To ask why you sought an ADHD diagnosis in adulthood?

I had my ADHD diagnosis at 38 and made the personal decision not to medicate.
Like many people have said, it's helped me accept myself. I'm not a failure/lazy/thick (I have a 1:1 degree...hello hyperfocus!) Up until 4.5 years ago I had a successful career but had to give this up due to different, physical, disabilities.

At the grand old age of 46 I'm finally beginning to like myself & accept me for who I am. I know I'm wired differently to NT folks and that's OK.
Ironically, my diagnosis has been incredibly helpful in supporting my 13 Yr old DD as she is currently going through the pathway. Whilst our ADHD manifests in different ways there's also a number of crossover elements that I feel equipped to support her through.
My partner recieved his diagnosis at 49 and chose to medicate. His diagnosis & medication have been an absolute game changer for him.
Remember, there's a whole generation of us, especially woman who mask, that went through school flying under the radar x

My DD’s secondary school picked hers up when she started. She found the transition horrendous and I was so desperate to help her we went to a private paediatrician for assessment. (She’d be doing GCSEs if we waited for the NHS.). That was 4x 1 hour appts, reports from both schools etc.

The paediatrician strongly suggested I seek diagnosis too. I spoke with a clinical psychologist I worked with and she was amazed I didn’t know I had it. Again, ridiculous waiting list so I went private. Top marks across every measure. School reports, questionnaires from my parents and colleagues, 3 hours of assessment.

Life suddenly made sense.

I spent 6 months doing all the non-medication stuff: coaching, exercise, diet. And 2 months ago I started medication. It’s been life changing.

I can support DD. I can manage life better. Sometimes I mourn the opportunities I may have had had ADHD in girls been better understood in the 90s. But actually, I’ve done okay.

You sound exactly like me. All being well I will have my ADHD assessment this summer. It would explain soooo much. Hugs!

I haven't coped my whole life and when I tried talking to my GP about my symptoms over the years she was largely dismissive or focused on trauma / mental health. Can't cope with housework 'Get a cleaner' Over decades I was referred to treatment for depression, anxiety and PTSD but no amount of therapy helped me cope with everyday responsibilities. Taxes years behind, struggling with basic self care, housecare and socially. At one point I employed some-one to assist me with the most basic of things. I felt a lot of shame. Simultaneously I was running a business and excelling in other areas of my life.
Then menopause hit and the systems I’d put in place no longer were enough. On most days I hit a wall at around 2 in the afternoon and from that time onwards struggled to do anything including taking myself to the loo.
At this point my marriage was also rocky for the first time.
It never ever occurred to me I might have ADHD. I’d bought the idea that it was about overactive badly behaved little boys. But before the ADHD bandwagon arrived in a random conversation I heard some-one rattle off the symptoms and I thought “That’s ME!”
Diagnosis was expensive and took a long time and to my surprise I was diagnosed with both ADHD and chronic fatigue.
I’m not a fan of medication and was quite petrified about taking a tablet. I think maybe it would change who I am or take away the things I am good at.
The first pill worked like magic - after about an hour I felt calm and focused and a constant feeling of doom was gone. And my body felt different - often my muscles felt rigid and I moved awkwardly - but now I felt fluid. I had no idea it would affect more than my brain. And I was no longer reaching for sweet things to eat constantly throughout the day.
I felt grief like a PP. It was quite overwhelming - I cried a lot for all the lost decades. I think I felt like I’d been robbed as there is no way to turn back time.
I am very private and have not shared my diagnosis with many people at all (I'm feeling very hesitant in sharing this even now) but it’s been life changing. I don’t mean that things were immediately easy but I am now making good progress on rebuilding my life. I still struggle to start things and complete things but I’m more open to asking for the help I need.

Some people - many people - benefit from Protection.

