By the time you have received an ADHD diagnosis, you will have spent months trying to:
🙄 Confirm your deficits and where you have gone wrong in life.
😞Gone back through your history, in some cases decades, looking for evidence that your symptoms interfered with or reduced the quality of your social, school, or work functioning.
🤦♀️You would have had to seek the second opinion of others to concur that you are disordered in many areas. Parents, teachers, doctors, psychologists.
🥺By the end of this, you will have a pile of information and many people confirming what is WRONG with you so that you can now prove you are DEFICIT and have a DISORDER!
This is all part of the diagnostic criteria for ADHD as set out in the DSM-5 - Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
❌For an adult seeking help for a neurological disorder, which has caused them mental health issues for most of their lives - it compounds negative feelings and is sh*t way to start a new phase of life.
❌For a child, who turns to the people around them to understand if something is good or bad, it is an awful, confidence crushing experience.
I have lived experience with both.
😮Imagine if the diagnosis process also captured your STRENGTHS!
❤️ A recent article by Joyce Vromen in Psychology Today made my day, week, month etc as this is everything I am striving for.
Read it here
ADHDers have amazing, incredible, unique brains and an abundance of strengths. We just need the opportunity and confidence to re-connect with them and shine.
Be curious. Be kind.
Amanda
Founder & Lead Consultant- Thriving With Neurodiversity
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