I wrote my master’s thesis in a week after putting it off – and dodging my supervisor – for eight months. I rescheduled my most recent NCT six times. I have wasted thousands of euro on unreturned purchases. I dropped out of my first attempt at university because I simply could not study.
Considering these facts it any wonder then that a certain life milestone that comes knocking for many elder millennial women has come calling for me? Yes, friends, it’s time for me to book an ADHD assessment.
I can imagine that a good number of you dear readers have already rolled your eyes off into the middle of next week. Sure, we’re all at it these days, aren’t we? Looking for a label to explain away our problems. Getting things diagnosed left, right and centre. There was none of this guff around back in your day, I’d say. Except there was lots of this stuff around back in your day. It just wasn’t recognised, diagnosed or treated. Especially in girls and women. And particularly in girls and women who managed to mask their neurodivergence via various coping mechanisms and decent school performances.
I’m not interested in a label. I’m not even looking for the validation of a diagnoses. I am merely holding out hope that in the event of the nod from the psychiatrist, the resulting prescription for stimulant medication might offer some respite from the debilitating procrastination that has dominated my life. It started in earnest in secondary school as soon as responsibility for my work shifted and deadlines and self-motivation came into play. Things only got done after I had put them off for as long as humanly possible. I would tie myself in knots worrying about the work I hadn’t started instead of, you know, starting it. I crammed for everything. I cheated on tests, not because I didn’t care, but because I was afraid of being found out. On the surface I was intelligent and performing fine. Underneath, my little legs were going like the clappers.
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In recent years as social media has highlighted the symptoms and struggles of those with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) I have found myself ticking every box and identifying with every Instagram Reel and TikTok video. I’ve never given myself permission to consider that I actually have it, though. I’ve never felt like I was “allowed”, because I wasn’t very disruptive or a cause for concern as a younger child. I had resigned myself to the fact that I am just a bad, lazy person.
Recently a clinical psychologist who I’ve been seeing on and off for five years has suggested that an assessment would be prudent, after a conversation about my procrastination and its detrimental impact on so many aspects of my life. They call it “executive dysfunction” in the ADHD world and it has affected every single job I’ve ever had. I still have regular nightmares about my time as a radio newsreader wherein I fail to put a bulletin together in time and then am faced with a blank screen and dead air. This happened in real life more times than I care to admit. The psychologist also identified a pattern of racing thoughts. There I was labouring under the assumption that everyone has 20 or 30 tabs open in their brain at all times.
Since the suggestion of an assessment I’ve dedicated a dozen of my mental tabs to gathering evidence of my potential neurodivergence. Yes, I was a pretty agreeable child but I was also a very anxious little girl who hid anything she was worried about. No, I wasn’t a pest at school but I do remember demanding quite a bit of various teachers’ attention. I got in horrible, traumatic trouble once in primary school for voicing an opinion during a task of not-so-creative writing that school was “sometimes boring”. I was made an example of in front of the whole class by a teacher who, in hindsight, was a bully. I was reduced to sobs and worried that my puffy eyes might not have returned to normal when it was time to go home. I didn’t want anyone to find out I’d been in such trouble. I hid everything. Including, possibly, ADHD.
The assessment process is expensive and confusing, and I feel like a fraud. It’s worth it though if there’s the slightest chance that medication could get the procrastination monkey off my back. I might even start sending this column in when I’m supposed to. Imagine that!