By this, I mean that their employer then won't do any of the following;

Insist they work in a loud, crowded office where there is no chance of being able to concentrate because there are five separate conversations going on, constant visitors to other staff, flickering fluorescent lights and no natural daylight, a huge amount of clutter, a radio going all the time, stuff on the walls and visual noise shrieking at them all the time (including situations where they've previously been working in a more or less ideal environment but somebody else decides that everybody should be in the same area and it's not fair that one person gets a 'privilege' to have their own office).

Ban people from getting up and moving around. 'The only time people leave their desks is during their designated break. If you want to get up, you agree in advance with the manager that the rota will be changed and you can take your lunchbreak at 11.30am from then on.'

Expect them to have lunch at their desks or to miss lunch/come back when summoned. 'Oh no, there's work to do, if you go over your time for lunch, you don't get to take it later'/'Where are you? What do you mean on lunch? You're needed back immediately, there's work to do'.

Impose changes with zero notice 'Oh, we've decided you're working over there from now on, next to the person who has constant visitors all day/the fridge that buzzes and will have people going to it and complaining to you that there's no milk like it's your problem, you've got fifteen minutes to move and then we'll expect you to be running at full capacity', 'No, from now we've completely changed a process and you now have to go in and out of three separate apps and everything has to be manually input because copy & paste won't work but we haven't written this new process down or thought that this way makes another aspect impossible'

Insist that everything is done in a rigid way that doesn't take into account a preference for visuals or simple logic - such as a phone list that is ordered by Mr A - Z, then Miss A - Z, Mrs A - Z, Ms A - Z and is a word list converted to PDF, so can't be edited and done properly colour coded/reorganised into a logical system.

'Why can't you answer right now? Don't you know? Why haven't you done it? Why haven't you said you've done it? I've emailed you fifteen times in the last hour requiring other things, why haven't you done the first thing yet?'

'Well, I'm sorry that you feel that way about the new office setup, but we are not going to give anybody special treatment, so we'll go forward with you reporting to x person with a written account of your activities by 9.05 every morning and an hourly written update and then a written account of what has been finished, what is outstanding, what you are doing to resolve them and how many minutes it will take for you to complete them so we can see where you're going wrong by 4.10pm every day'.

Those things may well affect everybody, but the protection that a diagnosis gives, it's less likely to be happen because a) they know it's a bad idea, b) they might listen if somebody says it won't be helpful due to their ADHD whereas an alternative works because or c) they would be at risk of getting into legal hot water due to deliberately doing those things to make it unbearable for the person to remain - so constructive dismissal - or to set them up for Capability Procedures to manage them out.

@Sharptonguedwoman to some extent, yes it was possible to work out what was “off” and put in coping strategies but not for everything, What’s more it can be very tiring to do this, so it is better to ‘come out’. There are quite a few things where it is impossible to ‘cope’ eg meltdowns, not recognising faces (common with autistic people) or sensory issues.

I am currently awaiting a doctor's appointment about this very thing. I have always thought that I was "different"; didn't fit in in social circles; struggled with off the charts procrastination, zoning out, etc. I remember at age 21 I was with a boyfriend and we were at a theme park and I suddenly realised that he was eating an ice lolly. I asked him where he had got it from as I had no recollection of us buying ice lollies. He laughed and said oh I bought us ice lollies from the ice cream van while you were doing that thing you do. I said what thing I do? He said, when you "zone out". Looking back it all makes so much sense now.

About a year ago I stumbled on a pod cast with the actress Geena Davis. She was talking about how she had been diagnosed with ADHD in her fifties. She gave an example of how a boyfriend had split up with her because she had a dining table but never bought dining chairs to go with it. She just kept putting it off. I thought Oh My God....it was like a light bulb moment. I looked around my house and saw the blind I have never put up in the bathroom, the shelf that lives on the floor in my bedroom, the six handbags I have on the go at any one time. The constant lost keys and letters I need and constant losing and breaking of mobile phones. The putting off of the most simple tasks like texting someone back to the point that they think I'm cross with them. Starting the washing up and then finding myself in the paint shop buying paint and brushes to decorate a room that never gets finished. But spending hours and hours hyper fixated on something like who really was Jack the Ripper or what made the Titanic sink. All the while the piles and piles of laundry are threatening to rise up and take on a life on their own and consume me.

