Adult ADHD diagnosis!

You don’t get a diagnosis in adulthood if there weren’t clear markers of it in childhood.

You’re also confusing ADHD traits as personality traits and not literal differences in brain processing. Having an underdeveloped frontal lobe has real impact. I spend a huge amount of energy organising myself at work (a very NT environment) which basically wipes out my weekends. I look at the mess and have great plans to sort it out, but there’s just nothing left in the tank to tackle it and I barely touch the surface.

I don’t think people are knowingly being offensive @TheWoofsAndTheMeows . I think a lot of the time it’s an awkward ‘not sure what to say.’ And one thing I do find a bit frustrating with neurodiversity is the insistence that somehow NT people are always smooth socially. They aren’t; they will often feel gauche and anxious and fret over saying the ‘wrong’ thing.

But that aside it is not for me to tell you or anyone what to do. I just think generally lecturing tends to be ill received.

How you describe yourself really rings true for me.

I came close to going for a diagnosis in 2021. Was referred and cancelled about 3 appointments with Psychiatry UK, bottling out because I was battling wanting answers and 'fixing it' VS just wanting to be normal and living my life. So I didn't and left it at that. I do wonder whether meds could have helped me though.

Nobody knows that I think am sure I have ADHD other than my DH, DM and my DD. I've never mentioned it to another soul. It was my DDs traits over the years that gave me the aha! moment for myself.

She too is undiagnosed but I have tried to get her talking and be really open with her about it so she doesn't get into that damaging cycle of self depreciation. I want her to like herself unlike how I feel about me. I hope that being aware that this might be explain a lot of why she is how she is, will help her. I never had that and just thought I was a total weirdo until I was 40. Still do I guess!

I think to have an ADHD diagnosis in adulthood (as opposed to childhood when it might be a problem at school) is indeed an excuse not to work on yourself. Like procrastination - it's sheer laziness. I am like that all the time - because frankly, it's always more pleasant to waste time doing pleasant things rather than work. I won't try to seek any mental health diagnosis, because I know I'm just lazy. If I worked harder and tried to be more organised, I wouldn't have this problem. As simple as that. As adults were are mature and self-conscious and should try to improve our behaviours, and not seek excuse to justify our bad behaviours.

I didn't pay anyone, I waited 2 years for an assessment on the NHS. During that time my mental health took a nosedive and (TW) I almost took my own life because I struggled with some parts of 'normal' life so much before I understood the reason why.

I can't speak to dexamfetamine because even though I was diagnosed in January, the waiting list to start titrating on medication where I live is another year so currently I am still unmedicated.

It's honestly been a horrendous lengthy process with seemingly no light at the end of the tunnel- if someone is honestly putting themselves through this simply for attention or to jump on a bandwagon then they're more tenacious than I am.

This kind of shit is the reason I told no one but DH.

I was claiming adult disability long before my diagnosis though, it’s almost as if these things are based on need and not diagnosis

But you were justifying people saying ‘we’re all a bit ADHD’ by saying they were just trying to move on from the conversation. Anyone saying that knows that they’re being offensive, it’s like the people that call it a label, they know very well what they’re doing. There are better ways to move a conversation on than to be offensive.

For some reason some people get very annoyed about ND, mumsnet HQ have told us that it’s something people troll about regularly. Some posters get a bee in their bonnet about it ND, like they do weight loss injections. Very strange.

I realised a few years ago that a lot of my flaws, the things I’ve beaten myself up about over the years and are massive day to day frustrations and limitations could actually be explained by ADHD.
I celebrate the current explosion of diagnosis, particularly for the value it has in a shift we need in considering what is normal. If 20% of the population fit a disorder profile we need to look at what is normal. I don’t feel abnormal or divergent just that I have a different version of how the brain works to some others. One day I wonder if brain function types may be characterised as eg blue type and green type etc rather than typical and atypical which will be more helpful. Within some types there will be people (like me) that rub along just fine and others that need more help/ medication to function.
I haven’t sought a diagnosis (if it was free or didn’t clog up a place for someone struggling more I might) and when I mentioned it to a friend she laughed in my face so understand your friends concerns.
I feel we are on a useful pathway with understanding different brain types that hasn’t quite met its end.

As somebody who looked into possibly getting diagnosed a few years ago, oddly, my biggest fear was that I wouldn't get a diagnosis.
That it would turn out I really was just pretty crap at stuff. That there's no reason, I'm just not very capable.

