#formally diagnosed with adhd for a month now and i STILL can't get help

[clown-femme]

i cannot concentrate i cannot concentrate i cannot CONCENTRATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i really really want to and need to but i can't!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[kaonarvna]

Going through so much right now. Barely have the capacity to do much of anything aside from work and take care of myself and my spouse.

Autistic burnout is truly a cruel mistress. As is having undiagnosed ADHD, knowing what your unmet needs are, and not having the means to access the support you require.

Big vent below. Workplace ableism. ADHD/AuDHD vent.

My spouse is quitting his job again. It happens every year. We've only just now realised "oh my god, it's the autism. It was always the autism" for why he keeps hopping.

He's leaving the current job because they're failing to give him what seems like the most basic accommodations (written instructions, scheduled meetings/literally any notice instead of impromptu "informal chats" in hallways with no record, basic empathy).

He's being told off for "speaking too loudly" and "speaking too enthusiastically" even though all he's talking about with his colleagues is work. They took away his office to turn it into a meeting room, forced him into the communal office space, and have now told him to stop talking to himself or his colleagues.

It's heartbreaking. It's been slowly creeping in for months and it's taken too long for us to realise "oh my god, you need a diagnosis, this is just fucking discrimination, you need formal accommodations and support".

So he's off on the sick now because his stress has become so severe that he just can't function. Before he got the sick note he'd come home and crash every day, and dreaded going to work. He role-played being a warhammer 40k servitor (lobotomised and obedient worker drone, basically) to help him get through the day of staying quiet and doing nothing but work. He'd come home and need so much sensory input and support. And he slept so much, and so poorly. He started to "fail the speech checks" (massively miss social cues and say the wrong thing) with colleagues at work, and came home embarrassed in ways he never was before. He's a very very social animal, and didn't think he had social difficulties, but now he's so worn down that he's realised he does.

He can't mask anymore. He's so tired.

And now that he got that sick note, and plans to leave, he's not dreading waking up each day nearly as much. He's still in the sensory sock every day, and he's still sad and overwhelmed, but he's feeling better.

We've started the process of getting him a diagnosis, but it's going to take months and months and months. We don't really have months. We're going to start applying for new jobs for him, and hopefully get him out of labs. You'd think a chemical laboratory would be the perfect place for an autistic man who loves STEM, but management has always made it unworkable for him. He's always slowly forced out.

And I can barely take care of him, between working full time and having EDS. And I've finally realised I desperately need that ADHD diagnosis, and I need meds. I haven't felt like a person in so long. I haven't felt like myself in years. I feel like this abstract creature inside this horrible prison, and the controls don't work anymore.

Every mental health professional I've seen has asked me, "Have you ever been assessed for ADHD? You've already adopted all the coping mechanisms and lifestyle changes I could recommend. I can't diagnose you, but yknow, think about it."

I've always suspected it. I know I'm autistic. All signs point to ADHD too.

I looked back on every stimulant I've put in my body, and realised that all of them made my brain emptier. They all gave me more control. I was always more able to make choices and act upon them. But I used to associate that with the pain relief (think kratom, nefopam, etc) not the stimulant.

So when I got my pain mostly under control, and I manage it now, I couldn't figure out why I still had so little control over myself.

It's the fucking ADHD.

How much time have I lost to being undiagnosed and unmedicated? How much of my life has slipped down the drain while I paced back and forth, or laid in place "stuck", or ping ponged from incomplete task to incomplete task until I crashed? How much more pleasure could I have experienced if my brain wasn't full of constant noise and thirty different versions of the same thought?

How much have I hurt myself by going "you're fine, you don't need meds" for so many years?

I don't know how long it's going to take to get diagnosed. I've started the process and now we just...wait. But all the evidence points to "yes", and that "meds will probably work and make a massive difference for your quality of life". I might get to be a person someday, or at least a more fulfilled creature.

[genderisareligion]

Re: yesterday's discussion...see, past self, you are on the anti psychology fence.

I wrote this because one of the last things my ex did before attacking me (actually the day after this post) was ask me to give her a list of "all of my disorders" (allegedly so she could research them) and when I handed her my autism diagnosis she said it "wasn't enough" and that "my diagnosises conflicted" and that what she really wanted was something saying I have DID, which at that point I was still in the process of doing formally with a PhD Psychologist, and it can take months.

I think what I consider most contradictory about my slew of labels so far is having both autism and ADHD. Are these also still contested as being real conditions like DID is? Yes. My own sister doesn't think autism exists or runs in our family.

I'm not a doctor so I feel I can't confidently deny these conditions when some of the language being used in psychology has been helpful in my actual life to remind myself to get through difficult things. Whether or not what they project is happening in my brain is actually happening, temporarily I have found that being diagnosed with things like major depression and autism have given me some language and tools to recognize, name, and adjust bad feelings and habits I couldn't describe before and needed help with. Mindfulness concepts have been healing for me as well

But I am a Black American and heavily critical of Big Pharma when it comes to pain medication so I know that these doctors out here don't always have their patients best interests and will sell you out to get a paycheck, plus a few years ago took an antipsychotic that made me feel fucking awful and has now put me off wanting to take anything but meds for physical pain and my ADHD.

Plus there's the misogyny aspect. So I'm still working on where I stand and pick and choose what works from psychology/psychiatry such as having a regular female therapist (for free in my case this time) but successfully dodging her attempts to put me back on fucking Olanzapine or Zoloft.

Psychologists will see a woman struggling and be like how many contradictory labels from the DSM can we pile on her before we shove her out the door with some pills?