MYEH😬

[MorningDanceTrece]

Possible Trigger:

weight, obesity, drug including alcohol use, parents being incredibly boneheaded

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So I sent my parents an email with the link to an article from ADDitide magazine about the connection between ADHD and obesity/overweight.

So I get an email back and my mother tells me that she and my dad know that I do not have ADHD nor have I ever manifested any ADHD symptoms or traits in my entire life especially my childhood 🤦

Has anyone ever seen a jello mold sitting on a plate?

Have you ever pinched the plate with your thumb and forefinger and yanked it really hard really fast and then stopped it?

The jello mold does this crazy jiggly wiggly dance.

So when people say things as far removed from reality as the things that my parents seem to need to say on a regular basis my brain does the Jello Mold Dance🤦🏻‍♀️😭😤😬🤦🏻‍♀️

After 59 years it's gotten quite old, rather!

I literally yelled at my phone looking at it holding it in my hand saying, "WHAT?!?! ARE YOU FOR REAL?!?! SERIOUSLY?!?! Were you even there for my childhood or replaced by pod people in the Invasion Of The Body Snatchers?!?!"

I mean people for crying out loud every single solitary last day of my childhood and adolescence my parents were angry with me and annoyed with me and frustrated with me and reprimanding me and being mean to me because of traits that I now know I have because of the ADHD.

My mother actually said in the email that I never had one single solitary problem in school -- not academically, not with the teachers, not with the other kids.

I would come home in tears and throw myself in her arms sobbing hysterically because of things the kids had said and done and the teachers had said and done to me.

Of course she ever so kindly told me that it was my own fault and informed me that I must have done something to make them be that way to me.

I don't think that she's lying but rather she really remembers things radically differently from how they actually were which is terrifying.

I'm the one who took all the drugs for decades and she's the one who seemingly has a blackout 🤦

I know that self diagnosis is valid but I really hope that this process that I have just started to get officially diagnosed lands me with an official diagnosis.

Cuz some people will not believe it unless it is an official diagnosis from somebody with letters after their name.

Thank you for letting me kvetch

[CHADDMOM]

ADHD answer, sorry and it might be unpopular and unhelpful for a min. You have your parents still at 59? I cannot say how incredibly lucky you are, but of course my parents would annoy me to no end if they didn't believe me. Past perfection...its a real problem sometimes.

My sister didn't believe me so that was half-satisfing, i mean infuriating. She pauses when i mentioned that our other sister was diagnosed in the sixties with hyperactivity, had a go at herife and was drunk for 20 years. And that she could never sit still Either. . She still uses my ‘diagnosis’ of her as a weapon. Saying that she's fine with her status of ADHD everytime she does something well as if to say i couldn’t have done that with ADHD .

As an ADHD educator, that 18 years of knowing still doesn't make life easier. Parents of our generation cannot understand that we aren't looking for an apology. Just validation. We didn't get any of that from them and have to live with it.

My dad died at age 30 from alcohol related complications. His pancreas was necrotic. He looked fifty when he was 28.

It was because their generation gave the basics and they concentrated on the basics. Food, shelter, clothing, clean bath every so often and well education. That's it. They covered it. They didn't struggle in the open, with their ADHD. Life was easier, just the basics.

We know it's not enough. But I doubt my parents would have confessed anything to me. After 13 years of my mother refusing to talk to me, I welcomed her with glee when she came back into my life. Even if it was to say good by again.

[MorningDanceTrece in reply to CHADDMOM]

Thank you for your response.

My mom and I especially more so than my dad and I share articles from newspapers and magazines and videos from YouTube usually about different medical conditions that one of us has that we think the other person may find interesting and we have been doing that for decades.

Back in the day before the World Wide Web existed we would cut things out and mail them to each other in envelopes🤪.

So since I've been struggling with my weight for a very long time but the last 7 years I've been trying really hard to lose weight and having an extremely difficult time doing so I thought that they would find it interesting that the ADHD is probably a big puzzle piece.

When I outed myself (so to speak) a couple years ago and told my mom that I am an autistic person there was no pushback whatsoever so I wasn't expecting there to be any with the ADHD diagnosis.

I'm quite surprised that she seemingly knows as little as she does from the email she sent me because she reads things, knows teachers (so talks about all kinds of things having to do with learning abilities and different abilities so to speak), she watches a lot of television including shows about reality stuff like talk shows and whatnot.

