ADHD and Me: Getting a Diagnosis in Adulthood
As alluded to in my previous post, Professional Procrastinator, I have been waiting for a while now to find out test results after taking an extensive mental health assessment. Time passed like grains of wet sand in an almost-too-narrow hourglass as I waited, impatient and terrified, to learn about myself in a quantifiable way that could affect what the future looked like for me.
While I'll walk you through the why I decided to seek a diagnosis and the changes I've found in myself in the week since my results in this blog post, I think it's important to show you all how I shared the very important news with my close friends and family.
When I was a kid, mental health was still treated very differently than it is today, or even than it's been treated in the last decade. Autism and Aspergers (thank fuck we finally dropped this nasty N*zi doctor's name from the books), two parts of the same spectrum, were treated like they had no overlap; ADHD and ADD (now the equivalent of ADHD inattentive) were fully separate diagnoses. While I'm no mental health professional, or even amateur, I remember enough to know that the list could go on and on from there.
Asking for accommodation for said hurdles could also result in bullying and other ostracism from your peers in school, and I'm sure in other spaces that I wasn't a part of during my formative years. Think about how ridiculous that is: something fully beyond your control (how your brain or body formed at birth) was the sole reason you were put down, made fun of, or otherwise made to feel "lesser" than people who had more "advantageous" birthing conditions (we see other examples of this disgusting, broken mindset in racism, homophobia, sexism, etc.).
I can't claim to understand how mental health impacts today's youths and their education experience as 1. I am in no way, shape, or form today's youth and 2. I do not have any plans to add to the population and be subjected to the demands put on them by proxy, but I'd like to hope that things like this are being treated with more empathy than they were back in my schooldays. The mindset of, "This is the expectation for everyone so you better damn well meet it in the time and fashion I prefer," is a demand that discredits individual needs in an attempt to shame people into conformity for the greater good.
All that aside, my lead up to the results I have today maybe sounds familiar to some of you. I never struggled with school until college. I've referenced this in other posts before, but I was a quick study; I usually finished my homework in class while passively listening to lectures and taking down notes, but I never studied unless it was a quick cram of terms or formulas to have them fresh in my mind before a test. I graduated with over a 4.0 GPA from high school and assumed the world would be my oyster; that my luck would never run out.
Until one day it did.
College led to me dropping out 15 credit hours short of a bachelors degree because I just didn't know how to retain the information anymore. I couldn't motivate myself, the days of routine and consequences living with my parents were long gone and I had no structure to create an equivalent in my life away from my childhood home.
I started working mundane jobs that were effortless for me to master, getting quick promotions due to my work ethic. I was a jack of all trades, but a master of none as I jumped around place to place trying to find something that I truly enjoyed, not just tolerated until I grew tired of it. I think, even if I do feel closer to that goal, I'm still looking for the puzzle-piece fit of workplace happiness.
Even none of this led me to wanting to make a change or better understand myself, I just always looked for the next big thing that would make me happy. Something that would give me a rush of endorphins or dopamine and make me excited to be alive. I craved novelty, a new challenge to sink my teeth into and master in a matter of days or weeks to ensure I didn't lose momentum. I swapped up hobbies, played through old games for the nostalgia, lived vicariously through the work and fun of others; I had done everything but look at the root of what was causing me to feel stagnant and bored.
My thirties rolled around and I found myself in a rut: a dead-end job that ran me into the ground, just enough money to coast but never grow or save, none of my old hobbies giving me anywhere near the level of happiness they used to. I was on a sinking ship and I couldn't even get myself to start scooping out the water with a bucket, a cup, my hands, anything.
In adulthood, I've had many friends that deal with various mental health conditions. Some of them I've met having had their diagnoses since childhood, some I knew pre and post results, and some still haven't been assessed but assume they have this or that based on family history, their habits and thought processes, etc. I always thought I was built different (meaning "normal," whatever the hell that really is in actuality) and coasted along through a bland span of days that just left me feeling... tired. Uninspired. Missing something from the past that I couldn't quite put my finger on.
While I had symptoms that were already presenting (and realistically had been my whole life), I always had some kind of excuse for why they were separate issues.
