having adhd and not knowing it from a young age is being yelled at by your parents because you remembered to do your homework that’s due tomorrow on the night before. it is often getting into trouble because you zoned out during a conversation or a teacher’s explanation but you don’t even know how you did it, you don’t control it. it is knowing deep down that you’re different from other kids but not knowing why. and then, being treated different by your peers and by the adults around you and again not knowing why. it is suffering in silence because everybody, in a way or another, punishes you for being the way you are even if you don’t even know what that means.
but then… you finally understand it. you finally put all the pieces together and for the first time in your life, everything you’ve lived until that moment finally makes sense. the reasons behind the things you did and still do are finally explained to you and you don’t feel like an outsider anymore. and tbh? it’s one of the greatest feelings in the world.
UGH there is NOTHING more frustrating than trying to research ADHD, it’s all “do you interrupt people a lot? do you find it hard to sit still?” and “boys are twice as likely to have ADHD than girls” and “here’s how to deal with your ADHD child” and there’s nothing about adults, nothing about underdiagnosis in women, nothing about RSD, dyscalculia, sensory processing, emotional regulation
i am not a little boy pretending to be an airplane in the back of the classroom. I was never allowed to be, because I was a little girl. i was a little girl who couldn’t sit still but i had to because ladies sit still while the boys shout and fidget in the background. i was a little girl who got left behind when recess ended because i was so engrossed in my small rock garden i didn’t hear the bell; i was a little girl who grew up smart enough to take precalculus, but couldn’t for the life of me remember my times tables; i was a little girl who got so angry and didn’t know how to stop it (“you can control your emotions!” my dad told me; “don’t bottle it up,” my mom said; “scream into a pillow, write it down, take deep breaths” everyone told me, and none of it helped); i was a little girl who lay awake every night terrified i’d forgotten to do something due tomorrow; i was a little girl who couldn’t make friends because socializing was hell because if i made one wrong move, received one negative response, i might as well have set myself on fire; i was a little girl who took pride in being the Weird Girl, because i had to; i was a little girl with adhd
and now i’m an adult woman with adhd, and i know that because of people on tumblr, not because of the DSM-V. The DSM-V and the CDC tell me little boys have ADHD, not little girls. they tell me if i don’t interrupt people (don’t interrupt people, that’s rude, being rude means hurt hurt hurt because of RSD and nice young ladies aren’t rude anyway) and finish assigned tasks (don’t forget don’t forget don’t forget if you forget they’ll hate you) i don’t have the inattentive component; and they tell me if i can sit still (what kind of organs do snails have, anyway? let’s research that for four hours) and avoid butting into people’s space (don’t be rude, don’t be RUDE) i don’t have the hyperactive component; and they only ever mean to talk to parents of little ADHD boys, and there is nothing, nothing, nothing meant for me.
Wow. I relate to this so much and the thought of it possibly being ADHD never even crossed my mind.
Just from my personal experience, I’ve found it much easier to get a diagnosis and be treated for mine. More and more health professionals are recognizing ADHD in AFAB (assigned female assign birth) people and adults. I’d highly recommend seeing a mental health professional to get assessed if you think it’s impacting your daily life in massively negative ways; getting help can be a life saver.
They also don’t talk about how girls with ADHD are much more likely to develop anxiety or how girls tend to fixate on hyper control to prevent “unladylike” behavior.
It took until college for me to get a definitive diagnosis of ADHD, and even then I second guess it. I can focus on video games for 18+ hours, with no breaks, not even for food. That’s not inattentive! Doesn’t matter if I can only focus on a few very specific games or that what’s really happening is hyper fixation. I can focus therefore no ADHD. My classmates comment on how surprised they are that I didn’t make a lot of noise in class from fidgeting? Everyone fidgets, still not ADHD. Literally feel like my brain is being crushed in a voice whenever I try to study or work? I just don’t have the discipline to get my work done, not ADHD. Want to start crying cause you can’t focus and what your learning/working on just does not make sense? Suck it up, still not ADHD.
“Everyone experiences those things”
Actually, no, they don’t. I’m not hyper fixating because I’m obsessed or addicted to something. My brain just decided THAT’S SOMETHING WE CAN FOCUS ON. Normal people don’t fail to get any work done for weeks or months at a time because it physically hurts your brain and things just WONT WORK. Normal people can get comfortable when sitting.
