I was recently diagnosed with ADHD and just realized how it's affected my life
A few weeks ago, I went to a doctor for the first time since I moved to a new city about a year ago. One of the things she wanted to have me tested for was ADHD. When they told me they were scheduling me for that test, I was like "Huh?" I did the test and they said I had ADHD to some degree, and they wanted to perscribe me medicine for me. Still in denial, I decided to do it anyway. I didn't have a chance to go get the medicine until it was too late though.
Last week, I was terminated from my job. I LOVED my job, and the company I worked at. It was a mobile game developer and I was an ETL programmer there. The reason I was terminated? The same reason I lost the job before it, however that job was at the state government and they gave me the "choice" of quitting, mainly so they didn't have to pay me unemployment: I made too many stupid mistakes, had to go back and fix things, forgot things, and missed deadlines due to all of the above.
So of course I was very frustrated, with myself, I felt like a failure for losing two jobs within a year like that, and still do to some degree. I honestly feel quite worthless at the moment.
Then I started thinking about it more, doing some research, and maybe my doctor was right: I do have ADHD, much worse than I think. I started the medicine the day after I lost my job, and I have been on it about a week. I don't feel anything different, and my girlfriend (that I live with) hasn't noticed a change either. I'm going back on Monday to get this fixed.
So doing some research and based on what the doctor said, these were some symptoms I came across:
Difficulty paying attention to details and tendency to make careless mistakes in school or other activities; producing work that is often messy and careless
Case in point why I lost my last two jobs.
Easily distracted by irrelevant stimuli and frequently interrupting ongoing tasks to attend to trivial noises or events that are usually ignored by others
Happens to me all the time.
Frequent shifts from one uncompleted activity to anotherj
Happened a lot at work.
Forgetfulness in daily activities (for example, missing appointments, forgetting to bring lunch)
Happens all the time. I'll ask my girlfriend what she wants to do for dinner and then ask her again an hour later.
Fidgeting, squirming when seated
This happens all the time, and still happens, which is a reason I have to go get my medicine fix. One of my legs usually bounces, I move my fingers on something, even yesterday my girlfriend noticed me reading something on my computer and randomly clicking the mouse on things, with no real purpose. When I play Dota, I basically press every button multiple times when I do something, and even when I play video games in general. It's really bad when I had long meetings at my jobs.
Getting up frequently to walk or run around
Had to do this all the time at work.
Impatience
Yep
Frequently interrupting or intruding on others to the point of causing problems in social or work settings
I have this problem too.
I didn't mention every symptom, but after I lost my job, a few days later I realized I have had this my entire life. When I was in elementary school, I always took forever on assignments, would stay up late doing homework that really wasn't that hard. I had this problem in college too, and made me graduate a year to two years later. I couldn't get through Caluclus II because of it and ended up doing an alternate math class instead.
It also caused me to have depression, which is also apparently normal for ADHD.
I told my parents about it last night, and my mother said that she though this ever since college, and thought about suggesting it but left it alone since I was almost done with college.
It obviously has affected me during work. I have a very hard time focusing when the task is difficult, and often I have multiple unfinished tasks I switch between, and always chase stupid solutions rather than the correct ones. It's a really frustrating problem I had that caused me to lose two programming jobs.
I still feel really shitty about it, and I am still barely coming to terms with the fact that I have this. I didn't want to believe it. I just wish I could go get the rest of my life back. Realizing I have ADHD doesn't erase the fact that I was practically fired from 2 jobs, and employers won't like that.
