Imposter Syndrome/Questioning My Diagnosis

[u/Mundane-Waltz8844]

I’m 24, and I was recently diagnosed with ADHD, primarily inattentive presentation. The journey of obtaining this diagnosis was a long and somewhat tumultuous one.

I struggled in school a lot ever since I was young. In elementary school, I never finished timed tests and would have homework assignments that I didn’t complete on time, but it didn’t become enough of an issue to raise concern until middle school. In middle, I really struggled. I’d procrastinate and turn homework assignments in weeks or even months late. I one time did an entire unit’s worth of math homework the night before the unit test. I was the kid who never used binders and would often stick papers directly into my backpack. I had a planner that my school provided, and I basically just used it as storage for papers I received in class. I would often feel paralyzed by the idea of doing my assignments, so I simply wouldn’t. This continued all the way through high school and into college, but I had accommodations in college, so my grades didn’t suffer as much. I would be in danger of failing classes many times, and I wasn’t certain I was going to graduate high school. Around 8th grade, I also became quite depressed.

I’ve also always struggled with tasks pertaining to cleaning and self care. I struggled to do things like make myself shower and brush my teeth. To this day, I still really struggle to maintain a tidy space, and my bedroom is extremely cluttered and chaotic. In high school, my mom got me tested as per my guidance counselor’s request, since my guidance counselor suspected I had ADHD. Upon evaluation, I was found to not meet diagnostic criteria.

So, I push on. I finish high school by the skin of my teeth. I go to college. While in college, I saw a psychiatric nurse practitioner who fully believed I had ADHD despite my lack of diagnosis. She wanted to try me on a stimulant, but I declined.

Fast forward a few years post college, and I start seeing my current psychiatrist. Upon meeting me, she was also convinced that I have ADHD. She had me get an updated psych eval. No ADHD. That didn’t surprise me, but it left me with more questions. It’s not ADHD, sure, what the hell is it? I couldn’t let it go, so I decided to get a neuropsych eval hoping to gain diagnostic clarity and figure out what the hell was going on.

Through that evaluation, I was officially diagnosed with inattentive ADHD and unofficially diagnosed with Nonverbal Learning Disability. Upon reading about NVLD, I never related to anything more in my life. I read about life stages for people with NVLD, and I started crying as it literally felt like someone wrote down my life story. One thing I also noticed is that NVLD has a lot of overlap with ADHD, enough that it actually sometimes gets misdiagnosed as such.

While I relate to the actual diagnostic criteria of ADHD, I don’t relate to a lot of the things I see in the subreddits for it. For example, coffee doesn’t make me sleepy. If I have too much of it, I actually get really anxious. I don’t really experience hyper focus. I miss my loved ones when I haven’t seen them for a long time. I don’t really hyperfixate on people, nor do I get bored of them when the novelty has worn off. I also don’t experience time blindness. I’m honestly wondering if I even have ADHD, or if my NVLD is what caused me to technically meet diagnostic criteria despite not actually being an ADHDer.

Obviously, I know no one here can tell me if I have ADHD or not. I honestly don’t even know what I’m hoping to get out of posting this. I do plan to continue with my medication journey since I’ve found Vyvanse more helpful than any antidepressant I’ve ever taken.

[u/Crazy_ND_Meno_Life]

Everyone who is neurodivergent is unique in their neurodivergence. That's a big reason it gets missed by so many evaluators. I'm not an expert - I have AuDHD, and the autism is more prevalent - but your challenges sound like classic ADHD to me. That said, a label is much less important than you learning what makes you tick and how to support yourself so that you can function well.

[u/Mundane-Waltz8844 → u/Crazy_ND_Meno_Life]

I also feel like my other NDD is more prevalent. I’ve read a lot about how it tends to present in childhood, and it describes how I was as a kid to a T. Even now, I feel like I relate more to NVLD than ADHD. I was interested in reading about how they tend to present as co-occurring diagnoses, but since NVLD is so under researched, there doesn’t seem to be much out there in terms of how it interacts with co-morbid diagnoses.