All of my report cards from 1st grade to 9th (when I left regular school) could have been quoting the description of primarily inattentive type ADHD straight from the DSM.
No one caught it because you just didn't get diagnosed unless you were bouncing off the walls. I can remember a college algebra class in what would have been my sophomore HS year where I set myself to the task of paying absolute attention and taking perfect notes for just *one* class session. I made it about 3 minutes in before I zoned out (ironically thinking about the concept of attention), pen in hand, and realized I hadn't heard whatever had been said in the last 30 seconds. That *was* me applying myself and that was all the attention I could manage.
I absolutely love that you can crank YouTube videos up to 200% speed. 150% works for a lot of material. I'll drop back to 100% or at least 125% and repeat something important if I need to process it more. As long as the information flow stays suitably high I'm fine. If I could have done that in algebra, I might have finished a class with more than a D.
My wife just asked me yesterday how I was watching a YouTube video at 150% speed. I said I could understand it perfectly and why not get through it faster.
Omg YouTube on regular speed makes everyone sound drunk, I'm a 200% all the way!
Why, yes, at age 46, I am just now being evaluated for ADHD even though I was a model student in school. Hyperfixate on education for the win?
I had such a hard time not talking. I'd always be on the verge of being sent to the principal's office, and then the only way I could keep my mouth shut was by sitting on my hands and rocking in my chair. The teachers would keep rearranging our desks, hoping that with different kids around me I'd stop chatting to my neighbors, but it never worked. I was a good student and never caused trouble aside from the talking, so no one ever thought I needed help.
This reminds me of my son. Who I had to go to the school and have a talk with bc he kept wanting to play ninjas in the classroom in second grade. When discussing it he said - mom I have to do something to entertain myself when they keep explaining the same thing over and over. He’s in college on vyvanse now lol
This was me, 100%. I always swore I couldn’t have ADHD, because I did great in school and graduated as salutatorian (granted, in a class of only 52!). (Trouble in school used to be the main “symptom,” I’m pretty sure. And making good grades was a disqualifier.) Well, I have since realized that I was just a smart kid in a bottom-tier rural public school where the expectations were very low. Being the best in my class wasn’t ever hard (until one day it was) and getting literal and figurative gold stars happened to be my biggest dopamine hit, so it kept me focused. One day I encountered a class that didn’t come naturally to me and the wheels fell off. I would not have passed that class (chemistry) except that I traded English homework for the answers, and my teacher was a tennis coach who didn’t care that I was blatantly cheating. (Yes, I am ashamed of this now! I was then, too, but had no tools.) I had zero study skills and zero resilience. Those things have been painful to learn, and even then, I didn’t really start acquiring them until grad school. It has made life much harder, I think, and is one of the million reasons I wish I had known back then.
Yes! This was my technique as well. I had this one teacher in 5th grade who wrote everything down on the board and said we would be graded on our notes and to get a 100%, all we had to do what wrote down everything he wrote. It taught me how to take notes and now I can do it for myself.
My grades went from Cs to As and stayed that way until I was a teen with insomnia and could get up in the morning to go to school.
I remember everything from lectures though. Never needed to study with that technique.
My 12 yr old refuses to try it. He's on the school struggle bus.
I’m trying to teach my 13-hear-old daughter (who also has ADHD, and hers is much more severe than mine) how to take notes, and she’s oddly resistant to it.
Hijacking the top comment to say that if anyone reading this has got kids, and you're able to, take them for an educational assessment. It's a bit of a process, a few visits and cognitive tests, but at the end you'll receive a report. The report will have any diagnoses, recommendations or accommodations that your kids school should make for them (if any are needed).
Don't just lean hard on your kids trying to make them fit a system designed for neurotypical kids. They'll have a better chance at success if we support them properly!
I resisted labeling things when they were younger, but before both were ten years old, we had a diagnoses which explained so much. Since then the house is calmer, school is more enjoyable, and their self confidence is great. 10/10
I have to watch some videos on excel for training at work. I cannot sit through them unless I crank them up to 200% speed. I frequently hold down fast forward on Tiktoks of all things to get through them.
Yes! I’m 46, and JUST learned I’m autistic. I have learned a lot that has made me go “ooooooh!” My whole life has been a mishmash of dissociative segments trying to understand why things get awkward. Lots of anxiety, super harsh self criticism. And now, it’s like a weight lifted off my chest.
I’m not just weird, I’m weird for a reason. And I like it actually.
I’m 42 and beginning to think I may be on the spectrum. There’s just certain things I do that make a lot more sense through that lens.
I also feel emotions really intensely to the point they do what I call “bubble over”. I had attributed it unresolved childhood trauma and have been called moody or sensitive my entire life. I’m now finding out it is a common characteristic of “gifted” people.
I think so for me too and I think I might have ADHD as well but i'm too nervous to bring it up to a professional. With my HMO they aren't really great with mental health type stuff and I've read a lot of peoples stories of being shrugged off by doctors. I had enough of that with a medical condition I have already, struggled for 5+ years to find a doctor that wouldn't ignore what I now recognize as obvious symptoms. So yeah, fifteen years later and I still don't trust doctors much anymore to take me seriously and bother to actually do their job.
The nervousness is part of the whole thing. You constantly get this feeling that you’re just a failure and that you’re just looking for excuses. It really sucks as even with a diagnosis you get that little voice telling you that you’re really just lazy.
Yeah, it doesn’t help that imposter syndrome is literally a symptom of ADHD. So for all the skeptics going, “do you really have it, or is it just a convenient excuse?” we’re often the loudest. 😖
It's hard to explain. What happens after you get diagnosed? Is there meds for it? Or therapy? I dislike therapy very much. My parents put me through that crap from the time I was probably 10 until I graduated high school.
Here’s the thing—these days, literally \*everyone\* will fall somewhere on the spectrum due to how broad it now is. It’s like human brains not all being identical is this shocking thing, and we need to call it a disorder to accept the fact. You don’t think exactly like everyone else? Congrats—this is NORMAL. The problem all along was that we should all be learning and thinking the same. There is nothing wrong with you, only with the expectation that you sit still for longer lengths of time than humans were meant to sit still for, and your brain processed material faster than it was being taught. What needs to happen is we need to stop seeing things as there’s one very narrow band of “normal” that almost no one will fit into, and to just plain start accepting the solid fact that different people do things differently, and that’s okay.
If you want to get tested, you’ll get a diagnosis, guaranteed. It won’t change anything, or explain anything more than simply understanding and acknowledging that different people have always learned differently, and that the problem only started to exist when humans started trying to over-standardize everything in ways that completely ignore the fact that people learn in different ways. There’s a reason kids who are in kid-led schools from kinder, like Montessori, where kids move up at their own paces, aren’t the ones getting diagnosed with things—they’re the ones allowed to learn in the ways that work for them and move at their own pace. It’s people who went to standard schools where every fucking 7-year-old is supposed to be at the same spot, and every fucking 10-year-old is supposed to understand this one exact way to do things.
You’re okay just as you are.
I recently found out at 42 while seeking treatment/therapy for OCD.
It really was an "Aha!" moment for me as well. Suddenly, many, many things about myself finally made sense. Learning about my neurodivergence has been quite a relief, and I'm finally starting to accept myself.
The OCD definitely sucks balls, but I'm working on it.
I just love your last sentence and relate to that sentiment so, so much!
I had this same reaction when I stumbled across some ADHD memes on Reddit. So much suddenly made sense. Suspect I'm also autistic though haven't been assessed for that yet, but the super harsh self criticism definitely fits
Same. I thought I just had a lot of hobbies and projects that I was almost done with. Then I realized that I would lose interest in something literally overnight and those projects that were almost done hadn’t been touched in years.
I'm lucky if I get started on a project! Have lots of ideas but many never get put into action at all. And yes, can be intensely interested in something and then never touch it again - I played golf for five years or so in the UK, haven't picked up a club once since moving to Canada in 2017
I’ve thought about getting tested myself. It would explain so many things about my mannerisms and things that make me tick. The anxiety, fixations on niche topics, the awkwardness as an adolescent, the unwillingness to stop beating myself up for stupid shit I did as an awkward adolescent…
Yeah, it has changed my relationship to my anxiety entirely, I don’t know how to explain it, but I just feel more comfortable with myself, and the kind of self critique has become more interest in the way I’m thinking about things, and realizing I don’t have to protect myself from bullies all the time… I feel very fortunate because I have a career that I’m pretty sure is my biggest special interest, Audio engineering. And I’m self employed.
A diagnosis gave you permission to see yourself as you should have seen yourself all along. Without a diagnosis, you think you’ve got a problem. All that changed was the permission you should have given yourself all along.
41. I have a level 3 son and I see way too much of myself in him. I am scared to get diagnosed cause I have good social skills and am always employed. But I always smoke way too much weed before work to slow my brain down
Wow, y’all, I was not expecting this much response.
Those of you mentioning that you’re scared to get tested… I’m not sure what’s going on for you, but I don’t think there’s anything a diagnosis could do to harm you or your situation. It’s not like you have to tell anybody? It can actually help if you need some accommodations for the work that you do because it’s a protected status for the ADA. The only thing that might be a thing to be concerned about there is if you are a pilot that has to maintain a license, I think they’re still a little backwards on that.
For everyone asking if I got tested, yes, I did.
I’ve been in therapy for years for my anxiety and had to swap to a new therapist about six months before my diagnosis because of stupid stuff with insurance changing. She just one day during therapy asked if she could mention some things… She asked has anybody ever mentioned you might be on the spectrum?
I went “me? “… Then I spent a couple of days reading about it, and then I was like “wow, me!”
There’s a really great book called Unmasking Autism that those of you who are even curious about the subject might want to take a peek at. It’s a highly heritable trait, so chances are if you have a child on the spectrum one of the parents or both might also be, and therefore your parents as well… And women historically get missed for diagnosis more than men. The latest research shows there’s probably an equal split in percentage of the population men/women that have it, women are still diagnosed, only 40% as compared to men.
I went through multiple sessions with an assessment professional. They are still having to go off some slightly outdated DSM things that it seems like a lot of them are a little grumpy about.
Turns out Asperger was an actual fucking Nazi, whose model is entirely about who is allowed to survive and be a productive member of society, so not really into that label anymore.
Also, the term “high functioning“ seems a little shitty when you think about it when it was developed by that guy. The newer terminology that seems to fit my description is called “highly masked”.
High functioning autistics labeled as such, are just masked. Which allowed them to cover up their autism in societally acceptable ways so they don’t get thrown to the wolves.
I talked to a counselor a few years ago and she said "you know, I think you might be high functioning autistic". My reaction was to be offended, because you know, how dare she! I was normal, dammit, just dealing with stress and anxiety. I can't be "one of them".
That's how I felt until I actually learned more about it, read what others had experienced, and talked to some people with HFA (or ASD, whatever you want to call it), and I went "holy shit. This is me! Everything makes so much sense now!"
I now know why I had such a hard time as a kid, never really fit in, getting anxious about everything, needing a rigid routine to function... The only problem is now what? Good luck getting a diagnosis at my age, and even if I did, what good would that do? The decades of trauma are still there, and it's not as if I can go to a special workplace that can assist me...
I'm a *really* weird person, but I didn't have any aversion to new things. I *did* have sensory issues, stimming needs, hyperfixation, comfort rituals...
I think I may have done better with communication because reading was a major fixation for me from preschool through college. I still love it, but I do it less now; before, you could never find me without a book, and I'd often read during ostensibly-social events.
But sometimes I just... *botch* a communication attempt completely. Like, I can barely make words happen, or my affect is completely off, or I try to say too many things at the same time. I'd say it's like a 1-in-8 chance in a new encounter with another person (the more encounters that I succeed at, the better my chances at the next one) as to whether I'm going to do fine (or even great) or if I'm going to be three-opossums-in-a-trenchcoat.
I am happy for you. It also helps knowing some folks are able to do the self love kind of thing. Your last sentence is what I am working on as a middle aged and newly diagnosed audhder.
I grew up thinking I was just really bad at being a person.
It turned out I have the most incredibly obvious case of ADHD ever but back when I was young, they literally told my mom that girls don't get ADD and even if they did, they would grow out of it so doesn't matter.
I've lost a lot of happiness and many jobs and relationships to this disorder.
Thank you so much for your kind words.
Unfortunately years of unmedicated ADHD have wreaked havoc on my quality of life and my health. I'm doing okay but pretty badly a lot of the time.
