Hello underachievers!
So my whole life I've had people ask me if I have ADHD.
I've had people tell me I have ADHD.
And I've had people blame things that I do on my ADHD,
which is a bit weird for somebody that hasn't been diagnosed with ADHD yet.
And of course over the years I've been getting a lot of comments like this:
I love to keep track of them.
They're kind of funny.
But yeah! I recently got diagnosed with ADHD at the grand old age of 21.
Just a quick explanation of what ADHD is.
It stands for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
People with ADHD struggle with things like impulsivity, having a short attention span
and excessive fidgeting.
If you're hearing lots of noises it's this guy. So, I'm sorry but, you gotta go somewhere.
I've always thought I've had ADHD.
Literally ever since I heard the term when I was a kid.
I've kind of been like: "Oh, that makes a lot of sense. That explains me" and my brother had it and
I was a bit like my brother so I was like: "Oh, I obviously have ADHD". I just wasn't tested for it.
But I also felt weird saying that I had ADHD without a diagnosis so I never
really told anyone that I had it, because I hadn't been diagnosed.
I have definitely struggled my whole life with, you know, having so much energy that it makes me
cry and just having a physical incapability of concentrating on things I'm not interested in.
I was physically incapable of revising. I was very lucky that I did well in school,
because I didn't revise at all.
And even my psychiatrist didn't believe me when I said that.
She was like: "Oh, but like you must have revised a bit". No.
Literally, like not once. I couldn't do it.
I'd sit in front of a textbook, look at the page and be like: "Oh,
we already learned this, why would I read it?"
So, why did I seek out a diagnosis?
Well, the older I got and the more self-aware I got, the more I realized that the struggles that
I had were not actually related to the depression and anxiety that I'd been diagnosed with.
And they weren't the struggles that my friends with depression and anxiety had.
Stuff that I realized more recently was that I wasn't a fussy eater
because I was spoiled or anything like that.
I was a fussy eater because I had a sensory processing disorder and
I just found textures really overwhelming.
Specific tastes and textures made me gag and cry and they still do.
The texture and taste and smell of onions is so overwhelming.
I just... I can't deal with it. My mind just doesn't compute onions.
In my world they shouldn't exist.
And as a kid I literally only ate chicken nuggets, and like plain pasta and plain rice and,
you know, bits and pieces here and there, but like any sauce was not going for me.
Like the thought of having a sauce on any of my food made
me feel ill and the texture of it was just iugh.
But yeah, I always felt really guilty that I couldn't eat the
things that other people were eating, and I couldn't just eat normal food.
And every time I went around a friend's house and they made food
that I didn't like I would just cry, because I couldn't tell them that I couldn't eat it.
And that's like lasted up into adulthood.
I'm so much better at eating things that I wouldn't have eaten as a kid, now.
But, Jesus Christ, like that was horrible.
Being in a relationship has made me realize that a lot of the things that I
experienced weren't exactly normal.
I knew I was a bit odd, I was a bit weird, but I didn't realize that so many things that
I did and so many fears I had and so many life experiences that I had just weren't
that of like a neurotypical person.
For example, it is not normal, for the texture of a wooden spoon, to make a person cry.
It's also not normal to have so much energy that you cry and start kicking the air.
It's not normal to have somebody speaking to you and you not being able to process
any of what they say, even though you're trying real hard to listen.
Genuinely half the time when people are talking to me, it feels like this video:
*Gibberish*
Is not normal to hyperfixate on tidying your room for 12 hours,
even though last week you did the same thing for 8 hours.
And it's definitely not normal to do that without eating or drinking or going to the
toilet during the day, because you're so distracted by, you know, your entire room.
I didn't really share this with many people at the time.
I told a few friends, but for a while I thought I was autistic.
Obviously I did my research and I was a bit conflicted as to like whether I actually had
it or not, but when I looked at the symptoms I was like: "Wow, I experience a lot of this".
I struggle a lot with eye contact. It makes me really uncomfortable and like, I'll do it
if I need to do it, but sometimes I just can't deal with it and I have to tell people to like...
Look away.
I get sensory overload when there's too many noises or too many textures or too many like
things to look at, which is something that people with autism have.
I get very stressed when plans change.
Like even tiny plans, like if I was gonna meet my friend at the cinema at 2 p.m. and
they decide to do it at 3p.m., it could take me like very long to get used to that idea.
And for bigger plans it could take me hours
or days to get used to new plans, even though they're literally fine.
As a kid, I would get obsessed with things.
I still kind of do get obsessed things, but as a kid I was literally, I had so many hyperfixations.
I was so obsessed with Spider-Man for so long that my parents just bought me 3 Spider-Man costumes:
One for the cupboard, one for the wash and one for me to wear.
And this happened with pretty much every interest I had.
