Female & late diagnosed AuDHD

I found out I'm Autistic last year female aged 44 and combined ADHD in the 99th percentile last week.
For some reason the Autism diagnosis didn't affect me too much and I recovered from that surprisingly quick. But the ADHD, that has hit hard. I think because it can be medicated and somewhat assisted.... whereas Autism cant. So any type of medicated intervention in the past may have mitigated or stopped a lot of my negative experience with life etc.

Plus I just feel like everything about me is now a certified conflict, I feel like I shouldn't even bother with anything because anything I start is really just some form of self sabotage.

The results were kind of just dumped on me too, and although I was informed by the assessor in March that I likely have ADHD, she didn't go into great detail. Then a night before me going to a follow up, my detailed results were sent via email. I read them on the morning of my appointment and had to cancel, because as I said... it hit like a ton of bricks. I haven't  been medicated. I have to wait at least another month for that, which is really affecting me.


I'm new here today so sorry if I made this too much about me, I'm still navigating this site. I only found out AuDHD was a thing from the assessor.

One last thing, back in the early 1980s my Mum tried to get me diagnosed for ADHD, it was called something different back then. She was told I couldn't have it and the testing never transpired.
Like you I also had the standard ocd, severe depression, social anxiety labels, that I've noticed is a trend of diagnosis sprinkled on women.

I see you posted this 18 days ago, has anything changed for you since?

AuDHDer here, too. It’s actually super common for women to go under the radar for Autism/ADHD. We had to basically claw and scratch our way to getting a diagnosis for our daughter who is very obviously also AuDHD. The school system we were in kept trying to slap on other, less-fitting diagnoses on her.

Are you by chance talking about ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) for what it was called in the past? That’s what I was originally diagnosed with because I didn’t fit the “hyperactivity” part of ADHD. That was back in the late 90’s early 2000’s though, so maybe it was something even more different in the 80’s?

AuDHDer here, too. It’s actually super common for women to go under the radar for Autism/ADHD. We had to basically claw and scratch our way to getting a diagnosis for our daughter who is very obviously also AuDHD. The school system we were in kept trying to slap on other, less-fitting diagnoses on her.

Are you by chance talking about ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) for what it was called in the past? That’s what I was originally diagnosed with because I didn’t fit the “hyperactivity” part of ADHD. That was back in the late 90’s early 2000’s though, so maybe it was something even more different in the 80’s?

Sounds like I’m talking to a mirror, lol. My mind would never shut off as a child. I would play with my pens on my desk pretending they were people and I couldn’t focus on math testing if my life depended on it. Once I was put on Adderall it fixed it pretty well, but I still have significant issues with focus/hyperfocus.

Commodore64 said:

My Mum was convinced it was because I drank diet coke

LOL! My mom’s never disclosed where she thinks my Autism/ADHD comes from, since there is no one in the previous generation that is OBVIOUSLY AuDHD, but given her political status and the area we live in she probably currently thinks it’s because I was vaccinated

Yeah! that's the name ADD!, it was around 1989/1990. My Mum was convinced it was because I drank diet coke . We actually lived off of it, because she didn't trust the tap water...Ironic...but that's another story  

I wasn't hyperactive, very active though...and kept having meltdowns and talked excessively, racing thoughts and ideas, over active mind couldn't swich off etc