Ep 14 - ADHD and Grief with Late ADHD Diagnosis

In this video, we explore the emotional journey of coping with ADHD grief after a late diagnosis. Many individuals who receive a diagnosis later in life experience a unique set of challenges and emotions.

We discuss the origins of these emotions and the stages one may go through, and provide insights into why self-compassion is vital during this process. Discover how to navigate your way from anger and frustration to acceptance and resilience.

Join us as we delve into the reality of bargaining with your ADHD, understanding the power of self-compassion, and finding hope in the journey toward acceptance. If you or someone you know is dealing with a late ADHD diagnosis, this video is a valuable resource.

00:00 - Intro
01:37 - Where the emotions come from with a late diagnosis of ADHD
04:18 - The first stage is...
08:07 - Why do you start to get angry towards yourself and what happens when you get caught up with it
09:44 - The reality about bargaining with your ADHD
13:17 - How to get to the stage of acceptance
18:09 - The power of self-compassion
27:17 - Outro
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Need ADHD coaching support? Feel free to DM me on Instagram @adhdcoachsky for personalized assistance and guidance.

Together, let's navigate the journey towards managing ADHD and unlocking your full potential.

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 1:37 Where the emotions come from with late diagnosis of ADHD
• 4:18 The first stage is...
• 8:07 Why you start to get angry towards yourself and what happens when we get coaught up with it
• 9:44 The reality about bargaining with your ADHD
• 13:17 How to get to the stage of acceptance
• 18:09 The power of self compassion
• 27:17 Outro

