Today, I’m writing about neurodiversity, as I’m reasonably confident that all three members of our household, including me, are neurodivergent.
Of the three of us, only our nine-year-old has a formal diagnosis of a neurodiverse condition, and is on the waiting list for assessment for another. But in recent years, it’s become quite clear to me that I probably have ADHD, and Christine is also likely to be neurodiverse too.
The term ‘neurodiversity’ is relatively new, having been coined in my lifetime (1998) and new enough not to be in the spellchecker dictionary that I’m using whilst writing this. Nor is ‘neurodiverse’ and ‘neurodivergence’; indeed ‘neurodivergent’ is the only one that doesn’t have a red wiggly line under it. It’s a broad term that encompasses various developmental conditions including (but not limited to) autism, ADHD and dyslexia. Many neurodivergent people prefer to talk about being ‘neurodivergent’ because it’s not a negative term; ADHD in particular features the words ‘deficit’ and ‘disorder’, whereas many ADHDers just see themselves as different. Someone who doesn’t identify as, or has not been diagnosed as neurodivergent could describe themselves as ‘neurotypical’ – again, it’s a relatively neutral term.
I’m going to respect Christine and our nine-year-old’s privacy by only focussing on my neurodiversity in this blog post.
ADHD
So, I’m reasonably sure that I have ADHD. If you were a reader of this blog over twenty years ago, you would’ve seen that I would post new entries multiple times a day. Now, this was in the age before micro-blogging – i.e. Twitter – was a thing, but clearly, I had lots of things to say and I needed to say them there and then. Most of these blog posts are long gone now, and probably won’t return as I don’t actually think anyone would want to read them now.
But there were also periods were blogging just wasn’t stimulating my reward pathways. If you go through the archives, I’ve tried to ensure that there are blog posts from every month going back to 2009. But there are also big gaps. Obviously the biggest is between 2018 and 2022, when I gave up blogging, but there was also a gap of several months earlier in 2018, and I apparently wrote nothing in November 2017 either.
Over 2024 I mostly managed to keep to my schedule of posting something every other day, but I managed to miss a week in June. I make no secret that I write blog posts in advance, and indeed this was written last Sunday just after the snow post. Partly that’s because I work full-time, and blogging isn’t my job, but also because I tend to write a series of posts in one go when I have my ‘hyperfocus’ periods. And for times when I lack inspiration, I have a fallback list of topics to write about saved in Simplenote. Indeed, this topic has been sat there for many months now, waiting for me to be in the headspace to write about it.
You can also tell when my interest in topics changes. I haven’t written a blog post about Home Assistant in two months. That doesn’t mean I’m not still using it, but it’s not the thing I’m hyper-focussed on right now.
Distraction and task avoidance
It’s probably fair to say I’m easily distracted. I empathise with Dug the talking dog from the Pixar film Up, who is regularly distracted by squirrels. Not least because I too am often distracted by squirrels in our garden at home. But it’s also things like email and chat notifications. I’m often the first one to respond to a message on Teams, for example. Which is good in some ways – I like being helpful – but not great when I need to focus on a task. I got a lot of tasks done on the 3rd January, as many other colleagues were on leave that day and so I had minimal distractions to manage.
Speaking of tasks – another way my ADHD manifests itself is task avoidance. For example, as I write this, I have a receipt for a pre-ordered item sat on my desk from two months ago. It’s there, because the item never arrived, and all I need to do is phone or email the company to follow it up. I have not done this.
And it’s also why I don’t have a formal ADHD diagnosis. Going about getting one means arranging an appointment with your GP to get a referral, and I’ve been meaning to do it for literally a couple of years now. But nope, no appointment, and therefore no further to getting a diagnosis. Which, in itself, could take years – demand for ADHD assessments has rocketed since the pandemic. I believe that part of the reason for this was that pandemic removed a lot of structure from peoples’ lives, but also because ADHD is massively under-diagnosed. There’s a line in one of the books I’ve read recently (I’ll talk about the book in a bit) where someone states that (paraphrasing) ‘ADHD is just used as a way of explaining away disruptive behaviour in middle-class young boys’. There’s a lot wrong with that statement, but indeed, lots of women, and especially people of colour with ADHD are only getting diagnoses in adulthood, because of attitudes like this one. I’d be willing to bet that there are sizeable numbers of people – and again, especially people of colour – in the criminal justice system with undiagnosed ADHD because they haven’t had the necessary support in life.
Other examples of task avoidance? We never managed to arrange an eighth birthday party for our nine-year-old last year. My passport is being renewed within a few weeks of its expiry, and beyond the point where I could travel with it if I had to. And I recently finished and sent out a report for a meeting about 90 seconds before the meeting was due to start.
