How can I avoid flogging myself for missing the life I could have had?
October 21, 2023 9:20 PM Subscribe
A recent diagnosis of ADHD, at a late age, has made me realize my life could have been very different had I been diagnosed sooner. By most measures for someone living in North America, I've had a good and fortunate life. But I know myself enough to know that, sooner or later, a spiral of thinking "I could have been better, done so much more" will start, and this cannot end well. Have others among you found ways to prevent this line of thinking?
What compensated for effects of inattentive ADHD and made it hard to recognize that I might have it at all, for so very long, is probably a combination of high intelligence and a general attitude of blaming myself for failures rather than blaming others or the world. But anxiety over performance and fear of failure made me reluctant to do more in life, preferring instead "safe" choices. I didn't understand this until the detailed diagnosis came through. Now I'm trying to avoid a destructive line of thinking "if I had fixed this years ago, I could have been better, could have achieved more, could have had a better position, could have ...". The inevitable follow-on to this will be "and now it's too late – so much of my potential was wasted" coupled with feelings of discouragement and defeatism or worse. I'm blocking this line of thinking right now by conscious effort, but this firewall won't hold forever.
What compensated for effects of inattentive ADHD and made it hard to recognize that I might have it at all, for so very long, is probably a combination of high intelligence and a general attitude of blaming myself for failures rather than blaming others or the world. But anxiety over performance and fear of failure made me reluctant to do more in life, preferring instead "safe" choices. I didn't understand this until the detailed diagnosis came through. Now I'm trying to avoid a destructive line of thinking "if I had fixed this years ago, I could have been better, could have achieved more, could have had a better position, could have ...". The inevitable follow-on to this will be "and now it's too late – so much of my potential was wasted" coupled with feelings of discouragement and defeatism or worse. I'm blocking this line of thinking right now by conscious effort, but this firewall won't hold forever.
I know it’s a cliche, but: the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago; the second best time is today. You deserved to be diagnosed as a child; you have that diagnosis now
I don’t know what you consider “a late age” for your diagnosis but I was an adult, old enough to have had adult children, when I was diagnosed. I was well into my career and had developed a lot of coping mechanisms to cover for it.
I have looked back decades and raged about what could have been. The most powerful thing has been recognizing my own powerlessness back then. I try to reach back and just LOVE that person as much as I can, no matter how angry/embarrassed/shamed I feel about it. I try to send as pure love as I can.
posted by Francies at 9:53 PM on October 21, 2023 [32 favorites]
I don’t know what you consider “a late age” for your diagnosis but I was an adult, old enough to have had adult children, when I was diagnosed. I was well into my career and had developed a lot of coping mechanisms to cover for it.
I have looked back decades and raged about what could have been. The most powerful thing has been recognizing my own powerlessness back then. I try to reach back and just LOVE that person as much as I can, no matter how angry/embarrassed/shamed I feel about it. I try to send as pure love as I can.
posted by Francies at 9:53 PM on October 21, 2023 [32 favorites]
This my life and I deal with it by really liking who I am. Every step has led me to be the person I am today and to change any of it would be to abandon myself.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:41 PM on October 21, 2023 [33 favorites]
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:41 PM on October 21, 2023 [33 favorites]
You've asked "How can I avoid flogging myself for missing the life I could have had?" and honestly, the rest of your text could have been pretty much anything.
People ask this question when they get a late diagnosis of ADHD, or they get a divorce, or have had kids, or didn't have kids, or have spent too much time on their career, or haven't had the career they wanted, or their body will no longer let them do everything they dreamed of, or because they didn't spend enough time with family, or any one of a million other reasons.
it's entirely normal for people to have these thoughts, especially as we get older and start to think about the inevitable end of things. The possibilities of existence are endless, yet our lives are a continuous winding thread. The greatest existential struggle for most people is that you can only walk a single path and every second of your life is a sliding doors moment. By definition, we will all have regrets about what might have been had we chosen a different path. That is to be human. This just happens to be the one-out-of-many possible other paths you're focusing on right now.
Regardless of the specifics, the happy person looks past their individual choices and celebrates the astonishing fact that they exist, and that life is the greatest, most profound privilege it is possible to imagine.
For everything you don't have, you have instead had something else. Do not focus on the negative space of what might have been, focus on the positive space of what being alive has granted you.
Life, existence, the ability to experience anything, is the greatest gift of all. If you can keep that in mind, the importance of what might have been fades into the background naturally.
posted by underclocked at 10:48 PM on October 21, 2023 [107 favorites]
People ask this question when they get a late diagnosis of ADHD, or they get a divorce, or have had kids, or didn't have kids, or have spent too much time on their career, or haven't had the career they wanted, or their body will no longer let them do everything they dreamed of, or because they didn't spend enough time with family, or any one of a million other reasons.
it's entirely normal for people to have these thoughts, especially as we get older and start to think about the inevitable end of things. The possibilities of existence are endless, yet our lives are a continuous winding thread. The greatest existential struggle for most people is that you can only walk a single path and every second of your life is a sliding doors moment. By definition, we will all have regrets about what might have been had we chosen a different path. That is to be human. This just happens to be the one-out-of-many possible other paths you're focusing on right now.
Regardless of the specifics, the happy person looks past their individual choices and celebrates the astonishing fact that they exist, and that life is the greatest, most profound privilege it is possible to imagine.
For everything you don't have, you have instead had something else. Do not focus on the negative space of what might have been, focus on the positive space of what being alive has granted you.