Transcript

0:00

You know, I think there can be grief anyway at any age in terms of, you know, experiencing a diagnosis. But I think when it comes to particularly late diagnosis around ADHD, there's almost like these extra emotions or this extra stuff that shows up around grief. And I think that comes from the place of like, What could have been, or how things could have been different. I am so excited to be finally back talking to you all. Like, it has been a red hot minute. So if you are new to this space, welcome. My focus, instead of just being on broad mental health, I've really kind of niched down a little bit in terms of ADHD. And so, what I want to do every week is answer your questions about ADHD. Hello everybody. So welcome to another chat around ADHD. So today I really, really wanted to talk with you about something that I am noticing popping up a lot more in my, my clinic in terms of my therapy, but also my coaching space is late diagnosis. You know, I think it is so good that there are so many people who are being able to be diagnosed and supported and now having an understanding of what has been happening for them their entire life. And equally though, I know with that diagnosis also can come significant grief. You know, I think there can be grief anyway at any age in terms of, you know, experiencing a diagnosis. But I think when it comes to particularly late diagnosis around ADHD, There's almost like these extra emotions or this extra stuff that shows up around grief. And I think that comes from the place of like, what could have been or how things could have been different or looking back and looking at life and going, wow, there are so many maybe fuck ups or failures or like times when you've just felt let down that the grief is not just around. I have ADHD. The grief also becomes around. Look what's happened with my life and I can't get that back. And that's a big thing for so many people to sit with. And I think it's so important that we acknowledge that for the people walking through our doors and also if you're that ADHD er is to acknowledge within yourself that that grief and that feeling that you're experiencing is just so Fucking valid, like if that's the only thing you hear in this next 30 minutes, your feelings are so valid. And what I notice quite often is that, you know, because we're so sometimes focused on either wanting that diagnosis to kind of help us make sense of our work, our world, or trying to figure out what's going on, that when we get the diagnosis, there is almost like this immediate relief of like, Oh my God, thank fuck, like, I know what's going on now. And then what I notice, almost like clockwork, is that following that relief is the, oh fuck, right? It's all of the feelings then show up after it that aren't really in a line with feeling relieved. And that's the grief cycle. That's the stages of grief. That's the stuff that we don't always talk about that is normal and natural in terms of having a diagnosis. So I wanted today to really talk you through, you know, what these stages of grief might look like for you. Um, what to maybe expect in terms of your experience and just a space for you to maybe feel heard. You know, when we think about the stages of grief, I try to think about them as like almost like a staircase, right? Where you can move up. Because the stages of grief, they're not fluid. We don't go through one, tick it off, go through the next, tick it off, go through the next, tick it off, and then we're done! Unfortunately, grief does not work that way, right? It's like ADHD brain going up and down the stairs because you forgot things a million fucking times, right? Like, we're gonna move through them at different spaces, different stages throughout our life. Now, the first stage, or one of the stages, if we're kind of putting it in the context of going up and down the stairs, is denial, and while immediately we might have felt relief, and this is really good, and now someone's understanding, quickly following that can be this sense of like, Oh my god, maybe I made it up. Maybe I'm lying. Maybe I am just lazy. You know that imposter syndrome that shows up with ADHD, which is quite ironic, right? Because we've been diagnosed with it, and now we're questioning it because of the symptom of it. Like, it's a little bit of a head fuck. But the reality is that imposter syndrome kicks in big time. Maybe I don't have it. I'm exaggerated my symptoms. Maybe I've shown them parts of me that aren't actually true. Like we create all of these stories in our head. And the problem sometimes is that the people around us can validate for us, right? They can be like, yeah, I didn't think you had ADHD either. Or, oh, everyone's got problems with attention or, oh, I would never have picked you for being someone with ADHD or just lazy. Like if you just honestly did the thing, you'd be fine. Like how many times? Have we been invalidated when we've shared an ADHD diagnosis, right? And that's what feeds that denial for the ADHDR. So once we get the diagnosis, it's not just our internal story that can create a problem. It's if we're not surrounded by people who are supporting that diagnosis, and who may be very well unintentionally invalidated. All of that feeds this feeling of denial, feeds this feeling of imposter syndrome, and feeds this really shitty feeling within that maybe I'm not worthy of that diagnosis. And really, at the end of the day, you are, but it's how you're feeling in the moment. Now, what can happen as we start to get into this sense of denial is that we also then move through, like, anger, resentment, frustration. Like, we get... Super fucking pissed off and especially with the late diagnosis, right? Because the stories then come up of like, and so valid in your experience, right? The stories come up around, Oh my God, like, how did my parents not pick this up? Or, Oh my God, I've seen so many professionals throughout my life. How the fuck have they not noticed this or we and go, Oh my God, my teachers have let me down. The principles let me down or like we start to get so upset with the people in our life that we feel have meant to be there and support us that we feel really let down by and this is not a judgment around those people, but this is a validation around your experience of what's happened for you, right? And then we get angry at ourselves, right? We're like, Oh my God, like, All of these failures in my life, if I'd just picked it up earlier, then this wouldn't have happened. Right? Or we're like, oh my god, I'm such an idiot, like, why didn't I advocate for myself when that doctor said no? Why didn't I say something to that psychiatrist when they said it was just anxiety? Like we start to, like the anger starts to build and build and we get overwhelmed within it. Now, here's the thing that can happen is when we get caught up in this anger, instead of acknowledging the feeling and validating our experience, what happens is, is that we go, Oh my God, I shouldn't be thinking that way, right? That's wrong of me to think that. And that's