As I got up from my desk I leaned on it to hoist myself up as my leg had gone to sleep, however the whole desk nearly gave way. I had forgotten that I had trained myself not to move my desk too much as I hadn’t assembled this Ikea desk properly, along with my drawers where one doesn’t close fully and the side cabinet where the door is misaligned.
I was never good at following instructions and I had to try really hard to make sure I didn’t make mistakes.
I realised I had ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) . I haven’t got an official diagnosis but I am working on getting that through the NHS. Self diagnosis now is really helping m manage my life a lot more and not feel so much confusion, guilt and shame about not quite feeling like or doing things like everyone else.
I have been aware of the boom of people saying they have ADHD since TikTok has become more popular over the last few years and I guess that stopped me from looking into more. I didn’t really consume that much ADHD content on that social media platform, it was from following ADHD accounts on Twitter that made the penny drop for me. And still that took a while for me to look into it more. Also a lot of women have found out they have ADHD and that was another factor why I flew under the radar and why people to this day still can’t quite grasp me a non outwardly hyperactive and subdued person claims to have ADHD.
At first I thought I had ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) but that term was phased out. ADD was a term used in the past to describe a subtype of ADHD that primarily involved symptoms of inattention without the presence of hyperactivity or impulsivity. I certainly am impulsive and until recently I became aware that I have hyperactivity.
Individuals with the ADHD can exhibit a range of symptoms that may include inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. Three subtypes of ADHD was introduced: predominantly inattentive, predominantly hyperactive-impulsive, and combined type.
I discovered that I was falling into the Inattentive ADHD subtype.
You might be wondering how creativity helped me with my ADHD diagnosis. It was definitely through delving into more of my passions that I started to see that I was struggling with certain things. At the beginning of the post I mentioned that I found it hard to follow instructions, well I knew this but I never gave it too much thought, I put it down to just not focusing enough because I usually found those tasks boring. But when it came to crochet I came to see it would take me a while to get the hang of something. I was quite careless in my mistakes or so it seemed and as I crocheted more and more I leant into my way of learning more and my frustrations weren’t there so much. I actually had compassion for myself and worked around challenges.
Recognizing my ADHD has really eased my anxiety and also how I approach being creative. I feel I have addressed that weird feeling that there is something holding me back and have a new sense of freedom in my creative flow.
Are you neurodivergent? How has this effected your creativity? Or do you suspect you’re neurodivergent? Lets discuss in the comments below.
Lissy xoxo
Introvert in Wonderland 