Life becomes exciting and scary when everything you thought you knew turns out wrong. October 2023 marked a turning point in my life when I realised I might have ADHD, a disorder I only knew clichés about. I invite you to come along into the rabbit hole and discover its secrets and demystifiy its stereotypes. If you are interested in where I get the information, here are my sources.

First steps of the journey

I’m writing this down mostly for myself, so my future self will be able to look back on the way she walked. My knowledge is still at the beginning and my opinions about this or that may change in the future – this is part of the way.

But I’m also writing this down in the hope that it may help other people who are in a similar situation. If you follow my blog and it speaks to you, I send you a heart-felt welcome. May it help us both on our way. Let’s begin our first steps in October 2023.

You have what?!

My eyes widenend in disbelief when a friend told me on the telephone that she was diagnosed with ADHD. “You? But how can it be? You’re not hyperactive or nervous or anything.” Up until that day, my knowledge of ADHD had consisted of the following unshakeable facts:

• Children who are hyperactive got diagnosed with ADHD
• This was the fault of parents who didn’t know how to raise their children properly
• ADHD didn’t exist and was just a fad to sell medication
• Medication was some sort of tranquilliser
• Medication was used for turning down the volume of the children to make them into docile, little zombies

Sadly, these harmful stereotypes are still spread widely among society. Lucky for me, my friend took a great deal of time to enlighten me and opened a door for me that evening. A door that would take me into wonderland.

Patiently, she explained to me that there are differences of how ADHD presents itself in a person. The hyperactivity can be external and internal. To break it down simply: If you are external hyperactive, you mostly get on everybody’s nerves around you. If you are internal hyperactive, you mostly get on your own nerves. ADHD is nowadays differentiated between three types: the hyperactive type, the hypoactive type and a combination type of both.

For me, it’s predominantly the hypoactive form. People like us usually are daydreamers, observers, caught in our own fantasies. Absent-minded and unfocused. Often this leads to difficulties in school but I always managed to get by and my teachers didn’t notice anything that would raise suspicion. This is because it was in the Eighties and Nineties and all that teachers knew about ADHD at that time was that kids were unruly and squirelly. Of course, if you’re a teacher, you tend to care mostly for the child that disturbs the lessons and not for the child that quietly sits in the back, looking out of the window.

For the most part, girls with ADHD have the hypoactive form. In combination with the usual upbringing at that time when girls had to be polite, quiet and well-mannered, most of us fell through the cracks. This leads me to the belief that many, many adult women who suffer with certain problems in their lives might actually be undiagnosed ADHDers.

You mean… this is all part of the bundle?

The more symptoms my friends explained to me, the longer got my own mental checklist: Yeah, I do that too… Yup, I know that feeling… But, I’ve been doing this my whole life… I know that as well… This is obscure, how can you know I do this… Hell, yes!…

All these symptoms are too numerous to include them in this blog article. I will cover them in future articles. Let it suffice to say, the phone call took four hours and left me completely dumbstruck. My horizon got suddenly much wider. As if I was on the threshold of something unfathomable and my next step would change my life completely. At that point, I could have chosen to forget about it. I could have ignored everything and just got on with my normal life and all its challenges and pain, pretending I was like everybody else and my main task was to function like everybody else.

But this was impossible. Deep inside me I felt something shift. Some puzzle piece that had waited to fall into place all my life. I knew I was different from other people. Had always known it since I was a child. This door was meant for me to open on that day, and I was meant to step through it.

So many suprises

My friend had told me about her own experience after her diagnosis. She woke up and noticed all the symptoms. As if they were suddenly all jumping in her face, screaming for her attention. Look at us! We’ve always been here, now you notice us and know what we are! The same happened to me, the very next morning.

I woke up with an unimaginable chaos in my mind. Louder and more chaotic than anything I’d ever experienced before. Multiple voices, fragments of sentences, music all at once, spinning around in an endless rollercoaster. A deafening pandemonic roar. Look at us, now you set us free!

The day continued to be an escalation of symptoms. I was completely lost and disorganised, not able to focus on anything at all. I considered being simply a hypochondriac but let that thought drop very quickly. After all, what I experienced had always been there. The only difference was that now I recognised it for what it truly was. I opened my web browser and search engine. Of course I know the risks of internet research but I needed answers, quickly. Luckily, I discovered professional websites very early and read everything I could find (Hyperfocus, anyone…?). The following weeks turned out to be… interesting. But this is a story for part 2. Stay tuned!

My sources

When I’m writing about symptoms of neurodivergent disorders, the information comes from several sources: One of my main sources is ADXS.org, a site available in English and German. I also consult other sites, preferably with professional medical background. I usually don’t consult blogs of private persons where information can’t be verified. Some things are my own observation and have been compared with other sources. I strive for accuracy and verified information. It’s not easy as a lot is still unknown about neurodiversity and many clichés are still being published that have been proven wrong years ago. If you stumble about somethings that you know for a fact is wrong, please get in touch by using either the comment form or the contact form.

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor or qualified medical person. If you experience health issues, mental or physical, please get help from a professional. This website is not meant to give medical advice, just some basic information and examples about what it means to live with Autism or ADHD. Symptoms vary strongly between individuals.