I have ADHD
Finally learning why I am the way I am
I’ve always found life in general a stressful business.
Ever since I was small I think I’ve always felt a bit of a square peg in a round hole. This has made the world at times a difficult place to engage with. I’ve managed of course, but it’s always been hard work to a greater or lesser degree to maintain what the world expects against what’s going on inside my head.
As I’ve got older and my responsibilities have grown, I’ve had more frequent spikes of stress where I’ve sought professional help of one kind or another to mitigate it. Five years ago I went onto antidepressants after a particularly stressful time at work. I’m still on them today.
Whilst those episodes have come and gone, frustratingly I’ve always returned to a baseline of feeling, well, stressed. I’ve never got to the bottom of it, though as you can see from my writing I have thought deeply about matters of the mind this past year or so. It’s always felt like my baseline state is to mentally “run hot”, to coin a phrase.
Then by complete chance, I heard a lady talking on a radio phone-in.
This person described how she had been misdiagnosed with anxiety for many years when actually as an adult she had discovered that she had Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).
Like many people, I’d never really perceived adult ADHD as a “thing” although I’d heard of some celebrities talking about it. I had always associated it with highly energetic children. Purely on a whim, I Googled for it and read some articles that described the symptoms.
And for the first time, I recognised myself and things started to made sense.
I just cannot describe the overwhelming sense of relief that came over me.
After the relief, came the sensation of finally understanding what shame is because I suddenly sensed the growing absence of it. The weight of all that shame about shortcomings that I always felt I should be able to fix but just couldn’t started to feel a bit lighter on my shoulders. Perhaps I wasn’t deficient and unworthy as a person and a professional, I was just, well, playing the cards I was dealt the best I could. For days afterwards, I’d have moments of realisation as circumstances past and present began to click together like pieces in a jigsaw.
I have since had the diagnosis formally confirmed by a specialist psychiatrist. To be specific I have ADHD, predominantly inattentive type.
My first emotion on being told was, of all things, a profound sense of pride.
And maybe, just maybe, I’ve finally started to accept myself.
