how is it possible to be feeling like you’re falling asleep and hyper attentive at the same time

it's so stupid that psychiatrists want people in your life to give them information about you as a kid to support adult adhd diagnoses. like these fuckers clearly never noticed anything was wrong, do you think they're gonna remember all that shit now? im 26! they didn't realise I was depressed when I wasn't able to get out of bed! they didn't realise I was agoraphobic when I was scared to leave the house and probably only had a few weeks of grade 12 where I was able to go to school every day! and you're expecting them to have realised I have concentration issues?

so its agreed im most likely autistic and adhd so the only question now is: is the adhd autism-flavored, or is the autism adhd-flavored

every day I watch jeremy’s streams and go “my GOD that man has adhd”. someone tell him to stop stimming with box cutters and stuff I’ll go buy him a fidget toy myself

A little while ago I read a post about an autistic person who had initially been misdiagnosed as bipolar. Of course, at this point I no longer remember WHO posted it, for which I apologize, but it went into detail about symptoms that overlap and how the initial mistake was made. There was also mention of autism being misdiagnosed as OCD. I read that, reflected on it, and then, suddenly,

BOOM!

Oh. my god. Backstory; both my son and I have been diagnosed as adhd, and that clearly comes from my father, who was born in 1938. However, Son and I have also looked at adult autism diagnosis criteria and, while neither of us wants to take the time to get a formal diagnosis . . it definitely seems that we both have that as well. For example, my score on a checklist was, iirc, 140 out of a possible 165. With 80+ being considered highly probable for autism. And, if true . . where did that come from?

Well. Sometime in the 1960s my mother was diagnosed as OCD based on the diagnostic criteria of the time (which are different now, of course). Not that she received any treatment other than "just Don't Do That, Then!" But, still, it was something she knew, or thought she knew, about herself.

Let's look at her, for a moment.

Could not stand for wind to touch her. Very choosy about the type of fabrics she would wear. One single hair touching her 'wrong' ie one of my shed hairs getting on her, put her into a State. Could get so invested in new hobbies that she could barely stand to put them down. Rabid reader. Extreme interest in math and physics. Kept, as much as possible, that same hairstyle and clothing styles life-long. She wasn't harshly critical of other people, she just "Had Standards." Everything had to be a certain way Or Else. Certain sounds made her frantic (such as someone normally whistling a tune).

Looking at all of that (and more) from a current perspective, it looks very much like the current understanding of autism. She passed away in 2002. This is all just my own reflections, but . . it certainly blew me away when I made the connection. And it's a cogent argument for the "why are there so many more autistic kids now" question. They were always here. But nobody knew. Just odd, weird, eccentric, she's-just-like-that.

So I decided back in September that it is Time. The time has come. I am going to try and get a formal diagnosis for my blatant and provable ADHD, because I am very interested in Doing Laundry

And in my defence it has only taken until this week (late January) to kick things off, which I am very aware should probably be part of the diagnostic criteria

Anyway

I have a plan! For the best chance of being taken seriously. If the university can do their in-house screening of me, I can go to my GP and make the following two points:

I am here because my boss felt I said "But everyone does that" one too many times while discussing the ND students, and she wants me to chase this in case it means she can support me better (I of course am charmingly bemused about it because I personally would never try and get diagnosed, no no, only those attention-seeking fakers do that)

An official educational institution i.e. my employer has in fact initially assessed me and deemed me Medically Distractible. I even have an ALN plan, look. So uhhhhh, maybe my boss is right? (I of course remain charmingly bemused about it because I obviously don't really believe it, no no, I could never be the expert on my own experience, but a Third Party is invested, so...)

Anyway yesterday the uni got in touch, and had me do the initial screening.

