ADHD: 6 Months After Diagnosis | chronic fatigue to adhd, how i got diagnosed, medication update

what's up friends today i just wanted to do another video a sit down video just talking kind of um because i just want to talk about this topic i have adhd and i was diagnosed in september i believe so so it's been six months since i've been diagnosed and i just wanted to talk about my experiences experiences since then um i am 26 years old and i was diagnosed when i was 26 which is pretty late for a lot of people a lot of people are diagnosed as children i was diagnosed as an adult and i'm a woman a lot of women are diagnosed later in life and if you're watching this you're probably questioning if you have adhd or you already have adhd and you are just looking for someone's experiences anyway i wanted to talk about this because i wanted to explain my journey and maybe you're going through something similar and then i want to talk about how my life is now that it's been six months since my diagnosis because i would say it's definitely changed my life and i think a lot of people could benefit from hearing this so let's get started um so again my name is rachel and i have adhd i have the inattentive type specifically and i am on medications concerta and occasionally ritalin now a little bit of background i did okay in school i like did fine i went to university i graduated i did pretty okay i don't remember much of my childhood i do have comorbidities including ptsd anxiety depression alcoholism so you might not have those but it might be relevant to your story if it is a lot of people with these issues don't remember much of their childhood and same case for me i do remember feeling very confused in the classroom alone just strange in general and i don't know what that was attributed to probably with a little bit of everything including the adhd i always struggled in school i feel like i could never do as well as other people even though i studied in studies and studied and it was it was just hard i was very quiet i watched a lot of other people a lot of the time rather than engaged and i kind of kept to myself a lot of the time so that was kind of my childhood as i grew up i became a little bit more social in college i picked up drinking and that's when the troubles started and i started really seeing the symptoms of the other things even though they were in existence when i was a child as well and i had symptoms so it after i resolved my alcoholism about two and a half years ago i've been sober for almost three years now um i was told by my doctors that that i have had anxiety and depression i already knew that for a few years and i'd been diagnosed and was on medication um but i was dealing with something pretty terrible that was really affecting my life which was this chronic chronic tiredness i was so sleepy um just sleeping all day uh struggling to get up in the morning just feeling like someone ran me over with a truck um because of this i had constant brain frog brain frog brain frog i had constant brain fog so some of my symptoms included brain fog exhaustion fatigue my body would hurt um something that i really struggled with was paying attention to something for a long time i couldn't do it and if i had to i would be so exhausted afterwards another thing that it affected pretty badly was my uh social life i found that after i got sober i really struggled socially i didn't have the energy for that like being around a lot of people i would get very overwhelmed i wouldn't be able to listen to anyone i wouldn't be able to take in what they were saying to me um i would just kind of like nod my head and be like oh yeah oh yeah no you know even though i didn't no idea what they were saying to me because i couldn't listen focus on them other things was my memory was super bad i'd have to write everything down and then i'd forget the things that i write down i lost everything i was constantly losing my phone my chapstick my keys my self i don't know just everything i'd lose it very clumsy i just wouldn't pay attention to my surroundings just not good and if you're here you're probably struggling with some symptoms of your own and if you know and if you're like me you know these symptoms can be really debilitating and can affect your life and the reason that i started searching for answers on these symptoms was because it was really affecting my life my relationship was being affected because i was so tired i would sleep all day um i wouldn't do things like the dishes or the laundry or if i was asked to do it i'd forget and i just wouldn't do it and yeah again i would just sleep all the time i would sleep in till 11 and then start work and then i'd take have to take a nap two hours later um our social life was kind of weird everyone kind of knew that i was super nice and friendly and cool and great for my partner but i wouldn't pay attention to them as they talked or i had to be on my phone engaging with my phone when they talked and they all kind of just knew rachel's weird and rachel is on her phone and it's rachel's rachel's rachel and she has to go take naps mid hang out with friends and whatever and it affected my relationship because my partner would get home from seeing friends and he would be like rachel why were you on your phone the whole time you know like they were that's so rude or like why are you sleeping in again you're gonna get fired from work or how are you taking naps all day you're gonna lose your job or rachel why can't you just do the dishes why can't you just do this you're being so lazy you're just lazy you can do it just do it you're just lazy and it was affecting my relationship because i knew something was terribly wrong and i didn't know what it was so i began trying to figure it out after i got sober i finally had the energy to kind of look into this other issue i was having and my doctors told me that these were symptoms