- I've always had a bad memory, I've never been good with names and dates and places and plans (while I could recall every single detail of when I met my spouse for the first time, down to the day, time, location, and other people that were there)
- Sure I fidget a lot, but that's just because I need to exert energy while living an otherwise sedentary lifestyle
- Verbal instructions have never been easy for me, but I just need to listen better
As friends of mine received late in life ADHD diagnoses and talked about their struggles, the same things I was poorly powering through day in and day out, I started to panic. Was my whole personality just mental illness? Would trying to do something about this now, well past when it feels like is "correct" to learn these things about yourself, be a waste of time, effort, and money? What if it wasn't what I thought it was, what if it was something else? Something I was unprepared for? Decision paralysis started and held me up for longer than I'd like to admit.
What tipped me over the edge of seeking help was my inability to do the things I enjoyed doing. I wanted to work on my book, but it still sat at 15k words like it had for the past few months. I wanted to work on my VN, but I hadn't touched my pixel art course since last year. These things that I desperately wanted to do felt impossibly out of reach even though they were already started. I was tired of feeling lazy and useless and frustrated with myself, so finally decided to do something about it.
I talked with a new primary care physician earlier this year and expressed my thoughts and feelings. I wrote down my symptoms for months and let my doctor read the whole list at his own pace. As embarrassing and nerve-racking as it was to have this health care professional scroll a seemingly endless list of troubles from me, an adult woman, that included things like, "Having to crush cans when I finish the drink or I'll forget it's empty," and, "Peanut butter spoon lunch," it made me feel so validated to see him take my life impacting, though sometimes somewhat inane, problems seriously.
After he read through the list and we talked some more, he gave me a list of local mental health specialists that he personally endorsed to seek a formal diagnosis. While other friends of mine have gotten the 10 question ADHD assessment questionnaire and moved forward from there, my doctor (given the medical history of my family) wanted to ensure that he didn't miss anything that led to him prescribing me medicine that could be of little to no help, or even detrimental to my health. I was thankful of his thoroughness, even if the unknown wait time to get in with someone else did make me extremely nervous about how long the process would take from here.
Luckily, the place I chose received my referral the next day, and within a month I had a series of three appointments scheduled that were designed to give me the full workup. I had a call with a doctor that asked what my symptoms were, I had a separate (almost four hour long) mental health assessment that tested for ADHD, OCD, Autism, BPD, bipolar, depression, anxiety, and I'm sure many, many more things, then a final follow up to reveal the results. The last call would be a whopping three weeks after the assessment, and I've never felt time crawl so slowly.
My doctors throughout this process have been amazing. They've been kind, understanding, professional, and transparent. I came out of this on the other side hearing that the reason for my struggles wasn't laziness, it was ADHD. Like my Crohn's, there's no cure for this particular problem, but treatment is real. A weight lifted off my shoulders as I gave myself grace for the first time in my life thanks to the knowledge that I worked differently because I was wired to. I'm still somewhat riding the high from the assessment results.
A week later and my primary care physician prescribed me my first ever attempt at medication. Nervous as hell and tentatively excited at the prospect of having executive function, I started my first dose yesterday. And you know what happened? I could do things! Without hassle or bargaining or dragging my feet! I effortlessly did household chores that I can count on one hand how many times I've done them since moving out of my parents' house. I felt unstoppable.
In fact, I read a book for the first time in over a decade! The whole thing in one day! Sure, that may be a prime example of hyper focus, but I was both excited to have the attention span to do it and afraid that today wouldn't yield the same level of results, so I took advantage of what I could do in moment.
While I wouldn't say today has been quite the game changer that yesterday was, I'm still doing things without feeling like it's a burden! I'm moving from the couch to refill my water or throw away my own trash without asking my husband to do it for me so I don't have to move. I'm putting things away instead of putting them down and dealing with it later. I'm choosing to not have things running in the background that could be a disturbance that keeps me from accomplishing the things I want to do. And, while I did get distracted multiple times while writing this blog post, I actually had the ability to jump back into it without feeling like I'd lost all momentum. Things I never thought I'd be able to do with any sense of regularity or consistency are now achievable.
Beyond just giving some insight into my mental health journey, I hope this post can help someone else who is just trudging through life realize there really can be greener pastures. Addressing the problem was beyond terrifying, but in the end it's wound up being extremely rewarding for me. Even if this particular medicine doesn't wind up being the right dose or type for me in the long run, I've seen what I can accomplish and I'm confident that I will take the steps necessary to keep me there. I deserve it. I deserve the ability to be happy with myself, warts and all.
tl;dr I did a very, very hard thing and I'm so proud of myself :)