What is an overshare anyway?
By Kim Moore
A few months ago, I finally received an ADHD diagnosis, after about five years of thinking-about-it but not actually doing it, and months of waiting. What eventually prompted me to commit to it was two close family members receiving a diagnosis and a feeling of a net of certainty closing around me! I had to fill in a form which asked questions about my childhood and my daily life, and then my twin sister also filled in a questionnaire about me. Then I waited about nine months before the assessment, which took the form of an interview lasting about two hours. The good thing about the process is I was informed of the result straight away – I met 15 out of the 18 diagnostic criteria for a positive diagnosis of ADHD.
I was surprised by this. In my head, I thought I might scrape through with a diagnosis and meet the bare minimum criteria, which shows you what I know. When I was told that I did have ADHD, I felt numb at first, rather than elated. Then afterwards I felt this sadness settling inside me. I think the numbness and then the sadness were a direct result of the intense interview/assessment. Two hours of thinking about all the mistakes I’ve made over the years and the amount of energy and time I spend rectifying them would probably make anyone feel sad.
I’ve swithered about whether to write this post for a while now. I find it genuinely painful when people say things like ‘well everyone is getting a diagnosis now’. As this article shows Greater awareness behind ADHD surge, study suggests - BBC News – it is not that there are more people getting ADHD, or deciding they have it, but there is greater awareness which has led to people asking for help. Women in particular are a ‘lost generation’ because our typical ideas of what ADHD looks like are built on what it looks like in boys, not girls.
My husband tells me not to call these things mistakes, but I can’t really think of them as anything else – huge spectacular mistakes that I made because of the difficulties my brain has with processing certain information.
Leaving my trumpet on a bus when I was 18. Afterwards, I couldn’t motivate myself to go to the bus station to check lost property, or to file a police report until my dad drove up from Leicester to Leeds to come and help me. I cried for days about that trumpet but never really faced up to the disconnect between my feelings and my actions. Now I understand that the sequence of steps to retrace my steps, ring the police, go to the police station, file a report was too overwhelming, so I made excuses about why I couldn’t do it.
In my late twenties I was playing in the Championship Section at the Areas with Barrow Shipyard Band in Darlington. When I arrived I realised I’d left my music at home, along with all the extra hand-written cues that I had to put in. I was playing and performing at a high level, but I couldn’t remember to put my music folder in my case. My husband drove from Barrow to Darlington to deliver it.
I turned up to my interview to become a peripatetic brass teacher without the music I was due to play at the audition. I rang the librarian at Leeds College of Music and she faxed a copy of it over.
On the day of my ADHD assessment – I left my phone at home and didn’t realise until I got to the train station. I drove back up the hill, got the phone and then jumped on the train. I didn’t realise I’d left the phone (again) on a bench in the station until the guard came round to check my tickets (which of course were on my phone). I got off at Rochdale, and a kind train guard called Robert calmed me down and rang Hebden Bridge Train Station. Luckily my phone had been handed in. It was delivered on the next train by another kind guard, and I eventually made my way to work.
When I told the assessor my tale of woe about the phone, even she looked horrified. The night before I’d tried to explain to a friend about why I thought I had ADHD and he’d said ‘But everyone loses things’ – which of course is true! But I think losing things with ADHD is on a different level – perhaps someone with ADHD might leave their phone once and then retrieve it and be more careful. But once I’ve lost it once, the stress that has caused actually makes it more likely that I will do the same thing again and again.
One of the things that has happened since my diagnosis is that I’m starting to acknowledge and feel the things that are difficult. The amount of energy it takes me to get out of the house. Sometimes I leave three times before I actually leave – I go back and forward getting things I’ve forgotten. Yesterday I was running around the house looking for my keys and I stopped and sat down and let myself feel how exhausting it was and how hard it is just to do what for other people seem to be basic tasks.
I am nervous about writing this post because I also think there is a lot of stigma around ADHD. In fact, when I rang the doctors to have an initial conversation, he actually said to me ‘Well, you’ve done very well for someone with ADHD if you have a doctorate and you are working at a university’. I was so taken aback by this that I said nothing, but of course people who are neurodivergent can ‘do well’ (whatever that means) especially if we are lucky enough to have a job which allows us to hyperfocus on something we love.
I am starting to understand that my ADHD brain has allowed me to achieve so much even whilst it makes things it is not interested in (chores, housework, paying bills, booking doctors appointments, losing things etc) very difficult. My brain, which cannot rest is the reason (I now understand) why so many of the ideas I come up with (16 Days of Activism, January Writing Hours) have this endurance element to them. It’s painful for me to sit still, so I come up with projects that mean I never stop. My brain also means I can hyperfocus all day and forget to eat – a useful trick when you are trying to complete a book manuscript for a deadline.
I wish I could have explained to that doctor that I achieved my doctorate because I found a methodology that was perfect for my particular type of neurodiversity, that I found a structure for the PhD that embraced the quirkiness of the way I think and allowed me to connect everything in a non-linear fashion. I should have told him that people with ADHD are brilliant and creative and resourceful and resilient - but at the time, I didn’t feel like any of those things. I felt like I was drowning and he’d just put his foot on my head!
Despite all this, I think getting the diagnosis has been a largely positive one. I have moved past that numbness and sadness and am starting to process and make sense not just of the past, but also my lived daily experience now. Sometimes this can take the form of hyper awareness of myself - my gestures, the way I’m speaking, moving, blurting things out, fidgeting and I suddenly realise ‘oh - this isn’t normal - not everyone does this! And then I feel awkwardly self-conscious. But on the whole, I am ok and I’m doing ok. I’m starting to be able to predict and articulate what I know I can do well, and what I need more support with – whether that is at work or at home.
A couple of weeks ago, I took my daughter into a well known shop to get a coat, and got distracted looking at a coat for myself (which I didn’t need as I’d just bought one). She grabbed my hand, tugged until I looked her in the eye and then said ‘Mummy! Focus!’. So that was me told. I think about that moment whenever I’m in danger of drifting off.
I don’t know if it’s the right thing to do to speak about this here – it would probably be easier to not say anything at all. Part of me is worried, by recounting some of my ‘mistakes’ that I will be seen as completely incompetent! And another trait of ADHD that I definitely partake in is oversharing of course - especially if I’m bored – but talking about neurodiversity is something that both Clare and I said we would do when we first set up this substack, and so far Clare is the only one that has kept their side of the bargain! So here I am – still in the process of carrying my diagnosis around like a large and fragile object that I don’t quite know the shape of yet, but perhaps writing about it will help me start to learn the weight and heft and wriggle of it.
As an openly ADHD writer, THANK YOU. It is very hard being a woman with ADHD, not least because of the level of misunderstanding about what ADHD is and how it works. The more we get our stories out there, the more we build up our own public narrative and give people resources to draw on. We need the support of each other, the validation, the voice. You're not alone. I've spent decades thinking I was a total failure at life. So many of us have. Thank you for sharing. There's a brilliant podcast on YouTube called ADHD Chatter. If you don't know it, I recommend. It has a lot of in-depth info about what makes us, us.
Beautifully written, Kim. Thank you for being so candid about getting your diagnosis and what it means, so far, for you. I hope that once you've digested all the information it will just become something useful for you to know and understand about yourself. The world is skewed in favour of such uncompromising versions of what is 'good' - neatness, organisation, etc. This kind of binary opposition is totally arbitrary but we all hold ourselves to these standards and they don't really serve any of us.