re: Seeing a lot of "mental health" posts here and in the news in general

quote:

---

Haven't you stated before you are on the spectrum and have ADHD or something similar? Just curious if there was something you wish your parents would have done different when you were younger?

---

I was always a weird kid, but I was incredibly smart so school was no effort. It’s socially okay to be weird when you’re 5, less so when you’re 13. I started really struggling socially when I was in middle school after moving schools from where I had a large close friend group developed in primary school. I started struggling more than I was used to in school work because the amount of responsibilities I had to keep track of multiplied. I wasn’t struggling to do the work when I would do it, I was struggling with the basic concept of remembering that I had work to do or checking my book to see if I had any homework. I also was bullied a lot (at school, at home, at all of my after school activities) and had anger issues (probably from losing so many fights that I didn’t start). All of this resulted in a pretty bad public meltdown at school in 8th grade and some suspensions for fighting.

My mom enrolled me in therapy, and the therapist was useless. All he did was listen. I didn’t need someone to just listen, I needed HELP! I needed advice on what I could do to solve my problems. I needed systems that would keep me organized, I needed social skills to defuse situations I couldn’t physically fight out of, I needed social skills to make friends and foster relationships as an adult, I needed ways to manage my out of control brain so I could focus. I got NONE of that.

I tried again in college when I was on the verge of dropping out, and they at least helped me understand my personality and learning styles a lot better. This helped me switch majors and improve my grades enough to graduate.

It wasn’t until I was almost 30, and working in a professional setting after graduate school that I finally got some real help that sorta worked. “What you’re describing is called x. Some techniques you can use in your everyday life when x comes up are y and z”. The bipolar diagnosis and the techniques used to mitigate it were literally life changing. If I had that at 13, I probably would have been so much more successful socially, scholastically, and financially as a young adult.