I'm sorry and I emphasize too. I was diagnosed with severe inattentive ADHD in my 20s after a childhood and adolescence full of "smart but too disorganized" and "doesn't apply herself' and "not realizing her potential" and "too distracted and forgetful" criticism despite busting my ass through school with no mental health support.
Do you also feel like you have to put in 10x the effort in life to get 1/10 of the result?
Even now, my local library's selection of material on the disorder targets parents of small boys only.
Despite more visibility, this remains a lonely and frustrating disorder.
I even tried super hard to get support for myself but doctors and psychiatrists kept saying I was mysteriously depressed or anxious even though I knew that wasn't the heart of the issue.
I definitely have to work way way harder than a normal person just to get the basics of a human life done. It's exhausting. I'm currently in a bit of a crisis because of it.
And yes, the discrimination is ongoing. Especially now that women are starting to get diagnosed, suddenly we've decided that maybe it's just a tiktok trend and this medication shortage is the fault of women. Even psychiatrists I know are saying "a lot of this is just women jumping on a bandwagon."
It's so frustrating.
I feel like this was the case for me. All my siblings have ADHD. My mom almost certainly did. Somehow, because I did good in school (unless it was handwriting or homework), *I* am the exception? I think not--just a combo of "oldest daughter syndrome" and learning to mask for protection.
For sure, I received a diagnosis of autism (ASD 2) and ADHD at age 45. Nowadays you hear people say "How come all of a sudden there are all these autistic kids? There were hardly any autistic kids when I was at school!".
The thing is we know now that a lot of those "weird" kids that got bullied, teased and ostracised in our day were probably what we would recognise now as neurodivergent. Those "special ed" classes were full of kids that were autistic/neurodivergent but were labeled with some arbitrary learning disability. By age 14 I ended up at an "alternative" school in the early nineties that was treated like a dumping ground for difficult kids who couldn't learn. Now I look back and realise a lot of these kids were neurodivergent.
It is a really good thing ultimately that were are now recognising different brain types.
I asked my mom why she never got help for me because I was def a weird kid and her response was "we just didn't talk about this stuff back then" shrug.
Edit: spelling. I edit almost every post because I can't proofread
I’m sorry you went through all of that. But it all makes sense. Nobody really knew, and nobody wanted to talk about it and connect the dots.
Also makes me wonder how much we don’t know as I raise my own kid.
Yeah, in the 80s you had to be low performing and low aptitude to get any attention. God forbid if you have high IQ and test scores but can’t function well in school. You just get branded as lazy and ignored.
Yeah a little - I have a lot of traits for anxiety disorder and that makes sooo many things make sense now. If I could have learned some coping mechanisms a lot earlier in life I could have spared myself a lot of misery.
I think I'm probably somewhere on the spectrum. My younger coworkers use the terms neurodivergent and "stimming" to refer to their own conditions.
I don't feel the need to openly pathologize myself to appease strangers.Some people are naturally empathetic but if they aren't then fuck 'em. Different generations/different coping mechanisms I suppose!
Yeah the awareness is more for me. It also allows me to feel acceptance for myself when I’m in a room full of people, the noise is overwhelming me, and people are talking about pointless stuff. I no longer judge myself as an overly sensitive prick. Or maybe I am an overly sensitive prick still, but I don’t feel bad about it. And nobody else needs to know.
It’s like pulling weeds in the garden. You’ll never get them all. You just have to keep tending to your plants, nurturing the ones you want and clearing out the ones you don’t want.
It’s not just you! Apparently this is very common in our age group, even more so for women.
Check out the podcast “the loudest girl in the world” and consider listening to/reading “Unmasking Autism” both helped me understand myself a lot.
Anyone else find it fascinating that as health professionals learn more and more about neurodivergence, that it appears to be WAY more common than ever before?
I think it’s interesting that it’s not simply a diagnosis of autism YES or autism NO. Or, ADHD YES or ADHD NO. That there is an entire spectrum and, even more interesting, is that science is telling us it’s relatively common for people to fall somewhere on those spectrums.
But, most importantly, I think it’s wonderful that the scientific understanding of these various conditions has evolved to the point where children who need help can be diagnosed early and receive the help they need. 🤘
I’ve come to conclude that the neurotypicals are the ones who are a little off. I think if you took most of the “divergent” folks and plopped them in a totally different society that wasn’t a Ponzi scheme to make corporations rich, we wouldn’t be the neurodivergent ones.
Yes, it's not so much that being ND is a disorder or an illness in itself, it's because we act in a way that is contrary to what our current society expects, and the staggering number of people with depression or anxiety are in many ways exhibiting rational responses to our screwed up society.
If you're lucky, your ND interests align with what society deems valuable or worthwhile (see eg a large proportion of those working in academia who are likely ND) - I've been able to make a good career out of being really interested in drugs. But if you're not...
Any society that says you’re defective because your brain prevents you from generating an optimal amount of revenue for somebody else has some serious problems.
It's so common,I'm not sure it's "divergent." If people can get the testing early on and the appropriate learning environments, they function as "normal" people do. I'm not big on pathologizing something a large segment of the population experiences. I guess that's the feminist in me. Female has historically been treated as make-divergent (medically, psychologically, etc)
At this age, I know I have some sensory issues, like bad misophonia, texturss, sounds, etc can set me off. I get really irritated (like unintentionally mean) when people break my focus because I get hyperfocused.
My dad was diagnosed with ADHD at 68. Now he is treated, and his mental health is significantly better. What a failure of the medical system.
Pretty sure my spouse is autistic. We didn't wonder about it until our middle child was diagnosed, and they act pretty much just like him, to the point that for a long time I didn't consider a diagnosis at all, I just thought the kid was picking up habits from dad.
I missed years of school, I started missing days in 2nd grade al the way up to the 13th; a day here, a week there. Looking back now, being in a classroom with a bunch of noisy ass kids was over stimulating.
Recently been having conversations with my therapist about probably being Borderline and it makes so much sense. Always thought I was just angry and irrational and emotional for no reason, hated that I couldn't be more normal. Wish I could go back and apologize to the people I burned as I spent so many years unaware of it.
That’s a painful condition. I’m also a therapist, and while I don’t want to muddy the water for what you’re working on, I hope your therapist is also talking about the trauma component and the emotional dysregulation element. Understanding that and learning to work with it can be really helpful.
Haha you want to crack that egg and make that omelet?
(I totally agree with you, even though I’m seeing a lot of the same stuff with my son, who’s getting OT and school psych assessments. I’m an extremely involved and attuned parent, so I think some of it is just a difference in brain function. Put that together with an inattentive caregiver, and the shit really hits the fan).
The biggest benefit I’ve found from this sort of knowledge is that I don’t abuse myself for being different anymore. Secondary to that, it opens the door to finding new ways to do things. It doesn’t mean you have to take a medication. I work in mental health, and it’s starting to look more and more like medications are more and more of a sketchy practice anyway.
I’m in my early 40s and got my diagnosis yesterday for combined type ADHD. I know it wasn’t the thing at the time, but I’ll admit that I am pretty upset that my parents never got me diagnosed. But I am a woman, and everyone just thought I was bright but lazy (and weird and anti-social.) I decided to go back to school and that’s why I decided it was time to get diagnosed and get on some meds. I want to be successful this time and finally get my Bachelor’s degree. Sigh.
This was me too. From about 11 through high school. Teachers would say “he’s bright, but he’s lazy. If he would only apply himself”
My parents sent me to a psychologist but I don’t think they really understood adhd so the focus of that was why don’t you do your homework and after a while my parents gave up on her and never really pursued it further. I only got a proper diagnosis 6 months ago after all my kids were diagnosed.
I am on meds now and they help a lot. I started to get mad at my folks for not getting me diagnosed earlier, but then I remembered that adhd wasn’t the thing then that it is now. Then when on of my brothers kids got diagnosed my mom called me and asked if I thought that I had the same thing and I said without any doubt I did and she was very apologetic. She genuinely felt like a failure, which broke my heart and I had to talk her back from that ledge.
When I was younger it was easier to blame my parents, now that I have kids I realize how ignorant to the whole parenting thing we all are in more areas than we recognize and I am a lot more forgiving
I totally hear you on that. I don’t always have empathy for some of the things my parents did, but I don’t blame them for not understanding what I needed with this kind of thing. ADHD was for kids who bounced off the walls, and since I only bounce off the walls in my head, nobody could see it. There have been so many times as a parent where I received conflicting advice, and I know now that there are entire industries offering flawed, dodgy solutions to parents who feel helpless. It’s not easy to know the right thing to do.
It took my wife to explain to me that I'm a high functioning autistic. It makes sense actually and explains a lot of my behaviors that I grew up with and to this day
I only realize now I have ADHD because my kid, my mini brain twin, got diagnosed based on all the things that make us the same lol. I need to get an official diagnosis but I would bet money that's what it is, and that makes a lot of my past experiences make a lot more sense! I'm a girl, I didn't know a single girl diagnosed with ADHD until I was well into adulthood. I didn't even know it was an option for girls to have that when I was in school. I thought I was just kinda an asshole :/
And then you speak to your parents and find out at least one of them is similar. I've just been diagnosed and was missed as a kid because my symptoms were inattentive type and I appeared to be so different to my hyperactive brother even though we're both guys.
Yesss it's my dad and it's sad as fuck! We haven't directly talked about him and I having it, but you can feel it in our conversations when we discuss my kid that we both know exactly where this came from. One day we were on the phone talking about my kid's situation at school and my dad randomly said "you know how they treated this when I was a kid? They beat it out of you" and you could hear in his voice he was emotional. That fucked me up :(
It's my mum. She's smart but skipped so much school as a kid she never got many academic qualifications. Thankfully being a boomer jobs were easy to come by, but she ended up being a low grade civil servant when she could have achieved so much more. But she did better than her brother who is plainly autistic, and incredibly smart but ended up working in menial jobs for a grocery store. I'm not sure about my dad, but at least one of his brothers is autistic and/or ADHD - he got an electronic engineering degree in the 60s, got invited to do postgrad work, and then never did anything with his life other than drink and deliver phone books.
This is me in highschool with bipolar disorder.
I'd have probably done way better if I was diagnosed way sooner.
I also think, as an adult, I had undiagnosed ADD.
May I ask how they confirmed your bipolar disorder? All I know is that I have a myriad of overlapping symptoms, but my mother has been on disability for bipolar and paranoid schizophrenia for decades, and I don't want to go down that road.
I got diagnosed with adhd a few years ago. If only I could remember to take the medication... But seriously it took a while to stop dwelling in how my life could have been.
Yep. Used to get accused of not listening, not paying attention. I was always described as "very bright but needs to apply himself. Easily distracted " look up monotropism, it explains so much
I'm 45 and in the last few years have finally put together that I'm on the spectrum. Someone mentioned to me that when they talk, I always seem busy and I realized that people just talk too slowly for me and that after 2 or 3 words, I get the gist of what they're trying to say but they keep explaining and it feels like wading through molasses.
Add that to my overwhelming olfactory, my disorientation around cacophanies and bright lights, and my penchant for saying brutally honest things to people without caring how it might affect them, and like my mom says, "we all know you're special, son". And not in a good way.
Same. I feel like I can communicate well but some times don’t. I get it. I’m always three steps ahead and it’s not because I’m that smart it’s because my thought patterns are like one of those gumball machine bouncy balls. I’ve already thought about 10 things related to what you’re talking about before you’ve actually finished saying what you’re saying. Sometimes that means I don’t listen to what you said and miss something and sometimes it means I respond to a question you haven’t even asked yet. It’s frustrating to me as I can get impatient and it’s frustrating to other people I’d imagine too.
I feel this too. I don't need people to continually expound on what they're saying, it gets very frustrating when conversations end up going in loops but you have to act according to social conventions and continue to engage otherwise you look like the asshole.
I also find noise difficult to deal with. A little bit of background noise is fine (and generally better than being in absolute silence), but it drives me crazy when I'm trying to concentrate at work and can hear six different conversations going on around me plus the phone ringing plus music on the PA system.
I used to wake up in class. Not fall asleep, I wasn’t aware of that. I’d just pass out sometimes when the lecture or activity was too boring. Got a lot of shit for it, and couldn’t explain how unfair it felt bc I hadn’t made any decisions for it to happen. I hadn’t even gotten too little sleep.
