I Was Diagnosed With ADHD in My Late 30s—and Suddenly, So Much of My Life Made Sense

For most of my life, ADHD was not something I thought I had.

I’m a therapist. I earned good grades growing up. I completed graduate school with a 4.0 and graduated summa cum laude. I built a career. I became a mother of four. I managed responsibilities, raised children, worked, went to school, and accomplished things I’m incredibly proud of.

So ADHD?

That didn’t really fit the picture I had in my head.

Except, as I eventually learned, the picture I had in my head of ADHD was incredibly incomplete.

And ironically, it was my own children who helped me begin to see myself differently.

I thought I knew what ADHD looked like.

As a mother of four, including two children on the autism spectrum, neurodivergence wasn’t unfamiliar territory in my family.

One of my daughters had been diagnosed with ADHD alongside autism for years, and her ADHD looked much more like the version many of us traditionally associate with it.

She was physically hyperactive.

You could see it.

So without realizing it, that became part of my mental picture of ADHD.

Then, eventually, my other daughters were diagnosed too.

And theirs didn’t look the same.

There was more distractibility. Difficulty with executive functioning. Trouble initiating tasks. And in my youngest daughter especially, there were BIG emotions.

That last part caught my attention.

Because I knew those emotions very well.

For years, I wondered if those emotions meant something else.

Growing up, my mom sometimes wondered whether I had some type of mood disorder.

I could be extremely emotionally reactive. I could become angry quickly. Things could feel HUGE to me.

And because of what we understood about mental health at the time, bipolar disorder seemed like one possible explanation.

Years later, when I saw similar emotional intensity in my youngest daughter, I wondered the same thing about her.

Then her therapist asked me something that shifted the conversation:

Had I ever considered having her evaluated for ADHD?

Her therapist explained that emotional dysregulation can also be associated with ADHD and that what she was seeing didn’t necessarily resemble the distinct mood episodes characteristic of bipolar disorder.

That sent me down an entirely different path.

And eventually, my daughter was evaluated and diagnosed with ADHD.

Suddenly, I started looking at myself.

But I had already tried to get answers once.

Shortly before my mom passed away, I had actually gone to a psychiatrist because I was struggling with focus and functioning.

At the time, my mom was battling cancer.

I was living with the reality that we didn’t know what tomorrow would bring or whether we were approaching goodbye.

Of course I was sad.

Of course I was struggling emotionally.

The psychiatrist attributed what I was experiencing to depression.

And I remember thinking:

Yes, I’m depressed about what is happening to my mother. Who wouldn’t be? But I don’t think that explains everything.

I knew myself.

Something else felt like it was happening underneath that grief.

I asked about other possibilities, but ultimately I didn’t feel heard, and I let it go.

Then my mom passed.

Time went on.

A year later, I was still noticing many of the same patterns.

The circumstances had changed.

The patterns hadn’t.

Some days I could do EVERYTHING. Other days I couldn’t start anything.

This was one of the things that confused me the most.

I could have a million ideas.

And sometimes?

I could execute 100 of them.

I’d work, clean, plan, organize, create, handle responsibilities and feel like the most productive person alive.

Then I could spend the next two or three days looking at dishes in my sink knowing I needed to wash them…

and just not start.

Or I’d know exactly what work needed to get done.

I wasn’t confused about the assignment.

I wasn’t incapable of doing it.

I just couldn’t seem to make my brain GO.

That distinction is incredibly difficult to explain to someone who hasn’t experienced it.

It wasn’t:

I don’t want to do this.

It was more like:

I want to do this. I know I need to do this. Why the hell am I still sitting here?

And then I’d get frustrated with myself.

My brain could also have 15 thoughts trying to walk through the same door.

This may be one of the best ways I’ve found to explain what ADHD can feel like for me.

Imagine 15 people trying to squeeze through one doorway at the exact same time.

Nobody can figure out who is supposed to go first.

That’s my brain sometimes.

I know what I want to say.

The thoughts are there.

Sometimes there are actually too many thoughts there.

But organizing them, prioritizing them and figuring out which one needs to come out first can be the difficult part.

Give me five things I need to accomplish and, instead of simply doing #1 through #5, my brain can become so overwhelmed by figuring out where to start that suddenly I’m doing none of them.

