TRIGGER WARNING: talk of depression, anxiety, ADHD, and systematic failures in ND diagnosis for women—this is also pretty lengthy

I had long suspected it. More in that…oooh…squirrel kind of way than the windup toy kinda way. Can you visualize the difference? It wasn’t that I couldn’t attend. It’s just that I would attend to all the wrong things. Like…put me in front of a spreadsheet and I could work that data while the building burned down around me. But I just couldn’t attend to things like following up on doctor appointments or keeping up with laundry.

In March of 2020, everything just kind of collapsed. I was 6 months pregnant and the world shut me in the house with a 4 and 2 year old. I couldn’t remember to brush my teeth.

How could this happen to me? 

I’ll tell you. All my systems fell apart. I had been remembering to brush my teeth all these years because in the morning, I got up and raced against the clock to get those aforementioned children to daycare. In doing that, I peed, washed my hands, then grabbed the toothbrush that had always been sitting right there. But once we were locked in the house, we weren’t rushing anywhere. Suddenly all those urgent deadlines ceased to exist. And apparently, so did my toothbrush I am embarrassed to say.

Sure. Over the years I had lost my keys. A lot. Same with my phone. My purse was a Mary Poppins bag of anything you could ever need. Things went in and never came out. I never remembered to put my money or credit card back in my tiny wallet because it was always lost in that purse of mine. If I put down a cup of coffee or my glasses, they were now dead to me. That one still happens. A lot. Sorry, husband.

I guess over the years of my life, I just kind of figured out ways to make it work. It’s not that I don’t lose my keys anymore. It’s that I have an elaborate system in place so that I don’t lose my keys as often. There is a huge difference.

Pay for everything with the same credit card that goes directly back into my new giant brightly colored wallet that’s easy to find in any purse. Do NOT walk away from the cashier without putting that credit card away even if it means holding up the line. 

YOU. WILL. LOSE. IT. 

This also makes it easier to pay bills because there will be only one to pay. 

Attach my keys to the inside of my bag with a dainty carabiner. 

Thank you, push-to-start. 

Leave my work bag in my locked car overnight so I didn’t forget it at home. 

I did this for orientation for my new job. I left my computer at home when I was going to be training on new computer software. 

Put my phone in my lunch bag at work so I remembered to bring said lunch bag home. 

Set one million alarms on my phone for everything from telling me to get off social media to reminding me to take my meds to yelling at me to make an appointment. 

Never delete an email out of my inbox until I am certain I’ve  addressed it because I 100% will forget. And don’t actually delete the email. File it into a folder because I guarantee I will need it again sooner or later. 

Mark in your phone contacts who people are: Becky’s Mom, Neighbor on 63rd, Aunt Laura McK vs Sister Laura Hou (because I keep forgetting that Sister Laura got married and changed her name from McK to Hou…nearly TWENTY SEVEN YEARS AGO). 

AHDH didn’t affect me until it did. And when it did, it hit like a ton of bricks. I didn’t know how to figure it all out because I was just so overwhelmed. Where do you even start? At first I thought it was the addition of a 3rd baby. Then my doctor had suggested it was anxiety and depression. I just had a baby during a pandemic. That must have been it. I took some meds. Did it get better? I tried to assure myself that it did. But looking back it really didn’t. I had convinced myself that it did, though.

I was evaluated for ADHD. I remember looking at the testing report. It read like textbook ADHD to me. I’ve seen probably hundreds of neuropsych reports in my 25 years as a special education teacher. After reading all the testing, the diagnosis shouldn’t be surprising. You can kind of guess where it is all going before you get it the end.

But…my diagnosis summary read something like this:

Karyn does not meet criteria for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or any other cognitive disorder. In terms of mood, Karyn consistently endorsed symptoms consistent with anxiety and depression. 

Diagnostic Impressions:
Generalized Anxiety Disorder
Major Depressive Disorder, Recurrent, Mild

My self-rating scales were literally off the charts for ADHD. My executive functioning was…malfunctioning. My visual and auditory attention were extremely affected, as well. Yet the doctor literally wrote she suspected malingering. I had to look that word up. Lying. Cheating. I was accused of lying on the assessments rather than conceding that a successful woman could also have ADHD.

And. Yes. Sure. I was successful. I was making it all work. Until I wasn’t anymore. I was on the verge of burnout. I mean that crying all day, don’t know where to start, when was the last time I showered kind of burnout. But to most everyone else, I was fine because I was functioning. My kids were fed. We were all bathed regularly. I went to work and did my job. But at what cost?

My doctor wasn’t listening to me. She tossed more anxiety and depression meds at me. Nothing was getting better even though I was on three different medications at almost max doses.

So I ghosted that doctor and white knuckled it for almost a year until I just couldn’t anymore. I was falling apart. I got a recommendation from a friend and somehow followed through to make the appointment. This is a miracle in and of itself. I brought the neuropsych report and was prepared to fight. She took one look at the report and said Do you think you have ADHD? I burst into tears. YES!

