Was it Trauma or ADHD?
How a late ADHD diagnosis rewrote my life story
I was diagnosed with ADHD a few months ago. Then I was offered a trial of stimulant medication.
My whole world has changed since then. My life story has been rewritten. I no longer even see myself as the same person.
I am happier, more at peace with myself and more confident. I am also more in touch with my feelings and better connected to myself and those around me.
So how did all this happen?
It involved a lot of letting go and healing of trauma, which was only possible once my ADHD was managed.
ADHD and trauma have many overlaps .
Trauma is a recurring theme I’ve found when speaking to people about ADHD. Not surprising given the misunderstandings and challenges people with ADHD face early on and later in life.
ADHD, or “attention deficit hyperactivity disorder”, is inherited and environmental. Trauma is a factor that can activate genes, irreversibly altering brain structure and chemistry and resulting in lifelong drops in norepinephrine and dopamine. The former handles alertness, focus and attention, the latter, reward, pleasure and drive.
Those neurotransmitter levels being low account for most of what we experience as ADHD symptoms.
“Attention deficit” and “hyperactivity” are how these deficits surface, low norepinephrine making it hard to pay attention and increasing anxiety and fight or flight reactions. Low dopamine results in loss of drive and purpose, impacting self-esteem and confidence. All this manifests as being distracted, hyperactive or impulsive.
But ADHD goes deeper, affecting executive function, the ability to plan and make life decisions, as well as emotional regulation. Being able to feel intense emotions and staying in control.
Trauma impacts those in similar ways too.
Trauma being anything that overwhelms your nervous system beyond its ability to cope. Emotional or physical abuse, neglect, family breakups, bullying. Poverty and hardship also count.
Seeing parents fight, the death of a loved one, abandonment, being involved in an accident. It can all affect how you think, feel, act and respond long after the event. Setting rules for how you navigate life, handle situations and make choices. What you avoid, the coping strategies you develop, the rationalisations, stories and blame you assign.
The event that caused the trauma may be vivid years later or a vague memory but unless processed the emotion remains, stuck from when it overwhelmed, or dysregulated, your nervous system. Trapping you and preventing intense emotions being felt. A safety valve snapping into place, triggering a fight or flight response, taking away control. Causing you to lash out verbally or physically, run away or freeze up. Or simply shut down. Limiting your opportunities for progress and happiness by making you avoid situations which may risk triggering you.
Life involves taking risks. Intense feelings are a part of that. Without the ability to regulate emotions life is limited and leaves you stuck.
Therapy can help with understanding where avoidance or coping strategies may come from. And it can help process and heal trauma. The emotion must be allowed to be fully felt and released to remove the trauma.
Restoring emotional regulation.
But there are cases where no amount of therapy or other psychological techniques can ever remove the trauma.
If there’s been no change or improvement for years, no release of emotion or restoration of emotional regulation, your nervous system still overwhelmed, then it may not be psychological trauma.
It may be neurological. Something to do with the underlying structure of your brain and its chemistry.
It may be ADHD.
Not only what happened to you but also who you are.
ADHD puts a block on the nervous system that works in a similar way to trauma. Low norepinephrine and dopamine prevents emotional regulation leaving you nursing a fragile nervous system. Any trauma present will also be stuck. A lifetime’s worth can be backed up with no way of processing intense feelings. Holding you back.
The block is neurological, not psychological. Therapy can’t fix it.
That can be scary but there is hope.
My trauma
My childhood was traumatic.
Running away at a young age. Not being sent to school. Parents withdrawn, not working and staying indoors, unable to pay bills…
I’ve told this story many times over the years and written about it too. Earlier in life I denied or normalised my childhood. Later I opened up and celebrated it as part of an underdog story after I’d turned my life around. Materially anyway.
I talked about my running away in a lighthearted way, running off to see airports and planes, driven home by police. Not dwelling on or acknowledging why any of that happened. That my parents couldn’t be the caregivers my sister and I needed. I couldn’t process the pain of that so it leaked out in stories. I was offloading the emotional processing I couldn’t do to whoever was listening.
I was trapped. The stories were cries for help. Trauma leaks.
I carried it all and more for years. Decades. Into my forties over the course of a bumpy life starting things only to leave them unfinished. Always running away.
