Dr. Yath Ramesh

So the older you are,

the more likely you are to have lived life by writing your own narrative and your own autobiography.

So I guess let's start off with, we are all, all the time, writing our own autobiography in our heads.

And when you're much older, you've already written many of the chapters.

So when you get this diagnosis, often one of the first questions you ask yourself is, how am I going to fit this into my book?

How am I going to make sense of everything that I've written before, all the conversations that I've had with people in the past about myself?

How is it all going to fit together?

And with that comes another question, which is, would this book have looked different if I was diagnosed earlier?

And that contributes certainly to the grieving process as well.

What I would say is that I always ask people this, and it doesn't matter what age you are, but I always ask people to think of three priorities that they have that they would like to improve as a result of having the diagnosis, because it helps people to narrow it down.

I don't think it's helpful to have the ADHD diagnosis

and then feel like you've got nowhere to go and reflect back and think, I wish my life was better.

You need to have a clear direction of what you want out of this.

And that's where we can help.

So that often usually helps people to get through.

ADHD symptoms, if you don't have another explanation for them, become embedded into what you think is your personality.

So when you think about the fact that I'm not able to, you know, spend time with other people without having energy for myself, if you don't have ADHD as an explanation, what might you label that as?

Being an introvert.

I need that downtime for myself before spending time with other people is what you think you need.

What is actually happening is you're rehearsing conversations before you meet them.