'I think I may have ADHD'

Coming to terms with having ADHD - admitting it to myself

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INTRODUCTION:

At the time of writing this I am 59 years old, but this process started about three years ago.

A close friend of mine, also in his 50s, was diagnosed with ADHD - Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, combined subtype¹.

It was the idea of a ‘diagnosis’ that changed things for me - there was something about this that made it ‘actual’ in a way I hadn’t considered before. Someone who knew about this sort of thing looked at my friend and decided that he ‘had’ the condition. It was ‘a thing’ and he ‘had it.’ There you go then.

But this set me thinking.

THE JOURNEY:

My own journey with ADHD started donkey’s years ago when I first became aware of it while working with troubled young people. Over the years, I learned more and more about it. I adapted my practice to help ‘ADHD kids’ more effectively. I read research papers and tried to keep myself informed about it all. Heck, I even mentioned to kids that I was ‘a bit ADHD’ myself.

So far, so good.

As time - decades in fact - went by, I quietly owned the fact that I was more than ‘a bit ADHD.’ Other professionals teased me about it gently. I played up to it now and then and developed a pride in being a professional social worker who was coping despite my condition. I even had close friends and colleagues - including psychologists and psychiatrists - who sensitively and quietly left me in no doubt that I had ADHD.

So, I reached 56 years old with all this going on and then something changed.

Trigger

My friend got his diagnosis.

Quite how or why this changed things so much for me, I’m not entirely sure; but it did. Radically. Maybe it was something about the formality of it? Having a doctor say, ‘you have this,’ seemed to ‘up the ante’ somehow.

I found a different narrative going on in my head. I moved from someone who’d long identified with ADHD, to someone asking himself whether I ‘actually had it,’ The ‘actual’ bit suddenly mattered.

I decided to dig deeper.

Confirmation

I immediately contacted two of my psychiatrist friends and tentatively suggested that, all joking apart, I was thinking I might actually have ADHD. They both laughed out loud. The tone of their responses, I felt, was one of, ‘of course you do, you know you do and, if you’re in any doubt, we know you do!’

Of course they were more subtle than that and responded carefully and tentatively, but the laugh gave it away. Here were two consultant psychiatrists - experts in their field with about 80 years of clinical experience between them - effectively saying, ‘Yes, Jonny, you have ADHD.’

The cat was now well and truly out of the bag.

In the space of a few days I’d gone from tacitly assuming I had the condition and not thinking a great deal about it, to having mental health professionals confirm it. Suddenly, it all seemed so much more ‘actual.’

Shock

Despite spending my working life, 40+ years of it, nominally thinking of myself as being ‘a bit ADHD,’ I was now in shock!

I know, it sounds daft. How can you spend decades thinking of yourself as something and then be so affected when it’s confirmed? I don’t know, but I was.

Quite out of the blue, I was gripped by an urge to do something about it. To understand it more; at least in as much as how it affected me personally. What was my particular manifestation of ADHD all about, if you like. Given my age, I was very aware of the need to avoid risk, stop being impulsive, ditch the over-working and generally slow down a bit - all things I’d summarily failed to do for years!

Now I realised that I am like I am because there’s something more going on than simple inherited traits or personality factors. I ‘had’ something that made me like this. There’s no doubt, it was a bit of a shock!

Grief

After getting to this point, something happened that threw me completely and almost toppled me (in the sense of being so unexpected I was temporarily paralysed by it). I started to grieve.

I didn’t think of it as grief at first. But it soon became apparent that I was experiencing deep sadness at things that had happened in my life and, importantly, things that hadn’t happened.

• I singularly failed at school, leaving with no qualifications

• As a result, I spent most of my adult life talking myself down as better at ‘doing’ than thinking

• I talked down my own work, including a book I wrote, because I felt it wasn’t very ‘academic’

• I offended people by not listening, cutting across them or blurting out inappropriate stuff

• I didn’t keep friends or really get close to anyone very much

• I regularly forget things, sometimes important things, causing offence and irritation to others

• The inability to focus on one thing because there were a gazillion others flashing through my mind

• The utter exasperation at having to go to bed and sleep because, despite knowing I was tired, I didn’t feel tired

• Completely losing it emotionally over the smallest things and feeling frightened, at times, with how angry I felt

• Being late for stuff or forgetting altogether, despite a preference for being early and trying (really trying) to plan well so I didn’t forget

• Losing track of conversations over and over again as my mind wandered off onto something else

• The over-riding feeling of my own existence was one of, ‘could do better’ (school again!)

These are just a few summary things to give you a flavour of the bigger thing that was going for me - I could have done sooo much better in my life than I did, if only…

Now, of course, I’m not writing off all my weaknesses and failings as purely about having ADHD. But, looking back, without it I might well have got to where I am now a decade or more earlier. There’s nothing quite like lost time to turbo charge feelings of regret.

The despondency lasted a few days while I ruminated and wrestled with it all. But once I realised what it was and what caused it, I could settle myself and start getting some perspective. I started to speak positively again about myself and about ADHD in an effort to balance my internal voice and avert a longer term foray into grief.

I love this quote from Gabor Mate’s book, ‘Scattered Minds’ (check it out here)

‘The shock of self-recognition many adults experience on learning about ADD is both exhilarating and painful. It gives coherence, for the first time, to humiliations and failures, to plans unfulfilled and promises unkept, to gusts of manic enthusiasm that consume themselves in their own mad dance, leaving emotional debris in their wake, to the seemingly limitless disorganisation of activities, of brain, car, desk, room.’

Now, I’ve come full circle. I was called ‘Tigger’ by friends in primary school and each stage of my life has its own version of this. Now, at 59, I’ve owned the fact that I have ADHD and always will have. It’s part of me and, despite the demands and disadvantages, there are advantages, too. But getting to this stage was tricky.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

My aim here is to help and encourage others on their own ADHD journey.

Your situation may be very different. The sub-type of ADHD you have - or suspect you have - may differ. But sometimes hearing about someone else’s struggles can lend strength to your own efforts to come to terms with and get through it.

Here are some things to think about:

• It can be a shock to realise you have, and/or be confirmed as having, ADHD

• This may floor you a bit to start with but is a natural and normal response to this kind of new information

• Grief about ‘what might have been’ is normal, too. But pitching your tent there is unhelpful - start reframing things quickly. For example,

  • ‘I achieved xyz despite my ADHD’

  • ‘My ADHD taught me to…’

  • ‘To get by I developed xyz strategies to cope’

  • ‘If I didn’t have ADHD I probably never would have…’

  • ‘The positive side of ADHD for me is…’

• If you find yourself looking back too much, focusing on and celebrating how you adapted positively will help you keep things balanced

Having ADHD is tough. But it has advantages too. More on this later.

But I hope this little foray into my ADHD realisation has been useful and has encouraged you to hang in there and press on.

There’s lots more to come…

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More information:

• BOOK: Scattered Minds - The Origins & Healing of ADHD by Gabor Maté - click here (affiliate link)

• BOOK: ADHD 2.0 by Ed Halliwell & John Ratey - click here (affiliate link)

• ADHD Test: Do I Have ADHD? - click here

• ADHD Test: For Women - click here

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© Jonny Matthew 2024

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1. Parent ICD-11 link with diagnostic requirements: click to read