Ah-hhheeeem.
[Epic movie trailer deep voice-over voice]
THIS WEEK on another riveting instalment of “Is this Real, or is this Hypercondria?”, poster girl Janie continues her journey right up the borderline between “functional human” and “certifiably disabled” as she discovers the potential real issue behind her studying struggles. Was she put on this planet to spout awareness about an array of unrelated and widely misunderstood medical conditions, or is this yet another doctor’s 15-minute answer to a mystery that no one… will EVER truly solve? STAY TUNED.
[Cue return normal voice]
Okay, even I wouldn’t watch that show.
Until now, no one, including myself and many many doctors of many breeds, has been able to explain why the dorkface with the OP2 has taken four years to complete one year worth of university study. This is a struggle that I’ve whined about a lot. The one thing that the professional opinions did seem to agree on was that I struggle with study more than I should. When the motivation was there in abundance, but the barriers were just too real, one of my GP’s decided that it was time to investigate possible deeper cognitive issues.
She referred me to a psychiatrist. He was the most stereotypical psychiatrist I have ever seen: stuffy, old, and extremely to-the-point. In all these years of bouncing from doctor to doctor across every specialty from paediatrics to endocrinology, never have I ever heard one phrase their diagnosis as a certainty. It has always been, “it seems you might have..,” “the symptoms suggest..,” “let’s try treating you for…”. But after no more than 15 minutes of speaking to me, very little of which was actually about my struggles with university study, Stuffy McCertainpants turned to me and said, “Your problem is Attention Deficit. Adult ADHD. I’ll give you a prescription for Ritalin, and you will feel the difference straight away. Your brain will turn on like a switch.”
I was stunned. “I’ll be able to read 
a book?” was all I could muster.
“You’ll be able to read a book,” he said. Without a shadow of a doubt.
There really is no sarcastic retort for how I felt in that moment. There I was, an angsty 22-year-old dork in an identity crisis because I was sure my most valued characteristic had been taken away from me (my brain), and 15 minutes after meeting me, this man was telling me that one pill would fix it all.
It did start to make sense. I’m stupidly indecisive, have poor time management, work best under pressure, and I’ve never been able to concentrate long enough to enjoy a book or read at all. I got through high school by cutting corners and relying on my ‘gift of the gab’ wherever possible. But the thing that shocked me the most is that the condition has been right under my nose all my life: my brother has ADHD, and I work with students with the condition for a living! How had my obsessive self-diagnosing processes skimmed straight over this one? Because, I concluded, even to someone with as much exposure to ADHD as me, I don’t fit the stereotype that goes with the label.
But that doesn’t mean that labels are bad.
When someone says ADHD, most people do think of the delinquent thirteen-year-old boy forever in trouble at school because he can’t stop talking to no one in particular while tapping his pen on the desk and forgetting what he was saying midway through a sentence. As a largely well-behaved adult female with a strong academic record (at least prior to university), I don’t exactly fit the bill. But a quick Google will show you that I’m far from alone. ADHD is not only alive and well in adult females, but is widely misdiagnosed – often, as just having a “flighty” or disorganised personality.
But all those misconceptions are a result of people being narrow- and/or simple-minded about labels and what they mean, not a result of labels existing altogether. So, the solution is to fight the misconception that labels are prescribed criteria set in stone only for indicating negatives in a person, rather than to hate on labels as a concept. I see many parents of students I work with who seem to operate under this fear – refusing to have their child seen to or formally recognised as having a particular “disorder”. Worse, I see adults, people I love, operate under this terrified state of refusal, of closing their eyes tight and shaking their heads and blocking out all talk of naming a condition for fear of the perception that there is something “wrong” with them.
This is the misconception that we have to address. Let’s contemplate why we have developed labels for medical conditions. Why must we give a name to certain combinations of symptoms? Why do we have to lump people with similar, but never identical struggles together as though they are not unique in any way? One word: understanding. We came up with a word for a cold so that we know what’s happening when our nose starts to run, and we know how to treat it. In the same way, we label ADHD and Anxiety and Depression and Bipolar Disorder and Mad Cow Disease all so that we can have some understanding of these people’s lives. How could we “raise awareness” without labels? And why do we raise awareness? To promote understanding. And understanding is critical to people who have any one (or more) of these conditions’ not wanting to strangle themselves every moment of every day.
I understand people’s contention with labels: that they don’t want to be defined by the condition as though it is all there is to them, that they restrict understanding to misconceptions and stereotypes, blah blah blah. All outweighed by the whole understanding issue outlined above. The real contention is the perception that anyone with a label has something “wrong” with them. But the issue there is with society, not with the concept of labels. Labels re necessary, people being ass hats is not. How to not be an ass hat, 101: recognise that characteristics of a person that also happen to be symptoms of a condition that has a label are no more or less a part of that person than anything else, and no more right or wrong than anything else. 
That is to say that my indecision, my inability to walk long distances, my mouse-brown coloured hair, my loud voice, my palpitating heart, my slow reading, my left-handedness, my food allergies, my warped sense of humour and my angsty-af approach to life are all equally a part of who I am, and equally unashamedly so. The fact that some of those fall under a label and some don’t is only relevant as far as it helps me explain who I am. I have ADHD in the same way that I am an extrovert. I have POTS as much as I am a Scorpio, an optimist, a “yellow” personality, an attention-seeker, a neeeeeerd, and a couch potato. Plenty of positives, plenty of negatives, plenty of could-go-either-ways; all me.
It breaks my heart when I have to work with children who would so benefit from the support and understanding that comes with a label. I’m just not sure whether to blame their parents, or the world around us.
Invisible Squared 