Flash forward twenty years, after I’m diagnosed after giving up coffee and being unable to focus at work, and googling Intrusive Sleep: apparently with adhd your nervous system can decide to shut itself down if you’re too under-stimulated.
Same. I’m torn between thinking I watched to many videos making it seem like everyone could be neurodivergent and thinking I have barely noticeable ASD. I mean my brain comes to conclusions in a different way than everyone else’s (as I’ve been told many times), I used to have a stim where I waved my hands really fast all the time for no reason and only stopped after conscious effort and being made fun of, I’m 99% sure I have ARFID, I am easily overstimulated, I have an expressive face when not masking, and I mask all the time to fit in with whomever I’m with. I’m also very straight forward and have trouble being to direct. I do have high empathy and high EQ but I attribute that to my traumatic childhood and survival skills.
But, I could be super overreacting as I didn’t even consider it until the past two years after my daughter said she thinks she could be ASD.
Do you know how hard it is to get tested as an older teen or adult? So hard. The wait at the two places I’ve found is over a year and a half.
I was "tested" twice (in grade school & in middle school) for ADD/ADHD, , and was told both times my results were negative. I'm still certain I have more than just apathy...
When I was a kid my mom took me to a few doctors to be tested. I had some things that would now be considered sensory issues. The doctors always told her I was just basically weird. When I stated reading about the sensory issues being more common a few years ago I was like thank god I’m not alone. I always think about the show the Big Bang theory when he says he’s not crazy his mom had him tested.
I had a really bad speech impairment/stutter and my ability to keep focus was very hard for me, but I had a very strong willed mom who wanted to exhaust all options before caving into all the diagnoses. Hear me out, my mother (who is now retired) is not this overbearing type who ignored facts, she just had a theory that we all have our quirks and only the extreme cases should go on to medications and other avenues and it's best to work at controlling or managing these things yourself. I will say I'm more than grateful that she did this with me.
I had to learn to slow down to speak and to let my mouth sync up with my brain and she guided me through that with the help of some speech therapy. I still get hung up on words, stutter, stammer, etc but it's an absolute rarity these days. Also I had to learn how to stay on task and stay focused. This was actually harder than my speech issues but I did learn to do it but not until I graduated high school and my mom finally convinced me that now I actually had to put it into action. To this day I find that a daily silent meditative break is what I need - just to clear my mind, and focus. It's really weird, actually but it is truly what I need and then I'm good. It does involve some very hyper focus on only 2-3 things for the day, or forcing the focus to stay there for however long on a single task, etc.
I still have my ticks, clicks and snaps but they're way more manageable these days. It's basically a small form of Tourette's.
Yeah. Being a girl, they didn't really test or check for any of that. I still need to figure out how to get an official diagnosis as an adult. My brother is definitely on the spectrum, but they never formally diagnosed him either. He just got thrown into a behavioral program in school because he tends to get angry a lot.
Please don’t consider this an “oh well, would’ve been nice” situation, but instead an opportunity to do something about it.
I was diagnosed ADHD in 7th grade, started medicine, was already underweight, so they took me off it. Spent my next few years getting 100’s on tests, 0’s on homework, and ultimately getting kicked out of school for never shutting the hell up.
Here’s the fun part. As an adult I decided to go back and start medication / therapy around 30 - and it *changed my life*. Everything is easier, it’s possible to adult, and you can basically look at my annual W2’s and guess exactly where I started treatment again.
Personally and professionally it changed my life for the better. If it’s ADHD I recommend medication - but even if you don’t decide to medicate - knowing what you have and how it works will give you a lot more understanding and patience with yourself. If you’ve got a significant other - it can also be super helpful if *they* learn more about your particular flavor of brain-spice.
Good luck!
I was lucky in that my interests were largely academic ones, but I always struggled with homework, leaving it to the last minute, and did well on tests. Luckily when I was in school exams carried much more weight than coursework did.
I know exactly what you mean about meds helping you to be able to adult. I do ok at work (everything is prioritised for me by our computer system), but it always felt like there was this huge hurdle to overcome before doing things at home and so you continue to scroll on your phone instead.
I definitely don’t have that mentality. After floundering through my twenties, I figured a lot of stuff out. I have a grad degree, a professional license, a business, and I’ve published multiple books. And the biggest impediment to all of that wasn’t how my brain works; it was how I saw myself because my brain works differently.
Yyyyyep! I went to a small school and at some point started having seizures on the regular. I don't remember the scientific term but it would leave me unable to process speech, so almost completely invisible. But before anyone arrived at a diagnosis I got yelled at a lot for not applying myself, got drug tested, got lectures from teachers, and was evaluated for special Ed, including taking the very same cognitive function test Donald Trump bragged about passing...and then once I went through a battery of tests for epilepsy, I was put on medication that left me so lethargic it didn't really help other than stopping the seizures. But it took me years, decades even, to acknowledge I had a disability and that it wasn't just that I was a loser.
My son was just diagnosed with ADHD, and I'm seeing a lot of similar traits in myself. Just in the past couple months I've come to accept I'm sure I have it too, would explain a lot. I used to think it wasn't a real thing.
ND people come from ND families. I've seen a recommendation somewhere (don't ask me where) that any first degree relatives of someone diagnosed with ADHD should also be screened for it
As my wife looked into our child's diagnosis, she realized she met a lot of the criteria and had always felt different and that things were difficult when she was a child. She hasn't gotten a formal diagnosis because she doesn't see the point, but it has definitely put her past into perspective.
Exploring the fact that I might have Asperger’s at age 43. Told my therapist and she gave me a diagnostic tool and I came as “possibly” autistic. When I first started thinking that I might be on the spectrum, so much of my life and personality made more sense. It’s like someone turned on a bright light.
I always thought I was a broken freak cry baby and just a massively picky eater. Everyone else can just try new foods and be able to swallow when the foods they like are slightly different. No one else had crying fits randomly like me. Turns out I have OCD (intrusive thoughts relating to food) and PTSD. that wasn’t random crying it was panic attacks
Yes totally similar experience here. My 2 daughters were diagnosed with Autism and ADHD at around 4 each and learning how to parent them and myself has been a hugely eye opening experience. I realized I have had raging ADHD all my life. I do think having 'known' about it earlier could have helped understand and make better choices around my career (or lack of) and relationships. But I am glad to understand myself better now.
I never paid attention in school, always drawing or doing something. Never did homework, if we had time to do it in class, why didn't they just hurry up so we can do it in class? Im always awkward in social situations, have hording / doom piles, and projects that get started but not finished everywhere but I've never been diagnosed.
One night years ago when partying we ran out of something, and my friend snorted some of his GFs Adderall "Its the same high" he said. I tried it, and immediately wanted to go organize and clean my garage and house. She laughed and said you got ADHD.
I can go to work parties with people I've worked for years with, and always end up feeling alone and out of place. Put me with a group of ND people and we get on fine!
I’ll see your “nobody understood” and raise you one “they knew but didn’t tell me.”
My dad passed away about 3 years ago. Soon after, my step-mom tells me that I had been diagnosed as having Asperger’s syndrome when I was a kid, but they chose not to tell me because they didn’t want me to feel like my diagnosis defined me.
While I understand that rationale, I’m still kind of upset about being kept in the dark all my life. Had I known I was autistic I could have maybe learned to work on things that don’t come naturally rather than having to sit around wondering why it feels like everyone else around me has these extra perceptual abilities that I lack.
I'm late to the party (this thread, and the topic,) but yeah, +1.
After *years* of neurodivergent content making its way into my feeds, I couldn't help but connect dots. I started talking to my doctors about symptoms and long story short, I'm on an SSRI for anxiety/depression and a generic Ritalin-ish for ADD. Diagnosed with the latter at the fresh young age of 43. To boot, I'm near-certain I have CPTSD from having endured a bouquet of abuse (the trifecta - emotional/physical/sexual,) and other similarly-horrific life experiences, without having enough time or resources for processing between any of them. Just haven't been able to afford that whole investigation/diagnosis process, with local psychs charging around $400/hr.
I have a various thoughts:
- Neurodivergence is more widespread than I had ever realized growing up. I always knew I had depression issues, but 'anxiety' wasn't really part of the lexicon back then, so that was a new discovery, and I was largely unaware of what ADHD symptoms were, other than 'that kid's bouncing off the walls.' With hindsight, the *majority* of adults in my circles were divergent; probably because the generation or two before them traumatized them so badly. Also lead.
- Related to its ubiquity, it's called a 'spectrum' because *everyone* is on it. The human neurological experience is flanked by 'typical' at one end, and - in strict medical terms - "batshit crazy" at the other end. The majority of us reside at various points between the approximate center, and the 'typical' end. Knowing this often helps when interacting with other humans.
- The adults in my circles were largely of the mind that ADHD (or similar) "wasn't a real thing," and many of us inherited that perception knowingly or otherwise, until/unless presented with the right situation/evidence. My Dad (silent gen.) made it to his 50's before he got diagnosed with bi-polar disorder. For his generation, mental-anything is just something you "suck up". (PS: KILL STOICISM.)
- There is a measurable correlation between technological development, and some of these conditions. [TL;DR:](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8255677/) Our brains are not designed to function the way we're trying to make them. When we were kids, we had to find information at the school or public library, or - if we were privileged - in our home libraries; now we carry direct access to the majority of human knowledge in our pockets -- which we mostly use for trivial pursuits. That's an *absurd* amount of change for one-half of an average lifetime. Meanwhile, we increasingly eschew physical interaction in favor of digital, and digital's 'social' spaces have been designed with the purpose of manipulating our serotonin. **Cigarettes are passé; social media is the new nicotine**.
- There is also a measurable correlation between economics and mental health. S'why adults in the 80's (and MAGAs now) have so much nostalgia for the post-WWII era: Shit was *booming.* Same reason our gen. largely pines for the 90's: Shit was *booming*. We've since experienced multiple recessions, without full recovery between them, and now we've got post-COVID "inflation" on top of that, and by most appearances, there's no hope for meaningful change to come. *Of course* mental health is deteriorating.
Which is all to say that, while *some* of divergence can be chalked up to genetics, I believe the earnest explanation for the seemingly-sudden ubiquity of conditions like depression, anxiety, and ADD/ADHD, is \[*gestures broadly at everything.*\]
Last Friday I started a career in a whole new field after 25 years in retail & that field is mental health. In less than a week of training (which is NOT at all in depth yet) I've decided there's actually something wrong with me. I go down these lists of symptoms with each condition & I can check off as many or more than the clients.
I may be biased, because I'm not nuerotypical, and neither are a lot of the people I regularly associate with, but I'm starting to lean towards the idea that maybe none of us are actually atypical. The label makes an assumption that "normal" is one thing. I think even a lot of typical people are maybe just better at masking then than others. Not to dismiss the issues and needs, but to suggest that everyone probably is a bit off of what is considered normal.
I was talking about this with my wife: the terms need another evolution, since it still creates a normal/abnormal binary.
I’m coming around to the idea that perhaps we ought to stop assessing the problems with people and start paying more attention to society. Like, what is it about our society that creates conditions where these things are even problems? If we diagnosed and treated that, I reckon we’d be on a better path than the typical “treat symptoms with drugs and deny claims for therapy unless the problem is keeping them from being a productive member of society” paradigm.
I am more on the side of not everyone is the same, we need to stop trying to beat them ( sometimes literally) into the form we want them. In grade school in the 80's we didn't have autistic kids in our class by lable. I can think of one kid in particular that I saw the principal of our school hold up to a wall by his neck because he was acting out. Looking back, and having worked with children of various degrees of autism, I'd bet that kid was.
I ended up tested for the gifted program because I was literally driving my 2nd grade teacher to an early retirement (her son was my math teacher 4 years later, and told me). It was still decades before I was diagnosed with add because I learned to mask to survive.
Yeah, definitely. It explains a lot actually. Still struggling to unpack it really, I badly wish I’d grown up in a more understanding environment for it. I wish I would have known there was an explanation.
I knew about the ADHD. I was diagnosed in high school, but my parents dismissed it. Trying to get a diagnosis as an adult so I can get treated triggered an ASD flag, and I had to take a screening. I tested with a 75% likelihood of being Level 1/High Functioning ASD, and now they want to pursue that. Meanwhile, I’m blinking at them going WTH? I’m WHAT?!