Then anxiety enters the chat.

Now I’m anxious because I’m behind.

I’m overstimulated because there are too many things.

I’m frustrated because I KNOW I’m capable of doing them.

And occasionally I’m crying because why the f**k can’t I just DO THE THING?

😂

From the outside, that can look like procrastination.

Internally, it can feel completely different.

So I finally went back for a second opinion.

By then, there was another piece of information I hadn’t had the first time.

My children were being diagnosed with ADHD.

When I met with another psychiatrist, I came prepared.

I basically brought the mental-health version of:

Here are all the weird things my brain does. Please tell me what the hell this is.

😂

I wondered about ADHD.

I wondered about bipolar disorder.

I wondered about OCD.

I wondered whether some things I had always interpreted through the lens of trauma or anxiety could actually have another explanation—or maybe more than one explanation.

For example, I’d notice myself driving while completely inside my own head, almost daydreaming. I’d previously wondered whether experiences like that were dissociation.

And this is where mental health gets complicated.

Human beings don’t fit neatly into diagnostic boxes.

Trauma can overlap with ADHD symptoms. Anxiety can overlap with ADHD. Depression can affect executive functioning. ADHD can contribute to anxiety. More than one thing can exist at the same time.

That’s why an actual clinical evaluation mattered to me.

My psychiatrist considered different possibilities, including OCD and ADHD, before ultimately diagnosing me with ADHD.

And suddenly?

So much shit made sense.

ADHD didn’t mean I wasn’t intelligent.

This was probably one of the biggest misconceptions I had unknowingly absorbed.

I didn’t struggle academically in the stereotypical way.

I got A’s and B’s growing up.

I earned a master’s degree.

I graduated summa cum laude with a 4.0.

I’m a licensed therapist and business owner.

Clearly, my brain was capable of learning.

My ADHD wasn’t a measurement of intelligence.

It affected how my brain managed things.

Starting.

Stopping.

Prioritizing.

Organizing.

Regulating attention.

Managing stimulation.

Managing emotions.

Sometimes remembering something incredibly important while somehow remembering 75 completely useless details nobody asked for. 😂

And that helped me understand why ADHD could have been there even while I was accomplishing things.

Sometimes success doesn’t mean something isn’t difficult.

Sometimes it means you developed ways to compensate for the difficulty without ever realizing that’s what you were doing.

My hyperactivity wasn’t necessarily happening in my body.

This was another lightbulb moment.

My daughter’s ADHD can be physically obvious.

Mine often isn’t.

But my brain?

Oh, she’s BUSY.

😂

Thoughts.

Ideas.

Plans.

Things I need to do.

Things I forgot to do.

Things I suddenly need to research at 11:47 p.m.

Something someone said three days ago.

A business idea.

A household responsibility.

And somehow a completely unrelated thought that has absolutely no business being invited to this meeting.

All at once.

That helped me understand something important:

ADHD doesn’t have one “look.”

Even within my own family, I’ve watched it present differently.

Emotional dysregulation was another missing puzzle piece.

Learning about the connection between ADHD and emotional regulation gave me an entirely different way of understanding parts of myself.

It didn’t mean every strong emotion I had ever experienced was “because of ADHD.”

Life isn’t that simple.

I’ve experienced trauma. I’ve experienced grief. I’ve experienced difficult relationships and difficult seasons. Those things matter too.

But suddenly there was another lens.

Maybe being emotionally reactive didn’t automatically mean I had a mood disorder.

Maybe some of the moments when frustration went from 0 to 100 were connected to difficulty regulating emotions when my brain was already overloaded.

Maybe overwhelm wasn’t evidence that I was incapable.

Maybe there was a reason five unfinished tasks could make my nervous system feel like the building was on fire.

Understanding that didn’t absolve me of responsibility for how I respond to emotions.

It gave me more information about what I needed to work with.

Treatment gave me another piece of information.

After my diagnosis, I decided with my psychiatrist to try medication.

I’ll admit I was nervous about starting a stimulant.

Especially given my history, medication was something I wanted to approach thoughtfully.

So we started low.

Over time, we adjusted until we found what worked for me.

And the difference wasn’t that medication suddenly made me smarter or gave me some superhuman level of productivity.

It helped me access what was already there.

