A diagnosis of ADHD has the potential to change your life for the good. For one thing, medication often works very well. Beyond that, understanding better what is happening when things get difficult for you can lead to all sorts of creative solutions to address your specific experience. For example, if you understand how your ADHD-wired brain is likely to relate to time, then you can come up with effective ways to work with it instead of against it.* This can help not just with time management problems like being late for appointments, but also with motivation, with stress, anxiety, feelings of guilt and shame, with addictive behaviours, and with relationships. Coming to understand and accept a diagnosis can provide great relief. It can help you come to terms with your past, feel better about yourself in the present, and make important changes in your life and relationships going forward. The positive ripple effect of an ADHD diagnosis into all aspects of your life can be tremendous.
I see this impact daily in my work. However, often when I first talk with men who have received a diagnosis, they don’t really know what to do with it. Medication often helps, but making the most of your diagnosis requires more. Good counselling can help.
Childhood and student diagnosis
Some of the men I talk with were first diagnosed as a child, or perhaps later as a student at college. They’ll say things like, “That was just when I was a kid, I should have grown out of it by now.” Or, “Yeah, I used the meds as a study aid at university, but that was a long time ago.” These people aren’t making the connection between their childhood and student experiences and their struggles now at work, in their relationships, or with anxiety, low mood, irritability, addictive tendencies, and more. Maybe they believe that ADHD is just a childhood thing (which may have been the consensus when they were kids but has since been shown to be mistaken). Or maybe they think that ADHD is just a “learning difficulty” that affected their ability to study but doesn’t reach beyond that.
recent diagnosis
Others get a diagnosis later in life. They’ve been prescribed medication, which may have made a noticeable difference, and they’ve thought, “OK, now I can focus a bit better at work,” but have missed out on resolving a whole host of difficulties they haven’t realized are connected to ADHD. For some, the meds had side effects that made them stop using them, and they never got good medical follow up that might have helped them try different dosages or switch to a different medication. For a few, the medication ends up not doing much, even after several different tries, leaving them discouraged, and unaware that other things, like therapy, can also help, even without the full benefit of meds.
Of course, as well as relief, a diagnosis can also bring up some difficult feelings, including anger that ADHD wasn’t recognized or properly treated earlier; regret and sometimes depression, that things could have been different if only you had known sooner; sometimes a kind of second-guessing or denial (“Maybe I’m just using this as an excuse, maybe the truth is I really am just bad at stuff.”) These feelings often need to be processed in order to reach some acceptance and understanding of the diagnosis and reap the benefits that it can bring.
If you’d like help in making the most of your ADHD diagnosis, let’s talk.
* Jessica McCabe’s book How To ADHD: An Insider’s Guide to Working With Your Brain (Not Against It) is full of useful suggestions for living effectively with ADHD.