I’d spoken to many therapists over the years and had worked up a chronicle of my whole life. Later I’d written a memoir reaching 100,000 words. But the emotions remained elusive. Reading my memoir back I couldn’t make sense of my life.
Emotionally closed off. Why was I like this?
I did have feelings. I could laugh with friends, feel anger or joy on their behalf or cry during a movie.
Emotional dysregulation doesn’t mean you can’t feel emotions. It means you can’t handle the ones that affect you directly while staying in control. Like dealing with conflict or intimacy.
The safety valve closes. Fight or flight. In my case flight. I’d avoid conflict at all costs by people pleasing, bargaining or giving in. And I couldn’t be vulnerable so could never allow anyone in. Even if I wanted to. My nervous system wouldn’t allow me to regulate emotions and see how a situation would develop. It wouldn’t let me keep control.
I’d run away or freeze up.
That creates all sorts of problems. Setting and maintaining boundaries, negotiating or forming genuine connections and relationships. I’d avoid putting myself in situations that had emotional stakes or I’d sabotage them myself. Self-sabotage is a defence mechanism. Remove the danger of conflict or intimacy before it can happen. Before it can overwhelm my nervous system. Then regret the opportunities lost, make excuses or beat myself up.
For others dysregulation may not be flight but instead fight. Lashing out. Triggered but unable to control the reaction. Neural pathways etched and reinforced each time it happens. That could be far more dangerous and damaging. I was lucky I only froze up or shut down.
A lifetime of bottling up feelings.
I blamed it all on childhood trauma. Fear of failure and rejection from my dad’s attempts to homeschool me. His unrealistic expectations, frustration and disappointment at me. My fear of intimacy I put down to neglect, reasoning that’s where my hyper independence came from. “I didn’t need anyone.”
I had my stories, rationalisations and blame all neatly assigned. The mind shapes reality in ways to protect and soothe itself.
All this caused lifelong self-esteem issues. Negative self talk and extreme fears of failure and rejection. Stopping me from trying. If I didn’t try I couldn’t fail. Simple. It was protecting me. My fragile nervous system.
My life has been lived in cycles of obsessive and intense activity followed by loss of interest or burnout, then sinking into depression and long periods of withdrawal. I couldn’t plan for the future and I found endings, thresholds and transitions terrifying. I’d even sabotage successes to avoid seeing what lay beyond. I only lived in the now, any future version of me seemed like a stranger.
I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted. No sense of purpose or meaning. Without being in touch with my feelings I couldn’t connect with myself. Needs can’t be met if they can’t be acknowledged. I avoided or worked around them. I existed as a bundle of coping mechanisms and avoidance strategies all tied together by stories, which if I stopped to look at carefully wouldn’t hold up well.
Avoiding all conflict means no progress or growth. Not letting people in means a life of isolation. Without emotional regulation there is no life of meaning, purpose or connectedness.
I was stuck in this loop most of my life. Repeating the same pattern. Always chasing something, living for others or withdrawing into isolation. Outwardly seeming confident and happy, and later, materially successful too. Some could see that something wasn’t right.
Hiding my anxiety and low self-esteem behind a mask of telling stories and jokes. My sense of self-worth dependant on external validation.
I continued to work with therapists, read books and increased my knowledge. I was able to help others with my understanding and insights but made little progress myself. Relationships failed because I couldn’t open up, they may not even have started for the right reasons. Conflicts avoided and opportunities missed. Bold and confident in the workplace and for others, but never able to act in my own interests. Or even know what they were.
Eventually starting to realise that maybe this trauma ran too deep and could never be healed. The pattern may never be broken. A lifetime of trying to fill an unfillable void with achievements I couldn’t enjoy. Never feeling like I was enough. Not able to let anyone in so resigning myself to spending my life alone. Wanting to give up but unable to stop.
Neither living nor dead. Feeling alive only when chasing something, the rest of the time spent in joyless survival. Always wanting but never content with having. Quickly turns to ashes.
Either always on the go or in a low power mode. All or nothing.
No peace. No rest.
This is how I described my trauma the last few years. Or what I thought was my trauma. I thought a lot of it was “just me.”
All of this also describes ADHD. It describes everything that low dopamine and norepinephrine levels can result in.
