I want to read your experiences before being diagnosed with adhd? How did you realized? How did you feel?
Me:bitch . I have adhd and I need therapy and meds
Family member: bUt dO YoU waNt tO bE laBeLed???
Me, timidly: um…. no…..
Me, in my head: guess the internet’s my only safe place for mental health huh
i was diagnosed at 4. i had no idea until a school counselor accidentally broke the news when i was 17. assignments that took my friends an hour took me three. i almost never finished my tests. half of my homework was late. my mom tried to get me into assisted study hall and i refused. my counselor gave me countless planners and checklists and i could never keep them for longer than a week. my mom sent me in to get signatures from my teachers so i could prove i talked to them about my 0’s.
my twin sister had been in accelerated school programs since we were 9. i wanted to be like her so bad. i hated help, hated admitting i needed help, would rather fail than ask for help, because nobody else seemed to need it. i wanted to be able to do what everyone else was doing and i was desperate to prove it, because i didn’t know i had adhd and thought everyone else had just diagnosed me with stupid. my mom insists i knew. i didn’t.
fast forward to now, i’m a grown woman and i’m still finding out day-to-day more and more of my behaviors that are related to my adhd. i have the sense of self awareness i was denied for most of my childhood. i’m still stuck in the depression that stemmed from leaving my adhd untreated for so long. i’m experimenting with different medications and i’m doing well. but i still feel like i’m the only one in my life who understands how i work.
please tell your kids what’s happening inside their brains. talk to adults with adhd and ask them what their childhood was like. stop reading those adhd parenting books that were written in the 90’s. they’re not relevant anymore. i always wonder what my life would look like now if i didn’t burn out three years before i graduated high school, if i’d understood what was going on, if i had someone else who understood looking out for me.
i know i’m preaching to the choir here, but i needed to get that out there. it may have seemed like a minor issue when i was a kid but maybe if i had been treated properly i wouldn’t want to die today.
Even saying ”I’m so sorry, I completely forgot” sounds marginally better than ” I’m so sorry, I didn’t completely forget, I actually completely remembered. I thought about it the whole time and it stressed me out so much my brain built an insurmountable wall around it.”
