Anxiety….or ADHD?

My first beautiful big baby boy was 11 days overdue.

All of a sudden, I was a Mummy to a baby and I had nothing to occupy my mind, apart from that gorgeous little boy. So, I set about making it my mission to get him to do exactly what I wanted him to do. 

HAHAHAHAHAHA. 

I was a new Mummy in a town far away from my support system. And I was scared. My heart was now living outside of my body. In the form of a baby who did NOT do what I wanted. My first son was my first for a reason. What I thought was “out of control” was a little baby who slept through the night from a week old. If I had my ADHD boy first, it would have been so much more of a shock. To the Mama’s who had their ADHD kids as their first, I take my hat off to you. And my bra because that shit is uncomfortable. 

I kept a diary of all his stats for each day. Obsessively documenting his feeds – including what time he started feeding and finished feeding. This was a behaviour that I repeated when I had my youngest. I realise now that it was my way of trying to maintain some sort of control over the situation. I feel so much empathy for myself for this now. 

So, I was a stay-at-home Mum. 

Sounds great, right? 

A week or so after his birth we were in the shopping centre, and I had a panic attack. I thought I was going to die. I was struggling to breathe and rushed to the health food shop to buy some Rescue Remedy. I believe I had at least one panic attack as a child, so I knew what was happening.

Side note – the panic attack as a child was after watching the movie The Witches and then convincing myself that our hockey umpire had purple eyes, like the witches in the movie did. But I digress. 

What was happening to me? I always say to people that having my first child shocked the shit out of me. I was so used to being in control and suddenly, this little person didn’t want to do what I wanted him to do. I was trying to get this poor child to fit into my idea of what was what. I mean, I had worked in childcare! I was a Nanny for 3.5 years! Kids did what I told them to. 

But this glorious child was going on his instincts. I had no one to hand him over to at the end of the day. It was just me, and I wasn’t coping. I was angry a lot of the time. I often felt this sensation of being out of control. I felt confused. But also, he was my little mate. He and I were a team. I took him everywhere with me and he gave me so much joy.

For 12 years of my son’s life, I had linked my anxiety to my foray into parenthood and, as a result, to him. I know that’s not fair. But that is what happened. I wonder how many women can empathise with this.  

However, a few months ago when it finally dawned on me that I might have ADHD, someone in an ADHD group I am in wrote: What if becoming a mother wasn’t what caused anxiety, but rather was the first time I could no longer use the coping mechanisms I had used my whole life to manage my ADHD. 

B-FUCKING-OOM. 

That got me right in the solar plexus. YES. 

And so began the re-framing. I don’t know about you, but when I experience re-framing there is a process to it. Something shifts my solid, set views on something. Like above, how this woman’s own realisation was spot on for me. Or perhaps I will come to the realisation myself. Then, I have to put myself back where I was. It’s not hard because these are usually defining moments in my life. Then I gently explore around the idea, feeling my way and testing the new idea out. It’s almost a physical experience for me. I can feel my beliefs shift and the new way of looking at it settle in. 

If I included the hypothesis that I had ADHD (at this stage I was not diagnosed) and that perhaps I wasn’t struggling with motherhood itself, but rather my way of coping was taken away. Well, that’s a whole different ballgame. I can detach those feelings from being connected to my son. I can drop the shame. I can feel empathy and love for myself. 

It wasn’t my fault. I’m not a bad mother. I was doing the best with what I had and when I knew better, I did better. It is with so much time, deep diving, and hard work that I can say those words. For so long I believed was a bad mother. 

The shame. How I berated myself.   

Every day since suspecting my diagnosis I have been becoming the kind of Mum I have wanted to be. I did not realise how much of my behaviour stemmed from shame. I knew there was something wrong, but I did not know what it was, so I just blamed myself. Why wasn’t I like all those other Mum’s? How did they just know what to say and do? How come they could just back themselves and be so sure that what they were doing and saying was right? It turns out that my cute little brain just works differently to other people’s. It turns out that I am more sensitive.  

And along with this realisation, I was able to start the slow process of gently challenging my definition of what I believed was anxiety within my body. I was beginning to understand that the feelings I had assumed were anxiety related, were – for the majority of the time – actually ADHD.  

I cannot possibly convey in mere words the importance of this discovery. 

It’s important for me to highlight that while my ADHD presents partly as inattentive, it also presents as hyperactive – most of which is internal. Yes, I can be quite loud when I’m in the right place – usually with my family. Or after several red wines. But the internal hyperactivity was what I was feeling, and misinterpreting for anxiety. The cliché of a hyperactive child with ADHD running all over the place, leaving a path of destruction was instead living inside of me. And I judged that inner child, berating myself for not being able to stop feeling and behaving that way. 

Yes, I do still get anxiety sometimes. But the tightness in my body, the ball in my stomach and the weight in my chest was being caused by a neurological disorder. It wasn’t my fault. I had created a shame story around my perceived anxiety. I tried to ignore it but it’s pervasiveness would never leave me alone. I was beginning to see that my body had been trying to tell me a different story the whole time. I just could not slow down to hear it. 

Now, I could set out on one of most the critical self-love journey’s I had ever been on – intricately extricating a lifetime of memories and now viewing them through the ADHD lens.