All very obvious now. Now that everything has changed.
Epiphanies
The diagnosis itself didn’t change anything. In fact, I’d been referred in error by my GP. I’d asked for an autism assessment. But as I was curious about ADHD I let it be.
I only knew a little about ADHD. Difficulties concentrating, starting or finishing tasks, being hyperactive or impulsive. I knew some people with it who seemed to be coping fine. I didn’t look any deeper, even weeks after my diagnosis. Odd for me as I usually look into everything compulsively.
A part of me didn’t want to know.
I was offered a trial of ADHD medications. Stimulants that stayed in the body less than 24. Boosting dopamine and norepinephrine. I was open to seeing what would happen. They were meant to help with concentration and focus and were not like anti-depressants which I’d tried a couple of times in my twenties to no effect.
They were essentially slow release speed.
All I was doing at the time was reading, running and writing. In a transitional period after 18 months of travelling, staying at my mum’s for months while I waited to get my own place. Not easy for me given traumatic memories and a difficult relationship with my mum who had her own issues that easily triggered me. I spent most of my time in my room. In the cold dark winter months there wasn’t anywhere else to be. So I had ample time to explore the effects of the medication without any outside commitments or pressures.
Elvanse (or Vyvanse/lisdexamfetamine) was what I was started on with a 30 mg dosage. Overpowering at first, making me sweaty and jittery. A bumpy start with some side effects that subsided after a couple of weeks.
I felt more energetic and had focus and motivation. I finally got curious about ADHD, wanting to understand the underlying causes and how it affected behaviour. I’d been surprised by the diagnosis. I’d known I was autistic but ADHD didn’t seem to fit. I was super organised and had systems in place for everything. Later I would realise that people without ADHD don’t usually adhere so rigidly to their systems. Or coping mechanisms.
Mine were so good they’d become invisible to me. We normalise our coping mechanisms and inner world. It’s just us being us.
My conclusion was that I had ADHD but had “mastered” it. Learned to manage it so well that I’d beaten it. Which explained the career and material success I’d enjoyed after turning my life around over a decade earlier. My “meteoric rise.” I couldn’t understand then that it had happened because of my ADHD. It had pushed me relentlessly ever higher without letting me rest or enjoy any of my successes.
I was looking at my rise like an outsider. It hadn’t brought me any peace, joy or happiness.
After severe, and inevitable, burnout I had resigned from my job. A hectic high pressure role during the pandemic. Then a few months later I came out of a relationship and months after that left on an open-ended trip around the world lasting 18 months. The last six months wanting to stop but unable to decide where I wanted to live or what I wanted to do. How I wanted to live. Stuck in a loop until I finally ended up at my mum’s. Treading water until a friend helped me decide to buy my own place. Then in limbo while I waited for the purchase to complete, leading into the ADHD diagnosis and medication trial.
Everything started to change when I read an article about the “dopamine cliff” and experienced a “dolly zoom” camera effect. Being on medication may have helped kick this off. Dots connected in my mind. The cycles of relentless striving then crashing into pits of depression…
A permanent dopamine deficit…
ADHD was a permanent dopamine deficit.
My whole life. It was brain chemistry. I wasn’t defective or broken.
I started seeing those cycles in a different way. Chasing reward or stimulation with diminishing returns. Until I’d worn out the novelty and there was no more dopamine left, leaving me to collapse into lethargy and depression. No motivation, will or desire. Trapped endlessly replaying what had happened.
There it was. The entire pattern of my life. It’s what happened in the final year of university when I inexplicably lost all interest and dropped out after pushing myself so hard and consistently scoring over 90% in exams. Then haunted for years by failure and shame. Letting everyone down. Letting myself down. Not understanding what had happened. Crawling into a hole. Wanting to die.
So many times.
It was wrenching. But I could start letting go of it now. Start forgiving myself.
It wasn’t my fault.
It wasn’t my fault.
It wasn’t my fault.
There was more to come. It was starting to pour out. My nervous system was starting to handle intense emotions without becoming dysregulated. Without being overwhelmed. Letting me stay in control and feel the anguish and grief that I needed to but couldn’t before. The increased dopamine and norepinephrine from the medication allowed this.
