In 2019, at age 24, a counsellor I was seeing for my OCD asked me how long I’d be diagnosed with ADHD, I looked at her in confusion because I didn’t have ADHD. ADHD was when people couldn’t sit still and were naughty and loud, something pre-teen boys had. And that first thought of mine shows how poor a job our education system does (or hopefully did, I’m holding onto a flicker of hope that things have improved since I was at school), of teaching us about neurodivergent brains, especially about how this is different in men and women.
I went home from this appointment and told my mum what the counsellor had asked. She had a similar reaction to me, and we both dismissed this random thought on the grounds that I hadn’t been a naughty child. Large-scale misinformation strikes again!
For a few years, I thought no more of ADHD until the conversation was brought up again, this time by my mum after meeting an adult with ADHD at the Apple shop. She’d been chatting to him for some time whilst waiting on a tech repair and ADHD had been the subject of a lot of that conversation. Throughout their conversation, my mum came to see traits in this man that she also saw in me, ADHD traits. She came home and told me about him and thus the little spark in my brain started.
When the person who is closest to you in the world can see traits of ADHD in you, it may be worth looking into. My mum isn’t a doctor or a psychologist, but she is my mum and she knows me. I took some time to look into ADHD and suddenly things started clicking for me, I was feeling seen bit by bit. I was also feeling the growing weight of imposter syndrome looming over me. With the rise of video content on social media, came more people telling their stories and I started to stumble upon more and more personal experiences of ADHD. Again, I felt seen, and I also felt like an imposter.
What is imposter syndrome and why do we feel it?
Imposter syndrome is the persistent feeling that something isn’t deserved, valid or earned despite evidence proving otherwise. We feel it for many things, a promotion at work, winning an award, thinking you could be neurodivergent. But why do we feel imposter syndrome? Probably because of our own self-doubt and lack of self-confidence to know ourselves and our own minds. In today’s world, there are so many online spaces to compare yourself to other people, which can often lead to questioning yourself and your validity.
So how did this affect me?
I was seeing people online with much more presenting symptoms of ADHD than I felt I had. Some symptoms are more well known than others and those were the ones I was seeing most online. It didn’t help that when I finally plucked up the courage to speak to my doctor they shut me down almost immediately and said they wouldn’t push me through any further for a diagnosis. ADHD presents differently in girls and boys and then men and women with a huge neglect for research into women with ADHD, so that’s already a point against me. Boys’ ADHD symptoms are being used as the marker for which girls are being tested against, which just doesn’t hold up. This is quite an interesting article on the subject if you want to learn more.
How the Right to Choose helped me
If you are based in England under the NHS you now have a legal right to choose your mental healthcare provider and your choice of mental healthcare team.
Taking this route allowed me to take control of my diagnosis. When the doctor told me no I felt deflated, I thought I had the answers for why my brain always felt so intense and busy and stressed and loud and too much, but then I was told I didn’t have those answers after all. Back to the imposter syndrome corner for me.
I can’t remember how I learned about the Right to Choose, but I’m so glad I did. This is a fairly new option, introduced in 2018, that allows you to override your doctor’s decision. In my case, it meant the ‘no’ I was given wasn’t the end of my diagnosis journey. I felt strongly I had ADHD and I wanted to know for sure, so through the Right to Choose I was put on the Psychiatry UK waitlist, which took around 14 months for me to be seen by a mental health professional. In prep for this wait I had to fill out several questionnaires, as did someone close to me, I chose my mum. Other than that it just took patience… the shining trait of someone with ADHD 🙃
The wait felt neverending at times and my imposter syndrome only grew as each month passed. I kept convincing myself what was going on in my brain was a result of both low attention spans due to smartphones and also my creative and busy personality, basically talking myself out of thinking I had ADHD. My symptoms didn’t stop, if anything they felt more intense and at times I felt I was struggling to cope. And then I got the magic email, at 29 years old, I’d been taken off the waitlist and could finally book my assessment appointment!
(I joke, but I am so glad this service exists, it’s been pretty life-changing for me)
Getting my ADHD diagnosis
I knew a few friends who had gone through this same process so I kind of knew what to expect, but this was the stage that felt the most nervewracking. Firstly, I had to pick who I would see, I was given multiple profiles to choose from with reviews on each. It felt like a lot of pressure, especially because they were all men, and I felt I’d have preferred to talk to a woman. I eventually settled on someone who I thought best aligned with me, and it turned out to be a great choice.
On an hour-long Teams call I met with this man, he asked me a lot of questions, I made notes of my symptoms to share with him, and we dived into my childhood, my family, and my career. It felt very thorough and I expected to be told I’d hear back in a few weeks when he’d reviewed everything. What I didn’t expect was for him to tell me there and then that I had combined ADHD, both inattentive and hyperactive-impulsive ADHD (I thought I would just be diagnosed with the latter so this was also quite a surprise).
After years of wondering and a lifetime of my brain’s quirks, I had an answer.
Why was getting a diagnosis important to me?
This was the question I got asked the most by people who knew I was on the ADHD assessment waitlist. I currently don’t want medication so why does it matter to me to have the official diagnosis on my NHS record?
It all comes back to imposter syndrome – that feeling of uncertainty and like I was making it all up. I wanted to know for me, to have that clarity in my brain that I wasn’t going mad, I have ADHD and it can cause X, Y and Z to happen. I felt I could understand myself a lot more and be more forgiving of feelings that would usually confuse me. Before getting diagnosed with OCD when I was 14, I felt so stressed and confused, but once I had the diagnosis it all started to make sense and there were steps I could take to help my brain. I wanted that same feeling when it came to ADHD.
I’ve had this diagnosis for one month and already it’s made a difference to me. I’m rethinking certain things in my life that I can now see don’t help me or how my brain works. I’ve been in situations since my diagnosis where I’ve felt panicked and overstimulated and now I know why that is. The clarity is the biggest thing I’ve taken from all of this. I may change my mind about medication in the future and sure the diagnosis will be useful for that, but for right now, knowing more about how my brain works is already a great tool for knowing how to be happier and enjoy my life.
If you’re reading this as someone who is going through this process, I promise the wait will end and you will get your answer. And if you’re reading this as a fellow ADHD-brained human, then hey, feels nice to know I’m not alone!
I haven’t gone into details about my symptoms because that is for me, but I’m sure if you ever watch my content or are in my Patreon community, you can see a fair few of them present. Thank you for reading about my experience, it helped to write it all down.