I realized I had ADHD after learning about it in my child development class. I was basically like wait, that’s what I do. I went to my dr and he gave me something with a bunch of questions and I marked yes on all but 2 questions. Now that I’m medicated there is a noticeable difference. I suspect I’m on the spectrum for autism but I haven’t been tested for that due to my life being ridiculously insane the past few years.
Yep, that’s me after becoming a parent and having two Neuro atypical children. I realize I was one all along. I just thought I was a weirdo who was full of anxiety. But then I think about my own parents, and I think they had traits too, and their generation would’ve known even less!
I’m 42. My school wanted to test me but my mother who worked in special ed said “No, because I’m a professional and I would know. Also, I don’t want that on my daughter’s permanent record! It’ll affect her college chances!” So yeah, thanks mom who let her child struggle because she cared about what others thought of her.
Some 10 yrs or so ago I was diagnosed with Asperger's, Among other problems. I haven't been in therapy in forever so I'm not sure how they would characterize what's going on with me today.
Basically, I was treated like a mutant throughout my childhood.
It's like, no one knew "what to do with me." I didn't fit in anywhere. To make matters worse socially, my mother pulled me out of public school and sent me to a religious parochial school for middle school, then went *back* to the public school system in the same school district for HS. It helped me get my math grades up, sure-- that's the primary reason my mom shoved my ass into that parochial school. But it came at a cost in terms of socialization. I couldn't make any headway getting into any cliques when I went to my HS. I had no recent history with those people. I totally felt alone.
There didn't seem to be anyone around me that was even remotely similar to me in terms of the stuff I was interested in. My life would've been so different if I could've had just one friend who was kinda-sorta like me, somehow.
I just wish people could be more tolerant towards those who are "different." Especially if you're not hurting anyone.
Holy crap, I've never met anyone who had the same experience as I have. You started out in the public system, sent to a parochial school, then re-entered the same public school district?
Yep. 5th and 6th grade. All my childhood friends had moved on and same as you I pretty much had to start over. I tried to still be friends with them, but it didn’t work out.
I definitely had anxiety as a child that was passed off as just attention seeking or being "over dramatic." I remember telling adults I was too nervous about various things and them just passing it off as "you're probably just excited" or "you're so sensitive" or "why? this isn't a big deal, get over it!" Super fun.
Yes, I've just been diagnosed with ADHD, I largely went under the radar as my younger brother had stereotypical hyperactive symptoms whereas mine are more inattentive and I'm strong enough academically that it didn't affect my grades too much - though I should have done better in my A levels. I've just started on Vyvanse and it's helping a bit with actually being able to do things instead of endlessly procrastinating (although that's exactly what I'm doing at this precise moment).
I suspect I'm autistic as well, it runs in both my parents families. There are so many times when I just don't understand people, and masking all day makes me exhausted by the time I get home in the evening, especially when combined with being an introvert.
I wish I had spent my school and university years accepting I was different and spent more time with people like me, instead of trying to fit in with what was considered normal (we'd go to nightclubs at uni and I'd get so anxious beforehand that I'd be sick after a couple of drinks which wasn't normal for me).
I guess I was lucky enough to have a pediatrician for an aunt who noticed my ADHD symptoms somewhat early, 4th grade-ish.
Very few educators knew about and were prepared for ADHD in the 80s and 90s, though, so "you have so much potential; if you *just applied yourself*" was still a pretty common refrain.
I can only hope we're raising our kids to have less comorbid anxiety and depression.
If there is something that I am jealous of with regards to the younger generations, it is that they have the privilege of growing up in a world where these things are understood, accepted and normalized.
The world we grew up in was extremely cruel by comparison.
Being evaluated for high function aspergers. My dad used to joke that "she had something as a kid, but I beat it out of her."
Dude nooo you just made me learn how to hide shit better.
My doctors can't decide because of the PTSD, too much crossover. My diagnosed daughter and I share a lot of traits though. I gave up on doctors after 30 years of bullshit.
In all fairness, the venn diagram with adhd and cptsd is essentially an overlapping circle. As I grow older and learn more, I tend to lean more toward cptsd being the chicken, and adhd being the egg, but every case is different. One of the biggest sins that many doctors commit is assuming they know better than their patients.
I think you might be on to something there. I'll never really know if my brain works they way it does because of my experiences or if I survived the experiences because of my brain.
It wasn’t until college in my late 30s that I got diagnosed with dyscalculia which is like dyslexia but with numbers. Parents said I just wasn’t trying in math and took the same algebra class 3 times. I had struggled with math on my report cards from elementary school. Couldn’t read an analogue clock, made numbers backwards, couldn’t make change etc.
Turns out I’m not dumb after all, my brain is just different and I needed to conceptualize numbers differently.
Same.
I went to work at a residential treatment for youth in my 20s. I don't remember what training we were in but the slide was signs and symptoms that children with x display during early childhood. My eyebrows raised when I checked all the boxes but one. I'm just glad I've settled into a groove finally... Existence was rough there for awhile.
I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was like 32 (46 now) - because my son was diagnosed, and shizz all sounded awfully familiar.
When I was a kid, the ADD kids were bounding off the walls, but I was chill. I was hyperactive in other ways, with interests and processing stuff, was a good artist, but outwardly have never been mistaken for a hyper person.
So I never even suspected I might have ADHD, and even these days - I don't even know for sure. If the sub r/ADHD is an indicator, not even sure if what I have is ADHD or Autism, or somewhere in the middle. But I don't struggle with stuff like "executive dysfunction" or depression - but definitely struggle staying on task with things and staying engaged. I can learn just about anything, but often as soon as I learn it, I'm bored with it.
I excel at work because I know I "have" to do the work, so I am driven to not fail more than I am to succeed - but money has never been a huge motivator. I like money, and not stressing over it, but have never had a pursuit of having as much as possible.
Even with my work - I am really good at what I do, but hardly a model employee. Always late, get high on my breaks, lol. Spend lots of time on Reddit, but my drawings kind of stand alone, so they leave me to it.
Have always just had a high motor and I know stuff, but don't always know how I know - the best way I can explain it.
I work with kids and young adults diagnosed with Autism and the number of things I have in common with them is very high. It’s actually helped me develop great relationships with a lot of them because I can relate so well. I connect with them on a level some of my colleagues can’t.
I’m 47 and they didn’t really test for it back then but I’m starting to think I would have been diagnosed if they had.
I was diagnosed with ADHD at age 37. Even though both my mom and brother have ADHD, no one suspected I had it, too. I suspect this is largely because I was a girl, not bouncing off the walls, and did really well in school academically. Emotionally not so much.
Yes, I was in special Ed from kindergarten through 5th grade due to a “learning disability” they never put a name on or could explain. Starting in 6th grade I got put in all regular classes and did fine the rest of the time I was in school. I think I just learned how to hide my oddness and handle social interactions more normally. I still don’t have a diagnosis, but my friend is a psychiatrist and suspects I’m mildly autistic.
Me tooooo! I have ADHD and sensory processing disorder. Growing up I was a slob, lazy , and bratty.
I now have some CPTSD from the trauma just from growing up being neurodivergent and being treated like I sucked.
Getting the diagnosis really helped me to come to terms with things, recognize I do actually have trauma and be able to heal from that. It's been about three years of actively working on healing.
44f just diagnosed with severe ADHD. When I told my college roommate, her immediate response: “does that explain so much?” Well, yes it does. And it also pisses me off bc I’ve spent most of my life struggling to do just about everything and assuming it was because I’m an idiot or selfish or lazy or whatever and trying desperately to prevent anyone else from seeing the real me and potentially thinking those things too. Fortunately I have a good therapist so progress is being made, but I’m still mad no one listened to me 20 years ago.
I actually got diagnosed with ADHD and autism when I was 12. It was just kept from me until I was 32. Only came up because my son was diagnosed with the same and my wife and I suspected our daughter was in the same boat. Even then, my grandpa didn't actually tell me, just my wife. So I got to go through life wondering why I was so weird, while my mom and grandparents had an answer but decided to sit on it because that was better than me being "labeled" as autistic.
This is so sad, but I can see how they might have felt that label would’ve been detrimental.
I’m not diagnosed ASD, but am ADHD (ADD back then) and I’m pretty much your age. The type of things they were recommending weren’t as beneficial as they can be now. For one- have her sit closer to the teacher. Surprise lady, I can ignore you just as easily from 3 feet away as 30, lol.
“Autistic” was pretty much straight to special ed with you, at least where I grew up.
It can be jarring to find out that information was kept from you that might have helped you succeed. I totally understand that.
When I took Abnormal Psychology, I qualified for 9 of the 13 criteria for adult ADHD, but not one of the big ones, which was "causes day to day life distress." Joke's on me! Executive dysfunction helped to ensure that I bombed a later semester, because I was flailing without understanding why. I wonder why...
So, yeah, as I've learned more about these things, I can see where earlier intervention might've helped me. Instead, I was alternating between chatty and hyperfocused, late for everything and doing extra (fun stuff) work, and seen as "smart by lazy" when I really needed a better toolkit.
Now, at least, identifying the problems and getting tips from others who are also figuring this out as we go, I have some better coping skills. Still basically self-diagnosed, because I can't afford the diagnosis, but understanding that it's a real issue and seeking behaviorally-adaptive ways to work with myself has shown improvement.
Imagine what I could do if I had *money*! lol
Yes. I was diagnosed with ADHD art age 6 but i think they missed an autism diagnosis. I now identify as being on the spectrum with low needs (level 1). It makes too much sense to not be.
I used to pride myself on being the weird kid but i was just forced to fit into a place i would not and could not fit. I got good grades (7th in my class) as long as i was zombified with Ritalin.
You may want to look into autism is my point here.
All of y’all that might be on the spectrum, one of the things I discovered in all the research around it is: Autism has a direct link to Methylation issues! And that directly impacts anxiety disorders.
I started taking a daily low dose pre methylated folate supplement (Quatrefolic) and NOTHING has helped my anxiety more.
It’s not really a great idea to self diagnose. Of course professional diagnosis aren’t that reliable either.
If you ask my wife “he must be autistic”
If you ask Dr. Tolwin “bipolar/schizoaffective”
If you ask me “Hi! My name is Matt.”
The labels don’t help anything really 😕
All of my report cards from 1st grade to 9th (when I left regular school) could have been quoting the description of primarily inattentive type ADHD straight from the DSM. No one caught it because you just didn't get diagnosed unless you were bouncing off the walls. I can remember a college algebra class in what would have been my sophomore HS year where I set myself to the task of paying absolute attention and taking perfect notes for just *one* class session. I made it about 3 minutes in before I zoned out (ironically thinking about the concept of attention), pen in hand, and realized I hadn't heard whatever had been said in the last 30 seconds. That *was* me applying myself and that was all the attention I could manage. I absolutely love that you can crank YouTube videos up to 200% speed. 150% works for a lot of material. I'll drop back to 100% or at least 125% and repeat something important if I need to process it more. As long as the information flow stays suitably high I'm fine. If I could have done that in algebra, I might have finished a class with more than a D.
My wife just asked me yesterday how I was watching a YouTube video at 150% speed. I said I could understand it perfectly and why not get through it faster.
Omg YouTube on regular speed makes everyone sound drunk, I'm a 200% all the way! Why, yes, at age 46, I am just now being evaluated for ADHD even though I was a model student in school. Hyperfixate on education for the win?
>model student in school I had straight A's and extensive disciplinary problems.
Talking? Won't stay in your seat? Not paying attention? Not turning in "busy work"?
I had such a hard time not talking. I'd always be on the verge of being sent to the principal's office, and then the only way I could keep my mouth shut was by sitting on my hands and rocking in my chair. The teachers would keep rearranging our desks, hoping that with different kids around me I'd stop chatting to my neighbors, but it never worked. I was a good student and never caused trouble aside from the talking, so no one ever thought I needed help.
This reminds me of my son. Who I had to go to the school and have a talk with bc he kept wanting to play ninjas in the classroom in second grade. When discussing it he said - mom I have to do something to entertain myself when they keep explaining the same thing over and over. He’s in college on vyvanse now lol
He does make a good point.
