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I have always felt like a little girl masquerading as a grown up. I thought for a while it might be related to the neurological oddities that cause ADHD, but the delay in brain maturation is reportedly only three years. At the mid-century mark, a three-year delay hardly explains my feeling like a 6-year-old.
I remember dressing up in my mother’s clothes as young girl, fully decorated with enough Merle Norman make-up for three people. I would recognize the smell of those cosmetics to this day – 40 years later. I had on black panty hose with her very tight white shorts, gobs of jewelry and black pumps – it was quite a sight, I’m sure. I remember this day clearly because our neighbor saw me out parading around and absolutely cracked up laughing. Being hyper-sensitive, that was probably enough to traumatize my delicate psyche.
But if not, about the same time someone came running out of the woods screaming that my little brother was hurt – story of my life, but a different story. He had fallen out of a tree and broken his leg halfway up the thigh. Poor guy was in traction for weeks, then wore a full body cast for months. I think he missed most of 5th grade. I was very over-protective, so I probably thought it was my fault for not being there to tell him what to do (or not to do, in this case).
To make a long story short, I have felt like an imposter most of my adult life. I still have dreams two-three times a year that I am in college and the school finds out I never finished high school because I couldn’t pass math. Many times I have awakened, afraid ‘they’ were going to rescind my graduate degree and revoke my license to practice. There’s no doubt – the cumulative effects of growing up with ADHD are far reaching.
In this ebook, readers get a glimpse of how early experiences can continue to revisit us decades later as ADHD-related problems on the job. I am a licensed professional with over 25 years of service and advocacy for those in need. Though undiagnosed until my early-30s, I exhibited the classic symptoms of ADHD from childhood. Years of therapy and trial and error with various doctors finally lead to the right combination of medication and self-help. Though I was doing ‘everything right’ to manage my ADHD, the perfect storm developed when I entered the for-profit world of corporate America.
Over-stimulation and the need to multi-task all day at work resulted in anxiety that reached the point of anxiety attacks. Anxiety lead to insomnia which quickly became sleep deprivation. Soon I found my resistance to stress so low that I could not go to work. Counseling and medication adjustments while on personal leave netted little success until I realized the underlying problem while talking with a friend – PTSD.
Read more about my search for understanding and validation as I stumbled through the maze of corporate bureaucracy. My hope is that everyone with residual effects of ADHD and other invisible conditions will learn about legal protection and self advocacy, and never need to exercise them.
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