Starting a task became easier.

Following through became easier.

My brain felt more capable of organizing what needed to happen next.

It wasn’t magic.

I still have ADHD.

I still procrastinate sometimes.

I still become overwhelmed.

I still have days where my executive functioning apparently decides it’s taking PTO without notifying management. 😂

But now I understand what I’m working with.

And that has changed how I respond to myself.

I started reinterpreting parts of my past.

This may have been the most emotional part of receiving a diagnosis later in life.

You start looking backward.

At the anger.

The impulsivity.

The emotional intensity.

The periods of feeling completely overwhelmed.

The difficulty initiating things.

The stimulation-seeking.

The ways I coped when I was younger.

My history with substance use.

My struggles with self-esteem.

Periods of self-destructive behavior.

My complicated relationship with food and my body.

Not everything in my past can—or should—be reduced to ADHD.

There were many factors in my life.

But learning more about my brain allowed me to ask a question I wish I had known to ask much earlier:

What if I wasn’t simply failing at things that seemed easier for everyone else? What if there were things about my brain I hadn’t learned how to work with yet?

That question creates room for accountability and compassion.

And I believe deeply in both.

A diagnosis didn’t change who I was. It changed how I understood myself.

I think sometimes people are afraid of labels.

And I understand that.

But for me, receiving the correct diagnosis didn’t put me into a box.

It actually helped get me out of one.

The boxes had been:

Lazy.

Too emotional.

Too reactive.

Not disciplined enough.

Why can’t you just start?

Why can’t you just calm down?

Why are you overwhelmed by this?

Why can you accomplish SO much one day and nothing the next?

ADHD didn’t become an excuse for those things.

It became information.

And information gives us choices.

I can build systems around the way my brain actually functions instead of constantly demanding that my brain function like somebody else’s.

I can recognize overstimulation earlier.

I can break tasks down.

I can understand why task initiation may be difficult.

I can recognize when my brain is seeking stimulation or reward.

I can work on emotional regulation without shaming myself for having emotions in the first place.

And I can teach my daughters things about themselves that I didn’t understand about myself at their ages.

That might be one of the greatest gifts of getting diagnosed when I did.

My diagnosis also changed the way I show up as a therapist.

There was another part of receiving an ADHD diagnosis that I didn’t necessarily expect.

It helped me understand some of my clients differently, too.

I’ve worked with clients who came to therapy already knowing they had ADHD.

And I’ve worked with others who don’t have an ADHD diagnosis but recognize patterns in themselves that make us curious about whether ADHD—or another form of neurodivergence—might be something worth exploring through an appropriate evaluation.

Before my own diagnosis, I understood ADHD clinically.

I had the education.

I understood the symptoms.

I knew about executive functioning, attention and distractibility.

But there’s something different about understanding something intellectually and then recognizing pieces of that experience in yourself.

Suddenly, when a client told me:

“I know I need to do it. I WANT to do it. I just can’t make myself start.”

I understood that sentence differently.

When someone felt ashamed because their house was a mess even though they had spent the entire day thinking about cleaning it…

I understood.

When someone had ten things they needed to accomplish and became so overwhelmed trying to determine which one to do first that they ended up doing none of them…

I understood.

When someone was incredibly capable, intelligent and successful but couldn’t understand why certain seemingly “simple” things felt so difficult…

I really understood.

Not because my experience is identical to theirs.

It’s not.

Even within my own family, ADHD looks different from person to person. Sharing a diagnosis doesn’t mean sharing the same brain, symptoms, circumstances or life experiences.

But my diagnosis gave me another layer of empathy.

And another layer of curiosity.

Instead of only looking at:

“Why aren’t you doing this?”

I’m even more interested in:

“What’s happening between knowing you want to do it and actually being able to start?”

That’s a very different conversation.

Sometimes giving someone language for their experience changes everything.

I also work with clients who haven’t been diagnosed with ADHD but may recognize certain traits or patterns in themselves.

That doesn’t mean every person who procrastinates, becomes overwhelmed, struggles with emotions or has difficulty concentrating has ADHD.

There are many things that can create similar experiences.

Trauma.

Anxiety.

Depression.

Chronic stress.

Sleep.

Grief.

Other mental health or medical conditions.

And sometimes several things exist together.

