Resurrection - A Response to “Ireland: An Obituary” by John Waters

   In his article for First Things, which describes itself as “America’s most influential journal for religion and public life,” John Waters casts the vote to repeal the 8th amendment to the Irish constitution on May 25th as the death of his country. On that day, he writes, “history seemed to have gone into reverse: the Resurrection behind, Calvary in front. On Friday, the Irish people climbed Calvary backwards, in the name of progress.” I knew from that first line that the Ireland he knows and the Ireland I know must be two very different places. Like most Irish women at home and abroad, I went to sleep the night of May 25th, when exit polls showed that the referendum had passed with 68% of the vote, scarcely allowing myself to believe that I would wake up in a world where Irish women were free. The next morning, though I may have been curled up under my blankets half a world a way in Canada, I felt as though I was with the thousands of women at Dublin Castle who were weeping in joy and relief as the results were made official, alternating between chants of “Yes!” and “Savita,” the name of an Indian immigrant who died of septic shock as a complication of miscarriage in 2012, after being denied an abortion five days earlier and being told “this is a Catholic country,” before breaking into a tearful chorus of Amhran na bhFiann, the national anthem. I spent the next forty-eight hours crying off and on, and I’d be lying if I said the teary spells have stopped completely, almost five days later.    Before I go on, I want to make my opinion on this matter perfectly clear. I am Catholic. Abortion is not an easy topic for me, and I do believe that on some level, it involves the taking of a life. In Canada, the country that sectarian oppression led my family to before I was born, abortion is legal for any reason up to birth. I do not agree with that at all. But in Ireland, the 8th amendment created the opposite extreme- in making the life of the mother and the life of the fetus equal in all respects, women could not even have a termination for medical reasons unless her death was imminent. I say that because a potentially life-threatening situation, such as a lengthy miscarriage, which can lead to sepsis, was not enough to merit a termination- you had to actually be experiencing sepsis in order to be allowed an abortion. This is what killed Savita Halappanavar, the catalyst for this referendum. Personally, I believe that abortion should be allowed if the pregnancy poses risk to the health, including mental health, of the mother; if the baby is diagnosed with a fatal foetal abnormality such as anencephaly; and in cases of rape and incest. However, because I do not believe that anyone should be forced to disclose that they have been a victim of rape or incest in order to access health care, I believe that there should be a period in the first trimester during which abortion can be accessed upon request.    The 8th amendment, however, went beyond prohibiting abortion in all cases. The law undermined the agency of women carrying wanted pregnancies to term, as it prevented women from accessing any sort of health care that may hurt the baby. I read one story of a women who was denied chemotherapy and ultimately died, only for her baby to die three days later. In short, the 8th amendment was a draconian law that shames any nation that considers itself modern. With that in mind, I invite you to take my hand and dive into dissecting Waters’ article. I decided to write this response on a whim at one in the morning, because a lot of things have made me really angry in the last few days, but nothing as much as this article. Let me tell you why.

   Waters opens with “If you would like to visit a place where the symptoms of the sickness of our time are found near their furthest limits, come to Ireland. Here you will see a civilization in freefall, seeking with every breath to deny the existence of a higher authority, a people that has now sentenced itself not to look upon the Cross of Christ lest it be haunted by His rage and sorrow.” From the get-go, he is casting Ireland as some sort of hellish wasteland of sin more akin to Las Vegas than to a country where the Angelus is still broadcast on national TV and every single person I’ve ever met went to a Catholic school. As the western world goes, Ireland is behind the times, and certainly one of the most pious countries among its peers. I’m not saying Ireland has the same levels of religiosity as it did even 50 years ago, but 85% of its citizens identify as Catholic, and the handprint of the Church is all over its laws. In 2009, the Dáil (Parliament) passed a law implementing a €25,000 fine for blasphemy, and children must be baptized Catholic to be admitted into school- that’s the kind of fundamentalism we use to justify bombing Muslim countries. So is Ireland shaking off some of the influence of the Church? Absolutely, and thank God for that. But is it “a civilization in freefall, seeking with every breath to deny the existence of a higher authority?” Absolutely not. Could not be farther from it.    A later paragraph begins with “For the first time in history, a nation has voted to strip the right to life from the unborn.” Is this true? Technically, but only because Ireland is the only country (to my knowledge) to ever have had the legal equality of the life of the mother and her unborn child enshrined in their constitution. That in and of itself ought to tell you something about Irish society- that abortion laws had to be changed by referendum rather than by legislation because an absolute ban was literally enshrined in the constitution.    He continues: “The tenor of the contest has been so nauseating that the deepest parts of my psyche had begun to anticipate this outcome. It was little things: the frivolity of the Yes side: “Run for Repeal”; “Spinning for Repeal”; “Walk your Dog for Repeal”; “Farmers for Yes”; “Grandparents for Repeal,” which ought to have been “Grandparents for Not Having Grandchildren.” This, like the same-sex marriage referendum in 2015, was a carnival referendum: Yessers chanting for Repeal, drinking to Repeal, grinning for the cameras as they went door-to-door on the canvass of death.” Apparently, Waters has a problem with the fact that Irish people live normal lives, and don’t just spend their hours alternatively praying the rosary and making babies, as borderline-Orientalist caricatures from Americans would have you believe. What hurts me the most about this - this denial of normalcy, of modernity, the eschewing of activities such as spin class or walking your dog as something somehow out of reach of the constantly-praying people of the Emerald Isle - is that it comes from an Irishman. Growing up in Canada, I’ve grown used to foreigners, especially Catholics, having this mythologized idea of Irish society, as though time stopped for us in 1849. And I’ve grown used to other Catholics going into hysterics when we step out of line from this fantasy. But seeing someone who describes Ireland as the only home he’s ever known perpetuating the infantilizing and, frankly, almost racist idea that Irish people aren’t, for lack of a better word, normal- I can’t lie, it hurt.    This, for me, has been the crux of the issue as I’ve debated the referendum results with non-Irish Catholics, or (even worse) Catholics of some vague and distant Irish descent, who maybe had a great-great-great grandparent come over on the coffin ships during the Great Hunger. There are 500,000 people of Irish descent in Canada, which makes up 15% of our population; likewise, in the US there are 33 million people who claim Irish descent, which makes up 10.5% of their population and dwarfs the all-island population of Ireland, which is about 6 million. Most of these people, however, are descendants of people who came during the Great Hunger or shortly thereafter. First generation Irish-Canadians (or Irish-Americans) like myself are extremely rare. Because of this, though Irish culture is very strong and certainly privileged in North America, there are few people here with an actual connection to contemporary Ireland. For this reason, the image of Ireland that’s held by “Irish” Catholics here is not realistic.    Not only is Ireland imagined as a place where having 10 children is considered the average and no one has heard of birth control, but they think we actually like it that way. Catholics in North America treat Ireland as a dollhouse; a plaything. Of course, when you base your admiration and connection to a country on nothing but its (imagined) religiosity, you’re apt to want to dissociate yourself from it entirely if its people step out of line. I kid you not- I saw a fully Canadian girl proclaim in light of the passing of the referendum “Today I am not Irish.” Sweetie, relax. You never were. Furthermore, it does not escape me that these attitudes carry a distinct air of colonialism, which is problematic when you consider the fact that many North Americans look at Ireland as a country that only became (mostly) free because the Brits took pity on us and handed us the 26 counties to shut us up.    So it’s bad enough to hear this from people who have never set foot in Ireland, but from someone who lived their his whole life? I felt betrayed. Heartbroken. And like I needed to say something. Like I needed to get the truth about Ireland’s tumultuous and oppressive relationship with the Catholic Church out to as many people as I could. In that moment I felt it became my duty to show the truth that every woman in Ireland knows to the world.

