A woman who found out she had ADHD after decades of being undiagnosed has spoken of the grief she felt when she found out. Hannah Huxford, 47, had always wondered why things were different for her.
Even back in her school days she would be called immature. She was even held back a year by teachers.
She questioned herself for years before finally getting the diagnoses that opened her eyes. Hannah said it was difficult to come to terms with, but she's now written a book about her experience in the hope of helping others, reports GrimsbyLive.
She said: "After two years of investigation, I was eventually diagnosed with ADHD, Dyslexia and PTSD. In recent times, it's been put across by celebrities as a trend or a cool thing to have, but that discredits it straight away.
"It's very strange for me though as it's not common to hear about it affecting women, especially those who are 47 like me. I didn't realise something might be wrong until I moved back to Grimsby though."
Hannah added: "After 20 years of being self-employed I started a new job, but quickly began to have meltdowns and my behaviour was very different to normal. My boss noticed something was wrong, seeing that I kept getting overwhelmed and having permanent brain fog.
"I started to question my life and some of the things I was doing and it now turns out that I was using them as coping strategies to deal with my undiagnosed ADHD. I decided to go to the doctors who said it was becoming more common in people my age and that got the ball rolling."
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As well as being told she had ADHD, Hannah was also informed she had Dyslexia and PTSD which was caused by a life time of carrying around a disability she knew nothing about.
She said: "I realised I had been masking who I was all these years and decided to just be the real me. After I was told I went into a grieving process, that's the only way I can describe it.
"For years, I'd been told I was immature and not good enough at school. People always said I was too loud or extra and some people didn't even invite me to places because they thought I was embarrassing. My school even held me back a year because they thought I was too immature for secondary school, now it all makes sense."
Off the back of her diagnosis, Hannah decided to write a book about her experience in the hopes of helping others. The Secret Diary of an ADHD Martyr: A Girl Gone Wild takes readers on a journey through her life from when she was a child to now.
Hannah said: "The book will hopefully help others to realise they might be in the same position as me, but I also found writing it was like therapy for me. I felt sad for a while and it was a bit of a mix of emotions when I was told about everything, but the book was a way of creating something positive out of it all."
Staying up until 3am some nights, Hannah, from Grimsby, spent six weeks alongside her friend Alan to create the book before spending another seven editing it. "I just want it to give some idea what life is like living with ADHD for those who don't know," she said.
