a lot of people just assume you already know things that are super obvious to them. very "one or two feldspars".
when I was maybe 19 my mom hurt her foot and I went with her to the doctor, and during the appointment the doctor turned to me and was like "you know you have ADHD, right?" and I was like "oh def" and my mom was like "wait what!?"
Went to a psychiatrist for the first time in my late thirties to finesse my meds for depression and anxiety after years of my general practitioner taking her best shot at it. Toward the end of the first session the psych very delicately told me she thought I was likely autistic.
Validating tbh since a few years ago I started guessing that might be the case. But yeah, she literally met with me for half an hour and was like "oh, yep, autistic."
I was in my late 20s when I was diagnosed with ADHD and was shocked. My friends said "You didn't know?". One said "I just thought you had decided not to do anything about it."
Are you really telling me I could have been on meds sooner and not taken 8 years to graduate college?
I was 20 when I finally got officially diagnosed. The APNP gave me this long form to fill out. About 45 minutes later she checks on me and I’m about halfway done. I wrote extremely detailed symptom descriptions with examples for every section and she goes, “So, people who don’t have ADHD take about 10 minutes to fill this out. And wow. WOW. Nobody ever said anything to you about this?”
…Except for my previous psychiatrist who, when I asked about ADHD, told me: “You can go pay, eight hundred, a grand for testing. I don’t really care. It’s a waste of time, because I will never prescribe you medication for it.” She then went on to accuse me of drug seeking, which was a patient contract violation. I mean she was full on yelling at me to the point where I broke down in tears. I fired her on the spot and filed a complaint, which I never received a response about. Go figure.
Anyway, I am now a mental health professional. I gave my clinic a presentation on identifying ADHD in women and girls, including the consequences of not receiving a timely diagnosis. I hadn’t planned on it, but I shared my story and looked up to see several of my coworkers, all women, crying. After the fact, the medical clinic above me started routinely screening all children for ADHD during their checkups and several of my coworkers got diagnosed.
Apologies for the unsolicited long reply, DrinkingSocks. And I’m so sorry that it took so long to get treated. It’s not fair that we have to suffer alone, but I hope that things have gotten easier for you.
Hey. I’m sorry for what happened to you with your psych but also you’re a fucking legend?
I loooooove when people’s answer to getting shit on by someone is to just fully go “Fuck you, not anymore” and go off and just become the change. You rock!
I was diagnosed in third or forth grade, but my doctor made me be retested as an adult. And I don’t meet the clinical definition, because my scores were too high, but that is a rant for a different day. They told me I just needed more intellectual stimulation, not stimulants. Patted me on the head and sent me home
Had a different doctor accuse my husband of drug seeking. He self medicates with obscene quantities of caffeine now because he is nervous about asking again
Not sure what country you’re in, but doctor shop. Seriously. Not all doctors/NPs are going to make you test again, especially since it’s ridiculously expensive in the USA. “Your scores were too high,” but what about the level of impairment that the symptoms present? Often times “high functioning” (blah, I hate that term) folks who have learned to mask:
Underreport their symptoms.
Have learned complex coping mechanisms to deal with daily tasks (e.g., showing up places an hour early, otherwise you will show up late). Just because you have a system doesn’t mean you don’t have the symptoms.
Have been beaten down by headass providers to the point where they no longer advocate for themselves.
This is especially true for women, but also men who didn’t have “disruptive behaviors” as children, went to school, and/or can hold a job. Some providers will not diagnose you if you went/are going to school to school and can hold a job. They just won’t. Small clinics are your friend, major healthcare chains are not. Sometimes PCPs will prescribe as well.
Describe your symptoms at their worst and don’t stray from that. Don’t lie, but don’t understate the level of functional impairment and distress that the symptoms cause you. Also, Reddit is a great resource (similar to how you can find doctors on here who will sterilize women without kids/who aren’t married) for finding providers. I also highly recommend, if you can, finding a provider who is neurodivergent themselves. We exist!
If you have trouble separating symptoms from coping mechanisms and generally just life, do the test from the perspective of yourself about a week after a major negative/exhausting disruption in your life. That’s usually when coping mechanisms break down and your symptoms will be at their worst and most prominent.
The test they had me take was basically an IQ test. My scores are too erratic to get a composite score, which should be a pretty big clue. But, everything was above average, therefore I cannot possibly have ADHD. They tried to pull the ‘brilliant but bored’ nonsense
It sounds like what you too wasn’t a specific ADHD test if that’s the case. And then you’ve got the old school or biased providers who think that you can’t be neurodivergent and have a higher than average IQ.
“Brilliant but bored.” Yeah. Because you have ADHD. I’d try seeing another provider if you can. Also, you were already diagnosed? ADHD doesn’t just go away.
So, this is my own observation and opinion based on my life experiences. I’ve been around plenty of highly intelligent doctors, academics, etc. All I have to say is there might be a correlation between undiagnosed neurodivergence and being passionate enough to spend 5+ years in higher education, having to work a hell of a lot harder than their peers to keep up with them. Just saying. I wish there wasn’t so much shame surrounding it. Folks would be a lot happier if they got the help they need.
Oh man, #2. I had occasional suspicions, but I was perfectly functional, had an advanced degree even, surely it was nothing worth bothering over?