Now, they're doing it as part of a wider screening process of learning needs, so they also check you for dyslexia, dyscalculia, dyspraxia, and autism, as well as ADHD. Plus how good your reading/writing/maths is. Plus they make you do these really fun tests - one was like a classic American spelling bee, one was a spelling test where they read out increasingly lengthy fake words and you had to spell them (we started with "blit", and by the end she was saying things like "unintarcation" and "iffrig-oggonery" and "self-regulating free market" trololol I JEST), and the other was that she'd read out a string of numbers and I had to type them backwards to test my working memory

Good fun, actually. Anyway, my results were mostly completely fine:

Study skills are good! I mean, we're going orange at the end, look, time management is bad - but that's the ADHD, so expected.

No problems with the tests! I mean I'm slightly grumpy about the social and communication score going blue, because I'm pretty sure it's because I explained how I was bullied in school, which I feel is more about them than me. But eh.

Dyspraxia was a little less solid- that's the time blindness, I think. Also attention and concentration, that's expected. Maths, lol - that's not medical, I'm just bad at maths.

The autism testing. Again, mostly fine, but some overlap with ADHD symptoms, so blue instead of green. Makes sense.

And then

Fucking rinsed.

Hi Sam! When you decided to go for an adhd diagnosis, is there a reason you went to the type of place you chose? I know you ended up having a difficult time with them after your evaluation. Did you go to your pcp first or try any other routes?

I’m starting to feel very heavily impacted by what I’m fairly certain is undiagnosed adhd, and I really want to try medication to see if it helps, but as I’m sure you’re aware, the process of making appointments is very difficult for one with undiagnosed adhd. Sigh. I’m wondering if it’s worth it to try and just make an appointment with my regular doctor to see if that gets me anywhere. But I know that doctors tend to be very cautious when prescribing, and I don’t want to bother with completely pointless appointments.

I just feel so overwhelmed when I think about trying anything else.

Yeah, I started working on getting evaluated in 2019 and only managed it in 2022, so I'm familiar with The Delay :D It never occurred to me to go through my primary care doctor -- I haven't had one for most of my adult life, because my insurance doesn't require it in order to see my specialist, and I just use a clinic if I'm sick. If you have a PCP you trust that's probably your best bet. You don't need to talk to them about prescribing, even, just talk about "I wonder if you have a recommendation for where I might get evaluated." You might even be able to get a recommendation without making a formal appointment. But if you get pushback on getting evaluated, then you can venture out on your own (more on this below).

I had a recommendation for a testing site, and I called a handful of times in 2019, but they never called back -- the desk person would say "Leave a message for our scheduler" and I'd say "Is there any way I can talk to a person? I keep leaving messages that don't get returned" and they'd say "Oh, they'll definitely return it this time" and that never happened. So by about mid-2019 I gave up and said I'd deal with it later. I started to research it in 2020, but then there was a global pandemic and I didn't want to be spending hours on end in a small room in a medical center.

And honestly, whenever I spoke about it to someone who wasn't a peer -- a parent, a doctor, etc -- I'd get a skeptical look and the response, "But you're so put-together and you're successful. Why would you think you have ADHD?" And I internalized that a little, to the point where I thought, yeah, I'm coping fine, it's not like anything would change other than maybe medication, why bother? Which...

That worked until it didn't, sometime in late 2021.

It worked until I looked at my life, which was not falling apart, and could see it fraying, and that if it did fall apart, it would be catastrophic. So my resolution for 2022 was to get evaluated. If it was ADHD, to get medicated; if it wasn't ADHD, to get help because clearly my life was not going as well as it looked.

So I just...sat down with an empty spreadsheet and I started googling "adult adhd evaluation chicago" (If you're not in a major city, I'd google your state or major cities nearby instead). Every site I found, I recorded the URL, my thoughts on the site, and their process for making an appointment. Once I had a list of places, I started "cold-calling" -- mostly via email, just reaching out to each place and recording the date and how I contacted them. When they answered, I recorded the date they replied and whether I responded.

The place I ended up going wasn't the first to call me back but they WERE the most responsive, and the first to schedule me for the evaluation (I did save the spreadsheet in case that fell through). They did a good job, more or less; I had struggles with them, but those were more to do with the fact that the woman who evaluated me already had one foot out the door and left my eval unwritten, meaning someone else had to take up the slack, which took time. And it at least helped to be able to say to my prescribing psych, during our first meeting, "Look, I have a diagnosis but I'm struggling to get the paperwork from them, and I'm really hanging on by a fingernail here." He gave me a much-abbreviated evaluation (basically a 20-minute questionnaire) and was able to prescribe for me that day.