   I can only hope that Waters was purposely misleading his American audience and didn’t actually believe what he said when he wrote “The spiritual reconstruction of Ireland that took place after the Famines of the 1840s placed mothers at its center: the moral instruments by which Irish families were to be brought back to the straight and narrow. Women were placed on a pedestal, their actions or demands immune from questioning by mere men. Add two dashes of feminism and you have an unassailable cultural force, which has now attained its apotheosis. “Trust women,” one of the many fatuous Yes slogans demanded. Trust women to kill their own children?”    Excuse me... WHAT? Placed mothers at its center, immune from questioning by mere men?? I think I need to give you folks a hard dose of truth here. As everyone knows, England occupied and oppressed the people of Ireland for 800 years (and is still occupying and oppressing the people of the North - tiocfaidh ár lá). But what many people don’t know is that, throughout the last hundred years of British rule, the Catholic Church, seen by so many as the vehicle for Ireland’s resistance, was available to the highest bidder, which was the colonial administration every time. During the Great Hunger, which was not in fact a famine but a purposely orchestrated genocide, the Church was more than happy to let the people of Ireland starve, with nothing in the way of help besides promises that you would spend eternity in Hell if you accepted a bowl of soup from the Quakers. When Ireland won independence for the 26 counties in 1921, its dreams of self-determination were dashed by the Church, which quickly stepped into England’s place of controlling every aspect of our lives. No one had to carry this burden more than Irish mothers.    From the 18th century until 1996, women considered “fallen” were put into Magdalene laundries- homes run by nuns, ostensibly with the intention of rehabilitating these girls into better Catholics. After the 1920s, the laundries took a turn from bad to disgusting, essentially becoming prison labour camps for all sorts of women- disabled women, petty criminals, and girls who were considered “loose,” but mostly unwed mothers. Here, these women were forced to perform hard physical labour up until and immediately following birth. Their children were taken from them immediately and sold to American families. Many of these women and children never saw each other again. Unable to see their babies, women endured the torture of not being able to express their breast milk, and were beaten for crying or complaining. The babies who died were buried in mass graves on unconsecrated ground. At one Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Co. Galway, 796 babies were discovered buried inside a septic tank. The Bon Secours Home in Tuam operated from 1925 to 1961- this is not something out of pre-Industrial history. This happened within my parents’ lifetime.    The domination of the Church in all areas of life meant that up until the 1980s c-sections were not performed in Ireland. Instead, difficult labours were handled with symphysiotomies- essentially the surgical breaking of the mother’s pelvis. This was done widely throughout Ireland and without consent. Women often were not told that it had been done until after their babies were delivered. So much for women’s “actions or demands immune from questioning by mere men.”    Ireland, I am proud to say, has come a long way in the last few decades. In 1980, condoms became legal, and within my lifetime, the last Magdalene laundry closed and divorce, gay marriage, and emergency contraception were decriminalized. But the 8th amendment, inserted into the constitution in 1983, remained a major roadblock to women’s liberation. I wish I could say that I am sure that the people who wrote the 8th amendment did so innocently, without realizing how many women would die because of it and how many families it would traumatize, but looking at Ireland’s history, I can’t say I have that much faith that our institutions care about women.    Savita Halappanavar is the most high profile case of the damage caused by the 8th amendment, but she is far from the only one. The lead-up to the referendum was defined by stories like hers, some from women who were lucky to survive, and some from the families of women who weren’t. Another famous story is that of Miss P, a pregnant woman who in 2014 was declared clinically braindead, but whose doctors refused to unplug her from life support because it would kill her baby. Her family, having just lost their daughter, wife, and mother, was forced to appeal to Ireland’s High Court so that she could be removed from life support and die and be buried with dignity. The court ultimately ruled in the family’s favour, but only because her baby had no prospect of surviving- not because using a brain dead woman as a baby incubator is fundamentally wrong and disgusting. Another section of stories that particularly touched me were those of families who received the devastating diagnosis of fatal foetal anomaly. One woman, after discovering that her baby had anencephaly (the absence of a major portion of the brain and skull), was told by her doctor “it’s going to be a long 20 weeks.” Many of these women and families made the decision to travel to England for a termination- a lonely and harrowing experience, which more often than not involved getting back on a plane the next day or even that night, still bleeding from the procedure and receiving their baby’s ashes in the mail three weeks later.

   Waters begins to wrap up his article by stating about the image of Ireland as the Land of Saints and Scholars, “We now know it to be a legend long past its use-by date. The Irish of today are more likely to be among the looters and book-burners, the barbarians who value nothing but what is expedient.” He is both right and wrong. Ireland is indeed no longer a land of saints and scholars- but why should it be? That was a title given to us based on our history before the year 1000 AD. No other country in the world is expected to stagnate as Ireland is expected to. No one chides France for no longer being a country of crusaders, or China for abandoning its emperor. It’s worth noting that the Land of Saints and Scholars is a title given to us by foreigners, not by us ourselves. No country is single-faceted. Ireland was never just a land of saints and scholars; we are, and always have been, like every other country, a dynamic place. A changing place. A living place.    Where Waters is wrong is his second sentence- looters, book-burners, barbarians. The only people who ought to be ashamed to call themselves Irish, the only people who disgrace their ancestors, are those who speak of their own people in this way. Book-burners? Trinity College Dublin is one of the top universities in Europe, where anyone can go and view the immaculately preserved Book of Kells. Barbarians? In the last 100 years, Ireland has invented the defibrillator, the ejection seat, the nickel-zinc battery, and radiotherapy. Does finally shaking off the oppressive shackles of the Church make us, and us women in particular, book-burning barbarians? Is Ireland’s worth based entirely on the degree of control held over it by Catholicism?    Ireland is doubtlessly changing, but anyone who thinks that that change is for the worse rather than the better needs to check up on their history. There is a reason that Irish women from Dublin Castle to the Midlands to the Aran Islands and from Ontario to New York to Australia greeted the 26th of May with tears in our eyes and joy in our hearts. Those who attempt to make this referendum about abortion on demand and attempt to paint us as celebrating the death of our children are being willfully ignorant to the fact that this referendum was centred heavily not on abortion on demand but on women like Savita Halappanavar, who came to our country seeking a better life only to die too young because of the stranglehold the Church has on our society. Waters mocks the slogan “Trust women,” but that is really what this was all about. For 200 years, Irish women have been entirely robbed of our agency and our voice. Like Taoiseach (a word that I, unlike Waters, am not embarrassed to utter) Varadkar made clear, this week Ireland spoke loud and clear, telling the world that we are a compassionate country, that we are a dynamic country, and that most importantly, we are a country that trusts women.    According to Waters, this referendum was a backwards walk from the Resurrection towards Cavalry, from life towards death. He could not be more wrong. The promise of the Resurrection brings to us a new day, a new dawn, a future where we are free from the shackles that previously held us down. In my eyes, and in the eyes of the vast majority of Irish men and women alike, May 25th was the beginning of a new Ireland. We turned our back on centuries of pain, suffering, and death, and took our first steps towards the light of compassion. May 25th was not a backward walk to Calvary- May 25th was a Resurrection.

-

For Savita. I’m sorry we let you down.

