Jamie

ADHD Voices: Tanya

I’d always known I was different. Not in a Peter Parker spidey-senses-tingling kind of way. More like that feeling when you have a cold, your senses are dulled, and you know that you’re not quite hearing everything at full volume. But you’re very aware that everyone else is operating on Dolby Digital surround sound.

There was the time I told a friend’s mum that I wore tights in summer because they “filtered the warm air” so it was cooler by the time it got to my legs. Or when we had to write about one of Leonardo da Vinci’s inventions in a history class and I spent an hour praising how ingenious it was that he had created the world’s first trampoline. He hadn’t. It was a parachute. But my head had seen “cloth stretched apart by wooden poles” and it meant someone could fall from a height “without injury.” Interpreting things slightly oddly has always been my forte.

Struggling with school

Then there was hitting age 15 and being surrounded by all my classmates studying for mock exams; I just didn’t understand. I knew what I’d been taught, and I wasn’t going to waste hours re-writing all of my schoolwork in the vague hope that I’d remember it all a bit better.

I’d been a model student until then: I was a real-life Hermione (right down to the precocious corrections of everyone’s grammar) and loved to learn. I devoured books. I was always reading, writing, drawing, crafting. Anything to keep my hands and my mind busy. I just wanted to know everything. I would obsess for weeks or months on a topic. Pirates. Rainforests. Tornadoes. Dinosaurs. Jack the Ripper. I delighted in finding nuggets of trivia to drop into conversation.

Suddenly, I found myself stifled in a classroom learning dull facts that bore no relation to the technicolour world I learnt about in my encyclopaedias. I didn’t understand. Why was I being expected to learn all of this pointless information? I was bored. My mind wandered. My mum was called in to talk to my head of year about my lack of motivation and enthusiasm. But I was still doing well enough in all my classwork that they weren’t really worried – just a bit concerned that I wasn’t “applying” myself.

I achieved a straight set of A and A* grades at GCSE. I hadn’t revised for even an hour. And clearly, it would have been a waste of time anyway, to my mind, given my stellar performance. I was excited to start A Levels, anticipating a new challenge, hoping that finally my schoolmates would have caught up to my level of enthusiasm for learning and that the materials we’d be studying would be a little less elementary.

It took about a week for those hopes to drain away. I felt trapped in a world that was stifling my creativity, stumping out my curiosity. Lessons were a list of boxes to be ticked, stock answers to be memorised. And always, without fail:
“You just need to apply yourself.”
“You’re smarter than that.”
“You have such good ideas, I don’t understand why your written work doesn’t reflect that.”

I was surrounded by academic, conscientious girls who would sit in silence for an hour whilst I debated Shakespeare’s take on feminism, made jokes in French, questioned the benefits of our voting system. And then they would turn in full-mark essays whilst I could barely concentrate for half an hour when I got home to hit the minimum word counts. I was confused. I felt stranded. I desperately wanted to learn and debate, discuss and engage. My head was full of ideas and questions, but it just felt so pointless having to churn it all out so someone could match it up to a marking guide.

Theatre was my saving grace. I joined a youth theatre aged 14, and I don’t think I have ever been as happy as I was every Wednesday evening, in the glow of the sconces on the wood-panelled walls, cocooned in the embrace of music and dance. Even now, the nostalgia of those rehearsals fills me at once with warmth and can bring me to tears for how much I crave recapturing that feeling.

Into adulthood

Fast-forward to last year, and I’m struggling with a relationship that feels like it’s splitting at the seams, a diagnosis of severe anxiety and depression, and medication that feels like it’s doing more harm than good.

I can’t keep track of time. I forget plans I’ve made. I get told off for constantly interrupting everyone. I feel like an outcast in every job I have, like everyone else was given the handbook for functioning in the workplace but I’ve got to work it out for myself. And it just doesn’t make sense. New friendships with colleagues feel forced. I can’t “just get on with” mundane, boring tasks. I start my day with the best intentions, and well-organised to-do lists and suddenly it’s 5pm and I haven’t done anything on the list. But I’ve been busy all day. Every day.

