Adult Diagnosis

In 2019 I went to see a psychiatrist to discuss my OCD, and I walked away with a diagnosis for the last thing in the world that I thought I had; ADHD.

One for all the late diagnosis girlies. I see you <3

Transcript

Entry number 7, the 14th of the 5th, 2025.

In 2019, I went to see a psychiatrist to discuss my OCD. And I walked away with a diagnosis for the last thing in the world that I thought I had; ADHD.

As a child, I was very quiet. I didn't talk a lot, only had one close friend and spent most of my time reading. I loved the library. The village near where I grew up was too small to have one of its own, so we went to one in the nearby town where my grandmother lived. It was housed inside an old church. Walls made of wood panels with shelves to match. And a mysterious set of stairs at the back of the room that I always wanted to explore.

Every summer, the library ran a competition for kids. Who could read the most books before term started again. You got a piece of cardboard with your name on the front and Velcro on the back, and you stuck it to one of those big blue boards. And every time you finished a book, you went back to the library and moved your name closer to the finish line. I remember going to the library when I was 12, so, so excited to begin my summer reading and being told that I was too old to take part. I was genuinely wounded. Perhaps it was the beginning of the end of childhood. The start of growing up.

As I moved into my teens, I didn't stop reading. If anything, I read more. I became very withdrawn, and my initial quietness as a child turned into painful, shy behaviour. Which, I suppose, I now know was anxiety. High school, obviously, exacerbated everything. Because of the way my primary school worked, I was in a joint class. So my best friend was actually in the year below me. Which meant that I had to start high school all by myself. I did have a few other friends that came up at the same time as me, but without my confident, outgoing best friend, whose personality and light made me feel safe, I became extremely quiet once again.

That first year of high school really showed me what it was like to exist in the world. I was so small, physically. And I have a late birthday, so I was actually only 11 when I started. I was so anxious and quiet and spent all of my spare time in the library. In my second year, I rationalised that, in order to stop being bullied, I just needed to stop talking. If I didn't talk, nobody could slag me off. So, at school, I stopped talking. In class, in corridors. I stopped having interactions at all, if I could help it. And I don't remember starting again until I was 14. Not long after that, things started to get a bit difficult.

My grandmother became ill with cancer and only had a very short time to live, which brought this very sudden strain and tension into our house. When she passed away, I had a bit of a mental break, I suppose, and my teenage rebellion truly began. I started drinking and staying out as late as possible, which, of course, meant lying constantly to my parents about where I was and what I was doing. I couldn't sit still. I was always getting into fights with teachers and other people. I was deliberately making stuff happen, though, like texting my friend under the desk while she was sitting right next to me, knowing it would get me kicked out of class. Arguing with my maths teacher so she would put me out of the room and then I could just leave. I skived as much as possible. And it's interesting looking back on this time because I do see it as some of the best days of my life, as we all do when we think about our teenage years.

I spent so much time with my best friends, drinking, hanging out, crying, smoking, going to gigs and just being stupid. And I miss that. I miss the security of having a home I don't need to pay for and people to look after me and someone to drive me somewhere, drop me off, pick me up, being able to just really do what I wanted.

But it was also one of the hardest times of my life. My gran meant a great deal to me and my sister. She looked after us a lot when my parents were working, almost every day after primary school and high school for the first couple of years. So when she died, we both took a bit of a turn. It took me a really long time to get over my gran dying and it affected all of my decisions that I made about what I was going to do with my life and where I was going to live, and for about seven years, I just made a lot of bad decisions. I did a lot of really stupid stuff with my life and so many things that I regret doing. But when I was ready to start putting my life back together, it was my sister again who was there on the other end of it to help me. I'm so grateful that our relationship is the way it is now, that we're as close as we are and supportive of each other.

As I got into my 20s, I realised that I still didn't feel settled. I got a lot of help, thankfully, from my mental health and put a lot of work into therapy and looking after myself to try and manage what I thought was just overall generalised anxiety disorder. But I realised that no matter what I did, I always felt like there was something else going on. I realised that working full-time didn't work for me because 9-5 always ended up in a mental breakdown. I left every job I ever had, either because I couldn't handle the hours or I got bored. I ended up doing a lot of different part-time temporary jobs that never paid me enough money, never got me anywhere and I always felt forever desperate to learn rather than work. I just wanted to know everything and there was never a job that could keep me interested long enough. I guess that's why I ended up doing a PhD.

All of these behaviours I attributed to anxiety, and I had so many years where I felt okay and then years where things were just terrible. Panic attacks on and off and I just felt like everything I did was geared towards curing my anxiety or dealing with my anxiety, managing my anxiety. And I just felt like there had to be something else wrong with me because I was doing everything right but I still couldn't hold down a job, had never slept properly my entire life. How could I do so many things at once and never feel like I ever achieved anything?

I always suspected I had OCD. I was always a very clean person, extremely distracted by things that were not clean but I also suffered from intrusive thoughts or sticky thoughts as I kind of think of them and I started to wonder if this was the underlying thing that I wasn't managing, that was holding me back from achieving everything in life that I felt was just out of reach.

In 2018, I was struggling so much that I went back to my mental health nurse and asked if I could be referred for an appointment to discuss OCD. I said that I felt like even though I had a really good handle on so many things I still suffered from all these other problems and I just didn't understand why. And whenever you go to the doctor and tell them that you think you have a problem they seem to need to be reassured that you didn't just find this on the internet and have decided that you have this now.

