Adult ADHD Diagnosis: How My Dx Changed My Life

How would it feel spend your entire life convinced that you were a robin but somehow couldn't manage to sing like the other robins, only to learn that you are actually a hummingbird.  This is how I felt until my ADHD diagnosis, which was a revelation and the beginning of a life-transforming journey.  Whether you're newly diagnosed, suspect you have ADHD, or are someone who wants to understand the condition better, take a listen and let me know what you think.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:28

Hi everybody. I decided to kick off this first official episode with talking about how being diagnosed with ADHD changed how I treat myself. Is there a difference between how my brain worked before I was diagnosed with ADHD and after? No, probably not. What is different is how I treat myself.

Speaker 1: 0:54

I want you to imagine standing at the starting line with everyone else that you started in, say, kindergarten with. You're told that you're a great runner. You keep up with everybody. You even maybe get to go to a different class that is better suited to a person like you. I want you to imagine graduating high school and standing at the starting line with everybody else ready to take off running.

Speaker 1: 1:18

You've been told your entire life that you are a great runner with tons of potential. People expect great things of you. They expect you to place in every single race, probably with minimal effort, and then you start running and everyone is beating you. You keep pumping your legs just like everybody else, and you keep pumping your arms just like everybody else, and you're exhausted. Nobody else seems exhausted, but you are so tired. Maybe you just aren't trying hard enough. Maybe you didn't get enough sleep or car blood enough. You go home, you car blood, you sleep. You go to bed early and then the next morning you wake up and you go to that starting line and you hear the crack and you take off and everybody is out running you again and they're making it look so easy and you start to wonder why is this so much harder for me? Everybody else started at the same place.

Speaker 1: 2:20

I did, I've always done well. Why am I not keeping up? Maybe it's a personal choice. Am I not working hard enough? Am I not trying hard enough? Am I not focused enough? Maybe despite the fact that I'm pumping my legs and I'm pumping my arms? Maybe I just don't want it. Maybe I'm lazy. Maybe everyone else isn't lazy and they're just going and I am making a choice not to go as hard as they are. And you really start to second guess yourself and wonder did I maybe fool everybody for all those years? Was I actually not as good as everyone thought? And I just tricked them? And you freak out and you think I'm lazy, I'm not trying hard enough. I could succeed if I applied myself. Everybody says so, but everyone else is doing so much better than me. It's probably my fault, somehow. And you really get down on yourself. And then you see somebody and they say hey, did you notice that you are dragging a 250 pound weight behind you when you run? And you turn around and there it is and it's chain to your waist and you didn't notice it before. But there is a weight chain that you are pulling every time you race and nobody else is pulling a weight and that's why you're so tired and that's why you're not keeping up. And all of a sudden it's not that you weren't trying hard enough, and it's not that you weren't putting in enough effort or that you were choosing to be lazy and choosing not to keep up despite having the ability, you were having to work 250 pounds harder than everyone else, and that's what getting diagnosed felt like to me.

Speaker 1: 4:01

There's something called the gifted to burnout pipeline, where kids who are identified somewhere in grade school as being above average and intelligence get to go to a gifted program or an alpha program, and it is generally something designed to challenge them and expose them to different ways of thought and more advanced things. And I got to do this from fifth grade through eighth grade. They didn't have it in high school, not that it mattered. I was mostly homeschooled at that point. I only went to school for English and band. Everything else was either at home or at the community college. But I had somebody point out it was on the internet and they mentioned that the gifted and the alpha programs were basically just special ed for undiagnosed neuro spicy kids, except nobody told the teacher that it was special education. So none of us were taught the skills we needed to survive in the real world. And it's funny, but also not because, yeah, that's basically it. I was put in this class that did challenge me and did, you know, vastly widen my vocabulary and put me in touch with a bunch of other kids who were, you know, bright like me. And I don't say that to toot my own horn, but I also don't think it's fair to, you know, play down the fact that I did well on an IQ test Not exceptionally well, I think, I scored like one point over where I needed.

Speaker 1: 5:31

But because I was part of that, you know, we had different classes that weren't as structured and when I was in high school and mostly homeschooling, that was also fairly unstructured. And even in the classes that were structured I didn't have to work terribly hard to pass them. So when I went off to college and I went into an engineering program where everybody was a big fish and everybody had it easy and nobody had to work hard in school. I didn't have any self-imposed structure, I didn't have any study skills and, as a result, I didn't do very well. In fact, I flunked precalculus twice. I didn't go to my engineering class pretty much at all.