So your other option is to just...find a psychiatrist who specializes in adult ADHD and/or ADHD medication management, make an appointment, and say, "I don't think I have it in me to set up a longform evaluation for this. I'm wondering if you can help me get evaluated and get some help." One of my goals was to get medicated but your overall goal is not medication -- the goal is help, and that just often happens to be medication. This isn't like, a trick to get a prescription or to manage a suspicious doctor (those have their place, believe me I know) -- your goal in getting treatment should always be to improve your life. But it's okay to want medication, you just have to want it in terms of improving quality of life, not medication qua medication.

So on the one hand, you sound like you need help, and you should work towards getting it -- but on the other, bear in mind that this sometimes just takes the time it takes, and keep your eyes on the goal. If you can be doing something, do it, and if you can't, then don't feel guilty that you can't.

Good luck :)

Hey, uhh, I'm 15 and I think I might have ADHD. It seems to match what I feel. My mom actually independently thought the same thing. It seems to fit. But my mom says that since I don't really need support or anything, I don't need to be officially diagnosed. It would be a lot of effort. I don't know if I I agree with her and I don't know what to do if I don't. I feel like I can't really say I have ADHD if I'm not officially diagnosed. I don't want to be one of those fakers who just want attention or those constantly self diagnosing kids. I also have been officially diagnosed with depression and social anxiety, so some symptoms might be from that. Thank you.

Sent February 22, 2024

Our official position on self-diagnosis is that it's fine to do so as long as you aren't trying to use it as an excuse to get out of taking responsibility for poor behaviour. There are so many reasons people may not be able to get a formal diagnosis, and a self-diagnosis doesn't qualify you for treatment anyway.

The main problem with your mom's attitude is that you're doing fine until you aren't. Speaking from personal experience, you may be able to mask and function quite well in school because of the external structure being imposed on your time, but all of that may fall apart when you're finished high school and have to figure it all out for yourself. Even if you don't need medication or accommodations now, you may want to access one or both in post-secondary, and you'll need a diagnosis on the books in order to do that. In addition, if you're an average student right now you may find that you become much better once your symptoms are better managed and accommodated. Never mind the strategies you could learn if you access ADHD coaching!

This post will take you through the process of self-diagnosis. If you go through it and conclude that yeah, you probably do have ADHD, make a list of all the practical ways your symptoms affect your life in negative ways, and talk to your mom about those. Tell her that, if nothing else, you would like to maybe see an ADHD coach (you usually don't need a formal diagnosis for that) to see if you can learn some effective strategies to help you with these things now, before you're thrust into the unstructured, disorganized world of post-secondary education.

After you've been seeing a coach for a while, you can revisit the possibility of getting a formal diagnosis. Your coach may have some thoughts about whether that will be beneficial, too.

For a coach, I recommend looking for someone who has been trained through iACT. The owner has ADHD herself and is a Nurse Practitioner as well as a Registered Nurse. If I were to train to be a coach, this is where I would register.

