I'm 29 years old and only recently received a formal diagnosis for ADHD. A partner in the past shared with me that they thought i had ADHD from time to time, which I always brushed aside with the whole "I did well in school" thing. I of course now realize that I was working from an incredibly narrow view of what ADHD is and for context I was raised in a household where everytime my parents watched a news program about ADHD they would complain how it's made up and not a real thing.
Anyways, I thought that previous context was important. Due to all sorts of unfortunate happenings in my recent life and feedback from trusted people, I now am entirely on board with accepting that I do have an ADHD brain. This has come of course with decades of not learning coping strategies with it and a very hurt sense of self and feeling like I have always been underperforming.
I'm in an incredibly stressful and tenuous position now where I need to find a new job to make ends meet and find an apartment within a month.
I am incredibly lucky to have been given a job interview next week for a job I'm most excited about. It will be for a tech support position for our state library position. It will involve some database management and SQL scripting.
I have never disclosed my ADHD or other conditions to employers and don't know what to do. I've done a lot of reading and googling about it, but I am very aware of stigmas against ADHD. I know legally it shouldn't be a deterrent for getting a job, but we all know that that might not actually happen.
On the other hand, I have shot myself in the foot for years and years in workplaces by not making it be known that I could benefit from different accommodations. It's made me feel burnt out, isolated, and not good enough. *If* I can gain reasonable accommodations I know that life will simply be better for me. But I also am so scared of not getting this job since my situation is so dangerous right now.
What do you all recommend? If you've had good luck sharing your ADHD situation with employers, how did you go about it?
I'm really trying to forge the best life for me and know that trying to force myself into this neurtypical mold has done a number on my mental health.
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Similar situation, but formally diagnosed while employed at 52. SO many jobs that I could have stayed at if I understood what was happening. You don't have to disclose during the interview process and it is not illegal or unethical. Choose "decline to answer" or however it is worded in the application if that is still in play. It sounds like you have an interview though, so maybe not an issue at this time. I work on a college campus, so things might be different, but where I am, you can register a disability after starting employment without seeking formal accommodation. This worked for me in the sense that I didn't feel like I was lying and had something already on file in case I needed to take it further with accommodation. This gives you time to suss out the job, understand and show that you can perform the essential duties, and be able to articulate exactly what you need. It might be that there is enough flexibility or quiet space or whatever that you don't really need it, but if something changes and then you do, it isn't like "oh now she's claiming this because she doesn't like whatever has changed".
When I changed my status from registered disability (before ADHD diagnosis, but I had suspected for about a decade that this might be the issue and I had plenty of other anxiety and insomnia issues etc. to get a letter from a medical provider with enough diagnosis to make registering legit) I had been working at my job for 3 years. I had worked very hard and done a great job, but things got haywire between pandemic stress (imagine you have to turn 300 faculty into online teachers overnight!), changing hormones and an extremely abusive supervisor. Aside from my professionally jealous boss, everybody else on campus was happy with my performance. Then came the day I wasn't able to understand written English any longer and had to go on FMLA part time during the summer from total extended brain overload. Luckily, I had done some projects for our ADA person so she knew I was good at my job and she was very much an advocate - also helped that she has a law degree and is ADHD herself. And we have a pretty decent HR director as well. After I came back to work full time, I got a really great supervisor (horrible one finally retired) who has a Ph.D. in brains and nervous systems and also is just a pretty flexible person all around, which has helped tremendously.
That said, I honestly don't know if I would disclose or ask for accommodations if I ever went into another position elsewhere. I do think there is discrimination, even if it is subconscious. And the people who do know can't legally discuss it, so there are some other high up folks who have said some extremely judgmental and hurtful things and probably don't even realize I could sue them for it if that's how I chose to operate. (Spoiler alert: it isn't worth it...) I don't expect to be promoted anytime soon after some of the things that have happened (which really weren't that bad and certainly nothing compared to some folks, but you now how it is with the self-loathing).
Sometimes I'd just like a clean slate where I can start over with a better understanding of how I function and how to pretend it is something else more mundane ("oh, I just need to step out for some fresh air - let me get back to you on that!). But I do feel like I can keep a pretty decent and well-paid position with some minor accommodations and not get to feeling so incompetent or insane that I leave. To be clear, I have never been fired. I did walk off a job once that was just beyond ridiculous. But mostly, it has been a history of quitting because I was always so stressed out and convinced I would be fired, or that the job was making me crazy when it was actually brain chemicals and something called RSD - look it up. I laughed when one of my faculty members mentioned it to me and said that was the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. Then I took a questionnaire and one of the items was "do you assume you are being fired every time your boss asks to speak with you" and realized that was how I had been living for decades and not only was it not normal, but totally distorted given my consistently excellent performance reviews, etc.