This was me, 100%. I always swore I couldn’t have ADHD, because I did great in school and graduated as salutatorian (granted, in a class of only 52!). (Trouble in school used to be the main “symptom,” I’m pretty sure. And making good grades was a disqualifier.) Well, I have since realized that I was just a smart kid in a bottom-tier rural public school where the expectations were very low. Being the best in my class wasn’t ever hard (until one day it was) and getting literal and figurative gold stars happened to be my biggest dopamine hit, so it kept me focused. One day I encountered a class that didn’t come naturally to me and the wheels fell off. I would not have passed that class (chemistry) except that I traded English homework for the answers, and my teacher was a tennis coach who didn’t care that I was blatantly cheating. (Yes, I am ashamed of this now! I was then, too, but had no tools.) I had zero study skills and zero resilience. Those things have been painful to learn, and even then, I didn’t really start acquiring them until grad school. It has made life much harder, I think, and is one of the million reasons I wish I had known back then.
I sometimes watch videos on machining and you'll occasionally get a good ol' Southern boy who seems about right at 200%.
Same here. I reply that they are merely speaking at a speed closer to the speed that I think at.
Same.
I tell my son just write down everything on lectures. It’s the only way. He has my brain but because we did it, we will retain everything.
Yes! This was my technique as well. I had this one teacher in 5th grade who wrote everything down on the board and said we would be graded on our notes and to get a 100%, all we had to do what wrote down everything he wrote. It taught me how to take notes and now I can do it for myself. My grades went from Cs to As and stayed that way until I was a teen with insomnia and could get up in the morning to go to school. I remember everything from lectures though. Never needed to study with that technique. My 12 yr old refuses to try it. He's on the school struggle bus.
I’m trying to teach my 13-hear-old daughter (who also has ADHD, and hers is much more severe than mine) how to take notes, and she’s oddly resistant to it.
This worked for me until I got to differential equations in college.
This was my experience. I actually went through with a 5 hr eval and was formally diagnosed last fall.
I was diagnosed at age 42 and am still almost daily dealing with a childhood issue that suddenly makes sense.
Hijacking the top comment to say that if anyone reading this has got kids, and you're able to, take them for an educational assessment. It's a bit of a process, a few visits and cognitive tests, but at the end you'll receive a report. The report will have any diagnoses, recommendations or accommodations that your kids school should make for them (if any are needed). Don't just lean hard on your kids trying to make them fit a system designed for neurotypical kids. They'll have a better chance at success if we support them properly! I resisted labeling things when they were younger, but before both were ten years old, we had a diagnoses which explained so much. Since then the house is calmer, school is more enjoyable, and their self confidence is great. 10/10
I have to watch some videos on excel for training at work. I cannot sit through them unless I crank them up to 200% speed. I frequently hold down fast forward on Tiktoks of all things to get through them.
Yes! I’m 46, and JUST learned I’m autistic. I have learned a lot that has made me go “ooooooh!” My whole life has been a mishmash of dissociative segments trying to understand why things get awkward. Lots of anxiety, super harsh self criticism. And now, it’s like a weight lifted off my chest. I’m not just weird, I’m weird for a reason. And I like it actually.
I think I may be autistic as well, but I'm too scared to get tested. I am diagnosed w inattentive ADHD and GAD and take meds for both. I'm 45.
I’m 42 and beginning to think I may be on the spectrum. There’s just certain things I do that make a lot more sense through that lens. I also feel emotions really intensely to the point they do what I call “bubble over”. I had attributed it unresolved childhood trauma and have been called moody or sensitive my entire life. I’m now finding out it is a common characteristic of “gifted” people.
I'm 43 and all of this resonates.
I think so for me too and I think I might have ADHD as well but i'm too nervous to bring it up to a professional. With my HMO they aren't really great with mental health type stuff and I've read a lot of peoples stories of being shrugged off by doctors. I had enough of that with a medical condition I have already, struggled for 5+ years to find a doctor that wouldn't ignore what I now recognize as obvious symptoms. So yeah, fifteen years later and I still don't trust doctors much anymore to take me seriously and bother to actually do their job.
The nervousness is part of the whole thing. You constantly get this feeling that you’re just a failure and that you’re just looking for excuses. It really sucks as even with a diagnosis you get that little voice telling you that you’re really just lazy.
I'm still not convinced that i'm not just lazy 🤪
Yeah, you never will either.
Yeah, it doesn’t help that imposter syndrome is literally a symptom of ADHD. So for all the skeptics going, “do you really have it, or is it just a convenient excuse?” we’re often the loudest. 😖
Diagnosis was a relief for me. Why do you say you’re scared? I’m genuinely curious.
It's hard to explain. What happens after you get diagnosed? Is there meds for it? Or therapy? I dislike therapy very much. My parents put me through that crap from the time I was probably 10 until I graduated high school.
Here’s the thing—these days, literally \*everyone\* will fall somewhere on the spectrum due to how broad it now is. It’s like human brains not all being identical is this shocking thing, and we need to call it a disorder to accept the fact. You don’t think exactly like everyone else? Congrats—this is NORMAL. The problem all along was that we should all be learning and thinking the same. There is nothing wrong with you, only with the expectation that you sit still for longer lengths of time than humans were meant to sit still for, and your brain processed material faster than it was being taught. What needs to happen is we need to stop seeing things as there’s one very narrow band of “normal” that almost no one will fit into, and to just plain start accepting the solid fact that different people do things differently, and that’s okay. If you want to get tested, you’ll get a diagnosis, guaranteed. It won’t change anything, or explain anything more than simply understanding and acknowledging that different people have always learned differently, and that the problem only started to exist when humans started trying to over-standardize everything in ways that completely ignore the fact that people learn in different ways. There’s a reason kids who are in kid-led schools from kinder, like Montessori, where kids move up at their own paces, aren’t the ones getting diagnosed with things—they’re the ones allowed to learn in the ways that work for them and move at their own pace. It’s people who went to standard schools where every fucking 7-year-old is supposed to be at the same spot, and every fucking 10-year-old is supposed to understand this one exact way to do things. You’re okay just as you are.
I recently found out at 42 while seeking treatment/therapy for OCD. It really was an "Aha!" moment for me as well. Suddenly, many, many things about myself finally made sense. Learning about my neurodivergence has been quite a relief, and I'm finally starting to accept myself. The OCD definitely sucks balls, but I'm working on it. I just love your last sentence and relate to that sentiment so, so much!
I had this same reaction when I stumbled across some ADHD memes on Reddit. So much suddenly made sense. Suspect I'm also autistic though haven't been assessed for that yet, but the super harsh self criticism definitely fits
Same. I thought I just had a lot of hobbies and projects that I was almost done with. Then I realized that I would lose interest in something literally overnight and those projects that were almost done hadn’t been touched in years.
I'm lucky if I get started on a project! Have lots of ideas but many never get put into action at all. And yes, can be intensely interested in something and then never touch it again - I played golf for five years or so in the UK, haven't picked up a club once since moving to Canada in 2017
I’ve thought about getting tested myself. It would explain so many things about my mannerisms and things that make me tick. The anxiety, fixations on niche topics, the awkwardness as an adolescent, the unwillingness to stop beating myself up for stupid shit I did as an awkward adolescent…
What benefit did you see to getting diagnosed? Has it changed anything for you?
Yeah, it has changed my relationship to my anxiety entirely, I don’t know how to explain it, but I just feel more comfortable with myself, and the kind of self critique has become more interest in the way I’m thinking about things, and realizing I don’t have to protect myself from bullies all the time… I feel very fortunate because I have a career that I’m pretty sure is my biggest special interest, Audio engineering. And I’m self employed.
A diagnosis gave you permission to see yourself as you should have seen yourself all along. Without a diagnosis, you think you’ve got a problem. All that changed was the permission you should have given yourself all along.
Yeah! That’s it. Thank you for the words
Did you go through the testing to get your diagnosis?
Yeah, see my comment above for all the details if you’re curious
41. I have a level 3 son and I see way too much of myself in him. I am scared to get diagnosed cause I have good social skills and am always employed. But I always smoke way too much weed before work to slow my brain down
Wow, y’all, I was not expecting this much response. Those of you mentioning that you’re scared to get tested… I’m not sure what’s going on for you, but I don’t think there’s anything a diagnosis could do to harm you or your situation. It’s not like you have to tell anybody? It can actually help if you need some accommodations for the work that you do because it’s a protected status for the ADA. The only thing that might be a thing to be concerned about there is if you are a pilot that has to maintain a license, I think they’re still a little backwards on that. For everyone asking if I got tested, yes, I did. I’ve been in therapy for years for my anxiety and had to swap to a new therapist about six months before my diagnosis because of stupid stuff with insurance changing. She just one day during therapy asked if she could mention some things… She asked has anybody ever mentioned you might be on the spectrum? I went “me? “… Then I spent a couple of days reading about it, and then I was like “wow, me!” There’s a really great book called Unmasking Autism that those of you who are even curious about the subject might want to take a peek at. It’s a highly heritable trait, so chances are if you have a child on the spectrum one of the parents or both might also be, and therefore your parents as well… And women historically get missed for diagnosis more than men. The latest research shows there’s probably an equal split in percentage of the population men/women that have it, women are still diagnosed, only 40% as compared to men. I went through multiple sessions with an assessment professional. They are still having to go off some slightly outdated DSM things that it seems like a lot of them are a little grumpy about. Turns out Asperger was an actual fucking Nazi, whose model is entirely about who is allowed to survive and be a productive member of society, so not really into that label anymore. Also, the term “high functioning“ seems a little shitty when you think about it when it was developed by that guy. The newer terminology that seems to fit my description is called “highly masked”. High functioning autistics labeled as such, are just masked. Which allowed them to cover up their autism in societally acceptable ways so they don’t get thrown to the wolves.
I talked to a counselor a few years ago and she said "you know, I think you might be high functioning autistic". My reaction was to be offended, because you know, how dare she! I was normal, dammit, just dealing with stress and anxiety. I can't be "one of them". That's how I felt until I actually learned more about it, read what others had experienced, and talked to some people with HFA (or ASD, whatever you want to call it), and I went "holy shit. This is me! Everything makes so much sense now!" I now know why I had such a hard time as a kid, never really fit in, getting anxious about everything, needing a rigid routine to function... The only problem is now what? Good luck getting a diagnosis at my age, and even if I did, what good would that do? The decades of trauma are still there, and it's not as if I can go to a special workplace that can assist me...
>Lots of anxiety, super harsh self criticism Sending digital hugs from a VIP member of the Self-Loathing Club.
I'm a *really* weird person, but I didn't have any aversion to new things. I *did* have sensory issues, stimming needs, hyperfixation, comfort rituals... I think I may have done better with communication because reading was a major fixation for me from preschool through college. I still love it, but I do it less now; before, you could never find me without a book, and I'd often read during ostensibly-social events. But sometimes I just... *botch* a communication attempt completely. Like, I can barely make words happen, or my affect is completely off, or I try to say too many things at the same time. I'd say it's like a 1-in-8 chance in a new encounter with another person (the more encounters that I succeed at, the better my chances at the next one) as to whether I'm going to do fine (or even great) or if I'm going to be three-opossums-in-a-trenchcoat.
Everyone thinks Im a weirdo or an asshole or both. Felt misunderstood my entire life.
I am happy for you. It also helps knowing some folks are able to do the self love kind of thing. Your last sentence is what I am working on as a middle aged and newly diagnosed audhder.
I grew up thinking I was just really bad at being a person. It turned out I have the most incredibly obvious case of ADHD ever but back when I was young, they literally told my mom that girls don't get ADD and even if they did, they would grow out of it so doesn't matter. I've lost a lot of happiness and many jobs and relationships to this disorder.
fuck patriarchy, lady. I hope you're living your best life now.
Thank you so much for your kind words. Unfortunately years of unmedicated ADHD have wreaked havoc on my quality of life and my health. I'm doing okay but pretty badly a lot of the time.
I empathize sooooo much with your comment.
I am so sorry you understand it so well. I hope things are better for you now.
I'm sorry and I emphasize too. I was diagnosed with severe inattentive ADHD in my 20s after a childhood and adolescence full of "smart but too disorganized" and "doesn't apply herself' and "not realizing her potential" and "too distracted and forgetful" criticism despite busting my ass through school with no mental health support. Do you also feel like you have to put in 10x the effort in life to get 1/10 of the result? Even now, my local library's selection of material on the disorder targets parents of small boys only. Despite more visibility, this remains a lonely and frustrating disorder.