-

Here’s the link to the original article: https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2018/05/ireland-an-obituary

Why am I literally all of these at the same time

I should be studying but instead I made this

You know…. ADHD gets a certain… Idk a certain reputation? Like people think, consciously or not, that it isn’t that bad and isn’t a big problem. It’s like… Depression can kill you, anxiety can send you into panic attacks and debilitating fear, eating disorders can kill you, personality disorders are “scary” or whatever, autism makes you “different”… People think these things are a big deal. Whether their reasoning is sound, or fueled by ableism, people, at least on tumblr and in my experience, put a lot of weight on most mental illness and neurodivergence.

But for some reason ADHD is like… Trivialized? Like it is a mild inconvenience that only has a real effect in school. Maybe it’s because it’s not usually life threatening, or because it’s not visible, but I have known that I have had ADHD for 12 years. I am only now understanding the impact it has on my life. My ADHD effects every aspect of my life. I think it’s more impactful than my anxiety disorder. (It may be the cause of my anxiety disorder but we will not even think about that aspect rn).

My ADHD is not a quirk, it’s not just a school problem, it’s not a kid problem, it doesn’t mean I’m hyper and spacey all the time, it’s not any of that.

My brain functions in a fundamentally different way from a NT brain. My social life, academics, memory, interests, confidence, and so much more are directly affected by this. And I never even knew.

I grew up thinking that ADHD made me easily distracted and talkative. That was all the information I was given. Every other symptom was just a personal flaw that I should work harder to fix. I’m starting to realize just how intense the effect of my ADHD truly is and I resent the attitude that it is “not as big of a deal”.

me, talking about my trauma: haha yeah it was no big deal tho i don’t really care it’s whatever honestly

somebody: validates my trauma and says i shouldn’t have had to go through that

me, suddenly crying: huh. weird

“I’ll remember” is the ADHD demon talking. You won’t remember. Write it down.

Or the alternative, being a girl with ADHD and not getting diagnosed until you’re in your 20s, having your diagnosis based primarily on the “less known symptoms,” and having your mind entirely blown as your psychiatrist just explains your entire life for you in like half an hour.

ad(h)d  culture is being diagnosed and then thinking that ad(h)d is only about attention issues and living years of your life thinking you’re just weird until you finally do more intense research and realize that most of your problems are actually less known symptoms of ad(h)d

something that helps you manage adhd: daily routine something that prevents you from establishing daily routine: adhd

I Went Off My Meds...

   As the title suggests, I went off my meds. So first of all, I should probably rename this blog LOL. But before I do that, I decided to make a blog post about why I had to make this decision and how it has affected me now that I’ve gone a whole month sans Adderall. First of all, I didn’t do this voluntarily and never would have. It wasn’t because of some hippy dippy desire to try “natural” or “holistic” remedies (even if my economics prof thinks I just need to meditate... major side-eye here, bro)- it was because unfortunately, I was one of the approximately 1% of people whose heart cannot tolerate Adderall. On that note, I am writing this only to give a (hopefully insightful) update on my personal situation, NOT to fear monger or to contribute to the stigma around ADHD medication. I cannot stress enough that what happened to me happens to only 1% of people who take Adderall and that it is absolutely no reason for anyone else to have any trepidation about being prescribed stimulants. If you are under doctor supervision and on a safe dose, and there is a problem, your team will catch it just like mine did.    So here’s what happened with me: in September I started on 5mg, and that helped a teeny tiny bit with my impulsiveness and not at all with my inattention. Before starting Adderall, my resting heart rate was 76 BPM. After two weeks, I told my GP that the dose I was on wasn’t doing anything for me. He checked my heart - it was at 84 BPM that day, which was an increase from my previous visit but within a normal fluctuation range - an upped my prescription to 10mg. I quickly found that the new dose was doing almost everything I needed it to do, and I figured I was set. That is, until my first EKG.    Being the procrastinator that all ADHD brains are, I put off my EKG for like three months- not a good idea y’all. Do as I say not as I do and get your EKGs when your doc tells you to. When I went for my follow-up appointment, I was seen by a resident rather than my GP, which was a terrible experience overall that I can talk about in another post. She told me that my heart rate had been over 100 BPM at my last three visits and that while the EKG showed my heartbeat was perfectly regular, it was fast enough to be concerning- 107 BPM to be exact. She told me to throw out the rest of my Adderall and prescribed me an antidepressant instead. (I know what you’re thinking- why the hell did she give you an antidepressant? Again, I’ll talk about the difficulties of navigating the health care system and advocating for yourself in a later post.)    I’m not gonna lie, between how cold the resident had been with me and the fact that I had to come off the drug that had turned my life around, I was heartbroken. I came home from that appointment sobbing, and had my mom call to schedule another appointment- with my actual doctor. To make a long story short he let me go back down to 5mg for a month but it didn’t lower my heart rate and didn’t help me anyway.    So here we are- I’ve officially been off Adderall for exactly thirty days, and while I lived to tell the tale, lemme tell ya, it hasn’t been easy. I’d be lying if I said there were absolutely zero positives about this change, but I’ll save those, along with some personal reflection, for the end of this post. For now, let’s dive right into the negatives. First of all, the first week I was off it, I literally would have misplaced my head if it weren’t attached to my body. I swear I “lost” my phone about seventeen times a day. I’m not kidding when I say that I can’t count how many times a day I’d walk into the kitchen meaning to get a glass of a water, replace the dirty tea towel with a clean one or do some other task that wasn’t getting a glass of water, go back to my room, and then remember five minutes later that I wanted water. I know this is pretty normal for ADHDers, and in the pre-Adderall days I probably did it two or three times a day, but the first week off my meds it felt like I was spending my entire life walking back and forth and back forth to different rooms in my house because I forgot what I meant to do.    For the first little while, I also naturally had a really hard time regulating my emotions, and I got into a couple of fights that threatened to undo all the progress I had made in certain relationships over the last six months. For the first time in six months, I also caught myself telling my mom I hate her. The words flew out of my mouth before I could stop them and it was only then that I realized I hadn’t done that since I had started taking medication. That right there folks, is what heartbreak feels like- realizing that without medication, you can’t treat the people you love the way they deserve to be treated. That was probably the deepest low I’ve experienced in the last month.    In every other sense, I just went back to the way I used to be. Studying for exams stopped being a thing. I had a hard time reading because my brain felt all jumbled up. I was staying up til 4 in the morning and waking up after noon. I started interrupting people a lot and getting out of the shower to send a text so the thought wouldn’t leave my head. I started forgetting the thought that been in my head 0.25 seconds ago again. I started having panic attacks again. You know. The usual ADHD stuff. It is what it is. However, I was definitely able to derive two major benefits from coming off my meds. The first was purely physical- I hadn’t realized it while I was on it, but the way the Adderall was jacking up my heart rate was having a major effect on my entire body. I didn’t realize how jittery and light-headed it made me until I stopped taking it. Even though my brain felt a hundred times heavier, physically I felt a hundred times lighter.    The other positive change was a lot more profound, and something I know will help me in the future as I explore other medication options. I was absolutely terrified of the life that I was just managing to put back together spiraling into pieces again when I stopped taking Adderall. Because of that, I put steps in place to make sure that that didn’t happen. I invested over $100 in supplements that are supposed to be good for ADHD. I bought a journal/day planner that helps you map out every single detail of your day, and tracks your productivity and mood at the end of every week. I started scheduling everything, and breaking my tasks down into tiny, manageable steps long before they were due (big thanks to HowToADHD’s video about procrastination anxiety for teaching me how to do this- Jessica is a saint and a lifesaver, I swear!). Slowly, something began to change. I realized that these were the things I should have been doing from day one. In time, I started to understand what my psychiatrist meant when she told me that Adderall was not a miracle cure, and that it wasn’t automatically going to fix everything. Although it definitely made things easier, I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been hoping for more from my medication. However, as I prepared for a few months without it, I realized that the reason I was falling short of my expectations was because I hadn’t been putting in the work. I was using my meds as a crutch and expecting things to magically get better, and it just doesn’t work that way.    Since I’ve started taking the necessary steps to organize my life and manage my time, I’ve been a lot less stressed- way less stressed than I’ve been since high school, with or without Adderall. I also find that while these steps don’t alleviate my inattentiveness, my brain fog, or the psychosomatic symptoms I experience, they definitely help with my impulse control and my interpersonal relationships. Why? Because I lash out, particularly at loved ones, when I’m stressed. When I feel like my life is out of control, I try to control the people around me instead, and I become completely intolerable. This is really common for people with ADHD, and the same need for control over something, anything, is what led me to develop an eating disorder in high school. Now that I’ve started to regain that sense of control over my life, I’m lashing out a lot less. My fear of losing the relationships that I had dedicated so much effort to saving had gone out the window.    What I’m really excited for now is to integrate these new tools and coping mechanisms when I start a new medication at the end of June. I don’t know what that medication will be yet- initially I thought I couldn’t take any stimulant medication, but I did a little research and found that it’s definitely not the case that reacting badly to one stimulant means you will react badly to all of them. I see my psychiatrist again on June 25th, and the first one I’m going to ask her about is Vyvanse, primarily because it’s a slow and gentle release option. If that doesn’t work, there are other options like Strattera, but honestly? For the first time since I was diagnosed, I’m starting to think that maybe, just maybe, I can do this without meds if I have to. I’m not saying that’s ideal- trust me, I definitely, definitely want to go back on meds, lmao. But I can honestly say that it took coming off medication for a little while for me to learn how to have a healthy relationship with it, and that whatever the future holds for me, I’ll always be immensely grateful for this experience and the lessons that came from it.

