Midterms + ADHD + New Meds = Unbearable Anxiety

[cjnolet]

Holy moly. I've been up for a week studying for my midterm. I'm in my mid 30's and decided to go back to grad school. Received my master's last year and decided to try for the Ph.D. I've got 2 young children and 3rd on the way and, to be quite honest, I've been so hyper focused on studying for this exam that I have literally locked myself in my office for most of the week.

My problem is that in order for me to stay in the Ph.D program, there are 4 courses I need to get A's in. This is one of them. I was diagnosed with ADHD as a child, then misdiagnosed with bipolar as a teenager. I suppose they mistook the hyperactivity for mania. I gave up on the bipolar medications when I hit 18 because they were obviously not the correct thing for me to be taking.

Now I'm mid-30's and I make awesome money as a software engineer (a socially awkward one, with horrible anxiety) and I just recently got re-diagnosed with ADHD. Why did I care about getting re-diagnosed? I've had a cycle my whole life of obsessing on things. From music to computers to digital signal processing to building things to starting businesses. Whatever my current obsession was, it consumed my world. That's pretty awesome until you have kids and it doesn't stop. Then it's not fair to your wife or your kids.

Anyways, this semester they've been trying me out on Topimax for migraines and Vyvance for ADHD and it's been a freaking roller coaster. I've got a 99% in this class right now but I've spent the past month feeling like a dumb piece of shit for some reason and thinking I'm not cut out for this Ph.D program.

I'm about to go to the school and ask them to forgive my GPA just in case this midterm doesn't go as well as it needs to. I'm 100% sure I've studied 10x harder than any other student in that class and I will likely still get a B.

At one point, I asked my doctor if I could lower my Topimax because of my anxiety and a couple days after lowering it, my brain got into some strange fog for a few days. I ended up blurting out some crap in class trying to impress my professor without thinking about what I was saying and the professor spent the next 2 lectures berating me about it. So- now not only was I *thinking* I was a dumb piece of shit. But now I had a professor reminding me of it.

It's crazy because I feel like I've been gifted with this brain capable of solving these hard problems that a lot of people either can't or won't tackle and yet I can't socialize with a mathematician for shit, usually because I can't control my emotions or anxiety in their presence enough to keep my brain from going blank when numbers come up in conversation.

Somehow, I got myself all the way to this Ph.D program and it wasn't until I got an official diagnosis of ADHD that I started limiting myself. Once I labeled myself with something, I started going backwards.

[Hidden]

The diagnosis might be giving you an excuse to feel like f'ing up is OK or expected. I'm still going through this being fairly newly diagnosed and never medicated. If it's the same thing, then I mitigate this by constantly visualizing doing well. I'm back in school as well, same age but female. When I started labeling myself as challenged or limited, I'll be damned if it didn't start becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. I grew up with a loving dad who was self-employed (so always busy) and a mom with undiagnosed borderline personality disorder, so I've had to hit the ground running and fend for myself with almost everything. Having someone like a neuropsychologist tell me how I scored on the Adhd test gave me permission to sometimes start thinking, "hey, it's ok if I screw up again. Don't bother trying." But I'm wrong when I get like that. Don't let yourself fk up. Visualize yourself doing well and talk to yourself in the knowledge that you'll be better tomorrow than you were today... at anything. Expound in great detail in your mind about how much ass you're going to kick.

[cjnolet]

Wow. So it took people at my work to point out that I was obviously on too high a dose of vyvanse and, paired with the anxiety, it was kind of making me appear bipolar.

Screw this stuff. I was fine before medications and I’ll be fine after them.

Not sure why people look at ADHD as a disease. I always thought of myself as having a superpower- I can aim my brain in a direction and obsess (hyperfocus) until I solve the problem.

Meditation and mindfulness was helping me bond with my kids just fine before the psychiatrist stepped in the way.

[Cmiceli in reply to cjnolet]

Clearly you work with some great people who care enough about you to pay attention and help you. So big gold star on that point.

Also, as a diagnosed adult myself, let me tell you that if you have already been successful in life, you most likely already learned a lot of the coping skills needed to work through the hardest of things. If you were successful off medications, you can be successful off medication again. Nothing against medication - it's a godsend to so many. But it isn't the magical answer to everything for everyone.

So the prof---- ok, I went back to school as an adult myself and got my BA and my MSA (I'm an accountant). During my BA I obtained a minor in psychology because it is a subject I have always had a great interest in - I was 2 classes away from a double major. Graduated magna cum laude too - I bring that up every chance I get. And i did all this while going through a horrendous divorce, becoming a sole supporting and single mom to my kids and working full time. So now you have the history. My prof for Cognitive Psych - well, she was an ass. We started that class with 21 students - I was the only non-psych major in the class. by week 2 we were down to 18. By week 3, 15. Midterm (we had accelerated semesters) we were down to 10 and by the last two weeks of class it was me and two other students. My prof tended to make these barbed comments towards me that nearly always featured "I'm surprised you know that being a business major" in the snottiest way you can make that sound. During a lecture on logic, she broke up the lecture by presenting logic problems. She teamed up the other two students together. i was on my own. Unknown to her, I happen to enjoy logic problems and puzzles and do them for fun. So I was nailing these puzzles by myself when the other team wouldn't get them. One she wrote on the wipe board was what she deemed particularly hard. She had us work it at the same time on different boards (I guess she thought I was cheating or something) and I finished it before the other team had read through the whole problem. She says "WOW - I didn't think someone like YOU could get that."

