Hi everyone! Yes, you can add me to the ever growing list of people you know that have been diagnosed with ADHD! I was officially diagnosed in December 2024 (at 47 years of age) and so much has become clear since then and I have experimented a bit to help the parts of my brain (and body!) that can be helped more now that I have this information.

I've left it a while to chat about my ADHD diagnosis as I wanted to be really sure that the personal info I shared was a bit more processed than it was initially (I have now had 6 months to process A LOT of my past choices, behaviour and struggles - my god, the retrospective processing is a LOT) and I've had time to play around with a few things to know what works for me and what doesn't so I can share that as well.

Before I go on, I just want to say that this is not a what-to-do blog, and it's why I've chosen to publish this as a personal blog under the Alisha's 360 section, so it's purely based on my experience and not general naturopathic advice.

Secondly, I need to share with you the best (and truest sentence!) I've read about why so many people are getting diagnosed with ADHD in recent years...

"It's kind of like how many more stars we were able to see once the telescope was invented?!"

And this is exactly why! We have more information, more parameters for testing and brain scans that can actually show neurotransmission and how that looks between neurodiverse and neurodivergent brain activity. More awareness and knowledge about anything means we find more examples right?

Coupled with the fact that we now have so much more information about how when our hormones drop (namely oestrogen and progesterone) during perimenopause, this can exacerbate ADHD symptoms and sometimes dramatically unmask previously controlled symptoms. The main reason for this is that oestrogen plays a very important role in regulating our neurotransmitter dopamine which is crucial for ADHD management.

I'd also like to go on to say they really need to re-name ADHD! I never thought I had it because I've never felt like I had an 'attention deficit hyperactivity disorder'!! My vote is for it to be called 'Dopamine-regulation-difficulty-with-a-side-of-brilliance-and-ways-to-think-outside-the-box-but-really-quite-shit-at-executive-functioning-so-what-may-seem-easy-to-some-is-almost-impossible.' Too long? 🤭

So I do have poor executive function - tick.
A hyper-focus on tasks that bring me dopamine - tick.
Time blindness - tick.
Constant dopamine seeking - tick.
Anxiety - Tick.
I make snap decisions and act on them impulsively or I stare at an 'easy' decision for hours and still don't know what to do - Tick.
A very overactive mind that is hard to turn off and gets in the way of my sleep - Tick. Studying anything or trying to take in information of anything that is not of extreme interest to me is almost impossible - Tick.
Creative with so many different and out of the box ideas which can be almost impossible for me to implement without help - Tick.
Unable to stick to routine - Tick.

So maybe that's why you will find many creatives and entrepreneurs like myself (and especially ones going through perimenopause!) getting diagnosed as neurodivergent. We've created a life that works around us and managed things as best we could but then the oestrogen drops, the wheels fall off, we now know why, can get adhd and autism properly diagnosed and TA-DA! Now I'm another one to add to the list! 😉

So how the diagnosis happened for me...

I'm in my perimenopause years. My daughter is diagnosed with ADHD at the end of year 5 about 4 years ago now. 
She got very sick with anorexia at the end of year 7. This was awful and hard for all of us but we now know why...puberty + first year of highschool + all girls school environment + bullying + not on any ADHD medication + undiagnosed autistic. 

During her acute treatment stage, her psychiatrist looked at me and said, "so are you the parent with ADHD?" and I said "No...Why??" He went on to say that there was a very strong familial link so it would be likely to be myself or my husband or both...and then he gave me a look that said..."I think it's you my dear" and that started my wondering.

I wondered on that for a full year (we had a lot on our plates with our daughter) and then when I began to get some space back to breathe and wonder more, I asked my psychologist if she thought I could possibly have ADHD and she looked at me like "ummmm, yes...I thought we were both just assuming this." She didn't say it like that but you know what I mean! 

I then asked two of my closest friends who know me inside out who also said they had known this since I was about 30 (17 years ago!!) when we did a long trip together. They basically said they were waiting for me to come to that conclusion myself if I ever needed to! No big deal (and it's not but it is you know?)

Because over the years I had obviously created the tools to manage myself and my life and I might not have Naughty Naturopath Mum the business without this kind of brain...and honestly it didn't seem to affect me too much until I hit perimenopause.

My brain fog was beyond brain fog. It was more like brain blizzard. 

The small inconsequential or menial tasks that I had always been able to push myself through became almost impossible to do. Wash dishes? I literally cant! But I can cook as that gave me dopamine...