I drive myself mad and doing my job is hard, hard work. It's so hard to focus and yet when I least expect it, I will hyper focus on something that really isn't urgent but that I become obsessed with. It's no surprise that people with ADHD are often diagnosed with OCD and/or depression. Because it can be bloody depressing and feels like you are obsessed with certain things. That's why it has lifted my spirits to read here that I am not alone and that not everybody thinks that ADHD is a made up condition to make lazy and scatty people feel better. I am hoping that a proper diagnosis might make me feel that I am not a failure.

No criticism implied or intended but by the time you were 50, was it possible to work out what was 'off' in your behaviour and put in coping strategies?

I would very likely have thrown in the towel on my career if I hadn't got a diagnosis and the support that it comes with.

It's horrible looking at everyone around you getting in with stuff, with life, with no effort, and just not being able to keep up. Always making the same stupid errors and not being able to learn how to complete the most straightforward and mundane of tasks no matter how hard you try.

It has made me have peace with myself. It has helped me to understand myself and my child and therefore I don’t strive as much to be what I can’t be. Some examples: I have always been messy and poor at housework and felt judged by family and friends. So now I am forgiving of myself on that front and will make a focussed effort when people are visiting but I realise that I am not ‘lazy’. I am educated to a very high level and have some good creative and people skills but I have never achieved success in jobs which I could sustain. I did manage a high flying job in a creative industry for 7 years but could only do this becasue of hyper focus and by prioritising my job above everything else. I was not able to have relationships or even friendships outside of work and in the end it all came crashing down. Now after diagnosis I can einderstand why this happened and come to terms with it. . I used to berate myself for never having achieved my potential but today having just lost another job I am more pragmatic. Now I will choose a job that is easy to manage and will give me just enough to live on and I won’t feel a failure for doing that. Also i now understand that I can get irritable easily and will remove myself from situations or apologise quickly. This has helped enormously in my relationship with my husband and other close family. In short it has helped me to be self accepting and to know that there are ways that I can explore which will help me to cope better with life

On the other side of this I’m certain I’ve got ADD, my brother got a diagnosis as a child in the 90s, my dad and my grandad almost certainly have it but couldn’t get diagnosed as adults at the time my brother got his diagnosis. I don’t want to know, I don’t think having it recorded anywhere would help me.

Because for 40 odd years I thought I was just a crap person with a crap memory and rubbish mental health. It never occurred to me that there could be an underlying cause that I could actually DO SOMETHING ABOUT!
I thought struggling as much as I have was just normal and it's been a revelation to me that actually it's not, and with the right support I can achieve more.

I’ve recently been trying to decide if I want to put myself through the assessment following some struggles at work and some internal screening. I’ve always thought adhd was likely - it’s strong in my family and like everyone I’ve seen all the recent reels and threads and recognised myself. When I mentioned it to my family, friends and team and work they were like “quelle surprise” 🤣

But … what would a diagnoses change? I’m not sure I’d want to medicate myself and the process apparently takes 3 years to complete, also, I’m mid 40’s and have made peace with my unusual personality, but it would be so nice to see how most people think - my head is a hard place to be a lot of the time.

I have 2 friends that were diagnosed and they were adamant I had it.

As others have said, I felt like I was drowning and just shit at life. Looked like other people just sailed through whilst I struggled to have a shower.

I cried on receiving my diagnosis. Pure relief.

I almost certainly have ADHD. DS1 was diagnosed 3 years ago, and it shone a light on my own history of childhood anxiety and lifelong executive dysfunction.