not true. Like you are allowed to feel how you feel. What we do with our feelings is our responsibility, but your anger is valid. Like again, late diagnosis. We are looking back on our life and thinking what could have been. There's no way around having feelings around that. You're gonna have stuff show up. Now, once we kind of go, okay, I'm angry and I'm pissed off, but what's next? Right? Like once we get into that, what next stage and With ADHD, it's like we can swing between the two pretty fucking quickly, right? But what happens is then we start to bargain with ourselves, right? We're like, okay, I've got ADHD, fair enough, but how am I going to fix it? How am I going to solve it? You know, like the ADHD a million miles an hour, all of these ideas, and I'm now just going to figure out my life and like fix the problem. We get into the bargaining stage with ourselves. All right, well, I'm going to get medication, and then I'm and then I'm going to do that, and then everything will be fine, right? Everything will be great. And the reality is, is that you can't bargain with your disability. If you have ADHD, you have ADHD. And what we quickly learn in that bargaining is that it doesn't matter what I choose immediately, nothing is going to fix things immediately. And then we become really despondent. And then we get really upset. And then we can look forward, and we get caught up in the overwhelm. of thinking what needs to happen in order to manage our symptoms. Like I have seen so many clients who come in and they've got the diagnosis and they were so excited about it. And then you can just see the overwhelm that they sit in in the space of like, but I don't know how to solve this. Right? I've booked in with the psychiatrist and I've got the medication, but then I've got side effects from that. And then I went to therapy and then I didn't gel with the psychologist and then. I wanted to do coaching and it was too expensive and like you can just start to feel the overwhelm in not knowing what to do, where to start, or how to be effective in managing ADHD. And when we get to that diagnosis later in life, we almost feel like this like real squish that we have to do it quickly because we've already wasted so much time. And right there in that moment becomes the overwhelm. I've wasted 30 years, 40 years, 50 years, for some people, 60, 70 years in their mind, not managing my ADHD and having it negatively impact my life. I want to sort things now. And so when we get into that headspace and we see that maybe that's not possible, we get so stuck again in like, this is really shit. And this comes into the next stage of like that depressive. What's the point? This is too hard. I'm never gonna be able to fix this problem. And we just get really stuck in this depressed feeling of nothing's ever gonna change. And I'd love to hear from you if you jump into the Facebook group Living With ADHD to let me know, like, what do you notice for yourself as you've moved through the stages of grief around a late diagnosis? You know, depression seems to be this big one that I notice and overwhelm that people are experiencing. And it gets caught up in like, everything's too big, it's too much, and it's too hard because that's the nature of ADHD, right? We want to solve everything at once. And it's really, really fucking tricky. So then we do nothing, which makes us feel depressed. But then we get the fear of like, if I don't do it, then my future is going to be really shit and I need to act now. And so then we swing into action and then we have a failure and then we go back into shame and then we're depressed again. It's this back and forth, this swing. And then if we don't have support around us, if we don't have the people validating the diagnosis, if we don't have people around us that understand ADHD, then we can fall bigger into that hole. of not feeling good enough, of feeling depressed, of feeling like we're never going to get our way out of this ADHD spiral. Then the self blame kicks in, feelings of never being good enough, and unfortunately, if we're not mindful, we can sit in that space for a long period of time. And that's a really exhausting place to be for so many reasons. Now, there's another stage That is probably, I think, the most important. It's also the fucking hardest. And I actually think we need help in actually being in that space. And that's the stage of acceptance. Accepting that you have ADHD. Accepting that it's not worse than it is, but it is what it is. Accepting that it's a disability. It isn't the stories you've been telling yourself. Accepting that you are at this age. And it is happening now and you have the time that you have in order to be able to manage it. Right? Acceptance is coming back to the moment and seeing things for what they are. And that can be really fucking tricky. But here's the thing, if we don't practice and learn to be in a state of acceptance, What we consistently do in our grief, is make ourselves wrong, is push ourselves further into the hole, is criticise, is judge, hate on ourselves, is just create this really unintentional negative space around us that isn't supportive of ADHD. And so I encourage you, there's a few things that I, I talk with people about in terms of working on acceptance. And the funny thing is, and it's not funny, ha ha funny, but like ironic funny, is that when we think about acceptance, acceptance actually requires understanding. Understanding ADHD, taking the time to know what the fuck it is. It requires compassion, showing up from a place of kindness, showing up from a place of love, being non judgmental, stop making fucking judgments in a negative way about your symptoms. And it also requires strategy, learning the things that are going to work for you to help you manage it. And the irony that I'm talking about with ADHD is that most of the time, and I would say 99. 9 percent of the time, ADHD is a fucking awesome at accepting other people, at being kind to other people, at showing compassion and love and giving other people ideas about how they can support themselves in their lives. What we can be really fucking shit at. Is actually seeing ourselves as worthy of our own love and our own compassion and our own kindness and our own time to understand. And that's when I talk about the irony. So when people say to me, like, I don't know how to be compassionate to myself. I don't know how to be non judgmental. I generally rebut that with, yes, you fucking do know how to do the skill. What you haven't learned is that there needs to be permission for that stuff to come back to you too. Now, what can you do like if you've got this later diagnosis in life and you're noticing yourself running up and down the staircase of grief and you're just feeling really stuck in that mouse wheel and not knowing what to do, like where do you start? And the first thing is really try to find people, whether it be online space or face to face who get it. or who are willing to get it or who support the fact that you have ADHD. So it's the people you want to be around