Basically I guess I'm trying to say is that she's not somebody that's living in a cave for the most part although there are some things about which she's incredibly naive.

I think in order to really understand how shockingly out of touch with reality the email she sent me ergo their thinking and beliefs about things is one would have to know my childhood & adolescence and also have read the email themselves.

It was like my mother was talking about a completely different person and not me.

What it felt like inside of me emotionally and psychologically and psychically to be honest was extreme gaslighting.

I needed a safe place to go with my emotions and my thoughts and I thought that here would be such a place and then the first comment I get is an abusive diatribe.

(It turns out the moderator decided that the person's comment was also 1,000% wrong because I got a private message from them saying so.)

I am blessed that my parents are still a part of my life and unlike some people I know that that is normal and a good thing.

We are trying to have a positive relationship and connection.

One of the ways I take care of my side of the street with that is when they do and say hurtful things I process it and unpack it someplace else so I don't have to do it with them which is something that they can't handle really.

I was hoping that the ADHD sub forum in a message board that claims to be kind and caring and compassionate would be a safe place to do that and instead I get an abusive message full of hate and stupidity.

Not talking about yours I'm talking about the first person who responded to me.

[HoppyHop in reply to MorningDanceTrece]

Hi,

I'm 57 and I just got a child diagnosed with ADHD. My brother was diagnosed as hyperactive when we were kids, and they told us to go off sugar, and that was it. So now I started digging in and reading books as we got off on this journey. Some books are like ADHD is a scam and doesn't exist, and Tommy Tuberville is like, just beat them. I don't know, even growing up with a hyperactive brother, you don't know anything. It's so confusing and nebulous, just smoke and fog and mirrors.

I'm sorry your parents aren't acknowledging it. I'm afraid to ask my mom if maybe she just had ADHD all this time. My dad passed away, but for a-thousand-percent sure he had it. I thought it might have been bipolar, failure to launch, whatever. Such a sweet man, and yet tormented by a sense of failure at life. Who knows you? You don't know anything. I've gone through half my life life thinking I was fine. Then thinking maybe I have some attachment disorder. Joining Alanon, cause there's so much drinking in my family and drug abuse... but sweet drinking, if that makes any sense. Then therapy for three years 10 years ago, then again now.

But learning about ADHD for my child is like, oh wow... I read Driven to Distraction by Hollowell and when he gets to like the hundred symptoms about ADHD and I tick all the boxes. Maybe not all, but 89 of a hundred. And the ones I don't tick, it's cause of some sort of traumatic overcompensation.

This is literally the first post I've responded to. It's liberating to think, oh this is what's going on. But also, wow, it's pretty late in the game, that's a bummer. Also, as a person who's diagnosed themselves with ADHD, isn't this exactly what I do about everything, read a book and dive completely %1000 into it! Is this just another false alarm?

I got kind of in the weeds, but what I meant to say is, even six month ago I was really doubting a friend who's child is on meds, just out of pure ignorance. 10 books and whatever later, it just seems more confusing. But I feel like everything is different. Maybe your parents just need more/better information. We all get caught with strong ideas about things we haven't a clue about.

Best Wishes

-me

[MorningDanceTrece in reply to HoppyHop]

Thanks.

I appreciate your response.

Just in case some of my comments don't make sense there was someone who responded (actually the very first person who responded) and they were actually abusive and hateful.

I reported it and the moderators erased it.

I forgot that people can have "imposter syndrome" for other people so to speak.🤦

Maybe that is with what my parents are dealing.🤷🏻‍♀️

I hope that you can find the support and information that you deserve.😉

[MorningDanceTrece in reply to HoppyHop]

Well as far as there being a plethora of information and some of it being contradictory -- while that is the case what is also true is I am highly intelligent and well-educated woman who knows how to carefully assess and vet resources to make sure that they are accurate and trustworthy.

You will see in my first comment that I said the article that I sent to my mother that she ended up sharing with my father is from an organization called, "ADDitude Magazine".

They are a highly reputable organization whose intel is extremely trustworthy.

As far as Tommy Tuberfill goes, I don't even know why you give the time of day to someone who recommended dealing with a medical condition by abusing the person who has it but in my opinion he needs to go play in traffic 🤦😤