Life, existence, the ability to experience anything, is the greatest gift of all. If you can keep that in mind, the importance of what might have been fades into the background naturally.
posted by underclocked at 10:48 PM on October 21, 2023 [107 favorites]
Consider how much more time flogging will take from you.
posted by trig at 12:34 AM on October 22, 2023 [17 favorites]
posted by trig at 12:34 AM on October 22, 2023 [17 favorites]
I used to have a lot of thoughts about things like this, and I have found the easiest way to stop them from spiraling out of control is to consciously accept the painful thoughts that are actually true. Yes, my life would be a lot different if I knew everything about myself earlier and had made some changes to my life. Yes, I have grown up with some privilege and am not nearly as happy as I "should" be given all of that. I have definitely not reached my full potential in life. And... that's totally okay. My life has still been good, interesting, and productive.
One of the worst parts of anxiety (for me) is my fear about anxiety. I know that my anxiety can ruin things, but I don't actually need to be afraid of it 99% of the time because it isn't actually causing real problems or hurting me or others. There's nothing wrong with regretting missed opportunities in moderation as it helps us make better choices in the future and better understand our place in this world. But obsessing about regrets is not helpful because my brain will keep looking for some "new angle" to explain how I messed up something important 20 years ago. One way to deal with obsessive thoughts is to make the thoughts boring and pointless so I don't waste effort and anxiety trying to "solve" a 20 year old problem that only exists in my head. Instead, I can acknowledge the mistakes I made while vowing to learn from them and move forward with the life I actually have.
posted by JZig at 12:37 AM on October 22, 2023 [10 favorites]
One of the worst parts of anxiety (for me) is my fear about anxiety. I know that my anxiety can ruin things, but I don't actually need to be afraid of it 99% of the time because it isn't actually causing real problems or hurting me or others. There's nothing wrong with regretting missed opportunities in moderation as it helps us make better choices in the future and better understand our place in this world. But obsessing about regrets is not helpful because my brain will keep looking for some "new angle" to explain how I messed up something important 20 years ago. One way to deal with obsessive thoughts is to make the thoughts boring and pointless so I don't waste effort and anxiety trying to "solve" a 20 year old problem that only exists in my head. Instead, I can acknowledge the mistakes I made while vowing to learn from them and move forward with the life I actually have.
posted by JZig at 12:37 AM on October 22, 2023 [10 favorites]
Someone gave me some advice the other day, which is that we always think "What if I had done this earlier, what things would have been better?" But we never think about what things might have been worse just from the butterfly wing-flapping effect. What loved ones might you never know? I was talking about this the other day with some friends. What if we never joined the Army? Well our lives would have been personally better, but we might not have become activists, might not have learned to care about things the same way, might not ever have become friends.
The life you're living is the life you have; don't grieve the past but think of the future.
posted by corb at 5:03 AM on October 22, 2023 [20 favorites]
The life you're living is the life you have; don't grieve the past but think of the future.
posted by corb at 5:03 AM on October 22, 2023 [20 favorites]
The reason the past feels like a safe place is because it has no uncertainty. If you imagine yourself being past you, you know what will happen. Back then there was a host of things you were probably worried would happen - Will I be able to get the job I need? You did, or you didn't and if you didn't you came to terms with it. Do I have the discipline to pass this course? If that is what worried you, you would have been worried right up until the final exam. You can't really remember how much it hurt until you are doing it over, and then, Christ, how it all comes back.
Perhaps your feeling is that if you could only go back to the past and do it over, all the good stuff that happened could be made to happen again, and you could forestall some of the bad stuff. That school course you failed because of the ADD? Now you'd know enough not to take it, or else you'd get the accommodations so that you could ace it. Heck, you might even remember enough about the stock market so you'd know how to invest...
But you don't know about all the bullets you missed. That time you were at a party with a dude who was eyeing the crowd for someone to befriend, get alone, and force into sex. He left the party with some other guy. That time you didn't catch the flu that wrecked your immune system. Your immune system was never wrecked. That supervisor at the job you didn't take who wrecked your confidence. You never met him, let alone thought he could be your mentor. The apartment you wish you had never left, no longer remembering your unease about the new superintendent just before you got out. You are assuming different bad stuff wouldn't happen in your do over, because it didn't happen the first time.
Okay, supposed you did somehow go back and get an ADD diagnosis and become entitled to lots of great accommodations and work out lots of great strategies to use your ADD to your advantage and work with it? You still could run into an incredible five-year-slog to get the diagnosis and then a massive fight with the organizations to actually grant you the accommodations they were supposed to. It's conceivable that they would have treating you worse in the alternate time line, because now they had a label for you that made you someone they despised. As an example, my son had vision problems so he had an IEP that required him to sit in the front row of his class, and when needed quietly get up and go to the blackboard to copy stuff from close up. His teacher however put him in the very back row, and stopped him from ever getting out of his seat. Getting a diagnosis and accommodations isn't a magic solution. It just presents you with a completely different set of problems.
Also, there have been several studies that show in general people return to their baseline of happiness, and neither becoming disabled, nor winning the lottery really changes that much in the long term. If you are anxious and confused and feel inadequate, there is a good chance that getting a diagnosis of ADD will give you a big, temporary boost, where you feel you have the solution to your struggles in reach... and then you'll go back to feeling the way you normally feel, only now you will be feel it about a different set of challenges. You bring your personality with you. This is not to say that adverse circumstances don't make your life enormously worse, but that your personality and your abilities follow you through life. "Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings."
