The lost girls: ‘Chaotic and curious, women with ADHD all have missed red flags that haunt us’
The lost girls: ‘Chaotic and curious, women with ADHD all have missed red flags that haunt us’
After multiple burnouts, in my early 30s I finally knew why life sometimes felt harder for me. It made perfect sense, so why had no one noticed before?
Saving this to show to my girlfriend later. I've been pretty sure she was ADHD since I first met her, and that has only been reinforced as I've gotten to know her. She often has to cancel dates at the last second because of some forgotten obligation or because she has to work late in order to meet a deadline. She's also told me that she has trouble applying herself if she doesn't have the pressure of a looming deadline. But she's also intensely curious about everything and loves falling down strange rabbit holes of information.
My therapist doesn't believe in adult ADHD and therefore also not in my self-diagnosis. This text just showed me again how obvious it is that I'm audhd though... Good read, thanks :)
Oh and the swan story was pretty funny, too!
@flora_explora @Five Ugh. No one deserves to be constrained by what their therapist "believes in".
I was diagnosed at 48, 4 years ago. And there is not a doubt in the world that it is in fact truth.
If you have any opportunity for a second opinion, go get one. If the diagnosis will help you, then your therapist's opinion doesn't matter.
It's shocking how much superstition can make it into what should be a more formalized method of treatment. ADHD is a quantifiable proven phenomenon. If someone you trust to be a positive influence to your health doesn't "believe" in it, they don't have a reliable method of sense-making and generally shouldn't be thought of as an authority. They lack they ability to be authoratative about anything except by councidence because they lack the ability to base their claims on reliable evidence since that appears not to be a factor for them.
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Despite the name, ADHD doesn’t exactly result in a “deficit” of attention, but more an issue regulating it, making it harder to plan, prioritise, avoid impulses, remember things and focus.
You discover cassowary eggs are bright green and in 2005, UK police found a leg of swan in the Queen’s Master of Music’s freezer.
Because of society’s gender norms, girls with ADHD are often dismissed as “daydreamers” and “overly sensitive”, as if we are a romantic, quirky caricature from a John Green novel or the Disney Princess canon.
The frequency of zone-outs, disassociations and meltdowns caused by our hidden internal restlessness and our brain’s inability to regulate information and emotion goes unnoticed.
As a child who was prone to inattentiveness and impulsivity, I was repeatedly told to “stop daydreaming”, “slow down”, “hurry up” and “act like a lady.” Overwhelmed by the world, it wouldn’t take much for my cup to runneth over or for me to completely disassociate – I got very good at both.
Blend all this with the pressures of attempting to work at a regular pace in an irregular environment, without allowing room for adjustment, and you’ve almost got an ADHD tasting plate.
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