I was tested for ADHD as a little girl but it was decided I didn’t have it, so I learned to sit still. I learned not to talk in school. I didn’t fidget and I didn’t speak unless spoken to. I hyper fixated on reading and expanding my vocabulary in third grade I was reading books at an 8th grade level because of this, but I didn’t have ADHD, I was just smart. I could not, for the life of me, figure out what the weird language of math was. it was a foreign language I couldn’t understand. but that was just me not trying hard enough. when I drove myself to tears trying to figure out one problem and being unable to move on to the next until k got this one right it wasn’t ADHD, it was me being childish and procrastinating my work. me not turning in half done work because it wasn’t finished so I couldn’t because it wasn’t done and it needed to be done to get turned in, was me being irresponsible and not caring about my grades when I cared so much it stressed me out in the fourth grade.
I got diagnosed with ADHD when I was seventeen years old. I was almost done with school by then. but that didn’t matter. we got me on meds, but they made me so sick I couldn’t eat anything and I was almost a zombie, no emotions to even struggle to regulate. (which when I had issues with that I was just “over emotional” and “a crybaby”) so we got me on new meds, and I think they worked. I couldn’t tell. I didn’t feel any different. I still hyper fixated on english and reading only now it’s fantasy and fiction because the world I see is too bleak and rattled with horrible things that my mind of anxiety, depression, and ADHD can barely handle.
now I’m twenty and off all medication and not being out back on because “it’s all in your head”. I’m twenty and just learning that the sinking feeling and tightness in my chest when I even THINK I’ve made someone close to my heart remotely upset is something that comes with ADHD that I wasn’t told about.
nobody tells you how much it actually sucks to deal with ADHD, and how its different for literally every single person with it. because while I may suffer from auditory processing (“huh?” “oh wait, *answers question/continues conversation in the middle of the person repeating*”/ “wait what? my brain said no to that-”), someone else may not, they may be able to process things perfectly but have some other issue with I don’t have.
WOW. I got my diagnosis a few months ago at age 32 and it seriously just boggles my mind. This entire post is so necessary. A diagnosis of ADD/ADHD as a late teen/early adult is just wild. You’ve lived your whole life feeling a certain way and then you get told you have ADD/ADHD. If I hadn’t worked up the courage and actually talked to my Doctor about my eating behavior and how it was making me feel, I wouldn’t have even known.
Doc decided to test me after 6 months when we talked about side effects of the med he had me on (Vyvanse) and there weren’t any negative. The positives prompted the test.
People don’t realize you don’t need to be hyperactive to to have attention deficit disorder.
Happy New Years! 2020 may have been a hard year, but it was a big year for me in terms of being diagnosed and finding the wonderful ADHD community. I felt so lost after my initial diagnosis, but I was so lucky to find people who understand and have been such great supports.
Thank you all for being a part of this and for sharing your experiences, cheering me on, and being a part of this community.
This is a very personal comic, even though it’s not very long and doesn’t have many details. There were many opportunities in my life where my ADHD should have been caught, but I felt like I had been failed several times by the same professionals I had sought help from. It all boiled down to the fact they thought they knew me better than I knew me and therefore what I had to say was not deemed important enough to listen to.
It wasn’t until I started seeing my current therapist that I was actually allowed to speak for myself. At first it seemed to only confirm my Generalized Anxiety Disorder, but the more I talked, the more she began to realize that there was something else going on. One day she politely asked me to stop for a moment and point blank asked me “Bri, have you ever heard of Inattentive ADHD?” I had not.
I’m a 40 year old woman, and a week ago, I started taking medication for ADHD. This diagnosis did not come as a surprise—I had to push for testing—but my suspicions had slowly been growing.
“But you did so well in school.”
“But everyone procrastinates sometimes.”
“But trauma has the same symptoms.”
But nothing.
Maybe I was just good at masking things. Maybe I always had enough time or deadlines or interest or coping methods to get by. Maybe there’s a reason my trauma symptoms look like ADHD symptoms. Maybe I grew up in a time, a culture, a household, where nobody really thought about digging into mental health. Maybe I was fine.
But it was still hard. And I haven’t been “fine” for a while. Those deadlines, that free time, those coping mechanisms compressed and disintegrated amid parenthood and a graduate program and family crisis and a pandemic, until my window of tolerance for over- or under-stimulation grew so small as to be disabling. My coping mechanisms became less about function, and more about survival.
I’ve been unconsciously self-medicating with caffeine and sugar for a long time. I pick up new hobbies like I’m tasting samples at Costco. I can’t sleep without white noise, or study without music, because my brain is too loud. I’ve always done my best work in the frantic early morning hours before an assignment is due. And I hate it. Have a long conversation with me, and it will fork like a strange and glorious Wikipedia rabbithole. I have to write lists—sooooo many lists. And I forget what I’m supposed to be doing as soon as I open a new browser tab, or walk through a doorway, or have a stray, interesting thought.
I don’t expect medication to magically change all that. I’m still going to be me. I still am me. But it’s been a little quieter inside my head this week. And I can see my window of tolerance opening up around me.