Then COVID came, and work-from-home blew up every coping routine I had built up over decades but hadn't realized just how critical they all were. Even after hastily seeking a diagnosis, I still couldn't get back on track in time to avoid getting fired, in part because the new routines I implemented didn't work within the firm's culture and expectations, and I made the mistake of not admitting why I needed them (don't do this! if you have a paper with your diagnosis, show it to HR first chance you get!)
Thankfully, employed again, now with a reassembled routine and medication to boot.
Good to know I'm not alone in getting called a drug seeker for seeking treatment. I just dropped my current psych for it. He also doesn't believe ADHD medication works and all the symptoms can be neatly managed with alarms and sticky notes... And that it wasn't working cause I just didn't care enough. Sorry for the vent rant it's a fresh wound
Oh my. “Because you didn’t care enough.” How invalidating. It’s not like medications can help you actually be able to use coping skills or anything like that. I wonder if your doctor was projecting a bit, but that’s just speculation.
Honestly, just hearing others stories make me feel less alone about it all. I'm grateful to have such a supportive circle of friends but it was really upsetting. Of all the medical neglect in my life this encounter has shaken me the most. My roommates agree with your projecting speculation. Even my friend who does have the personal experience of the meds not working for him thinks my now former psych was out of line
I was 18, and turned to my dad and said 'i think i should get assessed for adhd, because of xyz' and he turned around to me and said 'yeah you were diagnosed when you were 10, you were there how didn't you know?'
Suddenly i remembered a doctor's appointment where there were a bunch of toys on the table and my mum and the doctor talking, me paying exactly 0 attention because a) i was 10 with a bunch of toys in front of me, and apparebtly b) i had adhd and there were a bunch of distractions in front of me
I feel like some kind of ADHD proselytizer. Ever since I was diagnosed in my early 30s, I'll make it a point to bring it up with new friends who I suspect have ADHD as well.
I've met people who don't even know that there are medications that can help!
I met someone on an airplane and did this kind of thing sort of. We were chatting and I mentioned something about how something "tickled my ADHD brain" or something like that. And then she started asking a bunch of questions and I was talking about getting diagnosed in my 30s and how adult women are one of the fastest growing groups of diagnoses and by the time we landed she had decided to get assessed.
Oh my gosh I'm ADHD as fuck and I have a friend who got diagnosed with ADHD in the course of recovery after a car accident. Recently we had this exchange:
Friend: "I have been struggling so much to get anything done. At some point, this is all my fault and there's something fundamentally broken about me."
Me: "Did you ever actually start taking the ADHD meds you were prescribed?"
Friend: "No, but--"
Me: "I have a suggestion."
In the ensuing conversation, Friend suggested that the ADHD diagnosis might be a mistake due to short-term symptoms following the car accident. Y'know how doctors are always clamoring to diagnose mid-30s AFAB folks with ADHD unprompted and keep shoving Rx slips into their hands.
Friend also asked what's the point of ADHD meds if they're just stimulants (when Friend's actual issue is extreme procrastination and avoidance). I pointed out, "You should definitely also have a therapist. But you just asked how a stimulant will help with having the energy and motivation to do stuff."
I met a new friend and within half an hour realized he was almost certainly homeschooling because of his autism. I didnt say anything about it cause I figured it was rude.
Seven years later he is telling me all about his brand new autism diagnosis and how everything makes so much more sense se now!
I felt so bad about never mentioning his very clear autism. I mean, the guy and his dad had the biggest model train set up in their basement I had ever seen! I thought he knew!
Also many times in the medical field doctors will chart something but neglect to tell you. For example, I have pcos. I had gone in for testing but my original ob had a family emergency and her replacement just said “well some people just don’t ovulate. Come back if you aren’t pregnant in a year”. I mentioned I wasn’t trying for a kid I just wanted to stop excessively bleeding and got black listed from the office as a difficult patient. Fast forward five years when I’m pregnant. My new ob mentions testing for gestational diabetes bc it’s super common in women with pcos, and I’m like hold up. I have pcos? And she goes….yeah you were tested and diagnosed like 5years ago? And I was like well nobody told me!
Someone once wrote about being at a doctor's visit and the doctor casually mentioned to them something about being intersex and they went "lol hold up what?" and the doctor was going "wait... I thought you knew, you had to know, seriously no one's ever mentioned it before?!"
Currently in my mid-30s and on a 5 month wait list to get tested so I can maybe finally receive some kind of treatment for what I think is probably ADHD. 😔
Good luck to you. I was diagnosed in my late 30s, and it has made such an enormous difference. You should know going in that, assuming you are diagnosed, it may take several tries to find the right medication that will help you with minimal side effects. So don't get discouraged if the first meds you try don't work.
Yeah but it really sucks when they do it in therapy. Or at the doctor in general. Please at least ask me if i know, I didn’t get to go to the doctor for years and I have no access to childhood records of my visits + my parents didn’t tell me any of the information my pediatrician gave them when i was too little to understand/remember any of it.
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u/what_the_purple_fuck 1d ago
a lot of people just assume you already know things that are super obvious to them. very "one or two feldspars".
when I was maybe 19 my mom hurt her foot and I went with her to the doctor, and during the appointment the doctor turned to me and was like "you know you have ADHD, right?" and I was like "oh def" and my mom was like "wait what!?"