I could also focus more clearly inwards on my thoughts and feelings. See things I couldn’t before.
This is the only way the block could have been lifted. No amount of therapy would have worked.
But what about my childhood trauma? The failures, low self-esteem, lack of motivation, depression… Was it dopamine and norepinephrine all along? ADHD? Not my fault but also not my childhood either? Not my parents?..
It was no one’s fault. It just was.
It’s true I did have a traumatic childhood. But trauma can heal or fade. I’d put in a lot of time and work. I’d had a comfortable life for many years by this point with many friends around me. Yet nothing had improved on the inside. Nor was anything ever enough. I was never enough. The same discontent was always there. Never able to be present or in the moment. How many more years would I have gone on nursing my “childhood trauma” if this hadn’t happened? 10? 20? To my death? Never knowing.
I sat with my thoughts and feelings. There was an assembly line of backed up trauma that needed processing. I welcomed it. Now that I could handle it.
Had it been childhood trauma or ADHD holding me back?
It was both. But really it turned out to be ADHD.
My trauma had been stuck behind a neurological block all these years. More and more piling up.
It was like a dam released, pouring out of me over weeks in waves of anger, grief and sadness. Leaving me lighter and freer. Realising that everything I’d been calling “childhood trauma” for much of my life had actually been ADHD all along. Like a plot twist at the end of a film, I saw it all clearly in flashbacks across my whole life now. It had been there all alone. Hiding in plain sight.
This would never have been possible without medication. The only times my dopamine and norepinephrine levels would be high enough would be when I was hyperfocused, chasing or striving, my attention elsewhere. And certainly not possible in a low state. Anxious, hypervigilant and in fight or flight.
It started to dawn on me that I’d had a disability my whole life. One that had prevented me from regulating my emotions or making any real life plans or decisions.
A disability that was invisible and kept me going, creating coping mechanisms and stories to hide itself from me. Leaving me banging my head for years in therapy.
But it did push me. Gave me skills, knowledge, experience and means. It even made me a good storyteller because I had to create stories to explain the inexplicable things I sometimes did. The spectacular successes and failures.
It forced me to develop in a multitude of ways. Always feeling behind and needing to play catch up. Trying too hard. Overcompensating and overachieving. Telling myself it was because of my dad’s harsh attempts at homeschooling and withholding of approval. Or because I started school late and then skipped so much. Because I dropped out of university. Or that I didn’t have my first “proper job” until much later than others. Pushing myself, overshooting and still not being able to stop. Not good enough. Driven on and on.
Never stopping. Achievements as trophies chucked on a pile to never be looked at again.
Other times it held me down and stopped me from taking risks because it didn’t think I could handle failure or rejection. Or protecting me from future regret. Better not to try. Can’t fail that way. Can’t regret. Except trying to avoid regret also results in regret.
Stuck in loops ruminating over past failures, endlessly replaying memories.
ADHD loves its loops.
Between the chasing and striving or the low periods, what was missed was love, joy and happiness. It was all around me but I couldn’t see it. It was in the moments. I let them pass by.
Through many memories, realisations and epiphanies I went through the stages of grief over and over again. Forgiving myself. Forgiving my parents. Letting go of my old life. Old stories I’d held onto. Blame. Missed opportunities. Misunderstandings. Shame.
Letting go of the old me.
The years of therapy had worked. The memoir I’d written that seemed to make no sense. All the work had already been done underneath. It was all waiting for the dam to be released. The neurochemical balance to allow this.
All the mysteries of my life fell into place rewriting my whole life story into something that finally made sense.
It was four weeks into the trial and the dosage was increased to 40 mg to see if there were further benefits. l was feeling more motivated, less anxious and had a sense of wellbeing and confidence.
A lot had happened. What more could there be?
My autism came back in full force for the first time since my mid teens. Fast reading and comprehension, visualisation, quick intuitive analysis and the great memory. I thought it had all been eroded by age but no, it had been submerged under the ADHD this whole time. ADHD had been the mask.
The autism assessment I’d had prior to my ADHD diagnosis had come back inconclusive due to complex trauma. That had confused me then but now made a lot of sense too. As did their guarded responses. They could see my ADHD. I wouldn’t have been ready to hear it.
My restored autism and memory were helping me break down and understand what was going on in my mind. Understand my ADHD.