-J

I'm feeling a bit conflicted about the whole self-diagnosis topic. Like I would say I generally lean towards being pro self-diagnosis, a diagnosis can be expensive, really difficult to get, having it on paper can have negative legal consequences and so on. Besides, coming from an anti-psychiatry perspective I think it's generally good to take the authority of psychiatrists down a notch, to recognize them as being flawed and biased humans too who frankly don't have as much access to a person's whole being as they themselves have, and then of course being critical of the conceptual validity of 'mental illness' as well. But I feel like being anti-psychiatry leads me to think that we need to keep the same critical eye on self-diagnosis that we have on formal diagnosis. Really it might be a little bit misleading to even call it 'self-diagnosis' in the first place, as if we're talking about the self-evaluation of a completely separated self, and not a self that exists in the context of peer-assessment, a social network of information and a culture (whether online or offline) with an increased vigilance towards psychiatric diagnoses. And these communities - despite not being institutional or professional - sometimes kinda do the work of the psychiatric industrial complex for it, by validating, legitimizing and expanding these categories to such a huge degree, which is how we get people talking about every little behavior in the language of 'symptoms'. What I'm saying is that while I think self-diagnosis is fine, it matters how it's done. It matters where you get your information from, for what purpose you want to label yourself with this category, how you come to understand it as well. Labeling yourself with a diagnostic category if it generally fits your experience can be somewhat helpful in coming to understand yourself better, but building an illness identity can also come with a load of negative consequences; like limiting yourself way more than needed, or to understand what might just be fleeting reactions to environmental pressures as eternal 'symptoms'. I saw someone on TikTok saying that it shouldn't be surprising that there are so many people with autism and ADHD on TikTok with it being a dopamine machine and having an algorithm that caters to your special interest. But then I could say that the reason I personally don't use TikTok is because I find the app really overstimulating and too fast-paced for my processing capabilities. I could easily frame this as a result of 'my autism' and make a sort of generalized statement about autists' relationship to this app and thus the legitimacy of 'believing' the people on it. But I really don't feel like making everything about symptoms and generalizing huge groups of people based on my personal experiences. So why does this person do that? I think what these kinds of discussions sort of miss is that whether or not the people on these social media communities are 'valid' is way less important than 'what do these platforms want with them?' TikTok has an audience that's trained on short-form fast-paced content that probably lowers their attention span somewhat. Could such an audience be more likely to identify with ADHD? Does TikTok have an interest in 'selling' the identity of ADHD to this audience? To give them a community that keeps them attached to the app, that keeps them engaged, maybe even instills a sense of pride in using the app and consuming this form of content? After all, it's a 'symptom'.

Nerodivergent lmk hcs bc I can

Red son: Autism

Mk: AuDHD but the ADHD is more prevalent and medicated for the ADHD

Mei: ADHD medicated for it

Sandy: AuDHD with the autism being more prevalent and not medicated for the ADHD

Pigsy: Autism

SWK: AuDHD not medicated, but does meditate (he learned how to deal with both of them by Tripitaka during the Journey To The West™️)

Macaque: Autism

PIF: Autism

Mei got diagnosed early on since her mother has autism and her father has ADHD.

Mk also got diagnosed early on but not formally, Pigsy was just like “ahhh, my child has autism” and that was a shut and closed case. And when Mk met Mei her parents just thought he had ADHD so it was a very weird conversation when her parents were like “oh our child has ADHD too” and Pigsy was like “oh no my child has autism” but then Pigsy did research and was like “ohhhhhh my child might have AuDHD…” and then only got him diagnosed with ADHD so Mk could get meds because BOY does that child need meds.

Red Son got unofficial diagnosed by Mei during her Samadhi training arc and then Red Son did an autism and got hyperfixated on it and was like “ohhhh shit my mom prolly has autism too”.

DBK is just endlessly confused, being in a house with a woman and a gender fluid person who both have Autism and who he hasn’t been in the lives of for YEARS, but he tries

Sandy and Pigsy became friends because they both clocked the other was Autistic before they even knew they were autistic, Sandy was diagnosed with ADHD early but because they thought you couldn’t have both he was only diagnosed with Autism earlier in life. Pigsy never got a formal diagnosis but Tang decided to read the dsm-5 for some reason (either class or he just wanted to) and was like “you fit all the criteria for autism” and Pigsy was like “oh look at that I do” and then did absolutely nothing about it.

Mk also told SWK that he probably had ADHD and he was like “yeah and Autism” and then didn’t explain further.

Mk did the same thing with Macaque but with autism and then Macaque got a hyperfixation on it and was like “oh shit yeah I am”

Intro Post

Just realised I haven't done one of these yet so here we go!

Name: Robin

Pronouns: they/he/it/xe

Age: 20

Gender: demiboy, genderqueer

Sexuality: aroace

I have ADHD and autism (self-diagnosed but beginning the formal diagnosis process currently, and I consider myself peer-reviewed by the autistic people in my life with actual diagnoses).

