AIBU getting frustrated with adults self diagnosing with ADHD?

[Ags888]

To start I'll explain why I'm probably taking it too personally - I'm 90% certain my dad and my brother have undiagnosed ADHD - My dad is kind of a wreck in personal life, but his work is extremely restrictive and there's no chance for distractions so he's surviving, plus my mum is an angel. My brother is not able to complete any tasks, cannot hold any job, but also is quite spoiled and isn't really trying. I know it's genetic and in the past I thought about it in myself - I failed a lot in my early life, but from about age 25 I learnt that if I adjust/restrict my life I am able to achieve things. I never thought about using it as an excuse, rather feel embarrased that it took me 25 years to figure out how to discipline myself.

In last 1-2 years I noticed a lot of women in both my and my partner's circles, in their 30thies, bring up that they think they have ADHD, or are in a process of getting a diagnosis. some time ago I was at a dinner where all 3 women present were talking about their ADHD struggles as starting a lot of projects and not finishing any, or uncontrollabyly spending. I felt uncomfortable and felt like saying "isn't it like that for everyone? finishing projects and budgeting is not easy, just something you need to learn" but I didn't want to be impolite.

Some of them openly say that getting the diagnosis will translate to benefits at work/other responsibilities, or getting PIP.

I have one friend who got diagnosed recently, but in her case I believe it's legit, she cannot hold a job, gets hyperfocused on thing's she's interested in but everyday life is a struggle. Most important she is pushing herself to improve but is still struggling.

For all the rest the idea of ADHD diagnosis feels like it came out of nowhere. granted, not everyone me or my partner have known for 10-20 years, but good chunk. Those women are having careers/jobs, not wrecking their lives with debt, they have friends/relationships, they are not unrealible to the point people just abandon them (Like my brother or friend)

Is it just mine circles that have this sudden surge in ADHD talks? I do't use social media much but I think I saw a lot of it there too. It frustrates me because it feels like it's taking away from the life wrecking experiences of people I know.

I understand it's most likely a spectrum, and not everyone's struggles are visible, but I'm baffled with how almost every woman I know claims it.

I get where you're coming from. Lots of my work colleagues are "sure" they have undiagnosed neurodivergence because of various reasons. Can't pair socks, can't bear the sensation of putting clothes on damp skin after swimming, spends too much at Christmas, can't deal with the sound of chewing etc. All state that these are real and debilitating issues they face. Maybe they are. But I can't believe Sandra from reception that she hates crowds and always panics when I see her pictures from a weekend festival with her crushed up against strangers smiling. Don't really put much credit on Don in HR telling me he's got serious obsessive things about food which leads him to restrict his diet to just a few measly things and NEVER eat food he didn't prepare when I see him diving fork first into a new colleagues homemade pasta.

So I do roll my eyes a bit, especially when I go home to my actually diagnosed ADHD husband and find he's shut off our water, ripped out half our bathroom and is playing Call of Duty like nothing the fuck is going on. He has a deadline to meet, so it's obviously the perfect time to begin to remodel the bathroom on an undiscussed whim and then reward yourself with games.

@Sparklfairy do you have any guidance on info / how you went about reorganising your life to improve stuff?

I’m one of those women. I hold down a job and manage to mostly turn up on time for things / not forget them. But it’s a constant struggle that has a huge toll on my mental health. For example, I feel I have to work secretly in the evenings just to keep pace with colleagues.

for years I thought it was my dyslexia which was causing this. Now I think it’s something more but at this stage in life I can’t see the benefit of a diagnosis.

Well, that's precisely the point. There was so little awareness when many of us were younger, and so a lot of us were missed.

I always knew that my brain was broken. I just didn't know why.

@PastaLaVistaBabee I went to my GP because I've been struggling a lot since the birth of my daughter for a variety of reasons. I've been brushed off many times. I expected to be medicated/referred to perinatal but after several long appointments and assessments with my GP he has sent referral for diagnosis as he is almost certain. I'm getting a diagnosis so that I'm able to get the help I need with my problems. My life is 'normal' in terms of I have a job, a child and a stable relationship, what goes on inside my head is extremely different. I've spent majority of my life suppressing a lot of things (thinking this is what everyone does) and having a lot of struggles with change to put it mildly. I hadn't really considered I had ADHD or ASD, I just thought I was a bit 'damaged' and that I had PND, that's why it was a surprise to me. However over the last 5/6 weeks I've been able to begin making sense of a lot of things that have happened on my life, a lot of thoughts I've had and I'm beginning to finally understand why I am the way I am.

