The question at the center of my life, ever since I was a very little kid, has been: “What’s wrong with her?”. My mom tells me I hit all of the developmental milestones like a normal kid until three years old, when suddenly I didn’t. By four years old, I wasn’t socializing with the other kids in a normal way. My interests were peculiar for my gender. From the ages of three until I left my hometown for college, I was asked: “What’s wrong with you?” and “Why are you different?”. And despite seeing multiple specialists throughout this period, the honest answer is: The professionals don’t know, my teachers don’t know, my parents don’t know, and I don’t know. At 22 years old, when I had moved abroad during the pandemic and things were really hard, I was still asking myself: “What's wrong with me?” and wishing I had an answer. Because, I thought, life didn’t have to be this hard, right?
Like many chronically online people, I went to the self help forums and searched up people with similar issues to me, partially to feel less alone, and partially to get answers. Besides, the internet is a great source of knowledge right? What's the harm in a little self-diagnosis? The people who resonated the most with me were those on r/cPTSD, who tended to examine their lives through the lens of really challenging childhoods. Trauma at the center of their existence. But this couldn’t be me, because, like I said, there was also clearly something wrong with me. r/ADHD seemed to have a lot of people with the same issues, since by this point in my life, I am numbing myself, procrastinating like crazy, and losing interest in everything that once gave me joy. So, I went and got diagnosed with ADHD at a clinic that specializes only in diagnosing ADHD, and shocker, ADHD was the diagnosis I got. But the clinic only diagnoses, they don’t treat, and so when having the label didn’t fix things, and incorporating tools and strategies that are supposed to help someone with ADHD didn’t work, I became miserable. And I finished a master's degree miserable and burnt out. Still wondering what the hell was wrong, still wanting a diagnosis that made everything clear. Still wanting things to get better and magically fixed with the right label. How great would it be to say: “This! This is why things have gone wrong!”.
At 25 years old, I was lucky enough to start a PhD, and when I joined my lab, a colleague asked, out of genuine support and curiosity, “Hey, you’re a little different, like me. Have you thought about getting diagnosed to get access to the tools that might help?”. And off I went again, to a diagnostic clinic that this time used qEEG (which is not so scientifically validated) and behavioral tests for another round of diagnostics. The result was different, but the outcome was the same: a diagnosis of ADHD like behaviors without the classic ADHD markers. The clinic offered no path beyond pharmacologics for treatment, not even in pair with a professional to supervise and help understand the medication they were offering. Apparently a common occurrence with these kinds of things. I turned down the option to take the meds.
I am now 26. My PhD is, like most PhDs, a stressful time and a treatise on self-management and self-regulation. The question at the center of my life is now even more focused on: “What the hell is wrong with you?” and so much of my time is spent trying to find the answer. If I could just know, I could tell people why I am a little strange, a little different, a little out there. Just a one word answer that would tell people, “you’re not crazy, there is something off! How very perceptive. Now that you’re aware of the ideosyncraticies, I can tell you that the thing that defines me is ___!”. That way, I wouldn’t have to keep masking all different things about me, and I could be more confident in myself when I could just say, when asked, why yes, I do have “___”. And then people would be accepting, and kind, and accommodating. It's a lovely thought, and far from reality. The reality is, people judge. Labels invite preconceptions.
They can be limiting for self growth if you use the label as an excuse, and avoid the responsibilities around it. But it can also let you know when a “won’t” is actually a “can’t”. She “won’t” listen at a meeting becomes she “can’t” sustain attention to people’s conversations for more than two minutes before mind wandering. Labels can direct you towards strategies that actually work, so that “can’t” accomplish a task the conventional way means you accomplish the same unconventionally because the task is no less important.
Knowing what I know now, looking back at my life, it sucks that the question at the center of it all was: “What is wrong with you?”. I think it speaks more about my parents' unwillingness or incapability to accept me as I am rather than an inherent flaw. After all, if them taking me to multiple specialists resulting in no diagnosis then, and nothing is conclusive now, maybe the condition that I have is (groan) the human condition. I tried to make the central question of my life: “how can I grow and change for the better?”, “how can I show up for the people that I care for?”, “how can I be the best student I can be, and then how can I give my all to the work at hand?”. But each of these was trying to remedy that fact that I thought there was something inherently wrong, and something to be fixed. I was asking myself how I could make me “not wrong” or “not broken” anymore. But that’s not an actual solution. There’s no reasonable end goal to “not be broken”. So I think, for now, the best I can do is to try to answer: “How can I accept the person that I am unconditionally?”. It’s a lot harder said than done. The struggle is real.