When I was 39, I decided I was going to get tested for ADHD. I had been thinking about it for a while, actually. I have always known my brain works differently, or at least it seemed to, but seeking answers was never really a priority.
That all changed after the pandemic. Not only did I have two children who were about to enter school, but I also found my own life increasingly challenging. I’ve always been forgetful and had poor working memory, but with my need to keep track of two other humans, my issues seemed to skyrocket.
I want to tell you about my ADHD late diagnosis, specifically as a woman. I also want to talk about things that worked for me in terms of coping with a late ADHD diagnosis, and also the benefits of getting an ADHD diagnosis as an adult.
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What Is ADHD?
ADHD, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, is a common household term, but let’s define it really quickly. According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH):
“ADHD is a developmental disorder characterized by an ongoing pattern of one or more of the following types of symptoms:
- Inattention, such as having difficulty paying attention, keeping on task, or staying organized
- Hyperactivity, such as often moving around (including during inappropriate times), feeling restless, or talking excessively
- Impulsivity, such as interrupting, intruding on others, or having trouble waiting one’s turn”
Now, let’s be clear.
Most people have a combination of those traits at various points in their lives. The difference is that ADHD is a chronic condition that affects the overall life of the individual, in a variety of situations, from childhood through adulthood.
In other words, ADHD causes real consequences on a person’s life throughout the course of life.
There are also 3 types of ADHD: inattentive, hyperactive, and combination.
ADHD is not:
- laziness
- lack of intelligence
- lack of willpower
- bad parenting
- a trauma response
In other words, pulling yourself up by the bootstraps won’t cure your ADHD. (Or blaming your parents! 😜)
What I Needed for an Adult ADHD Diagnosis
Exploring an ADHD diagnosis as someone who was almost 40 meant not only finding a therapist or psychologist to talk to, but also to examine my entire life in terms of ADHD and what symptoms I had experienced.
Because here’s the thing: ADHD is something you have or you don’t.
So how do you know if you have ADHD?
I always knew I was different
A lot of neurodivergent folks will tell you the same thing: they just always knew they were different. They felt that their brain worked differently.
This was my experience as well. It felt like there was a key, a missing piece or a lens, that would click into place and suddenly my life would make sense.
My Early Life Symptoms – Clues I Had ADHD
Be sure to look in your childhood when examining if you have ADHD traits.
I wanted to share a few stories of throughout my childhood in the hopes that you may recognize yourself in them. (Or, if you don’t have ADHD, to perhaps NOT recognize yourself!)
As always, I’m not a medical professional. I’m not here to diagnose you or offer medical advice. I’m merely sharing my experience.
Ages 1 through 4
One of the first clues that offered insight to my neurodivergence is that when I was about two years old, my mother bought a book about how to deal with strong willed children. She didn’t know how to handle me because I was always just doing what I wanted.
I wouldn’t sit still long enough to have her do my hair, so my hair was always shoulder length or shorter.
I was frequently told that I was “too much.”
Preschool and Kindergarten
When I was in preschool, I distinctly remember walking in a line with my class from the playground up the stairs to where my classroom was on the second floor. But I was distracted by two women who were talking to one another.
I couldn’t tell you why I stopped walking or why I wanted to listen to their conversation. All I know is that I stopped and my class went on without me. I was left in the stairwell with these two strange women. Thankfully, they took me to my classroom once they realized I was standing there!
Look at that pretty girl sitting in the grass reading a book like a perfectly well-behaved child!
Oops, there she goes!
In kindergarten, I was the bully. Maybe not the bully, exactly, but I severely lacked impulse control. While all of the other students were able to sit and listen during story time, I talked with my friends so much that I had to have a special spot marked with tape so I would sit away from them.
I also frequently knocked other kids’ blocks over. (*Sorry. Not proud of that one.)
Elementary School
Luckily, my parents saved most of my school report cards. Once I got over the knocking-blocks-over phase, I was a pretty quiet kid who just did her work.
But those report cards always said the same thing: Dawn doesn’t complete her work on time. She takes so long to finish the simplest task. Dawn is a sweet girl who is frequently distracted and doesn’t always get her work done.
Middle School
By middle school, I had figured out how to hyperfocus to get work done, and I was a pro at it, though it was mostly a mask.
I knew how to manipulate the system. I was good at doing my work quickly (and last minute) because I knew what the teachers wanted. I wasn’t a critical thinker. I wasn’t a fantastic student. But I was able to skate by undetected because I knew how to work the system.
I remember many a project completed the morning it was due. (Oops. Sorry Mrs. Millward!)
