How Being Diagnosed with ADHD Helped Me

Micro-epiphanies: kernels of thought that float your mind

The first time I heard the word “dyslexic,” was in conversation with my parents after they returned from a meeting at my school. I think I was about twelve.

It came from my father’s mouth and sounded like an insult, but felt like a compliment — I thought he had said “you’re decalectric.” Well, if electricity was good, then so was my being decalectric, I initially thought. I might have smiled, I can’t recall; but my innocence would soon be yet another bruised fruit.

That “accusation,” and the conversation after it, were the first moments when the notion of being “less than” first set in. Not that my father was trying to humiliate or berate me. He was merely a clumsy man. But it stuck, nonetheless. As if confirming what I already knew — I was an other.

It appears adults were right: I did have a “problem,” but I wouldn’t know its name as applicable to me, until as recently as a couple of years ago: Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder. I learned that I qualified after my therapist asked me some focused questions, to conclude that I exhibited all the symptoms, satisfied all the criteria, and then some.

What the ADHD diagnosis did for me was, it opened the doors to self compassion. What I thought was me being inadequate, less capable or broken from the outset had a name — there were reasons for it.

All the decades of misguided anger and accrued guilt over forgotten keys, lost wallets, misplaced papers, missed appointments, failed connection, projects started and left hanging, the ill reading of social cues… all this started to lift. I got to forgive myself at last; said sorry for myself for having been my fiercest, most unfair critic.

Most importantly, I learned to stop blaming my parents. Parenting notions weren’t in the 1970s what they are now — whether for better or worse is another debate altogether — and there was much in science which hadn’t been studied, knowledge not yet communicated.

In the role of children, we forget that raising a kid into a pleasant, functional, discerning adult is just an insane notion, whatever the decade — in fact, I find it so terrifying, that I have never wanted children because of the probability of inducing trauma in a growing being, no matter how hard one tries not to.

But I digress, and this is supposed to be a micro-epiphany.

So, speak to your physicians, get “tested” for ADHD. Go read up about it: Gabór Maté’s “Scattered Minds” will tell it to you eloquently, plainly, and from the horse’s mouth.

Even if you don’t have it, be compassionate with those who do. And if you do have it, you’ll be surprised at how widespread and “normal” it actually is, and how a whole number of aspects of your life and decisions will be seen in new light. You will see yourself in a new light. You will see others in a new light.

NB: Here is an essay where I go into more detail about the causal relationship between attunement rituals and ADHD

©Pedro B. Gorman 4.6.2021