‘It’s a kind of superpower.’
Janine (52), businesswoman
As a Gen Xer, to me, ADHD was always a boy thing. I barely knew the symptoms for men, let alone women, because it wasn’t in my world. I’d seen a therapist and always thought I had low-level depression, but I never wanted meds for it. So when a female friend of mine was diagnosed with ADHD, it was a revelation. I recognised so many of the traits she described.
When I visited a psychiatrist, he said that I probably did have ADHD but that it was difficult to diagnose at my age because I had developed such effective coping skills. So I have highfunctioning ADHD. We agreed to try some medication to see if it helped me to focus better. Since that had worked well for my friend, I was willing to try it. But it didn’t. In fact, I had a horrific experience. It made me totally irrational and brought out all of my worst characteristics. I became even more depressed and wanted to quit my job. I hated the feeling.
So I decided not to try any more medications (there were many others I could have tried), and to just manage the condition on my own.
Just having the diagnosis, though, has been amazingly helpful. I now have a therapist who specialises in neuro-divergence, and she’s helped me to develop skills to stabilise my emotions, the hypersensitivity. ADHD in women means overwhelming emotions, especially feelings of rejection, are very easily triggered. So when stuff comes up, I’m not reactive. I can recognise that something that is a big deal for me, isn’t for other people.
If I look at my life, I lost a lot of opportunities because of the emotional dysregulation of ADHD, of not being able to control my reactions. So there’s a sadness there about how life may have been different if I’d been diagnosed earlier.
But ADHD isn’t all bad, not by a long shot. There’s my particular brilliance, my ability to connect the dots, to think quickly… I need to be entertained, I’m really intelligent and I can pursue things at speed. I can achieve remarkable things in a short time. It’s a kind of superpower. ❖