>There's been a groundswell on social media wherein everything functionally becomes ADHD

That sounds needlessly dismissive in the context of the link that I posted. It does not help constructively (unlike you sharing your story - thank you for that!).

The page I linked has over 100 entries about specific ways in which ADHD makes adult life difficult. Specifically, I have written a long list of reasons why I consider it a disorder that impairs me in certain scenarios [1].

I ask you to read [1] before replying to this comment, so that we have a common context.

I am guessing that you haven't done so yet, because struggling with executive dysfunction, time blindness, and five dozen other traits/symptoms on a daily basis would surely not be "casting the net too widely" to say that it might be ADHD :)

And on the other hand, while there's an overlap with CPTSD and ASD, seeing that you don't experience things the same way might help someone who has been incorrectly diagnosed with ADHD.

I am terribly sorry that you didn't get the care that you needed — but neither did I, until I learned more about ADHD from social media posts like the one I'm making now.

You see a flurry of these posts because the medical community has failed to diagnose it in many people (as well as diagnosing others incorrectly!), leaving many people without help, and is still very much ignorant about it. They didn't even believe that adults can have ADHD all the way into 1970s!

So quite a few adults — women in particular — are only getting diagnosis and care now, because of ADHD advocacy on social media.

The reason why people identify as ADHD/ASD is because getting care/meds/restructuring their lives accordingly makes life significantly less painful for them. The most common sentiment in late-diagnosed people is grief over all the years they've been needlessly living life on "hard mode", all the struggles they didn't need to face, all the opportunities missed.

The diagnosis, as you mentioned, is only useful insofar as it helps people improve their lives. I'm sorry for your experience; not seeing improvement is the reason to challenge the diagnosis.

This is why I believe the page I made could be useful to someone like you. Maybe if you saw more personal accounts of people with ADHD and CPTSD, you would have realized that CPTSD is the correct diagnosis sooner.

ADHD in particular seems to be diagnosed from the perspective of "how is this making the lives of their parents difficult". There are still too few resources dedicated to helping adults live their lives.

Again, thank you for sharing your story and perspective. It's very interesting because my case seems to be a mirror image: an unsuccessful struggle with anxiety and depression, until consequences of undiagnosed ADHD were revealed to be the root cause.

One of the ways in which the diagnosis made my life better is knowing that my brain will simply sabotage any work that I don't believe in. When I was trying to force myself to do something that I believed should not be done, no matter how big or small, I suffered greatly.

In one case, it seemed that doing X to stay at company Y with great coworkers made all the sense even if X did not (it's just one project, I'll get over it!). Now I know to quit before being assigned to something that I can't stand behind — and am living a happier (and must I say, better paid) life. Simply knowing that already changed my life for the better.

Oh, and ADHD meds have helped with my sleep issues that I've had for as long as I can remember myself.

That alone was worth it.

I can enjoy mornings on a regular basis for the first time in my life, at 34, because of that social media groundswell :)

[1]http://romankogan.net/adhd/#Awfully%20Described%20Human%20Di...