Anyway, there are a lot of other traits of autism that I feel like
I fit under, but this video is not about that.
It's about ADHD.
But after researching a lot, I actually found that there was a
big overlap between ADHD and autism, they actually share a lot of traits.
So how did I get diagnosed?
So in the UK we have a National Health Service, which is great.
Like we're very lucky, like health care is great!
But the wait lists are very long for stuff like this,
so I didn't actually end up going the NHS route, I went privately to get diagnosed...
My brain stopped working.
I went privately to get diagnosed with ADHD.
I went with a place called Psychiatry UK, which I will put a link to in the description.
By the way, you can actually go there for free if you live in England.
There's this thing called the Right to Choose and if you google it: "Right to Choose ADHD",
it will come up and there will be ways that you can just go to Psychiatry UK for free.
I didn't do that because I knew that that would involve a lot of phone calls and
a lot of emails and that would stress me out a lot, which is stupid, I know.
The appointment costed £360, which is better than I expected but I paid it.
But, yeah. I knew that if I went via my GP,
I probably wouldn't actually end up going, because I just wouldn't keep up with it.
I just booked my assessment online, I chose which psychiatrist I wanted to go to and then,
I got sent over 4 documents that I had to fill in:
So the first document I had to fill in was an adult ADHD symptom checklist.
Pretty much you just tick off symptoms that apply to you and state how often they apply to you.
Here is the checklist that I filled out, if you want to pause:
The second form that I had to fill out was an ADHD self-report writing document.
Pretty much they'll just ask a series of questions that relate to your symptoms.
The third document that you have to send off to them is a document where you get somebody
close to you to describe what they feel your symptoms are. It's pretty much the
same document as the one I just talked about, except somebody else writes it.
And then the last form that I had to fill out was a cardiac health form where they just asked like:
"Have you had a history of sudden death in your family?"
"Do you have any heart issues?"
And it's for if you want to go on medication.
So what happened in my appointment?
It was a video appointment, so I didn't have to go anywhere. But
I wish I had better memory of what happened.
It was pretty much me just answering a lot of questions which I don't remember all of them,
but I'll try... I'll try and remember some.
The psychiatrist pretty much just asked me questions about
my symptoms in relation to my life.
She asked what my routine is like and how I organized that.
She asked me how I organized my day, my life, my Youtube videos, stuff like that.
She asked me what symptoms I struggled with as a kid
and how that impacted my school life, and how that impacted my friendships.
She also asked about my family mental health history, as well as like what disorders they have.
If there's any like history of mental health issues.
She asked if any of them had ADHD and autism.
My brother has ADHD.
To be honest a lot of what she actually asked on that video call
was just in response to what I had written down in the forms that I sent off to her.
At the end of the appointment she diagnosed me with ADHD and she said
that I had combined hyperactive impulsive and inattentive type ADHD, which pretty
much just means that I have hyperactivity problems and inattentiveness problems.
She said that I displayed 9 out of the 9 hyperactivity traits,
which... Thank you very much, we knew this.
And she also said that I displayed 6 out of the 7 inattentive traits.
So I'm very ADHD!
And she then asked me if I wanted to start medication to which I said "yes".
I thought I should at least try it.
See how it impacts my life, because I have been struggling
with a lot of the symptoms recently and for my entire life but, you know,
lockdown kind of exacerbates everything, makes me think a lot and I was like:
"You know what? What's the harm in doing it? If I don't get on with them, I don't get on with them".
But yeah. I'm going to be starting Concerta, I don't know how it's pronounced, in a few weeks.
I will keep you guys updated with how I feel on that.
It's pretty much just a different brand of Ritalin.
There's a bunch of videos on that.
If you want to know about that just Youtube like "ADHD medication".
So you guys actually had a lot of questions that you sent in about my whole diagnosis thing.
About how ADHD has affected my life,
so I just thought I'd answer a bunch of them, because why not?
So somebody said: How did you feel when you got the diagnosis back?
I felt a lot of relief, because I... Realistically I knew I had ADHD.
I've known it for a long time now but, you know, I never made the jump to go and get diagnosed.
I was just relieved that, you know,
she was kind of validating the things that I had in my head for my whole life.
I was really kind of nervous that I wouldn't get diagnosed with ADHD,
but when I thought about it, I was like: "That's ridiculous".
I've had a few people be like really confused as to why I'm
happy that I got diagnosed with ADHD and it's not that I'm happy that I have ADHD.
I already knew that I had ADHD.
The label "ADHD" is just the label,
it doesn't change the fact that I've had the symptoms my entire life.
It's just like a nice thing to be able to be like: "Oh, yeah. I'm like this and this explains that".
I've had quite a few people be like: "Well,
actually, if you really had ADHD, you'd be upset about being diagnosed with it".