Excuse me?

I asked to speak to her over the break and in the hallway explained that I found her attitude and behavior appalling. I told her i wasn't sure where she developed her prejudice for business majors from but that she should look deep within herself and find a way to address it. I also told her she should be grateful she didn't work in a business climate and only in academia because the business world "wouldn't tolerate your bullshit" and that I wasn't going to either and that I was going to the dean and lodging a formal complaint. She tried to tell me I had it all wrong and I misunderstood and I looked her in the eye and said "no, I'm not wrong. I've known you my entire life. You were the bully on the playground in grade school pulling my hair, you were the mean girl in jr high making fun of my clothes and you were the jerkoff in high school who snapped my bra strap. Your name and form may have changed, but you're the same person you have always been, a small person with a modicum of perceived power who strikes first at others so no one will see what a nobody you really are. What a shame that I grew up and know how to handle you and you are left with your pitiful arsenal of barbs that you continue to fling. I'm done with you." and I reported her.

So, I highly recommend in a calm moment addressing your professor and if necessary, reporting it. Also those after class surveys are what they themselves are graded on. I usually looked to balance any bad comments with positive ones as I knew my professors worked pretty hard for us but for her, I went scorched earth. I noted she wasn't back the next year. Guess you can't have everyone but three people drop your class and have the only non-psych major (got a B in the course - my first B - I was devastated) write pages of verbatim comments on what a jerk you are and still keep your position.

Good luck!

[cjnolet]

Well. I got an 88% on the midterm. That added to the 99% I have for the homeworks and projects... I might just make it through after all.

[Cmiceli]

Hey - how about an update - are you going to make it through? We are rooting for you!

[cjnolet in reply to Cmiceli]

Thank you!

So that Topamax was what was making me effing nuts/paranoid. I cut out the Topamax and got back on Vyvanse and I'm doing great. I got an 88% on the exam and the class avg was a 62%. I got the second highest grade in the class. I was so worried after taking the exam that I emailed my professor to tell him about the bad medication reactions and when he showed me my grade, I'm sure he thought I really was nuts, lol.

So now that I'm off the Topamax and back to a normal (ADHD) brain, I was able to sit down with my professor one on one and chat with him about my interests. He's probably one of the smartest people I've come across in some time (I have a suspicion he's ADHD, he has to set a timer during his lectures and he STILL goes over). I *think* he likes me and I have a strong suspicion he's been grilling me so much in class because I've been the one interacting more than any of the other students. Just today, he was asking a question and I threw out a term and he asked me to define it in front of the students. At first, I was like "maybe he thinks I'm a bullshitter and was trying to put me in my place" but then I realized, he wouldn't waste his time sitting with me after class (he sat with me for over an hour while other students were waiting to see him) if he didn't like me. I think I have a problem with taking things people do the wrong way.

On one hand, I get a little embarrassed for being put on the spot and I feel like he brings up stuff just to see how much I know about it because maybe he's heard me talk about it. On the other hand, if he cared enough to do that, it obviously means he has an interest in me.... because who would spend all that time just to make a single person, who has one of the highest grade in their class, feel like an idiot.

[Cmiceli]

So happy for you that you’re doing well! That’s awesome!

I think it’s time for you to start challenging your internal dialogue. Wow! Doesn’t that sound shrink-y! Lol. I knew that minor in psych would pay off. But seriously, you are making some serious leaps of assumption is what others think of you. Now this is pretty common for folks with ADHD. We have a little too much personal knowledge of how folks didn’t approve of our behaviors as kids.

But you’re not a kid anymore and making these huge assumption leaps is you getting in your own way.

I would challenge you to challenge yourself. It’s hard. I hear you! If you can’t do it for yourself, do it for your kids. Model for them a person who doesn’t assume everyone is thinking the worst of him. Because those kids are watching you and they are following in your footsteps. If you show them “everyone thinks the worst of me” they will feel the same.

I’ do think you have the tiger by the tail for the most part. Set aside this burden of what other people are thinking. You’re already questioning it - I can see that in what you wrote. That “voice in the head” is a bitch. Tell it to shut up and leave you alone. You’ll be amazed at how quickly it will do just that. I’ve found I have exactly silenced it completely but it’s more like how my dog barks at anything going by. It can’t discern a real threat from someone new be using the sidewalk so I just tell her to hush and I don’t pay a lot of attention to it. You too can silence your “barking dog”

Good luck! And again congrats on the class. Very impressive!! As an adult student myself I know that my graduation later in life was so much sweeter than it would have been in my early 20s. I overcame so much more and it meant so much more!