At Age 57, I Was Exhausted By A Lifetime of Challenges. Then I Received A Surprising Diagnosis.

The author in her happy place in Maine, by the ocean, in summer 2023, the day before her wedding.Reading the report cards from my elementary and middle school years in Oslo, Norway, where I grew up in the 1970s, was proof beyond doubt that I was a girl who had trouble following the rules. “Nina interrupts.” “Nina walks around in the classroom without permission.” “Nina was sent to the principal’s office.” “Nina disturbs other students.” And so it goes: the early track record of a kid with ADHD. Except back then, nobody used the label of the now-ubiquitous diagnosis, let alone offered us coping mechanisms, therapy or medication. Children like me just had to learn how to swim through our formative years full of chidings, consequences and punishments, without sinking too deep into self-loathing. When I look at a black-and-white photo of myself at 6 years old, I am filled with empathy and compassion for that little girl who looks so vulnerable. Eventually, as a teenager, I figured out how to charm the adults around me, from teachers to neighbours, to employers and my friends’ parents. I was industrious and held down many jobs after school, my handwriting was impeccable, my school projects received good grades. I spent more time with older adults than with my peers. I was told I was an old soul. The elderly in our neighbourhood had stories to tell and patience and time for mine. They made me feel seen and appreciated, contrary to my classmates, who found me difficult or annoying to be around. While they were busy partying and experimenting with their budding sexualities, I babysat, groomed horses and ran my paper route. I had become a young adult with a compulsive urge to please others. The author in Norway, the summer she turned 6.Always one to have half a dozen balls in the air simultaneously (some say a multitasker, others a scatterbrain, or simply, a hyperactive woman running from one endeavour to the next), my young adult life — 20s, 30s —was spent pursuing a Ph.D. in French literature while raising three young sons and also embracing — with fervour — a new culture and tradition. I underwent an Orthodox conversion to Judaism before marrying the man who became the father of my children, and this “living Jewishly” (keeping kosher, observing the Sabbath and holidays, etc.) was another full-time job I pursued with hunger. I would later realise that what I was craving was order, predictability and the grounding of the minutiae of engaging, physically, in all the Jewish traditions.Even though I earned a Ph.D. and taught languages and literature, I tired of formal academia with its convoluted sentence structures and jargon, all part of publishing papers, speaking at conferences and writing “the book.” I felt like a poser. Then, during the challenging years of my divorce in my mid-40s, I found deep satisfaction blogging and writing personal essays, and seeing many published. It was a revelation to discover my authentic voice. It was as if I had come home — or landed? — in my body, through words. But I was also exhausted from over 40 years of pleasing others with my performance, always being energised and “handling everything.” It was difficult for me to say “no” and to set boundaries for self-preservation. Through my personal writing, I began to explore how I had become who I was, but these were also tumultuous years filled with too much alcohol and Xanax. I self-medicated, imagining it helped me stay afloat when in fact it did just the opposite. When a friend asked how I was doing, perhaps sensing my brokenness, I said, “Fine,” but what I fantasised saying was, “Please admit me to a mental health institution where I’ll wear a blue hospital gown, sit in a lawn chair and stare into space while medical staff bring me small plastic cups with meds.” I contemplated ending it all, but each time I had that split-second temptation to put the pedal to the metal and aim for a tree, something pulled me back. The kids. I just couldn’t do it to the kids. Yoga, therapy, hypnosis and meditation made it possible for me to go on. And a lot of this work turned my attention to my body, which felt grounding and stabilising in all the instability and volatility that was the constant undercurrent of my life. In 2018, when I was 53, I decided to enter an MFA program for creative writing.One night, during my first residency, I woke up with severe hip pain, and that hip moment became the catalyst for me spending the next two years examining the stories my body could tell me through, and about, pain, pleasure and everything in between. “I’d like to explore my muscle and emotional memory as it is lodged in my body,” I told my mentor. “Tell me more,” she said. It’s as if I knew in my bones that I would find what I needed within myself. For the next two years, I spent my writing time contemplating, inquiring, conversing with and listening to my various body parts and the stories they had to tell me. Hips, feet, hands, breasts, back; the intense physicality