The Allure Diaries

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Happy Equinox! May this spring bring blessings and bounty to all!

Still reading “You Mean I’m Not Lazy, Crazy or Stupid?” - a book for and about adults with add. And this is all me, especially that last bit.

rbing again to add that I want to thank op for posting this. seeing this on my dash several months ago was the very first time I ever considered I could have ADD/ADHD inattentive. I never had the slightest idea before. fast forward to now and I’ve been going to therapy and on medication and things have turned around so much for the better.

I’m so glad to hear that! That’s why I posted it, because I knew I couldn’t be the only person that this rang I giant bell with.

I WAS THAT LITTLE GIRL. THAT WAS ME.

I was AT THE SAME TIME this little girl and the “trouble with bright girls” little girl–I was told that I was smart enough to “compensate” so I didn’t need treatment/help, so anything I had difficulty with I had to avoid like the plague because even though I knew why it was hard for me because I had been told I had ADD, I also knew that my status of smartness was at risk any time I struggled with something, and had no idea how to actually consciously deal with my ADD when natural ability/terror of deadlines didn’t get me through.

It’s a less common presentation in boys? But the quiet boys ALSO get missed the same way. They’re “lazy” and “apathetic”. They “don’t apply themselves” and “lack discipline”. 

And while we’re at it: even the girls who are textbook? Who ARE disruptive and loud and overly excited?….often don’t get diagnosed, because Girls Don’t Get ADHD. So they’re just Bad and Disruptive, oh and Selfish, because they’re disruptive. They’re just “acting out for attention”. Etc. 

(You can absolutely add racial and class issues to this and get even more Excite. And ironically if you get into the right kind of middle-upper-middle class, then you have “well I’m really not okay with ~*pathologizing*~ children’s ~*natural exuberance*~, and I don’t like ~*labels*~.”) 

So yeah. It’s just … All crap. *sigh* 

This is one reason I am SO GLAD that they’ve changed the diagnostic criteria. It no longer has to IMPAIR your functioning in two or more settings, the symptoms just have to be PRESENT in two or more settings. Because the fact is, it’s almost impossible to tell if someone smart is being “impaired” a lot of the time. I did fine in school despite not paying attention, but that doesn’t mean my brain was working correctly. If I’d been correctly diagnosed and treated a couple decades earlier, when I was still getting straight As, then I wouldn’t have fucked up so badly in college, and I wouldn’t have sailed through my PhD classes only to fall off a fucking cliff when I got to the dissertation. “Impairment” is relative to the context, and has nothing to do with whether or not your frontal lobe is actually working properly. My executive functioning is no worse than it was in high school, I’m just no longer in a context where I don’t actually NEED executive functioning skills to hit the arbitrary “success” markers. I now have to take care of myself and a child (luckily, with the help of a NT husband) plus plan and execute an enormous long-term project. My brain works the same, it’s just been plunged into an environment where working that way isn’t good enough.