A couple of years ago I promised myself that one day I'll be strong enough to be able to talk about my mental health openly. I've made this my goal. I think this is the day, so here's how I ended up diagnosed with ADHD at the age of 37 - a thread...
In 2017 I reached my rock-bottom. I got back home from Philippines, where I failed to deliver my conference talk due to being a mental train-wreck (for which I'm terribly sorry!). I started having suicidal idealizations and I realized it's time to get help.
It's not that I wanted to end myself, but I would see myself dying in all sorts of ways every-single-day. These are called intrusive thoughts and the ones I had were probably one of the worst ones you can experience.
I started therapy in May 2017 and it was surprisingly easy for me to...just start talking. It was a relief that I could just talk to somebody because I pretty much isolated myself from everybody.
Unfortunately, my therapist didn't want to be specific about my problems and everything was just...too generalized? I don't know how to describe this. I wanted to hear concrete facts eventually, like "you're dealing with X and you should do Y to improve".