Re: Shadow Syndromes

[Anonymous]

@Spacely, there are a bunch of us here who were diagnosed late in life (I’m 37 and just got the news recently). (Makes me wonder what it is about the 35-40 age range that makes it more easily diagnosed). From what I’ve seen, it’s much better to know early. It’s nowhere near a death sentence or even a stigma anymore.

Think of it this way, I grew up thinking I was weird and developed some very unhealthy habits to cope and self-medicate. Had I been diagnosed as a boy, I might have had a few people be cruel to me about ADD and their ignorant prejudices about the disorder. As it happened, I was the one who was cruel to myself. I beat myself up about things that weren’t my fault, and I constantly moved from brilliant success to abject failure in seconds. My successes were always darkened by the mystifying failure that I knew was right around the corner.

Had I been diagnosed, I would have at least known I wasn’t alone. I would have known that there are things I just couldn’t do, and I would have been able to ask for help from the right people. I got very far in life, despite my undiagnosed ADD, but the ride was bumpy and could have been a lot less painful.

ADD isn’t a curse, it’s just a different kind of normal. There are hundreds of millions (if not billions) of us and we have support groups, medical treatments, philosophies and healthy coping strategies. Living with undiagnosed ADD is the curse.

REPORT ABUSE