I’m regularly describing my mood as “edgy”, “foggy”, “panicked.” Sometimes I’m speaking and it’s like someone else is doing the talking. My dreams are more vivid than ever, and I’m waking up every day exhausted from having already lived out an entire day in my sleep. Sometimes, I’m so hyper that I can’t sit still, my words tumble over themselves and I feel like a wind-up toy, a motor buzzing inside me, unable to think clearly until it’s juddered to a halt.

And then come the days that I can’t face the world. It’s like there’s a slab of concrete pressing down on me, pinning me to the bed, clouding my mind until I can’t imagine ever being happy again.

Making sense of it all

I spoke to my GP. I voiced my concern that I had bipolar tendencies, from all the reading I’d been doing. Luckily, she referred me and I was seen by a psychiatrist within weeks. I spent two hours unpicking my thought processes, my reactions, my instincts. It was cathartic in itself just to do that. Then came the magic words:

“I think it’s very likely that you have ADHD.”

My eyes were opened.

True to form, I got home and scoured the internet for every morsel of information I could find on adult ADHD, specifically in women. I was reading about me. Suddenly, everything made sense. The overactive imagination. Feeling like time would speed up and slow down. That feeling that I was seeing the world through different lenses to everyone else.

Life after diagnosis

It’s been 8 months since my diagnosis, and I feel like a different person. To quote Kate Kelly and Peggy Ramundo’s fantastic book, “You mean I’m not lazy, stupid, or crazy?!”

It’s not that ADHD is an excuse for any of my frustrating traits (probably more frustrating to me than anyone else!), but it certainly explains a lot of it. And now that I have a reason, I can look into ways of mitigating behaviours that impact on other people. Or at least give them an explanation – that I don’t mean to interrupt them 7 times in a conversation, but I am aware of it and I’m working on it. That I’m really trying to be on time, but a 10 minute window where I can arrive without panicking is really helpful to my mental health for the rest of the day.

It’s also made me realise that it’s ok to feel trapped in an environment where I’m stuck at a desk for 8 hours a day. It’s just not something my brain can handle very well. It’s helping me to focus my job-search, looking for things that will give me some scope to be out of the office, or to work from home a day a week. I’m stuck with the paradox of needing a routine, but also feeling suffocated as soon as I have a routine that is too structured.

I’m not saying I have a handle on it yet. It’s a work in progress, and I’m sure it will be for quite some time. I might not know exactly where I’m going, and definitely not how I’m going to get there. But at least now I have a map.

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Tanya can be found as @tan_pollypocket on Twitter
and you can check out her own blog, Polly’s Pocket as well.

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ADHD Voices is a series dedicated to sharing the stories of folks like you and me who have ADHD. Posts in the series are written by guest authors, sharing windows into their lives and struggles, written by them, for you and me. If you’d like to share your story, please contact me on social media or through my email, ADHDsurprise @ gmail.com

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How Undiagnosed ADHD Impacted My Home Life

As you seek an ADHD diagnosis, your doctor or psychiatrist will ask about how it is impacting your home life, as well as work or school. The challenges we face which drive us to seek mental health services will almost always stem from one or more of these major arenas. And as you look closely, you will find the impacts of ADHD in all areas of your life.

As my diagnosis of ADHD-Inattentive came well into adulthood at age 37, I have found plenty of signs of its impact at home, work, and school. Though I of course experienced them all as they happened, I accepted what I had always told myself: that these were the simply signs of a good-for-nothing, lazy, and possibly incompetent person. Someone who did not care for his things, his family, or himself. A person lacking motivation to take care of even simple, every day tasks that every adult is simply expected to do.

As ADHD was given this camouflage of laziness, it wreaked havoc on my home life. After my therapist brought up ADHD I was able to begin to see all of the damage that had been done. Here I share some of the major areas of impact that I have observed in my home life as an adult.

Organization

I have always struggled with organization, and my adult home is no exception. First off, I own too many things. There’s a massive sense of guilt attached to letting go of anything that might one day be useful, and a great deal of nostalgia surrounding a multitude of belongings I’ve kept since childhood. I have collections gathered from many, many past fixations that are neatly stored and awaiting the day when the fixation might resurface.

