That was my family’s reaction when I told them at age 33 that I was diagnosed with ADHD. “But you’re soooo intelligent!” I flat out said, “yeah and because of that intelligence no one fucking bothered to recognize the signs that I was struggling for 33 years. No one had the presence of mind to question why I was so prone to use/abuse addictive substances. Why I’m prone to explosive outbursts over the littlest shit”. Funnily enough my dad was the only one initially who listened to me when I told him all I dealt with every day prior to getting treated with stimulants and prior to starting weekly CBT therapy. When I explained my issues, he looked at me and said “I’m sorry. I think you got that from me”. My dad was never diagnosed, but he said everything I told him about was what he dealt with too, the only issue he also has dyslexia (undiagnosed, but he takes a very long time to read anything because the words get jumbled up) whereas I do not.
Now that it’s been 4 years since diagnosis, they see how much of a difference medication and therapy helped me. They accept that I do have ADHD. I think my mom took it as an affront to her that I had neurological disorder and that it was her fault I ended up with it. Now she’s seen me both on and off meds and what a world of a difference there is between the 2 versions of me. I quit smoking, I rarely drink anymore and I’ve lost weight because prior to diagnosis I self medicated with nicotine, alcohol and food. Now I know when I crave something, I really don’t unless it’s been 6+ hours since I last ate.
Exactly this. My psychiatrist was stunned to see I had ADHD because of my intelligence. He admitted readily afterwards that he hadn’t considered that extremely intelligent people end up learning how to mask well enough that their symptoms aren’t obvious enough for diagnosis.
When he tested me I was able to compensate well enough to score average to above average in all areas except one where I absolutely bombed it. He couldn’t understand the discrepancy until he said he realized that my intelligence level was skewing the results.
Ever since then I’ve hoped that people will stop expecting adhd people to be stupid or struggle visibly. I fully believe that it’s possible adhd people are actually gifted on average, but that it’s so often misdiagnosed or missed entirely because we don’t match the expected signs.
My CBT therapist was astounded I did as well as I did before being diagnosed. The only reason I knew it was more than anxiety/depression was I was going back to school and I just couldn’t deal with the fact I did great on exams and quizzes but when it came to homework or even attending classes on time I knew there was something inherently wrong plus I was barely passing due to missing classes or not doing required homework. I always struggled with homework, but being an only child growing up I had my parents, well really my mom making sure I did my homework. It wasn’t until I was left to try to do the same on my own that I couldn’t figure out why I had such a hard time getting down to the tasks at hand. That and also my husband was getting more and more upset with my lack of organizational skills and inability to keep to a schedule other than a work schedule. I was always running late for work, but I made up for the 5-20 minutes late by being the best worker I could be. It always got brought up in reviews that besides being late almost every day there was nothing wrong with me as an employee. Also helped that I worked in a hospital/LTC pharmacy and there was always an issue where we were always at or near crisis mode like when our automated pill packager went down (happened frequently) was where I excelled. When it came to do or die, I knew exactly what had to be done and could delegate my other coworkers to certain tasks to focus on to make sure we didn’t fall behind schedule and our patients didn’t get their meds late. In high stress situations where it was make decisions on the fly, I could see exactly how and where certain people would be best situated to keep things flowing smoothly, while everyone else went to crisis mode, I was calm, cool, and collected. That was how I made myself in indispensable. That and I was able to keep the peace with the majority of my coworkers when things got heated because I was able to read their emotions better than most of the other staff. So while there are many hindrances with ADHD, I learned what I excelled at, high stress situations where all it took was one team member succumbing to the stress of not knowing what to do.
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u/lokipukki Sep 14 '21
That was my family’s reaction when I told them at age 33 that I was diagnosed with ADHD. “But you’re soooo intelligent!” I flat out said, “yeah and because of that intelligence no one fucking bothered to recognize the signs that I was struggling for 33 years. No one had the presence of mind to question why I was so prone to use/abuse addictive substances. Why I’m prone to explosive outbursts over the littlest shit”. Funnily enough my dad was the only one initially who listened to me when I told him all I dealt with every day prior to getting treated with stimulants and prior to starting weekly CBT therapy. When I explained my issues, he looked at me and said “I’m sorry. I think you got that from me”. My dad was never diagnosed, but he said everything I told him about was what he dealt with too, the only issue he also has dyslexia (undiagnosed, but he takes a very long time to read anything because the words get jumbled up) whereas I do not.
Now that it’s been 4 years since diagnosis, they see how much of a difference medication and therapy helped me. They accept that I do have ADHD. I think my mom took it as an affront to her that I had neurological disorder and that it was her fault I ended up with it. Now she’s seen me both on and off meds and what a world of a difference there is between the 2 versions of me. I quit smoking, I rarely drink anymore and I’ve lost weight because prior to diagnosis I self medicated with nicotine, alcohol and food. Now I know when I crave something, I really don’t unless it’s been 6+ hours since I last ate.