High School
In High School, I excelled at music and art. It was my hyperfocus medicine of choice and I was great at it. I was still good at school—not great—and I skated by because I knew how to work the system.
(Also, I only wanted to do my homework if I was supposed to be doing something else.)
Frequently Losing and Forgetting Things
As I grew in responsibility, I also noticed that I frequently lost or forgot items. I got a detention from my High School German teacher because I didn’t bring my German dictionary to class for 2 weeks.
When on a trip to Germany after my senior year, I also (briefly) lost my EuroRail Pass. She was livid.
After High School and my 20s
I dealt a lot with grandiose thinking in my 20s. I expected things to happen right away, without much preparation. For example, I pushed the choir I directed to overwork themselves because I wanted to take them as a feature group at State conference. They weren’t ready.
I tried to buy a house before I was ready.
I even got married before I was ready. (That one ended in divorce.)
When I got remarried, I romanticized the idea of having a farmhouse with a large garden (like my grandparents did) and chickens and goats, but I did not do the research into what it would take to keep up a home like that, and my husband and I have been overwhelmed ever since.
My 30s
Having Children
Becoming a mother made my noticeable ADHD traits highly visible. Because once I had my own life to manage plus the lives of two other individuals, I was thoroughly overwhelmed.
And children are incredibly over stimulating. They’re loud, active, and need you (or want you) when you’re around. I found that my ability to pursue my goals plummeted when both my boys were young. When I wanted to hyperfocus on something, I kept getting interrupted!
Perimenopause
We know that menopause is the transition of a woman between having a monthly cycle and losing it. It happens at a different age for every woman, but usually between 45 and 55.
Perimenopause, or the hormonal changes that precede menopause, can start to happen in the late 30s! I suspect my hormones have been changing for the last few years, as I had a massive endocrine system crash after I stopped breastfeeding my youngest.
Basically, in perimenopause, your body makes less estrogen, which can cause all kinds of weird things to happen to your body. The perimenopause symptom that I find the most linked to my uptick in noticing my ADHD more is sleep disturbances.
If I get less sleep, I deal with brain fog, can’t focus (even hyperfocus), and generally feel drained.
My Chosen Profession
I think I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about what I chose to do with my life.
I am a music teacher. Whether I’m in a high school classroom directing choir or an elementary classroom teaching general music, I’m on my feet 75% of my class. We dance, we sing, we move.
I get to be like a little kid in my classroom. Music is something I have a deep passion for and can hyperfocus on for hours and hours.
If I were to be in an office cubicle, I would be miserable. Hell, even during one summer when I did work an office job, I found ways to be out of my cubicle doing other things. I organized filing systems and moved around furniture in the break room. I couldn’t sit still and do my work.
Being a music teacher works with my ADHD.
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The ADHD Diagnosis Process
Now we get to the meat of the matter! The actual process of being evaluated for ADHD!
A friend had recently been diagnosed with ADHD and recommended me to a local place who did virtual appointments. I already had them on my list, so I called and made an appointment.
There were many tests I had to take over the course of my evaluation. Most of them were questionnaires about my memories and symptoms associated with ADHD (as I detailed above).
The last test I took was the QB test, and it knocked me off my axis, so I’ve written an entire post about it! Basically, it measures your hyperactivity and inattention with several cameras and a computer test with shapes and patterns.
After I scored in the 98th percentile for a positive ADHD diagnosis, my doctor was happy to give me the official ADHD diagnosis. She said that my experiences were enough for her to diagnose me, but that the QB test gave her a deeper look into my brain.
I was given a diagnosis of combination ADHD, with both inattention and hyperactivity.
How to Cope with a Late ADHD Diagnosis
Hopefully, if you’re pursuing an ADHD diagnosis, you’re prepared for the result. But it’s possible you thought you were one thing and ended up ADHD instead.
You might feel:
- relieved
- hopeful
- sad
- overwhelmed
- ecstatic
- angry
- or any other number of emotions.
Experiencing mixed emotions is common and completely normal. Make sure you sit with your feelings and validate what you’re experiencing.
It also helps to have people around you who can support and validate you through this process.
Being ADHD doesn’t mean anything other than you have a label to go with your experience for your entire life.
I found watching ADHD content online to be extremely beneficial. It’s often done in a humorous way, and it can be extremely validating! Just make sure you don’t go too deep into the rabbit hole, where influencers can tell you how to act or behave and can manipulate you into thinking particular traits are symptoms of ADHD when they’re not.