The thing is, I'm genuinely not very intelligent. All the adults I know who were diagnosed as adults are definitely more intelligent than me.

I really am average. Some of it I can attribute to my already diagnosed dyscalculia, but not all.

In many ways I'd rather keep in my head that I might not just be rather useless, instead of having it formally confirmed that I'm just not that good at stuff.

There's no reasonable adjustment for simply being an average to below average Joe or Jane, which I suspect is really the case with me.

I'm not convinced about my ling-ago dyscalculia diagnosis now either. I think I'm just...not very bright.

Love this.

My story is almost identical. Diagnosed 2 years ago in my early 50s and until a psychologist asked me if I’d ever considered that I might have ADHD, it had never even featured on my radar. He was actually a ND specialist that was assessing me to help with cognitive issues that I was suffering with due to long Covid and he later said he knew almost immediately that I had ADHD as it was so obvious.

Told a few close friends about my diagnosis and without exception my male friends did the “no shit Sherlock” response whereas my female friends seemed dumbfounded and it had never occurred to them either. Quite an interesting difference in reaction between the sexes (but obviously a small sample size!)

@TheBeaTgoeson1 I’m very open about having ADHD at work. It was actually my employer who paid for the psychologist and my subsequent diagnosis. (My NHS GP wouldn’t even refer me to be assessed as “they’ll just give you amphetamines and we don’t really advise that” - and yes, she seriously said that!). I work in Financial Services and it’s very clear (now!) that it attracts a lot of people with ADHD due to Novelty, Urgency, Interest and Challenge (great post from @Jimmyneutronsforehead - these 4 words are so powerful for understanding ADHD).

However, I’m more guarded about sharing my diagnosis in my private life. The aforementioned close friends know and one of my cousins (and my best friend’s mum) but that’s it. It’s very obvious to me now that my father has ADHD. We are SO alike. But he’s 83. When I was diagnosed in my 50s it felt like I’d been hit by a truck and I went through a real cycle of emotional turmoil trying to come to terms with it and how my life could have been very different if I’d been diagnosed much earlier. I don’t want to put my Dad through that. I’d already made the decision not to tell him but it was further confirmed recently when I visited my best friend’s 80 year mum. My friend and her brother (both early 50s) have recently been diagnosed with autism and their mum realises now that she most likely has it too and she really blames herself for passing it to her children. She feels real angst.

A diagnosis brings with it real emotional turmoil as well as an element of relief. It’s almost like going through the cycle of grief. It’s taken me a good 12 months to work my way through it.

And perhaps that is the distinction; there are those who share and those who don’t and those who do share do tend to be a ‘type’, in my observations at any rate.

Except lots of us choose not to share it with people in RL, because we know that there is so much judgement.

@MrsBennetsPoorNervesAreBack - I know it sounds like a weak little flapping fish when I say ‘oh no no I don’t mean you’ but I guess I’m not thinking of people like yourselves.

I know for me my twenties and thirties were just dreadfully chaotic, I couldn’t seem to manage the most basic things pertaining to money, timekeeping and even having a normal ish diet - I’d generally not eat all day then binge on absolute junk all evening, normal perhaps at 22 but I was still at it at 37! - I can be kinder to myself now that I ‘know’ but I have no intention of letting anyone else know! Even my husband has no idea what my life used to be like.

I can relate to the ‘real me’ being exposed for my part, I didn’t ever do badly academically but I never really graduated properly into adult life until in the last five years or so actually. I used to think it was because my mother died when I was mid teens but I think it was more than that now.

I’m pretty sure my sister has ADHD & possibly ASD, as well as anxiety & depression. She has struggled with her mental health her whole life & it’s had a huge impact upon her work, relationships etc.

Things were relatively stable until about 2 years ago & she changed medication - unfortunately since then things have been “unmasked” & she’s nor has a total personality change. She is now combative, rude, reactive & lacking in empathy.

i approach it as if she does have these diagnosis, and make allowances, but in truth it’s really difficult to have a relationship with her.

Tbh, you have no idea whether most people talk about it a lot, because you wouldn't know about the ones who have chosen not to talk about it.

Most people I know have no idea that I have adhd.

Masking is a survival skill.

Some people call it camouflaging, because like chameleons, you do it to blend in.

You're right that not everybody has the capacity to do this because it requires the skill of the perception of the world outside of yourself, but having a perception of the world outside of yourself isn't part of the diagnostic criteria, it's simply part of a spikey profile.

