I had navigated the medical system to make an appointment, filled out pages of forms, answered a nurse’s questions that repeated what was asked on the form, and answered the psychologist’s questions, which the nurses repeated. If you’ve ever heard someone scratch their nails against a chalkboard for an hour, you can imagine the feeling in my ADHD body, averse to every part of this process, yet drawn to the promise: medication.
It had taken me years to be officially diagnosed after the first indications that I might have this neurodevelopmental disorder, and years more before I ended up here, on medication. My life without it is a whirlwind of forces, leading to natural disasters of impulsiveness that often most acutely devastate my bank account.
The doctor explained that he was newer and wanted to call in the expert. This “expert” entered the windowless room, leaned against the wall and said, “I’ve never heard of anyone with ADHD struggling with personal finances. Have you tried seeing a therapist?
The dam broke. Tears and a raised voice followed. “Yes, I saw a therapist, as I told him, as I told the nurse, as I filled out the form.” I was a hysterical woman who joined generations of women who have sat in a male doctor’s office and not been believed. I scrambled to regain ground. “I wrote about this for the New York Times.”
The expert, who stood with his arms folded and looked down at me in the chair, told me that I was very emotional. He suggested they increase the dosage of my anxiety medication, and he left.
“Well, then he’s incompetent by definition,” said an expert I interviewed for an earlier story and whom I called in desperation.
He knows what I know now: that the link between ADHD and financial problems is well documented. A study on the finances of people with ADHD begins: “ADHD has a debilitating impact on daily functioning, including the ability to make financial decisions.”
Previous studies have shown that we have problems with impulsive spending (as I mentioned), maxing out credit cards, and saving.
“Additionally,” the study continues, “compared to adults without ADHD, adults with ADHD demonstrated difficulty making decisions regarding the future and were more likely to report impulse buying and the use of a spontaneous or avoidant decision-making style.”
Not everyone with ADHD is broke. I have friends who are millionaires because of their ADHD. We also have a superpower called hyperfocus, and for some, finances are their hyperfocus. For me that is online shopping. When eBay first came out, the dopamine mix of winning and spending led to a joke between roommates.
Besides the studies and my own personal history, there is also the empirical evidence. The discussion board of the Facebook group Neurodivergent Finance/ADHD Finance, with more than 15,000 members, is a wall of despair. They’re struggling, they’re in debt, they’re broke, they’ve barely made rent, they’ve overspent, they’re asking for help.
There is a familiar (at least to us) concept of the ADHD tax: the extra money you end up paying because of the symptoms of ADHD. Time blindness causes late fees; Object impermanence means that we lose things and have to replace them.
My struggle with money has been a defining theme in my life
My struggle with money has been a defining theme in my life. There are areas of maturity that I just can’t reach because every time I climb a ladder of effort I fall into a flood of impulsiveness. It feels almost impossible to explain to people without ADHD what it’s like not to be able to say what you’re going to do next. You promise to resist this time, and then you don’t. Over and over again, for decades. I always thought I was a bad person morally. Defective.
That’s why the ADHD community, the boards, the classes and support groups have been life-changing. They taught me that I don’t have to berate myself, hate myself, berate myself. I have learned to advocate for the person in here who has been stuck with this ADHD mind all my life without making a decision about it. And it’s not an excuse; it is an operating system that I am learning to live with and live with.
But that professionals have no idea – that the people who hold the keys to many people do not know that this is the reality we live in – is, I agree, incompetent.
It has been almost a year since that appointment. Even though I continue to struggle, I haven’t gotten through the ADHD kryptonite of the medical systems, the forms, to get a second opinion.
I have no idea how much their ignorance has cost me.
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