Speaker 1: 6:11

My freshman year I just never woke up. I had unfettered access to television and junk food and all of the things that I didn't have at home. I had video games. Netflix had started streaming around that time. What wasn't on Netflix was on YouTube and lots of things were on YouTube. Because YouTube wasn't quite as closely monitored as it is now and because I had undiagnosed ADHD, I was a complete slave to my brain's dopamine needs and the immediate reward of playing video games and watching all the shows I wanted to watch and eating whatever I wanted and taking a nap right now instead of waiting that all outweighed the long-term rewards of if you graduate college, you're going to have a job that'll pay you a lot of money.

Speaker 1: 6:56

So because I wasn't doing well in school, because I flunked precalculus twice, which I stupidly took with the same professor at the same 7am slot, two semesters in a row that I never went to because I'd never had to work hard in math, and I was shocked that I had to go in person to this class to learn the things and you can't I personally cannot learn math in a theater filled with 300 other kids, but there was a 250 pound weight that I was dragging behind me that I wasn't aware of, and so, instead of going, oh, I can't focus on classes or on studying because I didn't have those skills taught to me and I'm never going to be able to focus that well because I'm ADHD and unmedicated. Instead, it was very much a self-flagellation of well, I was always smart in grade school. I must not be trying hard enough, or well, maybe I must have fooled them all and serious, serious bouts of imposter syndrome. I had a number of people in my life, my family especially, who were very concerned and understandably frustrated, believing that I just needed to apply myself, I needed to focus, I needed to want it more, I needed to grow up and stop focusing on things whims, if you will. I needed to be an adult and realize that a college education was more important than television, but in my brain it wasn't and it couldn't be because I suffer severely from executive dysfunction. So when I was diagnosed at 31 years old at the time I was suffering severely from burnout and would continue to do so for another six-ish months before finally going on short-term disability leave for burnout recovery. I was really beating myself up at work because I love being an executive assistant.

Speaker 1: 8:53

It is a very important job. It is crucial to the success of many companies. I believe we are the unsung heroes working in the background. We are jacks of all trades. We do a lot of things. There are days when I am organizing a town hall for 100 people in person and 300 people online and I'm coordinating slide decks and speakers and all sorts of very exciting, complicated things, organizing catering. There's a thousand moving pieces and other days I'm drawing a giant diaper on a piece of paper that I'm coloring in for the diaper drive that our culture club is hosting. So it really is such a diverse and fun job.

Speaker 1: 9:38

But I will say it is not a difficult job in terms of academic requirements. It is a difficult job but I don't need a master's to do it. Heck, I'd probably guarantee that if you started in a small enough situation straight out of high school, you didn't even technically need a college degree to do it. College degree helps, especially with the writing portion and the research skills and simply growing up a little bit and being around the kinds of people that you'll be supporting. But it is not an educationally demanding position. It can be, but it usually isn't, especially not in smaller situations. So to be an EA, with the expectations that were placed on me from high school to do something great, to be an engineer, a lawyer, a doctor, a non-profit director who is going to save the chimps in Africa, for me to be just an executive assistant was something of a surprise, I think, to a lot of the people in my life and myself as well. But it is a job that works very well with ADHD and it's something that I very much enjoy.

Speaker 1: 10:49

But it was a struggle to keep up with unmedicated. At the time of my diagnosis I was about nine years out from back-to-back concussions a story for another time which undoubtedly worsened my ADHD. There's a stark difference in my functionality before and after the concussions, but I also had a one-year-old at the time I was diagnosed and pregnancy changes the brain. It's been studied enough. Everybody knows this and being a mother, even without neurodivergence. It affects your focus because you are forever split in your focus. You are always thinking about that little person, even when you don't realize you are. You are Especially when they're that young and there's so many things that can hurt them and there's so many things that you have to take care of for them. They can't change their diaper, they can't go to the bathroom, they can't feed themselves, they can't put themselves in their bed. There's a lot going on.

Speaker 1: 11:45

So all of those things combined had me really beating myself up, because in my head I was not in a hard job and at the time the department head that I was supporting was not super demanding. It was a very lax job at that time and I was still struggling to keep up and do the most basic tasks. And so when I was diagnosed it didn't fix it. I still had to do the work, I still had to play around with medications to see what helped and I had to address the burnout. But there was this breath of relief and this wave of self-compassion and self-forgiveness and it really has continued over the course of the last year where I realized that a lot of the self-talk that I had in my past, a lot of the things that I've continuously beat myself up about in my past, my biggest regrets, my biggest mistakes. Many of them, when viewed through the lens of this person, has ADHD fairly severely. All of a sudden, it's wow, how were they able to accomplish that much with this 250 pound weight behind them? It's amazing that that person was able to do this and that and this and that all while having severe ADHD. Instead of wow, that person had so much potential and they wasted it. Like I said, it's been a year and there are still things from my past that'll pop up and I'll go wait a second. That wasn't a choice I made. That was a symptom that wasn't me not trying hard enough. That was me having an especially bad ADHD moment because there were multiple things that were exacerbating existing symptoms.

