Kylie, I empathize with you sincerely and seriously. If you now sense a ‘but’ coming, then you are right. So, please don’t hate me for it, because it’s not meant to trivialize your emotions. NOT AT ALL. You experience them in their rawness, and that’s what makes you (a) suffer, undeservedly, and (b) think poorly of your intellectual capabilities, totally unjustifiably.
Now here is my caveat. I have been reading more and more often about adults being diagnosed with ADHD in their 4th, 5th, or even 6th decade. So, I made an online test myself, and, bingo, I’m ADHD, too. Nothing could be further from the truth. And just to preempt any suggestion of that kind: the test was not from some attention-seeking tiktok weirdo, but from one of Germany’s prime addresses for ADHD diagnosis and treatment. Now I don’t need a shrink to convince me I have what I really don’t – ADHD.
Our today’s problem is that psychologists somehow seem to think that every little personality quirk needs to be defined as a disorder and medicalized.
I fully understand the distress that you describe in your school episode and in your first-aid course. That’s raw and real and it is what affects most people more or less severely: the fright of public speaking. Totally natural. In your case it extends to the live performance of having to absorb some new information first (while others are watching) and then having to respond to it (while others are still watching). If that defines ADHD, then half the population is in the ADHD club. My point is, if that label helps you to become more relaxed in those situations, because it somehow helps you to tell people that what they see is not a Kylie with the IQ of a golf ball, but an ADHD Kylie with a respectable psychological condition then by all means, it’s good and helpful. If this diagnosis starts to make you feel inadequate in new ways, then it’s definitely not a good thing.
Oh and one last thing: I really loved how you tell the story. I admire your choice of metaphors and the wonderfully vivacious language.
Can you forgive my hopefully not too harsh-sounding critique of ADHD diagnoses?
