Agreed! It’s hard before you realise you have adhd because you don’t know how to justify your struggles and then it’s just as hard after diagnosis because you don’t want people to think you’re making excuses 🥹

It took me 20 minutes to pick an outfit for work the other day too and I got so frustrated I *literally* hit a wall… at least you’re not alone

I have too!! I used to miss the coach to college almost once a week. I’m regularly one or two minutes late for work. Time just doesn’t work for me like it does for other people. I think the best part of having an awareness though is being able to bend it to suit you. 😊 Oh and no more apologising! Unless your life or other peoples lives depend on it being late is hurting nobody 🙅🏼‍♀️

Hey, I’m so happy this resonated with you. I know when I had the realisation it felt like an epiphany after a really low point. It can take months for these patterns to highlight themselves because we’ve been living on auto-pilot for so many years. The list sounds like a great idea! I’m glad you’ve found yourself on this journey and wish you all the best.

@@SianKatie I 100% had a similar epiphany where so many small things suddenly clicked into place and everything about my previous behaviour suddenly made sense. It's just a shame that getting treatment via NHS apparently takes so long and private treatment is so expensive. Thanks so much for the kind words and for helping spread awareness! You're doing a great job!

Yes it is a shame! I would love to be getting constant coaching and community support classes ran by the NHS but there’s nothing in my area. I went recently to ask for help & got handed a list of websites (still worth looking at though) I’ve listed them in the description of my last video if you want to check them out. Scrolling the internet is tedious but the more you know 😅 thank you for being so kind!

@@SianKatie Yes some kind of support group would be great. Ah amazing, thanks for pointing me in the right direction, I'll have to check those links out when I get some time... Oh who am I kidding, I'll probably look at them whilst I'm supposed to be working or something lol

I feel a bit bad because the only online support groups I know of are aimed at women and recently I had a guy inbox me on LinkedIn and I still haven’t replied because I have no recommendations. I did think about starting one but not sure how successful it would be but at least it would be open to all. I think an in person one would be great but that might only be accessible if you live in a big city. Haha. I always end up doing personal stuff in work time and work in personal time I just accept it now 😅

Thank you for sharing such an honest and beautiful moment with me. I am so grateful to have contributed to an increased awareness for you. I know that after this realisation I have not been as inclined to cover for myself and I hope you find the same happens for you. I've also realised I was holding myself to extremely high standards and people either don't care or quickly forget if I do make a mistake or let somebody down. You have to put yourself first, I think neurotypicals find that a lot easier than we do. See it as levelling the playing field haha.

The best thing about being diagnosed (for me) is having flashbacks of the past events that used to haunt you in your sleep where you've been weird or fucked up and fucking forgiving yourself and seeing the power and ingenuity within you from how you dealt with those circumstances with an undiagnosed universe brain. We're like the fuckin chosen ones but we gotta realise our power UknO! 🤣✊👽

@@marcus8302 totally agree! Diagnosis really helps the pennies drop into place and prompts lots of reflection on the past. As someone once said, life is lived looking forwards, but understood looking backwards. Diagnosis helps with understanding, but we gotta look forwards and do something differently otherwise we'll keep getting what we've been getting... For me diagnosis ain't the end point, just the start point. Unfortunately we got to do a bunch of self-advocating, push for reasonable adjustments and reduce our masking - it's an unhealthy thing IMHO. Accepting my diagnosis to me means I can start to own it and begin figuring out how move forward differently than in the past. It sure ain't easy, but nothing easy really gives much satisfaction anyways 😜

I hear you, it’s hard to justify all of our actions and thoughts and without the diagnosis or awareness of adhd it can feel like you’re making excuses even if you tell the truth so sometimes it’s easier to make up a believable lie haha.

@@mccannger I love this! And yeah for sure, I think for me (who does not disclose my ADHD with my employer due to bad past experience), I see my medication as giving me the ability to mask, at least in terms of my work, so well that my ADHD is undetectable (in fact I seem very organised, even if this is just many manual systems I have put in place, and follow to a T, to counter my lack of memory and attention to detail 🤣). It's kinda sad to think my success as measured by how well I can "mask" into the "normal" world, but in a strange way, this has liberated me, because the moment I am out of work I refuse to mask my ADHD, I won't apologize for shit and I won't beat myself up for my mistakes either, ill laugh at them and if the neurotypicals arnt impressed, they can fuck themselves! I don't mask so hard for 40 hours a week to do anything other than live my best authentic ADHD life, doing whatever random shit I want to feed the lil ADHD creature in my brain with dopamine hahahahaha.