Speaker 1: 13:28

There's been a lot of conversations around whether or not it's even worth getting diagnosed as an adult, especially if you're not planning on medicating. But for me, really and truly, if you have dealt with the negative self-talk and beating yourself up and thinking that you could have done it if you just applied yourself, or you weren't trying hard enough, or you didn't put in enough effort, or you were lazy having a professional say that you have ADHD and it wasn't a choice and it wasn't a lack of focus or a lack of determination or a lack of want, or because you're not hardworking enough or because you're lazy. Recognizing that it is the way your brain is wired is such a relief. Now, that doesn't mean, okay, well, you don't have to ever try hard again and you can never succeed because you have ADHD. Instead, this opens up the doors to what tools are there to help people like you succeed? What tips and tricks can you find to help you get motivated, to move past the issues we have with task initiation, to help you move past the issues we have with rejection, sensitivity, dysphoria, to help you motivate yourself? When you have a brain that is very dopamine focused and very reward focused and very immediate reward focused, when you understand how your brain works and how to motivate it and how to reward it and how to get the best results out of it, then I find it much easier to succeed.

Speaker 1: 15:01

It is still difficult. I still have my bad ADHD days where I struggle to use the tools and tricks that I know work, but there are fewer of them when you spend years believing that you're handed the same tools as everyone else and somehow everyone is better at using them. It's hard when you are beating yourself up in your brain, thinking I don't have the hard worker gene that everybody in my family apparently has. When you think it is a personal failing that you are quote unquote lazy. Stepping back and realizing that what most people see is walking up a slight incline is tantamount to climbing a mountain for you. I think you become less ashamed and more proud because you did that despite having dozens of invisible hurdles that you didn't even realize you were jumping over. Recognizing that you are able to succeed despite all of that is huge. Being diagnosed also means recognizing that what you put in your body affects how your body reacts.

Speaker 1: 16:12

I know there's a lot of debate on whether or not being die free actually helps. Personally, I have noticed that I have worsened ADHD symptoms when I have read die 40. I've also noticed that in my son when he has something at school that had read die in it, his behavior in the afternoon is significantly worse on days than when he didn't have that For me. I also know that if I eat a lot of junk food, the result the next day is generally pretty terrible. Now that's not to say that I don't eat any junk food.

Speaker 1: 16:48

I love McDonald's chicken nuggets. I love McDonald's chicken nuggets so much that my husband gave them to me in a heart-shaped box for our very first Valentine's Day. He also kept the chocolate that he dumped out of the box. But the fact that I got 20 nuggets with a barbecue sauce in the middle in a heart-shaped box, that freaked me out because it was very warm on my lap and I wasn't sure what was happening. But it was wonderful.

Speaker 1: 17:12

I can eat those, but I have to make sure I'm balancing it with a lot of fresh produce and lower processed foods the rest of the day. If I have chips, I try to make sure I put it in a bowl so I'm not eating too many of them. With sodas, I try not to drink them at all. I try to drink more water, I try to drink a lot of tea and there is a noticeable difference on high sugar, high caffeine, high processed food, days and days without those things. So I treat my body differently. Now that I have this diagnosis, I am kinder to myself. I understand the relationship between my diet and my ability to focus. I understand the correlation between my cycle and my ADHD, which definitely worsens during the luteal phase, which, for those of you who are not aware, is the time between ovulation and the start of your menses.

Speaker 1: 18:11

There is a lot of discussion about overdiagnosis today. I know I've heard it, I'm sure you've heard it. I have a feeling the number of neurodivergent people is so much higher than anybody can fathom. But I also know that neurodivergent people generally hang out together and that it is a very heritable situation. So when I originally went to my family and said I suspected I had ADHD, there was some humor and well, if that's all it takes to have ADHD, then I'm probably ADHD too. And since that jokey conversation six years ago, my family has since come out and said wow, actually, no, I probably do. Am I going to get tested? No, probably not, because why would I bother at my age? But the recognition of oh no, oh, I probably do. You don't have to fit into the 1990s young white, male version of ADHD to have ADHD. This is also probably a great moment to point out that ADD attention deficit disorder is now ADHD inattentive type, add. The term is no longer used amongst professionals, it is just ADHD hyperactive type, adhd inattentive type and ADHD combination type Again. As I said earlier, I fall under inattentive. I suspect I am borderline combination, but that is a conversation for another podcast.

