Re: Why now? I am mid way through my life and now I discover what I have.

[Misswho23]

tcopling,

I feel for ya. I was diagnosed at 42 about a year and a half ago. And it seems pretty common to be diagnosed midlife.

For me the symptoms got worse especially at work. I was seeing a therapist due to stress from my mother going through heart problems and the family struggles of caring for her. So initially I went seeking help for that. That’s when the therapist diagnosed me. Everything in my life was so imbalanced at that point that whatever coping and ways I had been doing to compensate either stopped working or weren’t working so well. I was surprised to have the AD/HD part of it. My therapist helped me to uncover a lot of things that I thought were part of normal life were really AD/HD. And it took him about 6 months to convince me to try medication.

This has also been a godsend. The first place I have ever really talked to people who also have it.

So here’s my list of things.

what do you do or have done to better your life and those close to you?

Got help

Got diagnosed

Education – watch the move ADD and loving it and ADD and mastering it

Educated my partner and those close to me about what it really is

Talk to others who have it

Meditation – have to work at that one

Medication

Laugh

Have fun

Forgive myself and others for the years I didn’t know

What do you do at work to improve?

I lost my job of 11 years due to AD/HD symptoms that I didn’t know were causing the problems.

I freelance at home and still struggle with work but here are some.

1.I read “Time management for the creative person” by Lee Silber

you may not be creative but it could have been named “for the ADDer”

2. Break my day down into sections when I will do certain tasks. Like 2 hour or 4 hour chunks.

And have a 15 min break in the time chunks. I hyper focus

3. Write down what I have to do. I thought I had super human memory powers but I do not.

4. If I have to write a lot of stuff I have someone proof it. Or if I can wait for a day and then review before sending or submitting.

5. Really pay attention to how long it takes me to do something. I have a habit a saying I will get something in sooner that is realistically possible.

6. Took some job training workshops – they were really basic but a good reminder

7. I been doing a reassessment or inventory if you will to track what things have been persistently causing problems. And being mindful about was it a bad job match or something I can change? The last job was a really bad match so I know what to look out for in the next job.

Long post but glad to have you here. Hope you find this site helps you. It’s a really fun place. And we need that in our lives.

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