What I’ve learned after being diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 45

This is a follow up to an article I wrote for Choice Literacy. I highly recommend signing up for a subscription to access all the smart thinking and writing from literacy teachers and leaders. I also appreciated Ruth Ayres’s thoughtful lead essay that builds off of the piece.

Earlier this year, my parents dropped off a box of artifacts from my childhood.

It was your typical collection: certificates of achievement, newspaper clippings of box scores from my athletic events, artwork from my primary years.

And report cards.

I didn’t need to rifle through them to remember what they stated. My report cards were always a bit of alphabet soup: a couple of As, a few Bs, a C here or there, and once in a while a D or even an F. The comments were equally diverse; “Hard Worker” might be printed directly above “Needs to apply himself better.”

At the time, I didn’t think much of this feedback, other than to chalk it up to my need for relevance with whatever work I might do and being pretty absent-minded.

But for whatever reason, revisiting these artifacts from my past prompted me to pay attention to some of my current challenges, for example:

• Starting projects but only getting halfway done with many of them
• Misplacing my keys and my wallet on a seemingly rotating basis
• Regularly missing grammar and spelling errors in my writing
• A struggle with boredom

Also remembering that ADHD runs in my family, I finally decided to get assessed for it.

Not long after, I was diagnosed with ADHD combined type: inattentive and hyperactive, with the former quite prominent.

After feeling relief in an explanation for some of my challenges, a question came up for me:

Why didn’t I seek this assessment sooner?

The simplest answer is, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. Certainly, there were environmental cues that told me something was off. But the pernicious part about ADHD, at least for me, is the limited capacity for self-awareness and critical thinking – the very skills I needed to start addressing this challenge.

Now that I have started taking medication and engaging in counseling, things became more clear.

A short story to further explain this idea of not-knowing: In high school, we were preparing for the upcoming baseball season indoors. I was a pitcher, and I was throwing a simulated game off a wooden mound in the gym. The catcher started complaining that I wasn't throwing the pitches he was calling, for example a curve instead of a fastball. Shortly thereafter, I got my eyes checked and I was prescribed glasses. Oh, this is what I was missing, I remember thinking when I tried them on for the first time. For me, it was a somewhat similar experience once I started treatment for ADHD; it was almost like a new reality.

This leads to the second reason I pursued support: it was only until I began journaling and meditating that I could see my thoughts and experiences more objectively. I started this a couple of years ago when I applied strategies for being more present; I slowly realized how tired I was from working to improve and not seeing significant progress in comparison to my efforts.

To be clear, I cannot say that either journaling or meditation significantly helped me in terms of being more mindful and calm. But both activities did start to give me a sort of feedback loop, in which I could better gauge my ability to sustain these and other tasks. Conclusion: It was difficult.

And a final reason for delaying:

I didn’t want to admit that I might have ADHD.

It contradicted how I saw and presented myself: a productive educator, writer, and family man. Our culture accelerates judgement and rewards achievement, especially with the advent of social media. We are encouraged to portray ourselves to be Pinterest-perfect. Instagrammable. To acknowledge that I may not be who I thought I was would require not only being open and vulnerable; it would require an identity shift. I think at some level in my subconscious, this shift felt like too big of a change.

However, as I have reached this stage in my life, especially with the increasing realization that my time on this planet is limited (and no, it was not a mid-life crisis :-), the urgency to improve felt high.

Thankfully, the identity shift I have to make is one I am starting to welcome: an imperfect person who is still a successful educator, writer, dad, and husband, with the added benefit of being able to use this knowledge and self-awareness to better help myself and maybe even others.

Three things I have learned after being diagnosed with ADHD.

#1 – Admitting that I might have this challenge was the first step to seeking help.

I see this initial reluctance with others too, especially parents who are hesitant to have their child evaluated. I believe it goes beyond not wanting their child to take medicine, although that is certainly part of the issue. It goes deeper, particularly (I suspect) to a need of avoiding the perception of appearing flawed or feeling like a failure as a parent. It’s not an accurate narrative but it can still feel very true for someone.

This understanding is something I will bring more consistently to my conversations with others.

#2 – Counseling and medication are only part of the solution.

Don’t get me wrong – these two interventions have been crucial for becoming and feeling more successful.

Exhibit A: I had two teachers tell me how smoothly the first couple days of school went this year. While recognizing an awesome faculty, staff and group of parents to help make this happen, I do chalk up some of this smoothness to my improved capacity to get things done more efficiently and to do them well.

In addition to these hoped-for changes, I’ve also noticed that I have increased patience for the people in my personal life. I don’t feel myself getting as annoyed with issues we all deal with. There’s this lessening of reactivity to the events in my life when they don’t match my expectations. Self-regulation has improved.

And yet counseling and medication are not the complete solution to a challenge like this. Although pretty new to this situation, what I’ve noticed is they help lay the foundation for forgiving my past self, being at ease with my current self, and more likely reaching that future self I want to achieve.

It’s also not all about me, which leads into my third understanding…

#3 – When we take care of ourselves, we can better take care of others.

I’ll be honest: I was not totally sold on self-compassion as a strategy for improving myself. Journaling, meditation, etc. felt a little woo-woo.

What I’ve realized is that by addressing my needs first, I can better respond to the needs of others. A smooth start to the school year, less frustration at home…the benefits I receive from taking care of myself seem to have a multiplier effect. Self-compassion and compassion for others are mutually inclusive.

Okay, I will leave you with one more question that you may be wondering:

Why am I sharing this with you?

First, writing is how I process my thinking and experiences. Like the journaling I did before my diagnosis, I can see how I view reality right now and respond accordingly.

Second, by writing publicly, I hope that others who might struggle with similar challenges will seek out support and get answers. Maybe the challenge is internal, external, or a mix of both.

Finally, I want to do my best to represent how the world actually exists instead of perpetuating the myth of perfection that social media and other online platforms encourage. It’s unhealthy to constantly feel this need to meet expectations that simply aren’t attainable, at least without sacrificing our well-being. I write online to support others and to offer solutions to their challenges.

By openly sharing my own challenges and sharing the solutions that have helped me, maybe that’s the best way to help you, too.

Take care,

Matt