I will not be seeking a diagnosis. I have found ways to cope with my lack of object permanence, my rejection sensitive dysphoria and my impulsiveness. Technology has been a game-changer in this respect.

I was diagnosed in the 90s but due to, well ADHD, I didn’t stay in the system and now I’m having to restart the process (whilst now being ineligible for “Right to Choose” as I already have a diagnosis, but cannot access any help for it!)

Can anyone describe the difference between the day when you’ve taken medication nd the day when you haven’t.

I went for the diagnosis because I wanted to try medication. The medication wasn't successful for me. Honestly now I wish I hadn't got the diagnosis. It hasn't been a helpful thing to know about myself. I'm also wondering if it is the correct diagnosis, although it was made by an NHS psychologist with a national reputation. A lot of my symptoms could equally be explained by anxiety.

I read a first-person piece by a recently diagnosed woman who described the difference between a day where she’d taken medication versus what an usual day had been like previously and it just clicked - after decades of not understanding my own struggles and inconsistencies. Grateful that the GP referred me straight away. The Elvanse does really help and having a diagnosis has been really useful in leading me to different pieces of research about its connections to adoption and childhood trauma.

I’d say to other people wondering if diagnosis is worthwhile to do pursue it – even if not for themselves, then for how the emergence of a significant population of us can help bring about longer term change in our culture that will make it better for kids with ADHD in 20 years time. At some point the sheer volume HAS to make a difference, like if so many round pegs aren’t fitting into square holes maybe the solution becomes varying the shapes of holes instead of trying to make all the pegs the same?

I got an assessment because it was ruining my life and I wanted to understand what was wrong and get treatment. Untreated ADHD is dangerous. Harder to keep a job, more likely to suffer from addictions, impulsive behaviour and inattention leads to injury and accidents, and the whole thing apparently shaves a few years off of the life expectancy.

So yes, I’m medicated as that is the first line / most effective treatment. I wish I had been diagnosed as a child though when my brain was still developing. If I had been treated then with the right combination of meds and strategies, my childhood sponge brain would have made more permanent connections. As an adult it’s just to manage the symptoms as best you can.

I went for an ASD diagnosis, 2 diagnosed DC and thought that was the reason I felt so fucking different all my life.

Nope….i have ADHD 😆.

Not me, but my DH was diagnosed in his early 40’s, is now medicated and says the medicine has been life changing.

I was diagnosed with AuDHD (I don't love the term, but as a shorthand) very recently.

Right now I feel utterly scrambled - no meds available, no support unless I seek it out (on threads like this!) and obviously if I was in a position to arrange a support group etc I wouldn't have two neurodiversities characterised by processing issues, procrastination and social difficulty - you may as well ask me to pilot a Mars rover.

Anyway - I sought a diagnosis because I felt "something" (tbc) was up with DD, and I recognised a lot of myself in her. I also really battled with my patchy career history, more visibly odd as I get older and contemporaries are in classical Big Jobs - very frustrating as I'm intelligent which I'd have expected to correlate to career success (ha bloody ha). And finally, in my current role, working for myself, I seem to do very well leading others and making decisions, while simultaneously being dreadful at the most basic of "bum on chair" tasks.

As I said, it's early days and I'm still processing it all. But I am glad I sought a diagnosis. I am being kinder to myself now.

DH is looking into it follow DS's diagnosis as it makes a lot of his childhood make sense. Also interested because he's wondering if it's why he's lost quite a lot of jobs when there's not been any disasters under his watch or any big confrontation or anything - as it happens I just read a statistic that said adults with ADHD are about 60% more likely than those without to lose their jobs.

I went for an autism assessment as my elder children were diagnosed and came out with a bonus diagnosis of ADHD.

I am medicated. There are now several hours in the day when my brain is able to focus on one thing at once instead of the incessant feeling like I have 35 tabs open in my brain and I can't find the one I want
I'm kinder to myself
I've learnt about strategies I already implemented and why they've worked for me.
I have more confidence in who I am