Do I have ADHD?

I’ve always been a hard worker, even as a child. In school, I would work harder than anyone else I knew, studying for hours on end, making my parents quiz me on flashcards and editing papers a dozen times until everything was “perfect.” I’ve always been a high achiever, becoming valedictorian of my high school, graduating college with summa cum laude honors and managing a team of employees at age 24.

Since I’ve put so much pressure on myself to be perfect and succeed, I’ve experienced anxiety and depressive symptoms over the years. In fact, my psychiatric diagnoses have centered around anxiety and depression the past six years, and I’ve gone to therapy and tried many psychiatric medications trying to be well. But all these years later, even after trying all the medications, I’m not well.

So I figured I needed a new plan of action. I looked up a new psychiatrist and thought maybe I should get a second opinion. I described my symptoms to the new psychiatrist and almost immediately she started to identify signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

I was a little shocked, as no one had ever suggested I had either of these conditions with all the mental health professionals I had seen before (which was a lot). While I didn’t identify with the OCD as a distressing part of my life, it made sense to me at least, as I’ve always been overly concerned with items being in order and making sure I don’t make mistakes.

But the potential ADHD diagnosis didn’t make sense to me at all. All the typical ADHD symptoms—forgetting appointments, missing deadlines, being disorganized, being restless, having difficulty in school—I didn’t identify with any of them. My therapist has even joked that I’m one of his only clients without ADHD. What then were the signs my new psychiatrist was seeing that no one, not even me, had been able to recognize?

1. Forgetting appointments

I have a hard time understanding how other people forget appointments or obligations. In my mind, you write it down in five different places, put 16 alarms on your phone and have your dad call you just to make sure you don’t forget. That is completely normal, right? Apparently not. I’ve learned that not only forgetting appointments, but also setting an excessive amount of alarms to remember something can actually be a symptom of ADHD.

2. Missing deadlines

Part of my personality is following through on what I say I’m going to do, so the thought of missing a deadline is completely foreign to me. Even if I don’t have enough time or what I need to get the job done, I will push myself to make a deadline, no matter the consequences to my personal health and well-being. And yet, I actually have missed deadlines before because I have been unable to prioritize what’s really important. I submitted a proposal late one time because I was so focused on the footers matching up that I neglected to see the big picture of submitting the proposal on time. Being unable to prioritize can be another symptom of ADHD.

3. Being disorganized

I am a bit obsessed with organizational devices and making sure everything is in its proper place (see previous mention about potential OCD diagnosis). And yet looking around my house as I write, all I can see is a mess. I have a hard time keeping up with chores around the house due to anxiety and depressive symptoms, so the dishes and laundry pile up. Even though I care deeply about my house being organized, I’m not able to keep it that way, which can actually be a symptom of ADHD.

4. Being restless

To me, restlessness means outwardly not being able to sit still. But I had never considered that restlessness could occur on the inside, such as racing thoughts, multi-tasking, jumping from one thing to the other and generally being productive AF. What’s wrong with productivity, right? However, with the constant need to be stimulated, I would become overwhelmed and subsequently anxious and depressed when I wasn’t able to accomplish everything I thought I should. This inner restlessness, often disguised as “hyper-productivity,” can be an additional symptom of ADHD.

5. Having difficulty in school

As I mentioned earlier, I’ve always been successful in school, so to me, that means I couldn’t have ADHD. It never occurred to me that I had to work twice as hard as everyone else to achieve success. For some of my peers, school just came naturally to them, but for me, I always had to work at it. So even though I didn’t get bad grades in school, I still experienced difficulties by the sheer amount of work I had to put in in order to be successful, which could be interpreted as a potential symptom of ADHD.

What does it all mean?

So do I have ADHD? I don’t really know yet. But I do know that I started medication for ADHD, and it has been helping tremendously. I wake up with a sense of calm that I didn’t know was possible. I am able to focus, and the racing thoughts in my head that I had always associated with anxiety are not as loud. It feels like I am finally able to breathe. So maybe that’s a sign I do have ADHD. I’m cautiously optimistic to explore a potential new diagnosis.

Even though I don’t have all the answers when it comes to my own mental health, I wanted to write this blog to spread awareness that ADHD does not look the same for everyone, especially in girls and women, so much so that it’s often underdiagnosed. Whether I have ADHD or not, I’m so glad I found this new psychiatrist that recognized what I didn’t even know I was hiding and helped me unmask what might be the key to my mental health recovery.