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Me, My Editor, and ADHD
Erin Shetron’s Q&A with me, [B]old Woman Debbie Weil
If you prefer, you can listen to my audio recording of this Q&A.
After working together for a year, Erin Shetron knows me quite well. She understands me, as a writer, and, increasingly, as a person. She knows when I need to go deeper, to get closer to the truth, and maybe most important, she’s turned me on to the semi-colon and encouraged me to write more lyrically. But we have more in common than an obsession with punctuation and writing style; we were both diagnosed, as adults, with ADHD.
You probably know that ADHD is often associated with young children who can’t sit still; hence Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder1. But you may not know that it’s estimated that over 15 million2 adults (about six percent of the U.S. adult population) have ADHD. For adults, and especially for women, ADHD is still misunderstood and often misdiagnosed as depression or anxiety or even bipolar disorder. It presents as a cluster of behaviors that can include trouble focussing on one task, difficulty with executive functioning3, a constant desire for novelty, and, often, emotional dysregulation: feeling intense emotions and having difficulty modulating or expressing them. A person, an adult or a child, with ADHD may feel acutely aware of “not fitting in” to society’s norms; of course, continued efforts to try to fit in and to be accepted often lead to anxiety and depression.
Today, I’m turning the tables of my [B]old Women Q&A series. Erin will be asking the questions, and I’ll be answering.
Please meet us in the comments to continue this conversation!
ES: Debbie, you were diagnosed with ADHD in your 40s, in 1995. As someone who was diagnosed in their early 30s only a few years ago, it feels like a small miracle that you were able to get a diagnosis back then, especially as a woman. Can you tell us how you got diagnosed?
DW: Our son, who is now in his mid-40s, was diagnosed as a 14-year-old by a child psychiatrist. It was a surprise to us, as he’d always been a very good student, so I delved into researching ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder, as it was commonly called back then)…
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