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Why I sought a diagnosis of ADHD
Feb. 26th, 2021 04:25 pmSo I've been posting about my results with Conserta, and I got asked why I sought treatment.
I'm assuming this is why did you think you might have ADHD.
So I've been having trouble with focus at work for some time, I know in January 2020 when I started therapy I listed concern about focus at work as one of the things I wanted to work on.
With attention to history I can see it as a problem much further back. In elementary school I had trouble with grades because of incomplete work because I'd forgotten to do it, or lost it, or forgotten to turn it in.
In secondary school I benefited by falling in with a group of friends who were high performers, and so I had to work super hard to seem like I fit in. Since I'd been outcast in elementary school I was highly motivated to fit in once there was a chance for it. We were still a nerdy unpopular group, but we were a group, and that was a big move up.
I decided in early elementary school that I was going to be a teacher. That plan stuck through college, and multiple attempts at becoming a teacher including all the class work for a teaching credential and teaching or student teaching in 3 different schools. While substitute teaching I realized that one of my problems with teaching was an inability to be consistent on classroom management.
Eventually I gave up on teaching, cast around for several years, and found work that I could do around my issues.
I also noticed the issue with consistency with parenting, and am really motivated to make that better.
The way focus at work has shown up is that I'd get a task that I knew I should be able to do in a given amount of time, and set myself to it, and notice half or more through that time that I hadn't made significant progress, then I'd slap together the product as quickly as I could and turn it in sometimes even early but not as well as I felt it should be done for fear that if I didn't get it turned in now I'd forget and just not finish it. This happened enough that quality of products is something I was working on with my supervisor.
This was a problem for day to day work, but much more so on things that needed to be done regularly, but not urgently, and even worse on bigger projects where I knew they needed to be done some time in the future. Really if the due date was more than a week away my brain would file them as not important today, which wasn't a bad idea except that I wouldn't reliably pull them out again until the due date.
Generally while this was a problem I was working well enough most of the time and I was able to buckle down and make myself focus when there was an urgent task. These come up periodically, and the second to last one, I struggled, and it made it take longer than necessary, and the most recent one I didn't seem able to hit that better focus at all.
On the not work front we'd been looking at getting Joshua diagnosed with ADHD for a couple of years, friends with kids who had ADHD, or who worked with kids with ADHD seemed to think it would be worthwhile to look into, and she was getting frustrated with problems related to focus. This past summer she was diagnosed, and as we went through the process and especially as we learned how to help her the things we were learning seemed to apply to me.
I'm assuming this is why did you think you might have ADHD.
So I've been having trouble with focus at work for some time, I know in January 2020 when I started therapy I listed concern about focus at work as one of the things I wanted to work on.
With attention to history I can see it as a problem much further back. In elementary school I had trouble with grades because of incomplete work because I'd forgotten to do it, or lost it, or forgotten to turn it in.
In secondary school I benefited by falling in with a group of friends who were high performers, and so I had to work super hard to seem like I fit in. Since I'd been outcast in elementary school I was highly motivated to fit in once there was a chance for it. We were still a nerdy unpopular group, but we were a group, and that was a big move up.
I decided in early elementary school that I was going to be a teacher. That plan stuck through college, and multiple attempts at becoming a teacher including all the class work for a teaching credential and teaching or student teaching in 3 different schools. While substitute teaching I realized that one of my problems with teaching was an inability to be consistent on classroom management.
Eventually I gave up on teaching, cast around for several years, and found work that I could do around my issues.
I also noticed the issue with consistency with parenting, and am really motivated to make that better.
The way focus at work has shown up is that I'd get a task that I knew I should be able to do in a given amount of time, and set myself to it, and notice half or more through that time that I hadn't made significant progress, then I'd slap together the product as quickly as I could and turn it in sometimes even early but not as well as I felt it should be done for fear that if I didn't get it turned in now I'd forget and just not finish it. This happened enough that quality of products is something I was working on with my supervisor.
This was a problem for day to day work, but much more so on things that needed to be done regularly, but not urgently, and even worse on bigger projects where I knew they needed to be done some time in the future. Really if the due date was more than a week away my brain would file them as not important today, which wasn't a bad idea except that I wouldn't reliably pull them out again until the due date.
Generally while this was a problem I was working well enough most of the time and I was able to buckle down and make myself focus when there was an urgent task. These come up periodically, and the second to last one, I struggled, and it made it take longer than necessary, and the most recent one I didn't seem able to hit that better focus at all.
On the not work front we'd been looking at getting Joshua diagnosed with ADHD for a couple of years, friends with kids who had ADHD, or who worked with kids with ADHD seemed to think it would be worthwhile to look into, and she was getting frustrated with problems related to focus. This past summer she was diagnosed, and as we went through the process and especially as we learned how to help her the things we were learning seemed to apply to me.