Then my mind went quiet. It had been quiet lately but now it was still. I thought I’d lost my emotions. I wasn’t reacting to things the way I had before. Took several days to realise that it was my anxiety that was gone, not my emotions! Emotions were very much there when appropriate. I could sit with them now. But I could no longer be triggered and I no longer had a constant buzz of anxiety, overthinking or racing thoughts. I was stunned to find I’d lived my whole life with that noise and finally when it went quiet I mistook my anxiety for emotions.
How did I live like that my whole life?
I could think so clearly. Focus inside and outside. Increased norepinephrine — attention, focus, alertness.
Next I started finding it easy to say no to people. To be direct. Set and maintain boundaries without resorting to people pleasing or worrying about not being liked. And I became ambivalent about many things I’d give my attention to previously. Restored executive function, automatically prioritising what mattered to me and what didn’t.
More thinking, feeling and processing. I’d been sharing my journey online but was largely keeping to myself in real life. Taking the time to let all this happen. The assembly line still moving. Daily realisations and more letting go.
I was due to go up to 50 mg after a couple of weeks. I had mixed feelings about 40 mg. A voice inside me swayed me back down to 30 mg. It said:
“You’re too autistic. You want to be like that in public? And you’re becoming a bit arrogant too, saying no and ignoring messages too. Maybe you need a little anxiety and restlessness to keep you on your toes? A little people pleasing is good. You used to like making people laugh, remember?”
I wondered who I was becoming. Someone more calm, serious and direct. Was that who I wanted to be?
I went back to 30 mg and within two days realised I’d made a mistake.
A little anxiety was back and I was more restless. Less confident too. Bit too eager to reach for phone notifications to satisfy dopamine hunger. Or to please people.
I’d been tricked. By who?
The old me. The ADHD.
The old me had never known peace. The old me would never just let me be. The old me was only ever hungry or suspicious and fearful.
I was done with the old me. I would fight him!
I was going to continue up to 50 mg.
Those weeks in seclusion in my old bedroom at my mum’s I was in a cocoon. In between lives.
But in my mind I imagined the confrontation as a scene from Tolkien. Me as Gandalf facing the Balrog, an amalgam of my old self and the ADHD, at the Bridge of Khazad-dûm.
“You cannot pass.”
I broke the bridge and we fell down into the abyss. Fighting for days in the dark. From the lowest dungeon to the highest peak. Until at last I cast down my old self, the sum of all my pain and anguish.
Then darkness took me, and I strayed out of thought and time…
But it was not the end. I felt life in me again…
Reborn
I carried on reflecting and processing. I decided to explain to my mum what I’d been diagnosed with and sent her an article explaining ADHD. Told her to read it a little at a time, she’d always had difficulty concentrating… and then I knew before she even said the words “this sounds like me.” My heart broke in pity and grief.
It all made sense. Her whole life. So obvious now. Her inability to concentrate, the constant anxiety, overthinking and mistrust. Looked down at by others, even me. I thought all her problems were down to never trying hard enough. I felt a tremendous sense of guilt. It had never been her fault. Nothing had been her fault. She was like me. I was like her. I’d never wanted to admit that before. Didn’t want to see it.
She was my mum.
I forgave her. Instantly. There was nothing to forgive.
It had been hard for her with my dad. I’d already guessed he was autistic like me but of course he also had ADHD. It explained everything. He died alone almost 20 years ago. I saw him very differently now too. His frustrations while trying to homeschool me, not being able to regulate his emotions…
I spent time with my mum rather than hiding in my room like I had for months. Had dinner with her. No longer bothered by her anxieties or impulsive jumping in mid sentence. None of it bothered me anymore. I could be kind and patient.
I told her I loved her for the first time in my life.
She said I’d been reborn.
I had. I cried.
Emotional regulation. Not being overwhelmed by strong emotions and triggered to fight or flight. Staying present, in control and feeling. That was what had allowed the trauma to finally be processed. Now it was letting me connect with my mum too.
My brain was no longer desperately looking for dopamine or living in survival mode, emotions could be allowed to grow as situations developed without being cut off. My nervous system was no longer fragile. I could feel love, anger, grief, sadness. All without fear of being overwhelmed. I had control.
