Adult ADHD diagnosis!

[TheBeaTgoeson1]

last Monday, somebody very close to me was diagnosed with ADHD following an assessment process. They are an adult, and have lived with what they now understand to be symptoms (is that the right word?) for decades.

They do feel relieved, however they also feel almost like they might be judged by people thinking they are almost trying to excuse some of their behaviours. Nothing bad, but behaviours around disorganisation, timekeeping, procrastination! I’d like to support them, and I guess my question is two fold.

What is everybody’s honest opinion when they hear that somebody has received a diagnosis of ADHD as an adult?

How can somebody Neurotypical support somebody with ADHD in any practical ways?

I want to answer your post about hyperfocus but I'm a bit busy right now. I'll come back to you though!

Tell me you know nothing about adhd without telling me.

If only it was just being a bit disorganised and procrastination but the ANXIETY is horrific. The overwhelm is indescribable. Now I’m on meds, when I’m an overwhelmed with tasks I can list them, before meds my brain couldn’t even untangle my thoughts. We joke that said people have no filter because we just say the things that come into our head but we have no incoming filter either so all the sounds and all the sights just hit us all the time, overstimulating and exhausting us.

In my opinion it’s not possible to easily obtain a diagnosis on the NHS unless you genuinely have the condition.

I have been diagnosed and medicated since 2014 and it’s been life changing. The majority of people I know who claim to have it do not have a formal diagnosis, they just say they have it and talk yit like it’s a fun quirky personality trait.

it’s not, it’s debilitating and it has impacted my life and continues to affect me adversely. It’s not an excuse it’s an explanation for why I grew up not being able to manage myself and my emotions, why I couldn’t organise myself and the reason why everyone around me was able to tie their own shoelaces while I could not, despite being able to read Sophocles in the original aged 12.

it is a good thing but not everyone can understand the implications of it

Weirdly, I had. No idea why - mild hoarding probably - but they were in my National Record of Achievement folder.

I hate my days in the (open-plan) office for precisely this reason. I can be talking with a colleague and also conscious of every other conversation that is happening around me. Trying to filter that out is utterly exhausting.

Thank you, that will be interesting.

I’m a late diagnosed AUDHDer. Went through NHS Right to Choose. I was pre-diagnosed with ADHD at my Autism assessment. The psychiatrist strongly suggested I get tested.

I don’t claim and never have been on benefits and I certainly don’t want PIP. The diagnosis has been life changing nevertheless. It has totally stopped my negative thinking. I spent all of my life being called weird or being told I was behaving badly. So much so that I became withdrawn and afraid to make any friends because they would inevitably think I was weird and reject me. I would look at everyone else, try to be like them and fail or exhaust myself with the effort.

I have finally understood myself and started to become happy with the person I am and brave enough to show who I am (to a select audience).

I do feel sad for my younger self. I wish we were more understanding of ND in the 90s and 00s. My life would have better if I could have lived more authentically without judgement.

I really relate to this post. On the outside, people see me as a successful woman who has, over the years, effectively juggled a very demanding career, a part-time Master's degree, various voluntary commitments, being an involved parent and being a carer for two elderly relatives. People often marvel at how I manage to fit everything in.

What they don't know is that I compulsively overcommit myself because my brain is constantly seeking novelty and challenge. That I can rarely do anything until it becomes urgent, and so I live in a constant state of panic, shame and guilt about all the stuff that I haven't done. That I spend hours looking for stuff that I have lost. That I spend £££ on replacing things that I have lost or paying for express deliveries etc. That I have Alexa devices all over the house giving me constant reminders to keep me on track. That my bedroom permanently looks as if a bomb has hit it. That I have lost count of the sleepless nights I have spent trying to meet a deadline because, no matter how hard I try, I simply can't get my brain in gear until I really have to. That I can rarely sleep well even when I'm not trying to meet a deadline because I don't know how to switch my brain off. That I spend much of my life worrying that the mask will slip and that others will see my chaos in all its glory.

It's exhausting. There are times when I just want it all to stop. And yes, the menopause has somehow made things even worse. And I am not able to take medication either, sadly.

People who think it's just "an excuse" can fuck off. They're very lucky that they have no idea what they're talking about.

Thank you so much for all these posts and advice. A really interesting range of opinions. Just catching up!

you know that saying "if you want something done ask a busy person"? i think it's more if you want something done ask an ADHDer - we will jump at it to procrastinate what we really have to do !

And it's not just fun, i have been known to clean the toilets because i actually had a work thing to do but can't engage my brand on that and procrastinate with chores

Definitely! My DH has learnt to recognise the signs...he now knows that, if the house is tidy, it probably means that I'm stressing about something in work!😂

You are my twin. I hear you on every single count - in facts it’s scarily accurate.

We’ve been in our house for over 20 years. I still flick every light switch on the panel in the hall before I get the right one.

It's bloody hard work being us, isn't it?!😂

I'm sometimes described as dismissive about adult ADHD.

I think part of your support should continue to be to help them be critical about their environment and the way it does impact stresses, and to continue to be creative in trying to shift those.

I know a lot of women who are trying to juggle full time work plus driving multiple DC around everywhere plus doing a majority of housework plus various personal dramas (mum has cancer! the dog needs medication! the landlord is threatening eviction!)

