Witchyone
Well-known member
I was 19. Legally an adult, but not really living in the adult world yet.
The important thing is that you know what you need.
Does the experience of ADD people resonate for you? For me, it did, very strongly, when I first heard about it (through the book Driven to Distraction, which was the very first one aimed at the average reader that covered both child and adult ADD and got a wide readership). That was really how I knew, and what prompted me to seek a diagnosis. Getting the diagnosis only validated my life experiences.
I didn't say they would have to have the diagnosis themselves to give it. My point was that the best professionals to work with ADD are those who have personal experience with it, but it doesn't necessarily have to be the experience of having it themselves. If they have a family member with it, that's personal experience. Some sense of what it actually looks like in real life, outside the office, which is a very controlled setting. People who don't have that experience are much more prone to not believing it even exists, than people who have seen it firsthand.
That doesn't mean practitioners whose only experience with ADD came from their practice can't make the diagnosis, just that they're more likely to dismiss it and less likely to cover the bases on testing.
Thanks for the reply. It didn't resonate with me until I heard about adult ADD and forms of it that don't include hyperactivity. I agree that it is a difficult-to-pin-down diagnosis, but I don't doubt that it exists. I think it may be overdiagnosed in children now, and underdiagnosed in the adult community.
Anyway, some traits I thought might be related were symptoms of rage and not being able to focus at work, but most of that subsided when I adjusted some things. I've been treated for depression for many many moons. I always had a quick temper, but my symptoms didn't really start until puberty, which makes my doctors think a lot of it is related to hormones. My experience bears this out.