ADHD: My Diagnosis Journey
TLDR: How ONE video opened my eyes and CHANGED the course of my life! Reflecting back on how my symptoms got MISSED throughout my entire life.
Let's talk ADHD.
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. There's three types: inattentive, hyperactive, and combined.
I was diagnosed with combined-type ADHD at 31 years old. Yup, 31! Here is my story.
One day, I saw a video that changed the course of my life. It was about how internal hyperactivity comes out in ADHD. In a nutshell, I have what is called thought streams. Essentially I have multiple multiple multiple thoughts happening in my brain at any given time, they never stop. It is like a constant buzzing noise in the background. My brain has never been quiet/silent... EVER.
Anyhow... I thought this was normal. Why does meditation send me into a panic? I must be doing it wrong? After watching the video, I realized that people can literally have no thoughts sometimes. I'm sorry, what?! But apparently, it's true. I thrive in chaos, it quiets the noise in my brain.
I began to question my brain and my experiences and naturally more videos began popping up on my news feed. ADHD. Huh.... I talked to my family doctor and was eventually diagnosed by a psychiatrist with combined-type ADHD.
So why so late? (Fun fact: Many women are diagnosed in their thirties, especially after having children when the symptoms become unmanageable. We are still learning about how ADHD presents differently in women and girls). Well, what's the first question they ask you... did you struggle in school as a child?
Socially? God yes. But grades, I was an A++ student. I excelled in school. School was easy if you just did what the teacher wanted. Also fun fact: ADHD does not impact intelligence level. Very often people with ADHD are highly intelligent, gifted even. Reaching our potential is the challenge.
Thinking back to school, there were signs that got missed. I remember asking the educators to repeat the instructions many many times for assignments. I became a perfectionist and a people pleaser. I didn't have many friends and maintaining friendships even as an adult has been difficult. I never fit in, still don't but that doesn't bother me anymore. I preferred talking to the teachers at recess opposed to playing with the other kids.
By high school and university, I couldn't sit still. I stimmed a LOT. Anyone else bounce their leg up and down while sitting? Pull your hair out or twirl it? Bite your lips or inside your cheeks? Pick your skin past the point of bleeding? Click your pen repeatedly while thinking? These are also signs of hyperactivity by the way.
If you know me personally and you're thinking, I've never seen you do any of those things. This doesn't sound like you. Let me tell you a little secret. I have learned to mask my symptoms so strongly that even I didn't realize what was happening. If someone told me I was weird for doing a repetitive action, I never did it in public again. Talking too fast? I have to consciously slow down my speech to be socially acceptable, which by the way is exhausting! I lived behind a mask my entire life and am still learning to accept who I am.
Back to my diagnosis. I remember asking the doctor to help me because my short term memory was atrocious. I would think of something I needed to buy while standing in the living room, and by the time I got to the white board in the kitchen, it was gone. What the hell was wrong with my brain.... it isn't short term memory. ADHD affects your working memory, your ability to hold a task in the forefront of your brain without another task interrupting and taking over.
Have you ever been tidying the living room and picked up a shirt and bring it downstairs to the laundry room and plan to start the laundry but along the way there's a bottle to recycle so you pick it up and start going to the recycle never having started the laundry and along the way something else distracts you and before you know it: the living room isn't tidy, the laundry isn't started, and the bottle isn't recycled.. Still following me? This is your working memory struggling with executive function.
Who hasn't done that, right? Well here's the difference. If you're neurotypical and feeling stressed, you may very well start 5 tasks and never complete any. But when you remove the stress and this continues to happen every day, all day, that my friends is a sign of ADHD. This is one of my biggest challenges.
I either run around completing no tasks unless I have a list to follow. Often I circle back and find my uncompleted task left out, opps. Or I hyperfocus on a task so hard that I forget to eat, sleep, drink, or go to the bathroom. With hyperfocus, comes time blindness. ADHD isn't the inability to focus. We can focus, IF we are interested. ADHD is a dysregultion of attention.
ADHD has a huge list of symptoms that I won't get into today, but I do want to share that it is a spectrum. What may be my hardest struggle, may not be a struggle for someone else at all and vice versa. Every symptom has varying degrees of difficulty for every individual. But that's what makes us unique.
ADHD is considered to some a disability, and sure there are lots of struggles and challenges. However, it also makes me an incredibly creative, compassionate, and empathetic individual and allows me to problem-solve by thinking way outside the box. Like WAY outside.
Did getting a diagnosis make a difference in my life if I am not on medication for it? I can confidently say it completely changed my life and my inner voice. I'll talk more about that another day.
Anyhow, I could talk about this forever but I will end it here. If you have a question about ADHD or my own story, please leave a comment or PM and I will be happy to respond.
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With love,
Alysha
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