Is it possible that you got the diagnosis and were all positive about how it would change your life... but then it didn't change it very much, so now you are thinking that you got the diagnosis too late for it to be any use? It's not completely transforming things now; it's still a fight to get the life you want. But if only, if only, you had got the diagnosis then it could have completely transforming things then. It would have been so easy then, and it's so hard now.... Except of course, if it isn't work now, it probably wouldn't have worked then either.
Here's an alternative view: So you didn't get the diagnosis when you were twelve. You got it when you were (random age for purposes of example) thirty-two. But there is some alternate time line where you didn't get that diagnosis until you were fifty-two. In that alternate universe you struggled along, never knowing, suspecting but not knowing, suffering a whole extra twenty years before you figured it out. Somewhere out there there is a fifty-two year old version of you looking back and saying, "If only I had found out when I was thirty-two instead of now, this late in my life! I coulda had twenty years of my working life to turn things around.... It's too late."
So go and live the alternative life of that fifty-two year old, where they got to go back to the past to your current age. You ARE on an alternate time line. This is the one you got where you found it out early enough to be able to change the future. You still have a future ahead of you, and you can still change it.
posted by Jane the Brown at 5:15 AM on October 22, 2023 [34 favorites]
Perhaps your feeling is that if you could only go back to the past and do it over, all the good stuff that happened could be made to happen again, and you could forestall some of the bad stuff. That school course you failed because of the ADD? Now you'd know enough not to take it, or else you'd get the accommodations so that you could ace it. Heck, you might even remember enough about the stock market so you'd know how to invest...
But you don't know about all the bullets you missed. That time you were at a party with a dude who was eyeing the crowd for someone to befriend, get alone, and force into sex. He left the party with some other guy. That time you didn't catch the flu that wrecked your immune system. Your immune system was never wrecked. That supervisor at the job you didn't take who wrecked your confidence. You never met him, let alone thought he could be your mentor. The apartment you wish you had never left, no longer remembering your unease about the new superintendent just before you got out. You are assuming different bad stuff wouldn't happen in your do over, because it didn't happen the first time.
Okay, supposed you did somehow go back and get an ADD diagnosis and become entitled to lots of great accommodations and work out lots of great strategies to use your ADD to your advantage and work with it? You still could run into an incredible five-year-slog to get the diagnosis and then a massive fight with the organizations to actually grant you the accommodations they were supposed to. It's conceivable that they would have treating you worse in the alternate time line, because now they had a label for you that made you someone they despised. As an example, my son had vision problems so he had an IEP that required him to sit in the front row of his class, and when needed quietly get up and go to the blackboard to copy stuff from close up. His teacher however put him in the very back row, and stopped him from ever getting out of his seat. Getting a diagnosis and accommodations isn't a magic solution. It just presents you with a completely different set of problems.
Also, there have been several studies that show in general people return to their baseline of happiness, and neither becoming disabled, nor winning the lottery really changes that much in the long term. If you are anxious and confused and feel inadequate, there is a good chance that getting a diagnosis of ADD will give you a big, temporary boost, where you feel you have the solution to your struggles in reach... and then you'll go back to feeling the way you normally feel, only now you will be feel it about a different set of challenges. You bring your personality with you. This is not to say that adverse circumstances don't make your life enormously worse, but that your personality and your abilities follow you through life. "Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings."
Is it possible that you got the diagnosis and were all positive about how it would change your life... but then it didn't change it very much, so now you are thinking that you got the diagnosis too late for it to be any use? It's not completely transforming things now; it's still a fight to get the life you want. But if only, if only, you had got the diagnosis then it could have completely transforming things then. It would have been so easy then, and it's so hard now.... Except of course, if it isn't work now, it probably wouldn't have worked then either.
Here's an alternative view: So you didn't get the diagnosis when you were twelve. You got it when you were (random age for purposes of example) thirty-two. But there is some alternate time line where you didn't get that diagnosis until you were fifty-two. In that alternate universe you struggled along, never knowing, suspecting but not knowing, suffering a whole extra twenty years before you figured it out. Somewhere out there there is a fifty-two year old version of you looking back and saying, "If only I had found out when I was thirty-two instead of now, this late in my life! I coulda had twenty years of my working life to turn things around.... It's too late."
So go and live the alternative life of that fifty-two year old, where they got to go back to the past to your current age. You ARE on an alternate time line. This is the one you got where you found it out early enough to be able to change the future. You still have a future ahead of you, and you can still change it.
posted by Jane the Brown at 5:15 AM on October 22, 2023 [34 favorites]
What has worked for me is acknowledging that much of what I previously beat myself up for (eg just scraping a passing grade on a terribly flawed post grad research project) was actually an imperfect achievement and something I did without knowing that the difficulty level was set higher than for other people. Another late diagnosis ADHD acquaintance described it as realising that they were unknowingly dancing life backwards and in high heels.
I am also slowly realising that (for me) even after a diagnosis and access to medication and the slow process of awareness and working out what combinations of behavioural changes and hacks and adaptations suit me best... I am still someone living with an ADHD brain. The implications of that brain (strengths and weaknesses) now inform my choices going forward, but i have to accept that previously I didn't have that level of information and so I made the best choices possible.
To summarise, I think that celebrating and forgiving are really useful practices post-diagnosis but they both took me over two years to realise.
posted by pipstar at 5:58 AM on October 22, 2023 [5 favorites]
I am also slowly realising that (for me) even after a diagnosis and access to medication and the slow process of awareness and working out what combinations of behavioural changes and hacks and adaptations suit me best... I am still someone living with an ADHD brain. The implications of that brain (strengths and weaknesses) now inform my choices going forward, but i have to accept that previously I didn't have that level of information and so I made the best choices possible.
