That ended with me finally explaining to him how the way he and my mother treated me as a child, with undiagnosed (and really not even conceptually understood at the time) ADHD caused me lasting trauma that persists to this day. I’m a 45 year old man, and I cried.
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Imagine there being no ND diagnosis at all, no concept between normal and short-bus, and the parents mostly taking advice from fellow Christians because there were no other authorities to look to beyond the family doctor.
You missed that wonder by about a decade.
Also, those previous gens were obvs not diagnosed themselves, and had their own traumas they were masking.
If you’re up to it, think about where those parents came from.
The 20th century was toxic, we’re just starting to climb out.
I have started to mentally replace “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” with “every hurt you heal makes you stronger”. I am sorry you got hurt, I wish you the best on your journey to heal.
I feel like I’m having that conversation with my father all the time and he still doesn’t get it.
The icing on that cake is that he totally has undiagnosed ADHD and PTSD, and he’s a rich old white man so he gets to go through life ignoring the consequences (for other people) and saying things like “That’s not my problem,” when anyone calls him out.
Similar story. The old man was adhd/asd/ptsd and went through life a narcissist burning everyone around him, but it was never his fault when there were negative consequences. Hope you have better success, mine never really learned or accepted what he was doing.
E: damn autocorrect. It’d be better to leave it misspelled than the nonsense it puts out.
I have doubts as to how much really sank in
I’m 43. I feel you. Lately I started processing what happened to me because of ADD. I’m lucky, fell on my feet and have a good life but I’ve lost so much time and was misunderstood for so long.
This is me, too. Undiagnosed ADD until my 50s. No H, probably like you. Misunderstood for decades. It was really hard for my parents, but they had no idea and are now passed.
Learning about it made everything click about my difficult life, but made me proud of what I had accomplished in spite of ADD. And now I have a toolbox of methods I can use to recognize my ADD as it is happening, and help counteract it. I also have medication to help.
I think one of the things I needed to know is, ADD / neurospiciness can also be an asset at the workplace. One of the marketable I excel at is learning new things. Whenever I am given a new skill to learn, I dive into it passionately. I love learning new stuff! So that fits perfectly with IT, which is constantly moving forward with new technology.
And with that I’m currently working on a late-life Masters degree in IT. So, happy ending, I guess. Find your niche!
There is a before and an after. Once you get diagnosed you can start mitigating. There are many tricks but one thing I’ve learned is being vocal about it. My colleagues know I’m forgettable so they send me meeting requests and tasks all the time. They’ve also learned not to bother me with questions all the time because a simple question can turn into a deep dive for me.
I did the same thing as you. Got my masters degree in public management 2 years ago.
Finding a niche is hard when you like to learn new stuff all the time. Setting up a home lab got me into IT so a few days ago I also payed for my inscription fee at the uni.
Meanwhile I have done my best with my kid. My best obviously wasn’t good enough. Even a psych degree did not prepare me, and I still feel like that talk is headed my way in a decade or two. ADHD is a fucking nightmare.
Am 44. Masked nearly all of my childhood to avoid beatings. Understand 100%.
The biggest issue was that when I was in a phase where I pursued something worthwhile, such as a science project, electronics, programming, they stopped me and said I obsessed too much over it, took it away, said I needed to focus more on something else. Which then did not stick, as it was forced, of course.
That’s exactly the kind of obsession that leads to success, though, and it took me years to recover after moving out. Wish I had those skills I wanted to get in all those areas, but I had to focus on one thing at that point, as the end of my 20s was approaching.
Also when they forced me to do something like “clean your room, immediately, until it is done”. With the tools at hand now, I know that I have to talk to myself like “in 20 minutes, set a 15 minute timer and get as much done as you can” or “pick one aspect (garbage, floor, desk) and do that immediately”. Or with homework: I know now that one tool I needed was to set everything up at the desk ready to start to get over that first step. An order like “all homework needs to be done immediately to perfection” does not work.
With my own child, the problem is that I don’t know who he really is down to the core. Is “10 minutes of cleaning on a stopwatch before dinner” just the right push, or too much sometimes, or too little?
I think a little push is right, to yourself and to your children, but it needs to be a “relative push”, depending on the person, the day etc. Some days, just staying in bed and crying is already the best you can do. At our best, we might be capable of doing 10 hours focussed tasks and just need a little “come on, do it”. Which of those is it? That’s the question. I find that meditation helps best to get a feeling for that. Sometimes, I just need a nap and didn’t realise, and that’s why it felt like the world is ending.
It’s interesting that you mention sleep. I have awful sleep apnea, and i wonder how much it is affecting my mood and divergence. I got the Inspire surgery though, so hopefully when this ramp up period is over, i can finally get some real sleep and see if there’s any improvement.
Hey brother, it fucking sucks and I can only imagine how teachers and folks around you responded to you out of ignorance when, with understanding, there are excellent ways to mitigate and control your expression and thought process in a healthy manner.
I’m glad you figured yourself out and I hope things get smoother from here on out. Much love from a fellow neurodivergent - if you need to vent or talk things through we’re always here and listening.
Been there, had that talk. Thankfully, my parents are mature, capable of introspection and have worked on becoming better people throughout their lives. So it went quite well, although I will say it doesn’t make much of a difference with regard to the past. That’s for me to sort out now.
If you would, could you tell how you initiated that talk? I just turned 40 and I need to have the same talk…
I’m not OP, but I wanted to wish you good luck.
I was diagnosed in my 50s after my parents had passed, so I can’t do what you want to do. But one thing I’ve found with a neurospicy brain is - there are bad things and good things associated with it. For example, I am really good at learning new things, so I know a little bit about many subjects (and admittedly deep knowledge about some things that don’t matter very much). But that can be a marketable skill.
Finding techniques that work for you can help minimize the bad stuff, while maximizing the good stuff. For example, me making physical lists helps me to unburden my brain and concentrate on other tasks. Checking off tasks when complete is a physical reminder of doing stuff and gives me a feeling of accomplishment.
It’s the only brain you’ve got. You’ll need to find out what works for you, and write that shit down so you don’t forget! 😎 But on your talk to yourself and others, and to that, I think it’s important to frame both the bad and the good.
Best of luck to you!
Thank you. I’ll save your comment to read it again :)
Make a reminder to read it again later
Unfortunately it happened at the tail end of a much longer conversation that just started up spontaneously. It was a pretty unusual occurrence.
Fucking good for that. That conversation sucks and I’m proud of you for doing it!