That meant I could also handle conflict without triggering a fight or flight response. I could let myself become angry and remain fully in control. And I could also be vulnerable.and allow intimacy.
It was incredibly empowering. I felt it. I was complete.
It gave me an innate sense of confidence, self-assuredness and security I’d never known before.
Over the years people had said to me “you just need to let someone love you. They were right but it hadn’t been possible. There had been a structural and chemical block in my brain. Now gone.
Fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of intimacy, avoiding conflict, anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, negative self-talk, overthinking, decision paralysis… all of it. It was all gone now.
Every problem I’d put down to “childhood trauma” before was suddenly solved.
This was the first time in my life I felt like what I’d thought a grown up was meant to be.
People with ADHD can seem childlike and be overly trusting, naive or earnest. Or they can seem like they don’t have full control over their emotions, being triggered and having outbursts or freezing up. That can all result in them not being taken seriously, or worse, manipulated, used or abused. As I have been at times, sometimes without realising.
So it was a surprise for me to find I was suddenly a very capable, resilient and mature person.
I became everything I would have wanted in a parent when I was a child. Everything my parents could never be because they themselves had struggled with the same problems I have with far less support and understanding.
My journey had been about reparenting myself.
Emotional regulation has been the most important breakthrough of my life. What I’d spent years in therapy trying to achieve. Here it was a couple of months into taking ADHD medication.
I no longer had an unfillable void. I was enough.
I could let people in. I didn’t have to be alone. And I wasn’t alone, there were already many people in my life.
I could know peace. I was already feeling it. My mind was clear.
My life could be free of anxiety. Decisions could be guided by my feelings.
I came out of my cocoon and started seeing friends. They noticed I seemed more at ease, spoke slower, listened more. I even ate slower. I was easygoing and smiled more too. Nothing seemed to bother me. I could handle anything. Of course I could. All the lives I’d lived. I’d been all over the world.
This was the me I’d glimpsed at times when riding high on dopamine from some achievement. Then gone after a few days or weeks. My “higher self.” Left tormented by memories of how self-assured and confident I’d been and how easy life had felt. Almost wishing that self had never existed because I couldn’t understand how I could rise so high and then sink so low again. But it had only ever been low dopamine and norepinephrine. Now corrected.
Now I could be that self all the time. The only self I ever wanted to be.
All the praise I’d received over the years that I couldn’t accept because I didn’t think I was good enough. All the kind words. The high regard my friends held me in. All making me afraid of letting them or myself down. Now no longer afraid. I accepted it all.
I understood what it meant to love myself for the first time in my life.
All the difficulties in my life. The fears, the endless striving, never enough, never content. The anxiety and indecision. The confusion and lack of purpose.
All ADHD.
My whole life.
All the unprocessed trauma blocked by the ADHD. Now healed. The ADHD. Now managed.
To think the assessment happened by accident. A part of me had tried to avoid learning about ADHD. Tried to quit medication at points and persuaded me to even drop down in dosage to prevent the ADHD from being fully managed.
I fought it and I won. And become a new person.
Now I can see it and have it under control, I don’t resent it. I did for a while but it is a part of me. Yes the relentless pushing didn’t let me know joy or happiness but it did give me more experiences than many have in a whole lifetime. The knowledge and skills I’ve gained. The people I’ve met. It set me up.
So I thank it for all that. But it almost killed me. So I’m going to leave it drugged and take all its money. That’s a fair deal.
There are only a finite number of moments in life. I’d like to be present in as many of the ones I have left as I can. Letting my feelings guide me to do as little or as much I want. Or to do nothing at all. Simply sit with my thoughts and feelings. Just be.
Medication has changed my life and unlocked neurological barriers I didn’t know were there. It is approximating the dopamine and norepinephrine levels of someone without ADHD. If I stopped taking medication now the realisations, understanding and healing would remain. That’s permanent. But the ADHD symptoms, overthinking, rejection sensitivity and others, would return. I would return to reward seeking and fight or flight responses. I would no longer be able to regulate my emotions.
But maybe some better coping mechanisms would emerge. Neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to remould itself, is present throughout life and so medication and understanding may rewire my brain.