I definitely considered using death excuse when I was late for super important things because there was no excuse why I was late other than me having no perception of time 😩

Hey, I can totally empathise with this! I have a physical disability too that’s been the cause of being late or needing time off before and I didn’t feel comfortable getting accommodations for that either. We only have one life though, we have to be our own priority to get the most out of it. Don’t know about you but I’m sick of putting my career first and have finally decided my physical and mental health are more important. X

@@SianKatie hi, being I'm a man, with ADHD mild left spastic hemiplegia cerebral palsy. Trying to just carry the same weight as the able body is embarrassing, and de-masculating. neuro typical people think your lazy don't listen, and told to concentrate. But the problem is filtering out the distractions, to focus on what is being told to you, and I am convinced they think we with ADHD are doing it all on purpose. I don't follow instructions, miss out on information. It is very fatigueing, trying to mask multiple disabilities, for 8 hours. And if I mentioned I have to go for physio, it is at the neuroscience part of the hospital. Managers ask me to cancel or re arrange for another time outside of hours. But being cerebral palsy is muscular skeletal, they pull tight and knot up. I also suffered hemiparesis in 2003. And I still tied to do my job and keep up with able bodies. Anyway take care, and try not to worry, easy to say but hard for us.

I think I need a better visual timer so that I can see how long is left before a key time for measurement of how long I have left to get ready 🥲

Yep! That’s hard after a lifetime of trying to fit in and around others

Aw, thank you so much for commenting. I never really anticipate the impact when I put these videos out (I think I’m just rambling haha) but the fact it strikes a chord and makes people feel seen, means a lot to me 🫶🏼

There's a lot of unraveling to experience 😌 thank you 💛 it's the only pro of constantly overthinking every single thing I do, think and say, haha! Thank you, that's so sweet of you to say 🧡 Wishing you all the best on your journey of self-discovery!

Ahh, Jack, thank you so much for opening up and sharing this with me. You made my day when I read this comment. Firstly, congratulations on your diagnosis and also welcome to the 27 club haha. 27 is OUR year! It's good that you've had some previous therapy that supported this increased awareness, I've found it can take a few mentions of something to realise it's an issue I struggle with before even being able to tackle it. This was definitely a moment of clarity for me so I'm glad I caught it on camera. Ah, that's so kind, I'm glad you found it so helpful to watch and happy to be a part of your journey too. Yes, to more therapy haha!! I've found looking for someone specifically with experience of ND helps. All the best!

Thank you, I appreciate you commenting so I can say thank you for watching. It’s bittersweet reflecting because the clarity often brings sadness for the time/people/experiences lost. All we can do is try our best moving forward and keep up with the self development 😌

I feel you on this. It’s one of my biggest barriers to overcome and why I really struggled working from home towards the end of 2022. There was no pressure on me at all so I just let myself off the hook everyday… I think I realise now though that it’s really important I care about what I’m doing and I’m clear on the reasons for doing it. I’ve tried this with myself this year and so far it’s helping me impose stricter rules on myself because I know what I’m playing for so to speak. I can see what I want to achieve and I’ve justified the benefits to myself. Using a pomodoro timer is really helping me right now too. Just 25 minutes and then I can reason with myself if I want to keep going and it’s still worth focusing on a task.

Hey, it can be difficult to see the positives, I don't see mine most of the time but you will have some! If you can just convince yourself to be kind to yourself for 10 minutes I'm sure you'd be able to list your positive qualities, they don't have to directly relate to your ADHD. That being said, I completely feel you on this! I had a down week and tried to start on a positive note yesterday but ended up being 20 minutes late to work so even with the best intentions it's difficult. You just have to stop being so hard on yourself because at the end of the day, we can't help it - if we could, we would. 🧡

Hello, thank you for sharing your experience with me, I always feel touched when people can relate to my experiences because it's only recently I've realised that I'm not alone too. It's great that you've started this journey so early on in your life, I started looking into this at 26 too. I think it makes more sense now because upon reflection I was in the best position to do this in-depth self analysis being at my lowest and also having so many negative experiences to analyse. Wishing you all the best on your journey to diagnosis, hang in there, it may take some time but you will be listened to. In the meantime, self diagnosis is valid and accepted widely online, you can find supportive communities online that are goldmines for information and shared experiences. There's nothing stopping you from implementing a lot of the habits and trying some of the methods recommended for managing adhd without medication. I'd just like to add too, one thing that eventually became apparent is that much like ASD, ADHD is also a spectrum, I've had to acknowledge I don't have the severity that others may experience in certain areas of their lives and vice versa.

