Does adult ADHD exist?
Am I too old to have ADHD?
The short answer is yes, but it’s tricky.
Special Note: Diagnoses are abstractions or summaries: sometimes helpful, always incomplete. Also, neurobiology is a continuum; it follows that ADHD is too.
ADHD is a neurodevelopment disorder reflected by atypical neurological development in the brain, especially in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) area, located at the very front of the brain and behind the forehead and eyes. Neurologically, what’s happening is a chronic under activity of the PFC that causes you to become flooded with competing bits of sensory data, thoughts, feelings, and impulses. Since your body and mind cannot be still, you struggle with sustained focus and degrees of self-control.
Because ADHD is a development problem, it does not show up out of nowhere in the adult years. By definition, ADHD symptoms are experienced in early childhood, at least by the middle school years, and contribute to substantial and chronic impairment across multiple settings.
The tricky part of adult ADHD is that as a child, you may not have been immediately aware of your ADHD because your environment supported, promoted, coached, and accommodated your unique style of learning and being. When your parents, teachers, and coaches huddled together, they collectively provided you with structure and direction, and this support effectively hid your ADHD. Then, when the form disappeared in your adult years, you came face-to-face with your ADHD.
A brief test that reveals you might have adult ADHD comes down to answering a single question.
Do you forget to remember the future?
How did you do? Are you still unsure? Perhaps your answers to the following few questions will clarify whether adult ADHD might explain your day-to-day struggles.
Do you know what to do but don’t do what you know?
Do you do things without thinking? Take risks others think twice about and avoid.
Do you need to remember to attach importance to things that must be done?
Does time slip your mind, causing you to be late or procrastinate?
Being somewhat forgetful and disorganized, do you make careless mistakes?
Do you want to control yourself, but your mind won’t?
Do you feel something needs to be corrected or not quite right about how you think, feel, and act?
Your answers shine a bright light on whether you’re on the ADHD spectrum. But if you’re still not convinced, take the challenge test.
Russell Barkley, Ph.D., discusses adult ADHD in his marvelous book “Taking Charge of Adult ADHD” and identifies five challenges in managing daily activities.
Challenge #1 - Poor self-management relative to time, planning, and goals.
Challenge #2 - Poor self-organization, problem-solving, and working memory.
Challenge #3 - Poor self-discipline or lack of inhibition.
Challenge #4 - Poor self-motivation.
Challenge #5 - Poor self-activation, concentration, and alertness.
Does this sound like you? If so, the good news is adult ADHD can be managed by developing life skills that help you control your life more than your life holding you. It’s true; you can learn to coach yourself and modify your surroundings, so your ADHD symptoms become less interfering and frustrating and more worthy of winks and giggles.
Because ADHD is a development problem, it does not show up out of nowhere in the adult years. By definition, ADHD symptoms are experienced in early childhood, at least by the middle school years, and contribute to substantial and chronic impairment across multiple settings.
The tricky part of adult ADHD is that as a child, you may not have been immediately aware of your ADHD because your environment supported, promoted, coached, and accommodated your unique style of learning and being. When your parents, teachers, and coaches huddled together, they collectively provided you with structure and direction, and this support effectively hid your ADHD. Then, when the form disappeared in your adult years, you came face-to-face with your ADHD.
A brief test that reveals you might have adult ADHD comes down to answering a single question.
Do you forget to remember the future?
How did you do? Are you still unsure? Your answers to the following questions may shed valuable light on whether adult ADHD might explain your day-to-day struggles.
Do you know what to do but don’t do what you know?
Do you do things without thinking? Take risks others think twice about and avoid.
Do you need to remember to attach importance to things that must be done?
Does time slip your mind, causing you to be late or procrastinate?
Being somewhat forgetful and disorganized, do you make careless mistakes?
Do you want to control yourself, but your mind won’t?
Do you feel that something is wrong or not quite right about how you think and act?
Your answers shine a bright light on whether you’re on the ADHD spectrum. But if you’re still not convinced, take the challenge test.
Russell Barkley, Ph.D. discusses adult ADHD in his marvelous book “Taking Charge of Adult ADHD” and identifies five challenges in managing daily activities.
Challenge #1 - Poor self-management relative to time, planning, and goals.
Challenge #2 - Poor self-organization, problem-solving, and working memory.
Challenge #3 - Poor self-discipline or lack of inhibition.
Challenge #4 - Poor self-motivation.
Challenge #5 - Poor self-activation, concentration, and alertness.
Does this sound like you? If so, the good news is adult ADHD can be managed by developing life skills that help you control your life more than the life holding you. It’s true; you can learn to coach yourself and modify your surroundings so your ADHD symptoms become less interfering and frustrating and more worthy of winks and giggles.
If learning to remember the importance of doing something you’d rather avoid sounds interesting, contact our clinic or enjoy the process of digging deep into adult ADHD research.
A great start on your journey to learning about ADHD involves visiting the website of Dr. Russell Berkeley, MD, who has dedicated himself to the education and research of ADHD. He’s a fantastic speaker and speaks from a place of comfortable confidence.
Press the button below to learn more about how your mind works as described in Dr. Zierk’s book, Mind Rules: Who’s in Control, You or Your Mind?