When I was in high school, I had a feeling something wasn’t right. I was really struggling with getting my work done but had no idea what it could be. I had done some tests, which came back as being diagnosed with Dyslexia. It wasn’t severe enough to warrant accommodations. I remember my marks had always been high enough to sneak past suspicions that something was wrong. Even with this Dyslexia diagnosis, something wasn’t adding up. It wasn’t until my fourth year of university when my ADHD was diagnosed. When Covid hit, I had bad panic attacks. They were bad enough to warrant a therapist. It wasn’t until I started to open up about my anxiety that my therapist told me there was a strong possibility that I had ADHD. My entire life, I had always thought that I was not working hard enough. I was always told that I was smart but not applying myself to my full potential. I knew that when I put my mind to things, my marks were phenomenal, but putting my mind to things meant sacrificing everything else in my life. I learned that there is a difference between wanting to do work and not being able to and being able to do work and not wanting to. Two things that in my mind equated to the same. My inability to get my work done was a sign of laziness, which I now know isn’t true. For years I had been working myself to the bone. Studying from what felt like the crack of dawn to the evening in order to reach what I felt my potential was. Then I found out that the amount I was working was not, in fact, normal.
It is very well known that women are often underdiagnosed with having ADHD. People who perform well at school also raise no suspicions of the possibility of having any issues. Whenever I used to bring up the fact that something seemed wrong, I was always dismissed by my teachers. I reached out to my doctors and guidance counsellors at school, who informed me that my marks were high, so I shouldn’t be complaining. I was told that I wasn’t trying hard enough time and time again and that I had potential that I wasn’t achieving. It ate away at me. My entire life became studying so that I didn’t fall behind. My marks were always high enough to avoid any suspicion of something else going on. What people didn’t see were the nights where I was crying myself to sleep because I couldn’t memorize math formulas the times I would try to study at a reasonable hour but would end up doing all my work at 4 in the morning and my fear of going out to parties because it was time I could be spent studying and getting my work done.
Now that I know what the problem was, I can much more easily work with it and find a solution. It’s not an excuse by any stretch of the imagination but knowing that I have ADHD helps me understand myself and my needs better. Some days are great, and some days are bad, but I now can manage myself and my time better. Finding a diagnosis has allowed me to articulate what I need from the people around me better and it allowed me to have a healthier work-life balance. I only wish that I would have found out sooner and that it wouldn’t have taken a pandemic for me to get diagnosed. The education system in that aspect had failed me. The years I spent struggling could have very much been avoided if someone had just listened to me when I said something was wrong.