Speaker 1: 19:45

The final thing I'd like to address in this episode is dealing with people who say things like well, if that's all it takes to be ADHD, everybody is ADHD, or oh, while I'm feeling very ADHD today, or everyone's a little ADHD sometimes. Everyone struggles with the symptoms of ADHD on occasion. Everyone struggles with focus and memory and sitting still and paying attention to boring things and doing boring tasks and procrastination. We all do it. Everyone, regardless of neuro-spicy level, experiences those symptoms at some point or another. What makes it ADHD is that it's not on occasion, it is all the time, it is constant and it very rarely is relieved. The people who say things like oh, I'm a little ADHD today, I could just as easily say on one of my exceptionally good days, huh, I'm a little neurotypical today. But the thing that separates us is it's infrequent. I have trouble with task initiation with every single task, unless it is something that I am very excited by and am getting a huge hit of dopamine for.

Speaker 1: 21:03

Yes, everybody misplaces their keys. Few people have had to pay for as many sets of replacement keys as I have. Everyone misplaces their wallet from time to time. I replaced my driver's license four times in three years because of how many times I lost my wallet. Everyone struggles with procrastination. Utis are common in people with ADHD because they procrastinate going to the bathroom so often. Everyone forgets to eat on occasion. People with untreated ADHD can often deal with issues of weight loss because they simply forget to eat.

Speaker 1: 21:44

Nobody likes doing boring tasks. For somebody with ADHD, it causes physical pain every single time. So it is about frequency, it is about severity and it is about how it affects your everyday work and home life when it starts becoming severely detrimental and affecting your ability to succeed. Now it's concerning, especially if it's been present. Since childhood. We have seen an increase of ADHD-style symptoms in people. It's not a big surprise. With the rise of television and smartphones and social media. The world has never been so distracting and with likes and comments and shares, people have never been so reward-motivated. They've always been reward-motivated, but it has rarely been so immediate. Pavlov would have loved 2023. He would have loved social media and smartphones. We see these distractions very often, but that is not the same as true ADHD. Adhd is something you are born with. It is something that is present in childhood, regardless of whether or not it was picked up in childhood.

Speaker 1: 23:05

My mother recently sent me a box full of schoolwork from elementary through middle school I think there may have been some high school papers in there as well and I had somewhere in the vicinity of like 15 writing assignments from my third grade teacher. It was when we were learning to do expository writing, and every single one all 10 to 15 of them said at the top excellent writing, great detail. How can we keep you within the 45 minute time limit? This was wonderful. What can we do to help you finish on time? Unfortunately, I had to stop you because we hit the time limit. How can I help you finish within the time range? It wasn't a one offer or two off, it was every single writing assignment. If you looked at my report cards, they all said very bright daydreams, too much. Great grades. How can we help focus during lessons? Great at math. Please stop reading during math class.

Speaker 1: 24:19

When you look back through a 2023 lens at my schoolwork circa 1996, god, that's a terrifying dot circa 1996 through 2009, when I graduated high school, the symptoms and signs are all right there. I just weren't looking for it at that time. So what I'd like to leave you with is this If you are recently diagnosed, if you suspect you have it, if you have spent entirely too much time beating yourself up over your lack of trying, or constantly hearing that you could succeed if you just applied yourself, or accusations of being lazy or why aren't you hardworking enough, I want you to sit back and I want you to read up on what executive dysfunction is and what the ADHD brain looks like in comparison to a neurotypical brain, and I want you to experience that self-compassion and self-forgiveness. I plan to talk about a lot of the tools and tricks that I have used to succeed to fight my ADHD, and sometimes because of my ADHD. I hope they will help you. I hope they will motivate you along your journey to succeed. Maybe it'll push you towards getting a diagnosis. Maybe it'll push you towards discussing your suspicions with people who have struggled with your ADHD symptoms, whether it's family, whether it's coworkers, whether it's your spouse or your partner.

Speaker 1: 26:04

When you understand the difference between choices and symptoms, I think we become much more understanding and forgiving of the way our brain works. Neurodivergent brains are capable of wonderful, incredible, groundbreaking ideas, but until we give ourselves the confidence to believe that we are hardworking and that we are capable of success. I think it's a struggle for us to get there. So look through your past. Identify the moments where you blamed yourself for a lack of success. Identify what the symptom could have been that caused that difficulty. Have a little compassion and figure out how you could work with your ADHD in the future to avoid that situation. It's possible, I assure you. Until next time, this has been the ADHD EA Podcast. Thank you.