The Five Stages of Grief Applied to My ADHD
Grief isn't just experienced in connection with death. It's real here, too.
A few years ago, I lost two very good friends within nine months, both from aneurysms. At this point in my life, I had gotten really good at avoiding the processing of other losses in my life, including losing my marriage and my job within six months of each other.
I went to see my therapist because I was absolutely not recovering from having lost my friend Dave and I couldn’t figure out why. She pointed out a whole series of losses I had experienced over the last three years and suggested I start an eight-week grief group therapy.
I had never considered my feelings about my divorce and job loss as grief. I had about 48 different emotions, but none of them I would have noted as grief. Then she hit me with a definition of grief from the book for the group:
“Grief is the conflicting feelings caused by the end of, or change in, a familiar pattern of behavior.”
Notice it says nothing about death. Because grief is not solely about death. This has been a huge part of the processing of my ADHD diagnosis. I am grieving. I am allowed to grieve.
Interestingly, when I went back to the book just now to find that exact quote, I highlighted (of course) this sentence on the next page: “Grief is about a broken heart, not a broken brain.”
Whoa. Wait. What?
When I hear from others, who have been diagnosed with ADHD, particularly much later in life, there is a commonality that we feel grief-stricken. It makes sense. We have experienced significant losses our whole lives.
Out of curiosity, I went back and looked at the stages of grief outlined by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in the pivotal grief book On Death and Dying.
They align perfectly with everything that I’ve been feeling.
Denial
I spent my entire life prior to diagnosis in this stage of grief. Forty damn years. I define this as the stage in my life where, instead of considering that I could have a brain disorder, I just thought I was all of the awful things I was made to feel I was: a stupid, lazy, unmotivated, procrastinating space cadet. Damn.
My denial took the form of thinking I could just “do better.” “try harder,” and “focus more,” only to fail time and again, plummeting my self-esteem and self-worth for decades.
Anger
After getting my diagnosis, this stage hit me hard. I was not prepared for the amount of sheer anger I would feel. I was pissed at everyone. The school system didn’t see it. My parents didn’t see it. The doctors I went to that misdiagnosed me with anxiety and depression didn’t see it.
I was angry with myself for not taking investing in myself earlier. I was angry at society as a whole, which never seems to take women seriously, for not paying attention to the near army of us.
I was angry with researchers who only focused ADHD research on young boys and men. I was angry that my years as a wife, mother, and employee taught me to mask my struggles, selflessly move forward, despite the pain and confusion, and hide in shame.
I couldn’t help feeling as though I had been robbed of the life I was supposed to have. Despite my psychiatrist urging that “what if” is not a road to walk down, I couldn’t help lingering there for a while. That led me to the next stage.
Bargaining
I spend a good amount of time begging the universe now to send me opportunities that I can make use of, having not had others in the past or having blown them completely.
I want to know who I would have been and what my life would have been like if I had been either “normal” or diagnosed earlier.
There’s residual anger there, too, followed closely by a weird sense of entitlement. Damn it, I deserve good things now. I never got a fair shake at life, why can’t I have one now? Jesus Christ, in the name of all things holy, can someone just give me a damn chance.
Depression
Depression is a houseguest that just sits in the corner of my living room, always there and refusing to leave. I am in this stage of grief damn near every day. Not one day goes by that I don’t have self-loathing that sneaks up. Sometimes it looks a lot like imposter syndrome.
We can’t disconnect our diagnosis of grief from depression because it has been a constant all our lives. It’s my go-to.
If I don’t know how to feel, depression will just charge out of the dugout, grab a bat, and start swinging.
I fight it every day, and there are a lot of tears, but the clouds part, and I get to spend time in the last phase.
Acceptance
This is where the beauty lies. Very quickly after my diagnosis, acceptance flew in through the window I opened, hoping depression would climb out of it. Finally, I knew what was wrong with me. I had answers and a prescription.
Suddenly, all of those words I thought described me and shaped who I was no longer carried weight. Accepting my diagnosis has meant accepting that there’s nothing wrong with me, my brain just doesn’t function like most people’s. My acceptance has been me repeating to myself almost every day: I am not broken.
I’ll move in and out of these stages for the rest of my life because no matter how beautiful that last stage is, it’s going to take a lot of work to keep me from being pulled back into anger and depression. But, I’m here for it, and I’m going to keep doing it because that’s the promise I’ve made to myself, and I’m keeping it.
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