where you go, I have ADHD and they're like, okay, or can you tell me more about that? Or I'd love to learn more. Right. We need to be around those people. Okay. And minimize the time being around people who are like, no, you don't, or you're fine or suck it up or. You know, you're just being lazy, like limit the time with those people. I don't care who they are, maximize the time or being in the space of people who just fucking get it. And whether that be somebody that you know personally or somebody that you just find online and there's in a safe way, there's a space where you can go. It's super important. Find one person and sometimes it might be the GP or it might be, um, you know, somebody in a, in a Facebook group or a coach or a psychologist. Find one person who you can talk to, who can help you navigate what they think is the best treatment route for you. And generally the GPs can be helpful if you find someone who knows about like ADHD. Because sometimes what happens is, is we're like, we go to the GP and they send us down this way. And then... The nutritionist sends us down this path, and the OT sends us down this path, and the, I don't know, the fucking coach sends us down this path, and all have value, abso fucking lutely. And equally though, if they're not working together, you're going to be in overwhelm. So pick one person to talk your story through with, and let them help you and support you to come up with a treatment plan so you don't have to do it on your own. And as I said, sometimes the GPs can be a good place to start. Practice self compassion like a motherfucker, like literally get a piece of paper and write down how do I show compassion to others, right? And how you show compassion to others might be saying, I make time for them to talk about how they feel when they talk to me about how they feel. I just validate what they're saying by saying, yeah, I hear you. That must be really hard. Then practice those skills with yourself, whether you believe them or not practice the skills with yourself. The next one is there's somewhere in there is acknowledging that you are going to be on an emotional roller coaster for a little while yet. It's so normal. And remember, emotional dysregulation is part of ADHD. So instead of starting down the bottom and going, Oh, I'm a little bit dysregulated. You are going to be like on the fucking big roller coaster. You didn't get a chance to try the baby one first. You're on the big one. Accepting that you're on the big roller coaster, knowing what it is, knowing it's okay. And just breathing as you go. The other thing that's super important is educating yourself. Like educate yourself about ADHD. Attitude magazine online is an amazing place to start. They have so many free things available that support you in understanding what ADHD is and the different parts, like everything basically. But just find one place, but it doesn't have to be that one, but find one place where you are going to go to learn. We don't want you Googling ADHD and then being bombarded with a million, 50 fucking different rabbit holes, not going to be helpful, right? Like TikTok is amazing for you to get on and look and feel validated by other people's experience, but educating yourself is not validating yourself. TikTok is useful for that in terms of education. Find something that is reputable that you are going to be able to learn and understand. more about your diagnosis. The other thing that's so important is learning that ADHD is not all of who you are and equally you have strengths that go with this polarity of struggles and weaknesses and writing your strengths out asking your loved ones. Hey, what are the five things that you see in me that are just amazing, you know, getting them to write it down, reading it every day, reminding yourself that you are more than your struggles. is so important, especially when you've got to this later space in life and you're looking back and going, Oh my God, look at all the struggles I've had. Look at all the failures I've had. Look at how bad my behavior has been or my life has been or my attention has been or insert anything right when we're doing that, that's bringing in more overwhelm. Again, feelings are valid, but just getting caught up in all of the failures is going to keep you stuck. So equally breathing and sitting in a space of going. Yes, I so valid and equally though. But what are my strengths? What can I draw on now to support me in the next six months in the next six years, right? That's what we want to focus on and being mindful that it takes time for things to change in your world. Sometimes when we get a diagnosis and we jump in the deep end, there can be an expectation in our mind that we should be able to fix things quickly. That we should be able to just get shit done, or figure things out, or now we know what it is, we should be able to sort our shit out. The reality is, ADHD is lifelong. And it's about managing. It's about supporting. And it's about working with your ADHD, not fixing or trying to get rid of your ADHD. And that's a mindset thing in itself. Like, that's part of the acceptance that I'm talking about. It's a bit of a dance, right? Part of us is like, I don't want this! I want things to be better! I want to be normal! And the other part is like, Fuck, this is for life, and I've got to work with this shit. Okay, but I don't want to be normal, but then this is me, but like, and it's like whiplash and you're probably going to move between the two for a while. But again, normalizing that. Okay. I'm noticing I'm having that whiplash moment again. I'm noticing I'm getting caught up in story. Stop and breathe. Okay. This is a process. This is like a lifestyle. This is something that I'm going to learn to support myself in and manage. Versus fix, get rid of, be done with and move on and just practicing that language and shifting your language about how you're going to support that part of you as you move forward in life can be super important. Now, as always, I would love for you to jump into the Facebook group living with ADHD. And if like, I'd love for you to share, like if you've had a late diagnosis of ADHD and you feel like you'd love to, I'd love to hear from you. Like what? What have you noticed for yourself? Like, what is the experience been like? Because not everybody's experience is grief, right? Like some people's might be different. Um, and that's okay too. Like, that's amazing. But wherever you're at, I'd love to hear from you. And if you had a diagnosis earlier on, like happy, jump in and share as well. You know, our space in there as a community is all about coming together. Supporting each other, learning, and have a little bit of fun. But I really wanted to let you know today that whatever you experience after a late diagnosis of ADHD like it is so valid and you will get through it and things can absolutely get better. They can. And right now, equally, it's okay to just be sitting in whatever space you're in and just feeling the feels. Alright everyone, I will talk to you again soon. Bye.