All of these belongings greatly exacerbate the general state of disorganization that permeates the house. The farther you are from the front door, the more my belongings exist in piles. Historically this has been worst in the garage and an extra bedroom which came to be known as “the storage room.” Both areas tended to grow in clutter until I literally just threw items through the door onto the pile because either the mess was so bad the extra item wouldn’t be noticed, or because I could no longer enter the room without stepping on something.

My own bedroom has often gotten to a state where (predominantly) clothes dominate the space: in baskets, on the floor, or piled on open drawers. Tops of dressers and night stands are covered in clutter accumulated by dozens of drive-by drops as the rest of the house gets “cleaned.” Even the cleaner parts of the house like the living and dining room will collect small piles of clutter around the edges of the room and on top of flat surfaces. These get somewhat spruced when the infrequent guest stops by, but often are ignored as we become blind to the existence of the smaller piles.

I can clean and organize things, and every now and then I will muster up the drive to do a massive cleaning or organization project and I can completely fix a room or two over the course of several hours. But typically that is a one-shot deal and within a week or two the room has returned to its usual cluttered state.

Lack of maintenance

I always admired my dad for how well he took care of his things and family. Our house and acreage, many cars, various pets, and of course us humans in the home too. He was always working to improve and/or maintain things. For example, with his cars he kept a notebook for each one where he would log the maintenance he performed. These notebooks existed for the entire time he owned each vehicle. If anything became broken on the property or on a vehicle, it was fixed almost immediately.

I have always felt like a failure compared to him. No matter where I live, my home or apartment is in a constant state of decay, and though I may even notice what is happening I simply don’t have the drive to do anything about it. Many home-improvement projects are lying around started but unfinished and there are several items that are broken and have been awaiting repair for years.

This lack of maintenance also extends to myself. Routine things regarding self-care are very difficult to sustain with regularity. I have developed a few routines that help me (usually) stay on top of the basics like brushing my teeth and showering. But ‘bigger’ self care items like going to the dentist and doctor are put off for years in favor of the “go when it really hurts” plan. It’s not a great way to stay healthy.

Relationships

My undiagnosed ADHD was particularly challenging for my partner and my kids. My fixations were often all I could think about and took all of my time and attention, usually taking priority over all family matters. I would rarely help with chores around the house unless I was asked. I simply didn’t feel any drive to clean and do dishes or laundry. And when I did resolve to make changes, they would only last days or weeks.

A big part of my ADHD is emotional dysregulation. My emotions run very close to the surface and that means that anger, frustration, fear, happiness, sadness-any or all of these can come rushing out. While I can usually hold things together at work throughout the day (where there are real world consequences for ‘losing it’), I tended to lose it at home instead, where the immediate consequences for doing so are less severe. This often meant yelling at my kids or being surly with my wife when they weren’t really the source of the frustration or anger.

Managing life tasks

Poor executive function is the culprit for a lot of things I struggle with. I have low impulse control and tend to spend money on frivolous things or items related to my current fixation, whether we can afford them or not. I completely forget about or am slow to pay bills even when I have money to do so. An incredibly poor short term memory equates to a lot of broken promises to family members and many forgotten and neglected responsibilities.

Time blindness is another hallmark of ADHD. For me it shows up in a few ways. When I’m hyperfocused, I lose track of time completely and hours may pass. If I’m doing something that’s required or imposed, time my drag on and 10 minutes can feel like an hour. It also impacts larger passages of time. While I may think I called my dad earlier in the week, if I check the call log, it may show that as much as two months have passed. I’m horrible at keeping up contact with family and friends who are long distance.

What now?

This list surely isn’t exhaustive, but I believe it gives a pretty good picture of the major impacts that undiagnosed ADHD had on my home. I hope that reading it helps you identify some of the ways ADHD has impacted your home so that like me, you can begin to make changes for the better as you gain knowledge and supports to combat your symptoms.

Just discovering you have ADHD can be life-changing, as you can begin to build supports and routines into your life to counteract many of the symptoms. But for me, treatment through therapy and medication have been necessary. What isn’t helped by medication can be supported through therapy as you break down mental barriers and create new routines together. Things aren’t perfect for me at home yet, but I am seeing a huge difference for the better as I’ve begun treating my ADHD in earnest.