OK - way too long, but hopefully helpful. Good luck!
Dont tell them. Ime, most people think add adhd is fake & they will look at you as a scammer or someone who will not do the job correctly. And if you get a sociopath manager, they will delight in gaslighting you, taking out their anger on you, belittle you, & ruin your mental health. I didnt know the breadth of the damage this crunt did to me until after a year of applying for accommodations, they basically fired me in the nastiest way possible, literally ganged up on me like the witches they are. I hope a house falls on each of them. Good luck.
You need a pay check & thats your first concern, its a no brainer. You can always leave for another job.
He never disclosed his ADHD and then things would go terribly wrong at his jobs- mostly fast paced warehouse jobs.
I went through OVR and found him a job coach. He helped him find a job, but what he will also do is spend some time with him on the job to decide if and what accomadations he may need.
ADHD falls under the ADA- Americans with disabilities act. No one should think this is made up.
Totally love DrWingDing's answer and I have had a similar set of career experiences in Canada (I'm Canadian). I'm a 39-year-old female who was diagnosed at literally the average age of female diagnosis, last year, at 38. I would do exactly the same thing in Canada. Usually when I disclose it to co-workers, at least one of them also has ADHD and is managing it on his/her own. Not many formal accommodations in most positions for it, as an adult, apart from the ones you can figure out on your own, unfortunately. And stigma unfortunately remains, but I would say is getting a lot better. Especially for females lately.
Be gentle with yourself. What I have learned, you should tell because it actually may increase your chance for the following reasons…1) business are required by law to hire a percentage of ppl with disabilities ,2) if you are failing to make any specific quotas surging probation they need to provide accommodations before firing you. Always disclose. Even if you end up loosing the job in the end, you will have a documentation and if you have to file for disability insurance bc you aren’t being hired due to disability, you have documentation
hey! I think a lot depends on the manager! I currently have one who tries to discriminate against me bc of my ADHD. She’s a total witch and I can’t wait for the contract to end to get away from her.
I’m like you, I’ve « shot myself in the foot » every job before this one. I keep my diagnosis quiet, and then, if needed, I ask for accommodations.
My super before that was awesome! When I asked for accommodations, he bent over backwards to make sure I was successful. I wish I could have extended but the project ended and there wasn’t the money to continue.
It's criminal and self defeating that they can ask about disability in the application process.
I got fired from a dialysis nurse job at Davita after they invested $50,000 in training me! I repeatedly told them that I was having specific problems and asked for accommodations that would cost them nothing, or more often, even save them money. It was like they wanted me to fail.
I did not disclose ADHD. I was so worried about this that my hiring was delayed because I had to get my Psychiatrist to threaten the MD who did my physical exam not to reveal my diagnosis. I thought that Dialysis is a field where patient education is vital and my instructors and management would be adept at considering learning style needs. But nope. For a month, I thought I was doing well - my preceptor (nurse teacher) kept refusing to let me do skills (like start IV, even though I have been IV RN!) but he was nice and I did what I was told. THEN, out of the blue, the regional manager who never met me called to say I wasn't taking the initiative and I was progressing to slow; He cut my hours.
Now, instead of 12 hours and 2 dialysis treatments, my shift was 8 hours and 1.5 treatments. All of the learning I had to do was at the start/end of dialysis. The middle is just checking vital signs. They paid me good money to do repetitive tasks for hours, they refused me opportunities to drill skills I needed. My anxiety went up, making it harder and harder to focus. I stopped following one preceptor and got assigned to random nurses who treated me like it was my first day because they didn't know my skills. One young guy, instead of letting me verbally walk through a procedure before doing it, said "you should know this already! just do it!" After we got that treatment running, I explained that since I only had 8 hours, I'd like to take a 3 hour break so I didn't waste learning time on vital sign monitoring. When he said no (with no rationale) I got a "behaviorial write up" for walking out on a preceptor (nurse-teacher) to call my manager. The manager's response? "the nurse knows what he's doing. just do what he says." LOL - this is the week after this same manager calls me up and sanctions me for doing what the nurse says!
IDK if you should report ADHD. If I had told Davita, then I could have forced them to help me under the ADA. But would they have hired me? IDK. I hear employers have disability quotas, but if amputee office worker is equivalent to ADHD nurse, who do you think they'll hire? The ADA is toothless until you fill out a w-2 so you're pretty much flipping a coin.
I suspect that ADHD success depends much more on the willingness of your co-workers to understand and adapt than on any administrative measures afforded us by the ADA. Companies and managers like simple fixes: I think it's easier to make them pay $1,000's to install a wheel chair ramp than it is to ask for changes to their day-to-day routines, even if it costs nothing.
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