of my depression and anxiety and once i got on the right mats i would be better um so i was on all these maths i started going to intensive therapy because i wanted to figure it out um you know i thought if i resolve my trauma and if i resolve my anxiety maybe my symptoms would lessen i wouldn't have to sleep all the time i don't know i would have like maybe i'm socially anxious and that's why i can't be social and then i get tired i don't know so it was very hard for me so i started looking into different things and i was like i guess the biggest thing was i was constantly exhausted i just the brain fog i felt like there was a heavy thing sitting on my head and it felt like my brain was heavy and just look slow i don't know i don't know how to describe it maybe you experienced something similar i was like okay so something's wrong with my sleep i sleep way too much i sleep maybe 16 hours a day um or more and that's not normal and it's affecting my life so i was like okay chronic fatigue i have chronic fatigue and so because it was just chronic fatigue right and chronic fatigue is pretty mysterious and i was trying to get a diagnosis for chronic fatigue because i just wanted to know what was wrong with me because something was wrong with me no one believed me if people thought i was just lazy but i knew something was wrong my doctor referred me to get a sleep study i went to the sleep study everything came back normal i had no sleep apnea i was falling asleep pretty quickly like a normal person and my sleep was fine like it wasn't nothing was wrong there was no reason i should be sleeping that much so it was really difficult because that was a dead end um i got blood work done to see if i was you know didn't have nutrients or something that came back normal um i changed my lifestyle i would go more walks but i would just like need to pass out after that because everything was so exhausting to me so that the next thing was like okay i have ptsd let's resolve that um so i went and got very intensive ptsd therapy with my therapist i was meeting her once a week and for an hour every week and we were just going through all this stuff and i resolved it mid last year i would say and it was the best feeling because i wasn't dealing with ptsd symptoms anymore but i was still sleeping all day and not being able to pay attention to anything my husband said and he'd get frustrated because he would be like what did i just say i'd be like i have no idea and he would just like be like you don't listen to me you're not paying attention to me and i felt really bad because i wanted to be there for him and i wanted to give him the attention he deserved and he gave me but i just couldn't and so it was affecting my friendships as well um i wasn't reaching out to my friends i was neglecting my friendships because i just didn't have the emotional and physical and just capacity to do it like it was just a lot so once i resolved my ptsd i wasn't depressed anymore for the first time in my life i wasn't anxious anymore for the first time in my life and i was still sleeping all day okay so then i was like okay what is this because something is wrong it's not normal okay so it was summer and i was like i need to figure this out it's ruining my life and i'm so unhappy because of this um and so i started googling things i was like okay chronic fatigue i still don't think i have chronic fatigue and then i forget what triggered it but i was like i need to figure this out and i started looking up random things and i think i stumbled upon adhd and i googled it and all the symptoms kind of just made sense to me like adhd inattentive so i'm just gonna look it up really quickly and read to you some of the symptoms so i read these often has trouble staying focused on tasks at work home or play frequently does not pay close attention to details or makes careless mistakes at work or while doing other tasks often has trouble organizing tasks or activities is easily distracted frequently does not follow through on instructions or fails to complete work assignments chores or other activities often forgets doing routine chores like paying bills returning phone calls keeping appointments avoid tasks that require long periods of mental focus preparing reports filling out forms in my case social interaction often loses items needed to complete tasks or activities and does not appear to be listening even though spoken to directly a person would experience more than five of these i would say to have adhd apparently and i would say that these were rang completely true to me i was like this is exactly what i'm experiencing but from what i know about adhd it's more like hyperactive so i was kind of like okay well i can't be adhd the more i looked into it i looked at research and i saw that woman were often misdiagnosed and diagnosed very late um because uh we're more quiet about it we might have the inattentive type more likely and so we don't really we're not really vocal about our issues we do fine in school because we figure out how to do fine and that's very much what my life was like so yeah terrible focus staying on tasks that work home or play you know i i'm pretty detail-oriented but i make careless mistakes while doing tasks like i'll swing my armor and i'll drop something like this is constant i think i drop a glass of something like three times a week i don't know um and other people don't do that i'm easily distracted absolutely um um i do follow through on instructions and fail and complete work assignments i would say because i have to and like i learned that i have to do that um it might be like a really hard road to get there but i would do it however i will not complete chores or other activities and then avoid tasks that require long periods of mental focus i don't know if i avoided it but it was more like i just wouldn't even engage so i guess avoiding loses items yes i lose