The Grief and Relief of an ADHD Diagnosis

Hello, and welcome to Powerful Possibilities, a guide to ADHD from Diagnosis & Beyond. I'm your host Katherine, and I'm a certified ADHD coach with my own experience of a diagnosis of ADHD and autism in my 40s. My career is dedicated to helping people like you navigate the misunderstood areas of ADHD.

So whether you're recently diagnosed, you think you might be ADHD, or you're looking to better understand your journey so far, this is your new go-to platform for your insights and transformative strategies. Grab your coffee, settle in, and let's unlock the potential that's just waiting for you. You're in the right place.

Welcome to the first episode of Powerful Possibilities, a new podcast that's going to help you navigate your journey from a new diagnosis of ADHD onwards. I'm Katherine, I'm an ADHD coach, and I was diagnosed with ADHD and autism in my early 40s. This first episode, we're going to look at the emotional journey you might experience after being diagnosed with ADHD, especially as an adult.

Now, if you're a parent of a young person who's also being diagnosed with ADHD, I'm going to suggest take time to check you, your partner or your other family members are not also somewhere within that group. And be prepared for some of the emotions that I'm going to talk about coming up for your young person at any age. And yes, young teenagers who have a diagnosis of ADHD may also feel some of these negative emotions.

And if you're prepared for them, you're going to manage them a lot better. I recently spoke to an amazing lady over 60 who had recently decided that the way she felt was ADHD. And having spent an hour talking to her, I do not diagnose ADHD, but the way we were able to have a conversation was the way that I normally have a conversation with other people with ADHD.

Let's put it that way And she delightfully described her brain as a box of toys and didn't feel that it had held her back, but did feel that it explained an awful lot. So if you are a person with a brain like a box of toys, and if you have felt that sometimes it's gotten in the way of a life that you would have enjoyed, had it been different, I want to walk through some of the emotions that you might experience and think about what's next.

The first thing we're going to talk about is the traditional stages of grief and how they can apply after you have a diagnosis of ADHD. So Elizabeth Kubler Ross described five stages of grief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. And although I don't think they need to come in that order, I think that they are something many of us experience at different stages after we learn about ADHD, recognize our own experience and our brain and the challenges we may have had and then receive a diagnosis sooner or later…

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-grief-and-relief-after-an-adult-adhd-diagnosis/id1713560365?i=1000632635154

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