of this inquiry centred me and moored me, and I eventually discovered the guiding principle that explained my struggles. I understood my lifelong propensity for reactivity, overly emotional responses, overwhelm. Patterns revealed themselves, and the self-insight I gained fed my resolve to make an appointment for a neuro-psych evaluation, or ADHD assessment. After a few weeks of analyzing the results, the psychiatrist who gave me the extensive and intricate day-long testing and screening called me back for the “findings consult.” I was a classic case, he said. It is difficult to describe what a relief it was — redemptive, I’ll say — to receive a diagnosis that made all the pieces of my life’s behavioural and emotional challenges fall into place. The always vibrating undercurrent of my internal unrest, that at 57 was still exhausting me, had a medical explanation. The author and her three sons in Norway, May 2022.But it was not only the negative/difficult aspects of living with ADHD that I came to understand better; I was able to learn to appreciate how many of my strengths — my creativity, my energy, my effusiveness — are part of the flip side, the positive side, of the ADHD coin. A friend who is a psychiatric nurse told me she hashad patients cry with happiness at the diagnosis, the explanation of their lives, and for many — the incredible improvement in their lives with meds. During the conversations with the psychiatrist, we talked about how I had lived a full and rewarding life despite the challenges that are common for folks with this type of neurodivergence, and he did not immediately suggest I try medications. We agreed that, after all, through compensating, I had managed pretty darn well. But, I reiterated, I was exhausted on a deep, cellular level. Intrigued to see how meds might positively impact my quality of life — like quiet my monkey mind, help my disorganisation and difficulty with sustaining focus and improve my sometimes tumultuous second marriage, where too much reactivity made small spats too easily devolve into what felt like huge existential crisis — I asked if I could try. So, for a few months, I dealt with the hassle of the monthly refill and the challenge of finding the meds in stock, a new reality for someone not used to taking regular medications. I waited patiently for a clear-minded radical shift in my sense of self, but if it happened, it was ever so subtle. Since the neuropsychiatrist recommended cognitive behavioural therapy alongside the meds, I continued seeing the therapist who knew me and had helped me through relationship and emotional hurdles before. After six months, I decided to stop taking the ADHD meds, but to continue with the CBT. These sessions proved useful in reminding me how important it is to practice daily self-awareness in managing reactivity and emotional disregulation. Alongside a regular yoga and meditation practice, where the simple awareness of stillness in breath (and breath in stillness) becomes an anchor in time and place, I have learned how to stay grounded, better regulate my emotions and reactivity and set boundaries to preserve my own energy, all without sacrificing my creativity and ebullience, which I consider invaluable parts of my life force. Although meds did not feel like the answer for me at this time, I know many fellow ADHDers find them to be life-saving — well worth the hassle and any potential side effects. My clinician friend recently told me she wishes that more patients could consider and value the compensatory measures and the resilience they have developed throughout life, and realise that meds are not silver bullets, but that individual treatment plans may include some combination of approaches.Today, I sit at my computer with the intention of working on my next book project, but predictably, as an idea flashes in my mind, I click away from the Word document and start down a different rabbit hole: researching non-slip socks for my aging mom, checking flights for my next trip to Norway to see her, buying tickets for a comedy show. Then I sigh, take a deep breath and smile at my distractibility, and return again to my writing project. “Begin again, without judgement,” as the meditation instructor reminds me on the meditation app. Begin again.Nina B. Lichtenstein is the founder and director of Maine Writers Studio, and the co-founder/co-editor of In a Flash Lit Mag. Her writing has appeared in HuffPost, WaPo, Tablet Magazine, Lilith Magazine, Literary Mama, Brevity Blog, AARP’s The Ethel, among other places, as well as in several anthologies. Her memoir, “Body: My Life in Parts” is forthcoming from Vine Leaves Press (May 27, 2025).Related...'I Was 34 When I Got My ADHD Diagnosis – It Changed My Life Forever'I'm An ADHD Assessor — These 2 Signs In Adults Show It's 'Not Just Disorganisation'12 Things Not To Say To Someone Who Has ADHD

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At Age 57, I Was Exhausted By A Lifetime of Challenges. Then I Received A Surprising Diagnosis.

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