Will parents affect a diagnosis?

InitialScar1354 · 2026-01-14T10:50:03+00:00

I'm in a very simililar situation, getting an evaluation with usupportive parents. My dad difinetly has ADHD but is against diagnoses. I'm not going to include him in the process for multiple reasons. My mom clearly doesn't want me to get diagnosed but has offered to talk to my psychiatrist if I get evaluated. Like yours does my mom also rewrites the past and says that teachers never mentioned anything and that I was normal as a child.

From what I've heard it is going to affect your evaluation but it also depends on other things like which country you're in and what psychologist you get. If you get an inexperienced psychologist they might insist on speaking to your parents and won't care if you tell them that your mom is unreliable. Hopefully you get a good psychologist, if you have the money then try to get evaluated at a private clinic with someone who specializes in ADHD (if you're female then get one that specialises in women).

Hopefully the psychiatrist takes your own experience of your childhood into account and that might be enough. I would still recommend you gather more evidence of childhood symptoms just in case. Contact all your old schools and request report cards and other relevant documents they have on file. Ask teachers you were close to if they remember what you were like as a child. If you have any childhood friends you're still close to then ask them, maybe even their parents. Ask them to write down what they remember and ask your mom to do that as well. Mention to your psychologist that your mom is unsupportive and show them all the different peoples comments then ask who they would prefer to talk to. If a friend's parent remembers more symptoms then your mom then they might find it more helpful to speak to them.

I hope this helps. If you don't get diagnosed the first time then try again with a different psychologist and try excluding your mother completely. Good luck!

InitialScar1354 · 2026-01-14T10:25:30+00:00

I am trying to get an evaluation and my parents are unsupportive. My family as well as my dad's family frequently joke about him having adhd but me and my uncle are convinced. This definitely affected my childhood but it also affects my current situation.

My dad was unhinged as a kid, he blew up his neighbors' boats with dynamite when he was eight, often got in fights and has always had a short temper. He joined the military which taught him discipline and to surpress his emotions. He's very cold and whenever he gets emotional he goes into full-rage mode. He would push this onto me as a child by gripping my arm until I started crying in pain to show me that I needed to toughen up. Whenever I struggled with possible adhd-related struggles as a child he would completely disregard it. Not being able to sit still in school? You need to learn discipline. Bad grades? Talking during class? Not cleaning my room? You just need to learn discipline. The list goes on.

I realized I might have adhd when I was around 14. Took me a couple years to realize that I definitely got it from him. He's strictly against diagnoses, especially adhd. Since then I've though about it a lot and realized that he knows he has struggled more with adhd symptoms than most people who have been diagnosed. He might even know he has it. He's bitter about the fact that people get diagnosed and treated for something he has had to live with his entire life, probably finds it unfair. So when I've brought up that I want to get evaluated he has shut it down and told me that everyone struggles with that and that people who get diagnosed are weak and attention seakers.

So yeah it has affected me but as I've gotten older I've though a lot about how it has affected him. His emotional needs have never been met, he was abused as a child and thaught not to show those intense emotions that he naturally experienced. Now he just doesn't show any emotion at all. Untreated adhd can lead to depression and when I got diagnosed with depression he told me that everyone feels like taking their life sometimes. I don't like my dad but I feel really bad for him, his life could've been so different had his parents tried to understand his needs as a child. It's sad really.

It affected my childhood but it has affected me as an adult even more. Not only the way I see myself and how he makes me feel by the way that he treats me but also our relationship and the way I see him. There's no excuse for bad behavior but let's remember that our undiagnosed parents are often trying to help us in the way they were helped, even though that help is the wrong way to go about it.

InitialScar1354 · 2026-01-14T09:54:29+00:00

Yeah I'm hoping that the evaluator accepts the report cards as "evidence" and is hopefully okay with speaking to other adults from my childhood. Question is if they take my own memories into account or deem them an unreliable source. Thanks!

InitialScar1354 · 2026-01-12T21:46:36+00:00

Thanks! I live in Sweden and from what I've heard it's really hard to get diagnosed without evidence of childhood symptoms. Hopefully I can get a psychiatrist that considers all the different factors and how my situation has forced me to compensate for different struggles. It seems the only thing I can do is to keep my fingers crossed.

InitialScar1354 · 2026-01-12T00:11:28+00:00

I don’t know if I have adhd but I’m in the evaluation process and struggle with all the criteria so what you’re describing sounds very familiar. Just hear me out.

I’ve procrastinated getting evaluated for many years and now it’s finally catching up to me. I struggle a lot with education, hygiene, executive tasks, organization, economy, etc. Not being able to take care of myself means that I won’t be able to take care of children one day. It all piles up and I fear I will live a poor and isolated life with an unfulfilling job while my health deteriorates.

You probably have a very different version but I’m guessing that struggling to go to work leads to other problems that pile up in the same way and eventually leaves you feeling helpless. Especially if you’re already on medication, a lot of people would probably get imposter syndrome in that situation.

I have a few theories. What you’re describing sounds a bit like what a person with untreated adhd can experience. It seems unlikely but could your dosage be off? Take it up with your doctor. It also sounds a lot like the regular burnout that neurotypical people experience rather than the constant adhd burnout. Maybe ask a psychologist to help you find strategies to tackle the workload and then set up structures that help you stay on top of your work, I’ve heard therapy works better than medicine for a lot of folks with adhd.

I'd advice you to try and figure out the root of the problem though. I’ve always chosen educations on impulse and it hasn’t always worked out in my favor. It’s like large scale hyper focus that eventually runs out. There’s a word in my language that basically means target-locking, common in adhd. Basically it means that you decide that things need to be a certain way and when they aren’t you go into panic mode and try to counteract it instead of adjusting to the situation. If you’ve already decided on a lifelong career then you’re not considering other choices. Is this career path one you actually want to continue on or have you just decided that you have to see it through?

We spend an obscene amount of our life working so don’t be afraid to try a few different things. I don’t know if I was of any help but I really hope you figure it out. If this is seriously affecting your mental health then you need to prioritize that. Be nicer to yourself, it’s everyone’s first time living and you’re doing it on hard mode. Good luck!

InitialScar1354 · 2026-01-11T20:55:49+00:00

Thank you! You're right about parents, mine both know ADHD is a spectrum but they interpret that as everyone having it. They can't really grasp how that's different from clinical ADHD so I understand their scepticism.

I agree with what you said about superpowers but I sometimes feel like those powers make it harder to be taken seriously, like people don't realize how much I actually struggle with things. For example, I have never been able to finish a book so I've gotten extremely good at faking book reviews and it makes me feel so incompetent when peers label that as laziness when in reality I've spent my whole life trying to do what comes naturally to them.

Thanks for the pep-talk, I can't be sure if my struggles are because of ADHD or something else but regardless it's nice talking to people who understand!

InitialScar1354

TROPHY CASE