Turns Out…

Awhile ago, I posted about some behavioral stuff going on with my little boy. During that period of time, we were looking at things like; autism, aspergers, ADHD, and ADD.

We are still going through this process and with the food changes we’ve made, things are slowly improving! So we’re taking things day by day and waiting for daddy to come home from deployment (as I believe that is a major factor here).

But anyway, while we were filling out the forms for his ADHD, I kept reading a lot of the things that I was marking high for Theo that were also popping up in the back of my head….like, ummmmm you do these things as well……like all of these things, you do Emily…..

wait a minute……do I have ADHD?????????

…... and down the rabbit hole I go……

………………………………………………

*google searches ADHD in women*

Holy. SHIT. balls.

UMMMMMMMMMMMMMM YEP………..turns out I have ADHD.

Like, went to my doctor and had to get put on meds.

When I first brought this up to my doctor (who has been my ride or die on my lupus journey with me so I love her dearly), I brought out my list of things that I am struggling with: late payments, constant piles of shit that I never organize, build up of dishes in the sink past the point of no return, weird issues with socks, running late for things, if I don’t write something down it’s gone forever, etc. I mean, the things were endless.

One of the main things I became obsessed with, and this shouldn’t surprise you, but the term “hyperfixation”. It basically means that you overly focus on one thing and literally CANNOT focus on anything else until that thing is taken care of in your mind.

YOU.

GUYS.

I have literally done this my whole entire fucking life. I LITERALLY JUST WROTE A BOOK ABOUT HOW I BECAME OBSESSED WITH 9/11 AND HAD NO CLUE WHY……..ummmmmm this is why!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My head is exploding.

I 100% know that ADHD is not anything bad, wrong, or anything else. It’s not going to affect my body the way my lupus and B12 deficiency does. It’s nothing “serious” or anything, but still, I wanted to write this post about it because my mind is literally fucking exploding. And I’m sharing this so maybe it clicks with someone else, like “holy shit, maybe I have that, too?!”

There are SOOOOOOOO many things are just making sense since I started going down my rabbit hole of research.

I follow a lot of people of tik tok and instagram that talk about ADHD symptoms and I’ve decided that I’m going to join that bandwagon and share my struggles with it, too, because I honestly didn’t know that these struggles could be fixed.

I truly didn’t.

I thought that this just was how I was; always late, sucked with time management, bad memory, bad with money, etc.

Then the cycle would continue of beating myself up over why I sucked at all these things.

And I would fight with myself. Honestly. I would.

Like, why are you like this? Why can’t you just stay organized? Why can’t you just keep your house clean? Why are you so irritated when someone interrupts you when you’re doing something? Why does this shirt irritate the shit out of your skin today but didn’t last week? Why do you wait until the very last minute to do something? Why do you have endless mounds of unorganized doomsday piles?

BECAUSE YOU HAVE ADHD, MY DEAR!

Enter adderall.

Now, most people have their own thoughts and feelings on this med. I do as well. And I was extremely against going on meds for a long time.

I’ve gotten myself off almost all my meds just from my healthy living changes and weight loss, so I’m really hesitant to get on anymore.

However, my shit was getting out of control.

I got to the point where I had to carry around notebooks with me everywhere so I could write all my thoughts down. If I didn’t write them down, I’d forget, no matter how important the thing was that had to be done; if I didn’t write it down, it was forgotten.

Now, some of you may be going “hmmmm, I’m forgetful like that…” and that’s fair. But let me explain this a little bit more before you go and start self-diagnosing with ADHD.

When I say that I needed to write things down or I’d forget, you guys these aren’t like little things. They are big things, like pay your mortgage and get your B12 shot. I would have to write that down, and if that note got lost (which it ALWAYS DOES) then I completely forget and move on with my life. I literally will not think about it again until I get that scary letter in the mail saying your payment is late….again. Or until I start falling again because my B12 is bottoming out….again.

I am not joking. This has been a struggle my entire fucking life and I always thought it was my fucking fault. Like, there was something wrong with me.

And that is simply not the case. My brain just works a completely different way. And now that I’ve done so much research on it and work to understand it, it’s helped me tremendously in my own healing journey, as well as with parenting Theodore.

When he is having his freak out moments, I just completely understand that feeling. I don’t yell at him for being “too emotional” or call him “dramatic”. I understand that, to him, this thing absolutely FEELS huge to him, so we need to work through that, not shame him because he feels things strongly.

I also had to learn this about myself and give myself some major grace. I had to go through some forgiveness stuff with me and my mom actually when I began this whole thing. I love my mom dearly, but we had a hard relationship and she called me dramatic more times than I could ever even try to count. I hated it. I resent it, still, but work through it in therapy. I also learned through that though that I would never do that to my son.

And I don’t.

And yes, is my wonderful little boy a little bit dramatic? Of course. He most certainly is.

BUT…when he is feeling something incredibly intense (the way that I do) it doesn’t help them by calling them dramatic. That belittles how the person feels and makes them feel wrong and stupid for having these feelings.

And now, that I’ve learned (at 35 years old), that there is an actual reason for those feelings feeling like that? Like, there’s an actual reason why you feel things 10 times stronger than other people. There’s a reason for your unorganization and irritation and open cupboards everywhere. There’s literally a reason: ADHD.

Now, I’m not saying ADHD is entirely to blame for all the awesome parts of my entire fabulous, all-consuming personality, but, now that I’ve started taking adderall, I can tell you it is responsible for a lot of it.

Turns out, I love to be organized. I love having a system in place to keep track of all my bills. I love to feel like I am in control and not just constantly fighting all those rushing thoughts in my head.

I mean, you guys, I’m not gonna lie…..if this is how all of you live your life on a normal day….like how I feel now…if this is how you all feel on a normal day, I’m kind of pissed off about that.

I’m not joking. Like what do you do with all your free time?!

I am getting things done like you can’t believe. My days are incredibly organized. I’ve started writing my second book, I’m working on another song, I have so many new and exciting things coming up for MCA, etc. I just can’t explain how this feels. Like all my thoughts are just in order and not competing with each other and yelling over each other. My mind is just calm, and organized. And now there’s so much more room for activities!!!!!!!

The main reason I did this post is for other women out there. Women are commonly overlooked for ADHD and go undiagnosed for years, so if any of this resonates with you, please go talk to your doctor. Especially if you feel like you are just drowning and can’t get out. Getting my diagnosis and getting on meds has helped my life tremendously. I literally can’t believe how hard my life has been because of this going undiagnosed for so long. And I literally can’t believe how much easier things are now.

I hope you are all prepared for the onslaught of ADHD reels I have coming up! Obviously, they’ll be fun, but I hope to educate people on the realities of this hilarious, yet annoying, little personality quirk.

PS. I’ve been going back through my blogs and rereading them because I write exactly how I think. Like once a thought pops in my head, it comes comes here. And you guys….looking back at my blogs, my book, etc…..I just can’t stop laughing.

I totally, 100 million percent have ADHD. And I’m fucking here for it.

Happy Trails,

Em