i thought you guys would find this thread i wrote interesting

“Don’t Call Me That!” - My Relationship with “Disabled”

When my psychiatrist told me I had ADHD, I was shocked. Like, really shocked. I had asked for a referral to a psychiatrist because I knew something was wrong, but ADHD was the last thing I was expecting to hear. I was thinking at best depression, at worst borderline personality disorder. The symptoms that prompted me to seek psychiatric help were a total absence of motivation, uncontrollable fits of anger, and severe attachment and abandonment issues. I remember her going through the checklist of every possible disorder in the DSM, asking me if I heard voices, if I self-harmed, if I binged and purged.  Then she started asking me what I thought were the stupidest questions in the world. Did I interrupt a lot? Yes. Did I start projects and never finish them? Yes. Was I very forgetful? Yes. Did I spend money recklessly? Yes. I wanted to ask her what any of this had to do with anything, because those were just normal aspects of life for me and always had been, and I didn’t think they were symptoms of anything. I didn’t see how they were related to what I was going through at the time. She stopped writing, looked at me, and asked me if I had any idea what she was talking about. I laughed and said no, no idea. 

I’ll never forget the way she lowered her glasses, smirked a little, and told me “You have ADHD.”  “Oh.”  I’m generally pretty deferential to authority as long as it isn’t being abused, so all I said was Oh, but what I was thinking was more like what the fuck? On what planet? How?

At the time, I think I knew or knew of maybe two or three people with ADHD, and only one of them was anywhere close to not completely fucking batshit insane- and to be honest I didn’t really know her personally but some of the things I’d heard about her were kinda pushing the envelope on that. What I mean by not completely fucking batshit insane is that her hair was a naturally occuring colour, she didn’t identify as demisexual aromantic nonbinary, and didn’t feel the need to change her name to an inanimate object like Pokemon or Beansprout. Still, what little I did know of this girl involved some pretty out of control antics. To be fair, yes, the primary reason I had sought a psychiatric evaluation was for out of control antics within an intimate relationship, but I wasn’t like that all the fucking time; it only came out when I was under a high level of stress. I guess what I’m trying to say was that seven months ago, I didn’t know anyone with ADHD who I would have considered “normal.”  I guess my thoughts were written all over my face, because my psychiatrist jumped right in to explaining that so many girls like me go undiagnosed until post-secondary precisely because we seem “normal.” She told me that if you’re not being loud and disruptive in class, and especially if you’re getting good grades, teachers won’t look at you twice. She wasn’t wrong. All of my high school teachers knew that all-nighters before exams and tear-filled breakdowns over papers were the norm for me, but none of them worried. They just saw my straight-As and figured I stressed over school because I was a perfectionist. They didn’t see how hard it was for me to sit down and focus, because in high school you honestly didn’t need to focus that hard to do well. They didn’t realize that I wasn’t crying because I thought my essays weren’t good enough- I was crying because I didn’t think I was ever going to get them done. Slowly, she explained to me how everything I had been experiencing fit into my new diagnosis and that I was far from the only girl who felt this way, and in spite of myself, by the end of my appointment I was fairly confident that she knew what she was talking about, that I was both “normal” and a person with ADHD, and that those two things were not mutually exclusive.  I went home bound and determined to learn all that I could about ADHD so that I could improve my life as much as possible. The internet, as always, was very helpful, but there was one thing I saw that bothered me deeply. My psychiatrist spoke about ADHD like it was basically a mental illness. Obviously it’s a little more complicated than that because it impacts a lot more than just your emotions, and you can’t “recover from” or “beat” ADHD, but that was basically how she presented it to me. Reliable websites referred to it as a neurodevelopmental disorder, and a lot of people spoke of it as a difference in cognition. I didn’t know exactly which of those definitions I identified with most, but out of every label I saw, there was one that I rejected as if it was a hot coal being pressed into my palm from the minute I saw it- disability.

I was glad that I didn’t see Wikipedia or WebMD or, most importantly, the DSM, referring to it as such- it was mostly the kind of batshit fucking insane blue-haired Tumblr snowflakes I referred to earlier who adopted this label. Still, it made me angry, almost irrationally so. It has bothered me every day for the last seven months, and it still bothers me today. For that reason, I’ve decided to make this post exploring and examining the various reasons - from medical to personal - why I reject this label, while at the same time critically examining why I have such a distaste for being labelled disabled in the first place. Thinking about this has forced me to confront my own ableism, and while I believe I have done that successfully, I still personally reject the idea that ADHD is a disability. I’m going to separate this entry into three sections, discussing the personal, sociological, and medical reasons why I do not identify as disabled. I would be more than happy to hear everyone’s thoughts on this, so don’t hesitate to message me or leave a comment on Facebook!

Let’s Talk About Bias

Out of all the reasons I reject the label disability, there’s only one that isn’t really grounded in either science or sociology. In fact, it isn’t grounded in much of anything besides my own upbringing and my own bias, but as bad of a light as this may cast me in, I still want to be honest with y’all and talk about it. Honesty? I just don’t want to be disabled. I don’t understand how being disabled is a reality that anyone would want, let alone an identity that they would choose for themselves, which a lot of the ADHD community and the mentally ill community more broadly seems to be doing. I don’t think being disabled is something desirable and I have no fucking clue why anyone would embrace it if they don’t have to.

