Holy hell I absolutely identify with this.
this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
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I was diagnosed at a very young age but I didn't knew what it really is for a long time. As a teen I forgot for a few years that I even have ADHD and was doing what's described in the post. I couldn't figure out WTF is wrong with me until I watched barkley's presentation on neuroanatomy of ADHD which enlightened me on that.
I’ve not been formally diagnosed, but I’m 100% sure I have had ADHD. I talked with my parents about it a few weeks ago and they basically just said “yeah you probably have always had it, but we never argued your doctor about it”. The idea that I’m in my thirties and only recently really identified why I struggle with things is so infuriating. Worse yet is the fact that there were things that could have helped me succeed and be more comfortable in school is just the worst. I manage fine at this point with various strategies to be successful so it’s not really worth it to me to talk to my doctor and argue that I’ve always been like this, but man is it just hard sometimes.
I was diagnosed at 40. I have meds for when my coping mechanisms fail me. It's awesome
Hmm interesting...
See a different doctor and get a diagnosis. It can really help for stuglff like getting accomodations or meds, and meds can really be helpful for a lot of people. I got diagnosed as an adult because my parents never believed me when I suggested I had it as a kid, and it made a world of difference. Even just knowing for sure helps me mentally.
Yep, I'm not diagnosed but I'm pretty sure I have it. The one doctor I had long enough to even bring it up immediately discounted the possibility because I'd graduated high school (which he didn't even bother checking if that was true before saying that). So many people dismiss it out of hand simply because I'm "not a complete idiot". Yet many people with diagnosed ADHD have just assumed I'm diagnosed and are shocked when I say I'm not. One person actually laughed at me because they thought I was joking because "There's no way you don't have ADHD, stop messing with me". Like I probably do, but I'm not diagnosed. Unfortunately ADHD diagnosis is far from the top of the list of shit I need to work on so it won't happen soon.
I got diagnosed but ended up getting a second opinion because I could tell my doctor didn't know anything about adhd, he just gave me a brief 1 page questionnaire to fill out to diagnose me, and then later when I was talking to him about how I need a doctor's note about my adhd related to my driver's license he told me it was silly for me to need that because "people with adhd are actually better drivers", and I knew at that point that I didn't actually trust his opinion on the matter (people with adhd are NOT better drivers in most cases) and so I sought out an assessment with the health centre at my local university (I had access as a student) and their test was actually in depth and their doctors actually knew what they were talking about and what the executive functions are. They confirmed my diagnosis for me lol. A lot of family doctors/GPs don't actually know a lot about adhd, but they could at least recommend people to a specialist instead of dismissing it when they don't know anything about it. Graduating high school is NOT a determining factor, many people who get diagnosed as adults are people who graduated high school, me included.
Yep, like I knew the high school thing was utter bullshit cause yeah, I graduated, but so did the student who showed up twice a week and turned in work never. I had a few classmates make it to middle school unable to read because the district cared more about their numbers than students education. And on the rare occasion they actually tried to hold a student back to repeat a grade they would instantly cave if a parent pushed any amount.
I knew someone whose parents tried to hold her back in elementary school because she'd missed a lot of the year for health reasons and they absolutely refused to consider it. Apparently "being in a class with her friends" was more important than missing over half the school year. She'd had tutors, but they weren't very helpful because the meds she was on at the time messed with her ability to commit things to long term memory (it was only temporary while in treatment). So yeah, my high school had a great graduation rate, but many of them simply shouldn't have graduated.
But yeah, he was a psychiatrist and believed that. Needless to say I didn't go back, but sadly not even for this reason. He tried to convince me to stay on a med that made me so nauseous I couldn't eat or barely drink for four days and nearly ended up in the ER for dehydration (quite frankly I still should've gone, but I just wanted to sleep). Like max dose prescription nausea meds couldn't keep things down. But he wanted me to stay on it for "only six more weeks". Like I can say with 100% certainty that no food for six weeks would either kill me or land me in the hospital from malnourishment.
Also there are some kids with adhd who legitimately do well in school, because adhd is different for everyone and if a kid is interested in the topics being taught in school then they'll have a much easier time doing well. I wasn't one of those kids myself, I just scraped by, but I've known kids like that. It's just a really stupid metric. And like, just because an adhd kid is doing well in school that doesn't mean their adhd doesn't affect them in other aspects of their life, so it's not like they don't still benefit from a diagnosis or treatment.
Yep, I practically slept through math with straight A's, so apparently that meant I couldn't be struggling. Like yeah, math was easy, but I'd also spend 4 hours on a 30 minute history assignment and get a C. But my math grades were "proof" that if I "just put in a little effort" I could have straight A's in every class. Which always hurt, like what do you mean "just put in a little effort"? I put in eight times the effort I was expected to and barely got a passing grade. Being good at one school subject doesn't magically make you good at all of them. But if I got anything less than a 100% on everything I was in for a "lecture" aka 30 minutes of screaming about how they didn't raise a failure (and 30 extra minutes of sleep I had to miss to work on homework). I would've seriously benefited from help, instead I got shame.
I mean, I've been diagnosed for like 25 years now and I still have to do this.
Yeah, it actually really depends on your level of understanding ADHD.
Yup. It's a developmental disorder instead of a mental illness (like autism). Our frontal lobe or prefrontal cortex didn't develop properly.
I think ADHD is a horrible name for it. Executive Functioning Disorder is a much more accurate name.
