Studying that you’ve ADHD in adults can evoke disappointment, reduction, and different feelings

By On Apr 8, 2021

Noor Pannu couldn’t believe it. Her psychiatrist had just diagnosed her with ADHD. But she didn’t trust him. She had read that people with this disorder had things like fights and problems with the law, and she wasn’t at all.

“It took me a long time to accept it,” she says. “It was a lot of confusion, honestly.”

Pannu is an energetic 30 year old full of ideas and enthusiasm. She leads the digital strategy for an e-commerce company in Winnipeg, Canada. She has had multiple promotions and good relationships with her co-workers. Even so, she has a hard time staying productive, concentrating, and coping with the fear of deadlines. After years of these symptoms and some worrying blackouts, she decided to get help when she was 29.

“I went to my family doctor and said to him, ‘I think I’m going crazy. Something is wrong with me. “He referred her to the psychiatrist who diagnosed her with ADHD.

“It took me almost 6 months to come to terms with this and start taking medication,” she says. She feared the scars from both mental health problems and ADHD. “The way people see it is, ‘People with ADHD are just not productive. They’re not great to work with. They don’t deliver well. You can’t trust them. ‘And those are really bad things to say about other people. “

The disbelief and denial Pannu felt are just some of the over-sized emotions you may experience after learning as an adult that you have ADHD. First, there are all of the feelings that come with diagnosing a condition that you have dealt with all of your life. You can feel sadness, relief, or both. In addition, people with ADHD often feel more emotionally than other people.

“The ADHD brain experiences emotions in an enlarged manner,” said Amy Moore, PhD, a cognitive psychologist at LearningRx in Colorado Springs, CO and vice president of research at the Gibson Institute of Cognitive Research. “Every emotion is bigger and bigger and bigger. This grief can feel absolutely overwhelming. And that relief can almost be a feeling of amusement. “

Come to terms

An ADHD support group helped Pannu gradually accept her diagnosis. She met people with similar symptoms, asked them questions, and shared her experiences. “If it hadn’t been for them,” she says, “I might not have started my medication and would probably still be confused now.”

When she started taking stimulants, she felt like she had reached the full potential of her mind. She is now planning a Masters in Business. She is studying for the GMAT Business School entrance exam and is aiming for a high score.

Despite her high hopes for the future, Pannu is disappointed that she didn’t find out she used to have ADHD. She grew up in India, where she says a lack of awareness of the disorder as well as a stigma about women’s mental health kept her from being diagnosed earlier in life.

“I wish I knew about this diagnosis sooner. I would have done much better and achieved a lot more in my academics, ”she says. “I feel like there was so much in my life that I could have done.”

Grief is one of the main emotions you may feel when learning that you have ADHD in your late teens or adulthood, says psychologist Moore.

“You mourn the realization that your life could have been so much easier if only you had known it. You mourn the loss of the life you could have had all along. And you mourn the loss of the ideal adult age you imagined, ”she says.

Some people experience anger and sadness: “Anger that no one recognized [your ADHD] before or that nobody did anything about it – and that you suffered for so long without explanation or without help. “

Pannu found the help she needed until she was nearly 30. But now that she has accepted her diagnosis, she gets along better. And she has a healthy sense of humor about who she is.

“I always thought I was weird. I didn’t know how weird, ”she laughs. “But I know now.”

Facilitated to know the truth

When Melissa Carroll’s doctor diagnosed her with ADHD last year, the 34-year-old Nashville credit analyst was grateful to hear the news. After years of struggling to get chores done, advancing her education, and keeping various relationships together, she felt satisfied with the diagnosis.

“I’m a bit everywhere and not everyone can keep up with it,” says Carroll, describing what it can be for others to have a conversation with her. She says that her ideas make sense in her head, “but this conversation is sometimes difficult to have this conversation or to make sense of it in a professional setting.” She also struggles with follow-through, she says. “It’s difficult to be driven in one direction long enough to get to the next stage.”

Treatment changed that. She started taking stimulants, which improved her ADHD symptoms. It also relieved her major depression, which she believes is due in part to decades of untreated ADHD. She had had a difficult childhood without a very stable home. Adults tended to dismiss their symptoms as Carroll just “acting out”.