My emotions were so up and down and my reactivity was off the scale. Now this has always been me. Highly emotional - Tick, tick! But I felt it was worse than ever especially while I was trying so hard to be calmer for my daughter.

Reading a school newsletter or checking over insurance details for the business did not land in my brain at all. I could try and read the whole thing and I may as well have been trying to read another language.

And being able to finish a task got harder and harder. I was start a lot of things and then they would lie dormant in my brain as a big open tab creating anxiety that didn't need to be there if I just finished...but I couldn't! 

So I became pretty aware about what might be going on but thought to myself...Why do I need an actual diagnosis? The awareness is already there and if I just assume I have it,  I can start using more tools and tricks for motivation and I had been coping quite well thanks to my emotional support toolkit of flower essences.

But then my psychologist mentioned in one of our sessions that the only truly definitive way to know that my symptoms were ADHD (and not from the extreme amount of stress I had been through or simply perimenopause or any other reasons that can mimic symptoms of ADHD) was to actually try the medication. If ADHD medication makes a difference, we know we are dealing with a neurodivergent brain.

That got me curious. So I went through the process of getting on a waitlist for a psychiatrist to start the diagnosis process. All up, it took about 4 months and I was diagnosed as ADHD and then offered the medication...or choose to just know this about myself and be on my merry way.

My curiosity wanted to know for sure so I ended up filling a script for Vyvanse and giving it a whirl.

I'd like to preface this next part by saying: Medication isn't the full answer. There are ways we can help modulate the neurodiverse brain and help it so much, with or without medication, which will be a whole other blog. And there are many ways we can't modulate how our brain works. And of course we don't want to change how we tick at our core level! I love my brain and it has done so many wonderful things for me including creating a life that I love so much...but to get help with the parts of my brain that do hinder me, has been pretty incredible.

So straight away I noticed the difference on Vyvanse. My brain slowed down to the point where thoughts were coming one. at. a. time! It was like my thought threads that had been previously woven together were coming apart enough so I could look at each thread separately. My overwhelm went down. My anxiety went down and my motivation to do all the things went right up. I was also calmer and less reactive.

So I guess I had taken the final neurodivergent test and found I was definitely and unequivocally ADHD. A neurotypical brain person would feel like a crazed squirrel on Vyvanse so I was glad I wasn't turned into that.

Once I had reached this stage, the retrospective processing began!

I grieved for the little girl who would get so anxious she would faint or vomit and then when she got older had terrible irritable bowel symptoms due to her anxiety. 

I grieved for the little girl who was caned on the back of the legs in front of the whole primary school by the principal when she was only in year 3 (!) for being so 'naughty' (impulsive, creatively mischievous and obviously a very square peg in a round hole)

I grieved for the amount of car accidents I had as a young adult now that I know my proprioception was always affected. This included being very clumsy, falling and hurting myself all the time as I didn't have the spatial awareness of where my body ended and the world began.  And in later years, this included any vehicle I was driving...

I grieved for the young girl, the young adult, the middle aged adult that was always trying to regulate her dopamine by eating and drinking 😔 

I understood why I found it so hard to study but if I had an interest in a subject I could hyperfocus on it to get it done at the very last minute. 

I understood why I make snap decisions and acted on them so quickly without thinking them through! I actually love this part of me because it's how I got any of my tattoos, bought any of the houses we've owned, jumped out of a plane and travelled so much...

I understood how washing my hair and brushing my teeth sometimes felt so impossible that I would put it off until an outside motivation made it happen...like my husband telling me to brush my teeth (!) or my kids telling me my hair looked messy.

I understood why I had only ever had one full time job in my whole life for only 6 weeks at the department of transport and why it nearly killed me. I actually got depressed and after that terrible experiment of trying to be a 'grown up' went back to working many casual jobs that made me smile.

I understood how I eventually created a career where I wouldn't have to answer to anyone but myself (I make a terrible employee!) keep my own hours and be free to create and write when my hyperfocus would kick in. 

I understood why being submerged in water had always been my therapy. It softened the noise, helped my brain have moments of stillness. 

I understood why my daughter and I would escalate together when anything went wrong...

And for what came next over the next 6 months was trial and error with medication dosage, different types of medication and utilising all the supplements I knew that would support a brain like this even further but that feels like it needs a whole separate blog now!

