How to stop torturing yourself over ADHD - no diagnosis necessary
Here are some facts about ADHD:
it wasn't diagnosable in adults in the UK until 2008
the diagnosis criteria do not include emotional symptoms (like rejection sensitive dysphoria), despite overwhelming research proving their importance.
NHS waiting lists for assessments are up to 7 year long. Private options cost well over £1000.
You don't need a 'formal' medical diagnosis to be legally disabled, get help such as from Access to Work, or be entitled to reasonable adjustments at work.
This is a reminder that psychiatrists are not the ultimate authority on ADHD. They do not open up your brain and look inside. They don't do any kind of physical test to confirm whether you do or do not have a neurodevelopmental condition. They don't do a brain scan. They don't know what it's like to live your life. They are human beings with their own interpretation of ADHD.
They might chat to you for an hour or two. They might ask broad questions, such as whether you are 'easily distracted', or 'have difficulty sustaining attention'. They might ask you to get other people to fill in forms with similarly vague questions. That's it.
It's a bit anti-climatic. Social media can send us down endless rabbit holes of googling our symptoms and trying to decide which box we fit into. It can advertise medication to us, convincing us that a 'fix' exists, that there's a pot of gold at the end of the diagnosis rainbow. It can (and does) sell us ADHD.
In most people I know (including myself), medication isn't the answer. It might be part of a much broader picture, but that tablet isn't going to stop you from being you. You've got the brain you've got. Until you start learning about how that works and deciding to OWN it, regardless of whether a stranger has told you which label might apply, you will let it control you.
The question of whether you do or do not have ADHD will become a mental tab that you return to regularly. You will open more and more tabs. You will fall down internet vortexes, each one creating a new neural pathway all leading to the same tab of mental torture. Every time you have an experience that resonates with one of these tabs, your brain will jump ahead to the end page, catastrophizing on how awful life is going to stay until you get that diagnosis.
You will overthink all parts of your life and create the new belief that if you could only get a diagnosis, or medication, or something, maybe it would all get better. This belief will torment you.
When my doctor said their waiting list was 7 years long, I knew I would have died. Not because the diagnosis itself helped me that much (I didn't even return to complete it for a year - ), but because my life had become this mental tab. I was tormented by it, unable to trust myself or any decision I made. I was terrified of what I'd do by the end of the day. I fully believed there was something deeply wrong with me.
Being diagnosed with ADHD by a mega-expensive fancy psychiatrist didn't stop this. It made it worse. It made me believe that now I was taking medication, I had no excuses for not being 'normal'.
It was only when I started having ADHD coaching that I managed to learn how to close this tab, because I learned about what ADHD actually was. The issue wasn't me, it was a world built for neurotypical brains. I'd been trying to work from a different operating system. Regardless of labels, my brain just worked based off interest and dopamine, so I needed to build structures to support this.
Ultimately, the letters A D H D are just letters. The words Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder are just words. They describe certain behaviours that sometimes occur together, which can significantly impact your life. Every single person has a different interpretation of what that means to them. This will depend on their own unique situation.
When we validate ourselves based on external validation, on other people's assessments of whether we 'do' or 'don't' have something, we imprison ourselves in an endless cycle of overthinking. We become obsessed with other people's experiences, trying to decipher whether this is something that all 84726 people who also liked the meme genuinely experience, or just us.
This can make us feel like imposters. It can make us feel like we're not able to advocate for ourselves or try to start addressing our symptoms until we get this 'official' confirmation that we do indeed, have a 'real problem', like the people we read about. It can make us question what our own experience is in comparison to the ones we read about on Google.
It can make us feel as though we're on the outside looking into a community that seems like us, but we've not quite passed the initiation test to join them yet.
When you do finally get this 'official diagnosis', it inevitably sends you off into more spirals. Your brain has built up the Disney happy-ending expectation, and you will get on that train, but it will fall off the cliff straight back into the valley of eternal overthinking. Of what could have been different. Of what is 'me and what is my ADHD'. Of whether the medication is 'working'. Of how to navigate labels like 'disability' and whether to tell your employer, or share it on social media.
You will probably question whether you do actually have ADHD, because it doesn't seem like anything has changed. Things were supposed to be different.
A psychiatrist saying you have ADHD won't convince you that you 10000% 'have' it, because it won't 'fix' you. You can't be fixed, because there's nothing to fix. You just have a different brain wiring to most people. Yes, you can take medication for it, which might help you to do things like sit still for 8 hours a day. However, human beings were not designed to sit still for 8 hours a day. There is nothing 'wrong' with you.
Nearly half of all zoos admit to giving psychiatric drugs to their animals, because they are simply not supposed to be trapped in cages. There are parrots on Xanax and Valium, walruses on anti-psychotics, and cats on Prozac. Approximately 8% of horses compulsively self-harm when they are shut in stalls, but stop when given opioid blockers.
This doesn't mean that there's a problem with the horses: it means there's a problem with their environment.
The only thing that will give you the peace of mind that you deserve is accepting that you have ADHD, and deciding what that means for you. YOU are the final judge on whether you have ADHD. If you think you've got it, then guess what: you probably do.
However, you don't need a diagnosis to change your environment. You are not a horse trapped in a cage. You can understand how your brain works, communicate this to others, and change your own environment. You can advocate for yourself, but above all, you can accept yourself as you are. You don't need Google or Instagram or a doctor to do this.
This is why I dedicated my life to empowering people to help them take control of their own brains. ADHD is a billion percent real and can destroy our lives if we don't manage it, but there's still so much that even the 'professionals' don't know. I don't have a medicine or neuroscience degree, but I've coached countless people to transform their own lives when they stop searching for these external answers and start taking action with what they've got.
An 'official' diagnosis from a psychiatrist can feel extremely validating, but only because our society has appointed them as the 'qualified' judges on this. Trained medical professionals have an incredibly important role to play, but the fact is, there's not enough of them. 7 year waiting lists are mind blowing.
It makes me furious to see people being marketed an ADHD diagnosis by exploitative businesses and algorithms who jump in to fill this gap. It reminds me of being scouted to model: it wasn't something I even wanted to do, but they convinced me I should lose 3 inches off my hips to be accepted by them. The journey never ends, until we learn how to control our own brain.
ADHD is not a brand, product, or status. It's a serious and highly complex neurodevelopmental condition that cannot be summarised in a 5 second TikTok video. 1 in 4 women with ADHD will attempt suicide. It is life threatening. We don't have years to waste on a waiting list to get help. That help doesn't look like a tablet or a piece of paper: it looks like support, education, and understanding.
Imagine you had the diagnosis and/or medication: then what? How would your life be different? Now try living your life as though that's happened.
You can also join the things I've literally designed for any person who is overthinking ADHD:
Make ADHD Work For You In 30 Days - 5 mins of v relevant info a day as above
ADHD: an A to Z - out on now
ADHD Coaching - as above, but 1:1!
Please choose to free yourself of this vortex right now: it will be the best thing you ever do.