I’m writing this here because I don’t know who else I can talk to about this.
At the moment I feel that my life is falling apart despite the fact that there’s actually nothing wrong with it. For the past 15 years or so I’ve been trying to deal with my inability to actually DO anything in my life. I’m 28, I have no friends, no social life, and at the moment I have no job. I’ve never had any kind of sexual or even romantic relationship. I’ve just finished a long tenure in the protective environment of academia by (probably) failing my PhD.
I’m smart, I’m moderately talented in a broad range of areas, I work well under pressure, am extremely good at problem solving, and at getting myself out of holes I’ve dug for myself. Considering the circumstances I’m fairly good at getting on with people, I can make them laugh at any rate (after all, self effacing humour is easy), I have a loving family who supported me through university and are still supporting me now, If I fail my PhD it’ll leave me with three good degrees to get by on. I have no overbearing financial problems. I’ve had a lot more good luck than bad. I’ve seen the problems that people around me have; I know that there are many who would kill to have my life.
I can see all the things I need to do to resolve or address my problems; I just know that I won’t do them.
For a long time now I’ve found it almost impossible to get many of the things in my life done until the last minute. I’ve spent weeks of misery avoiding doing something that would eventually take me 15 minutes. I can work to strictly enforced deadlines (at the last minute) but as soon as things get less rigidly defined things start to go horribly wrong, The things that don’t come with deadlines I end up not doing at all. I spend much of my time stressing about the things that I’m not doing. I have a very poor memory for things that don’t interest me (and a very good one for useless facts) I forget to do things that others ask me to do, I’m therefore terrified of responsibility, I find it very difficult not to let others down, and I hate that part of myself. I don’t understand why I can’t do things until I’m “ready” to do them but I do know that trying to do so is intensely stressful, it feels like I’m trying to chain my mind to a task it doesn’t want to do. I can concentrate for hours though on something pointless.
I worry about the prospect of employment in a responsible position and the consequences all of the above could have for an employer or others. I don’t know how I can expect to explain all of the above to other people as, intellectually, all of this sounds just as stupid and unlikely to me as it must seem to others. I’ve been able to deal with this to some extent in the past, but by the 100th straight time you try to think “OK, this week is going to be different” it becomes hard to convince yourself and easier to let yourself down. I tend to be fairly compulsive in my purchases and behavior although I deal with this by limiting my opportunity to get into trouble, a limited income and not having credit cards and refusing to take loans on things have kept me out of financial trouble so far (don’t ask me about savings). I’m sure that most people around view me as lazy and irresponsible and I can’t fault them on that at all.
I’ve read similar accounts from other people and have read up on adult ADHD, I don’t really exhibit much in the way of hyperactivity now, save for constant foot tapping, although I certainly did as a child (I was pretty much the ADHD poster child in primary school) and still do when I’m stressing out about not doing something, but the Inattention spectrum sums my life up perfectly.
I eventually managed to persuade my doctor to refer me to the local psychiatrist only to be told that we don’t really believe in adult ADHD in the UK and that it was obviously impossible for a PhD candidate to have very much wrong with their life (I’m pretty sure she somehow managed not to meet any graduate students at university). My doctor then told me that the psychiatrists in my city are useless, overstretched, and under resourced and that unless I’d gone in there and actually tried to set fire to the women she was pretty much bound to find me fit. He did however add that he also thought that I couldn’t possibly have gotten to be a PhD student if I had much in the way of problems. After a couple more increasingly stressed visits he tried me on Prozac for a couple of months and when that didn’t work he agreed that if I could contact the one doctor in the country who did believe in ADHD in adults he might be able to arrange a referral.
By this time however I’d started to apply for employment in a variety of areas including the civil service, all of which involve large medical history disclosure forms and in some cases access to my medical records. As it stands my doctor said that he would describe the course of Prozac as due to minor stress related to my (then) impending thesis deadline and the psychiatrist seems to have pronounced me sane. As the civil service seems to offer me one of the best chances of a non research career at this point and as I’m intending to make further applications to the graduate fast stream at the end of the year it seems like a bad time to be embarking on a further crusade to be diagnosed mentally unreliable.
I know that the ADHD angle might not be the answer, and while I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want an easy solution for my problems I know that isn’t going to happen. I’m also terrified by the alternate possibility that all this is just my fault and I really am just a terrible, lazy, person.
But I want to be able to be proud of the things that I’ve done rather than realise that I could have done better, and I want to go out and do things and meet people and build relationships, I want to try new things. I want to go places and see things. I don’t think any of that is much to ask out of life and I don’t think it’s too late to start, but the only thing standing in my way is me and I don’t know how to deal with that.
I realise this is probably going to draw contempt from the people who have genuine problems in their life but I really don’t know what to do here. My life isn’t a terrible one and it isn’t as bad as I’ve probably made it sound here, I’m not miserable all the time; it just seems to be terribly empty compared to the lives other people have. I don’t know whether to try and follow up on this doctor now and risk losing another career path, or to try and hold things together for the time being and wait until I have more security.
Anyway, if you’re still here, thanks for listening.