Here’s a few ADHD content creators I enjoy:
ADHD_love with Rox and Rich
I have one of their t-shirts!
Olivia Lutfallah
Holderness Family Music
He’s definitely more parody entertainment (and writes his own songs as well) but he does a lot of content about ADHD from a humorous lens.
4 Benefits of Getting an ADHD Diagnosis as an Adult
Whether or not you want to pursue an ADHD evaluation and diagnosis later in life is completely your own decision. Never let anyone pressure you into it (or tell you not to do it). Trust your own instincts.
But there’s a lot of good reasons to get evaluated, no matter how old you are.
1.) Lifelong traits and challenges suddenly make sense
Getting that confirmation (especially after doubting myself for so long) was a huge relief. It meant that I wasn’t crazy for thinking the challenges I faced all through my childhood, adolescence, and adulthood were not normal.
My life made complete sense for the first time. That validation and emotional relief was well worth the diagnosis process.
2.) Find new or better coping techniques
For many people, they pursue that diagnosis because the coping mechanisms they’ve used their whole life are no longer working the way they want to. Whether it’s because of life situations, changing biology (aging, hormones, etc.), or something else, sometimes the techniques we used to use to manage our challenges stop working.
When you get more information about ADHD, whether you actually have it, what type, and what severity, an entire new world of possibilities opens up to you.
Your therapist or psychiatrist can prescribe medications, put you through therapy techniques, or make other lifestyle recommendations for you.
Personally, I’m trying these Kind Dopamine Patches. I know that I struggle with dopamine production (something most ADHD people do as well) and I’m hoping they will help me with online shopping and doom scrolling! 😂
3.) Ability to help family members
ADHD is genetic. This means that it likely runs in your family.
Getting diagnosed is a way to help others in your family who may struggle with similar things. Especially as a parent, looking for those symptoms and traits in my children is very important so I know how I can help them.
(I’ll talk more about whether I’m getting my children evaluated below.)
4.) Connection to other mental health issues
For some of us, getting diagnosed with ADHD is a springboard that opens up a whole world of better understanding of our mental health. You might also be diagnosed with OCD or autism, or encouraged to pursue those diagnoses if your mental health professional is not able to diagnose them.
You might learn so much and be able to differentiate your ADHD from your autism traits (though there is a lot of overlap) and develop coping techniques that are even more tailored to your specific mental health and brain function.
ADHD is typically a pretty easy diagnosis to get as opposed to others like autism, which requires a specialist. So this might just open up your world!
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5.) You get to be a role model for others with neurodivergence
This may not apply to everyone, of course, but as a teacher, I was able to tell my students about my diagnosis. I wanted to make sure they knew that getting that ADHD diagnosis was something positive.
The number of students that perked up and said, “I have ADHD, too!” was heart warming. I wasn’t trying to get them to tell the whole class about their ADHD, of course, but when I spoke about it in a positive light, they in turn felt validated.
They knew that it wasn’t a bad thing. That our brains work a little different, and that’s okay!
I had found something to do with my life that worked with my ADHD, and it didn’t preclude me from finding success.
Especially being a woman when girls are still not diagnosed at the same frequency as boys, feels like a superpower.
We Live In Strange Times
I chose to pursue an ADHD diagnosis as a 39 year old right before RFK Jr. became Secretary of Health and Human Services. My ADHD is mild enough that I’m choosing not to be medicated (at least right now), but the way that neurodivergent individuals are being persecuted by this man is astounding.
He suggested in a 2024 town hall that people who use drugs, including legal stimulants for ADHD, need to be put on “wellness farms” under the assumption that a little sunshine and physical labor will somehow “cure” a person of whatever ails them.
News flash: it’s been tried before and less than 1% of those people were “cured.” (Read the article linked above.)
This type of thinking is incredibly ableist, and, as the article mentions, has ties to eugenics. (In case you’re unfamiliar with eugenics, it’s basically an attempt to use science as grounds for racism, ableism, colonialism, and other forms of discrimination.)
Because of this, although I suspect my children are neurodivergent as well, I will NOT be getting them evaluated until RFK Jr. is out. They’re at a Montessori school where accommodations are built right into the students’ lessons, so a diagnosis wouldn’t do much more for them than what they’re already getting.
Conclusion
Getting that ADHD diagnosis as a 39 year old woman was eye-opening and so completely validating. There were signs and clues all throughout my life that I was dealing with something like this, and I finally know for certain.
Yes, an ADHD late diagnosis can be challenging, but it’s also incredibly liberating. And if that is something you want for yourself, I certainly hope you get it!
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