Is that bad? Is that ableist? I don’t know. I’m very much into social justice, but I’ll admit that ableism and disability activism is probably the area that I know the least about. So if I say anything here that’s ableist, don’t hesitate to call me in, but please forgive me- this is not my area of expertise, and I’m just trying to be honest about how I feel about my own situation.  Let me give you a little bit of background here. I come from an immigrant family, and I was raised on a lot of tough love. I grew up with the notion that if there was something I couldn’t do, it was probably because I wasn’t trying hard enough. For this reason, it took literally a decade from the first time I had a panic attack to the first time I sought treatment for mental health issues. I was diagnosed with anxiety and anorexia about four years before I was diagnosed with ADHD, and while my family was supportive, they were also firm, and always reminded me that if I wanted to recover, it was up to me. ADHD might be a little bit different than anxiety or anorexia- it’s basically lifelong, and you can’t just recover from it. However, when I was diagnosed with ADHD, I knew that my quality of life was still up to me. It was up to me to take my meds. It was up to me to make sure I get enough sleep. It was up to me to keep a to-do list and to ask my friends and family to help hold me accountable. It was up to me to make dietary changes. At the end of the day, even though ADHD would be with me for life, I was in control. I can’t beat it in the sense that I can’t end my battle with it, but I can beat it every day by choosing to do the things I need to do to feel healthy and normal.  Based on what I was taught growing up, that isn’t a disability. While my parents gave me a lot of tough love, they also taught me compassion, and taught me that I was very fortunate to be of able body and mind. I could “tough love” myself towards a life where ADHD didn’t hold me back. People with disabilities literally can’t do that. Someone who uses a wheelchair is not going to be able to walk if they start getting eight hours of sleep. Someone with a true learning disability cannot overcome their struggles in school by taking Adderall. So I mean, why would I want to be disabled?  It’s not that I’m looking down on people with disabilities or perceive their human worth as less- not at all. It’s just that obviously people who are disabled have a unique set of struggles that are largely impossible to treat or to overcome, and I acknowledge that I’m very privileged and fortunate not to be in that situation. What I have may be lifelong and it may be challenging, but it isn’t untreatable, and with the right medication and self-care, it isn’t impossible for me to live more or less the same life as a neurotypical person. And I’m happy about that. I don’t want to embrace a label that implies that that isn’t the case.  It’s not just that I like being abled, and it certainly isn’t because I have any sort of disdain for disabled people. Most importantly, I think that calling myself disabled would really cheapen the term, because I know that what I struggle with is not really comparable to what someone with autism or Turner’s Syndrome or spina bifida struggles with. Which brings me to my next point…

“Disabled” As an Identity

The 2010s have been the decade of identity politics, and in my opinion this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. People have been organizing and advocating around certain identities that tangibly affect the way they move in the world and what their lived experience in society is like. Identities are things like gender, race, religion, and sexuality, and within these identities, there are privileged groups and non-privileged groups. For example, men are privileged and women are not. White people are privileged while other races are not. Christians and secular people are privileged while Muslims and Sikhs are not. Of course, one of these identity groups is based on ability. Abled people are privileged while disabled people are not.  Based on this, when I’m deciding whether or not I’m going to identify as disabled, I really need to examine my privilege. Basically, I need to ask myself if my ADHD impacts the amount of privilege that I have in society. People are often quick to jump the gun here and assume that any challenge means a lack of privilege. If that were the case, ADHD would definitely be a disability. However, challenges that exist internally, like having a hard time focusing or not being able to control your emotions, are not about privilege. Privilege or lack thereof is not about internal challenges but about the degree of ease or difficulty you experience accessing and interacting with social institutions. For example, black people lack privilege when dealing with law enforcement. A white person who keeps getting arrested because they keep committing crimes does not lack privilege, because their arrests have nothing to do with the way law enforcement sees them. On the other hand, Eric Garner for example was choked to death by a police officer for selling cigarettes, which is a clear misuse of force and clearly exemplifies that the police officer saw Mr. Garner as less-than. People with ADHD need to ask themselves if the struggles they experience are a product of their position in society, and if they are in that position because of their ADHD. Of course the answer is no. ADHD does not really alter the way people look at you or interact with you, as it would for people with profound intellectual disabilities, and it doesn’t come with accessibility concerns akin to those that come with using mobility aids such as a wheelchair or walker. Since ADHD doesn’t result in any significant loss of privilege, when questioning my identity on the axis of ability, I have to align myself with the privileged group and say that I am not disabled.  A lot of people will jump at this and say “well the legal definition of disability includes ADHD!” Yes, it does. It also includes all mental illnesses, diabetes, heart disease, and asthma. The legal definition of disability has a specific function that is not particularly relevant to whether or not one can fairly assume the social identity of being disabled- the legal definition simply exists to protect anyone with any medical condition from being discriminated against on the basis of that medical condition. These conditions are classed as disabilities so that they can be dealt with by the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal and treated as “discrimination on the basis of ability.” I think we all agree that diabetes and heart disease are not disabilities, so now that we’ve cleared that up, you can proceed to throw the legal definition of disability in the trash, because it is truly irrelevant.

Basically, if being disabled just means you have a medical condition that makes things difficult, then sure ADHD is a disability. But especially in today’s world, where truly disabled people are organizing and fighting for their rights as a marginalized group based on this identity, then the word has to mean something more. Otherwise it loses its power as an identity around which marginalized individuals can advocate for change. And honestly? To anyone who thinks any mental illness is truly a disability- no one with a real disability believes you. Okay, I shouldn’t say that. None of the three people I spoke with while writing and preparing this entry believe you. But their voices matter. No one knows better what is and isn’t a disability than disabled people. And at least in my experience, disabled people don’t think ADHD is a disability.

I see a lot of “mental illness is a disability” in student politics- something that I have a love/hate relationship with, as anyone who knows me knows. Student union offices, your campus’ women’s centre, or CFS conferences are great places to hear people going on and on about how hard it is to be neurodivergent, and to see people with anxiety and depression and ADHD describing themselves as disabled and talking shit about how it truly impacts their lives and experiences and blah blah blah blah blah. So I want to issue a challenge to students especially: look around your student union office. Look at the posters that cover your student centre during elections. Look at the people in attendance at CFS conferences. Ask yourself if you see one autistic person. One person with Turner’s Syndrome. One person using a wheelchair. I bet you don’t. It drives me crazy how people can write essays about their “disabilities” when the spaces they are involved in and find solace in aren’t even accessible to disabled people.  So as harsh as this sounds, honestly, if you call yourself disabled because you have ADHD or any other mental illness, check your privilege. Literally.

