Post-Diagnosis Dip

I was diagnosed with ADHD (innatentive type) just over three years ago at the age of 38. Up until this point, I was putting huge amounts of mental effort into fighting against what I saw as defects and problems with myself, which was exhausting and stressful.

Upon receiving the official diagnosis, my view of these 'defects' changed: they were no longer an issue I had to fight, but part of me that I had to accept and learn to live with. This change in viewpoint triggered an interesting behavioural phenomenon: I noticed my symptoms (no longer defects!) getting worse and my ADHD-like behaviour getting more pronounced. I procrastinated more, I couldn't concentrate as well as before, disractions always got the better of me.

Why was this? I realised that receiving the diagnosis and changing my attitude towards these behaviours had caused me to relax and accept more. My immediate reaction to noticing that I couldn't focus or that I was procrastinating was no longer to scold myself and generate internal pressure to get things done. Instead I was saying internally 'you have ADHD, this is part of your symptoms and it's natural'. I wasn't trying to overcome them any more, so things took a dip.

For me, this dip lasted several months as I adjusted. Gradually, however, I came to look at my symptoms differently again. I wanted to overcome them, but with an attitude of compassion and understanding: I was no longer going to bully myself to get over them, as that would only recreate the stress and damage I'd done to myself over the past decades. But I knew that I had to regain momentum, or I would not be such a productive and helpful member of society, my employer might start asking questions and I didn't want to let down friends or family.

I started with a will, the desire to be productive and the best person I could be. From there, I did my research and looked into techniques and tricks I could employ to help overcome the barriers my symptoms threw up. I found that a lot of these techniques I'd been using before, but now I did them with an attitude not of pressure and coercion, but with desire and drive.

Diarising all tasks and meetings, body-doubling to ensure someone was there while I did a task, journalling to clear my mind and thoughts at the beginning of the day all helped. As did medication; though the path to get to the right combination was not straightforward, because we were dealing with comorbidities (other conditions that occur alongside the ADHD) like 80% of people with ADHD. However, my doctor and I found the right balance and restored some powers of concentration and focus.*

Gradually, I pulled out of the dip, and started to work towards a new way of living with ADHD. I'm still getting used to it and finding new ways and approaches to help me, and am pretty sure I will be doing so for the rest of my life! Frequent change and newness are motivators for ADHD brains, and so applying that idea to assistance techniques helps us engage with them and get more out of them.

Have you had a similar experience post-diagnosis? How did you overcome it? Share in the comments below to start the conversation!

*This is an interesting topic in itself, because by taking medication, we're trying to set our brains to be more like neurotypical ones and there's a discussion to be had around conformity and comparison at another time. However, if your symptoms of concentration and focus loss are damaging your day to day life, like mine were, I found medication the right thing to do and very helpful. It doesn't fully 'fix' the problem, but it certainly helps.