A few years ago I was enjoying a delicious lunch with a good friend. We were talking about her daughter who had recently been diagnosed with ADHD, and the fact that it had brought home that my friend believed she was likely ADHD too. She looked at me and said, ‘of course you’re ADHD Em, so you’ll know all about this’. It stopped me in my tracks –‘you think I’m ADHD?’ and she looked at me with confusion and replied, ‘hell yes!’.
At that point I had no idea if I was or not, but it probably won’t surprise you to hear that I spent the next few weeks consuming everything and everything ADHD related, podcasts, books, videos, following 100s of ‘ADHD’ people on insta, even a quick literature review and more. As a psychologist I couldn’t believe I had somehow missed this! Not least that I had identified both ADHD and autism in family members and supported their diagnosis and journey. To be honest I felt stupid and a bit ashamed that I could’ve missed something so big about myself that was becoming blindingly obvious.
As a psychologist I went straight to the official tools, exploring the Adult ADHD Clinical Evaluation (ACE+) and DSM-5, ticking most of the boxes as I went. What I found most helpful though was the Instagram account of Alex Partridge – scrolling through his posts and listening to his podcast and the mists cleared, I felt very emotional and really seen for the first time. As an aside, when writing this blog I couldn’t remember Alex’s name. I opened insta over 15 times to try and find him, and every time I got totally distracted by something else, then eventually returned to blog writing, remembered why I had open insta and repeated the pattern again… and again… and again….
Now there might be those of you saying ‘hey Emma I do that, doesn’t mean you’re ADHD’ – this is something I encounter pretty much every time I share with someone that I have ADHD. “Everyone is ADHD these days” is the most typical response, along with all the things about me that they believe prove I’m definitely not ADHD. As a part of how ADHD shows up for me, I don’t respond well to this, I feel criticised and upset reading all kinds of things into such comments. Rather than it just being someone’s opinion, which of course they are entitled to, I imagine all sorts of negative reasons behind these comments:
“She thinks telling us she has ADHD will help excuse….the 100s of typos in her work…. the fact she double-booked me…. why she forgot to post my birthday card…. her inappropriate over-sharing…. why she is always late etc etc etc”
And I feel somehow compelled to prove that I am ADHD… which rarely helps.
Understanding I have ADHD though has been an absolute game-changer. Looking back over my life to date, it was like finally being able to do a huge jigsaw in my head, all of the pieces had been there, but I’d never been able to solve the puzzle before. From the big stuff – why I have suffered with anxiety much of my life, to the smaller things ‘why I can’t stop biting my nails’. Something else about ADHD is that we often spot each other and are drawn to each other. I feel like I’m home when I spend time with someone else with ADHD – the conversation is high-energy and fast paced, the ideas come thick and fast, I don’t have to mask or filter myself, and it feels easy. Which is how I felt when I met Dan Hudson recently. We talked work stuff, then got onto our late ADHD diagnosis and loads of other things too. My husband calls this style of conversation ‘lily-padding’ which I love, it sums it up really well.
After our conversation I approached Dan and asked if he would be up for joining me on a webinar to share his story of his ADHD diagnosis and to my delight he said yes!! We’re running the webinar as part of Neurodiversity Celebration week, and I’ll be sharing my story as well. It will be very honest, very candid, and I’m going to really try to drop my mask as much as I feel able. No doubt I’ll over-share and then over-analyse afterwards, but I’m sure the conversation will be great fun. We’d absolutely love for you to join us, and maybe share your story too whether you’re neurodiverse or neurotypical. Hope to see you there.
@Emma
Join us for our upcoming webinar – ADHD at work…sign up here
