How my ADHD diagnosis changed my life

Topics mentioned: ADHD and mental health, school, anxiety, depression, eating problems, body image, social media, counselling and therapy, medication

About: From struggling with anxiety, depression and disordered eating at school to learning CBT techniques, Poppy shares her journey to a life-changing ADHD diagnosis.

This blog contains reference to suicidal feelings and eating problems. Please do not read on if you think the content may be triggering for you. If you are currently struggling with your mental health, please visit our find help page for information, advice and guidance on where to get support.

When I was little, I felt as though I was quite sensitive, but I didn’t battle too much with my mental health. It wasn’t until I started secondary school that things became more difficult. At first, I didn’t really think I had a problem. I didn’t have panic attacks so I thought it couldn’t be anxiety. I could get out of bed and go to school so I never thought it was depression. But around the age of 11, I started counting calories.

I thought I was counting calories to help with running which I loved at the time. However, I quickly fell into the world of Instagram fitness - I started going to the gym every day and following the diets of fitness influencers. Now I can’t believe that 12-year-old me was cutting out sugar and doing keto diets. But I truly believed that people would like me more if I looked slim.

When I started GCSEs the increase in my anxiety fed my food control. I was overwhelmed by guilt if I ‘overate’ or ate something I thought was ‘bad’, but I never told anyone - from the outside I was super happy at school and always made sure to smile loads. I never wanted anyone to know what was really going on. If I told people about the thoughts in my head, I thought they might see how ‘disgusting’ I felt on the inside.

In sixth form controlling my anxiety using food became much harder as I was exhausted all the time. I couldn’t get myself to the gym and I started binge eating. My biggest fear was putting on weight, so as the depression worsened, I self-sabotaged. I did things I knew would make me feel so much worse, because I believed I deserved to be punished.

Just before turning 18, I went to therapy for the first time and was told I had severe anxiety and depression. It was obvious I was really ill, but this diagnosis felt like a ton of bricks falling down. I thought I’d been able to control my head from the outside for so long. I still went to school and smiled as much as I could. I pretended everything was absolutely fine, but on the inside, I felt completely empty and unlovable.

Fortunately, my therapist was incredible and cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) saved my life. It taught me how to unlearn some of the narratives which were so debilitating and challenge my thoughts of unworthiness and my relationship with food. I learnt about the cycles of obsession over food and my relationship with myself got much healthier.

I stopped CBT after a year as I felt like I’d reached the end of my learning, but I didn’t feel fully healed. I decided to take a year out after A-levels to focus on my mental health and my relationship with food improved a lot.

My boyfriend helped me learn to enjoy food and not punish myself with it. At the start of our relationship, if we went for dinner, I would always get the vegan, low-calorie option. But watching my boyfriend eat such delicious food finally made me give in and I started to eat what I wanted. I was a lot happier, but I would get better for a few weeks before falling into a pit of anxiety and depression again.

I started to think I was never going to get better, and I couldn’t understand why. I’d felt like something was wrong with me ever since I was little. Why couldn’t I cope like everyone else? I knew everyone had bad days, but mine were completely debilitating and my self-loathing was so extreme that I felt like life wasn’t worth living at many points.

I read that a lot of women are often misdiagnosed with BPD as ADHD in women was so under-researched. I saw women talk about the emotional dysregulation of ADHD and I had no idea this was part of it – my understanding of ADHD was the boy at the back of the class who couldn’t sit still. A year later, I saw another psychiatrist who told me that I had combined type ADHD. I was prescribed Concerta XL, which is a brand of methylphenidate, and I slowly felt everything fall into place.

My mood became so much more manageable, I didn’t feel debilitated by it, and I felt like I was finally actually happy. Before, I felt I just wasn’t made for this world, but now I know I am - my brain just functions a bit differently to everyone else’s.

Medication allows me to live the life I never dreamt would be possible. When you’re depressed, you can’t imagine life ever getting better, but it can. Getting the right diagnosis has completely changed my life. I feel like the luckiest person in the world to have found out I have ADHD.