Does knowing that you have ADHD make things worse?
Initially I was very happy to get my ADHD diagnosis, but now I'm not sure this knowledge is making my life better
I remember that when I first got my ADHD diagnosis in 2012, I was super thrilled. Finally here was something that explained so much about my life that far that I had considered to be a “problem”.
Acing entrance exams only to graduate in the middle of the class. Twice over.
A complete inability to complete projects. In life. Whether at school or at work.
Finding seemingly difficult things easy and seemingly easy things difficult. And hence optimizing for things other than what others did.
Inability to get even remotely motivated in things that I didn’t find interesting.
Lots of abandoned hobbies (and after-school “classes”) during my childhood.
All of these I’d never been able to explain to myself. And then came this one diagnosis, followed by a course of Ritalin (note to American readers: Adderall is (even now) not licensed in India, or in the UK). Suddenly everything started making sense. I could explain my life better.
In the next dozen years I’ve gone on and off Ritalin multiple times. I’ve learnt to navigate the world, making choices that try to exploit the upside of ADHD, while trying to limit the downside.
Yet, there are things that cannot be helped. Parenting has been a struggle, for example, and there is nothing in the ADHD world that can be done to hedge it (except, of course, being so bad at relationships that you don’t end up being a parent at all!).
And now I’m thinking - is my life actually worse because I KNOW that I have ADHD? I mean it was all nice and fine when I got my first diagnosis that explained everything, but is the knowledge that I have ADHD making things worse for me now?
I can think of the answer being “yes” in a few ways:
There are things that I simply don’t try hard enough any more. I know that “given my ADHD I’ll never be good at this”, and so don’t make an effort. I don’t know if this lackof effort is always rational
There are things that I simply don’t try at all any more. Again I don’t know if it was due to ADHD but one thing I did a lot of during my youth was experiment. Do things just for the heck of it without knowing if you will like it. Now, as I’ve gotten to know myself better, and know that “thanks to ADHD I’ll never be good at things I’m not fundamentally good at”, I’ve stopped trying things. And on average, I think I’m the worse off for this. I’m having far less fun in life.
I know that I cannot hold thoughts for a very long time and can forget stuff. Earlier in life I would just get on with life, forgetting stuff, and then dealing with the consequences later (most of the cases I’d figure out how to “wing it” in an attempt at controlling damage). Now because I know that I forget stuff easily, I try to add in redundancy. Of thought. Of making a special effort to carry thoughts in my head and not let them slip (I still like this model of ADHD I’d come up with one day a dozen years ago).
And this redundancy is extremely expensive. It is the “right thing to do”, but as finance people might say, “the cost of hedging is really high”. However, now I’m conditioned to hedge, and so constantly living with this cost.Also, knowing that I have ADHD can result in higher anxiety. I’ve recently concluded that anxiety occurs when what I intuitively want to do and what I think is the right thing to do conflict. And knowing that I have ADHD, I’m constantly judging myself on whether what I intuitively want to do is rational. So this conflict happens more often and that results in higher anxiety.
On some days I just give up saying “it’s a very high ADHD day, I can’t do much more work”, and in essence lose productivity. I possibly give up too easily because I know myself better.
So on the balance, I don’t know if I’m happier that I have an ADHD diagnosis. Initially it was great, but over the years it’s sort of catching up on me.
I might have mentioned here before - being “out” with neurodiversity means I get a lot of requests from friends and acquaintances about their or their children’s potential ADHD. And my constant advice is “unless it is absolutely necessary, don’t let your children know that they have ADHD until they are adults”.
What do you think about this? How has your experience been in terms of dealing with ADHD, and the knowledge that you have it? Has it been a net positive or negative?
I feel this so much!
A similar experience. I got a diagnosis which was quite explanatory and helped me not feel like I was doing something wrong that made my life garbage.
But that's the only thing good about it. When I looked for fundamental solutions, there were none. There were no practical changes to make, and the experts in the field had nothing to offer other than scary prophecies of how bad my life will be and the only solution was medication. All the techniques to cope sounded incredibly jugaadoo, and they'd stop workinf for me after a period. Life was just Doomed.
When I became a mom, I had enough of struggling, and I didnt want my daughter to struggle. I joined support groups full of people who were struggling very hard, and I started reading books on the edge of science. I coldcalled the authors of the books and discussed findings with them. Funnily, what motivated me was reading books about raising toddlers and realizing that adhd is just normal toddler behavior.
Eventually, I'm convinced the ADHD industrial complex is a scam, and going from first principles is a better way to solve the problem.
I did that, went down to my symptoms and decided I'll drill deep into why. I paid attention to how I did things and at what point I found myself distracted. And I tried cognitive behavioral therapy on each of these things that I found.
A year after that, I grew CONVINCED that I had a real explanation and a solution. ADHD is just my brain on stress. The stress is triggered by patterns of communication i carry with me. Those patterns come from growing up with my mom. They are not her fault, she had a lot of undiagnosed anxiety that she masked as concern and anger, which continues to make being around her a stressful experience to this day. We just thought mom was strict, but no, she's just easily triggered.
Anyway. I took a multipronged approach. I found this book titled Brain Energy which has been highly useful. It shows even extreme mental health issues as resulting from lack of strong/many mitochondria. I changed diet, upped exercise, upped sleep and I found i was much less triggered. I dealt with my emotional patterns with CBT. I tried bullet journaling, which organized my thoughts and i no longer had issues with processing speed for normal life stuff.
The stumbling block for me has been my work environment, which, in this economy is constantly triggering stress in me. Im making plans to move out of tech into a field that isn't as relentless, or at least I have the mastery so it isnt as cognitively demanding for long hours.
I've also found great success with having adaptogens like rhodiola for the most stressful times, and I realized I need to supplement iron, copper and b-vitamins to stay in a mentally regulated state.
So yeah, I've moved away from the peer reviewed acceptable literature from the ADHD industrial complex and into mitochondria, metabolism, and stress management. I've responded to you on this before and you've not been receptive, which is fine, you have your own reasons and what I say sounds like woowoo.
But if you're tired of where you are, there's a different approach you can take. Even if nothing, try reading Brain Energy by Chris Palmer and see if that gives you any insights.