My special interests are Doctor Who, Queen (the rock band), the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and animals! I am also into Supernatural, Good Omens, Hannibal, and plenty of other things too.

My favourite video game is Undertale, tho I am currently obsessed with Paleo Pines.

My favourite animal is sharks, specifically lemon sharks but thresher sharks are a close second :)

i am a furry and i have a lemon shark fursona called Lemmie!

I mostly post about things I'm currently obsessed with, and like to reblog memes, metas, and fanart that I enjoy.

I consider this blog a safe space for everyone except bigots and bullies. if you come onto any of my posts with some bigoted bullshit you're getting instablocked.

I am a queer inclusionist, and I am chill with all communities considered 'cringe' by general society. (e.g. furries, therians, otherkin, xenogenders, neopronoun users, neurodivergent folks of all kinds, etc.)

nsfw blogs are free to interact and follow, but i probably wont follow you back because I am a sex repulsed aroace person and I personally dont want to see nsfw content, but i have no problems with it existing.

minors are also free to interact and follow, I do swear a lot but i dont post nsfw.

Picrew of me:

DMs and inbox are open!

Love ya!

ok hi haha lol I dont rly feel like going in circles in my head forever trying to figure out whether, among other "smaller" things, being left alone in a room w only media as a child and not feeling like I had even a semblance of a personality for most of my life counts as "trauma"

a lot of these parts of me are new, I'm just recently putting names to them and it feels as though I'm developing facets of personalities in my mid 20s after a lifetime of either feeling like I'm basically just ADHD in a person, an amalgamation of kins shoved into a body, or something made of guilt Also shoved into a body.

I don't like, claim to know what this means. but I don't think a lot of my current mutuals would feel comfortable interacting w me bc I don't necessarily believe in the black and white of what plurality is. I'm not able or planning on getting any formal diagnosis and while I'm discussing this w my therapist they're very much not one to pathologize

I definitely don't feel like one person but I dont think id count for most of you as a "system" as the different parts of me feel as though theyre still developing. take all of this as you will, I'm not going to stress my body out more by trying to figure out "what" I am as I've been doing that my whole life and I'm kinda tired of it.

I know that I'm not entirely one thing and feel Enough like multiple things for myself, but blurred in a lot of ways. like some sort of gem with many different facets.

not sure where to go w this tbh take this how you will. im not comfortable saying I'm leaning one way or the other regarding system discourse, (<- not a phrase i want to use but the best shorthand i have) as I genuinely don't believe the human brain is nearly that black and white.

I'm both "me" and very much not "me" at times. idk what this means but ik I'm not comfortable saying im just pandora and im not sure im "allowed" to say im a system and im not sure if it matters, or should matter, regarding friends. im going to be like this regardless, id unfollow me if this grey area im likely to stay in bothers you

if you don't want me refollowing I'd probably block, too, as my memory is bad

hi! i hope it won't come off as nosy, but i got really interested when you said you've been diagnosed with bipolar, and adhd on top of it... mainly because i have adhd, and for the past month i've been waiting to get a bipolar diagnosis confirmed, since my psychiatrist is suspecting it. i don't know anyone who has it and it feels a bit lonely to sail this boat, would it be okay if i asked you a few questions? (feel free to skip if you don't want to answer them!)

overall i just wanted to ask, what are your main symptoms and how does your adhd get worse with experiencing episodes? & are you able to experience remission with your current treatment (that's mostly for adhd, if i remember it correctly)? and also i just want to quickly say im insanely proud of you for managing to survive, and, despite all the difficulties, still finding your voice in music 🤍🤍

Hi! I don't mind these questions at all - I know firsthand how isolating and difficult it is to navigate these illnesses and especially when you're waiting on a formal diagnosis. Having adhd and bipolar (and in my case.. also a recent autism diagnosis) together can be incredibly difficult, but on the plus side, people with these disorders usually have some of the most creative minds in our society. So.. yay to that part of it's any consolation!