So thanks for reading this far and let me know if the next instalment is of any interest and whether any part of my ADHD journey resonated with you, 

Alisha x

Hi everyone! Yes, you can add me to the ever growing list of people you know that have been diagnosed with ADHD! I was officially diagnosed in December 2024 (at 47 years of age) and so much has become clear since then and I have experimented a bit to help the parts of my brain (and body!) that can be helped more now that I have this information.

I've left it a while to chat about my ADHD diagnosis as I wanted to be really sure that the personal info I shared was a bit more processed than it was initially (I have now had 6 months to process A LOT of my past choices, behaviour and struggles - my god, the retrospective processing is a LOT) and I've had time to play around with a few things to know what works for me and what doesn't so I can share that as well.

Before I go on, I just want to say that this is not a what-to-do blog, and it's why I've chosen to publish this as a personal blog under the Alisha's 360 section, so it's purely based on my experience and not general naturopathic advice.

Secondly, I need to share with you the best (and truest sentence!) I've read about why so many people are getting diagnosed with ADHD in recent years...

"It's kind of like how many more stars we were able to see once the telescope was invented?!"

And this is exactly why! We have more information, more parameters for testing and brain scans that can actually show neurotransmission and how that looks between neurodiverse and neurodivergent brain activity. More awareness and knowledge about anything means we find more examples right?

Coupled with the fact that we now have so much more information about how when our hormones drop (namely oestrogen and progesterone) during perimenopause, this can exacerbate ADHD symptoms and sometimes dramatically unmask previously controlled symptoms. The main reason for this is that oestrogen plays a very important role in regulating our neurotransmitter dopamine which is crucial for ADHD management.

I'd also like to go on to say they really need to re-name ADHD! I never thought I had it because I've never felt like I had an 'attention deficit hyperactivity disorder'!! My vote is for it to be called 'Dopamine-regulation-difficulty-with-a-side-of-brilliance-and-ways-to-think-outside-the-box-but-really-quite-shit-at-executive-functioning-so-what-may-seem-easy-to-some-is-almost-impossible.' Too long? 🤭

So I do have poor executive function - tick.
A hyper-focus on tasks that bring me dopamine - tick.
Time blindness - tick.
Constant dopamine seeking - tick.
Anxiety - Tick.
I make snap decisions and act on them impulsively or I stare at an 'easy' decision for hours and still don't know what to do - Tick.
A very overactive mind that is hard to turn off and gets in the way of my sleep - Tick. Studying anything or trying to take in information of anything that is not of extreme interest to me is almost impossible - Tick.
Creative with so many different and out of the box ideas which can be almost impossible for me to implement without help - Tick.
Unable to stick to routine - Tick.

So maybe that's why you will find many creatives and entrepreneurs like myself (and especially ones going through perimenopause!) getting diagnosed as neurodivergent. We've created a life that works around us and managed things as best we could but then the oestrogen drops, the wheels fall off, we now know why, can get adhd and autism properly diagnosed and TA-DA! Now I'm another one to add to the list! 😉

So how the diagnosis happened for me...

I'm in my perimenopause years. My daughter is diagnosed with ADHD at the end of year 5 about 4 years ago now. 
She got very sick with anorexia at the end of year 7. This was awful and hard for all of us but we now know why...puberty + first year of highschool + all girls school environment + bullying + not on any ADHD medication + undiagnosed autistic. 

During her acute treatment stage, her psychiatrist looked at me and said, "so are you the parent with ADHD?" and I said "No...Why??" He went on to say that there was a very strong familial link so it would be likely to be myself or my husband or both...and then he gave me a look that said..."I think it's you my dear" and that started my wondering.

I wondered on that for a full year (we had a lot on our plates with our daughter) and then when I began to get some space back to breathe and wonder more, I asked my psychologist if she thought I could possibly have ADHD and she looked at me like "ummmm, yes...I thought we were both just assuming this." She didn't say it like that but you know what I mean! 

I then asked two of my closest friends who know me inside out who also said they had known this since I was about 30 (17 years ago!!) when we did a long trip together. They basically said they were waiting for me to come to that conclusion myself if I ever needed to! No big deal (and it's not but it is you know?)

Because over the years I had obviously created the tools to manage myself and my life and I might not have Naughty Naturopath Mum the business without this kind of brain...and honestly it didn't seem to affect me too much until I hit perimenopause.

My brain fog was beyond brain fog. It was more like brain blizzard. 

The small inconsequential or menial tasks that I had always been able to push myself through became almost impossible to do. Wash dishes? I literally cant! But I can cook as that gave me dopamine...