And that’s a terrifying, beautiful thing.
<3
Being diagnosed as an adult was life-changing for me. I hope the same is true for you!
What? “You were never taught how to focus as a baby”?? How do you even teach that to a baby?¿
STRAP YOURSELF IN BRO, WE’RE GOING TIME TRAVELING [IN AMERICA]
sooo after a bunch of civilization advancements (technology, food supply, modern medicine) started giving caretaker parents serious free time (1940′s-ish onwards), parents had the option to pamper their kids instead of scheduling nursing time for baby #12 between hand-washed laundry loads and making bread dough.
In the US, this meant a bunch of dudes took it on themselves to write books and make lots of money telling people to never neglect baby cries and never put kids in playpens and stuff
(the most famous one was Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care, 1st edition published in 1946 but new ones published like every decade the whole century)
people were like yeah!! that sounds like a great idea! and stopped putting their kids in playpens and scheduling nursing and whatever.
and then the civil unrest of the 1960′s and 70′s happened and everyone was like ‘OH MY GOD THIS IS BECAUSE WE NEVER PUT OUR BABIES IN PLAYPENS ISN’T IT’
other dudes wrote other books like ‘dr. spock is wrong, buy my book instead where I tell you to pinch your baby’s neck to discipline them because lack of baby discipline is everything wrong with this country’
other dudes said ‘well MY book says we should be friends with our kids instead of ordering them around’
but even though their parents were freaking out because they figured hippies were the result of free-range babies, baby boomers were like ‘this Dr. Spock guy is GREAT’ and in the 1980′s they also were all about Free Range Babies.
I mean, his name is DOCTOR SPOCK. dr. spock
are you not going to do what dr spock tells you to do????
soall these babies born in the 1980′s never went in playpens and were fed whenever they were hungry instead of scheduling mealtimes and whatever
and playpens are SO out of style that we don’t even call them that anymore and everybody is like ‘they probably fuck up your kid. they probably just fuck your kid up so bad’
We started using Ritalin to treat adhd in the late 1960′s
then in the 1990′s: BOOM. Suddenly all these kids born in the 80′s/in elementary school in the 90′s were getting diagnosed with adhd left and right! and it never stopped getting diagnosed a lot??? the percentage of kids diagnosed with adhd keeps going up (11-13% of kids in 2011)
(spoilers: starting in 1991 adhd got disability help, lots of publicity, standardized testing increased, cultural standards changed, etc)
butalthough Science™ had linked adhd with heredity and neurological function, not diet or parenting methods …
–
“excuse me, the explanation that Science™ gives for kids getting diagnosed with adhd does not satisfy me, a layman, and therefore I would like to seek an uninformed second opinion” - 90′s/00′s parents, probably
“did somebody say they wanted an UNINFORMED SECOND OPINION?” - 90′s/00′s media, probably
–
…. the idea that adhd is an uncontrollable inherited disorder is actually kinda scary. and if you think the stigma against mental illness and neurodiversity is bad now, man. you should have seen the 1980′s/1990′s. so even as people were getting their kids checked because they didn’t want their academic life to suffer and studies said adhd would make you a bad student for life without treatment, there was this lingering feeling that adhd was just some kind of excuse for being undisciplined.
and hey! people sure do love to tell other people what they’re doing wrong, especially if it will make them money.
so there’s plenty of people eager to write books and articles that explain that while they’re sure adhd is real …. probably………. you know, in some case study somewhere ……………. …. the large majority of ‘adhd’ people are totally normal - orwould have been, if you hadn’t been a terrible parent(!!!):
“10,000% of the time adhd is a misdiagnosis. so maybe your kid does have adhd, but it’s way more likely that they just have a short attention span, can’t stand being bored, lack self-discipline, and don’t know how to organize because you fucked up your parenting so bad!
PS and even if they do have adhd their symptoms would be less bad if you were a better parent. you ass” - an uninformed second opinion media piece, probably
—
so in conclusion: as late as 2012, something like 1 out of 3 people thought your adhd is just because your parents/guardians did a bad job raising you. they let you do whatever you want too much, didn’t pay enough attention, let you watch too much tv or play too many video games, never put you in a playpen, or something else. i don’t know. but it’s sure not neurodiversity or anything.
that’s what we get for listening to Spock about parenting.
(final but not necessary to read note under the cut!)
adhd culture is being told as a kid that you’re too impatient / impulsive / distracted 24/7 but not getting a diagnosis bc you’re not a cis white boy so you start learning more about it on your teens and maybe bring it up at home but your parents are like “wdym you’re grown” bc of course only kids have adhd so you wait until you’re an adult to get a diagnosis but you have adhd so ofc you keep forgetting about making an appointment and you’re just ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯