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Signs of ADHD From Before I Was 12

At some point in your ADHD journey, you’ll need to consider the subject of this post. It’s an important topic, and one your doctor or psychiatrist will likely ask you about if you’re seeking an ADHD diagnosis as an adult.

Why is this so?

ADHD doesn’t come out of nowhere. Yes, the symptoms can be masked and/or may not have a significant impact early in life. Especially those ADHDers with the inattentive sub-type like me can often go undiagnosed until we hit “the wall.” This could happen in middle or high school, college, or that first high-expectations job. But that wall will eventually present itself and you’ll realize something is wrong.

For me the wall came in college, when I nearly flunked out my first semester. That’s an easy enough thing to point to and looking back, the struggles I had were clearly due to undiagnosed ADHD. But as I mentioned, ADHD doesn’t just suddenly appear late in life. So as you examine your life before age 12, you should be able to identify symptoms of ADHD, even if they didn’t necessarily impede you from obtaining early success in school.

Possible indicators of ADHD from before I was 12

I was terrible at keeping up with homework
I was a heavy procrastinator
I would struggle with large projects, being indecisive about how exactly I wanted them to be done; initially wanting perfection, but often settling for whatever I half-assed at the last minute
I was drawn to screens. Typically video games or cartoons. Saturday mornings I would get up by myself (even though I had three siblings) and I would watch cartoons starting at 6:30am until about 11am (when programming switched to daytime TV). When I realized there was a cartoon at 6, I got up earlier. And then 5:30am. I had to get as much as I could.
I was prone to addictive behaviors with my fixations, which at various ages included Dinosaurs (ages 3-5), school, reading, video games (original Nintendo!), Cub Scouts, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Cartoons, Legos, baseball – both playing and collecting cards, and food – especially sweets.
Low impulse control overcame personal values. I would often lie in order to cover up school problems and I frequently stole items related to my fixations.
My room was typically a messy disaster
I struggled regulating emotions, and when I got angry I would slam my bedroom door and throw my belongings around my room
I was asked by peers about my showering habits (in 3rd and even 7th grade)
I had private violin lessons for years but only practiced independently a handful of times
I had very few friends
When given the opportunity I would play video games for hours. One day in the summer I played the original Legend of Zelda from breakfast until dinner, not realizing that I’d developed a painful blister on my thumb from doing it.
I was very sensitive to social rejection and would often cry because of it
I preferred my fixations to my peers, at times even reading on the playground rather than engaging with others

When you look at that list it can seem like a lot of negative. There were a lot of great things about my childhood – they’re just not the focus of this post. When I went looking for ADHD in my early life, that’s what I found. In an earlier post, I discussed why I didn’t get diagnosed when I was younger. That one covers the other side of things – the behaviors that helped cover up these symptoms.

In fact, when I first shared my ADHD with my dad and a couple of my siblings they were surprised to hear about it. Because as extensive as this list seems, and as much impact as ADHD actually had on me, it was covered up by early success in school and a lot of little lies at home.

So is everything on that list exclusive to ADHD? No. You can lie, steal, throw tantrums and love cartoons and video games and not have ADHD. But when all of this evidence is taken in the context of my life since then, as well as the continued struggles that emerged from these early indicators, it’s clear that they fit the pattern of ADHD and help to complete the puzzle that is my life.

Examining your childhood for ADHD

As you consider your life before you were 12 looking for signs of ADHD, some helpful questions might be these:

Did you have any fixations that lasted for months or years, where that was all you wanted to do or learn about or talk about?
Did you struggle with organization and planning at home and/or school?
Did you have low impulse control, possibly giving in to lying or sneaking and stealing to get what you wanted right away?
Did your bedroom look like a tornado went through it, even if you cleaned it earlier in the day?
Did you struggle with regulating emotions – where you were often overcome by anger, sadness, or even happiness to where you weren’t in control?
Did you have trouble keeping up with mundane tasks like homework, chores, and self-care?
Did you feel socially isolated?

Though this list is neither diagnostic nor exhaustive, I found some of these questions helpful in guiding me through the process. I hope they will also help you as you work to connect the dots between being an adult with ADHD and discovering the child you were with ADHD.

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