And I'm like... I get that like maybe if you weren't expecting to be diagnosed with it,
you'd be upset but I knew I had it.
It's just nice to know for certain.
Somebody asked: Do you feel the need to mask certain behavior?
So pretty much masking is when you like stop yourself
from doing a behavior that is like natural to you.
The answer to this question is yes.
And I didn't realize that until recently.
Like I live in a house with 5 other people and I've gotten to a point where I can just behave
how I would naturally behave and they just
don't give a [ ], because they're used to me, which is very nice.
But in terms of like, examples, a lot of the time I have too much energy and what I'll do
to get rid of that is I'll like stomp very loud, or I'll like jump up and down, or I'll like skip.
And sometimes I'll just be sitting down and I'll feel the need to just like twitch
and it's not like I'm trying to do it.
I can stop myself doing it, but it is difficult.
But I'll just like twitch and make noises and it's probably very annoying to people.
But a lot of the time, yes.
I obviously try and stop myself doing that,
because nobody wants to hear like a random like *whoop*.
Like no one wants that.
You know how some people have like a resting [ ] face?
I have like a resting confused face because, I guess, it maybe...
I experience the world differently to like "neurotypical people",
so when I take an information, maybe I don't know, it just is a bit different.
So my face is always a bit confused.
I try to not do that. Try and get rid of the confused face.
"Do you wish you'd got the diagnosis sooner?"
Yes, because maybe then I would stop being so hard on myself,
because I have felt for a lot of my life that I was just lazy.
The reason that I couldn't get out of bed and just
start working was because I was lazy and it wasn't that.
It's just that my brain, for some reason, finds it difficult to follow through with tasks like that.
I feel like if I was diagnosed with ADHD whilst I was at school and maybe if I had like treatments
to that or like if I had like medication maybe, I would have performed a lot better in school.
And I know like... I did very well at school! I got like A-stars and A's in my GCSEs.
I got straight B's for A-levels, but I was very depressed, so...
Yeah, I would have done a lot better at school,
I think, if I had the ability to actually revise, but like I'm not mad about it.
It's fine, there's no point like worrying about the past, like I don't care, it happened.
I didn't fail anything.
There was nothing like, drastically,
bad that happened as a result of me not being diagnosed with ADHD so, it's whatever.
"Do you have any ongoing hyperfixations?"
Absolutely.
I don't know if you guys remember my Bill Skarsgård phase,
but that was absolutely a hyperfixation.
Not a fun one.
I'm a bit obsessed with rats,
which is more normal now, in 2021, than it was when I was like 10.
I liked rats back then.
2 like big ones as of late is, I am for some reason so obsessed with tidying.
Even if things aren't dirty or messy.
I just want to tidy them up, I want to make things look nice and I'll do it for hours and hours.
I won't go to the toilet, as I said earlier.
I won't shower and I'll have plans that I planned and then I won't do them,
because I've started tidying!
And once I've started tidying I can't stop.
And even when I need to do other things that involve other people
I'll be doing things with them, but in the back of my head I'll be like:
"Oh, God, I gotta get tidying again!"
And one super recently I am just like obsessed with IKEA.
I've spent an embarrassing amount of time on the IKEA website.
And when I say like an embarrassing amount of time, like hours and hours every night
so much to the point that I'd be going to bed at like 4 a.m.,
just because I've been looking at IKEA for like 4 hours.
4 hours isn't even a stretch, it's been longer than 4 hours.
Someone asked "has anyone accused you of lying that you have ADHD?".
No, I mean people have been like:
"Well if you actually had ADHD you'd be upset about it", but no.
My camera just died, so sorry if it looks different,
but people have told me I was lying when I said that I didn't have ADHD.
I've never had that problem because I feel like I'm very much like,
you'd look at me and see how I behave and be like:
"Oh, he's ADHD", whereas there are some people that actually have ADHD as well
who don't appear so like, visually ADHD?
That made no sense.
You know what I'm trying to say.
"How have you found ways of getting into a routine/organizing yourself?"
So, I love this question because I love organizing things, which is a very good interest to have if
you have strouble... Strouble?
If you have trouble, you know, completing plans.
The way I plan my entire life is on my notes page.
Like I've written every point down that I want to get to on this Youtube video.
Every single thing that I've done every day since 2020 I have written down on my notes page.
Like I have like 2021 plans.
And, yeah. The only way that I actually stick to following through with things,
and the only way that I remember that I have appointments or stuff like that is because,
as soon as I have those like appointments booked, like:
"Oh, hey you got a session on this day".
As soon as I'm told that I whip out my phone and write it down on my notes page
and I would check my phone every day, and my notes page is in a convenient place that,
if I don't remember what I'm doing, I can just click on it and it'll tell me.
