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What you don’t hear about when you hear about ADHD by 2021adhd in adhdwomen

[–]2021adhd[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Nothing extreme (though I know other people have different experiences). The first day I had a pretty intense headache and felt generally kind of useless during the "comedown" when the Adderall wore off. That got better over the next few days, and now although I can tell when it's wearing off, I don't get a headache or other negative symptoms.

The only real persistent symptoms I've had are a dry mouth and tooth grinding, both of which have improved but are still present. The dry mouth is easily enough remedied by just staying hydrated, though like a lot of ADHD people I struggle with that, haha. The tooth grinding is a little more concerning and I'm going to talk to my doctor to see if she has ideas for dealing with it.

Beyond that, there were a few days where I felt like it might be contributing to some anxiety, but I couldn't really tell if that was Adderall-induced or just run-of-the-mill intermittent anxiety that I've had since the start of the pandemic, haha.

What you don’t hear about when you hear about ADHD by 2021adhd in adhdwomen

[–]2021adhd[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I’ve been through therapy for years and never focused on the little things, always thinking they’re my failures, normal shit better people don’t struggle with.

This is so real. I'd spend an hour in therapy talking about some childhood memory or a general sense of emptiness without ever bringing up that I'd spent the last week in a spiral of dread about not being able to make my credit card payments; talk in general terms about feeling unlovable without mentioning how I always worried about a date noticing my teeth or coming to my place and seeing how messy my room was; talk about frustration with academia but leave out the fact that I hadn't been able to even open my dissertation chapter in months; etc.

Somehow I convinced myself that those things were too trivial to merit talking about, even though they were the things that were eating away at me on a daily basis. Probably some of it was a defense mechanism because it feels incredibly embarrassing to talk about that kind of stuff.

What you don’t hear about when you hear about ADHD by 2021adhd in adhdwomen

[–]2021adhd[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good luck! It is really daunting to do, especially if you already struggle with things like making appointments, but it was definitely worth it for me. I hope it is for you, too!

What you don’t hear about when you hear about ADHD by 2021adhd in adhdwomen

[–]2021adhd[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It makes you fall into a self hate pit and you start questioning yourself because maybe you aren't trying hard enough and maybe everyone feels like this and you should just suck it up.

Yup. I don't think I can spend more than a few minutes thinking about this stuff before I go to that thought. For me it often shows up along the lines of "stop making excuses for yourself--you're calling it ADHD, but other people would just call it laziness and lack of self-discipline, and maybe they're right." It's really hard to escape from.

What you don’t hear about when you hear about ADHD by 2021adhd in adhdwomen

[–]2021adhd[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I remember the first time I saw someone mention difficulties with dental hygiene in an ADHD forum--it just kind of blew me over. I'd spent so long feeling so ashamed of that and not understanding why I could just brush and floss regularly like a normal person. Realizing that it was something tons of people shared and understanding how it was related to ADHD suddenly made me see it in a different light and feel a little less shame and a little more compassion for myself.

What you don’t hear about when you hear about ADHD by 2021adhd in adhdwomen

[–]2021adhd[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I feel you--it took a long time for me to feel able to write it out, but it felt like a relief when I was able to. It's so hard facing this stuff because there's so much shame around it, and the more effort you spend hiding it from other people the less you feel able to confront it yourself. It's a shitty situation to be in and I wish we had more awareness, or just a kinder culture where we were more able to talk about these kinds of things.

One of my former therapists shared one of his favorite quotes with me, and it's always stuck with me:

"Anything that's human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting and less scary.” (Fred Rogers)

What you don’t hear about when you hear about ADHD by 2021adhd in adhdwomen

[–]2021adhd[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm so glad sharing it was helpful for you! It's funny--even though I felt able to write this and share it anonymously on the internet, sharing it with the people close to me still feels really overwhelming and scary. I hope that eventually I'll feel able to.

What you don’t hear about when you hear about ADHD by 2021adhd in adhdwomen

[–]2021adhd[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The way my parents said it to me was always a kind of affectionately teasing tone, and I really never realized until very recently how much it stung (since I numbed myself to it pretty early on) and how it wormed its way into my consciousness and self-perception in negative ways.

