoms? Like being late to everything. Yeah enough. It’s confused everyone.
Want more of a backstory? Keep reading.
My (Longwinded) Pre-Diagnosis Backstory ((No need to scroll down, I’ll tell you from now, it’s long))
Before lockdown, my life was way too hectic for me to tell what was what. I had good days and bad days, but I ascribed these to whatever was happening in my life – things external to me and never suspected anything was different about me.
I had moved countries with my husband Thomas twice, from Canada to the UK, then from the UK to Portugal, and the ramifications of these massive upheavals and resets, paired with the fact that we were entrepreneurs and took in way too many cats at one point – meant I was exhausted, drained, and to be honest, a little more than a little traumatized from my experience in the UK.
I couldn’t explain or understand why, but I’d developed agoraphobia while living in Bournemouth. That paired with weird GI symptoms and brain fog that I lived with 3-4 times a week still didn’t have me questioning whether something was awry. Neither did what felt like extreme mood swings. And something like depression that wasn’t it if I looked up the actual definition. As the timeframe just never jived. And don’t even get me started on the clumsiness.
I was used to it. I’d always been this way. Even the anxiety to the point of being quite literally too afraid to leave my house – that seemed like a natural progression of my neurotic, stressed out, and introverted ways.
During lockdown, life slowed to a standstill. Without all the external forces to get in the way, I started seeing patterns that had to be from myself emerge. Some days I would feel miserable and unable to enjoy anything for the vast majority of the day, until magically my mood lifted just enough for me to feel okay in the evenings.
I Googled it. I Google everything. It led me to PMDD. So I went down the wormhole and started using a monthly tracker – after 6 months I finally accepted that this was my problem. But there were still weird things that were unexplained…
My GI symptoms were way worse after my morning coffee. I figured this out in the UK and stopped drinking coffee, but after years I finally had a eureka moment when I had an awful trip to the bathroom after eating some Whey protein yogurt, and chasing it with a bowl of cereal and milk to make myself feel better. Needless to say, I died that day, but I had my second comorbidity spotted – clear as day: lactose intolerance. Who knows when that developed.
So I cut it all out. Because it definitely made my PMDD symptoms worse. But there were more things I just couldn’t figure out the explanation to. My hands kept shaking. Parkinson’s? Doesn’t sound like me. I keep having issues with remembering things, and while Alzheimer’s runs in my family, my genetic profile looked okay and my grandma who died of it didn’t get the early onset version… but still, early onset Alzheimer’s?
Then one day a quick Google just because I couldn’t handle it anymore.. why not look up ALL my stupid symptoms including the most obvious one… “Can clumsiness be genetic?” I know my dad is clumsy too. Very clumsy. I always thought it was a familial trait.
ADHD? No I don’t have that. Why does this keep popping up. I’m a potato, I haven’t got a hyperactive bone in my body. Inattentive? No I try to pay attention like mad and am so good at it.
Impulsive? Not even close. Every single thing I do is ridiculously planned out and thought out. And no I’m not late for things ever, I’m like 2 hours early.
Yes, I used to forget my car keys when I drove back in Canada. Every time I walk out the door. But that’s nothing like what ADHD is.
But I keep reading that ADHD is different in women. And I keep reading that a lot of women are realizing now that they have it. Some crazy social media frenzy.
Okay fine, no harm in researching more. But I don’t seem to have any of the “symptoms.”
Down the rabbit hole I went and right before I surfaced, I caught wind that I didn’t understand this thing as much as I should. So I asked about ADHD on Reddit and someone gave me a copy paste answer that changed my life…
Check out Russell Barkley. Well I don’t half ass things when I’m this obsessed, so I could watch all these little bits and pieces, but there’s this 2 hours and 51 minute video uploaded to YouTube of a lecture he gave titled, “The 30 Essential Ideas Every Parent Needs to Know.” Gonna watch this (on 1.5-2x speed of course, thank heavens they added that feature…).
I couldn’t stop pausing.
I needed a break every few minutes. Not because I couldn’t pay attention, nothing about this lecture was boring.
But it was too intense. I had to pause over and over, stunned, trying not to feel too many feels, but choking back tears and sometimes bawling for 10-20 minutes at a time when Barkley’s words just so happened to strike a tender enough nerve.
For the first time in my life, someone was describing my experience. And in such a way that it was like seeing a puzzle, of all the little fragments I picked up on myself day to day, being pieced together with big pieces I was still missing to form a bigger picture.
This was it. This is what I was looking for. What I have. What I’ve had all my life.
And it was heartbreaking. Things I’ve been in denial about forever. To others, and more so, to myself as well. Things about me I thought I would grow out of, kept waiting to grow out of, but I now understood had nothing to do with age.
Every pause came with a flood of memories. Core memories. Ones that I had no idea fit together or could be tied together by this one long string.
One long string that tied together all my random symptoms – or at least the vast majority of them – and gave me a framework for understanding my life until now that I never expected.