Navigating Adult ADHD: My Story of Getting Diagnosed at 33
Making sense of my neurodiversity
A document called “Getting Diagnosed with ADHD at 33” has been in my drafts folder since the summer of 2022. From my document’s history, I can tell that various edits have been made to it every couple of months. So you know, this isn’t the first time I have thought of writing about my experience with adult ADHD and how the diagnosis has affected my life.
I guess it is challenging to figure out where to start or how to dig into my ADHD story. It came up again yesterday when I listened to an episode of one of my favorite podcasts, Bodies. The episode, Diverging, dives into Hannah Harris Green’s ADHD diagnosis story - the struggles that led to the diagnosis and what changed for her post-diagnosis.
Side note: I highly, HIGHLY recommend giving the podcast, Bodies a shot. I looked through the podcast feed to share an episode or two, but the podcast website has a handy little starting guide. You can find it here.
Anyhow, back to the episode, Diverging, and my ADHD story. I found some similarities between Hannah’s story and my story. For both of us, our partners were the critical forces in helping us get started with the diagnostic process. Like Hannah, my therapist was the first medical professional to validate my feelings and self-diagnosis. Additionally, both Hannah and I started medicating our ADHD with Ritalin. Finally, there is an element of trauma involved for both of us. While it was PTSD in Hannah’s case, it was Complex-PTSD (C-PTSD) for me. For those wondering what C-PTSD is and how it differs from PTSD, here’s an infographic by VeryWellMind that might be helpful.
It might seem like I am trying to share my ADHD story through Hannah, and you are right. As I write this, I am still unsure how and where to begin my ADHD diagnosis story. For one, I have a hard time qualifying my personality traits as ADHD symptoms OR wondering if it’s me growing from a quirky, temperamental teenager to an angry, aggressive woman with a weird sense of humor and no spatial awareness OR symptoms of C-PTSD. Even the psychiatrist who brought this up during the final evaluation shared his assessment, saying, “we could break it down and say which of these symptoms is coming from ADHD and which one is C-PTSD, but there is definitely ADHD there.”
However, a few things I do can be attributed to ADHD, and I can write about it with some certainty. Understanding the reasoning behind a behavior, even if it seems irrational, helps me come to terms with it and accept my emotions without feeling ashamed. This is critical for me before I can figure out how to change a particular behavior or introduce a shift in my pattern of thinking - if that is what I want.
Now, the following list may or may not make sense to you. You might say, “Hey, I do this. I don’t have ADHD or C-PTSD. I am not neurodivergent”. I hear you, but remember that this is my neurodivergent experience. If something resonates with you, that’s great! However, I am not speaking for every neurodivergent human out there - always remember that, please.
Additionally, ADHD has many contradictions, and I will let Sasha Hamdani break those down for you.
Without further adieu, here are things I do that make sense to me since my ADHD diagnosis:
Doomsday prep
I constantly imagine and prepare for the worst-case scenarios in any given situation. My partner likes to call it Mental Exponential Expansion. You can't think of anything that can go wrong in a situation? I GOT YOU! Remember when I considered driving to Costa Rica with the dogs as the only possible solution? We have all been there, right? RIGHT?
The opposite of a photographic memory
It must be nice to read something once and remember it. On the other hand, I must underline or highlight every word I read and then write it down with pen and paper. Imagine going to grad school for computer science and learning how to code. Yes, I would try to write down computer code. Lots and lots of tears were shed during those 18 months.
Terrible short-term or working memory
Now, I always request my doctors to write down or send me the post-visit instructions via email. It might look like I understood it all, but trust me, I was focusing on making the correct amount of eye contact. That reminds me of the next thing on the list.
Eye contact
I cannot make eye contact and understand everything being said to me. Am I supposed to focus on whether I am making enough eye contact OR processing the conversation?! How does one do all of those things at the same time? I feel overstimulated just thinking about it.
Always planning, yet always late
How is it that I barely make it on time, even when I plan my entire day, sometimes to the minute, around an appointment? The planning is supposed to help with my anxiety, yet I generally need to take a few minutes to breathe and reset once I get to the appointment.
Constant buzzing in my brain
I didn't know that not everyone has 10-20 different thoughts/ideas and one to two random songs dancing around in their brains. In fact, this revelation started my ADHD journey.
Hyperfocus
Growing up, my family would call me an extremist. It was the 90s, and everyone was throwing around words like that.
Jokes apart, I tend to hyperfocus on one thing, get obsessed with it, lose all interest in it just as I am getting good at it, and then give up. Take working out as an example - I have gone from yoga to HIIT to Crossfit to nothing to walking/hiking to strength training. Trust me when I say this, I go all in! I practiced yoga six times a week. Sometimes I would practice it twice a day. And then, one random day, to everyone’s surprise, I was just done.
The same happens with food, too. I have had steel-cut oats with chia seeds since the very beginning of the pandemic. It is the same goddamn recipe every week. I tried switching it up with the protein powder flavor once but had to throw out the entire batch. It has been three years now, and I am still eating it for breakfast as we speak. Yep, you read that right!
Negative self-talk or my very, very LOUD inner critic
Add that to the already buzzing brain. I am actively working on this one. I wrote about self-compassion in this post from March.
Emotional Dysregulation and RSD
I wrote all about it last week. You can find it here.
This is my list for now. As you can imagine, it is always evolving as I continue in my own journey to understand my brain better.
I am curious to learn your neurodivergent story. Were you diagnosed as an adult? How did the diagnosis or even a self-diagnosis affect your life? What is the one thing that made sense to you after you received your diagnosis?