Yep, I’m not diagnosed but I’m pretty sure I have it. The one doctor I had long enough to even bring it up immediately discounted the possibility because I’d graduated high school (which he didn’t even bother checking if that was true before saying that). So many people dismiss it out of hand simply because I’m “not a complete idiot”. Yet many people with diagnosed ADHD have just assumed I’m diagnosed and are shocked when I say I’m not. One person actually laughed at me because they thought I was joking because “There’s no way you don’t have ADHD, stop messing with me”. Like I probably do, but I’m not diagnosed. Unfortunately ADHD diagnosis is far from the top of the list of shit I need to work on so it won’t happen soon.
I got diagnosed but ended up getting a second opinion because I could tell my doctor didn’t know anything about adhd, he just gave me a brief 1 page questionnaire to fill out to diagnose me, and then later when I was talking to him about how I need a doctor’s note about my adhd related to my driver’s license he told me it was silly for me to need that because “people with adhd are actually better drivers”, and I knew at that point that I didn’t actually trust his opinion on the matter (people with adhd are NOT better drivers in most cases) and so I sought out an assessment with the health centre at my local university (I had access as a student) and their test was actually in depth and their doctors actually knew what they were talking about and what the executive functions are. They confirmed my diagnosis for me lol. A lot of family doctors/GPs don’t actually know a lot about adhd, but they could at least recommend people to a specialist instead of dismissing it when they don’t know anything about it. Graduating high school is NOT a determining factor, many people who get diagnosed as adults are people who graduated high school, me included.
Yep, like I knew the high school thing was utter bullshit cause yeah, I graduated, but so did the student who showed up twice a week and turned in work never. I had a few classmates make it to middle school unable to read because the district cared more about their numbers than students education. And on the rare occasion they actually tried to hold a student back to repeat a grade they would instantly cave if a parent pushed any amount.
I knew someone whose parents tried to hold her back in elementary school because she’d missed a lot of the year for health reasons and they absolutely refused to consider it. Apparently “being in a class with her friends” was more important than missing over half the school year. She’d had tutors, but they weren’t very helpful because the meds she was on at the time messed with her ability to commit things to long term memory (it was only temporary while in treatment). So yeah, my high school had a great graduation rate, but many of them simply shouldn’t have graduated.
But yeah, he was a psychiatrist and believed that. Needless to say I didn’t go back, but sadly not even for this reason. He tried to convince me to stay on a med that made me so nauseous I couldn’t eat or barely drink for four days and nearly ended up in the ER for dehydration (quite frankly I still should’ve gone, but I just wanted to sleep). Like max dose prescription nausea meds couldn’t keep things down. But he wanted me to stay on it for “only six more weeks”. Like I can say with 100% certainty that no food for six weeks would either kill me or land me in the hospital from malnourishment.
Also there are some kids with adhd who legitimately do well in school, because adhd is different for everyone and if a kid is interested in the topics being taught in school then they’ll have a much easier time doing well. I wasn’t one of those kids myself, I just scraped by, but I’ve known kids like that. It’s just a really stupid metric. And like, just because an adhd kid is doing well in school that doesn’t mean their adhd doesn’t affect them in other aspects of their life, so it’s not like they don’t still benefit from a diagnosis or treatment.
Yep, I practically slept through math with straight A’s, so apparently that meant I couldn’t be struggling. Like yeah, math was easy, but I’d also spend 4 hours on a 30 minute history assignment and get a C. But my math grades were “proof” that if I “just put in a little effort” I could have straight A’s in every class. Which always hurt, like what do you mean “just put in a little effort”? I put in eight times the effort I was expected to and barely got a passing grade. Being good at one school subject doesn’t magically make you good at all of them. But if I got anything less than a 100% on everything I was in for a “lecture” aka 30 minutes of screaming about how they didn’t raise a failure (and 30 extra minutes of sleep I had to miss to work on homework). I would’ve seriously benefited from help, instead I got shame.