@@SianKatie Hiya, appreciate the advice and the time you took to write that :) already implemented a couple strategies, mainly whiteboard and egg timer so I live by that combo as much as I can nowadays haha, plus acknowledging I've had special needs I was unaware of/unwilling to accept before, and asking for some support now and then, it's been a big help so far. If you haven't already seen them, I'd reccomended Dr Russel Barkley's CADDAC lectures, they gave me my initial eureka moment and I understand myself better than ever before thanks to that man. Again thank you for your time you massive legend :P

Thank you, I’ll put some on in the background today while I work 🙌🏼 You’re welcome, hope you stick around, let me know if you try anything that really works for you.

@@SianKatie so far, asking someone to be a body double, whenever I struggle to get started on household stuff it's much easier with someone else in the room, not necessarily helping me do my thing, just doing their own thing. Also an egg timer, one I wind up and can hear ticking, helps me stay on boring tasks and stops me getting stuck on something more engaging for too long 👍

How about you? Any life hacks you've benefited from since your diagnosis?

Hey, I’m really sorry to hear you’re feeling this way but I can hand on heart relate because I’ve been there recently too. I feel sad that you’re not yet 30 and feel like this is your preferred option because I’m not far off 30 and I know we’re still so young! In my opinion feeling terrified to do something tells me it’s not the right thing for me to do, I hope you can consider that too. I have no idea what your life is like currently and what you’ve experienced in the past, so I can only share the thought process that has kept me going. For me, I’ve never valued myself or my existence that much, existing feels like suffering a lot of the time and that gets exhausting real quick. But I have been fortunate to find comfort in helping those less fortunate than myself. Mainly animals but sometimes charity work for vulnerable people too. So I’ve thought a lot about the value of my life recently and decided that even if I can never value myself or my life enough to want to continue living for myself, that the value I can add to the lives of others is worth me continuing for. I keep this sense of being useful and having a positive influence on the lives of others by living a vegan lifestyle, donating money when I can, supporting vegan charities by offering my time and my marketing skills for free. And if it all gets too much for me, I plan to donate my full life to the animals by quitting my job, my commitments, my relationships and moving full time to an animal sanctuary and living purely to see the difference I can make to the quality of life of other innocent beings who didn’t ask to be here to suffer either. I hope you can consider the value you could add to the lives of others too. Your life may not bring yourself or even your family much happiness, I don’t particularly feel my family value me much either, but I know how much of a difference we can make to animals by simply devoting our time, love, energy and focus on them. Please reach out and exhaust every alternative before you commit to your decision, that’s really the only choice you can’t come back from 💜

@@SianKatie thank you for taking the time too reply and my god was it a wonderful message! I too am vegan and will think deeply on what you've said! Tomorrow is the day and the dred has set in so maybe I'll use this as a catalyst too restart my life because really I think that was I really need! Good luck 🥊🥊🔥💯

@Of Age Non Related Carp 💌

Thank you for letting me know you’ve seen this message and you’ll consider my suggestions. That means so much to me. You’ll never truly know! 💜 if you want to get in touch more, or I can send you daily videos of bunnies 🐰 then DM me on Instagram @she_has_adhd 💖 I can also point you in the direction of volunteering your time online to help Animal Rebellion & The Vegan Society if that floats your boat. Animal Rebellion is particularly good at refocusing the angst we hold for the world 🥹

Happy Birthday 🥳 🎂 I hope you take the day to yourself - pull a sickie, do whatever the eff you like, eat your fave food and take care of yourself 💜

Thank you for sharing, that's sounds so relatable to me! The feeling of being rushed especially. I do this regularly and I can't say whether I'm compensating for my time blindness or if in the moment it's the overwhelm of the illusion of being rushed but it really puts me in fight or flight and has lead to a lot of arguments and outbursts. In a way, I think this is at the core of our ADHD. We're made to be reactive and enter those fight, flight or freeze modes quicker than neurotypicals. Try and give her mini prompts, often, small steps and calm, e.g. pick your socks out, then sit yourself down, put the left one on and then right. This is a tactic my partner has tried with me (breaking a simple task into even smaller steps) and it works and emotional outbursts get avoided.