She asked some questions and took some history. She listened. She asked what grammar school, high school, and college were like.

Remember when there were achievement  based reading groups?  Like the eagles, blue birds and buzzards? I was a buzzard in 1st grade. Not because I was a bad reader but because no one knew I was a really REALLY good reader. I was always reading ahead because everyone else read too slowly for me. I would get too caught up in the story. So when it was my turn to read, I never knew where we were. I would stammer over the words trying to figure it out. The teacher just thought I couldn’t read at all. 

In 4th grade I was told to empty my overflowing desk into a garbage bag.  I was made to drag it down to the first grade class. If I was going to keep my desk like a baby I could go sit with the babies. 

I never studied. Ever. I didn’t do homework. I could listen in class and pass any test. And although I was initially placed in a remedial English class in HS due to my placement test scores (ie scantron), I quickly was moved to honors and AP classes. I couldn’t pay attention to the scantron to not make silly mistakes. And by the time I figured out my mistakes, it took me too much time to go back and fix it all so I didn’t always finish. 

I once stopped going to a college class because the room was too cold. I just…stopped. I failed a class that was easier than anything I had taken in HS because by the time the temperature increased, I was too far in the hole to dig myself out. So I didn’t even try. And I forgot to drop it so I just got an F. I had to retake that freshman class as a senior to graduate. 

She said the same thing I had thought. The entire report read like ADHD. So how on earth did the evaluator completely dismiss my testing and history? I’ll tell you why.

I am successful. 

I have a husband, 3 kids, and a great job. 

I have not 1 but 2 masters degrees. 

I have additional educator licensing beyond those masters degrees. 

I additionally have a license to be a nail technician. 

I can maintain close friendships. 

I am a woman. 

We started treatment that day.

Since then things have gotten a lot better. There are days that are better than others. Last month I got a bad batch of Vyvanse and I swear it was as effective for my ADHD as a baby aspirin would be. But I’m making progress. I’m seeing a lot of puzzle pieces of my life falling into place. I’m relearning to be kind to me. It’s not that I am lazy and won’t do the things. It’s that sometimes I just can’t. And I give myself grace and time. Then I get it done.

Did you know that the vast majority of the research on ADHD has been done on young boys? You know the kind. The ones that seem like they are driven by a motor. But girls and women…we present differently. We are socialized from a young age to be people pleasers and dainty and quiet. We have been taught if we want to be taken seriously we need to excel. We are hyperactive in less obvious ways. We don’t necessarily have hyper bodies but we have very hyper minds. We are often hyper-attentive—but to the “wrong thing”. We fixate on the details while missing the big picture…making careless mistakes along the way. It’s not an attention deficit issue. It’s an attention regulation issue.

And the signs were always there. Always.

I twirl my hair. All the time. 

I talk a mile a minute and am constantly interrupting. 

I listen to books and podcasts at 2x speed. 

I hyper fixate on new hobbies and projects only to lose interest in a couple weeks. 

I’ve always been called spacey or a space cadet.

I forget everything the minute it is out of my sight…including friends. It’s not that I don’t want to reach out to you. It’s that I honestly can forget you are there. 

I can’t remember everything that isn’t written down and even then—I forget to look at it. 

I can’t remember names. Ever. Please don’t be offended. 

I’m SO. VERY. MESSY. Just ask my sister about sharing a room growing up. 

I forget to eat or drink water or pee—hello kidney stones. 

I have awful time management. 

I cannot initiate tasks. Or complete them if I can manage to get started at all. 

I am SO disorganized—it a rouse to anyone saying that isn’t true. I promise. 

I make careless mistakes. 

I overshare. All. The. Time. 

I’ve changed jobs perhaps more than professionally acceptable. 

I keep going back to school: SPED, reading specialist, nail technician, ELL, AT and MD. I’m thinking of going back again. It’s just one more class, after all. 

My brain is NEVER quiet. There is an endless narration in my head that I am told neurotypical people do not have. 🤯

My body is NEVER still: tapping my teeth, wiggling my toes, chewing my cheek, counting my teeth, clenching and unclenching my muscles, tapping my fingers…

This list is endless. I could go on for days. And it just makes me wonder: How did no one ever see this in me? Why did I have to be on the very verge of collapse before someone recognized in me what I had been saying all along? Why weren’t my experiences deemed valid enough to warrant some sort of treatment options to improve the quality of my life?

The system is failing us in so many ways.

All this to say, if you think that there’s something more going on than you or your doctor can manage, seek another opinion. If your gut is telling you that something isn’t adding up, then keep pushing. And keep doing it until someone helps you in a way that gives you relief from whatever it is that is giving you trouble.

YOU DESERVE THAT.