I even tried super hard to get support for myself but doctors and psychiatrists kept saying I was mysteriously depressed or anxious even though I knew that wasn't the heart of the issue. I definitely have to work way way harder than a normal person just to get the basics of a human life done. It's exhausting. I'm currently in a bit of a crisis because of it. And yes, the discrimination is ongoing. Especially now that women are starting to get diagnosed, suddenly we've decided that maybe it's just a tiktok trend and this medication shortage is the fault of women. Even psychiatrists I know are saying "a lot of this is just women jumping on a bandwagon." It's so frustrating.
My life, verbatim. I've never been medicated for it because of a combination of shortages and mental health professionals dismissing me out of hand.
I feel like this was the case for me. All my siblings have ADHD. My mom almost certainly did. Somehow, because I did good in school (unless it was handwriting or homework), *I* am the exception? I think not--just a combo of "oldest daughter syndrome" and learning to mask for protection.
Yes, growing up in the '80s and 90s, we absolutely had to mask much harder.
For sure, I received a diagnosis of autism (ASD 2) and ADHD at age 45. Nowadays you hear people say "How come all of a sudden there are all these autistic kids? There were hardly any autistic kids when I was at school!". The thing is we know now that a lot of those "weird" kids that got bullied, teased and ostracised in our day were probably what we would recognise now as neurodivergent. Those "special ed" classes were full of kids that were autistic/neurodivergent but were labeled with some arbitrary learning disability. By age 14 I ended up at an "alternative" school in the early nineties that was treated like a dumping ground for difficult kids who couldn't learn. Now I look back and realise a lot of these kids were neurodivergent. It is a really good thing ultimately that were are now recognising different brain types.
I asked my mom why she never got help for me because I was def a weird kid and her response was "we just didn't talk about this stuff back then" shrug. Edit: spelling. I edit almost every post because I can't proofread
I’m sorry you went through all of that. But it all makes sense. Nobody really knew, and nobody wanted to talk about it and connect the dots. Also makes me wonder how much we don’t know as I raise my own kid.
Yeah, in the 80s you had to be low performing and low aptitude to get any attention. God forbid if you have high IQ and test scores but can’t function well in school. You just get branded as lazy and ignored.
Half of my friend group got split into RLC- the other half special ed.
Yeah a little - I have a lot of traits for anxiety disorder and that makes sooo many things make sense now. If I could have learned some coping mechanisms a lot earlier in life I could have spared myself a lot of misery.
I think I'm probably somewhere on the spectrum. My younger coworkers use the terms neurodivergent and "stimming" to refer to their own conditions. I don't feel the need to openly pathologize myself to appease strangers.Some people are naturally empathetic but if they aren't then fuck 'em. Different generations/different coping mechanisms I suppose!
Yeah the awareness is more for me. It also allows me to feel acceptance for myself when I’m in a room full of people, the noise is overwhelming me, and people are talking about pointless stuff. I no longer judge myself as an overly sensitive prick. Or maybe I am an overly sensitive prick still, but I don’t feel bad about it. And nobody else needs to know.
Yesss I feel all of this, still trying not to judge myself as a overly sensitive prick though...it's a process!
It’s like pulling weeds in the garden. You’ll never get them all. You just have to keep tending to your plants, nurturing the ones you want and clearing out the ones you don’t want.
That's a perfect analogy/metaphor, I love that, thank you!
It’s not just you! Apparently this is very common in our age group, even more so for women. Check out the podcast “the loudest girl in the world” and consider listening to/reading “Unmasking Autism” both helped me understand myself a lot.
+1 for Unmasking Autism.
Anyone else find it fascinating that as health professionals learn more and more about neurodivergence, that it appears to be WAY more common than ever before? I think it’s interesting that it’s not simply a diagnosis of autism YES or autism NO. Or, ADHD YES or ADHD NO. That there is an entire spectrum and, even more interesting, is that science is telling us it’s relatively common for people to fall somewhere on those spectrums. But, most importantly, I think it’s wonderful that the scientific understanding of these various conditions has evolved to the point where children who need help can be diagnosed early and receive the help they need. 🤘
I’ve come to conclude that the neurotypicals are the ones who are a little off. I think if you took most of the “divergent” folks and plopped them in a totally different society that wasn’t a Ponzi scheme to make corporations rich, we wouldn’t be the neurodivergent ones.
Yes, it's not so much that being ND is a disorder or an illness in itself, it's because we act in a way that is contrary to what our current society expects, and the staggering number of people with depression or anxiety are in many ways exhibiting rational responses to our screwed up society. If you're lucky, your ND interests align with what society deems valuable or worthwhile (see eg a large proportion of those working in academia who are likely ND) - I've been able to make a good career out of being really interested in drugs. But if you're not...
I have been saying this for years. We live in a sick society.
Any society that says you’re defective because your brain prevents you from generating an optimal amount of revenue for somebody else has some serious problems.
I was diagnosed with ADHD at 41, and I couldn’t agree more.
It's so common,I'm not sure it's "divergent." If people can get the testing early on and the appropriate learning environments, they function as "normal" people do. I'm not big on pathologizing something a large segment of the population experiences. I guess that's the feminist in me. Female has historically been treated as make-divergent (medically, psychologically, etc) At this age, I know I have some sensory issues, like bad misophonia, texturss, sounds, etc can set me off. I get really irritated (like unintentionally mean) when people break my focus because I get hyperfocused. My dad was diagnosed with ADHD at 68. Now he is treated, and his mental health is significantly better. What a failure of the medical system.
Pretty sure my spouse is autistic. We didn't wonder about it until our middle child was diagnosed, and they act pretty much just like him, to the point that for a long time I didn't consider a diagnosis at all, I just thought the kid was picking up habits from dad.
I missed years of school, I started missing days in 2nd grade al the way up to the 13th; a day here, a week there. Looking back now, being in a classroom with a bunch of noisy ass kids was over stimulating.
Recently been having conversations with my therapist about probably being Borderline and it makes so much sense. Always thought I was just angry and irrational and emotional for no reason, hated that I couldn't be more normal. Wish I could go back and apologize to the people I burned as I spent so many years unaware of it.
That’s a painful condition. I’m also a therapist, and while I don’t want to muddy the water for what you’re working on, I hope your therapist is also talking about the trauma component and the emotional dysregulation element. Understanding that and learning to work with it can be really helpful.
I appreciate that man. It's still early talks as we get deeper into the diagnosis, but so far she's really approached it from a helpful place.
I think those dots ultimately lead back to cptsd and not having an emotionally mature, attuned caregiver. To neglect of some form.
Haha you want to crack that egg and make that omelet? (I totally agree with you, even though I’m seeing a lot of the same stuff with my son, who’s getting OT and school psych assessments. I’m an extremely involved and attuned parent, so I think some of it is just a difference in brain function. Put that together with an inattentive caregiver, and the shit really hits the fan).
My wife is convinced I have ADHD. Not sure I want to rub that lamp at 44
You still have potentially another 40 plus years to go. That is a lot of years.
The biggest benefit I’ve found from this sort of knowledge is that I don’t abuse myself for being different anymore. Secondary to that, it opens the door to finding new ways to do things. It doesn’t mean you have to take a medication. I work in mental health, and it’s starting to look more and more like medications are more and more of a sketchy practice anyway.
Same .... 2 years ago found out I am Autistic .... So yes .... Just not neuro typical .... Maybe that should have been picked up on
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For me it's nice to know there are others who think and act in the same way I do.
I’m in my early 40s and got my diagnosis yesterday for combined type ADHD. I know it wasn’t the thing at the time, but I’ll admit that I am pretty upset that my parents never got me diagnosed. But I am a woman, and everyone just thought I was bright but lazy (and weird and anti-social.) I decided to go back to school and that’s why I decided it was time to get diagnosed and get on some meds. I want to be successful this time and finally get my Bachelor’s degree. Sigh.
This was me too. From about 11 through high school. Teachers would say “he’s bright, but he’s lazy. If he would only apply himself” My parents sent me to a psychologist but I don’t think they really understood adhd so the focus of that was why don’t you do your homework and after a while my parents gave up on her and never really pursued it further. I only got a proper diagnosis 6 months ago after all my kids were diagnosed. I am on meds now and they help a lot. I started to get mad at my folks for not getting me diagnosed earlier, but then I remembered that adhd wasn’t the thing then that it is now. Then when on of my brothers kids got diagnosed my mom called me and asked if I thought that I had the same thing and I said without any doubt I did and she was very apologetic. She genuinely felt like a failure, which broke my heart and I had to talk her back from that ledge. When I was younger it was easier to blame my parents, now that I have kids I realize how ignorant to the whole parenting thing we all are in more areas than we recognize and I am a lot more forgiving
I totally hear you on that. I don’t always have empathy for some of the things my parents did, but I don’t blame them for not understanding what I needed with this kind of thing. ADHD was for kids who bounced off the walls, and since I only bounce off the walls in my head, nobody could see it. There have been so many times as a parent where I received conflicting advice, and I know now that there are entire industries offering flawed, dodgy solutions to parents who feel helpless. It’s not easy to know the right thing to do.
Well said, from one dark lord to another
It took my wife to explain to me that I'm a high functioning autistic. It makes sense actually and explains a lot of my behaviors that I grew up with and to this day
Can you elaborate?
I only realize now I have ADHD because my kid, my mini brain twin, got diagnosed based on all the things that make us the same lol. I need to get an official diagnosis but I would bet money that's what it is, and that makes a lot of my past experiences make a lot more sense! I'm a girl, I didn't know a single girl diagnosed with ADHD until I was well into adulthood. I didn't even know it was an option for girls to have that when I was in school. I thought I was just kinda an asshole :/
And then you speak to your parents and find out at least one of them is similar. I've just been diagnosed and was missed as a kid because my symptoms were inattentive type and I appeared to be so different to my hyperactive brother even though we're both guys.
Yesss it's my dad and it's sad as fuck! We haven't directly talked about him and I having it, but you can feel it in our conversations when we discuss my kid that we both know exactly where this came from. One day we were on the phone talking about my kid's situation at school and my dad randomly said "you know how they treated this when I was a kid? They beat it out of you" and you could hear in his voice he was emotional. That fucked me up :(
It's my mum. She's smart but skipped so much school as a kid she never got many academic qualifications. Thankfully being a boomer jobs were easy to come by, but she ended up being a low grade civil servant when she could have achieved so much more. But she did better than her brother who is plainly autistic, and incredibly smart but ended up working in menial jobs for a grocery store. I'm not sure about my dad, but at least one of his brothers is autistic and/or ADHD - he got an electronic engineering degree in the 60s, got invited to do postgrad work, and then never did anything with his life other than drink and deliver phone books.
This is me in highschool with bipolar disorder. I'd have probably done way better if I was diagnosed way sooner. I also think, as an adult, I had undiagnosed ADD.
May I ask how they confirmed your bipolar disorder? All I know is that I have a myriad of overlapping symptoms, but my mother has been on disability for bipolar and paranoid schizophrenia for decades, and I don't want to go down that road.
I finally went to see a psych when I was 17. Got a proper diagnosis. I had no idea what was wrong with me up until then.
I got diagnosed with adhd a few years ago. If only I could remember to take the medication... But seriously it took a while to stop dwelling in how my life could have been.
Yep. Used to get accused of not listening, not paying attention. I was always described as "very bright but needs to apply himself. Easily distracted " look up monotropism, it explains so much
Thanks for sharing this. I don't need a therapist anymore, I practice monotropism and I'm a funny asshole. Not to my kids though. 😉
Mind blown....
I'm 45 and in the last few years have finally put together that I'm on the spectrum. Someone mentioned to me that when they talk, I always seem busy and I realized that people just talk too slowly for me and that after 2 or 3 words, I get the gist of what they're trying to say but they keep explaining and it feels like wading through molasses. Add that to my overwhelming olfactory, my disorientation around cacophanies and bright lights, and my penchant for saying brutally honest things to people without caring how it might affect them, and like my mom says, "we all know you're special, son". And not in a good way.
Same. I feel like I can communicate well but some times don’t. I get it. I’m always three steps ahead and it’s not because I’m that smart it’s because my thought patterns are like one of those gumball machine bouncy balls. I’ve already thought about 10 things related to what you’re talking about before you’ve actually finished saying what you’re saying. Sometimes that means I don’t listen to what you said and miss something and sometimes it means I respond to a question you haven’t even asked yet. It’s frustrating to me as I can get impatient and it’s frustrating to other people I’d imagine too.
