ADHD & Everything that comes with it…
How many times have you been scrolling through your phone and a post pops-up about another disorder that is linked to ADHD? Or how many times has somebody close to you (your therapist even) informed you that a specific disorder is related to ADHD?
I don’t know about you but every time it happens, I want to tear my hair out.
Why is it not enough to have ADHD? Why do I have to factor everything else in? On one hand, it’s nice to understand myself a bit more. On the other hand, I’m sick to death of being the girl with multiple disorders.
Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD) was a mind-blowing moment, however. You’re telling me I can’t actually help being a massive clingy bitch? I don’t just cry & have suicidal ideation when I lose people in my life for the fun of it? This is something that I have dealt with for the majority of my adult life, why am I JUST hearing about it now?!
I was diagnosed with anxiety late on in my teenage years, it was your pretty standard..
“Hi, I hate everything about my life.”
“Okay, you have depression & anxiety. Here’s some sertraline.”
“Okay, thanks.”
This started my love/hate relationship with meds, but that’s another story for another time. The whole of my early 20s was then ridden with “My friends also have anxiety and/or depression, why don’t they react to things the same way I do?” It wasn’t until I found out about Emotional Dysregulation that I now know why they didn’t react to things the same way that I did. They didn’t think their life was ending over a miniscule problem, I did.
My ADHD diagnosis came last year, another woman who had been overlooked in childhood because there was never enough understanding of how ADHD affected women differently. For 26 years, I truly believed I was insane. The start of my adult life had me questioning whether I should be sectioned or not, just for all of it to be explained by having ADHD.
After being diagnosed, I fell down the rabbit hole of Reddit posts and TikTok videos about being diagnosed as an adult. Honestly, I found a lot of interesting stuff there that explained quite a bit about how I functioned through day-to-day life, but the one thing that was very limited was how ADHD manifests in women. Now, I’m not a scientist or a doctor, but talking about my own experiences and what I have found through this past year of being diagnosed seems to be helping me, hopefully it could help anyone else reading this who have also fallen down the same rabbit hole. If not, I’m just talking to myself, as I often do.
Don’t get me wrong, I feel immensely guilty for the way I react to things at times, having these disorders are no excuse for it. It does make me feel like I am taken advantage of a lot though, I am a HUGE people pleaser due to RSD, I’ll do anything to make anyone happy because the thought that someone doesn’t like me makes me want to DIE. This means that I never stand up for myself, but I’m trying to change that.
So, here I am. 27 years old, navigating life as neurodivergent, also fighting PCOS & PMDD (apparently, also linked to ADHD). I am nowhere near where I thought I would be in life at this age, but at least I have an explanation of what has been holding me back. Good days, bad days, everything comes and goes.
All the love,
Shan xo