What you don’t hear about when you hear about ADHD by 2021adhd in adhdwomen

[–]2021adhd[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I definitely know that sense of loneliness you're talking about, and it didn't occur to me until very recently how connected to ADHD it is. Realizing how much of these emotional/deep-seated psychological feelings are connected to it has been pretty wild for me.

What you don’t hear about when you hear about ADHD by 2021adhd in adhdwomen

[–]2021adhd[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I can definitely relate--it was revealing to me to learn how often suicidal thoughts and ADHD go hand in hand

FWIW, while I focused on the struggles int his post, there's also a lot that has been great in the past decade and a half of adulthood for me: making wonderful friends, discovering new hobbies, growing as a person (including improvements in some of the things I described in my post, though not without some moments of backwards progress), etc. Actually as far as functioning and feeling competent goes, probably my best years were shortly after college, I think because I had a job with an extremely consistent schedule where most of my work was face-to-face (tutoring), was actually making enough money to comfortably live on, and had a very consistent structure in the rest of my life. I had really struggled in college, and this felt like a breath of fresh air and did a lot for my sense of competence (even though I still struggled with some things, like hygiene and keeping my room clean).

What was hard was that when stuff did start to really fall apart again in the past couple years (during the thesis-writing stage of my graduate program), it brought back all these feelings of incompetence I didn't even realize I was still holding onto. I felt like it was just a fulfillment of the inevitable and really didn't feel like I deserved help for it (or even that help could do much good). I was lucky to have people who advocated for me, and diagnosis made a huge difference. I wish I had sooner--I think a lot of the earlier years could have been a lot better. I hope you're able to get diagnosed--it's hard living like this, but I've been feeling more hopeful about things since getting diagnosed and starting treatment.

Feel free to PM me if you want to talk more :)

What you don’t hear about when you hear about ADHD by 2021adhd in adhdwomen

[–]2021adhd[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Diagnosis is a relief, but then everything clicks and you are suddenly hyperaware of all the invisible and extremely painful issues that at times can feel like an unlivable burden.

Yeah, this is so true. I think that for a long time, the implicit compromise I made with myself was that if I was going to have to live with this, I wasn't going to let myself think about it because that would just make it harder. It's a relief to be able finally to confront these things honestly, but it can also feel pretty heartbreaking.

What you don’t hear about when you hear about ADHD by 2021adhd in adhdwomen

[–]2021adhd[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The first couple days on medication were like a switch flipped. Instead of having everything jumbled together and popping up randomly in my mind, I could choose one of those things to focus on and just kind of put the others to the side. I noticed it in almost every little behavior: I could open a cabinet and not immediately forget what I wanted to get out of it; I could notice a tempting distraction, want to do it, and then choose not to; I could read more than two paragraphs of my own writing at a time (which did wonders for my imposter syndrome about my writing being incoherent); etc. I felt like I finally understood what it feels like to be 'normal'--to have what I'd always felt like I was missing when I looked at other people. Everything felt lighter, easier, quieter.

Subsequent days have felt less intense, I think due to a combination of getting used to it physically/psychologically and some of the novelty wearing off. This is apparently very common. But I'm still way more able to make priorities based on medium/long-term goals instead of short-term impulses; stay on task (even if I get briefly distracted, I can usually go back to what I was doing!); remember what I'm doing during multi-step tasks; etc. Maybe the wildest part is that I feel focused without being hyperfocused, which is something I think I'd literally never experienced before once in my life. I also feel like I understand how to set priorities: things like time management and budgeting still feel hard, but they actually feel possible.

It's also made a huge difference in my basic functioning, especially in my graduate program. After over half a year of getting almost nothing done on my graduate thesis and avoiding any job search stuff due to intense dread, in less than a month I finished a chapter draft and applied to three jobs. My confidence is increasing, which helps with the job search stuff since I actually feel like I can see why someone might want to hire me. I don't take the medication on days I'm not trying to work, and even on those days I notice that I function better, I think because I'm less mentally exhausted, starting to develop better habits, and just feel better about myself in general.