Agreed. Private diagnosis is pretty easy - in my experience.

There are some awful posts on this thread.

I have ADHD. I am formally diagnosed.

I am generally able to hold it together. The effort that that takes is immense and exhausting.

I didn't self-diagnose - I paid to see a psychiatrist a couple of years ago for anxiety - and was told that ADHD was the driving factor. I had barely heard of ADHD.

I'm not concerned about people 'jumping on the bandwagon'. Women have been left out of the main diagnostic criteria for decades as they are male-centric and it tends to present differently in women. Doesn't mean these women are making it up.

"My ADHD flared up at the weekend, so i wasn't able to.....".

This kind of self diagnosing always makes me 🙄

So you're ok to self-diagnose yourself and your family, but only because you don't talk to others about it, and you all clearly have it so much worse than these other people?
YABU, obvs.

Exactly this.
As many upthread have mentioned its very difficult to get an NHS diagnosis. A private diagnosis is expensive and they certainly don't just write a diagnosis for anyone! My DH was privately diagnosed after he realised our severely ADHD DS wasn't as other children - he'd assumed he was normal as that's how he was as a child... It cost 1k 8 years ago and the psychiatrist spent about 4 hours doing tests, speaking to me too, looking at his school reports and all sorts of tests. NO way would he have been diagnosed if he was NT. Luckily he does get meds via NHS now - but he only uses them in quite a targetted way - if he has a meeting to concentrate in for example - ADHD people tend to self select their work so that they don't have to sit in an office all day. Our DS takes log-acting meds as he is still at school.

It has helped DH no end to know himself and how his brain works better - how could it not. Its saved the family and marriage too - though it takes some getting used to and I've had to have therapy about it...

But what would be the point of reading up on symptoms in order to get a diagnosis if the person doesn't actually have the condition? What on earth do you think they gain from this?

I was not looking for "excuses" when I went for my adhd diagnosis. I was just absolutely fucking desperate.

You sound like an utterly shit "friend" @PastaLaVistaBabee. So glib and dismissive. You clearly know fuck all about adhd and how it can affect people.

Genuinely your DH is exactly what my father was/is like. My bedroom was 3 different colours growing up. He never quite finished painting it before getting distracted/losing interest then months/years went by and he then would decide to do it again one random day, in a new colour…one day my sister and I were sat eating breakfast and he walked in the dining room and just stuck this massive fork in the parquet and ripped up the floor and said ”I’ll get a nice new floor down before your mother gets home from work.” We then asked if he’d even bought replacement flooring to which he realised he hadn’t…and gave up, leaving just a hole in the floor!

Absolutely and more and more is being understood about mental health and its relation to our physical well-being all the time.

I'm self employed so this works for my particular situation - you will probably need to adapt it but there are tools out there.

I use a combination of different apps, as well as pen and paper. Clickup for longer term projects at work with sub-tasks. I go through in the evening and prioritse half a dozen ish tasks to do the following day, and hand write them out in order. Handwriting feels like more of a commitment in my mind than just using digital, but might be just me!

Toggl for time tracking and shaming me about my procrastination, so I just get on to try and avoid seeing huge gaps with no work at the end of the day reclaim.ai for when I'm overwhelmed and can't think what to do first - it schedules things for me and tells me what to do next.

I take Equazen Eye Q (6 a day) and Lion's Mane and Gingko Biloba one each a day. I also have high strength CBD oil for when the chatter in my head gets too much (happening less often now).

Exactly...I don't get this. There's nothing to be gained from gaming the system to get a diagnosis of something you don't have.

As a society we need to start taking a different approach to both mental health and “neurodiversity” (I hate that term). People forget that the DSM is just something that we made up to try to describe a variety of behavioural phenotypes. We created labels and diagnostic criteria to try to explain particular groups of behaviours that tend to co-occur. It is not a perfect science - far from it - and an increasing number of psychologists are calling for diagnostic labels to basically be chucked in the bin.

