ADHD memes

diagnosed in my 50's

always known I'm different lol

coasted subjects I liked but failed subjects I hated.

I was disruptive and constantly outside the headmasters office. in those days I got the slipper and cane..

mum called me hyperactive and blamed tartrazine from orange cordial. looking back I was casebook ADHD.

now I have a diagnosis I'm able to get the support and connections to my kids that I never had myself. teaching techniques and understanding what's going on for them when they have meltdowns.

to be fair they didn't have ADHD diagnosis on the 70's so I'm just happy I can support my kids knowing what I know and why

So many times. Then the motor mouth starts and they start to understand..... sometimes.

This is why it took me 3+ decades to realize I have it

I was told as a child that I didn't have ADHD because I was able to sit quietly and read for long periods of time. I was only able to read for long periods if it was a fantasy novel. Now, in my 40s, my doctor was amazed I'd never been diagnosed as, according to them, I'm "textbook."

Wait

But that's just ADD?

Not diagnosed but my son is and I can't read a page of a book without forgetting what It's about so prob am I'm 42.now so it's just crack on as normal.

I don't even really like the term hyperactive. I was diagnosed at 6. I was told I was hyperactive, that I couldn't pay attention. But nothing about why I stimmed, nothing about why my emotional state was unstable and I had trouble properly managing my emotions. Nothing about executive dysfunction, time blindness, hyperfixation, over and under stimulation, or the ways ADHD impacted my ability to socialize. Everyone wants to chalk ADHD up to one thing. But it isn't. My peers at school wouldnt bully me because of being hyperactive but rather because of my failure to understand the nuances of social rituals no one explained to me. They would bully me because I stimmed especially when I did so verbally. I didn't even know those things were related to my ADHD. I genuinely just believed there was something fundamentally wrong about me that I could never fix. Once I stopped taking Ritalin in grade six because my mom decided I didn't need it anymore, I started to just receive constant ableist abuse from everyone in my life. I was always made to feel that it was my fault I was this way, my personal fault that I couldn't do group projects or get homework or projects done. I'd score poorly on everything I did in school despite being smart and capable of learning well on my own. This was always made out to be a personal failing of my own, and not a direct consequence of my untreated ADHD combined with a system wholly unsympathetic to my experience.

ADHD is so misunderstood by neurotypical people. It's wild talking to women who haven't been diagnosed and describe in vivid detail all the forms of ableist abuse they've suffered their entire lives. Incredible being able to recognize the commonalities in our stories. Society is incredibly punishing for neurodivergent people. It is only around other neurodivergent people that I really feel able to be myself, to this day. I have helped several women get diagnosed purely by recommendation after becoming close friends with them. It's wild how it feels like neurodivergent people subconsciously recognize each other.

Took Adderall a few times in college and got the zombie effect instead of the energy/focus boost you usually get when taking it without having ADHD. Never had performance issues in school or had trouble sitting still or anything. Always been kinda curious what’s up with that.

Especially when you’re older and tired all the time anyway.

I got diagnosed with laziness in school.

Many years later, another doctor looked at the diagnosis and said that the first doctor had written down textbook symptoms then missed the diagnosis.

The word lazy still hurts today.

here! I was also not disruptive to others in a classroom, so obviously I didn't have adhd. I just spent my time reading something else or doodling or something, never able to pay attention

I'm not very hyperactive. On rare occasions yes. I feel my hyperactivity is restricted to my mind. Like, it's different than a hyper focus. Like, where other ADHD people might show outward hyperactivity I feel like mine just becomes an overwhelming amount of thoughts I can't even focus on. Its almost disabling.

If I was going to play doctor I'd say it's because of my childhood. I'm a male, but grew up in an isolated and abusive family.

I find this lack of hyperactivity is much more common in the women with ADHD that I have talked to. Again, just sharing thoughts, but I feel like this similar type of abuse that I experienced is very similar to how our society expects women to act. To be quiet and submissive. Which maybe leads to a coping mechanism to hide outward hyperactivity? I don't know, but it feels like that for me.

Come to think of it. My most outwardly visible hyperactivity happens when I hang out with women that have ADHD. It's like being comfortable enough to not keep it in your head.

When I was hyperactive, I was annoying, disruptive, and poorly disciplined.

When I wasn't hyperactive, I was a lazy slacker.

The boys that shared my symptoms got treatment. I got punished.

I'll be honest, it has really prevented me from accepting the fact that I screened positive as an adult for ADHD based on other symptoms, because I'm older and when I was in elementary school non-hyperactive ADHD wasn't really much of a thing. (Side rant: why can't we go back to calling it ADD if it's not hyperactive? Why did they ever decide to erase the distinction and call them the same thing?) But having a son with non-hyperactive ADHD has forced me to admit that it exists, and see signs of it in myself. Unfortunately the side effects of meditation are not worth it in my case, so I can't do much with this insight.

I was constantly bored in elementary school and needed constant stimuli to be interested in learning anything. I cought on to most things immediately and it was easy so I never did any homework because why bother when it's just easy so felt like I was just lazy and also got called out on sloppy work because I just didn't bother spending time on it. All hand in assignments were always written the night before and always got a medium to high grade so why bother doing anything more? That severely bit me in the bum years later in university and fast forward another 10 years and I now have an ADHD diagnosis and in hindsight things are now finally making sense.

"Why do you think you have ADHD? You're so successful!"

I got lucky as a kid. I’ve struggled with executive dysfunction my entire life and was diagnosed in the 90s, but I had teachers that helped me catch up on my work and devise ways to track progress. They had me keep a journal and I would write down a checklist of school work I had to finish. I remember one day when I was finally caught up on all my work, one of my teachers had me announce it to my peers in class, and they cheered me on. It was nice to experience the feeling of getting a win and not constantly being behind. I had a couple teachers that were patient and kind, and would help me work through stuff I was slow at or just generally struggled with.

When I got to high school, it was a different story. If I struggled and fell behind, no one was there to help, or they simply didn’t have the time due to how full my classes were. I remember in anatomy and physiology, we all got partnered up so we could dissect things with another set of hands. My partner transferred out of class almost immediately and that’s when I knew I was cooked. When I couldn’t keep up, we met with my teacher and he refused to acknowledge that I was struggling, nor offer any help. I remember saying to him “dude… I have an F in your class…” and got nothing back. I ended up transferring out of the school entirely.

My upbringing was a mixed bag. I don’t remember being called lazy outright, but it was definitely conveyed. When I finally got a diagnosis and tried meds, they put me to sleep in class because they weren’t intended for non-hyperactive adhd like what I had. I quit taking them immediately because of how much worse they made things. It was all still such uncharted territory back then that a diagnosis was essentially a dice roll.

I’ve definitely felt the sting multiple times of feeling looked down on, like I was less intelligent. That’s the worst of it all. I didn’t care as much about the lazy labels as I did the intelligence labels. I had a college reading level in 6th grade, I was great in biology and science, but I was “slow” in everything else.

I mean, everyone around me agreed that I definitely wasn't hyperactive but highly inattentive so it was a matter of putting 2 and 2 together

hyperactivity is the only symptom that went away, all the other ones got worse

OH GOD IT SOOO ME . The first time I suggested that I had adhd I told a family member who is psy , because "he know better than me" , he made me do like 4simple exercise and told me "nan you are just a little bruned out". And this is how I lost 1year and a half of diagnostic , and one day I consulted a psychiatrist and could you guess what I had ? ADHD YAY