An earlier diagnosed ADHD'er

[Anonymous]

I want to thank all of the people who have worked to create this site, and worked so hard to offer help on a pro bono base when they are inevitably busy professionals. It’s hard to find altruistic intent these days.

I’m only in my early 20’s. I was diagnosed with ADHD as a child around the age of 5 and re-diagnosed afterwards more then a few times. I spent my life on medication from the time I was a child right up will grade 10 when I dropped out of school.

As a child, I was never really aware of what ADHD was, not for lack of information but because I did not want to know more about it. To know more about it would have made it too ‘real’. I did not want to be different, I wanted to fit in and be ‘normal’.

I worked and studied after I dropped out and achieved my grade 12 a year after dropping out of grade 10. Since then I’ve spent…six….years in university. I’m only in second year at this point. Only with the help from supportive parents and an intelligent uncle did I make it so far.

So many of the people on this forum talk about the frustration of having gone so long without a helpful label, and only the feeling that they were less or lazy or dumb. That when they found out they had ADHD and it was real, and could be helped they were frustrated that it had taken so long for it to be found out, that they had lost so much time.

It’s funny because I’ve felt so many of those same feelings although in perspective I still have so much ahead of me. Even though I knew I was ADHD I tried not to be. I still have lots of issues with accepting that there are things I can not do and things I can not do well.

In researching ADHD I found it very interesting how it seems that some of the behavioral ques used to detect ADHD and diagnose it are not totally caused by the ADHD per say but by peoples reaction to the actual behaviors of the ADHD.

That children with ADHD will tend to react a certain way, feel a certain way, respond a certain way because they are conditioned too by the reactions of others to them.

I found this at first depressing and then intriguing. It’s like being at a circus and looking into a oddly shaped mirror and seeing a oddly shaped reflection of your self, and then believing it to be real, because that’s the only image you see.

Through out school I was picked on and suffered a lot of the classic things ADHD people seem to suffer in the school system. I was left feeling stupid, defeated, underserved and lazy.

Even though I had a label for my differences I did not feel helped. It was not until I decided to take action and help myself that things truly started changing. While school is something I struggle with, I’m getting through it. Socializing is something that does not come easy to me but it’s slowly becoming easier.

It’s hard to deal with something that is not physically obvious like an amputation but is in everyway as real. The more I become self aware and the less I become bitter, the more I find I am able to grow and escape the past.

I’ve noticed I have a sort of ADHD radar, talking with people it seems obvious to me which have ADHD and are medicated or which have ADHD and are not medicated. (no I don’t mean I run around ‘diagnosing people’) but I find that if I take the assumption that a person that I am dealing with is more like me then like everyone else it becomes easier, isn’t it hard to get along with some ADHD’ers?

They just don’t shut up! I mean how is everyone supposed to hear all the cool things you could be saying if they keep talking…oh wait…and I mean they keep looking over at those shiny things over there when your trying to talk to them…mind you those things are awfully shiny…and OH MY GOSH do they ever hold onto their convictions! I mean clearly your right, you know you are! You can quote, demonstrate and prove you are right if only they’d listen….

When I am able to be a friend to someone who has suffered the same trial and tribulations as my self and who is embarked on a similar journey, I find it helps me both feel better about myself and that it helps me to grow.

Sometimes knowing you’re not alone makes all the difference in the world.

To all the people on this forum who are sharing their tales, letting other people see them as being not alone, as being part of a whole and as having hope, and options… THANK YOU!

PS. To those that were involved in the ‘Red Green show’ THANK YOU, watching that show on CBC during lunch time every day was the cathartic that got me through junior high! Maybe now I know why…!

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