I think ADHD is a horrible name for it.
Rather that saying that as an opinion say that as if it was an objective truth because it is one. It is truly a terrible name for the disorder because it's named after how we inconvenience neurotypicals and not after our struggles. It should either describe our struggles properly or have a serious sounding neutral name where people won't be assuming things about the disorder.
i mean at least the attention deficit part is accurate, i have to make sure to place objects where i can't avoid looking at them because otherwise i will completely and utterly forget the moment something else takes my attention.
I tend to refill my water bottle at the same time as going to the toilet, so if i just place the bottle on the kitchen counter i WILL without fail forget all about its existence, the only solution to this is placing the bottle in front of my door so i almost walk into it before remembering that it exists.
Other parts of ADHD have their upsides, but god damn this facet of it drives me up the wall and i can't see how it would ever be useful.
Technically, we're not lacking in attention capacity, we're lacking in the ability to focus that attention towards the thing you want/should. Our attention is great. We're just not giving it to the right thing in many cases.
You didn't remember where you put your keys, cause your attention was taken by something else when you dropped them wherever they were. But you had plenty of attention towards that other thing.
Yeah, ADHD is really more about attention regulation, not attention deficit.
Thank you! You just saved me, hydration-wise.
I finally got up the motivation to use the nice water bottle I have (I needed to wash it and so it was just sitting on my bedside table for like 2 weeks and I've been thirsty and just sipping from tiny cups). Had gone out to fill it up, put it on the counter, went into the bathroom and promptly forgot it existed. Read your post, laughed to myself about how I'm the same way, and then nearly went back to bed without my water bottle. Literally the only reason I remembered it at all is thanks to you.
Hate the executive dysfunction shit. When I went of my psych I had no idea what was wrong with me and my main complaint was that I could be really thirsty and unable to make myself drink the water I wanted :(
Uhhh, autism is a developmental disorder as well, it's not a mental illness. It's often comorbid with mental illnesses, but so is ADHD.
The sentence structure is vague. “ADHD, like autism, is a developmental disorder” is how I read it
Yeah, I didn't see that at all, though I can see it after a few rereads. IDK, I really can't tell which they meant.
Yeah, I definitely phrased that poorly. I meant what you said, that they're both developmental disorders
Same! I was diagnosed as a kid in the mid 90s. Took meds back then that didn’t work for me, and went unmedicated for about 30 something years. I at least have a grasp on some of the “why” behind my thought processes and behaviors, but none of it makes me feel any better.
I'm officially ADHD-PI (formerly ADD) and medicated, so I guess I don't have this particular tendency, but my wife is diagnosed ADHD-C, unmedicated, and also struggles with identifying her emotions in the moment due to an unconventional upbringing. She does this literally any time she's experiencing a negative emotion (embarrassment, anger, feeling hurt, etc.) and can't identify it.
We've gotten better as a team at dealing with it, but it's always on me to recognize when it's happening and initiate the mediation, so it's really exhausting, sometimes.
I have this weird quirk where I don't notice my current emotions but because I daydream a lot I realise my current emotions through my attitude/situation in the daydream. This happens when I'm slightly sad/frustrated/angry etc. I can recognise stronger emotions but not always though because sometimes they happen to be too complex for me to understand.
Interesting, my wife also daydreams a lot, I wonder if she would say the same thing. I'll have to ask.
Please update me on that, I want to know if it's something more common than I thought.
I have medicated adhd pi and I’m better than I used to be, but I don’t think I’ll ever have a boss whom I don’t lie to at least a few times. I think that’s pretty normal, but I don’t want to do it, and it’s mostly to catch up to where I “should” be.
There's a fun world past this where you have accepted your value to others and internalized your own value to the point where your ADHD is like the sting on a bee. People have to deal with it too get that honey. In fact the only reason they can get that honey is because you are a bee.
You get to shrug your shoulders and say deal with it. It never stops being a struggle in your own life, and you constantly need to engage in things that are just extra exhausting on top of normal life. But you are both valuable in spite of and because of your ADHD.
I know not every person with this can experience a scaffolded life, full of love and support, but plenty of you can.
Beware the self hatred, beware the internalized uselessness that you've built over a life of just not being able to make yourself do anything despite wanting nothing more.
It's funny because the ADHD subreddit is memes and upvotes and people talking about how ADHD hurts their performance at work.
The bipolar subreddit is people who want to kill themselves. People who are homeless. People who are broken, have lost their spouses, jobs, lives.
And ADHD gets so much sympathy. It's a mental illness that's so socially acceptable that people talk about it at work. Compare and contrast that to bipolar where you carry a stigma wherever you go. It's nuts.
Having Bipolar disorder often leads to drug and alcohol addiction trying to cope with it, and also creates much more problems in dealing with other people on its own even without adding chemical dependency into the mix. It's a horrible condition to have, and even though I empathize with people who have it, in my experience they can also be incredibly difficult to be around because of their illness. Which is one of the reasons it's such a fucked up thing. It's self-perpetuating isolation.
I can't speak about work but when it comes to upvotes it's most probably because people can relate to most of the stuff because it's stuff that other people also do but ADHD makes them much much more frequent and uncontrollable.
I am 99.9% sure my wife has ADHD. She’s getting several assessments done for free by our doctor’s office (because in the fall new doctors show up and need practice). She forgot to go to her 3rd assessment this past week. Now I’m 100% sure.
Funny