“You adapt to life so much that you get used to spinning your wheels, but eventually just spinning your wheels will just burn you out and give up,” she says.

Medication and therapy helped Carroll gain traction. It all started with the diagnosis of ADHD, which gave her hope that life could get better.

It’s common to feel a little bit comfortable learning that you have adult ADHD, says cognitive psychologist Moore. “That initial sense of relief comes from the fact that you finally have this explanation for your deficits. One reason you struggled in school and relationships. Relief that there is an actual name for why you are struggling with time management and organization. “

After she was diagnosed, Carroll took steps to better organize herself. “If I need lists or an app to remind myself which rooms to clean or the order in which to do things, then it’s okay for me to do that,” she says.

She told everyone she knew had ADHD. Many weren’t surprised. “I was blown away. I didn’t know it was so obvious to some people – because it wasn’t to me,” she laughs. “I was excited to be able to say, ‘I found out about myself, and it makes sense. ‘I think it’s the key to what I’ve been missing. “

An emotional tug of war

Moore can relate to Carroll’s excitement. She felt the same way when she found out she had ADHD when she was 20.

“I was so excited that I had a name for what was wrong with me that I wanted everyone in the world to know,” she says. “I sang it from the rooftops.”

Moore learned that she had ADHD while studying in the late 1980s. “Before, only hyperactive little boys were diagnosed. For a girl with mostly inattentive ADHD, I was one of those people who fell through the cracks. “

When she was a child, her parents gave her a highly structured life at home. However, when she went to college, she made an effort to stay organized and manage her time. But her mother, a child development specialist, worked with children around the time they were starting to be diagnosed with ADHD. When she saw the signs of her own daughter, she urged Moore to see a doctor.

After Moore found out she had the disorder, she took stimulants and sailed through college, graduate school, and a doctoral program.

“I didn’t grieve as much as I felt relieved,” she says. “Maybe this was because it wasn’t a widely used diagnosis in the 1980s. If I’d been through the same situation two decades later, maybe I would have known that they could have done something and they didn’t. “

Moore sees many people who are later diagnosed go through a “tug of war” between grief and relief.

Manage big emotions

Treatments like medication and cognitive behavioral therapy help many adults with ADHD take control of their lives and emotions. Moore says it’s also important to understand the main reason behind these big emotions. ADHD affects thinking skills called executive functions. These include organizational skills, working memory, focus, and the ability to control your emotions. Treatment called cognitive training or brain training can improve these skills, Moore says.

“Cognitive training is participating in intensely repetitive mental tasks that directly target these skills. Once you strengthen these, you will get the benefits of emotional regulation as it is also a managerial skill. “

It can also help set boundaries in your life, she says. For example, if you work in an office, you can post a “Do Not Disturb” sign on your door or cubicle if you need extra peace and quiet to concentrate. Or, you can have a frank conversation with your boss about your ADHD and ask him to relocate you to a less busy part of the office so you can be as productive as possible.

Meeting other people with ADHD can be a great pick-me-up too. “Something amazing is happening in self-help groups,” says Moore. “The very idea that you are not experiencing something alone has a strong therapeutic aspect.”

If you have been newly diagnosed with adult ADHD, it should be discussed with your close family and friends. “When you are raising your loved ones and they are able to look at your reactions and say, ‘Hey, is it because they have ADHD, that is how they react to me?’ They could show you a little more grace, ”says Moore.

swell

SWELL:

Amy Moore, PhD, cognitive psychologist, LearningRx, Colorado Springs, CO; Vice President Research, Gibson Institute of Cognitive Research.

Noor Pannu, Head of Digital Strategy, Winnipeg, Canada.

Melissa Carroll, Credit Analyst, Nashville.

The American Journal of Psychiatry: “Emotional Dysregulation and Attention Deficit / Hyperactivity Disorder.”

Got it: “What is Executive Function?”

Children and adults with attention deficit / hyperactivity disorder (CHADD): “Executive Function Skills”.