They all go through something similar like "omg, finally I know why I feel so stressed, it's because I have ADHD!" and then stop trying to reduce their environmental stressors.

And then they go around with this mental model that all of the above is perfectly normal and NT people are swimming along and it's just that their brain is defective for not coping.

We're triplets @AmIHumanOrAmIAYeti and @MrsBennetsPoorNervesAreBack 😁 I have qualifications coming out of my ears but struggle with the most basic household tasks. I've stopped hating myself now, so that's quite nice.

I wish I could say that I had stopped hating myself. I haven't mastered that quite yet.

I feel you on that. We only have two together on the panel in the hall, I still plunge my husband into darkness when he's half way up the stairs. Any more than two and it'd be like a fucking disco.

In the context of ADHD hyperfocus doesn't necessarily equate to special interest.

So it can absolutely be games on your phone.

What they look for in assessments is whether these bouts of hyperfocus or special interests are restrictive. Think along the lines of "just one more episode and then I'll go to bed/take the laundry out/wash the dishes". This can then spiral into other areas of poor time management and display not being able to start tasks and not being able to finish tasks.

There's a lot of information about there about intense hyperfocus around hobbies and things of interest, which is common because of how the ADHD brain works. It craves novelty and interest, but some people lean more towards urgency and challenge. These people might not be able to switch off from work mode, or home mode, because the challenge and urgency are far greater than the interest and novelty of the tasks around them. For these people it can impact relationships, because you're not able to fully engage with those around you and it creates this issue with a mismatch in task prioritisation.

You also don't necessarily need to be particularly knowledgeable about a topic for it to be a hyperfocus or special interest, it just needs to meet the criteria of restrictive or repetitive.

Some people with ADHD might have these micro-hyperfocuses. For example people who hobby switch. You sink a bomb on supplies, materials, resources and then you get bored of it half way through and no matter how you try to push through you'd have more luck forcing yourself to hold your hand on an open flame and burning yourself than you would finishing your task.

I'm sure everybody has felt some sort of task inertia which feeds into the "everybody does that" mantra some people feel, but if you're experiencing this often, and it's causing chaos around you, appointments are getting missed, shopping isn't getting done, the house is falling into ruin, or you're just not able to keep on top of your work load because you can't pull yourself away from what you're doing it would fall under the executive dysfunction umbrella of not being able to finish and start tasks.

Equally if you've ever seen something that needs doing then while you're doing it you see something else so you decide that you need to do that first so you make a start, then you find something is missing so you go to the shop to buy supplies and then while you're at the shop you see something for another task you've been meaning to do so you pick that up and when you get home you start working on that and forget completely about the other 2 tasks you've already started, then that can be a display of how hyperfocus works on novelty and how a sense of urgency whether relatively urgent or not can play a part in how you internally prioritise tasks which can be restrictive and detrimental.

There's a good about this and it's a perfect visual representation of how scatterbrained you can get with a hyperactive mind even if your body isn't particularly hyperactive.

I dont know why I had a hyperlink fail but there we go.

Yes hyperfocus can be superficially attractive or helpful but longer term it harms health, relationships and a balanced life.

Agreed.

I'll admit sometimes I'm very skeptical of some people's interpretations of ADHD when they self diagnose because it seems to be entirely superficial examples of executive dysfunction without any truly disabling elements, but it also breaks my heart when people say I struggle to do this and I've always been ashamed of it and I'm scared I will just be told I'm lazy and I have moral failings with examples that perfectly portray the disabling elements of ADHD and/or autism especially where there's a fear of judgement involved.

People will judge either way. Better to know for yourself.

But "I can't pull myself away from these games on my phone with flashy lights and reward beeps which are literally designed in a lab to be maximally addictive and it made me forget to go to the shops" is... exactly what you would expect!

What is everybody’s honest opinion when they hear that somebody has received a diagnosis of ADHD as an adult?

I feel pleased for them.

They must have obviously struggled with lots of aspects of their life and probably have felt “different”. A diagnosis will help them feel validated. It could also help them at work to have reasonable adjustments set in place.

My situation is different, but I am convinced I have endometriosis. It can take years and years to get a diagnosis. I have had years of being gaslit and dismissed by doctors. I’m on hormonal treatment and pain management. So a diagnosis wouldn’t change my life but it would damn well make me feel validated in my struggles and help massively for my occupational health at work.

Thank you. A lot of what you say there is why I delved into this in the first place. I do get absorbed and easily distracted. And the truth is, I need external motivation. When I was a child, this came in the form of avoiding being told off. As an adult in her 50s, I still find it hard to do chores, etc, without the external factor of getting in trouble.

I got lucky I. Being with the same guy since my late teens who just...gets it. He accepts I don't put things back in the right places, he's not bothered about a clean house, etc.

Actually, on timekeeping, I'm rarely late because I worry about it, so end up being early and hanging around. Again because timekeeping was another telling off from childhood, something stuck and being late became an anxiety.

'Needing to be told' is a problem in jobs, and one reason why I am a lots of hours at minimum wage person rather than career. I need a boss, I need to be told what to do and how to do it, preferably repetitive so I don't have to concentrate.

How much this has held me back is hard to say. This thread's been good to read, because as well as identifying with a lot of posters, I can also see my life isn't affected severely like others,and I wouldn't want to take up a space in the queue.