1. My main symptoms are lethargy/fatigue, ruminating, anxiety, issues with starting and completing tasks, impulsivity, memory issues/forgetfulness, poor time management and keeping a routine, mood swings, and (this is one I feel so so awful about and I'm trying so hard to work on) changing topics mid convo/interrupting.

2. When I experience episodes, I definitely feel like my ADHD exacerbates my symptoms. When I'm manic, I am go-go-go, do not eat for days, possessed and riddled with creativity and pull all-nighters frequently. It's like I'm on some sort of bender but my drug is creating things or getting really involved in a special interest or hobby. I'm also able to get a lot done and accomplish things I normally struggle knocking out. When I reach my depression cycle, ADHD paralysis keeps me immobilized on my couch or in my bed for sometimes entire days. I struggle to even get up and bathe.

3. Unfortunately no, I have not experienced remission. However, I will say that taking stimulants has helped numb out bad feelings when I'm low, and somewhat stabilizes me during mania. I don't feel AS extreme of mood shifts when I'm on stimulants, but it doesn't completely stop my symptoms.

4. I have tried other medications for treating bipolar in the past, and I have had horrible experiences with all of them, and some new trauma around coerced medication so finding something that will work is currently off the table for me in terms of drugs. I advise you be careful and trust your gut with whatever you're given. If you feel like something is wrong, you DO NOT have to keep taking it. And don't let anyone pressure you otherwise.

And thank you so much! Life has been incredibly hard and sometimes I am genuinely fighting for it, but my mania cycle is about to kick in finally (it always does around this time of year) and I'm ready to kick off LOL

I wish you the best of luck in your mental health journey, and props to you for advocating for yourself 🤍

when did you get help for your adhd? how long were you fully aware of it? how long did you suspect something was wrong?

it depends on what you mean by "get help" because if you mean "formal diagnosis and medication" uhhhh I Still Don't! (I've been bounced around between insurances and/or otherwise unable to see a doctor for Like Eight Years. America Baby!!) i started suspecting it in like my early-mid 20s when I started making friends who were formally diagnosed, seeing people speak about the realities of adhd living online, etc. and started comparing that to my own lived experiences and going "Uh Oh!" I've known to some degree something was Up basically my Entire Life (my fam talks about as a Literal Newborn Baby i would just straight up not sleep because i wanted to see and be involved in literally everything going on around me) but it took a lot of time and a lot of resources to have the means to understand What and What To Do About It. luckily even though I'm not medicated I have a support system of friends and family who understand why I go through what I do and provide the best accommodations they can to help me

Elanor, question in regards to welsh universities. I dont know why i sound so formal. Anyway, if i dont have an official diagnosis for something like autism and adhd and cant get a diagnosis should do i still say im neurodivergent on official forms or nah? (The uni is utwsd)

Dealer's choice, at UWTSD you'll be screened for free by Student Services for dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, ADHD and autism on arrival regardless (with your permission, obviously!) It's not an official diagnosis, but the university accepts it as such, and it entitles you to all the support and accommodations you'd get with an actual diagnosis. (It also gives you a helpful backup with your GP if you did want to go down the official diagnosis route)

If you do put neurodivergence on the form, the only difference it makes is that you'll get an email from Student Services at the start of the year telling you about what they can offer you in terms of help (including screening, actually). But I'm pretty sure they're starting screening of everyone from this October, so that'll happen whatever you choose.

I should add: this is not true of all Welsh universities! I know for a fact that some of them charge students for screening of each individual condition, and it's a good £300 apiece in some places. But UWTSD has a high proportion of ND students and very good support, so they take a different tack. It's going to be really interesting seeing the percentages now that they're testing everyone.

The final legal stuff: Welsh ALN legislation means you can only be screened with your permission. Your results will also be kept confidential to a degree that you will find annoying if you want to act on them lol - if you want your lecturers to all know, you have to tell each of them OR give explicit permission for them to all be told by Student Support (and request that they all be told in an email, so it's in writing.) Don't assume they'll just know! If you do need a support plan, it will be agreed with you. Your lecturer can amend their teaching at their own discretion, of course, but anything more than that (e.g. rescheduled deadlines), you need to give the go ahead.

