Women diagnosed with ADHD in their 30s: How did you rebuild your career, confidence and life?
I spent 4 years trying to fix myself before I realized I wasn't the problem.
I'm 33F and was diagnosed with ADHD last year.
For years, I thought I was lazy, inconsistent, undisciplined, or simply not trying hard enough. I quit my job a few years ago after a burnout that took almost 2 years to recover from.
I initially thought the burnout was caused by the job. I believed that if I rested enough and healed whatever had broken inside me, I'd be able to get back to life as usual.
But even after recovering, something still felt wrong.
I felt heavy. I felt broken. I felt like I was constantly fighting an invisible battle inside myself. I would catch myself holding my breath throughout the day, as if my body was permanently bracing for something bad to happen.
Even after two years, I still didn't feel relaxed.
That's when I started digging deeper. I looked into my childhood, my patterns, my trauma, and eventually came across Jessica McCabe's videos. For the first time in a very long time, I felt seen.
I resisted the idea of ADHD at first. A part of me didn't want it to be true. But another part of me knew that the sooner I understood what was happening, the sooner I could stop fighting myself.
I went to a therapist. We did assessments and they concluded that I had depression and anxiety. I don't blame them entirely because I could barely remember my childhood. I had spent years suppressing memories and disconnecting from difficult experiences.
Something still didn't sit right with me though.
A while later, I sought a second opinion. We went through the assessment process again, and this time I was diagnosed with ADHD.
I thought I would feel relieved.
Instead, I grieved.
I grieved all the versions of myself that I had called lazy, weak, careless, emotional, inconsistent, and not good enough.
I grieved the compassion I never gave myself.
That grief lasted for weeks.
Since then, I've been recalibrating my entire life around things I now understand about myself. In many ways, the diagnosis gave me answers I've been searching for my entire life.
But now I'm struggling with something else.
I'm 33. I've been out of the workforce for 4 years. During this time, I also realized that I don't want to return to the kind of work I was doing before because it wasn't a good fit for how my brain works.
So now I find myself trying to pivot careers with a 4-year gap, and as a woman in her 30s, I can't help but feel like I've lost time.
Logically, I know I spent those years healing and understanding myself.
Emotionally, I still feel behind.
Has anyone else gone through something similar?
How did you navigate returning to work, changing careers, or rebuilding confidence after a late ADHD diagnosis?