Getting an ADHD diagnosis later in life brings relief but also grief: the realization that certain hopes and abilities are no longer possible. The speaker uses a backpack metaphor to show ADHD as permanent, something to accept rather than fix, and notes that partners grieve too. Learning to distinguish what you can control from what you can't helps you eventually embrace it.
Chapters
One thing that's not talked about very much is that when you get an ADHD diagnosis, especially later in life, grief happens. When you get diagnosed, there's a lot of positive things that happen and you feel really great about understanding why your brain works this way, but then you end up also getting some grief because you realize that there's things that you thought you'd be able to do, there's ways you thought you could be that just aren't going to happen. One way to look at this is you're walking around feeling like you have a backpack on your back most of your life, and then you get this diagnosis and you get confirmation that, oh yeah, there's a backpack and it's not ever going to leave. So now you have this new reality of, okay, well, who am I now with this backpack? Because you know that it's going to be there just like a third arm. And there's things that you had hopes and dreams for that just aren't going to happen because of the way your brain chemistry works. When you get an ADHD diagnosis, it can give you grief and it can also give grief to your loved ones. For instance, your partner or your spouse has to realize, oh, there's ways I thought this person was going to be able to change. And now I know that's not ever going to happen. So that is a big loss for them and for the relationship also, which takes a process that goes through grieving. So if you find yourself feeling grief around this, What's really good to do is get clear on what you can control and what you can't control. And the things that you can't control, over time, learn to accept those things and ideally over time be able to laugh at those and incorporate them because this backpack is part of you. It's something that needs to be loved and hugged and accepted as part of who you are and how you're going to go forward in life.