Medical Reality Matters

Last but certainly not least, like the subheading says, medical reality matters. Just as much as disabled has to mean something socially, it also has to mean something medically. Quite similar to my more sociological analysis of the term, medically speaking disabled cannot just mean a chronic condition that impacts quality of life, because again, this would include everything from diabetes to arthritis to heart disease. Obviously, we need to narrow it down a little.  It goes without saying that ADHD is not a physical disability or a profound intellectual disability, but is it a learning disability? I don’t think so. And frankly, you can’t just say you’re disabled if you’re not. It doesn’t work like that.  According to the Learning Disabilities Association of America, learning disabilities “are neurologically-based processing problems. These processing problems can interfere with learning basic skills such as reading, writing and/or math.  They can also interfere with higher level skills such as organization, time planning, abstract reasoning, long or short term memory and attention.” ADHD certainly does interfere with executive functioning skills such as organization, time planning, and attention, but it isn’t a learning disability because it isn’t a “neurologically-based processing problem.” It is a neurodevelopmental disorder, but the issue is not with processing the material in and of itself.  Although it may feel like it, ADHD does not actually impact our ability to learn, but rather our ability to create and fulfill the conditions that enable effective learning. Obviously the struggles with focus and time management that come with ADHD make learning more difficult, but these do not originate in a problem with information processing. As we all know, ADHD is the result of problems with our neurotransmitters, specifically dopamine and norepinephrine. This is nothing to do with our ability to process or retain information directly, although it can seemingly affect our ability to do these things. On the other hand, the brain of someone with dyslexia has a problem processing letters; the brain of someone with dyscalculia has a problem processing numbers. Although we may have some similar struggles, the problem is not the same.  The Learning Disabilities Association of America actually addresses ADHD directly, stating that ADHD is “a disorder that includes difficulty staying focused and paying attention, difficulty controlling behavior and hyperactivity… ADHD is not considered to be a learning disability. It can be determined to be a disability under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), making a student eligible to receive special education services. However, ADHD falls under the category “Other Health Impaired” and not under “Specific Learning Disabilities.” I don’t think I can do much better at making my case than citing the Learning Disabilities Association of America, so there you have it.

Ultimately, I can’t tell anyone what to do or how to identify (although the Learning Disabilities Association of America can, ha!). I didn’t write this entry to start an argument or to criticize or attack anyone. This is simply a topic that I’ve been discussing amongst my friends for a while now, and I figured I would put pen to paper (or rather, fingers to keyboard) and share it with all of you, especially since I have been majorly neglecting this blog. I hope that this was informative, and as always, if anyone has any questions, feel free to message me or drop a comment on Facebook.  Hopefully I’ll be back again before another three months goes by!

What Does ADHD Look Like In Girls? - Things I Wish I Knew Ten Years Ago

Hello world!  

I'm back, as promised, and today I'm going to talk about some stuff I wish I knew ten years ago- ADHD symptoms that are common in girls but often get overlooked. Why, you may ask? Because a teacher or parent normally won't notice that a child is struggling unless it's very apparent – if she is extremely hyperactive and disruptive, for example – or if the child admits that they are struggling. That girl in the corner who's always daydreaming, but still gets good grades? Or the one who has a hard time making friends or making relationships work, but otherwise seems "normal" (whatever that means)? She's going to be passed over while her teacher is busy worrying about the boy who can't stay in his seat for more than five minutes. Plus, girls with ADHD are more likely than boys to internalize their struggles, so if you or your child is anything like me, you might not realize something is off until high school or even later, and even when you do, you might be too embarrassed to ask for help.

If anyone besides my mom ever starts reading this blog, one thing that would make me really really happy and feel as if I've made a difference is if even one young woman out there doesn't have to go through the failed relationships, ruined friendships, and lost semesters that I had to go through before she realizes something deeper is going on than just laziness and being emotional. If you're a girl who often feels like she's getting in her own way and suspects there might be something up, but aren't really sure what it might be, here are some often-overlooked ADHD symptoms that you might relate to.

1.   Daydreaming/Getting Bored in School

As long as I can remember, I've had a hard time paying attention in class. When I was very young, I would get called out for daydreaming all the time. I worked on my French homework in science class, flipped aimlessly through my agenda while the teacher was talking, and doodled all over ever single desk I've ever sat in. In grade five, I got in trouble for – get this – reading a book during a spelling test. Don't ask me how I thought I was gonna get away with that, but I was sooooooo booooooored and the teacher was taking soooooo loooooong to read these words that I knew how to spell in grade one. That's a big reason why inattentiveness in female students often gets overlooked- girls with ADHD don't usually perform poorly, especially in elementary school. Because I was gifted, my inattentiveness was treated as a quirk rather than a problem. I had a handful of teachers who tried to give me harder work to keep me motivated, but more often than not I was left to entertain myself. It always bothered me that kids who needed extra help got IEPs, the latest learning technologies, and one-on-one time with the teacher, but kids like me, who needed an extra challenge, were neglected

 2.     Impulsive Spending

The most important thing to keep in mind when analyzing the behaviour of people with ADHD is that our brains don't produce or transmit enough dopamine, which is the feel-good chemical that controls reward-motivated behaviour. Because of that, we seek out anything that will give us a dopamine rush... the only problem is that those behaviours are usually impulsive. You know the saying money can't buy happiness? Yeah, not necessarily true for ADHD brains. At least for a little while after buying something we've managed to convince ourselves we so totally need, we actually do feel really happy, because we're experiencing a dopamine high. My friend recently got me into doing my makeup properly, and I'm embarrassed to admit how much I've spent at Sephora in the last month.  I know it's dumb, but I do it anyway. Why? Because ADHD brains have a hard time distinguishing what is urgent from what is important. Once I get it in my head that I need that contour kit right now (because what if a surprise event comes up in the next week?), I can't convince myself otherwise. That sense of urgency releases dopamine, which tells my brain that wasting $60 to look more like the MUAs on Instagram will make me happy. And for an hour or two it does!... Until I look at my bank account.  

3.     Relationship Problems

So, dopamine rush-producing behaviours are usually impulsive, right? What does that look like when it comes to romantic relationships? Dopamine-seeking brains love anything that's new and novel, and that includes the first phase of a relationship, when you're sooooo in love and can't get enough of each other. Of course, that phase ends, and neurotypical people settle into a more lowkey relationship just fine. ADHD brains? Not so much. If you don't recognize what you're experiencing as a dopamine withdrawal, you may interpret it is a lack of love from your partner, or as a sign that the relationship is getting boring. I tend to fall into the first category, and people like me can become really insecure thinking that our partner doesn't care about us. We become excessively demanding and need dramatic displays of affection all the time, which naturally alienates our partners. If you're somebody who just gets bored, that can result in two unhealthy behaviours: one, moving really quickly from one relationship to the next and never learning how to be alone, and two, cheating. If any or all of these three behaviours are a pattern in your life, you just might have a dopamine shortage, and are unknowingly looking to your partner(s) to fix it.

4.    Word Vomit

It's really hard for me to explain my tendency to over-explain every little thing (ha, that's ironic), especially if I'm nervous about it. Have you ever taken seven sentences to say something that could have been said in one? Found yourself repeating the same thing in different words three times? I find I do this the most when I'm apologizing, or trying to explain why I did something that someone else didn't like or understand. You think you're being helpful, but really you're just annoying the other person. Then you realize how annoying you're being, and apologize for being annoying five times, and now they're annoyed with you for apologizing for being annoying... okay, that's when you know it's time to turn your phone off and cool down. On top of excessive explaining, ADHD brains can get a little word vomit-y when we're talking about something we're passionate about. Just ask my mom- get me on the Israeli occupation of Palestine, or, at the moment, information about ADHD, and you won't get me off it. Sometimes we don't really know when to shut up. If you have a tendency to keep talking even when you know nobody is listening anymore, then you might want to keep reading.

