Please welcome the lovely and wonderful Beth to the blog today! She’s here to talk about how she found TikTok a great resource for her when seeking info on when she was feeling a bit… other. (Sidenote: Because I am An Old™, this is my first time using TikTok ever. Embedding these was an adventure. Let me know if something doesn’t work right, because that is on me, not Beth!)
In the carnival ride of 2020, my Fun House mirror experience has been stumbling across an increasing number of TikTok videos made by (presumably diagnosed) people with ADHD, talking about some of the common traits/issues ADHD folks have. And relating to *all of them*.
@peterhyphen
When I was in middle school, it was a boom period of diagnosing and medicating ADD and ADHD. I was in the minority of my classmates, not being on medication to “help focus”.
@heygude
There was a lot of chatter in the years following, that psychiatrists may have been too quickly to apply a diagnosis to what is normal childhood behavior (we are not, after all, built to sit still and concentrate on one thing only for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week).
@peterhyphen
As far as I’m aware, no one even considered that I’d have ADHD, because I excelled at school and rarely got in trouble. I was in the gifted program (and the stigma of mental illness was such that no one in that program was “allowed” to be neurodivergent in any way) and was encouraged to value intellectual excellence above everything else.
@nerdygymcoach
These could be massive oversimplifications or more in line with individual quirks than a hallmark of ADHD.
@peterhyphen
But it’s possible I just learned to mask well, and found avenues around neurodivergence in order to operate to a level of success.
@heygude
As of this writing, I haven’t sought a formal diagnosis, mostly because I’m afraid it will alter my core understanding of myself if it turns out I do have ADHD. In the meantime, I just continue to get freaked out about stuff like this:
@catieosaurus
About Beth Wade
Beth is a technical writer at a software company in Seattle, WA, where she spends her free time reading, making too many plans, and herding her three cats. She spent 12 years struggling with doctors dismissing her worsening chronic conditions (and a large percentage telling her to "just lose weight and be more active"), so if you need some emotionally support in battling against doctors' unconscious biases, or if you want resources on endometriosis, adenomyosis, SIBO, and myalgic encephalomyelitis, give her a shout on Twitter at @ArtemisHi.
I was never diagnosed with ADHD and find this post helpful in my understanding. Thank you for the post today!
I’m glad it helps! I was shocked and surprised at a lot of that, too.
Ah, Beth, this is such a good post! I loved reading it. One thing I’ve noticed over the past few years is I’ve been hearing more people in my life realize that they’ve probably had ADHD their whole lives but because of the symptoms appearing SO different between genders, it wasn’t undiagnosed. And that is the longest run-on sentence ever! I like that more women are realizing that they have ADHD because I think a lot of it is disguised as perfectionism and thinking maybe you’re not trying hard enough as you can. Like, girls are generally held to different standards than boys are in school, that’s just basic facts. I feel like maybe there’s also more acceptance that boys will have ADHD rather than girls because they don’t act in the same way.
I feel like a lot of what I just said is repetitive but hopefully you get what I’m saying! I’m so glad for this post because I love seeing this out in the open! Those videos are amazing. I’ll have to dive into mental health TikTok because I haven’t ever really looked at it!
Thanks for posting this. My boyfriend has ADHD and these videos has helped me understand him more.
Hahaha! I watched that final video and yes, I put every finger down. At one point, I actually did have a doctor give me meds for ADHD, but I wasn’t consistent enough about taking it because I felt weird about it, so she eventually said maybe I shouldn’t bother. I see these traits in my kids too, so… yeah.