To summarise, I think that celebrating and forgiving are really useful practices post-diagnosis but they both took me over two years to realise.
posted by pipstar at 5:58 AM on October 22, 2023 [5 favorites]
Possibilities are stories we invent in our heads to give us a way to weigh options for our futures. They're not real; they're merely scenarios, fictions, exploratory musings. Only what actually did happen was ever actually possible; only what actually is happening right now is actually possible right now. Open-ended possibilities and the probabilities we attach to them are strictly future things, and even then, only one amongst the sheaf will in fact ever actualize.
Beating ourselves up over what might have been if only things were different from how they actually were is a pointless waste of intellectual capacity. Things never were different from how they actually were. That has nothing to do with us, it's just how the past works.
Best thing we can do with choices from our past that we now understand to be bad is learn from them, in order to avoid making similar choices should similar circumstances arise again.
If you want to keep on making up stories about a past that isn't yours just so you can keep on feeling miserable about it, you go right ahead; you have a perfect right to. Personally I've learned not to do that. I'd rather punch myself in the face every morning because I think that would hurt less.
Oh, and that whole "potential" thing? Potential is what other people reckon we should do with our lives - stuff that would give them pleasure to see us do and/or achieve; but the thing is, none of those people have even a shadow of a clue what it is that I'm dealing with in here. I've been having a whale of a time disappointing other people by failing to fulfil my own alleged potential since I was a school child bringing home Could Do Better If He Applied Himself reports because, frankly, fuck that noise. Potential is way overrated. Just try your best to keep yourself in semi-reasonable physical health and not act obnoxious most of the time and you'll do just fine.
posted by flabdablet at 6:01 AM on October 22, 2023 [9 favorites]
Beating ourselves up over what might have been if only things were different from how they actually were is a pointless waste of intellectual capacity. Things never were different from how they actually were. That has nothing to do with us, it's just how the past works.
Best thing we can do with choices from our past that we now understand to be bad is learn from them, in order to avoid making similar choices should similar circumstances arise again.
If you want to keep on making up stories about a past that isn't yours just so you can keep on feeling miserable about it, you go right ahead; you have a perfect right to. Personally I've learned not to do that. I'd rather punch myself in the face every morning because I think that would hurt less.
Oh, and that whole "potential" thing? Potential is what other people reckon we should do with our lives - stuff that would give them pleasure to see us do and/or achieve; but the thing is, none of those people have even a shadow of a clue what it is that I'm dealing with in here. I've been having a whale of a time disappointing other people by failing to fulfil my own alleged potential since I was a school child bringing home Could Do Better If He Applied Himself reports because, frankly, fuck that noise. Potential is way overrated. Just try your best to keep yourself in semi-reasonable physical health and not act obnoxious most of the time and you'll do just fine.
posted by flabdablet at 6:01 AM on October 22, 2023 [9 favorites]
Maybe this is the Gen Xer in me, but achievement and competitiveness are really over rated. I look at my peers and sometimes think " yeah, it might be nice to be able to say that I'm a scientist working at Academic Institution X researching Y" but peers who have achieved that sort of thing don't really seem to be happier or living more fulfilled lives than I am, often they even seem perhaps a little _less_happy, so I usually just shrug and move on. _Everyone's_ life is filled with missed opportunities and associated regrets- you can't do everything.
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 6:05 AM on October 22, 2023 [11 favorites]
posted by Larry David Syndrome at 6:05 AM on October 22, 2023 [11 favorites]
I think one way to address these feelings is to really look into the history of ADHD and who was being diagnosed at the time that you were a school-child. I think you will find that, not only did you do nothing wrong, but that everyone of your generation with your profile and presentation was missed.
The history of ADHD is really shitty: nobody was getting diagnosed in the '80s or '90s unless they were a massively disruptive hyperactive boy with (mostly) rich white parents, in the early '00s books were written and hands were wrung over the "drugging of our children" who were "just being normal boisterous children" and how it was all just due to too much sugar and food dye, and even today a lot of evidently-respected medical professionals still believe that ADHD isn't real (lookin' at you, Gabor Mate). Only within the past several years has the concept that a lifelong neurodevelopmental difference like ADHD could persist into adulthood (surprise?!) even been taken seriously.
You couldn't have fixed this years ago, because you had no way to know, and no-one would have diagnosed you back then anyway. (In a way, it's probably for the best that you didn't come to the attention of psychiatry back then and get misdiagnosed with a pile of stuff.)
posted by heatherlogan at 6:49 AM on October 22, 2023 [12 favorites]
The history of ADHD is really shitty: nobody was getting diagnosed in the '80s or '90s unless they were a massively disruptive hyperactive boy with (mostly) rich white parents, in the early '00s books were written and hands were wrung over the "drugging of our children" who were "just being normal boisterous children" and how it was all just due to too much sugar and food dye, and even today a lot of evidently-respected medical professionals still believe that ADHD isn't real (lookin' at you, Gabor Mate). Only within the past several years has the concept that a lifelong neurodevelopmental difference like ADHD could persist into adulthood (surprise?!) even been taken seriously.
You couldn't have fixed this years ago, because you had no way to know, and no-one would have diagnosed you back then anyway. (In a way, it's probably for the best that you didn't come to the attention of psychiatry back then and get misdiagnosed with a pile of stuff.)
posted by heatherlogan at 6:49 AM on October 22, 2023 [12 favorites]
The thing about ADHD is, you're like this forever.