That’s why appropriate assessment matters.

But therapy can still be a place where we become curious.

We can explore executive functioning.

We can look at emotional regulation.

We can talk about attention, overwhelm, impulsivity, stimulation-seeking and task initiation.

We can identify the systems someone may have unknowingly developed over the years to compensate.

And when appropriate, we can discuss whether seeking a formal evaluation could provide additional answers.

Because sometimes simply having language for an experience begins to remove some of the shame surrounding it.

Instead of:

“Why am I like this?”

the question can become:

“What is happening in my brain right now, and what might help me work with it?”

My own diagnosis has made me even more passionate about helping people make that shift.

At first, I was scared my clients might see me differently.

This is another part I think is worth talking about.

There’s vulnerability in being a therapist and publicly saying:

I have ADHD.

At first, part of me wondered whether clients would see me as imperfect.

Would they wonder whether something was “wrong” with me?

Would they question whether I could help them if I had my own diagnosis?

Would being transparent about something like this somehow make me appear less professional?

But let’s face it.

I am imperfect.

😂

I’m a therapist.

And I’m a human being.

Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive.

Therapists aren’t people who somehow figured out how to become perfectly healed, perfectly regulated human beings and then received permission to help everyone else.

We have histories.

We have brains that work in different ways.

We experience grief.

We experience stress.

We have vulnerabilities.

We have strengths.

We have things we’ve overcome and things we’re still learning about ourselves.

A diagnosis doesn’t mean something is malfunctioning inside of me.

It gives me information about the way my brain functions.

And that information has given me greater insight into myself.

More importantly, it has given me another opportunity to practice something I believe should be at the center of the mental health field:

Empathy.

My clients don’t need me to be perfect.

They need me to be competent.

Ethical.

Present.

Authentic.

Compassionate.

Curious.

And willing to continue learning.

My own diagnosis reminds me not to assume.

Not to judge someone’s capacity based on something they’re struggling to do.

Not to reduce a person to a diagnosis.

Not to assume that because someone is successful, intelligent or outwardly “high functioning,” there isn’t something happening underneath the surface that requires tremendous effort.

It reminds me that two people can carry the exact same diagnosis and experience it completely differently.

And it reminds me to stay curious about the why behind someone’s behavior.

Because that’s something I wish people had done more of for me.

My ADHD is one part of who I am.

Being a mother is one part.

Being a therapist is one part.

My past is one part.

My accomplishments are one part.

My struggles are one part.

None of those pieces alone define the whole person.

And that’s exactly how I want to see my clients, too.

As whole human beings.

Not diagnoses.

Not symptoms.

Not the worst thing they’ve ever done.

Not the thing they’re struggling with today.

Whole people whose brains, histories, environments, relationships, strengths and struggles deserve to be understood.

If understanding myself more deeply makes me approach another human being with more insight, empathy and compassion, I don’t see that as something that makes me less of a therapist.

I think it makes me a better one.

I wish I had known earlier—but I’m grateful I know now.

Sometimes I wonder what would have been different if I had understood this at 15.

Or 20.

Or 25.

Would I have been kinder to myself?

Would I have understood some of my behaviors differently?

Would I have developed healthier strategies earlier?

Maybe.

But I can’t go backward.

What I can do is use what I know now.

As a woman.

As a mother.

And as a therapist.

Because the more I learn about ADHD, the more I understand that mental health rarely looks exactly like the stereotype we’ve been given.

You can be intelligent and have ADHD.

You can be accomplished and have ADHD.

You can earn excellent grades and have ADHD.

You can sit relatively still while your brain runs a marathon.

You can struggle with emotional regulation without having bipolar disorder.

You can look incredibly “high functioning” to everyone around you while privately wondering why ordinary tasks sometimes require so much damn effort.

And sometimes, finally having language for your experience allows you to stop asking:

“What is wrong with me?”

and start asking:

“How does my brain work—and what does it need from me?”

That shift has given me something I wish I’d had much earlier:

Not an excuse.

Understanding.

And understanding gave me room for compassion, accountability and growth.

It also gave me greater empathy for my children, greater insight into myself, and another lens through which I can understand the people who trust me enough to sit across from me in therapy.

Which, when I think about it, is exactly what Hope for Growth has always meant to me.