What's wrong with me? What's wrong with you??

 This year, I started treating my newly diagnosed ADHD with talk therapy and a small beginning dose of Adderall. I take it only on workdays because they help me focus and concentrate at work. I was told not to take the med on Saturday and Sunday so that any chances of addiction would be minimized or eliminated. The Adderall doesn't help with crushing anxiety and depression. ADHD explains so much of my personality and the way I think and it sits uneasily atop my wild anxiety like a toddler on a bucking horse.

I was very sad recently and burst into tears. I haven't cried in months, probably. I was overwhelmed with a sense of impending doom, like death and/or destruction was waiting for either me or my husband just outside the door of the seafood restaurant in which we were trying to enjoy our lunch. A creeping dread wrapped its tentacles into my brain and didn't let go until the evening. Maybe I was just generally overwhelmed. I've had episodes in the past where I was sure that some maniac with a machete was just around the corner or an out of control car was barreling down the street in my direction. I hadn't had one of these episodes in a long time, though. It was similar to a panic attack.

Although most people have an inner monologue, I'm more accustomed to "this is your conscience speaking" episodes, where I'll hear disapproving (and purely self-generated) comments regarding my life or work in my brain as my attention is busy with something else. These episodes can prompt a full blown panic attack: accelerated breathing, a feeling of isolation and a rising sense of fear and dread. I can be busy at work with a pile of records to go though, then a little voice in my ear whispers "you're going to die young like your mother did". The hyperventilating will then start. 

Other hits in this Desolation Row juke box are "something bad is going to happen to you.....your husband....your friends and there's nothing you can do about it"; "you're not smart enough for this job"; "you're going to be fired soon"; "you're going to be homeless one day"; "no one really cares about you, people only tolerate you". Listening to music or podcasts while I work are really the only way I can keep those thoughts at bay. Having other people compliment me on whatever I am doing doesn't even help because I don't believe them. I can only believe myself and those positive thoughts just won't come. I don't know how to think positively of myself. I only know how to tear myself down. I had hoped that age would alleviate this self-loathing but it has not. I honestly don't know what will now, but I hope to find out.

Why are you like that? What planet are you from?

 My name is Lisa and I was recently diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 56. It was a bolt out of the blue; I had no idea that girls and women could even have ADHD, yet it seemed to explain almost all of my personality quirks that made me unusual, caused me the most problems and made my life more difficult that I felt it had to be. ADHD seemed to be the domain of annoying, loud little kids who broke things all the time, not middle-aged women on the countdown to retirement. This blog is going to be the journal of my ADHD experience, my treatment, and getting to know myself again by generating a new life narrative. I don't want this to be a "woe is me, I'm different" or even a "would my life had been easier if I had been diagnosed as a child?" type of blog. I want this to be a positive sojourn in self-discovery and if it helps anyone else along the way, that's icing on the ADHD cake. 

I have spent the majority of my life depressed, anxious, and feeling like I was unlike anyone else on the planet, let alone anyone else in my small Texas hometown. I knew in my heart that I was intelligent, but I heard comments like "don't be lazy" or "live up to your potential" so often, it started to take a toll on my psyche. I wasn't lazy and I had no idea what my potential even was, let alone what it should be according to others. I wanted to have a fulfilling career, but the stuff that interested me  and that I had an aptitude for didn't pay very well. People tended to consider me to be weird or quirky rather than capable and competent. I grew up unhappy and very angry, but I couldn't quite put my finger on the true cause.

I did have some traumatic issues in my childhood so I assigned all of the blame of my misery to those experiences. Although I received therapy for those issues and resolved them, I was still unhappy and angry. Surely life was not supposed to be this vexing and confounding? I didn't expect to live my life completely without problems and have a big stupid smile on my face all the time, but if I had to be miserable all the time, what was the point? I lived my teens and twenties in a black cloud, culminating in 3 suicide attempts and a stay in a psych hospital. Well meaning friends and family were convinced that all I needed was religion, but that has never been a solace to me; quite the opposite, in fact. Or maybe I just needed a boyfriend perhaps? When I started seeing the man who is now my husband of 28 years, the heaviness did indeed become less onerous, but I didn't want to burden him with providing the key to my own personal happiness. I wanted to be happy because........well, just because I wanted to be happy. The "you need a boyfriend" talk ended when I got married, but then the "you need to have kids to be fulfilled" talk started. I chose not to have children because of the unpredictability of my mental state and again, why would I want to pile that sorrow on a defenseless kid? The religion talk still plagues me. If I trust someone enough to confide in them, I want to expect that they won't condescend to me or downplay my concerns. Everyone's life experience is different and just because it's not the same as yours does not mean that it's not extremely important for someone to be HEARD and validated. Anyone who tells you that you're "being dramatic" or "everyone feels that way" are being contemptuous and egotistical. Similarly, anyone who thinks that because you've lived your life like this for 56 years and what good is it going to do to know that you have ADHD is sticking their heads in the sand. An intelligent person wants to learn and progress as a human being, not be a caricature.

The undiagnosed ADHD didn't cause too many problems when I was a child, because how can you be angry about something if you don't know you have it? I considered myself to be misunderstood and that contributed to the ongoing depression, anxiety, and anger issues. I am currently receiving therapy for the ADHD and I hope to find out my true potential. Misery and unhappiness are terrible burdens to bear, especially if, to your knowledge, you haven't done anything to merit those feelings. It's never too late to truly know yourself, and some of us aren't fortunate enough to be imbued with that knowledge as  child or young person.

When I was finally diagnosed with ADHD earlier this year, it explained so many things about me that I had previously considered to be "just the was I was": terrible difficulty in paying attention to subjects that I absolutely had no interest in to start with; feeling isolated and unconnected with the world and people around me; and a crushing sense of dread, like something nameless and terrible was about to happen and I couldn't stop it.

I'm currently working at a job that I like very much, even if it isn't my true passion. I'm not far from retirement and then I hope I can do more personally gratifying pursuits, such as writing a book. This blog will be my first step in my new life. Tag along if you can relate or just want to find out how this story progresses.