Diagnosis! = Murder?
Does a Neurodivergent diagnosis kill off your pre-diagnosed identity?
What happens to your pre-diagnosis identity… and how do we integrate the old you and the new you and errr… just be you!
I joked recently that the diagnosis of a neurodivergent condition can feel a bit like a crime scene- there can be a distinct sense of before and after.
This blog is about acknowledging the time around assessment and diagnosis and all the feelings we can have about ourselves- past, present and future.
But are we a different person with this new knowledge about ourselves? Are we retrofitting facts to fit our new understanding of ourselves? Why do people get annoyed when you try to bring your new understanding of yourself with you into the present moment? And is it a good or bad thing?
We can often feel like we are going through a grieving process in the wake of an assessment and the outcome; recognising what we are grieving for can be a part of healing.
When you receive a diagnosis, especially as an adult, you might gain an explanation of sorts for the bits of life you feel like you didn’t “get”. But you might also lose a version of yourself that you’ve spent years building, defending, apologising for, and often feeling bad about.
How do you rebuild from shaky foundations? Where do you start with separating the stuff that’s you, your upbringing or your circumstances? Post diagnosis, we might start by lumping everything in- Oh that’s why…! Then we might realise it’s more complicated than that.
A neurodivergent diagnosis can bring clarity, grief and crime scene vibes all at the same time.
You might have felt like there was something missing in your understanding of yourself and your presentation and existence in the world. You may have felt a gap between what you want to achieve and what you seem able to achieve. You may feel very capable in some areas and less so in many more. The discovery of an actual reason for feeling out of step with the world can give you a sense of identity and purpose that was never quite within your grasp before.
You might be able to compartmentalise before and after easily; you might find it easy to integrate these two different phases of self knowing but you might find it very hard to adjust to being “an autistic person” or “someone with ADHD”... and you might feel a bit of a fraud for taking up this label at a later age than people might expect.
But we know the screening for neurodivergent conditions is skewed towards a male bias and that many women and girls and those with inattentive symptoms were and still are being missed and misdiagnosed with anxiety, depression and other disorders before neurodivergent conditions are considered. So it’s not wild to find it a bit uncomfortable to take up a label that you might not feel you deserve because you are only coming to it later in life. BUT if the new knowledge means you can understand and work with yourself better then it can only lead to better things for you- right?
So how do you step into this new knowledge of yourself and use it as a lens to view your past actions and behaviours while building on what you know about yourself and what you need moving forward?
True crime?
Sometimes it’s about recognising and challenging the ideas you have carried around about yourself.
You might have believed you were:
* lazy but well-meaning
* just not able to “do life” like other people
* flaky but creative
* intense but driven
* incapable of working with others
* bad at life but good at ideas
* emotionally too much
* disorganised but “that’s just how I am”
You may have built an entire personality around:
* trying harder
* masking
* being the clown/ the saviour/ the mediator
* being the chaotic, crazy one
* over achieving and being hyper-vigilant to compensate
* under achieving and feeling ashamed
The truth is you got yourself through things (even if it wasn’t ideal) and you survived without the whole picture. You did your best and in my opinion, you are your own hero/ine and the quicker you can start believing that the more easily you can recognise you have always been a capable human- this gives you somewhere to start.
So ask yourself:
Where have you made great decisions?
Where did you follow your instincts?
What do you do that works well for you?
Where have you advocated for yourself?
What adaptations have you made?
When did you trust yourself?
Who or what do you utilise to support you?
What did you manage to do despite great difficulty?- and what did you learn about yourself/people/systems?
You might not even be able to see how hard you’ve been trying- that’s ok. If and when you are able to answer some of these questions (and anything else that comes up for you) then you’ll be able to bridge the gap between pre diagnosis you and you now.
You might realise how much work you’ve been doing just to get to a level playing field- you might be able to work out where you might want or need to continue this and where you might not.
Everyone’s self discovery journey is different and there is no right way except what works for you.
