When I received a diagnosis of ADHD a couple of years ago, it wasn't a lightbulb moment or a wake-up call. It was more like a quiet, knowing nod.
Technically, I was diagnosed with what used to be called ADD, Attention Deficit Disorder. Today, this sits within ADHD as the predominantly inattentive presentation.
For most of my life I'd thought in black and white - good or bad, clever or dumb, broken or fixed. The diagnosis didn't hand me a new label so much as open up everything in between. It let me see that I wasn't at one end or the other. I was somewhere on a spectrum, along with everyone else.
Always Moving
As a child, I had boundless energy. I would wake up, jump out of bed and just do things. My mind ran just as fast as my legs.
During the day, there was always something else to do. In the evening, when I finally went to bed, my body might have stopped but my mind hadn't. I would lie there while thoughts raced through my head, thinking about things I wanted to do or books I wanted to read. Sometimes there seemed to be so much information racing around that I became anxious that my brain might actually pop.
Risk-Taking and Impulsivity
Looking back, I didn't really think of the things I did as risks. I loved climbing trees and roofs, jumping across brooks and finding adventures, or hazards, wherever I could, often in places I wasn't meant to be. Today, we might call it trespassing or commercial burglary; back then, it was just another afternoon.
We just used to do things. It might be an idea of mine, 'Let's climb up there', or a suggestion from a friend, and I would have a go.
I didn't think that I might fall or hurt myself. I didn't think about getting caught or getting into trouble. Those thoughts about consequences didn't tend to arrive before the action.
School: Not Built for Me
School always felt like something tricky to do, almost as though I didn't have the rules. I didn't know what I was supposed to do. Subjects seemed full of information that I couldn't quite process in the way it was being taught to me.
At primary school, we had to stand up and recite our times tables. I was frightened of getting them wrong and everyone laughing at me, so I would move desks to try to avoid being called on. To this day, I still don't know my times tables.
Homework brought another difficulty. I was always doing something and I didn't prioritise it. I didn't stay up to speed with the work, which meant I fell further and further behind academically.
I guess the message I learnt from that was that I wasn't really 'school clever'. I wasn't smart. I wasn't going to college or university. The message I absorbed from school was that if you didn't get good exam results, you wouldn't amount to anything.
Friendships were difficult too. I didn't seem to be quite like other people. Other boys liked talking about football, while I was much more interested in books and comics. Apart from my small group of friends, I felt very different.
Secondary school was scarier. Everyone else seemed able to form friendship groups and I found conversations difficult. I couldn't talk to guys about 'guy things'.
With girls, I could listen, and they seemed to like that. I became seen as the guy that girls could talk to. But part of the reason I listened was because I was nervous that I would say something wrong, be laughed at or be rejected.
I didn't have many friends, and I was thankful for the small group I did have.
English was different. English was a refuge. I could lose myself in a book or create my own adventures. Fantasy, fiction, Jedi knights and elves gave me somewhere else to go. Escaping into somebody else's story was often easier than making sense of my own.
Finding My Place in the Adult World
The world beyond school didn't immediately get any easier.
Getting a job and holding one down was difficult. I struggled with timekeeping and routines. Some of the factory jobs I did involved repetitive tasks, and I found that mind-numbing.
I was working alongside grown-up adults who seemed, from where I was standing, to have their lives in order. The men I worked with would read the newspaper from the back because they wanted to get to the sport first. Once again, I wasn't interested in sport. Once again, I didn't quite feel that I fitted.
I carried low self-esteem alongside what probably looked from the outside like confidence.
Alcohol, and within certain groups amphetamines and ecstasy, seemed at the time to give me confidence. Looking back, I understand that differently. What they did was reduce my inhibitions. For a while, I wasn't as self-conscious all the time.
Finding Counselling
After difficulties with drugs and alcohol, I got help, and part of that involved having counselling.
Counselling introduced me to the possibility that you could stop. You could pause and look at your life and perhaps do something differently.
I started to realise there was another way.
It was something I wanted to offer to other people.
I remember talking to my counsellor, Barry, about possibly doing an introduction to counselling course. I wasn't sure whether I would be good enough.
He said:
'You remind me a lot of myself.'
Learning Differently
Counselling training gave me a very different experience of learning. It involved experiential learning, skills practice, reflection and being honest about my own process.
And I started to get different feedback.
People noticed a stillness about me. A focus that I hadn't previously been able to demonstrate. An interest and a passion.
I'd been told before that I was a good listener, but I'd always thought that was partly because I was scared to talk. Now I was being told by adults and professionals, 'You're really good at this.'
The ability to sit still isn't something that comes easily. It's something I've had to work at and something I continue to work at. I've learnt to recognise the importance of being still and connecting with another person.
My mind doesn't necessarily become still just because my body does.
Carl Rogers wrote, 'The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.' It took me a long time to understand what he meant.
Learning to Use It
When I'm with a client, I'm able to absorb a lot of information and make connections quickly. Sometimes I have a sense of where the client might be going.
I've learnt not to interrupt.
It's not important that I get there first. It's important that they get there.
Through training, personal development and clinical experience, I've learnt to consider those connections rather than immediately acting on them. Sometimes that means taking an informed therapeutic risk and offering something tentatively. Sometimes it means holding the thought and saying nothing.
It's not about me being right. It's about me being present with them.
Not an End, but a Place on It
My wife uses Asperger's to describe herself, and calls it her superpower - a particular way of seeing the world. I used to reach for that word too: my speed was my superpower, like The Flash.
I still like the image. But I've come to think of it less as a superpower and more as simply where I sit. Speed isn't the opposite of stillness, or better or worse than it. It's one point on a wide range of ways a mind can work - mine happens to run fast.
When I was younger, that speed spilled into risk-taking without much thought for the consequences. Now I've learnt to pause, consider the connections, and make more informed choices about what I do with them.
The speed is still there. I've just found where it belongs.
The Committee
In the past, my mind sometimes felt as though it was being run by a chaotic committee.
Thoughts cascaded into one another like unfinished sentences. They came so quickly that they became jumbled. One thought didn't have an opportunity to develop before another interrupted it.
The committee hasn't disappeared. It's become more organised.
Now it can consider the agenda. When I'm able to focus, the individual thoughts have more opportunity to develop. Each is given its own voice and allowed to speak without immediately being interrupted by the next.
On a Spectrum
I still struggle. I still get anxious. I still feel overwhelmed in busy social situations, and sometimes I retreat when I've been 'peopled out'.
But when I think about those old black-and-white judgements - whether they came from other people or from myself - I can see that there were gaps in my understanding. Gaps in the information I had about myself.
I think of it a little like a computer program with lines of data missing. Adding information doesn't complete the program or give me every answer, but it allows connections to be made that couldn't be made before.
Understanding where I sit on this spectrum has helped me navigate everyday life. It's helped me see how I interpret the world, and recognise that there can be different ways of thinking about and responding to things.
I've learnt patience. I've learnt strategies.
I've also begun to understand that I'm not as broken as I once thought I was.
Perhaps more than anything, understanding has given me perspective.
This is a personal reflection on my own experience and diagnosis. It isn't advice, and it isn't therapy - just one counsellor thinking aloud about his own way of being in the world.
Sincerely Yours,
Paul
Transparency note:
This blog has had AI assistance in formatting. All content has been written and reviewed by the author.