I’d still be in a better position to manage ADHD than I was before. I could look into Cognitive Behaviour Therapy or Dialectical Behavior Therapy to help manage it better. I could work with an ADHD coach to help with planning and decisions. But I’d lose the ability to feel deeply.
That to me is the most important thing. To feel a connection with others, myself and the world around me.
So I choose to remain on medication.
In the end my journey was one of trauma and ADHD. It was what happened to me and also who I was. Who I am.
It was rules I operated to, a brain that oscillated between reward seeking and survival to protect a nervous system easily overwhelmed. Those rules determined how I thought, felt, acted and responded. They fundamentally shaped the choices I made, my sense of self, my personality and preferences. Those choices branched out. That was my life.
We are all essentially the rules we operate to, the choices we make as a result and the memories and experiences we have. Our lives are the branches of those choices.
I am now operating to a different set of rules. Ones based on sitting with my thoughts and feelings. Connecting deeply with myself and others.
This is what is missed in the conversation about ADHD. Concentration, hyperactivity and impulsiveness are the tip of the iceberg. ADHD fundamentally shapes who you are as a person. It impacts every single aspect of your life. It’s not something that makes school or work difficult. It makes life difficult.
It’s been over two months since this started and I am already a different person. Inside and out. My life will now branch in new and unexpected ways. Slower ways. My priorities have already shifted. Or rather, I finally have some.
I can find peace and happiness. I can finish my book too. I’ll have to rewrite it.
How did I undergo such a dramatic change in such a short space of time?
The work had already been done. Therapy wasn’t wasted nor were the 100,000 words. It was all waiting for this. The dam to be released to wash away the trauma. The ADHD to be managed.
This all came at the right time. Just as I was about to give up hope my “childhood trauma” could ever be healed.
And now I am free.
Reborn.
A note to others on a similar journey
I hope this account helps others. It can be a difficult and frightening journey to go on. Assessment and diagnosis alone can bring up many painful and unexpected memories. Medication can feel scary and unsettling.
Take it slow. Make sure friends and family know what you are dealing with. Most of all, make as much time for yourself as you can. The true benefits of medication are not in increased work concentration and productivity, they are in the increased introspection and reflection you’re now capable of by sitting with your thoughts and feelings.
There may be a lot of pain and grief along the way. Let it happen. It was waiting to get out.
There’s freedom and new possibilities on the other side.
You may become a different person. Or you may not.
All versions of you are valid.
ADHD isn’t well understood. Awareness needs to increase. It is less about attention deficit or hyperactivity and more about executive dysfunction and emotional dysregulation and how those limit people from living full lives. Leaving them vulnerable to abuse, crime, poverty, loneliness and early death. Like my dad.
General estimates from the UK and US put people with ADHD at around 4–5% of the population. That’s about 1 in 25 people.
In the UK it’s thought there are 80% or 2 million undiagnosed. Half of the people ending up in prison could have ADHD. People who can’t regulate their fight or flight response due to a neurological block have no control, meaning cases where people don’t even understand why they did what they did. Those not in prison are also suffering in other ways, trapped behind facades and coping mechanisms.
Look again at that shy and timid coworker. The workaholic. The gambler. The addict. The outwardly successful entrepreneur. Are they happy or are they stuck in a loop?
If you go on the journey then don’t be surprised if you suddenly start noticing ADHD traits in others already in your life. Your family, your friends. You may see things in them you couldn’t before.
If you think someone may have ADHD then tread carefully. It can be unpleasant and dysregulating to be told there’s something “wrong” with you. Modelling behaviours and sharing experiences is one way to help. This is what I am doing.
Telling someone they have ADHD may drive them further away. My own reaction to my diagnosis was disbelief and then nonchalance. ADHD is very good at telling stories, hiding or fighting back when discovered.
Be gentle.
Those already diagnosed may also not be so far into their journey so make no assumptions there either.
Diagnosis is only the beginning of the journey.
There are many communities in real life and online. You’ll be welcomed in any you join. People with ADHD understand rejection and anxiety. Support is everything.
Your tribe won’t be hard to find. It may have been around you this whole time.
I’ll close with some words from Rilke:
“Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.”
For those with ADHD every feeling is final. But it doesn’t have to be. Managing ADHD can change that.
Best of luck to you on your journey and thank you for reading.
