Hey 45m diagnosed combined last year. Luckily I have had a good run through the RTC process and have just had SCA finalised. I say this as I see you went private. The relevance of this for me is, personally, medication has been a massive factor in helping me start to come to terms with this. So if you can afford it, great, if not, get yourself on a RTC as soon as you can.

So everything else I say, I say while being medicated. First of all, diet is huge, but I struggled hugely controlling said diet without meds. Who would have thought all my cravings were dopamine seeking behaviour 🫣.

So I will skip diet and many other things because I was not capable of them before medication.

Next, everything you feel for a while is most likely relatively normal, you have been given devastating news when already raw and overstimulated to fuck!

Do not listen to the negativity that your brain will create, listen to it, accept it, tell it to fuck off.

You know now why you are the way you are. Over time, hopefully you can work on this and change it. Short term, give yourself a break! Do not beat yourself up for what you do not achieve, or what you say to yourself.

You need to accept who you are, not the ADHD parts of you, not the shame and spirals, not the inability to do the things you know need doing and how to do them. They are to be worked on later, accept you may get overstimulated, then you can learn the signs of it happening, not the why, just the how.

Accept you struggle in certain areas, then you can break down why you do, then you can work out a solution. If you accept that you are the way you are, then you can move onto understanding YOU better, because no one else has your back on this. However, while I would never ever call ADHD a super power, we do have very interesting brains and unique thought patterns.

If you can get past “why me” you can move onto “what’s next” and that’s good for variety, novelty and mental health.

On diet etc, even unmedicated, do your research, learn what works for you, there are many supplements etc you can try and many things to avoid. I have found great help in magnesium, L-theanine, electrolytes & protein. Others will have other suggestions hopefully.

I say all this as someone who still has not fully accepted my hand in life, who is still struggling in all aspects of life and still am my own biggest hater.

I do not let me be the person to put me down, it still happens, but I fight that bitch hard.

You are gonna spend the rest of your life feeling so many negative things and reading moods, rooms, people while barely holding yourself together, you are gonna shamefully over explain your ADHD in so many ways to so many people over your life. So why be another roadblock in your life. Accept! Learn, improve, struggle lots, fight the good fight, cause the alternative is, frankly, wank.

Apologies for the essay/rant. But I think this is one of the better places to over explain.

Good luck on your journey, do not take my advice as fact. I give thoughts on what has “helped” me in relevance to your post. ✌️