Getting the right diagnosis

is life changing.

I have suffered from severe anxiety and depression for… as long as I can remember. My earliest memory of debilitating anxiety is at 5 years old. I was so afraid of the dark that the bathroom light across from my room had to be on and door cracked so that the light could shine in my own door cracked room.

When someone would use the bathroom in the middle of the night and turn the light off, I would wake up, curl my entire body under my blankets trying to move as little as possible in case whatever was in the dark noticed, and create as small of a nose hole as possible so I could breathe and will myself back to sleep. Just so I wouldn’t feel the intense fear.

There was a point in life when my chronic illnesses were so chronic and there was no relief that I would go to sleep just to not be awake. As I aged and had more responsibility’s, my ability to mask and “pull myself up by my boot straps” became better and better until one day…. those abilities completely vanished.

My coping and hiding abilities completely crumbled and I finally had to realize, something is really, really wrong. Beyond my chronic illnesses, anxiety and depression. Something that had finally had enough and was rearing its ugly head in ways I’d never experienced before.

During all of this, I thought I was doing the right things. I thought I was caring for myself well and on paper, I was. I was doing everything every holistic doctor and article and well meaning person had told me. All to try and get whatever was happening under control.

Turns out, at 33, I would finally get my answer.

ADHD.

I know, I know. So many tease and make fun and think it’s just something that distracts people. That’s the smallest, tiniest, most stereotypical tip of the iceberg my friends. Undiagnosed ADHD altered my path in life. Obviously, this was God’s will for my life. God has always known that I’ve had ADHD and for whatever reason He deemed this path most glorifying to Him and sanctifying for me and I’m at peace with that. I do wonder what life would’ve been like had I been able to focus, regulate my emotions, filter my thoughts and word more appropriately, etc. What would my relationships and friendships have looked like? How would I have handled family drama? Would I have been able to see the glaring red flags of others more easily?

I don’t know and I never will.

I do know that I’m thankful to have figured it out now. Untreated ADHD was quickly ruining my life. I was drowning every day. There were days I was taking it minute by minute. “Just make it one more minute. Another. Another. Another….”

In my experience ADHD is really not funny, it’s very real, it’s very debilitating, and it’s a spectrum of severity just like any neurodiversity seems to be. I am obviously on the more severe end. A psychologist I once had said “In my experience, the worse the anxiety, the worse the ADHD.” I knew I was severe then, but I realized even more just how severe when I had a friend experience his first anxiety attack. He was explaining it to me and said “Emily, you really can’t even imagine.” and I replied casually with “That’s my everyday life”. I wasn’t being hyperbolic.

Being diagnosed with ADHD was the first step to my entire life changing for the better. Being treated properly for it was the next. I’m a better and significantly happier mother, wife, friend, etc. for it.

Praise God for leading me here. Praise God for proper medication. Praise God for living in a day and age where the diagnosis and medication exist.

Praise God all around.