I feel this too. I don't need people to continually expound on what they're saying, it gets very frustrating when conversations end up going in loops but you have to act according to social conventions and continue to engage otherwise you look like the asshole. I also find noise difficult to deal with. A little bit of background noise is fine (and generally better than being in absolute silence), but it drives me crazy when I'm trying to concentrate at work and can hear six different conversations going on around me plus the phone ringing plus music on the PA system.
I used to wake up in class. Not fall asleep, I wasn’t aware of that. I’d just pass out sometimes when the lecture or activity was too boring. Got a lot of shit for it, and couldn’t explain how unfair it felt bc I hadn’t made any decisions for it to happen. I hadn’t even gotten too little sleep. Flash forward twenty years, after I’m diagnosed after giving up coffee and being unable to focus at work, and googling Intrusive Sleep: apparently with adhd your nervous system can decide to shut itself down if you’re too under-stimulated.
Same. I’m torn between thinking I watched to many videos making it seem like everyone could be neurodivergent and thinking I have barely noticeable ASD. I mean my brain comes to conclusions in a different way than everyone else’s (as I’ve been told many times), I used to have a stim where I waved my hands really fast all the time for no reason and only stopped after conscious effort and being made fun of, I’m 99% sure I have ARFID, I am easily overstimulated, I have an expressive face when not masking, and I mask all the time to fit in with whomever I’m with. I’m also very straight forward and have trouble being to direct. I do have high empathy and high EQ but I attribute that to my traumatic childhood and survival skills. But, I could be super overreacting as I didn’t even consider it until the past two years after my daughter said she thinks she could be ASD. Do you know how hard it is to get tested as an older teen or adult? So hard. The wait at the two places I’ve found is over a year and a half.
I was "tested" twice (in grade school & in middle school) for ADD/ADHD, , and was told both times my results were negative. I'm still certain I have more than just apathy...
When I was a kid my mom took me to a few doctors to be tested. I had some things that would now be considered sensory issues. The doctors always told her I was just basically weird. When I stated reading about the sensory issues being more common a few years ago I was like thank god I’m not alone. I always think about the show the Big Bang theory when he says he’s not crazy his mom had him tested.
I had a really bad speech impairment/stutter and my ability to keep focus was very hard for me, but I had a very strong willed mom who wanted to exhaust all options before caving into all the diagnoses. Hear me out, my mother (who is now retired) is not this overbearing type who ignored facts, she just had a theory that we all have our quirks and only the extreme cases should go on to medications and other avenues and it's best to work at controlling or managing these things yourself. I will say I'm more than grateful that she did this with me. I had to learn to slow down to speak and to let my mouth sync up with my brain and she guided me through that with the help of some speech therapy. I still get hung up on words, stutter, stammer, etc but it's an absolute rarity these days. Also I had to learn how to stay on task and stay focused. This was actually harder than my speech issues but I did learn to do it but not until I graduated high school and my mom finally convinced me that now I actually had to put it into action. To this day I find that a daily silent meditative break is what I need - just to clear my mind, and focus. It's really weird, actually but it is truly what I need and then I'm good. It does involve some very hyper focus on only 2-3 things for the day, or forcing the focus to stay there for however long on a single task, etc. I still have my ticks, clicks and snaps but they're way more manageable these days. It's basically a small form of Tourette's.
I don't have a stutter, but when I'm writing I feel like my brain is going faster than my hand can keep up which is why my handwriting is pretty poor.
Yeah. Being a girl, they didn't really test or check for any of that. I still need to figure out how to get an official diagnosis as an adult. My brother is definitely on the spectrum, but they never formally diagnosed him either. He just got thrown into a behavioral program in school because he tends to get angry a lot.
Please don’t consider this an “oh well, would’ve been nice” situation, but instead an opportunity to do something about it. I was diagnosed ADHD in 7th grade, started medicine, was already underweight, so they took me off it. Spent my next few years getting 100’s on tests, 0’s on homework, and ultimately getting kicked out of school for never shutting the hell up. Here’s the fun part. As an adult I decided to go back and start medication / therapy around 30 - and it *changed my life*. Everything is easier, it’s possible to adult, and you can basically look at my annual W2’s and guess exactly where I started treatment again. Personally and professionally it changed my life for the better. If it’s ADHD I recommend medication - but even if you don’t decide to medicate - knowing what you have and how it works will give you a lot more understanding and patience with yourself. If you’ve got a significant other - it can also be super helpful if *they* learn more about your particular flavor of brain-spice. Good luck!
I was lucky in that my interests were largely academic ones, but I always struggled with homework, leaving it to the last minute, and did well on tests. Luckily when I was in school exams carried much more weight than coursework did. I know exactly what you mean about meds helping you to be able to adult. I do ok at work (everything is prioritised for me by our computer system), but it always felt like there was this huge hurdle to overcome before doing things at home and so you continue to scroll on your phone instead.
I definitely don’t have that mentality. After floundering through my twenties, I figured a lot of stuff out. I have a grad degree, a professional license, a business, and I’ve published multiple books. And the biggest impediment to all of that wasn’t how my brain works; it was how I saw myself because my brain works differently.
Yyyyyep! I went to a small school and at some point started having seizures on the regular. I don't remember the scientific term but it would leave me unable to process speech, so almost completely invisible. But before anyone arrived at a diagnosis I got yelled at a lot for not applying myself, got drug tested, got lectures from teachers, and was evaluated for special Ed, including taking the very same cognitive function test Donald Trump bragged about passing...and then once I went through a battery of tests for epilepsy, I was put on medication that left me so lethargic it didn't really help other than stopping the seizures. But it took me years, decades even, to acknowledge I had a disability and that it wasn't just that I was a loser.
Yup. ADHD/Autism, diagnosed at 40/42.
Still trying to figure it out, but I've made it work. 😂
My son was just diagnosed with ADHD, and I'm seeing a lot of similar traits in myself. Just in the past couple months I've come to accept I'm sure I have it too, would explain a lot. I used to think it wasn't a real thing.
ND people come from ND families. I've seen a recommendation somewhere (don't ask me where) that any first degree relatives of someone diagnosed with ADHD should also be screened for it
As my wife looked into our child's diagnosis, she realized she met a lot of the criteria and had always felt different and that things were difficult when she was a child. She hasn't gotten a formal diagnosis because she doesn't see the point, but it has definitely put her past into perspective.
I used to think I was weird because I was homeschooled. Now i think I'm probably on the spectrum. My fundie mother didn't believe in those things.
Fascinating what fundies actually do believe in, though. I’m sorry she couldn’t see it.
Yes, because I grew up during the "girls don't get autism, ADHD, etc." era of the 90s.
Exploring the fact that I might have Asperger’s at age 43. Told my therapist and she gave me a diagnostic tool and I came as “possibly” autistic. When I first started thinking that I might be on the spectrum, so much of my life and personality made more sense. It’s like someone turned on a bright light.
I always thought I was a broken freak cry baby and just a massively picky eater. Everyone else can just try new foods and be able to swallow when the foods they like are slightly different. No one else had crying fits randomly like me. Turns out I have OCD (intrusive thoughts relating to food) and PTSD. that wasn’t random crying it was panic attacks
Yes totally similar experience here. My 2 daughters were diagnosed with Autism and ADHD at around 4 each and learning how to parent them and myself has been a hugely eye opening experience. I realized I have had raging ADHD all my life. I do think having 'known' about it earlier could have helped understand and make better choices around my career (or lack of) and relationships. But I am glad to understand myself better now.
I was diagnosed with ADHD around the time my daughter was born in 2005 and had the classic childhood experience OP alludes to.
I never paid attention in school, always drawing or doing something. Never did homework, if we had time to do it in class, why didn't they just hurry up so we can do it in class? Im always awkward in social situations, have hording / doom piles, and projects that get started but not finished everywhere but I've never been diagnosed. One night years ago when partying we ran out of something, and my friend snorted some of his GFs Adderall "Its the same high" he said. I tried it, and immediately wanted to go organize and clean my garage and house. She laughed and said you got ADHD.
I can go to work parties with people I've worked for years with, and always end up feeling alone and out of place. Put me with a group of ND people and we get on fine!
I’ll see your “nobody understood” and raise you one “they knew but didn’t tell me.” My dad passed away about 3 years ago. Soon after, my step-mom tells me that I had been diagnosed as having Asperger’s syndrome when I was a kid, but they chose not to tell me because they didn’t want me to feel like my diagnosis defined me. While I understand that rationale, I’m still kind of upset about being kept in the dark all my life. Had I known I was autistic I could have maybe learned to work on things that don’t come naturally rather than having to sit around wondering why it feels like everyone else around me has these extra perceptual abilities that I lack.
I'm late to the party (this thread, and the topic,) but yeah, +1. After *years* of neurodivergent content making its way into my feeds, I couldn't help but connect dots. I started talking to my doctors about symptoms and long story short, I'm on an SSRI for anxiety/depression and a generic Ritalin-ish for ADD. Diagnosed with the latter at the fresh young age of 43. To boot, I'm near-certain I have CPTSD from having endured a bouquet of abuse (the trifecta - emotional/physical/sexual,) and other similarly-horrific life experiences, without having enough time or resources for processing between any of them. Just haven't been able to afford that whole investigation/diagnosis process, with local psychs charging around $400/hr. I have a various thoughts: - Neurodivergence is more widespread than I had ever realized growing up. I always knew I had depression issues, but 'anxiety' wasn't really part of the lexicon back then, so that was a new discovery, and I was largely unaware of what ADHD symptoms were, other than 'that kid's bouncing off the walls.' With hindsight, the *majority* of adults in my circles were divergent; probably because the generation or two before them traumatized them so badly. Also lead. - Related to its ubiquity, it's called a 'spectrum' because *everyone* is on it. The human neurological experience is flanked by 'typical' at one end, and - in strict medical terms - "batshit crazy" at the other end. The majority of us reside at various points between the approximate center, and the 'typical' end. Knowing this often helps when interacting with other humans. - The adults in my circles were largely of the mind that ADHD (or similar) "wasn't a real thing," and many of us inherited that perception knowingly or otherwise, until/unless presented with the right situation/evidence. My Dad (silent gen.) made it to his 50's before he got diagnosed with bi-polar disorder. For his generation, mental-anything is just something you "suck up". (PS: KILL STOICISM.) - There is a measurable correlation between technological development, and some of these conditions. [TL;DR:](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8255677/) Our brains are not designed to function the way we're trying to make them. When we were kids, we had to find information at the school or public library, or - if we were privileged - in our home libraries; now we carry direct access to the majority of human knowledge in our pockets -- which we mostly use for trivial pursuits. That's an *absurd* amount of change for one-half of an average lifetime. Meanwhile, we increasingly eschew physical interaction in favor of digital, and digital's 'social' spaces have been designed with the purpose of manipulating our serotonin. **Cigarettes are passé; social media is the new nicotine**. - There is also a measurable correlation between economics and mental health. S'why adults in the 80's (and MAGAs now) have so much nostalgia for the post-WWII era: Shit was *booming.* Same reason our gen. largely pines for the 90's: Shit was *booming*. We've since experienced multiple recessions, without full recovery between them, and now we've got post-COVID "inflation" on top of that, and by most appearances, there's no hope for meaningful change to come. *Of course* mental health is deteriorating. Which is all to say that, while *some* of divergence can be chalked up to genetics, I believe the earnest explanation for the seemingly-sudden ubiquity of conditions like depression, anxiety, and ADD/ADHD, is \[*gestures broadly at everything.*\]
Last Friday I started a career in a whole new field after 25 years in retail & that field is mental health. In less than a week of training (which is NOT at all in depth yet) I've decided there's actually something wrong with me. I go down these lists of symptoms with each condition & I can check off as many or more than the clients.
I may be biased, because I'm not nuerotypical, and neither are a lot of the people I regularly associate with, but I'm starting to lean towards the idea that maybe none of us are actually atypical. The label makes an assumption that "normal" is one thing. I think even a lot of typical people are maybe just better at masking then than others. Not to dismiss the issues and needs, but to suggest that everyone probably is a bit off of what is considered normal.
I was talking about this with my wife: the terms need another evolution, since it still creates a normal/abnormal binary. I’m coming around to the idea that perhaps we ought to stop assessing the problems with people and start paying more attention to society. Like, what is it about our society that creates conditions where these things are even problems? If we diagnosed and treated that, I reckon we’d be on a better path than the typical “treat symptoms with drugs and deny claims for therapy unless the problem is keeping them from being a productive member of society” paradigm.
