William Shakespeare once wrote; “the course of true love never did run smooth” and arguably the same can be said for the path of post-diagnosis acceptance and learning. I thought that learning more about my own neurodivergence would make things easier, yet for some reason things just kept feeling harder and harder. It felt like, in giving myself permission to acknowledge my ADHD, the struggles suddenly felt like they were coming thick and fast. Even the struggles had their own struggles. Things I was able to do before, I now either found incredibly difficult, or couldn’t do at all. I used to be able to work a full day in our open-plan office, yet now more than a few hours felt impossible.

I know now this is a common experience amongst neurodivergent people. It’s a phenomenon called skill regression, in which we lose the ability to execute certain skills and behaviours - something you were previously very proficient at. Executive functioning skills can deteriorate, memory can worsen, sensory sensitivities can become more intense, all seemingly overnight. Prior to my diagnosis I was presenting as a (and excuse the outdated terminology here but) ‘highly functioning’ adult. I have done all the things that society expects of you by the age of nearly-thirty; university degree, a house and a dog, employed full time and recently married. And now I can barely do my job or leave the house. It felt like I had fallen so far.

Not long ago I read Matt Haig’s The Comfort Book, another of his anthologies of his own thoughts and reflections. I highly recommend it. There is a chapter called Caterpillar in which Haig tells the process through which a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. It’s (spoiler alert) not pretty, but somehow, in the way he tells it, it is.