Remembering and losing things
To date, I’ve only permanently lost one mobile phone, which was back in my first year of university. At the time, I described it as ‘stolen’, which it was, but I suspect I lost it and then someone stole it. I have, however, left a phone behind in a taxi – I had to ring my own phone and then pay the taxi driver to bring it to me. And I occasionally have to use Apple’s Find My device tool to get it to beep loudly if I’ve misplaced it at home.
With regards to my wallet and keys, I’ve managed not to lose these recently but only because I had to force myself into a habit of only leaving them in a particular place. Meanwhile, I’ve decided to give up on ‘true wireless’ headphones that sit in a charging box, because I’ve managed to lose two of the charging boxes. Big chonky over-head Bluetooth headphones are harder to lose.
On more than one occasion, I have caught the wrong train and ended up somewhere I didn’t want to be. The most recent time was only last summer, and meant we were late for a childcare pickup. I put these occasions down to being distracted by something which meant I hadn’t checked where the train was going before boarding.
Calendar apps are a lifesaver – any appointments go in there straight-away, with reminders set up. If you give me a piece of paper with a date and time of an appointment on it, that has to go in my phone immediately, as otherwise it’ll end up in a coat pocket to be seen again months later and probably after the event. Similarly, we’ve been in arrears on our nine-year-old’s school lunch payments because I’ve forgotten to pay that week, and only done it when I’ve been notified that we’re in arrears.
Oh, and when it comes to cleaning, we pay someone to clean our house once a week. We’re fortunate that we can afford this, but it makes such a difference. Being as we are two neurodivergent adults with full-time jobs, cleaning is something that we struggle to find the time and motivation for.
Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria
It’s not currently a medically recognised diagnosis, but I understand that many ADHDers have rejection sensitivity dysphoria as well. Whilst I tend to be okay at accepting rejection itself, with me it’s more a fear of potential rejection. This manifests as an irrational feeling that I’m constantly being judged, and that I’m going to get into trouble for not working hard enough.
There is overlap with Social Anxiety Disorder, and whilst I’ve historically had anxiety about public speaking (or even calling people on the phone) I’m mostly over this now.
Dirty Laundry and Small Talk
What prompted me to actually get on and write about my neurodiversity was listening to two books by Richard Pink and Roxanne Pink (née Roxanne Emery), a couple who are apparently big on ADHD Tiktok. Roxanne has ADHD, but didn’t get a diagnosis until her mid-thirties, and she talks candidly about her experiences both pre- and post-diagnosis. Suffice to say, my ADHD has thankfully not manifested itself to the same extent as hers, but I can relate to many of her experiences. Especially the bit about not feeling like you’ve been given a manual for how to be a grown-up. Let’s just say I use the word ‘adulting’ a lot when I actually get on top of doing admin at home.
Their first book, Dirty Laundy (sponsored link) was originally self-published, before later being picked up by Penguin. The follow-up is Small Talk (sponsored link), about the lies people with ADHD tell themselves and how to reframe them more positively. What I like about the books is that both Richard and Rox contribute, and talk both from the perspective of someone with ADHD, and someone who is in a relationship with an ADHDer. I found them both useful, both from the perspective of my own ADHD and also being a compassionate and caring parent to our nine-year-old. That being said, I recommended Dirty Laundry to a friend with an actual ADHD diagnosis, and she couldn’t get on with it, so your experience may vary.
To diagnose or not diagnose
So, I identify as someone with ADHD, in that I find that I have similar struggles to people who have been diagnosed with ADHD, and I find that many of the coping mechanisms that people with ADHD use also work for me. But I don’t have a formal diagnosis myself. As mentioned above, part of this is, ironically, because of task avoidance, but also the timelines. If I wanted a diagnosis on the NHS, I’m likely to have to wait years for it. As mentioned, there’s been a huge increase in referrals for adult ADHD assessments, and NHS services are struggling to cope. I could go private, but that would cost money – especially if I decided I wanted to go ahead with treating my ADHD with medication, as I would have to pay for private prescriptions.
A middle ground is seeking a referral from my GP to a private provider under Right to Choose, which friends have used – some have used Psychiatry UK and others ADHD360 with mixed results. Even then, as I write this, Psychiatry UK are stating that you may have to wait around 15 months for a diagnosis, and ADHD360 have an 18 week target. I may go down this route but I need to chat with others; a friend with ADHD set up a group chat with the intention of maybe starting a podcast, but, unsurprisingly, in a group of people with ADHD, we’ve yet to actually plan anything.
If you’ve read this far, then I hope being open about my experiences helps you. If nothing else, I hope it makes it clear that, whilst I might look like someone who has it all together, I’m ‘adulting’ by using a variety of coping mechanisms.
As an addendum to this, we have guests over for dinner tonight so of course we’re panic tidying today. In doing so, I found a load of my Christmas presents, from last Christmas, still bagged up and unused.