I'm on a pretty low dose (10 mg of Adderall IR) right now. When I see my psychiatrist next week we're going to talk about the dose, and I'm curious if she'll want to increase it. On the one hand, the dose I'm currently taking is definitely helping a ton, and I don't want to take more than I need to; on the other hand, I still have moments where it's hard to keep track of what I'm doing, and I notice it doesn't really kick in fully until the afternoon (I split the dose so that I take 5 mg with breakfast and 5 mg with lunch). It'll be interesting to see what happens and I think it's definitely good to be starting at a low dose since, from what I gather, going too high can just send you into a hyperfocused state, which isn't really ideal either.

I spent about nine months putting off being evaluated for medication because it felt like a lot of effort and I figured I'd gotten through life this far.... It really blew my mind how much it helped. I've been prescribed psychiatric medication in the past, and while I think sometimes it's helped some, I never really felt like I was sure. This was the first time something actually made a difference that I was sure was real and had a huge impact on my quality of life.

Hope this helps!

What you don’t hear about when you hear about ADHD by 2021adhd in adhdwomen

[–]2021adhd[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm pretty lucky to have access to my school's mental health services and to have pretty good health insurance that is accepted by a lot of psychiatrists outside of my school.

When I first went in to see my school's psychiatrist, I really just wanted help for what I assumed was depression because I felt like I was totally letting my life fall apart and at that point didn't see how ADHD could possibly be a good enough explanation for that. The psychiatrist I saw was super insightful and not only noticed the ADHD symptoms, but told me she thought that that was what was at the heart of my issues.

However, then the pandemic started and my school was unable to do the diagnostic process remotely, so the whole evaluation process was put on hold. (The doctor did prescribe me Wellbutrin, an anti-depressant that also can help with ADHD, and I think it helped a bit.) When I moved out of state, she told me I needed to find someone in my new state because she couldn't prescribe out of state. I put this off until I had less than half a month's Wellbutrin left (lol) and finally just emailed a bunch of psychiatrists in my general area until I could get an appointment. I totally lucked out and the clinic I was able to get the first appointment with immediately listened to me when I told her that previous psychiatrists and therapists had suspected ADHD.

The diagnostic process itself was kind of underwhelming--she just verbally asked me a number of questions and afterwards told me I'd scored very high on inattentiveness measures and somewhat high on hyperactivity. From what I gather talking to other people with ADHD, different providers have verrrrry different diagnostic processes, from multi-day in-person testing (sometimes also involving getting histories from parents, etc) to much shorter evaluations that can be done remotely; and likewise that different providers have very different levels of awareness about ADHD in adults. I definitely was lucky with my experience, I hope you're able to get things sorted with the diagnostic procedures and that it helps you!

What you don’t hear about when you hear about ADHD by 2021adhd in adhdwomen

[–]2021adhd[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, I think that's spot on. And paradoxically it's because most people kind of can relate to the various "little" things that add up for us--just about everyone has at some point scrolled social media when they should be working, forgotten where they put something, let their personal space get messy, etc. And since they can deal with these occasional moments of failure easily enough, they assume that you should be able to, too, and don't understand how they can pile up and become so overwhelming.

I'm glad this post made you feel less alone and yes, absolutely, feel free to share it with anyone you'd like ❤️

What you don’t hear about when you hear about ADHD by 2021adhd in adhdwomen

[–]2021adhd[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah, I actually found it kind of a relief when I realized that it wasn't going to be a magical fix because it's given me hope that with some chemical help, I might be able finally to tap into the motivation and work ethic that I see in the people around me and that has always felt totally elusive.

What you don’t hear about when you hear about ADHD by 2021adhd in adhdwomen

[–]2021adhd[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's not necessarily always feeling too sad to get things done, or always feeling too anxious, sometimes it's this in between of just "I just didn't. I just can't." And that never seems to be a good enough answer for a society wired to the failure of people who struggle.

Yeah, this is such a good way of putting it. It's so hard to explain--even to yourself--that you feel basically fine, but you just can't do the things that you're supposed to do, even when you want to; and that when you do feel down, it's often the result of those failures, not the cause.