Have you become your "best self" yet? Meds and proper coaching/therapy can help an incredible amount with being more functional, but.... you're still gonna have ADHD. You'll still have some of the struggles and will absolutely have to work around inattentive-brain.
So it follows that you never would have been psuedo-neurotypical. You would have had struggles even if you were diagnosed years ago.
"What if" and "if only" thoughts about the past are common, I think. I certainly have them. But they're the kind of magical, perfectionistic, UNREALISTIC thinking that we're particularly prone to.
I'd be amazed to find a person diagnosed with ADHD in adulthood who didn't carry a hefty load of shame and regret. You're not alone! It's not wrong to feel regret, so if you grieve don't beat yourself over that.
But it'll also hold you back and weigh you down. Generally I've found talk therapy useless for ADHD inattentive, but it did help me put down the burden of the past. So if therapy is an option, most therapists seem able to help with coping with this kind of shame & regret.
(Cautionary side note: in my experience, most therapists are NOT fluent in ADHD. Don't do years of "so how are you feeling" therapy after you feel okay about the past, hoping it'll help with the present. It won't. Look for a therapist who is goal-oriented, possibly someone who does DBT. Or if you can afford it, an ADHD coach may help.)
posted by Baethan at 7:10 AM on October 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
Have you become your "best self" yet? Meds and proper coaching/therapy can help an incredible amount with being more functional, but.... you're still gonna have ADHD. You'll still have some of the struggles and will absolutely have to work around inattentive-brain.
So it follows that you never would have been psuedo-neurotypical. You would have had struggles even if you were diagnosed years ago.
"What if" and "if only" thoughts about the past are common, I think. I certainly have them. But they're the kind of magical, perfectionistic, UNREALISTIC thinking that we're particularly prone to.
I'd be amazed to find a person diagnosed with ADHD in adulthood who didn't carry a hefty load of shame and regret. You're not alone! It's not wrong to feel regret, so if you grieve don't beat yourself over that.
But it'll also hold you back and weigh you down. Generally I've found talk therapy useless for ADHD inattentive, but it did help me put down the burden of the past. So if therapy is an option, most therapists seem able to help with coping with this kind of shame & regret.
(Cautionary side note: in my experience, most therapists are NOT fluent in ADHD. Don't do years of "so how are you feeling" therapy after you feel okay about the past, hoping it'll help with the present. It won't. Look for a therapist who is goal-oriented, possibly someone who does DBT. Or if you can afford it, an ADHD coach may help.)
posted by Baethan at 7:10 AM on October 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
Too adhd to read the other responses, but one way I deal with this, similar to being told when I was a child how smart I was, is to say it's like being tall. Tall ain't gonna get you into the NBA. If you also have good hand-eye-coordination, are skilled at teamwork, are incredibly dedicated, don't have asthma, have an engaged adult who can get you to matches, aren't queer, can get good nutrition and sleep, and if you enjoy basketball..... then being tall is for sure an asset.
posted by Iteki at 7:14 AM on October 22, 2023 [8 favorites]
posted by Iteki at 7:14 AM on October 22, 2023 [8 favorites]
I came back because I wanted to add the following. It sounds like you're entering the grief/anger stage of your post-diagnostic processing. This is normal! It lasts a few weeks to a few months. It will not last forever. It's ok to feel these feelings! It's ok to talk about them too! Here is some useful information on the processing of emotions, by and for neurodivergent people.
Finding a support group for recently-diagnosed ADHDers could help with the processing. (Sorry I don't have any leads to offer for this.)
posted by heatherlogan at 8:10 AM on October 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
Finding a support group for recently-diagnosed ADHDers could help with the processing. (Sorry I don't have any leads to offer for this.)
posted by heatherlogan at 8:10 AM on October 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
There are also neurodivergent therapists who can help with the near-term processing.
posted by heatherlogan at 8:23 AM on October 22, 2023
posted by heatherlogan at 8:23 AM on October 22, 2023
Coming in to agree that it is normal to grieve and need to process and you will not feel this way forever.
For right now, please try to counter the flogging and couldabeens with kindness to yourself. "I've worked very hard - without additional support or trained skills, in a world that is not really built for me - and that IS success. I have still had joy and formative experiences in my life. I am excited to see what happens next now that I have better tools." If you catch yourself talking to yourself in a way that you would never speak to a dear friend or family member - because I'll bet you don't treat them like their only worth in the world is in educational and financial success - stop yourself. Literally just say "stop" out loud if you have to. Say "this isn't helpful". Redirect yourself to go pet an animal or drink some water or perform some other dopamine-raising activity.
I am a classic case of post-menopause diagnosis, because I was apparently burning pure estrogen to function, and if you are maybe in a similar situation I will gently suggest that perimenopause is its own entire mental health crisis and some of this internal self-talk might be only tangential to the ADHD. Worth a discussion with your GYN or GP, if applicable.
Eventually, once I had my antidepressants worked out (and that has been overall more critical for me than the vyvanse, which I appreciate when I'm struggling to focus on work but do not take every day and I'm still much more functional than before), I was able to realize that it's entirely possible I could have made more use of that "potential" my report cards went on and on about...and likely burned the fuck out in my mid-late 30s. We tend to put on rose-colored glasses when we look back at the road not traveled, but it's very unlikely that alternate universe was going to be nothing but puppies and bags of money, you know? Getting through all this led me to quadrupling down on making the rest of my life more like what I want, and taking some of those risks, and letting go of the perfectionism to be more willing to take a swing and just laugh and shrug if I miss.
