I suffer from ADHD. Ok, it’s not terminal, (as far as I know) but darned annoying! It’s neurological. I used to wonder why I found little tasks much more difficult to accomplish than most others, why I rushed at things, failed to plan , and why my mind was buzzing with ideas but I was only moderately academically successful, and never achieved the dizzy heights some of the family did, since I was told I was intelligent and capable of far more. It’s devastating on one’s self esteem.

It was hard to be good at school; by that I mean in primary school, for instance , not to talk when you shouldn’t !  I was always told off and had points taken off the behaviour for being a chatterbox. At Swiss school, there are two columns: behaviour out of 6, the highest mark, and work out of 6. The discrepancy between the two on my reports was blatant, with every weekly report in the book sent home to be read and signed by parents, but no conclusions were ever drawn.

In Secondary school, I sank like a stone. No longer a chatterbox, I took to daydreaming and my work was careless. I wanted to achieve the high marks I felt I should , but just couldn’t. I felt different to everybody else and experienced depression for the first time. In those days, family didn’t take children’s behaviour seriously , they would “ grow out of it”, were labelled lazy whereas disaffected I now know would’ve been a kinder and more accurate term.

Well, I’m not going to trawl through my entire scholastic and higher education woes, but over the decades, a dim awareness grew that what I experienced could actually have a name. I searched and researched various terms, concluding what everyone now recognises in me : ADHD. What a relief to finally piece together years of the jigsaw not fitting, of frustration and tears , of anxiety about not being able to do well certain tasks everyone else saw as being easy-peasy.

If people think an identification, a diagnosis, is harmful, a label round your neck, a cause of shame, then think again. I am here to shout Hallelujah ! Thank Goodness I now know what I didn’t know then. Too late to put right, but such a helpful way in embracing compassion for others who struggle, I think. And I’ve learnt to look behind the behaviour and see what might really be going on. It was helpful in teaching children with Special Educational Needs, certainly.

ADHD : Not a curse, just a flippin’ nuisance in everyday life, but helpful in its own way. I’m a work in progress.

Sally

A Moodscope member