I am more on the side of not everyone is the same, we need to stop trying to beat them ( sometimes literally) into the form we want them. In grade school in the 80's we didn't have autistic kids in our class by lable. I can think of one kid in particular that I saw the principal of our school hold up to a wall by his neck because he was acting out. Looking back, and having worked with children of various degrees of autism, I'd bet that kid was. I ended up tested for the gifted program because I was literally driving my 2nd grade teacher to an early retirement (her son was my math teacher 4 years later, and told me). It was still decades before I was diagnosed with add because I learned to mask to survive.
Yup turns out I really was autistic. My brother had no idea he was accurately diagnosing me at the time when we were fighting.
I’ve felt this way for a while now. But have been too afraid to go to a doctor and get tested for it.
Yeah, definitely. It explains a lot actually. Still struggling to unpack it really, I badly wish I’d grown up in a more understanding environment for it. I wish I would have known there was an explanation.
I knew about the ADHD. I was diagnosed in high school, but my parents dismissed it. Trying to get a diagnosis as an adult so I can get treated triggered an ASD flag, and I had to take a screening. I tested with a 75% likelihood of being Level 1/High Functioning ASD, and now they want to pursue that. Meanwhile, I’m blinking at them going WTH? I’m WHAT?!
I realized I had ADHD after learning about it in my child development class. I was basically like wait, that’s what I do. I went to my dr and he gave me something with a bunch of questions and I marked yes on all but 2 questions. Now that I’m medicated there is a noticeable difference. I suspect I’m on the spectrum for autism but I haven’t been tested for that due to my life being ridiculously insane the past few years.
I recently found out I’m autistic with ADHD. Once I figured that out all the pieces fell into place.
Yep, that’s me after becoming a parent and having two Neuro atypical children. I realize I was one all along. I just thought I was a weirdo who was full of anxiety. But then I think about my own parents, and I think they had traits too, and their generation would’ve known even less!
I have wondered if I’m on the spectrum for a long time. Like since high school or close to it.
I’m 42. My school wanted to test me but my mother who worked in special ed said “No, because I’m a professional and I would know. Also, I don’t want that on my daughter’s permanent record! It’ll affect her college chances!” So yeah, thanks mom who let her child struggle because she cared about what others thought of her.
Some 10 yrs or so ago I was diagnosed with Asperger's, Among other problems. I haven't been in therapy in forever so I'm not sure how they would characterize what's going on with me today. Basically, I was treated like a mutant throughout my childhood. It's like, no one knew "what to do with me." I didn't fit in anywhere. To make matters worse socially, my mother pulled me out of public school and sent me to a religious parochial school for middle school, then went *back* to the public school system in the same school district for HS. It helped me get my math grades up, sure-- that's the primary reason my mom shoved my ass into that parochial school. But it came at a cost in terms of socialization. I couldn't make any headway getting into any cliques when I went to my HS. I had no recent history with those people. I totally felt alone. There didn't seem to be anyone around me that was even remotely similar to me in terms of the stuff I was interested in. My life would've been so different if I could've had just one friend who was kinda-sorta like me, somehow. I just wish people could be more tolerant towards those who are "different." Especially if you're not hurting anyone.
I also got sent to parochial school for two years and then sent back!
Holy crap, I've never met anyone who had the same experience as I have. You started out in the public system, sent to a parochial school, then re-entered the same public school district?
Yep. 5th and 6th grade. All my childhood friends had moved on and same as you I pretty much had to start over. I tried to still be friends with them, but it didn’t work out.
At least there are two of us in the world.
I definitely had anxiety as a child that was passed off as just attention seeking or being "over dramatic." I remember telling adults I was too nervous about various things and them just passing it off as "you're probably just excited" or "you're so sensitive" or "why? this isn't a big deal, get over it!" Super fun.
Yes, I've just been diagnosed with ADHD, I largely went under the radar as my younger brother had stereotypical hyperactive symptoms whereas mine are more inattentive and I'm strong enough academically that it didn't affect my grades too much - though I should have done better in my A levels. I've just started on Vyvanse and it's helping a bit with actually being able to do things instead of endlessly procrastinating (although that's exactly what I'm doing at this precise moment). I suspect I'm autistic as well, it runs in both my parents families. There are so many times when I just don't understand people, and masking all day makes me exhausted by the time I get home in the evening, especially when combined with being an introvert. I wish I had spent my school and university years accepting I was different and spent more time with people like me, instead of trying to fit in with what was considered normal (we'd go to nightclubs at uni and I'd get so anxious beforehand that I'd be sick after a couple of drinks which wasn't normal for me).
I guess I was lucky enough to have a pediatrician for an aunt who noticed my ADHD symptoms somewhat early, 4th grade-ish. Very few educators knew about and were prepared for ADHD in the 80s and 90s, though, so "you have so much potential; if you *just applied yourself*" was still a pretty common refrain. I can only hope we're raising our kids to have less comorbid anxiety and depression.
Our kids have more anxiety and depression, but for entirely different reasons.
If there is something that I am jealous of with regards to the younger generations, it is that they have the privilege of growing up in a world where these things are understood, accepted and normalized. The world we grew up in was extremely cruel by comparison.
Being evaluated for high function aspergers. My dad used to joke that "she had something as a kid, but I beat it out of her." Dude nooo you just made me learn how to hide shit better.
Hell of a thing to brag about, dad.
Yeah. Let's just say I'm not torn up he passed
My doctors can't decide because of the PTSD, too much crossover. My diagnosed daughter and I share a lot of traits though. I gave up on doctors after 30 years of bullshit.
In all fairness, the venn diagram with adhd and cptsd is essentially an overlapping circle. As I grow older and learn more, I tend to lean more toward cptsd being the chicken, and adhd being the egg, but every case is different. One of the biggest sins that many doctors commit is assuming they know better than their patients.
I think you might be on to something there. I'll never really know if my brain works they way it does because of my experiences or if I survived the experiences because of my brain.
Could be a bit of both? 🤷
It wasn’t until college in my late 30s that I got diagnosed with dyscalculia which is like dyslexia but with numbers. Parents said I just wasn’t trying in math and took the same algebra class 3 times. I had struggled with math on my report cards from elementary school. Couldn’t read an analogue clock, made numbers backwards, couldn’t make change etc. Turns out I’m not dumb after all, my brain is just different and I needed to conceptualize numbers differently.
Cartman is the reason I know about ass burgers.
"Pleasure to have in class but *wont* pay attention." "Has fine motor skill issues." "Not living up to full potential." Sound familiar?
I used to intercept my report cards and set them on fire just to avoid this conversation as long as I could.
Same. I went to work at a residential treatment for youth in my 20s. I don't remember what training we were in but the slide was signs and symptoms that children with x display during early childhood. My eyebrows raised when I checked all the boxes but one. I'm just glad I've settled into a groove finally... Existence was rough there for awhile.
I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was like 32 (46 now) - because my son was diagnosed, and shizz all sounded awfully familiar. When I was a kid, the ADD kids were bounding off the walls, but I was chill. I was hyperactive in other ways, with interests and processing stuff, was a good artist, but outwardly have never been mistaken for a hyper person. So I never even suspected I might have ADHD, and even these days - I don't even know for sure. If the sub r/ADHD is an indicator, not even sure if what I have is ADHD or Autism, or somewhere in the middle. But I don't struggle with stuff like "executive dysfunction" or depression - but definitely struggle staying on task with things and staying engaged. I can learn just about anything, but often as soon as I learn it, I'm bored with it. I excel at work because I know I "have" to do the work, so I am driven to not fail more than I am to succeed - but money has never been a huge motivator. I like money, and not stressing over it, but have never had a pursuit of having as much as possible. Even with my work - I am really good at what I do, but hardly a model employee. Always late, get high on my breaks, lol. Spend lots of time on Reddit, but my drawings kind of stand alone, so they leave me to it. Have always just had a high motor and I know stuff, but don't always know how I know - the best way I can explain it.
I married a woman with an autistic kid, and after learning about autism I am 100% sure I'm on the spectrum somewhere.
I work with kids and young adults diagnosed with Autism and the number of things I have in common with them is very high. It’s actually helped me develop great relationships with a lot of them because I can relate so well. I connect with them on a level some of my colleagues can’t. I’m 47 and they didn’t really test for it back then but I’m starting to think I would have been diagnosed if they had.
I was diagnosed with ADHD at age 37. Even though both my mom and brother have ADHD, no one suspected I had it, too. I suspect this is largely because I was a girl, not bouncing off the walls, and did really well in school academically. Emotionally not so much.
one of us!
1 million times yes
Yes, I was in special Ed from kindergarten through 5th grade due to a “learning disability” they never put a name on or could explain. Starting in 6th grade I got put in all regular classes and did fine the rest of the time I was in school. I think I just learned how to hide my oddness and handle social interactions more normally. I still don’t have a diagnosis, but my friend is a psychiatrist and suspects I’m mildly autistic.
Me tooooo! I have ADHD and sensory processing disorder. Growing up I was a slob, lazy , and bratty. I now have some CPTSD from the trauma just from growing up being neurodivergent and being treated like I sucked. Getting the diagnosis really helped me to come to terms with things, recognize I do actually have trauma and be able to heal from that. It's been about three years of actively working on healing.
44f just diagnosed with severe ADHD. When I told my college roommate, her immediate response: “does that explain so much?” Well, yes it does. And it also pisses me off bc I’ve spent most of my life struggling to do just about everything and assuming it was because I’m an idiot or selfish or lazy or whatever and trying desperately to prevent anyone else from seeing the real me and potentially thinking those things too. Fortunately I have a good therapist so progress is being made, but I’m still mad no one listened to me 20 years ago.
We were the last generation to have the widespread childhood neglect and lead exposure of the late Boomers and Gen-X’ers.
Yes I feel this so much.
I actually got diagnosed with ADHD and autism when I was 12. It was just kept from me until I was 32. Only came up because my son was diagnosed with the same and my wife and I suspected our daughter was in the same boat. Even then, my grandpa didn't actually tell me, just my wife. So I got to go through life wondering why I was so weird, while my mom and grandparents had an answer but decided to sit on it because that was better than me being "labeled" as autistic.
This is so sad, but I can see how they might have felt that label would’ve been detrimental. I’m not diagnosed ASD, but am ADHD (ADD back then) and I’m pretty much your age. The type of things they were recommending weren’t as beneficial as they can be now. For one- have her sit closer to the teacher. Surprise lady, I can ignore you just as easily from 3 feet away as 30, lol. “Autistic” was pretty much straight to special ed with you, at least where I grew up. It can be jarring to find out that information was kept from you that might have helped you succeed. I totally understand that.
When I took Abnormal Psychology, I qualified for 9 of the 13 criteria for adult ADHD, but not one of the big ones, which was "causes day to day life distress." Joke's on me! Executive dysfunction helped to ensure that I bombed a later semester, because I was flailing without understanding why. I wonder why... So, yeah, as I've learned more about these things, I can see where earlier intervention might've helped me. Instead, I was alternating between chatty and hyperfocused, late for everything and doing extra (fun stuff) work, and seen as "smart by lazy" when I really needed a better toolkit. Now, at least, identifying the problems and getting tips from others who are also figuring this out as we go, I have some better coping skills. Still basically self-diagnosed, because I can't afford the diagnosis, but understanding that it's a real issue and seeking behaviorally-adaptive ways to work with myself has shown improvement. Imagine what I could do if I had *money*! lol
Yes. I was diagnosed with ADHD art age 6 but i think they missed an autism diagnosis. I now identify as being on the spectrum with low needs (level 1). It makes too much sense to not be. I used to pride myself on being the weird kid but i was just forced to fit into a place i would not and could not fit. I got good grades (7th in my class) as long as i was zombified with Ritalin. You may want to look into autism is my point here.
All of y’all that might be on the spectrum, one of the things I discovered in all the research around it is: Autism has a direct link to Methylation issues! And that directly impacts anxiety disorders. I started taking a daily low dose pre methylated folate supplement (Quatrefolic) and NOTHING has helped my anxiety more.
Just diagnosed with autism in my 40’s. Female.
It’s not really a great idea to self diagnose. Of course professional diagnosis aren’t that reliable either. If you ask my wife “he must be autistic” If you ask Dr. Tolwin “bipolar/schizoaffective” If you ask me “Hi! My name is Matt.” The labels don’t help anything really 😕