You can always find something to regret. Alt-U You is wondering right now if they were held back by their childhood diagnosis and would have a happier/better/more "successful" life by whatever metric that is defined for them if it had been overlooked.
posted by Lyn Never at 9:14 AM on October 22, 2023 [7 favorites]
For right now, please try to counter the flogging and couldabeens with kindness to yourself. "I've worked very hard - without additional support or trained skills, in a world that is not really built for me - and that IS success. I have still had joy and formative experiences in my life. I am excited to see what happens next now that I have better tools." If you catch yourself talking to yourself in a way that you would never speak to a dear friend or family member - because I'll bet you don't treat them like their only worth in the world is in educational and financial success - stop yourself. Literally just say "stop" out loud if you have to. Say "this isn't helpful". Redirect yourself to go pet an animal or drink some water or perform some other dopamine-raising activity.
I am a classic case of post-menopause diagnosis, because I was apparently burning pure estrogen to function, and if you are maybe in a similar situation I will gently suggest that perimenopause is its own entire mental health crisis and some of this internal self-talk might be only tangential to the ADHD. Worth a discussion with your GYN or GP, if applicable.
Eventually, once I had my antidepressants worked out (and that has been overall more critical for me than the vyvanse, which I appreciate when I'm struggling to focus on work but do not take every day and I'm still much more functional than before), I was able to realize that it's entirely possible I could have made more use of that "potential" my report cards went on and on about...and likely burned the fuck out in my mid-late 30s. We tend to put on rose-colored glasses when we look back at the road not traveled, but it's very unlikely that alternate universe was going to be nothing but puppies and bags of money, you know? Getting through all this led me to quadrupling down on making the rest of my life more like what I want, and taking some of those risks, and letting go of the perfectionism to be more willing to take a swing and just laugh and shrug if I miss.
You can always find something to regret. Alt-U You is wondering right now if they were held back by their childhood diagnosis and would have a happier/better/more "successful" life by whatever metric that is defined for them if it had been overlooked.
posted by Lyn Never at 9:14 AM on October 22, 2023 [7 favorites]
Compassion for your past self is the key. You did the best you could with the knowledge and resources that you had. There are plenty of compassion-based practices out there for you to cultivate this.
posted by shock muppet at 10:06 AM on October 22, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by shock muppet at 10:06 AM on October 22, 2023 [4 favorites]
Think of what you might have missed out upon had you been diagnosed in 8th grade, took your meds, did the homework, got a steady job and behaved appropriately. I sure messed up but I had a helluva time doing so.
posted by Ideefixe at 10:06 AM on October 22, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Ideefixe at 10:06 AM on October 22, 2023 [3 favorites]
How can I avoid flogging myself for missing the life I could have had?
Dearest OP, I was diagnosed at the age of 43 and I was bitter and angry about my late diagnosis for a really long time. That was such a waste of time and energy on my part. You were never going to have that other life, as others have pointed out above. I was never going to have another life. Better late than never may sound infuriating but it is true for some of us. I took a workshop about five years ago for adults with ADHD at Kaiser. It was a several week course and I learned a lot about common traits that often coexist with ADHD. This was 20 years after my diagnosis and I learned lots of new and helpful things. I encourage you to grieve and feel your feelings and then move on to the actual life you have right now. There are plenty of things you can do to learn more and use that knowledge as a springboard to a better life, however you may define that. It sucks to get a late diagnosis but I am going to congratulate you anyway. Because getting one, at least for me, was so much better than when I did not have a diagnosis and just felt like a shitty human being all the time. Good luck!
posted by Bella Donna at 3:03 PM on October 22, 2023 [6 favorites]
Dearest OP, I was diagnosed at the age of 43 and I was bitter and angry about my late diagnosis for a really long time. That was such a waste of time and energy on my part. You were never going to have that other life, as others have pointed out above. I was never going to have another life. Better late than never may sound infuriating but it is true for some of us. I took a workshop about five years ago for adults with ADHD at Kaiser. It was a several week course and I learned a lot about common traits that often coexist with ADHD. This was 20 years after my diagnosis and I learned lots of new and helpful things. I encourage you to grieve and feel your feelings and then move on to the actual life you have right now. There are plenty of things you can do to learn more and use that knowledge as a springboard to a better life, however you may define that. It sucks to get a late diagnosis but I am going to congratulate you anyway. Because getting one, at least for me, was so much better than when I did not have a diagnosis and just felt like a shitty human being all the time. Good luck!
posted by Bella Donna at 3:03 PM on October 22, 2023 [6 favorites]
I was diagnosed closer to 40 than 30, and I've had these thoughts but rarely. I think that is because so much of what has shaped my life, and the lives of those I love most, have been shitty things beyond my/our control, and I had to find a way to give up on the if-onlys to even have a chance at keeping my sanity and functioning.
Byron Katie's 'Loving What Is' book helped me a lot.
posted by Salamandrous at 3:30 PM on October 22, 2023 [2 favorites]
Byron Katie's 'Loving What Is' book helped me a lot.
posted by Salamandrous at 3:30 PM on October 22, 2023 [2 favorites]
It would have been different; and yet, here you are. And no amount of rewinding and replaying your past choices will shift your present even one hair.
So: Here you are. What do you want to do now?
Or as the song goes, "And all these goddamn people in the world are all just getting by".
posted by Lady Li at 4:42 PM on October 22, 2023 [2 favorites]
So: Here you are. What do you want to do now?
Or as the song goes, "And all these goddamn people in the world are all just getting by".
posted by Lady Li at 4:42 PM on October 22, 2023 [2 favorites]
no amount of rewinding and replaying your past choices will shift your present even one hair
except insofar as it gives you an opportunity to clarify the present options available to you and the likely outcomes of choosing between them.
