In January, I became a team lead in work, and learned one of my team members has both ADHD and autism (common enough to have its own name, AuDHD). And I had to do my best to learn about neurodiversity pretty quickly in order to support them properly. But I only really scratched the surface, dealing with very specific issues and one particular person.
In March, I was explaining some worries I had about planning and organising a family event to my therapist. She asked me if I’d ever looked into ADHD, because I was describing issues with executive function. We did a screening assessment and I came out as strongly indicating ADHD.
In the last couple of months, I’ve gone through a formal assessment. I do have ADHD. Combined-type, to be specific. But it’s been quite a journey.
I’ve been aware of ADHD for decades. My first memory of it was in a storyline in Australian TV show Neighbours, where a troublemaker-type kid gets diagnosed, is put on meds, and becomes dulled and unhappy. That’s been a stereotype I’ve seen in a few places in media over the years. I’ve not known much more than that until this year.
My understanding was it was a behavioural disorder, and was purely about hyperactivity. I couldn’t have been more wrong. ADHD means your brain works differently in a lot of different ways. Hyperactivity is just one aspect, and some people with ADHD don’t have hyperactivity.
I do though. I never really noticed it because you learn over years to restrain it. I remember having my chair taken away from me in primary school to teach me a lesson about sitting down. I needed to be on the move, but I learned to be ashamed of that need. It’s not how you behave. That masking is a hard part of having ADHD, but one that’s often subconscious. Internalised over years of being taught the one, neurotypical, way that’s acceptable to behave.
Inattentiveness is the other core part of ADHD. Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder. It’s badly named, because it’s not a deficit of attention. It’s a struggle to direct focus. When you get deep into something, you can really hyperfocus for hours on end. You can completely lose track of time, because you’re so focused. But in a lot of cases, getting started on something is hard because you have to bring your focus to that. This “task paralysis” is what I was talking about with my therapist, that led to my initial screening, and is one of the big things I struggle with. Not being hyperactive, but being able to actually get started on the clear list of tasks that I have to complete.
Inattentiveness shows in more obvious ways too. Listening to a conversation in which I’m an active participant is hard, because my ADHD brain is spitting out a hundred different ideas related to the conversation, trying to remember a point I want to make while not interrupting (common ADHD behaviour), all while noticing everything else going on in the room. I find I can get sidetracked from a conversation I’m genuinely interested in. Which is awful. But it’s extremely common in conversations I’m not interested in, regardless of their importance. Which is obviously rude, but also a massive issue with things like keeping track in work.
Time Blindness is another part of inattentiveness. It’s so easy to lose track of time. It’s easy to completely overestimate how much time you have to complete a task, which covers both things at work and even travelling time. I often leave things to the last minute, then rely on adrenaline to push me through. Except with travel, when I’m so paranoid about being late that I can often be extremely early for things. Having to adjust my approach to this with young children is a cause of great stress.
Beyond hyperactivity and inattentiveness, there’s a third big element to ADHD for me. Low self-esteem. When you spend your life masking symptoms, or masking elements of your personality, you can struggle to know who you are, and when you’re genuinely you. But when you are you, truly you, people often have a problem with that. So you internalise that criticism, and apply it to yourself. You’re annoying, you’re too loud, you’re too energetic. Calm down. Be quiet. Or people won’t like you. You spend a lot of time worrying that people are upset with you, even if you don’t know why. (It’s called Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria, or RSD.)
And you spend a hell of a lot of time feeling like you’re lazy. Why can’t I just finish this project? Why can’t I just get started today? Why can’t I just concentrate like everyone else does? I have a long list of tasks to do, get on with it. Oh why did I forget that obvious thing, I’m so stupid. Internal criticism can be brutal.
There are all sorts of skills and techniques for dealing with ADHD that I’ve learned about over the last few months. It’s hard work, but is paying off. I might share some later this month. (I might not, because as I’m now realising, executive function issues in my ADHD brain make it easy to make commitments but hard to stick to them!) But just actually seeing the problems I had as problems born from ADHD, as opposed to just flaws in my character, has been such a relief. Such a massive help.
Thanks for reading this, especially if you got through to the end. It’s not been easy to write.
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