Yep, I’m not diagnosed but I’m pretty sure I have it. The one doctor I had long enough to even bring it up immediately discounted the possibility because I’d graduated high school (which he didn’t even bother checking if that was true before saying that). So many people dismiss it out of hand simply because I’m “not a complete idiot”. Yet many people with diagnosed ADHD have just assumed I’m diagnosed and are shocked when I say I’m not. One person actually laughed at me because they thought I was joking because “There’s no way you don’t have ADHD, stop messing with me”. Like I probably do, but I’m not diagnosed. Unfortunately ADHD diagnosis is far from the top of the list of shit I need to work on so it won’t happen soon.
I got diagnosed but ended up getting a second opinion because I could tell my doctor didn’t know anything about adhd, he just gave me a brief 1 page questionnaire to fill out to diagnose me, and then later when I was talking to him about how I need a doctor’s note about my adhd related to my driver’s license he told me it was silly for me to need that because “people with adhd are actually better drivers”, and I knew at that point that I didn’t actually trust his opinion on the matter (people with adhd are NOT better drivers in most cases) and so I sought out an assessment with the health centre at my local university (I had access as a student) and their test was actually in depth and their doctors actually knew what they were talking about and what the executive functions are. They confirmed my diagnosis for me lol. A lot of family doctors/GPs don’t actually know a lot about adhd, but they could at least recommend people to a specialist instead of dismissing it when they don’t know anything about it. Graduating high school is NOT a determining factor, many people who get diagnosed as adults are people who graduated high school, me included.
Yep, like I knew the high school thing was utter bullshit cause yeah, I graduated, but so did the student who showed up twice a week and turned in work never. I had a few classmates make it to middle school unable to read because the district cared more about their numbers than students education. And on the rare occasion they actually tried to hold a student back to repeat a grade they would instantly cave if a parent pushed any amount.
I knew someone whose parents tried to hold her back in elementary school because she’d missed a lot of the year for health reasons and they absolutely refused to consider it. Apparently “being in a class with her friends” was more important than missing over half the school year. She’d had tutors, but they weren’t very helpful because the meds she was on at the time messed with her ability to commit things to long term memory (it was only temporary while in treatment). So yeah, my high school had a great graduation rate, but many of them simply shouldn’t have graduated.
But yeah, he was a psychiatrist and believed that. Needless to say I didn’t go back, but sadly not even for this reason. He tried to convince me to stay on a med that made me so nauseous I couldn’t eat or barely drink for four days and nearly ended up in the ER for dehydration (quite frankly I still should’ve gone, but I just wanted to sleep). Like max dose prescription nausea meds couldn’t keep things down. But he wanted me to stay on it for “only six more weeks”. Like I can say with 100% certainty that no food for six weeks would either kill me or land me in the hospital from malnourishment.
Also there are some kids with adhd who legitimately do well in school, because adhd is different for everyone and if a kid is interested in the topics being taught in school then they’ll have a much easier time doing well. I wasn’t one of those kids myself, I just scraped by, but I’ve known kids like that. It’s just a really stupid metric. And like, just because an adhd kid is doing well in school that doesn’t mean their adhd doesn’t affect them in other aspects of their life, so it’s not like they don’t still benefit from a diagnosis or treatment.
Yep, I practically slept through math with straight A’s, so apparently that meant I couldn’t be struggling. Like yeah, math was easy, but I’d also spend 4 hours on a 30 minute history assignment and get a C. But my math grades were “proof” that if I “just put in a little effort” I could have straight A’s in every class. Which always hurt, like what do you mean “just put in a little effort”? I put in eight times the effort I was expected to and barely got a passing grade. Being good at one school subject doesn’t magically make you good at all of them. But if I got anything less than a 100% on everything I was in for a “lecture” aka 30 minutes of screaming about how they didn’t raise a failure (and 30 extra minutes of sleep I had to miss to work on homework). I would’ve seriously benefited from help, instead I got shame.