One thing that might help, as you rewind and replay past choices: having identified what now seems to you to have been a choice point, spend some time pondering the question of just how much control you actually had over which option you ended up pursuing, given who and how you were and what you knew at the time.
They say hindsight is 20/20, but that's not right. Hindsight often makes things that weren't really choices look like choices from here. Sometimes I think it does that just to give us opportunities for self-flagellation. It can be a bit of a bastard that way.
You can categorize poor outcomes either as the consequence of bad choices made due to personal inadequacy or as useful information to take into account when making new choices. That's a choice in and of itself; on reflection, I can't recall ever managing to do both at once, and strongly recommend the latter.
posted by flabdablet at 4:59 PM on October 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
except insofar as it gives you an opportunity to clarify the present options available to you and the likely outcomes of choosing between them.
One thing that might help, as you rewind and replay past choices: having identified what now seems to you to have been a choice point, spend some time pondering the question of just how much control you actually had over which option you ended up pursuing, given who and how you were and what you knew at the time.
They say hindsight is 20/20, but that's not right. Hindsight often makes things that weren't really choices look like choices from here. Sometimes I think it does that just to give us opportunities for self-flagellation. It can be a bit of a bastard that way.
You can categorize poor outcomes either as the consequence of bad choices made due to personal inadequacy or as useful information to take into account when making new choices. That's a choice in and of itself; on reflection, I can't recall ever managing to do both at once, and strongly recommend the latter.
posted by flabdablet at 4:59 PM on October 22, 2023 [1 favorite]
There was a similar thread earlier in the year (“I'm on ADHD medicine and I feel guilty”). This is what I wrote then:
→ "does anyone else with ADHD relate to these feelings of guilt and inadequacy?"posted by scruss at 5:16 PM on October 22, 2023 [2 favorites]
Yes, very much so. I used to grieve the friendships I could have kept, the career I could have had, the tidy home I could have welcomed visitors to ... but I now realize that I can't get those back. There's a lot of dealing with being for years the smartest (yet most slipshod) guy in the room, and then not. Because my recall hasn't always been good, I'm easily undermined by doubt over shared memories.
Dealing with my ADHD has been, on balance, massively positive: I'm now able to concentrate more on what I want to do, and be able to listen to others and advocate from an informed position. I'm able to be contented now. But 40+ years of baggage doesn't slough off with the first pill. Congratulations on starting the journey. Being a normal person feels so weird, right?
You already know this cycle because rumination is common in ADHD. Coping strategies at CHADD, ADDitude, one coach two coach; podcasts if that's more your bag: Tracy Otsuka 1 & 2, ADHD Support Talk Radio, Neurodivergent Nurse.
The Power of Regret, by Daniel H. Pink; Pink's TED Talk on the universality of regret, and the four types. How to live with your regrets, BBC DH Pink interview. Regret is universal, here's what to do when you feel it (another Pink interview) (& another, & another).
I was diagnosed in middle age, and these women were diagnosed in their 60s.
posted by Iris Gambol at 9:41 PM on October 22, 2023 [7 favorites]
The Power of Regret, by Daniel H. Pink; Pink's TED Talk on the universality of regret, and the four types. How to live with your regrets, BBC DH Pink interview. Regret is universal, here's what to do when you feel it (another Pink interview) (& another, & another).
I was diagnosed in middle age, and these women were diagnosed in their 60s.
posted by Iris Gambol at 9:41 PM on October 22, 2023 [7 favorites]
Coming back to say I echo heatherlogan's comment - my presentation profile as a little Asian girl would've never been diagnosed for ADHD, and the medical diagnosis process and the wider societal stigma wouldn't have been even easy to figure out for my mom as an ESL speaker. Me suffering is a systemic failure that is currently getting resolved in real time, and I also have friends who are decades older than me who are also trying to seek a diagnosis. Because of these super white institutions, we got failed.
Me having to clean up years of health problems in my late 20s, and being diagnosed at the age of 27-28, is considered a best case outcome due to this level of inequity, considering how many of my friends of the same age of me are still not diagnosed, who are primarily queer, trans, and people of color. You can even look at my AskMeFi history -- I was gaslighted for so many years until another MeFite helped me figure out how to navigate and understand that yes, I am very likely to have ADHD, and that was literally only 5-6 years ago, and it took me 5 years to finally get diagnosed after suffering through so many barriers. Every single person before you got diagnosed with ADHD has opened the pathway for you to get late diagnosed here, along with the clinicians who are being more open minded than they used to be.
There is still injustice, but being diagnosed with ADHD gives you so much room to do and take care of yourself and the people you love, and serve as an another example against what we were denied previously.
posted by yueliang at 11:31 PM on October 22, 2023 [4 favorites]
Me having to clean up years of health problems in my late 20s, and being diagnosed at the age of 27-28, is considered a best case outcome due to this level of inequity, considering how many of my friends of the same age of me are still not diagnosed, who are primarily queer, trans, and people of color. You can even look at my AskMeFi history -- I was gaslighted for so many years until another MeFite helped me figure out how to navigate and understand that yes, I am very likely to have ADHD, and that was literally only 5-6 years ago, and it took me 5 years to finally get diagnosed after suffering through so many barriers. Every single person before you got diagnosed with ADHD has opened the pathway for you to get late diagnosed here, along with the clinicians who are being more open minded than they used to be.