Masking can also look different for everyone who does it because it depends on your environment. For me, it's rehearsing scripts both before and after they've happened. It's constantly analysing what was said, how it was said, to the point I even mimic people's accents without realising I'm doing it. I spent a week working with 2 Romanian colleagues who thought I was mocking them, but I wasn't, it was just the way my brain was processing language at that time. Sometimes, like at the wedding reception I was at on Saturday, it's needing a drink just to be able to speak at all because there's so much input in every direction. It's practicing little phrases for when people catch me behaving weird to justify my weird behaviour like "Sorry, I'm a bit deaf, could you say that slower?" For when they have an accent I can't register, or "I'm just counting something" if people catch me stimming with my fingers. It's grinding my teeth to a pulp so I don't run off when I hear people slurping or gulping.

There's a lot more that goes into masking, and some people are definitely capable of it for a lot longer than others.

Unfortunately it's psychologically exhausting and I know many people who haven't been able to keep it up and that's what has lead to late diagnosis in them, but you still need an incredible amount of proof that this has been present since childhood.

It's been a great comfort to me since my diagnosis that all of those times I had my bum smacked, sent to the chair, sent to bed without food, pulled my hair out in chunks because I wish I could have just done as I was told or not cried and promised myself I'd not do it again and then done it again weren't because I was being a drama queen, attention seeker, controlling little brat, primadonna and the swathes of other names I'd been called, but because I was actually in a neurological state of crisis beyond my control and it couldn't have been helped, and it was for the adults around me in my formative years to recognise that. It's helped me understand them and forgive them because back then diagnoses especially for women and girls were exceptionally low.

I was diagnosed just before I turned 29. My son was diagnosed age 3. According to family we were exactly the same at that age. A lot of "I wonder where he got that from" tongue in cheek style comments, but the wider understanding of autism means he'll never have to go through what I went through my entire life where I wasn't supported to improve, I was beaten and chastised and shamed and embarrassed throughout my home and school life.

Interesting.

I'm the opposite to those people in many ways. Excelled in school, Oxbridge degree, very successful career etc. Lots of "achievements".

My life on paper looks perfect, so I definitely wasn't looking for excuses when I sought a diagnosis. I was looking for an explanation as why I still felt like a failure in spite of all the "achievements". Why the simplest tasks were so often a struggle when I was able to manage much more complex projects successfully. Why I so constantly lived in fear that the "real" me might be exposed.

Those closest to me knew my struggles, of course, and they weren't surprised by the diagnosis. The rest of the world has no idea, and they don't need to know.

It'different for everyone. Of course, the adhd is a part of who I am, and a diagnosis doesn't change that. It does help me to understand myself better.

Fair enough, that’ll be the literalness taking over 😂

This may be true for you but most people I know who have pursued a diagnosis have been verrrry vocal indeed about it, to the point where it is a struggle to have a conversation where it is NOT mentioned.

It was tongue in cheek…….. there is no PowerPoint.

No, they mean to minimise the other persons diagnosis ime.

I’m not ND but my sister works on a team that diagnoses autism and she hears this out of thing from people all the time. Obviously she tells them that they’re incorrect. You can’t be ‘a bit’ ADHD, and people who word it like that know exactly what they’re doing.

I think my "diagnosis" is a load of old guff, as above, it's a questionnaire and an interview made up of hugely leading questions. I do also have aberrant behaviours that I know many people find weird. I like dexamfetamine it's a lot better for mood than anything else I've tried.

If you think a psychiatrist who is probably being paid by you to define you in a way you want actually does define you meaningfully I think that's unfortunate.

That description couldn't be further from me. I have loads of hobbies, loads of friends and people seem to gravitate towards me in all settings so I don't think I'm boring or lacking spark.

In my experience, it’s not someone ‘banging on about it’, it’s usually someone asking why they get something that they don’t at work, and then the person tells them they have ADHD, autism etc. The come the comments like ‘we’re all a little bit ADHD or on the spectrum aren’t we’. They're ignorant and offensive.

It is one of those things that is a big no no to say online but in RL is acceptable. While we are not all a little ADHD many people do have symptoms of ADHD without actually having ADHD, which is what they mean.

Of course, you and anybody else are free to educate whoever you want (if educate means you will listen to me telling you how wrong you are!) but it may not be received with particular attention or interest and truthfully for most people it is just tedious and boring.