It’s heartbreaking reading your distress OP. Not attempting to armchair diagnose you but what stands out in all your posts is self sabotage, chronic procrastination, avoidance, compulsive eating, self esteem embedded in work, need for structure, difficulty switching off, delayed sleep/no sleep. The self blame cycles & all of the above you describe stand out esp to me as are all symptoms of (depression & anxiety) but also & made worse by ADHD. I know it’s virtually a MN trope now so forgive me.
But does time blindness, chronic lateness, hyper focus, difficulty regulating your attention & function either in either intense focus into something for hours on end or absolute apathy, forgetfulness, lose things constantly, have doom piles of ironing you can’t face, executive function difficulties inc organisation, planning, budgeting, get more awake & hyper later in the day into the a.m so unable to sleep, chronic shame cycles, boom or bust all or nothing dopamine seeking fixes (sugar addiction) followed by total crashes amongst others?? Obv as a teacher & HOD all the executive function stuff wld not prob be that difficult for you but you may have developed work arounds & ways to manage it which often manifest as over conscientiousness, anxiety, perfectionism, huge amounts of energy expended trying to mask all of these hidden difficulties, leaving you drained & needing to decompress & prone to burnout. Masking to compensate for all these internal battles that you perceive are just you & evidence that you must just be innately bad & worthless bcos you know rationally what you need to do & how you’re supposed to function like a “normal” person, yet you don’t, you can procrastinate for days & must just be lazy, bad, et . Imposter syndrome, really low self esteem despite being high achieving & academically able, capable & respected by others. Fall apart if no structure but find it hard to effect & stick to routines.
Anyway lots of pple with ADHD thrive in a teaching role for too many reasons to list (among lots of other professions /roles too obvs!) Anyway it’s just a thought & apologies if way off & over stepping the mark.
ADHD in peri & meno can really cause major havoc - is when a lot of women get diagnosed & when the raft of CBT & pills have had limited benefit. Their ability to mask as effectively as they cld before gets harder, anger & emotionality can go haywire & procrastination & all the symptoms suddenly come into focus & much easier to see in oneself.
Plse ignore if not!