I Thought Everyone Felt Like This’: The Quiet Reality of Late-Diagnosed ADHD
- Tracey Langrill
- Jun 4
- 4 min read
Late-diagnosed ADHD has become far more common as our understanding increases (particularly the signs in women, which have been neglected in many ways). For some individuals, that moment feels like a lightbulb switching on. For others, it’s more like an avalanche with decades of self-perception, shame, and coping strategies tumbling all at once.
As a counsellor, I'm seeing many clients (particularly women), who have a diagnosis, or are on long waiting lists. Some feel the formal diagnosis isn't important, but recognise that they need help to explore and organise how they feel about it, and how they can live well with ADHD.
Far from being a trend or a fad, the rise in adult ADHD diagnoses reflects a long-standing gap in how we’ve understood and assessed attention-deficit traits, especially in people who don’t fit the “hyperactive schoolboy” stereotype. For many, getting diagnosed later in life is both a relief and a reckoning. It explains so much… but it also opens up a lot of questions.
So what really happens after a late ADHD diagnosis? And why can it feel so complicated?
It’s Not Over-Diagnosis, It’s Catching Up
Some critics claim we’re in the middle of an “ADHD over-diagnosis crisis,” but research doesn’t back that up. What we’re actually seeing is an increase in recognition, particularly among adults and people who were missed in childhood due to masking, high achievement, or simply not being disruptive enough to attract attention.
Many clients describe years of being misunderstood by teachers, partners, workplaces, even themselves. What looked like “laziness,” “flakiness,” or “not trying hard enough” was, in fact, an invisible struggle to regulate attention, emotions, and executive function.
It’s not that people didn’t have ADHD before. It’s that we’re finally getting better at recognising it, especially in forms that don’t fit the traditional mould.
The Emotional Aftershock of Late-diagnosed ADHD
Getting a diagnosis later in life often brings a wave of emotion. For many, it starts with relief; finally, there’s an explanation for why things have always felt harder. Why the smallest tasks feel overwhelming. Why motivation doesn’t work the way it seems to for other people. Why everything’s either hyperfocus or paralysis.
But relief is often followed by something more complex: grief.
You might start replaying moments from school, jobs, relationships which you now view through a new lens. What if you’d had the right support? What if you’d known sooner? It’s common to feel sadness for a version of yourself who tried so hard to keep up, without knowing why it was so exhausting.
You might also feel anger or regret: about the misdiagnoses, the missed chances, the ways you’ve pushed yourself to fit into neurotypical systems at a cost to your health or identity.
“Was Any of It the Real Me?”
One of the more unsettling thoughts that can come with a late diagnosis is: “If I’ve been masking for so long… do I even know who I am without it?”
That’s not an overreaction, it’s a real identity shift. Many people with late-diagnosed ADHD have built entire personalities around managing or compensating for their difficulties: the overachiever, the perfectionist, the people-pleaser, the joker, the one who always says yes but then cancels.
When that scaffolding starts to come down, it’s disorienting. You might start to question the story you’ve always told yourself about who you are, and whether it was shaped more by survival than choice. (This is where therapy can be particularly useful. It gives you space to separate who you really are from the roles you’ve learned to play, often for acceptance, safety, or just to keep life ticking along.)
You Can Stop Fighting Yourself
One of the most powerful shifts that can happen post-diagnosis is the move from “What’s wrong with me?” to “How does my brain actually work?”
For years, many late-diagnosed people have been stuck in a cycle of shame, burnout, and self-blame, trying to force themselves into systems that weren’t built for them, then feeling like failures when it doesn’t work. But ADHD isn’t a failure of character, it’s a different way of processing the world.
Coming to terms with that might involve:
Learning how your attention really functions and how to work with it.
Understanding your need for structure, novelty, or downtime without judgment.
Letting go of the belief that you have to earn rest, or productivity equals worth.
Therapy can support that shift by helping you understand your patterns, not to pathologise them, but to make space for your needs without shame. Approaches like Internal Family Systems (IFS) can also help examine the different “parts” of you that may have been managing your ADHD long before you had a name for it; the taskmaster, the avoider, the inner critic, the exhausted part just trying to keep it together.
You’re Not Starting From Scratch
It’s easy to feel like you’ve wasted time, or that everyone else has had a head start. But a diagnosis doesn’t erase who you are, it just offers context. And with that context comes choice.
You can decide which strategies still work for you and which ones you can let go of. You can build systems that work positively with your brain, instead of punishing it. You can rewrite the narrative from “too much” or “not enough” to “just different, and that’s okay.”
Whether you seek therapy, join support groups, dive into research or just take time to breathe, this new awareness can be the beginning of a more honest, less exhausting way of being.
Need Support Making Sense of It All?
Whether you’ve just been diagnosed or you’re still wondering if ADHD might explain how you’ve always felt, you’re not alone. I work with many clients in this position, and the emotions that come with it are valid: relief, confusion, grief, curiosity, sometimes all at once.
For some, the label of ADHD feels like a missing piece that finally fits. For others, it’s less about diagnosis and more about understanding their patterns and needs differently. There’s no right or wrong way to feel about it and therapy can help you make sense of it, whichever side you’re on.
I offer a calm, non-judgemental space to explore these questions and figure out what works for your brain. If you're navigating this shift and want support, you can get in touch here to book a session.