Someone asked what's my opinion on people who self-diagnosed with ADHD.
The thing with self-diagnosis is that if you're going to get
an official diagnosis you already have probably an idea in your head
that you actually have the thing that you're trying to get diagnosed for.
So until a few weeks ago I was kind of like self-diagnosed as ADHD,
even though I didn't tell people I had it, which I think is a thing that maybe
is worth mentioning, if you're like self-diagnosing being like:
"I think I have ADHD" or, you know, something like that.
I am very aware that people are in very different situations to me.
There are a lot of people that can't afford health care.
There are a lot of people that don't have
the privilege of having like a free health care service.
So it'll be a bit shitty of me to be like:
"Oh, actually, if you haven't got this really expensive doctor's note
that tells you that you have ADHD, I'm not listening to any of your struggles".
That'll be [ ] up.
But then, again, I also just think it's like if you're self-diagnosed with ADHD,
it's probably good to be like:
"Yeah, I think I have ADHD, but I, you know, I haven't got an official diagnosis".
Because, obviously, there's a lot of overlapping traits between autism and ADHD.
And there's probably overlapping traits between ADHD and a bunch of other things,
which is why getting an official diagnosis can be important.
I don't know, I just think be careful with how you talk about it.
"I have ADHD and was wondering if you also have issues with
following multiple commands given to you at once".
Absolutely yes. It stresses me out so much.
Even if it's like a simple command, I will forget pretty much everything.
If someone is giving me instructions explicitly,
I will have to write them down on my notes page in order to remember them.
"What in your opinion is the most harmful thing that people say when discussing ADHD?"
So, obviously, I am a new member to the diagnosed with ADHD team,
so I probably haven't experienced a lot of the [ ] that other people have got.
But, personally, there's like 2 things that come to mind when I'm asked this question:
The first thing that I think is harmful is the fact that so many people
spread the idea that ADHD isn't real, that it doesn't exist.
That it's just a product of the fact that everybody's on social media and they need
instant, you know... I can't say gratification there.
That sucks because ADHD is very much real and it's not just that people are impatient.
It's that people with ADHD's brains work differently it's a different
state of being than someone who's neurotypical.
So being told that it's not real is a bit like:
"Oh, you're kind of invalidating me and also you're spreading misinformation".
Another thing that really annoys me that I've seen a
lot of recently is people going around being like:
"Oh, if you can unfocus your eyes, you have ADHD".
"Oh, if you can't get out of bed,
even though there may be other reasons why you can't get out of bed, you have ADHD".
I feel like nowadays people are very obsessed with labels and I understand why,
but I just think there's a lot of stuff going around where people are like:
"If you have this, you have ADHD".
"Don't go to a psychiatrist, don't do your research, you have ADHD".
That sucks!
My light went off, didn't it?
Where is it? Yeah, the lights off.
"Do the stereotypes associated with people with ADHD upset you?"
I had a think about this and the answer is "no",
because I kind of fit all the stereotypes about ADHD.
So they're accurate to me, but I can see how frustrating that would be for someone who like
doesn't have like the typical outward appearance or like outward mannerisms of someone with ADHD.
I can see how that would be frustrating for them to be like:
"No! I'm not like this!"
But I am like this, so I find it OK for me,
personally, I don't think we should stereotype anybody.
Apart from straight people.
That was a joke.
Somebody asked: "How does it affect the creative process when you're writing music?"
Oh, my God, so there's pros and cons of it.
The benefit of having so many thoughts going on in my head at once is that a lot of them
will be useful, and a lot of them will be good, and a lot of them will sound cool.
Yeah, my mind comes up with all kinds of weird [ ], like
stuff that I haven't even realized I've thought that I've said, which can be bad.
But when it comes to writing there's a lot of stuff going on, so there's lots to write about.
A con of ADHD when it comes to creativity and writing is that I find it very difficult
to concentrate, and to just sit down, and just write a song,
and just get on with it, unless I'm in a very specific mindset.
Something that I've been doing a lot recently is that I've been having a lot
of Zoom sessions with other writers, and although the other writers don't really
like contribute much lyrically to any of my songs, because I like to write my own lyrics.
There's probably like a few sprinkled in there for songs I've written that like
have come from somebody else, but some something that's good about having another writer there is
that I have somebody to bounce off and I have somebody sat in front of me on a computer that
is kind of like, it's their job to make sure that I write something, which is, I guess,
a way to cope with the inability to just sit down and do stuff, you know?
Having someone else there that like, makes you feel guilty if you're not doing something?
But yeah, that was the end of the video.
If you have any other questions, I'll probably be in the comments and I would like to answer them.
So let me know down below what questions you have.
Well, have a good day or don't.
See you later losers
Goodbye.
I'm in some like weird mood.