The Diagnosis I Didn’t Get
Why not getting the answer I wanted taught me something even more important.
Following on from my last article about brain fog and becoming more heart smart than brain smart, there's another part of this story I want to share.
A few years back I went for an ADHD assessment.
I was told I present with all the adult traits, but because I was able to focus at school and was essentially a model student and a 'good girl', she couldn't diagnose me. She put my symptoms down to the stress of running a business, my mum's recent dementia diagnosis and spinning so many plates.
I realise this is an uncommon situation. I know many women are finally getting diagnosed in midlife as awareness grows and as perimenopause can make lifelong ADHD traits much more noticeable.
I was initially really upset because my anxiety and brain fog were so big at that point. I'd done all the research, resonated with so many of the ADHD traits and I thought a diagnosis was the answer AND I waited a year for the assessment.
Looking back, I think I was searching for validation
As I'm writing this I'm trying to gather my threads around what I really want to say. I think it's something about needing validation and being seen. Something about backing yourself when you don’t feel you ARE being seen or taken seriously. Because when I didn't get that diagnosis, I started doubting my own reality. I still feel, to a degree, a lot of shame about being a "fake ADHDer". Ironically, that shame and self-doubt is something many women with ADHD talk about.
The fixing frenzy
If I'm honest, I have a tendency when something is wrong to go into what I can only describe as a fixing frenzy.And the world - or at least social media - completely endorses this. Women of my age can’t not see this everywhere.
Do strength training.
Get eight hours' sleep.
Take Lion's Mane.
Take magnesium.
Walk 10,000 steps.
Eat 150g of protein.
Read the books.
Listen to the podcasts.
Find another expert.
We look for someone else to validate our experience, then we read all the things and go at it like a wild thing. The irony is we don't have the energy to sustain all these changes because of the very thing we're trying to fix.
There are always helpers, look for the helpers
During one particularly bad bout of anxiety, which I now attribute largely to perimenopause, my friend who'd already been through the peak of peri said something so simple."Stop trying to do all the things at once to fix it. You're just creating more stress." I also spoke to my mum about the ADHD assessment, In her wisdom she simply said, "Use whatever tools you've found for ADHD whether you've got the diagnosis or not." More on that in a minute...
What else helped
The ADHD tools helped. HRT helped. Talking to bonafide, certified ADHDer’s helped. And some of the fixing frenzy findings did help too., placebo or not, my lion’s mane coffee is now a non-negotiable. Therapy gave me space to explore what was going on for me at the time. None of those things required me to have a diagnosis before I was allowed to use them.
Maybe we need to stop outsourcing ourselves.
I wonder if so many of us do this. We look for someone else to validate our experience ( or some THING - hello, Chat GBT!) Someone else to tell us what's wrong. Someone else to tell us what to do. And then we throw ourselves into action.Maybe we don't need to do all the things. Maybe we need to slow down. Maybe we need to go inwards. Maybe the answer isn't another expert, another supplement or another diagnosis. Maybe it's learning to trust ourselves enough to ask "What do I actually need right now?"
For me, that has been the biggest lesson of all and funny enough what my goal is with my clients - to encourage them to trust themselves above all else.
In a way, I've come full circle. Early therapy taught me to start trusting myself more, to stop giving my power away. It turns out it's a lesson I keep having to learn. Or, to paraphrase Glinda in The Wizard of Oz: "You've always had the power... you just had to learn it for yourself."
I'm still learning it.