So I felt like I had to frame it in a specific way. So I said that the only reason I wanted to get a diagnosis was because I wanted to know how to look after myself properly which was true. That's the only reason I think I've ever gone to the doctor about any of this stuff is because I feel like the better I understand myself the better I can look after myself and have the best life possible.

When I finally got my appointment to go and discuss a diagnosis I was pretty sure what I was going to come out of there with. The doctor began by asking me the standard questions about my childhood and then, I don't know what triggered him to do this, but he started asking me a different series of questions that at the time didn't make sense to me as to how they had anything to do with OCD but I answered them. And at the end he said he could see that I definitely had Generalised Anxiety Disorder and OCD but also that I have ADHD. And I was so confused by this because it just made no sense. I wasn't loud. I wasn't outwardly hyper. I had none of those stereotypical markers but I did have all the other stuff, the internal struggle, the racing thoughts, not holding down a job, never sleeping properly a night in my entire life, having to always be busy having to do so much at once. He offered me medication but I'd had so many bad experiences with medication that I just said it's fine. I guess this is just who I am.

And for some reason that I can't remember he wrote on my diagnosis that I had mild ADHD which at the time I didn't think anything off but would later come to be a very annoying way for my diagnosis to be explained. I have realised that it means doctors do not take me seriously when I've asked them for help. For example, I recently asked to be referred for a diagnosis of autism and was told by a different mental health nurse that, well, you only have mild ADHD. There's no such thing as mild ADHD. You either have it or you don't and while I totally agree that some people, especially people I know, are impacted by it in a way that would seem more direct perhaps because they are very outwardly hyper, loud, lives falling apart in front of everyone, it doesn't mean that what I have to deal with is any less impactful on my life. It just presents differently which of course is the problem for women with getting diagnosed and there's now such a huge, huge number of us getting to our 30s and suddenly being told that this is what's been going on this whole time.

Getting that diagnosis was so strange. I remember telling my parents and they were shook. Like it just didn't make sense. But I suppose I did feel relieved that I finally knew what was going on, everything I couldn't figure out about my life, this is what had been causing it. All my problems at school, impulsivity, addictive behaviour, time blindness, my restless soul. It all made sense. Until it didn't. I started to feel angry, really, really angry. I felt like I'd been told my whole life that I would grow out of all of these things. At school I was told that if I just stopped daydreaming and applied myself I would do well, if I just tried harder I would succeed. That never left me. Up until that point I believed that one day I just wouldn't be like this anymore; I would have finally made it out of second place. Now I knew that day would never come, that no matter what I did I would always be like this.

I spoke to my sister, who also has ADHD, about how I was feeling and she said that it's because I was grieving for a life I thought I would have. And that's how it felt. It felt like a loss. I was supposed to be someone else. I was supposed to grow up.

It’s been almost five years since I got my diagnosis and as much as I have embraced who I am tried to celebrate my differences and accept how amazing my unique brain is, my unique perspective that comes from being the way that I am, I'd be lying if I said I was over it. It’s really difficult to have a condition, it's harder to have comorbidities that exacerbate each other, and it's really hard to have like ten of those. And then see yourself on paper and wonder how the fuck you ever got this far? When we talk about grief we talk about how it never truly leaves you, and I think that while I will be able to create a life that I love and works for me, while I totally believe all of that's possible, I'm not sure if I'll ever fully be able to let go of this life that I thought I would have.

I've already written three songs and plenty of poetry, spoken word, about being neurodivergent. How difficult I found it growing up, self-acceptance, but I know I'll write a lot more. Writing songs, poems, journaling, any type of writing really, it's how I process my life. Some things take such a long time to figure out, to understand, that the creative work that comes out of all of that is vast and can take years to complete. So I'm not sure if anything written is ever really complete, but rather a version of what could have been. Just one aspect of an idea. Maybe that's why when I write in order to process I write so many things about the same subject until I feel I've covered everything or got that one piece that says what I want to say so succinctly and I'm actually satisfied it's done, I'm over it.

There’s probably only a few things though that I would never write a song about again, but even then you never know what you're going to be pulled towards. We just have to see where the work takes us.

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Spent the first few years of high school with my mouth shut

Knew there would be trouble if I opened it up

Yet I still remained in the firing line

They were taking shots at me all of the time

 I was getting into fights without uttering a word

But screaming for attention and never being heard

screaming for attention and never being heard

screaming for attention and never being heard

Cause I was keeping it all to my self self

Keeping it all to my self self

Carrying the burden of an adult situation while keeping it all to my self self

Not a bad kid

but I was treated like one and that gave me an attitude

pushed me into seizing up and dropping out

closing off and coming down

shrank my capacity for gratitude 

Cause I was keeping it all to my self self

Keeping it all to my self self

Carrying the burden of an adult situation while keeping it all to my self self

Cause I was keeping it all to my self self

Keeping it all to my self self

Carrying the burden of an adult situation while keeping it all to my self self

Never believed so I started to lie

I got angry out loud I was no longer shy

living outside of the lines that were drawn for me

pushing against all the small town monotony

fighting my way through the belly of grief

where late night school fights became my motifs

my cries for help

ignored instead

I was pushed to the cracks and left for dead

unable to see your pain through mine

not capable

at that time

thought we didn't get along so I started to fly

now I understand you thought I didn't want to try cause

Cause I was keeping it all to my self self

Keeping it all to my self self

Carrying the burden of an adult situation while keeping it all to my self self

Cause I was keeping it all to my self self

Keeping it all to my self self

Carrying the burden of an adult situation while keeping it all to my self self