My emotions were so up and down and my reactivity was off the scale. Now this has always been me. Highly emotional - Tick, tick! But I felt it was worse than ever especially while I was trying so hard to be calmer for my daughter.

Reading a school newsletter or checking over insurance details for the business did not land in my brain at all. I could try and read the whole thing and I may as well have been trying to read another language.

And being able to finish a task got harder and harder. I was start a lot of things and then they would lie dormant in my brain as a big open tab creating anxiety that didn't need to be there if I just finished...but I couldn't! 

So I became pretty aware about what might be going on but thought to myself...Why do I need an actual diagnosis? The awareness is already there and if I just assume I have it,  I can start using more tools and tricks for motivation and I had been coping quite well thanks to my emotional support toolkit of flower essences.

But then my psychologist mentioned in one of our sessions that the only truly definitive way to know that my symptoms were ADHD (and not from the extreme amount of stress I had been through or simply perimenopause or any other reasons that can mimic symptoms of ADHD) was to actually try the medication. If ADHD medication makes a difference, we know we are dealing with a neurodivergent brain.

That got me curious. So I went through the process of getting on a waitlist for a psychiatrist to start the diagnosis process. All up, it took about 4 months and I was diagnosed as ADHD and then offered the medication...or choose to just know this about myself and be on my merry way.

My curiosity wanted to know for sure so I ended up filling a script for Vyvanse and giving it a whirl.

I'd like to preface this next part by saying: Medication isn't the full answer. There are ways we can help modulate the neurodiverse brain and help it so much, with or without medication, which will be a whole other blog. And there are many ways we can't modulate how our brain works. And of course we don't want to change how we tick at our core level! I love my brain and it has done so many wonderful things for me including creating a life that I love so much...but to get help with the parts of my brain that do hinder me, has been pretty incredible.

So straight away I noticed the difference on Vyvanse. My brain slowed down to the point where thoughts were coming one. at. a. time! It was like my thought threads that had been previously woven together were coming apart enough so I could look at each thread separately. My overwhelm went down. My anxiety went down and my motivation to do all the things went right up. I was also calmer and less reactive.

So I guess I had taken the final neurodivergent test and found I was definitely and unequivocally ADHD. A neurotypical brain person would feel like a crazed squirrel on Vyvanse so I was glad I wasn't turned into that.

Once I had reached this stage, the retrospective processing began!

I grieved for the little girl who would get so anxious she would faint or vomit and then when she got older had terrible irritable bowel symptoms due to her anxiety. 

I grieved for the little girl who was caned on the back of the legs in front of the whole primary school by the principal when she was only in year 3 (!) for being so 'naughty' (impulsive, creatively mischievous and obviously a very square peg in a round hole)

I grieved for the amount of car accidents I had as a young adult now that I know my proprioception was always affected. This included being very clumsy, falling and hurting myself all the time as I didn't have the spatial awareness of where my body ended and the world began.  And in later years, this included any vehicle I was driving...

I grieved for the young girl, the young adult, the middle aged adult that was always trying to regulate her dopamine by eating and drinking 😔 

I understood why I found it so hard to study but if I had an interest in a subject I could hyperfocus on it to get it done at the very last minute. 

I understood why I make snap decisions and acted on them so quickly without thinking them through! I actually love this part of me because it's how I got any of my tattoos, bought any of the houses we've owned, jumped out of a plane and travelled so much...

I understood how washing my hair and brushing my teeth sometimes felt so impossible that I would put it off until an outside motivation made it happen...like my husband telling me to brush my teeth (!) or my kids telling me my hair looked messy.

I understood why I had only ever had one full time job in my whole life for only 6 weeks at the department of transport and why it nearly killed me. I actually got depressed and after that terrible experiment of trying to be a 'grown up' went back to working many casual jobs that made me smile.

I understood how I eventually created a career where I wouldn't have to answer to anyone but myself (I make a terrible employee!) keep my own hours and be free to create and write when my hyperfocus would kick in. 

I understood why being submerged in water had always been my therapy. It softened the noise, helped my brain have moments of stillness. 

I understood why my daughter and I would escalate together when anything went wrong...

And for what came next over the next 6 months was trial and error with medication dosage, different types of medication and utilising all the supplements I knew that would support a brain like this even further but that feels like it needs a whole separate blog now!

So thanks for reading this far and let me know if the next instalment is of any interest and whether any part of my ADHD journey resonated with you, 

Alisha x