everything and does not appear to be listening and spoken to directly yes i don't listen ever i don't think i listen to my husband during the first three months of our relationship i don't know what happened and how we ended up together because i was not the same time um and then it says other psychological conditions such as depression or anxiety substance abuse etc etc can accompany adhd and adults and so whenever that i was like girl who took this picture of me who took this picture of me and i was like okay that's me and i was wary of bringing it up to my psychiatrist because again i have substance abuse issues and i know people abuse uh the stimulants and so i was like i don't want him to just think i'm like looking for some pills even though mom i do be doing that sometimes um but i went to him and i was like hey i'm still dealing with these issues after y'all told me that once my anxiety and depression got resolved i would they would go away but i'm still dealing with all these symptoms i want to see if this is possibly what i have can you please engage with me on this and he did so i had been working with him for almost a year um and it and we had a really good relationship and he'd help me with a lot of different things um and so he tested me for adhd he had like some questions and he also referred back to my intake report and apparently i put the exact same things that i was answering to him that day on the intake report a year ago so it wasn't like i made this up or whatever it was ongoing issue and so he was like i think you have adhd possibly but let's talk to your husband i want to corroborate that you um show these symptoms and it's not you know other people see it and my husband came in and he was like yeah she never listens to me she doesn't finish her tasks she doesn't do anything she scrolls on tick-tock all day keep in mind i did not ever use tick-tock at that time and i was like excuse me um but yeah he basically was like yeah i hate her and then my boss was like yeah i'm my boss my psychiatrist was like you have adhd anyway after that i love medicine so he was like let's get some medicine on your life um because i already have pretty good like coping skills and mechanisms to help me get through some of the symptoms of adhd like focusing like if i have to focus on work i know i have to focus on work or something get fired so i'll do it um but yeah so they put me on ritalin and i was on like the lowest dose of ritalin at first that didn't work for me so i increased you allowed me to increase on my own volition um based on how i was feeling so i increased to 15 milligrams or i tried 20 milligrams and i was like and that was just insane and i was like so and down to 50 milligrams twice a day and suddenly the first day i did it i was working i completed a task that i had not done at work for like over a year that i've been saying i was going to do camera day anyway it was insane it was like from night to day i was not sleeping i woke up i was awake the whole day i was listening to my husband for the first time in my life it turns out that he is allergic to p.s didn't know that um yeah night and day i called my friends i was like hi how are you doing i haven't talked to you in five years and everything changed for the first few days i was like and then i kind of settled down into like a normal thing you know anyway but i didn't like that because it didn't last that long the ritalin so i changed over to concerta it started to work better for me it lasted from like 10 to 5 or something and so i was on my life changed i got myself a raise i got a promotion my relationship with my husband we like each other more now it's great um i call my friends now you know i don't sleep all day so i have hobbies now um i can pay attention to things i've like learned so much i'm learning how to code i pick up my medicines on time i do the dishes i take the laundry out of the dryer instead of putting on another cycle i don't know why i did that my husband hated it when i told him that i did that i don't know what i did that but anyway i actually take the laundry out now and i fold it and i put it away my life's completely different i also am a little bitter because i'm like had i been diagnosed as a child i would probably be a rocket scientist or something like that but alas i'm not anyway so i'm a little bitter a little bit angry because i did have such a hard time growing up and now i'm like i'm like where could what could i have achieved but i'm also proud of myself because i was able to get to this point regardless and now i'm able to grow even better grow even stronger improve my relationships with people and improve my life and so i'm just so grateful i was diagnosed and i hope that you get diagnosed too anyway that's it for me i think for this video um if you have any questions or want me to talk about something else with adhd i'd be happy to just leave a comment down below let me know about your experiences and what you've been through if it's something similar or something different i'd love to hear about it because there's so many of us who haven't been diagnosed or still working on getting diagnosed and it's hard so feel free to comment down below i'd love to hear it follow me on instagram and tick tock and all the things and i'll see you there

Channel: rachel anita!

Views: 196,149

Keywords: adult adhd, adhd medication, how to adhd, how to get diagnosed with adhd, adhd symptoms in women, chronic fatigue, concerta experience, ritalin experience, methylphenidate experience, adhd, chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic fatigue treatment, trauma and adhd, adhd and alcoholism, adhd in women symptoms, adhd vlog, adult adhd diagnosis, what is adhd like, adult adhd symptoms, adhd in girls, how to get an adhd diagnosis

Id: f98u2wbWEjI

Length: 17min 9sec (1029 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 13 2022