How to Process & Understand the Struggles & Trauma of Undiagnosed ADHD in Our Adolescent Years.

[Eclecticentric77]

Hi all,

I uploaded a video on my ADHD Youtube channel that explores the common difficulties many teens & adolescents face in regards to ADHD, along with the trauma & heavy coping habits that come along the way. If you as an adult want to grow & overcome your trauma from your undiagnosed teen years, I highly recommend you check it out. Best Regards!

My Youtube channel: @wilhelmadhd101

Video Titled: ADHD Struggles in Middle School & High School

[Hominid711]

Dear Wilhelm, great video! I watched it and another on your Youtube channel. Have to do a disability impact statement this morning and a tax return by the end of the week which I've put off and already got an extension for as I winged and whined over my mental state to the tax official so I have things to do ie discipline myself, not follow what I'm much more interested in and continue watching, and that's hard enough as it is.I just wanted to give you a heads up and congratulations. You've got a real talent there. I was moved especially by watching the teenagers' morning struggle, their exam performance, and - eerily familiar, that one - the fallout with the "maths genius" after the ADHD kid - who entirely depends on him for his happiness or just peace of mind - is just not getting it, despite the multiple attempts by the older bro explaining it in his way, ultimately giving up and getting angry, the ADHD kid blowing it (obviously), desperate, frustrated, hopeless.

I would procrastinate with homework and exam prep having sat in class for weeks and months, zoning out as my thoughts wandered or ran around lots of other things, not all pleasant, and trying less and less successfully to get back into the subject. Language I could just about follow although History and Geography with their many "just-facts" and numerical details would eventually leave me behind and daydreaming, trying to solve my family problems or why this or that guy didn't respond in the way I so needed, the whole subject of needing love desperately, and finally being disruptive with my need to escape boredom and disconnect and creating entertainment for myself taking over.

But maths and to an extent chemistry and physics really scared me - they were holy to my mother who had equally struggled - so I would eventually at night, exhausted from my own fruitless attempts to crack it, knock on my sister's bedroom, her being asleep or reading - her favourite pastime and she was fast! - and beg her sheepishly to explain things to me. She was understandably increasingly irritated from the start - sometimes it was near midnight when I turned up - yet try every time, but as soon as she opened her mouth and that fast monologue gushed out - which reflected her speed of thought and innocent idea of how easy and obvious maths was to her - the shutters would come down and I didn't hear a thing anymore.

As she got angrier and angrier, both of us shouting, not understanding each other, but me feeling my life depended on her patience with me, my last hope and tiredness and despair overwhelming, I'd finally cry and cry and the world would like so many times before and after come to an end. It was just a fact. I was stupid and she was right. I was oversensitive, she entirely reasonable. Something told me I had some form of madness "not otherwise classified". I felt weak, insubstantial. She had power and control and that was cool.

So as this illustration of yours really helps me to feel at peace with me and her during those disastrous and damaging nightly episodes, I am thinking of those kids out there and their neurotypical parents and siblings who must gain so much from watching themselves in your video. I must ask you to do everything to promote your videos to them whichever way you can! There's a sister site here somewhere for parents of ADHD kids (some on this forum know more as they have kids themselves), also sites for kids with mental health and all sorts of problems, suicidal kids, worried parents, and perhaps there's here and there an unknown, undiagnosed ADHD behind it all and just watching something so typical, so familiar, yet nowhere properly described or recreated or illustrated in any way as well as your video does, so have a look if you've not already done so and spread your videos.

Anything visual and close to actual experience is so much better absorbed than those sermons we have for our kids or books we read or lectures we listen to and we need this and more of it.

Get it out there and promote the hell out of it.

Thank you for reading.

A fellow hominid

PS: An afterthought. I took to drinking strong black tea, Assam or similar, a little later coffee as a teenager (it also helped my migraine and my mother with her migraine understood this) and there's no harm for tired teenagers in coffee in the morning and afternoon. Unfortunately many adults believe erroneously there's harm in caffeine and will extend that belief to their sons and daughters, their patients, their friends' kids, etc.

And no harm either in a doctor's visit to get referred, or a word with the teacher, the school counsellor, the piano teacher (my piano teacher was my greatest confidance - and btw, remarkable also the contrast of the seemingly incapable ADHD kid feeling a failure but so soulfully, artfully and well-advanced playing his piano, a complex multifaceted skill). And meds. And tell them to have courage, to be brave, to come out with it all and tell a responsible and responsive adult.

[Eclecticentric77 in reply to Hominid711]

Hi there, thank you so much for your kind & encouraging words. I'm really glad to hear the video helped you find peace with some of those past struggles. There are so many well intentioned misunderstood people with undiagnosed ADHD that are needlessly struggling. This inspired me to make an ADHD documentary film that I released last month on my youtube channel, to help bring awareness & hopefully help many others find the help they deserve. This ADHD middle/high school video is a scene from my ADHD documentary titled "Attention Deficit Attention Overload: An In-Depth Look at ADHD (2023)." If you found it helpful, I highly encourage you to check out the rest of it & share it with family, friends, colleagues, & most importantly those with ADHD. It shows how ADHD can negatively impact life in the different stages of life, along with a message of love, hope, & determination! Best Regards!!