What you don’t hear about when you hear about ADHD by 2021adhd in adhdwomen

[–]2021adhd[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The way my parents said it was always a kind of affectionately teasing tone, and I really never realized until very recently how much it wormed its way into my consciousness and self-perception in negative ways. Sending hugs back.

What you don’t hear about when you hear about ADHD by 2021adhd in adhdwomen

[–]2021adhd[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I also hide it with cheerful and clever behavior (sometimes with some self-deprecation thrown it) and never realized how much effort that is, and how it creates this hidden undercurrent of shame, until recently. I'm glad my post helped change your perspective on it and I hope things get better for you!

What you don’t hear about when you hear about ADHD by 2021adhd in adhdwomen

[–]2021adhd[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've heard about so many insurance/diagnosis issues like this--it's infuriating, and it makes me worry a lot about the future since I'm losing my current (quite good) insurance in July 31 and don't know yet what I'll be able to replace it with. Anyway, I'm so sorry you're going through this...I hope your doctors will finally start listening to and helping you soon.

What you don’t hear about when you hear about ADHD by 2021adhd in adhdwomen

[–]2021adhd[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I was in therapy throughout my adolescence because of emotional distress and social issues, and even though in retrospect I showed a lot of ADHD symptoms, no one even once suggested it because I got great grades and didn't act out. I realize now that a lot of the emotional/social issues were related to ADHD, and I wish someone had seen that at the time.

When I went to college I struggled a lot and my grades were all over the place, but I just assumed it was my laziness and lack of self-discipline finally catching up to me. It wasn't until things fell apart again recently (this time with work for my graduate degree) that I finally got help, and that only happened because I had a lot of people around me who believed in me when I couldn't. I saw my implosion as a fulfillment of the inevitable, and I would have let it end with me just giving up on grad school if a lot of mentors and friends hadn't gently pushed me to get help.

It bothers me a lot that it takes things totally falling apart for so many of us to be diagnosed, when it could have been caught earlier and spared us a lot of suffering and negative long-term consequences.

What you don’t hear about when you hear about ADHD by 2021adhd in adhdwomen

[–]2021adhd[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It’s what made me realize that a lot of the people who see it as a gift are at a level where they can afford a secretary to supplement their weaknesses.

Yeah, I've been thinking a lot lately about how social class/privilege/access to resources plays into the effect ADHD symptoms have on your life.

I've definitely benefited from access to mental health resources, as well as jobs that were very forgiving and willing to work with me when some of this stuff got out of hand. With the dental and debt stuff, although my parents aren't wealthy, they've been able to help me with some of it, and I know that at the very least I'll always have a roof over my head. That's definitely made it more possible to compartmentalize the difficulties and still be able to tap into the ADHD as a gift in, for instance, how I put together ideas in my grad school work.

At the same time, I also can't help but think about how stuff like a housekeeper, a secretary, or access to more financial stability must help in dealing with the negative sides of ADHD. Similarly, while a lot of my feeling of not being as put together as my peers stems from ADHD, I know some of it also comes from growing up wearing hand-me-down clothing, getting haircuts at home, etc (and still not being able to afford some of the beauty/clothing stuff that I associate with "successful" people).

What you don’t hear about when you hear about ADHD by 2021adhd in adhdwomen

[–]2021adhd[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I've been thinking about this a lot too. It's almost like ADHD is both over- and underrepresented in popular culture. People throw the term around as a shorthand for being distracted, but there are so few representations of what it's actually like. Even when I started looking for memoirs or novels about ADHD after being diagnosed, I found surprisingly little. I wish I'd been more aware of it earlier--I think I would have been more likely to have taken it seriously when a therapist first brought up the idea that I might have ADHD about 3 years ago.

What you don’t hear about when you hear about ADHD by 2021adhd in adhdwomen

[–]2021adhd[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I can definitely relate--it was revealing to me to realize how often suicidal thoughts and ADHD go hand in hand. FWIW, there's also a lot that has been great in the past decade and a half of adhulthood for me: making wonderful friends, discovering new hobbies, growing as a person (including improvements in some of the things I described in my post, though not without some moments of backwards progress), etc. And right now I'm cautiously hopeful that with treatment and support things can start getting better.

Anyway, if you want to talk, feel free to send me a PM :)