There is still injustice, but being diagnosed with ADHD gives you so much room to do and take care of yourself and the people you love, and serve as an another example against what we were denied previously.
posted by yueliang at 11:31 PM on October 22, 2023 [4 favorites]
I may have some brain injury due to maternal alcoholism. ADHD, lack of time sense, not-great memory, fortunately not severe like my younger sibling who has significant handicaps. I have hearing impairment that is likely genetic. When you start with the what could have beens, you think of the potential positives, but a good counter to that thinking is just how easily it could have been worse.
I self-diagnosed my ADHD when I diagnosed my son's. I was in my early 40s, both later confirmed by professionals. I have a bunch of useful adaptive skills for coping. ADHD means I notice things others don't, not just squirrels. It may be why I'm comfortable with change and spontaneity, why I'm flexible. My Mom was older so I could have had a trisomy. My family was dysfunctional; the alcohol likely a response to bipolar disorder, but there were lots of books, music, and a great neighborhood to grow up in. I got the genes for mental illness, also genes for some great attributes. I find it helpful to look at the big picture. The dysfunction did real harm, but it could easily have been worse.
posted by theora55 at 7:35 AM on October 23, 2023 [5 favorites]
I self-diagnosed my ADHD when I diagnosed my son's. I was in my early 40s, both later confirmed by professionals. I have a bunch of useful adaptive skills for coping. ADHD means I notice things others don't, not just squirrels. It may be why I'm comfortable with change and spontaneity, why I'm flexible. My Mom was older so I could have had a trisomy. My family was dysfunctional; the alcohol likely a response to bipolar disorder, but there were lots of books, music, and a great neighborhood to grow up in. I got the genes for mental illness, also genes for some great attributes. I find it helpful to look at the big picture. The dysfunction did real harm, but it could easily have been worse.
posted by theora55 at 7:35 AM on October 23, 2023 [5 favorites]
Mod note: [btw, underclocked's answer and this post have been added to the sidebar and Best Of blog]
posted by taz (staff) at 2:19 AM on October 24, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by taz (staff) at 2:19 AM on October 24, 2023 [2 favorites]
I'm going to come at this from what would seem like the optimum situation: I was a female "gifted" child and was diagnosed at age eight in 1983, with a dad who realized after I was diagnosed that he had it too.
Remember that if you had been diagnosed on time, you would have received the interventions and understanding and supports that were in place then, and not what exists now. I understand that having an explanation would have helped, but don't over-read how much it would have.
I know there's a sense of "It could have been so different!" but I got everything available at the time, which was methylphenidate and pretty much nothing else, and it wasn't enough to allow me to succeed to anything like my full potential or keep me from growing up hearing all of the negative messages about myself that undiagnosed people also hear. There just wasn't understanding of what ADD was or how pervasive its effects were, or how to help it.
I sat in class year after year, not understanding where everyone was getting the secret set of directions they all seemed to know how to follow. I needed constant age-level training on how to get started, breaking down tasks, how not to get overwhelmed, how to organize...everything, how to finish things, how to study independently, how to socialize, how to deal with rejection, a million other things. I had terrific parents and a well-funded school system and I didn't get it and you wouldn't have either.
Maybe you didn't do the best you could have with the right supports, but give yourself credit for your successes now that you know how high the barriers were rather than focusing on an impossible past where they would have been lower.
posted by jocelmeow at 12:58 PM on October 24, 2023 [10 favorites]
Remember that if you had been diagnosed on time, you would have received the interventions and understanding and supports that were in place then, and not what exists now. I understand that having an explanation would have helped, but don't over-read how much it would have.
I know there's a sense of "It could have been so different!" but I got everything available at the time, which was methylphenidate and pretty much nothing else, and it wasn't enough to allow me to succeed to anything like my full potential or keep me from growing up hearing all of the negative messages about myself that undiagnosed people also hear. There just wasn't understanding of what ADD was or how pervasive its effects were, or how to help it.
I sat in class year after year, not understanding where everyone was getting the secret set of directions they all seemed to know how to follow. I needed constant age-level training on how to get started, breaking down tasks, how not to get overwhelmed, how to organize...everything, how to finish things, how to study independently, how to socialize, how to deal with rejection, a million other things. I had terrific parents and a well-funded school system and I didn't get it and you wouldn't have either.
Maybe you didn't do the best you could have with the right supports, but give yourself credit for your successes now that you know how high the barriers were rather than focusing on an impossible past where they would have been lower.
posted by jocelmeow at 12:58 PM on October 24, 2023 [10 favorites]
I also echo @jocelmeow -- I was talking about it with my mom and she expressed to me that I probably was only going to receive medication and they weren't going to help me for anything else, and she was suspicious of me being separated from the rest of the class. I'm still unraveling all of this myself, especially because I went through hell to get diagnosed as an adult before it was widely talked about and advocated for, but the stigma regarding ADHD diagnosis at all age causes so many unbelievable barriers.
posted by yueliang at 5:47 PM on October 26, 2023
posted by yueliang at 5:47 PM on October 26, 2023
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Also, what ended up happening for me was that once I got my ADHD diagnosis and my meds, suddenly all the health problems I ignored due to the overwhelming stress of being undiagnosed suddenly became an extremely high priority. I'm in year 3 of pursuing medical, vision, and dental treatment for conditions I neglected for years and years and years, but the energy increase I've had is substantial due to getting all of this treated.
In general, you have enough time to get what you want, but the more you move forward, the happier you'll be. That's what my loved ones told me, and it has never led me wrong.
posted by yueliang at 9:26 PM on October 21, 2023 [15 favorites]