October is ADHD Awareness Month. After thinking a lot about the best way to help raise awareness of the condition, TAHI presenter Evie Orpe decided to tell her own story and share some thoughts.
"I'm not a doctor, let's get that out the way, I don't even have a degree. But this was my experience and this is how I feel about where things are and where they're going and awareness of ADHD itself."
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TAHI FM presenter Evie Orpe Photo: The TAHI / RNZ
Getting my ADHD diagnosis was the best day of my life
"So to begin with, a lot of people when they think of ADHD, they think of a little boy who can't sit still, who has no impulse control, who's yelling, maybe difficult in class, and that's just not the entire picture. It is part of the picture, for real, but that is not all of it.
"There are three different types of ADHD that people present with – Inattentive, Hyperactive and a combination. That's what I have – a pretty hefty combination of the two of them. So not only do I struggle with hyperactivity, I struggle in attentiveness, too.
"Sometimes in the middle of a conversation, I might completely interrupt because I'm hyper … I've already understood what [the other person is] trying to say, but their sentence is still going. And my brain is like 'why are we still here?' so I just interrupt with the next thing. Or [if I'm] inattentive, actually in the middle of a conversation with someone and just have no idea what they said"
"I was around 22 years old [and I had] spent all of those years thinking there was something wrong with me because in high school, as horrible and narcissistic as it sounds, I knew I was smarter than everyone. I knew that I had stronger, more nuanced opinions. I knew I understood stuff better than other people because I could see it in real-time, but I couldn't put that on paper and I could never prove it.
"That is one aspect [of ADHD] that is incredibly, incredibly frustrating and also damages your self-esteem. Some people, they spend the rest of their lives trying to rebuild the self-esteem that they lost, especially as a woman living with undiagnosed ADHD.
"To live as a woman with undiagnosed ADHD is essentially to live in a secret world, like a secret messy closet that is filled with shame, embarrassment, guilt, and frustration because normal day-to-day tasks are incredibly challenging for you.
"It's like there's a wall between me and simple things that I need to do. Luckily, medication can put a hole in that wall [but] it doesn't solve it or make the wall go away. But it puts a door there or even a window there instead of [me] sitting there for 45 minutes knowing I have to do something, screaming at myself internally, like what's wrong with you? Why can't you do it, get up, do it, do it, do it. And you're just sitting there staring at a wall, like unable to do anything."
University and laundry
"I dropped out of four different universities and never got a degree. When you have ADHD, you struggle with prioritising tasks or understanding what needs to come first and what needs to come last. So when you're looking at what someone needs to do to get a degree, it's not just like high school, where you show up at this time and you do your best and then you go home.
"It's all these lectures are at all different times. They're all about different things. And that changes daily. You have to sit there for two hours, pay attention for two hours, write down what was said in that two hours, understand it, regurgitate it onto a written thing and then do that for four different classes. It was just unfathomably difficult for me, but I didn't know how to deal with the fact that I'm smart, why can't I do this?
"So I just kept signing up for different universities. I was like 'well, this time, it'll work' and it just never did. And I dealt with another aspect of ADHD that people often don't discuss is you do have a lack of impulse control. And you do have a really, really innate sensitivity to perceived rejection. So for someone with ADHD who's undiagnosed or unmedicated, or still in that part of their journey where they don't know yet, if you perceive rejection it shatters you. And it could be nothing. And then you add that on to being unable to achieve something even though you know you're smart.
"I dealt with really common things. I mean, substance abuse, addiction issues, depression issues, low self-esteem… I spent an entire year locked in a garage just like chillin'. I couldn't understand why I couldn't do things. I couldn't hold down a job because menial tasks are harder than large-scale thinking. It's the most frustrating thing in the world when you sit there and you're so bad at admin and you're so bad at dates and emails and times, but you're great at like big long-term ideas, strategic thinking, thinking and connection … but you can't prove that you're good on day-to-day admin."
"I'm deeply, deeply still working on the shame I have around that. Laundry is the one thing that I still can't do. My life is just a pile of dirty laundry that I can't seem to manage. For me, it's number one, I have to figure out what clothes need to be washed first. So I need to prioritise my clothes, which are unorganised to begin with, they are on the floor… They are not where they're supposed to be. I have to find all those things. I have to take them to the machine, put them in, put them on the right setting, remember to come back at a specific time to get them out and get them dry. Because if I leave them there they'll get mouldy, then I've got to put them on a clotheshorse or I've got to put them in the dryer and then remember to come back again. And then I've got to fold them and then I've got to put them away.
"Those are all really challenging things individually for someone with ADHD but to look at it as a task and break it down into priorities is almost impossible. Just completely overwhelming. Like I could cry trying to do my laundry and it sucks."
Barriers and breakthroughs
"We're seeing people sharing a lot on TikTok, saying they've got ADHD or people learning that they might have ADHD through TikTok. And I don't think that's a bad thing. By and large, I think that it's really great that there are people who may not have had access to this information who now have access to it.
"But one of the difficult things about ADHD is that every single symptom that I've described, every single symptom that you will look up, every single person deals with those symptoms at some point in their life or some point in their day.
"I don't like doing stuff I don't want to do. I find it really hard to get started when I don't like something … sometimes the laundry piles up. And I think that what you need to consider [when thinking you might have ADHD is] are those symptoms chronic? Are they every second of every single day of your life? Because if they are maybe you do have ADHD but there's a lot of crossover with ADHD and other things like autism. There's also a crossover with people who are dealing with depression for the first time, even some dissociative personality disorders have things in common with ADHD.
"It's a real challenge when we have the system that already isn't working if it gets overloaded with people who aren't actually 100% sure what's going on or whatever it makes it really hard. I mean, there's been Ritalin shortages in the last couple of years on and off, which has been extremely challenging for myself and other people.
"I was lucky enough at the time that I got my diagnosis… well, not lucky, I was at such a low point that it was really scary and it needed to be solved. And so my family put money together for me to go to a specialist to get an assessment. But if you don't have that access, it's really, really difficult to go and get that assessment and be medicated for it. So there's people out there just suffering for no reason and it sucks, it makes me really sad.
"A lot of women don't find out they have ADHD until they become a mother. Because unfortunately, society wants us to be good at a bunch of things like cooking and cleaning. And when you aren't, because you have ADHD, you just feel like a failure. You just feel like a total failure. And if you don't have money, there's no one to help you and it sucks."
"There are people really suffering with ADHD. It's not a made-up thing that lazy people just make up. It's just not. And if I hear that one more time I swear, I will pop off.
"But it is a superpower. I am stoked, actually, now that I know about it, that I'm medicated for it, that I have the tools and support to work through it, that I can be better at things I like then anyone could ever be anything that I love and can do well and want to keep doing. I will be better at that than someone who doesn't have ADHD. Because my brain will just go for it and make it happen.
"Some people aren't comfortable with the term ADHD - I personally am. I feel like I'm ok with it … ADD isn't really the accepted term anymore but some people are more comfortable with that. Some people say 'disorder', some people say 'spectrum', some people even say 'disability'. It changes all the time. And that also comes back to that level of under-research that we have on it. But personally, I'm comfortable with being called ADHD. And if some other people aren't, shout out to you guys, it's fine to do whatever you want."
Related:
Chanelle Moriah on her book This is ADHD
What's Up With ADHD?