5.    Road Rage

Everybody road rages once in a while (okay, I'm told that not everyone does, but I don't believe it. Come on, how can you NOT scream at the person in front of you going 5 km under the speed limit?) but I legitimately feel claustrophobic and panicky if I'm on a four-lane highway stuck behind a car in each lane going the same speed and I can't get out to pass them. If the person in front of me is doing something stupid, I could literally run them over I get so frustrated, and not just if I'm already cranky- I yell at someone on the road every single day. I'm told this is “apparently” because of our “inattentiveness” and “inability to sit still”, and not because everyone else on the road is a freaking idiot. I don't know if I believe it, but that's what I'm told, anyway. ADHD brains are also more likely to get into car accidents. I've never been in a major accident while driving, thank God, but I'm only 22, and I've had four minor fender benders that, embarrassingly, didn't involve other cars, but me driving into things in parking lots. Once, I just wasn't looking behind me and backed into a pole. Another time, I thought that texting in the Tim Hortons drive-thru was a good idea. You get the idea.

6.   Forgetfulness

Again, everybody forgets things once in a while. But if you're forgetting or misplacing your homework, your car keys, your purse, your work pants (yes, I have actually lost a pair of pants before) every single day, then there might be a problem. Once, I parked my car near campus, spent the day studying in my friends' office, and then got a ride back to my car at the end of the day. My friend Dan was driving up and down the street I told him I had parked on asking me "is that your car? What about that one?" before I realized that I had parked on a different street on the other side of campus. I never thought being a bit scatterbrained was a problem, and if it only happens once in a while, it probably isn't. But all of these symptoms together paint a different picture.

7.    Difficulties With Motivation

I never really enjoyed studying, and I guess I was lucky that throughout grade school and high school, I didn't have to do very much of it. It's not that I didn't like learning, it's just that studying for extended periods of time is so boring. Even in my first three years of university, my super strict immigrant parents watched me like a hawk, so I did what I needed to do, as difficult as it was at times. That all changed when my fourth year rolled around and I moved to Ottawa for an exchange. With no one to stand at the foot of my bed and scream at me until I dragged myself out of it, I just... didn't. It wasn't because I didn't want to, it was just that I couldn't bring myself to. Same went for going to class, doing my readings, handing in assignments, showing up for exams... it wasn't pretty. This can also be a symptom of depression, and many people with ADHD, myself included, meet the diagnostic criteria for depression. The difference is that people with depression can't get out of bed because they're depressed; people with ADHD get depressed because they won't get out of bed.  We aren't lying in bed all day because our mood is low, but because we struggle with executive functioning - motivation, planning, organizing, and self-managing. Those things happen in the prefrontal cortex, and ours are underdeveloped. It can be hard to distinguish where the cycle begins for you, and before being diagnosed, I thought I had depression for sure, but as soon as my psychiatrist explained how ADHD works to me, it fit like a glove.

8.     Starting Projects and Never Finishing Them

This kind of goes hand in hand with lack of motivation, and it's something I've struggled with all my life. It's also one of the very few ADHD symptoms that isn't also a hallmark of something else, like depression or anxiety, so it should be a huge red flag if it's accompanied by some of these other symptoms! Most people tend to procrastinate things they don't want to do, like studying or cleaning their room. A big indicator that you might be dealing with something more than just laziness is when you procrastinate or don't finish even things you actually really want to do. And it's not because you're lazy or don't want to do it, it's because as great as it sounds, you just... can't. If you've ever started a scrapbook and tossed it to the side three days later, tried to start a club on campus but let it fall to the wayside, or created a blog then never actually updated it (I meant to have this posted a solid five days ago, whooooops), then you know what I'm talking about.

 9.       Being Scatterbrained

You're in the middle of a sentence and you completely lose your train of thought. Alternatively, you'll be halfway through a sentence then think of something more important that you want to say and totally abandon the idea you're halfway through and start talking about the new one instead. You interrupt people a lot, because you feel like you HAVE to say the thought that just popped into your head right now, lest it no longer be relevant if you wait five minutes, or even worse, you forget it again in 30 seconds. You're in the middle of an important text conversation but you open Instagram while you're waiting for them to text back... then half an hour later you're creeping your crush's ex's brother's best friend when you realize you never answered that super important text. You zone out while people are speaking directly to you, which makes you look super rude because it seems like you aren't paying attention. Our inability to focus hard on things can affect our lives in ways you never would have guessed- for example, I am terrible at proofreading and finding typos, and the number of assignments I've handed in with words missing from the middle of sentences is embarrassing. If this sounds like you (and if course, if this happens all day every day rather than once in a blue moon, because everybody get scatterbrained when they're overwhelmed), then you've come to the right place.

10.     Being SUPER Enthusiastic... Sometimes

We've already established that ADHD brains can have trouble with motivation and with staying committed to something long-term, but that doesn't capture the entire picture. If you think of depression as basically always being in a low state, ADHD is different in that you sort of swing from highs to lows and back again. Like I mentioned, ADHD brains don't have enough dopamine transmitters, and we kind of get addicted to anything that does produce a dopamine high. So if something does make us happy or excited, we're gonna be the happiest, most excited people on earth. My psychiatrist gave me a situation where an ADHD person might win $5 on a scratch off ticket, but the way they jump up and down all excited makes the people around them think they've won a million dollars. In my case, this often looks like getting really excited about a paper or assignment for a class I'm particularly interested in. I'll take out books from the library and hyper-focus on planning the assignment for about three days... then the whole "starting a project but never finishing it" kicks in, and that's a whole different story...

11.    Verbal Aggression (As Opposed to Physical Aggression)

Although I don't mean to generalize or to imply that every single boy or girl is the same, this tends to be a notable difference between girls with ADHD and their male counterparts. Girls are much less likely to be physically violent, but when you piss us off, or trigger our Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (that's what my next post is going to be about, by the way!)… watch out. You might get a verbal beatdown like you've never experienced before. This is one of the ugliest and most frustrating things about having ADHD for me. I'll tell the people I love that I hate them, that they're ruining my life, that I wish they were never born; I'll pick on the things I know they're sensitive about and call them every curse word in the book... only to regret it five minutes and sheepishly try to convince this deeply wounded person that I didn't actually mean it. It sucks. Big time.

And finally, the one I really wish I knew all this time...

12.    Being Diagnosed With Something Else

Throughout this post, I've given a dozen examples of the ways ADHD symptoms can appear like symptoms of depression and anxiety. ADHD in girls is notoriously misdiagnosed, and girls with ADHD are three times as likely as boys to be treated for depression before being properly diagnosed. Beyond that, ADHD can be comorbid with anxiety and depression. I've dealt with anxiety and panic attacks since I was eight, and was formally diagnosed with anxiety at 17. When I was diagnosed with ADHD, I was told that I meet all the diagnostic criteria for depression, but it was likely that treating my ADHD would make it go away. My depression went away within literally one week of starting ADHD medication. My anxiety did not go away, but it has been reduced by about 50%. I realized that about half of the somatic experiences I identified as panic attacks were not triggered by mental anxiety but by sensory overload because, as ADHD brains do, I was perceiving way too much of what was going on around me and getting overwhelmed to the point that I would experience panic attack symptoms- dizziness, shortness of breath, nausea, you know the drill. Another statistic that would have made a difference in my life is that girls with ADHD are 2.7 times more likely to suffer from anorexia nervosa than girls without ADHD. I struggled with anorexia from age 16 to 19, so this was quite a shock to discover three years later. There's definitely some cool brain science behind that why that is, so maybe it'll be the subject of a future post!