In my opinion (for what it’s worth) there are a very few specific mental health conditions that can be clearly identified and have a high degree of diagnostic sensitivity such that all medical professionals agree that person X is suffering from disorder Y. Things like paranoid schizophrenia where a lot of the behaviours are not shown at all in “healthy” individuals.

Other than that, we are using made up labels to describe behaviours that are very common. My eldest is “autistic” but I don’t think that makes her “neurodivergent”, I think she thinks about some things differently to other people but then is similar in other ways, and shares some behaviours or tendencies with other autistic children but not others. People are individuals. We all have things that we struggle with. For some it’s depressive feelings, or anxiety, for others we struggle with motivation or whatever else it may be. I agree it’s becoming incredibly common for people to strongly identify with adhd symptoms and what that says to me is that as a society we are finding it more difficult to regulate our responses to dopamine because we now have so many rewarding stimuli to filter out and humans weren’t designed to deal with an environment that changes so rapidly. I don’t think that huge swathes of the population suffer from “disorders” or are “neurodivergent”. We are all very different and modern society is a very different place from the environments we were originally meant evolved to live in.

I think you are being a little unreasonable.

Someone being assessed or referred, or considering things in their lifestyle that they struggle with as perhaps having a route cause is okay.

I have considered being assessed for ASD in recent years since having a child and seeing some of the more common things which cause childhood diagnoses - I then felt I recognised them from my childhood. I also felt that some of the problems I have had in life in terms of social interactions may come from this route cause. I haven't actioned it - partly because I felt if I was to be diagnosed I would keep it quiet.

I feel people would wonder why I got the diagnoses when I have a full time job, attend things, live a functional life outwardly (barring not being a driver which others know is caused by anxiety as I find I do have to explain this)

I hide most things I struggle with and live 'normally' so I'm not sure what I would achieve and I fear I would be judged, but there is a personal level of curiosity

I think it's better to not judge them as you may not know all the details in regards to their struggles as others may not in regards to your family, and know we all have different personalities and challenges and they may just be trying to come to terms with their own

I agree

I have adhd op and to some extent I do know what you mean as when I discuss it with people they tell me they think they might have it too when they are clearly very organised / got their shit together but just not as much as they'd like or they've got something else going on like anxiety.

Because I'm medicated a lot of people I've met more recently don't realise just how bad it is and are comparing themselves and thinking it looks similar but without meds I have huge mood swings, make an unbelievable amount of mistakes which have resulted in being sacked several times, messed up a levels / first attempt at a degree, had lots of debt, house being like a hoarders den, struggle to hold a relationship as my symptoms become too annoying etc. I suspected i had it for the last 14 years but had to go through learning disabilities, depression and anxiety diagnoses before I got here.

It doesn't help that tiktok has lots of quirky traits videos that don't really show the reality of hysterically crying because you know you'll get fired but just CANNOT concentrate.

Equally I have family members that are clearly in denial and live in a state of absolute chaos and I work with a girl I'm convinced may also have it so to some extent you need to self diagnose to even think to get it sorted.

My brother has self diagnosed ADHD and has started to attribute literally every shitty behaviour (and there’s A LOT) to this. It’s driving me up the wall. No you aren’t rude to mum because you have ADHD you are rude because you’re a rude prick

Am I missing something? You’ve literally diagnosed your dad and brother yourself? The thing you hate other people doing…?

Why are you associating ADHD with abject failure of adulthood? The majority of ADHD diagnosed individuals are not like this! Perhaps it's more of a personality problem for your dad and brother, rather than a neurodevelopmental diagnosis.

Do you know what? Just fuck off.

Firstly, you have no fucking idea how hard many of us have tried to "work on it".

Secondly, having a diagnosis in no way releases us from having to "work on it".

Just keep your ignorance and dismissive attitude to yourself, please, because you clearly have no fucking idea what you're talking about.

This is so horribly ignorant and disablist I don’t know where to start.

I was diagnosed at 23.
i achieved a 1st class vet degree and many other things in my life. But it was a HUGE struggle. My diagnosis from a psychiatrist revealed that I needed an autism assessment too. I was later diagnosed with autism.
I scored 9/9 for childhood and 9/9 for adulthood. I’m combined type and now medicated. I find the suggestion that my struggles aren’t as severe offensive… they’re different!