I hope this helps! HMU if you have any other questions

Hi Sam, how did you come to the conclusion you should be tested for neurodivergence? I've been reading a lot of Temple Grandin (Visual Thinking is fantastic) and see so much of myself in her books. But, I, too, am, let's just say well into adulthood, and I don't know if my life would change that much with a diagnosis. The only thing I can think of doing with a diagnosis is telling my siblings and childhood bullies that they picked on someone who had a reason for being "weird." But it doesn't change anything. Beyond the medication, did you find any solace? Thank you for sharing your journey.

I was just thinking I should do a post about this....

I don't recall the specifics and have never been able to find the post again, but sometime prior to 2019 I made a joke about having a short attention span, and someone said something like "Oh, did you finally get a diagnosis?" and I said haha no, I don't have ADHD, and a bunch of readers went, "Uh, you very clearly do." Some of them added that they thought I knew and was just being discreet about it. (As if I have ever been discreet about anything in my life.)

So I figured, okay, probably there's some level of neurodivergence there, given that my mother and siblings all have various diagnoses, and my father was clearly autistic. (Knowing what we know now about how ADHD can mask as other mental illnesses, there's a strong chance this comes from my maternal grandmother, who was the person in the family I was most like when she was alive.) I tried a couple of times to get evaluated and always had either slow or nonexistent responses from the clinics I reached out to, so I stopped trying. I had a ton of coping mechanisms in place and was in a good spot in my life, so I thought honestly, what would it change?

But by the end of 2021, while I was still in a pretty good financial place, and my career was doing well, I could tell that if things kept up as they were I was going to tank my job purely through being unable to get through a day doing productive work the way I used to.

I thought, well, if this is ADHD and it's getting worse because the whole fucking world is on fire, I have two options: I can assume I have it and just do the reading and figure shit out on my own, or I can get evaluated, get professional advice, and possibly get medicated. That seemed like the best return on investment, so that's what I worked on. My goal was primarily medication, because I didn't see myself being able to change much else about my situation on my own. And, truthfully, medication has been the biggest change -- I actually have an essay about that queued for the anniversary of my starting Adderall. But while it hasn't been a massive life-altering world-shattering change, all of this was worth it purely for the medication.

Uh, momentary sidebar in my memoir: there are downsides to having a diagnosed disability -- discrimination, legal barriers to certain things like holding government jobs or adopting, etc. Those have to be weighed when you're considering evaluation. If you think you may have autism, there's not necessarily an advantage to having a formal diagnosis unless you need accommodations; if you think you may have ADHD, the huge advantage is access to medication, which doesn't exist for autism as far as I'm aware. So your particular flavor of neurodivergence might dictate whether you get a diagnosis, or whether you just start operating on the assumption you have it. Both are valid, I think, it really depends on what's going on in your life and what you want to change.

Anyway, I have been doing other research, reading journal articles and pop psychology and talking to people, and that's been good, but even if I had none of that, the medication has been so helpful in getting me back on an even keel and then making life even better.

This sounds kind of weird to say but I'm not generally someone who needs a lot of solace. There is some relief in knowing that at least some of my fuckups in life weren't something I could have prevented by simply having more strength of character or working harder, and that's nice, but it's something I could have had without a formal diagnosis -- just like you could simply tell your siblings and bullies you have a diagnosis. (Being real, I doubt they'd care; bullies gonna bully whether you had a reason to be weird or not, and none of that would have been your fault regardless of your neurology. But it's all very situational, as I'm sure you know.) I wasn't badly bullied as a kid and there's nobody really to...tell, in the sense you're thinking of. But I didn't get into it for emotional solace; I got into it to fix a life that was, albeit extremely slowly, starting to fall apart. So if you're someone, as most people are, who derives emotional satisfaction or catharsis from having the diagnosis, I think it probably would be pretty helpful. But even if you aren't, like me, if you can get medication or accomodations, I think it's worth it.