Huh...

I was reading a post from another Mom asking for help with her daughter and everything the mother was describing was like a flashback to me as a child. The mom was concerned about her daughter's potential for success since it seemed like she hit every single marker for Inattentive type ADD.

So I look up the traits for both childhood and adult ADD.


Aaaaaaand I fit pretty much the entire description. It's a little scary how damn accurate it is for me. But it also explains quite a lot about how I handled high school (decent, with incredibly management on my parents' part), college (okaaaaaay) and graduate school (HAHAHAHAHA) It explains why I was so successful with my job at Bio-Rad (highly structured with time deadlines throughout the day and week) but failed miserably at the crime lab (highly unstructured with minimal to no deadlines even week to week). It

I'm not sure what to do with this. It does give me an avenue of support to reach out to if I want an official diagnosis to get some behavioral therapy and possibly medication, though I'd rather seek out therapy options first before medicating. I might push for medication if I go back into the workforce, to give me the best chance at success. Right now I think with some more support day to day I don't need anything more than social strategies for managing the home and farm.

I know my mom had mentioned in passing that she thought I might have ADD and never really pursued it, but I think it was before inattentive was classified. When I called her to tell her, she just went, "Yeah, your Dad and I thought so, but didn't want to say anything and let you come to that conclusion yourself".  Apparently, the amount they needed to manage me vs. my younger brother was dramatically different enough for them to go, "Huh, maybe Amy has something going on...."

Knowing is half the battle, right? And now I can devise coping strategies to help me keep my life together.