 If you have any questions about this post, or think that you or a loved one might be dealing with ADHD, do not hesitate to reach out to me with any questions! I also want to stress that this might seem like a lot, and that anyone dealing with all of this crap would stand out from a mile away, but if that was the case, so many of us wouldn’t go undiagnosed until post-secondary. I experienced all twelve of these signs and symptoms, but the only ones that pushed me to see a psychiatrist were relationship problems, difficulty with motivation, and verbal aggression. Most of these things didn’t seem like they were impacting my day-to-day functioning- I get good grades, have a job, and have no trouble making friends. So please don’t get fall into the trap of telling yourself that what you’re going through “isn’t bad enough to be a real problem.” If something feels off, see a doctor, because you deserve to live the best life possible. 

That’s all for now folks! Stay tuned for my next post about Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria.

Hellooooooo!

Hi there Internet people (or most likely like, five friends, my mom, and my aunt who are reading this because I posted it on Facebook), and welcome to my blog!

If you didn't link to this directly from my Facebook, and can’t tell by my blog name (which maybe you can’t, because a fancy tea and a drug people take to pull all-nighters is a super vague name for a website), this blog is all about my life as a girl who has ADHD. I’m twenty-two years old, in my final year of my international relations degree, and will be starting law school in September. I’ve always been a top student, did competitive Irish dance from grade one to grade twelve, have worked in political activism since I was fifteen, and hope to one day work on Track II Diplomacy and truth and reconciliation initiatives in Northern Ireland. Two months ago, I was also diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Lemme tell you- that explained A LOT. Like, A WHOLE LOT. The last two months may have been the most important of my life, as I’ve finally started getting effective treatment (four years after the first time I saw a doctor for my mental wellbeing). Now I start my day with 10 mg Adderall XR, and have spent a lot of time figuring out not-medicinal ways to further improve my life and make my world work the way I need it to. I’ve been thinking about starting a YouTube channel or a blog for the last week or so, so- here I am!

What made me decide to start this blog? There are three reasons.

#1 - NEW EXCITING PROJECT! ADHD brains love new exciting projects.

...there’s nothing deeper to this. I just really wanted to make a blog.

#2 - There are so few resources out there for women and girls with ADHD, and the articles and studies you will find are super super boring and just repeat the same information over and over again. “Many girls with ADHD aren’t diagnosed until post-secondary!” “The needs of girls with ADHD get overlooked because they aren’t disruptive and often do well in school!” Yeah, tell me something I don’t know. Honestly, I learned more about my own experiences and what I’ve been struggling with my whole life from one woman’s YouTube channel (HowToADHD is absolute MUST for women and girls with this diagnosis; it changed my life) than I did from my psychiatrist, psychologist, and every article about ADHD in girls that I could find on the internet. I wanted to create content that’s fun, relatable, and actually helps other girls like me understand what’s going on inside their heads and how to deal with it.

#3 - Honestly, I wanted to create a more positive representation of ADHD in girls than what I’ve been seeing on social media lately. What I’m about to say might not go down well with everyone in the mental health/disability community, but frankly, I don’t care. The general mental illness community on social media is toxic as hell. I first encountered this in high school, when I briefly had a recovery Instagram while I was struggling with anorexia. (By the way, did you know that girls with ADHD are at a higher risk of developing an eating disorder than other girls?) For every account that genuinely encouraged recovery and celebrated their victories while being transparent about their struggles, there were four accounts asking for tips on how not to gain weight when you’re hooked up to a feeding tube. I’ve heard from other people that there is a similar toxicity in the community around chronic illness and chronic pain. I follow this super brave and strong girl named Daisy on instagram, who has Ehlers-Danlos and Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (which apparently is literally the worst pain the world). She recently shared that she had to leave all of the “support” groups for chronic pain that she was in on Facebook because they were breeding a culture that encouraged people to stay at home in bed and mope rather than to continue seeking out the best possible treatments and live the fullest live that they possibly can. I hate to say it, but lately I’ve noticed the same sort of trend among people who have ADHD. It’s almost hard to believe that me and some of the people I’ve observed on Facebook and Tumblr have the same diagnosis. This is harsh but I’m just gonna say it- there is an awful trend of people with ADHD refusing to take accountability for their behaviour or to realize that just because you have a neurodevelopmental disorder does not mean that you can never ever be the person in the wrong. ADHD is an explanation for certain behaviours, not an excuse. Because of my ADHD, I have done things and treated people in ways that I am not proud of, but having ADHD does not excuse this behaviour. I was overjoyed to finally get an explanation for why I act the way I do sometimes- especially one that is as highly treatable as ADHD is. I wasted no time looking into strategies for coping with the unique struggles that I have and working on the resultant bad behaviours. There was not one moment of sadness over this diagnosis- just a relief that I finally had somewhere to start my journey towards being better. Beyond just using it as an excuse for everything, I’ve also seen a huge trend of people being more focused on self-pity than on self-care and self-improvement. These are the moments that I am really, really glad that I wasn’t diagnosed until I was 22. Do I wish I knew about Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria before I let my experience with it push away my best friend to the point that he blocked my number for six months? Of course I do. Do I regret losing an entire academic year because I couldn’t motivate myself? Do I wish I knew I wasn’t just being lazy, because maybe then I wouldn’t have been ashamed to ask for help? Obviously. But despite that, I’m glad I wasn’t diagnosed as a child or a teenager. Why? Because I grew up believing I was just like everyone else else. I grew up without a reason to think that I couldn’t do anything anyone else could do. I’m glad I didn’t grow up with an easy excuse for every mistake I made. I’m glad my parents never felt the need to go easy on me and I’m glad I wasn’t weighed down by this idea that I was inherently incapable of achieving my lofty goals. Was it really, really, REALLY hard sometimes? You bet. Did I often wonder why I couldn’t focus like everyone else could, or why relationships were so hard for me? Of course I did. But I’m glad I never had the opportunity to sit back and say “well I just can’t do it because I have ADHD and that’s that.” Would I have graduated high school with a 95% GPA if I had been diagnosed as a child? Would I have pushed myself to take a full French program in university when I only had grade 12 core French? Would I have written the LSAT, and scored a 162 even though I barely studied for it? Probably not, because looking at the ADHD community that I’m a newcomer to, I have a sinking feeling that I wouldn’t have pushed myself half as hard as I did. Being forced to muddle through and try to keep up with no help for as long as I did instilled in me the best gift possible: a positive attitude, and a firm belief that I can do anything I set my mind to.

So what does that have to do with this blog? Well, I wanted to create a space where ADHD is not seen as something that necessarily holds us back. I want to encourage approaching life with ADHD with a positive attitude. I want this to be a space where fellow ADHD brains can come for tips on studying for the LSAT and MCAT, share the workouts and sleep hygiene that help them focus, and talk about how they prepare things the night before so they don’t forget anything in the morning- not a space where people come to complain about how unfair it is that your boss wasn’t understanding of the fact that you were 25 minutes late for work. I’m not saying having ADHD isn’t a huge challenge, or that sometimes, despite our best efforts, we aren’t going to mess up. Because we are. A lot. And I’m not saying it’s not okay to be bummed out about those mess ups, or to sometimes feel like life isn’t fair. But instead of focusing on the negative, I want to focus on encouraging, empowering, and helping each other to never give up and to not let those occasional mess ups become what defines us.

I’m going to try to post once a week, but with exam season upon us, I can’t guarantee that that will happen- at least not right away. However, despite the ADHD tendency to abandon projects, this is something I’m really passionate about, so I’m going to try to post here as often as possible. In the next couple of days I’ll be making a post about common ADHD symptoms in girls that are often overlooked if we don’t fit the “typical” disruptive, hyperactive image of a kid with ADHD.

Until next time!