ADHD at 40, the diagnosis matters to me but will it matter to anyone else?

My first thoughts about writing and sharing my experiences in this new stage of my life.

I was diagnosed with ADHD, Inattentive Type, in October the year I turned 40. October also happens to be ADHD awareness month. I kept meaning to write something and post it here, something about that timing of a milestone year and the month coinciding, something about how momentous it all felt, how significant and perhaps fated. But I didn’t. I kept putting it off and never got around to finishing it (insert comedic rimshot).

At first, I kind of enjoyed that irony. But then, when I really thought about it I realized I was scared to write about my diagnosis. Scared to share it broadly and in the deeply personal way writing about it like this would require.

I wasn’t particularly scared of any stigma around the disorder*. Maybe kind of vaguely concerned people might hold it against me in the future in some unknown way, but it feels so commonplace now that I don’t really see that being a serious issue in this day and age (I hope).

In a way, it was actually its commonality that scared me.

We all know someone, probably lots of someones, with ADHD or who we think probably has it. We all have an idea of what it looks like, how it plays out, and how it impacts people. And that image, the one I believe most folks have, doesn’t match me at all.

I was scared to write about my diagnosis, not because I’m afraid people will treat me differently because they see my abilities and needs differently, but because I’m afraid they won’t. I’m terrified that people will look at me, the version of me I’ve carefully curated and constructed for them to see on the outside, and say I’m faking it, or attention-seeking (ha, the irony of that phrase!), or jumping on the bandwagon of the disorder’s recent uptick in diagnoses.

I’m an academically successful woman who holds a Ph.D., has a strong marriage and a great relationship with my daughter. I’ve completed the first draft of a novel, a handful of short stories and countless semi-poems. I’ve never been fired or even ever got a detention in school. I’m not reckless or risk-seeking, I don’t pace or require extensive amounts of exercise to maintain any semblance of calm. Since my early teens, I’ve always been gainfully employed (if, arguably, often underemployed) or in school (or both) and generally have done fairly well in either arena of life. I have a pretty healthy relationship with alcohol and, even in the wildest times of my youth, was fairly moderate in my recreational drug use and very consistent in maintaining safe sexual practices.

What this description doesn’t include, what drove me to seek a diagnosis of some kind for whatever was wrong with me, was decades of depression, feeling like my experience of the world didn’t line up with everyone else’s, frequent exhaustion from trying to keep up, massive amounts of self-blame and guilt, and a lifetime of suppressing my instincts and needs so much that at 40 I feel like in some ways I don’t really even know who I am.

When my therapist first mentioned the idea of ADHD I thought, “no way that’s me”.

I’m tired all the time, not active. I don’t lose stuff like my wallet because I check that it’s in its designated pocket a million times when I’m out. I’m always early for things, not late. These and several other objections went through my mind but when she explained that, for instance, my inability to start a task that I enjoy and have no trepidation about actually doing is a classic symptom of ADHD, I broke down in tears. Her explanation of executive dysfunction so perfectly matched my experience that it immediately lifted a portion of the weight of self-blame and guilt and shame that I’d been carrying for as long as I could remember.

After that session, I didn’t know if I actually had ADHD or a related disorder, but the idea of some explanation changed my life; the thought that there might be an actual reason why I struggled with so many things and had to work so hard to compensate was freeing and empowering and a little frightening.

Suddenly, it was (maybe) not my fault.

In my first draft of this piece, I now went into an extensive explanation of my symptoms and how they impact my life. But I realized I didn’t want to do that, not this time. My instinct is to always justify and explain, to try and prove to you that I have this thing, that it’s cost me dearly in my life, that it hurts, but I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to feel like I have to do that.

Not any more.

I’m a woman with ADHD and if you know me in real life and think that diagnosis doesn’t make sense then I encourage you to either reach out and ask me about it or do some research of your own into how it can present in atypical ways, often with the internalization of issues rather than the typical externalized behaviours, and how so many women grow up hiding and masking their symptoms.

My other worry was that people would invalidate the disorder itself. Phrases like ‘I’m so ADHD today, I forgot where I parked’ or ‘I do ____ too, everyone does that’ are actually unhelpful, even when meant as a way of expressing empathy.

You might think it’s a way to connect with me but what am I supposed to do with these statements? Do I take you over-seriously and tell you that you must have ADHD too? Or agree that ‘everyone is a little ADHD’ these days?

More often than not, I reply by trying to quantify my problems, trying to explain why what you’re talking about isn’t the same thing that drove me to a psychologist after decades of pain and suffering. This knee-jerk response is defensive because what I hear when someone says these types of things is that my struggles aren’t/shouldn’t be a problem, that everyone has these issues and I’m just weaker/whinier/overly-sensitive about it.

I’m working on that.

But while I do my own work on my own insecurities I’d like to remind you of what I tell myself to help curb the feeling of needing to defend my diagnosis: we know folks with ADHD have different brains, our struggles aren’t the same as ‘everyone else’ who has momentary memory gaps or trouble paying attention in a dull class; and we also know that ADHDers are highly sensitive to rejection and prone to self-doubt and blame so these types of thoughts come easily to us, even if it’s not what you intended at all.

So yes, I was scared to share my diagnosis because it means something to me.

It means a great deal to me to understand the root cause of some issues that have been causing me harm for my whole life, to have answers as to why things seem so much harder for me sometimes, and why I’ve always felt a little separated and disconnected from everyone else. And while the diagnosis completely makes sense to me and feels like it absolutely fits, it’s still new and like an old wound starting to heal, the whole topic is still pretty raw and sensitive so I was scared to expose it to whatever criticism or questioning that might come.

And yet, here I am. Writing about it and trying to share my thoughts on this whole mental process of sharing and explanation and self-understanding. In part, I do this because through writing I come to better understand my own thoughts and feelings. Especially the feelings. After years of ignoring and suppressing my own discomfort and needs so that I can try to fit into a world that is a bad fit for my brain, I struggle to feel what I feel and own and understand those feelings. But writing helps.

The other part of my desire to write this stuff is to share it, hence publishing it here. I wish I’d heard of adult ADHD symptoms and how they impact women earlier and I wish more people knew more about what it’s actually like to live with it. So I write and share what I wish I could have read a decade and a half ago. And write and share what I hope my friends and family will read now.

And so I write and I share, even when it’s scary, because I want to know more about ADHD and how it impacts my life and figure someone else might want to know too.

*I use the word disorder for lack of a better term. It fits how I am currently seeing my ADHD and how I feel like it impacts my life — my brain struggles to do some things most folks can do with ease and therefore it feels like a disorder to me. I understand others may choose different terms and welcome a respectful discussion of how to frame and label ADHD in the comments if anyone would like to share their thoughts.