My ADHD diagnosis has allowed me to re-write my life story

I’ve spent my whole life feeling like a square peg, trying to fit in a round hole. Not anymore, writes Angela Barnes

‘ADHD is frustrating in many ways, but only really because we are trying to operate in a world that isn’t set up for us’ (Getty Images)

In May this year, at the age of 44, I became one of a growing army of women diagnosed with ADHD. The use of “army” there might seem threatening, but to be honest, the chances of us organising any sort of coordinated attack are remote, and lord only knows what I’ve done with the keys to the tank.

The reactions to my diagnosis have been varied, ranging from the person in the comedy industry who told me I was “lucky because it’s very fashionable at the moment”, as if i had told them I had a thigh gap or extreme right-wing views, to my Mum who said, “Oh yes, that makes a lot of sense.”

But another reaction, one I didn’t expect was people rolling their eyes and saying something like, “Ugh, everyone has ADHD these days.” Firstly, I’ve had it up to here with eyerolls. My whole life, “she’s lost her purse”, eye rolls. “She’s late because she got lost”, eye rolls. “She spent the night in A&E because she fell over again”, eye rolls. Now, when I finally have a reason for those things, what do you do? Roll your eyes at me and tell me I must be mistaken. No.

Here’s the thing – ADHD isn’t being overdiagnosed. It is thought that around 2 per cent of the population have it. The diagnostic criteria was updated to reflect the latest research. That is why people are finally getting diagnosed now.

Do you think when people identified heart disease and treated it, people rolled their eyes? “Ugh, everyone has heart disease these days, eat your cholesterol sandwich and shut up about it.”

And diagnosis is important. There are many things I know about me in comparison to other people. I know I am in the 48 per cent of British people with blue eyes. I know that I am 5ft5”, about average for a British woman, and I know that I can win above the average number of days on Richard Osman’s House of Games (had to get that in). But we really have no way of knowing whether or not our brains work like the majority of other people unless it is externally obvious.

I don’t see my diagnosis as being labelled so much as being sorted into a category that helps me understand myself better. ADHD is frustrating in many ways, but only really because we are trying to operate in a world that isn’t set up for us.

Because we live in huge societies, structures are set up for the majority. Take left-handedness for example. In years gone by, being left-handed was seen as a weirdness; the word for it was literally “sinister”. Left-handed children had their left hand tied behind their backs to force them to conform. Today we accept that left-handedness is a result of different brain structure. It’s a minority but it’s not a disorder. However, even knowing that, the world is still set up for the right-handed majority. Watching my left-handed sewing friend trying to cut fabric with regular scissors is like watching me trying to do Swan Lake.

But nobody is saying we are overdiagnosing left-handed people. They just are there, doing their thing in a right-handed world.

And those of us with a neurodiversity – ADHD, Autism and so on – are just here, doing our thing in a neurotypical world. But without a diagnosis, we don’t know that we are, we just know that we are different. And the frustration of trying to be like everyone else is what causes us the problems, not being ADHD itself.

My reaction to this frustration and exhaustion was to simply label myself a failure, resulting in a 30 year-long spiral of depression and self harm and self neglect, 30 years of psychiatrists, misdiagnoses, antidepressants and mood stabilising drugs. I fell behind in all life’s milestones. Getting married, buying a house, learning to drive. All these things I have done/am doing now, in my 40s. Lord knows what my 50s will bring – maybe I’ll join the Brownies.

I’ve spent my whole life feeling like a square peg, trying to fit in a round hole. My diagnosis was somebody handing me a square hole and saying: “I’m terribly sorry, it seems you were given the wrong hole, this one is yours”.

So why did it take so long for the diagnostic criteria to be updated and ADHD to be better understood, particularly for women? ADHD symptoms exist pretty equally across genders, yet boys are almost three times as likely to be diagnosed than girls. Why? Well, most ADHD research was done in the 70s and centred around boys. But there is more than one type of ADHD, and the type that is most likely to affect women – inattentive type – presents itself in a very different way.

It is much harder to ignore the child throwing a chair across a room in frustration than the anxious child in the corner, getting themselves into a state because they can’t explain why they can’t just do what everyone else can do.

For the majority of women with ADHD, the only disruption we cause is to ourselves. The biggest obstacle lies with the term ADHD itself The H in ADHD has misled more of us than the one in Line of Duty. Hyperactivity. Although I fit the diagnostic criteria for ADHD like a glove – I think my psychiatrist even used the word “textbook” – nobody that knows me would use the word “hyperactive” to describe me.

Because that’s the thing those naughty boys have, right? But the hyperactivity for many of us with ADHD is internal. I’m not a neuroscientist, but I understand that the brain of someone with ADHD is different. It’s to do with dopamine, a neurotransmitter that regulates movements and emotions. Dopamine levels are different in people with ADHD. Dopamine is released when our brain is expecting a reward. Someone with ADHD is constantly looking for that reward. Our minds are hyperactive in this pursuit. My mind is a laptop with all the tabs open, jumping around until it can settle on the thing that provides what it needs. It’s the coked up young wannabe at a Hollywood party going from guest to guest until it finds the one willing to have a look at their screenplay.

My hyperactivity doesn’t punch people or run amok in supermarkets, but it is always there and it never stops. It’s the voice in my head that won’t shut up, telling me I’m not good enough, or am not trying hard enough, or that I am not like everyone else. It’s the voice that counts every footstep I take. Every. Single. One. It’s exhausting. It blurts out random song lyrics while I’m trying to concentrate and it remembers every phone number of my childhood friends, but point blank refuses to remember where I have put my car keys.

And crucially, all of this has been going on all my life, but because I was bright and I wasn’t disrupting anybody else, there was no calling my parents in for a “something must be done” meeting.

So when people ask me why my diagnosis is so important, it’s because I can finally begin the process of forgiving myself and rewriting my life story. Shining a light on the failed careers and relationships and being able to see that I was trying to do them all with my left hand and a pair of right-handed scissors.