The Emotional Toll Of Undiagnosed AuDHD (Explained by No.1 AuDHD Expert)

Added: 2026-05-09

[00:00:00]Yeah.

[00:00:00]>> What is the emotional toll perhaps of someone who has ADHD but never figures it out?

[00:00:07]>> This reminds me of a um of something that happened recently.

[00:00:12]Somebody um a mother um contacted me from um from Canada. She emailed me and she said that she has read my book. She had she had seen our um our our previous podcast and for a very long time she was in grief because her son died a year ago. Um his name was Adam. Um he was a musician.

[00:00:42]Um he was at the age of 13 years he was selected as one of the BBC musicians of the year. Um gifted. He saw music on the piano. He learned he mastered the music in two months after he learned the basics of it to the extent that people said that he is unteachable now. People could not train him because he was at that very level. He had died a year ago of overdose, fentinyl overdose and the mother could not forgive him or forgive herself. had not looked at the picture for a year. And when she sent me the story and sent me the email, I cried for 5 minutes, just just listening and just listening to the voice note and and looking at the story that she had sent the pictures of the person from the very onset. Like again, he was he was brilliant, but he used to forget things.

[00:01:44]He he ended up one day with just one shoe in school. Um he was he was not a typical um ADHD. And when mother raised concerns with with with the school teacher with with with the school nurse and she laughingly said, "Oh, somebody who can memorize a 40page uh sonata cannot have any learning difficulty." So it was completely dismissed. And then there was another side to him who was very preoccupied with things with special interest. He would not meet people. Um he would not mingle with people. He was uh taught in one of the best music musical music schools in the in in the world like he was in Manchester. Uh then he went to the Hamburg uh conservatory which is one of the leading institutes and he played all over Europe but again not socializing with people. The defining factor was in his life was the pandemic and that broke him. He was devastated.

[00:02:53]He was locked in the in the dome not able to get out. mother had to fly all the way from Canada because he had lost yet another passport, his sixth in a year and the authorities won't issue him the passport and mother had no alternative but to take him back because he was not able to sustain himself in Europe. Um and with that his dreams shattered to be a musician. Um he was diagnosed eventually with ADHD but was never medicated. He could not hold a job. Um he started self-medicating.

[00:03:26]He then it went into using hard drugs and u eventually became homeless and and and and the world saw him as an addict.

[00:03:37]He could not go past beyond that addiction phase of his like he became invisible from a music musical prodigy to to being a homeless person on the streets and according to mother his whole life was a contradiction.

[00:03:56]He was perfectionistic yet very chaotic and he he feared life more than death.

[00:04:04]When when his mother asked him and again that gave me goosebumps and mother said Adam why do you take drugs and he says mother normal people they fear death people like me they use drugs because we fear life as such a strong statement and it actually shows his insight into his life and how he was missing understood and not seen and he eventually one day died of a ventonal overdose. His m parents were in another city and mother received a call and a doctor with your son is on ventilator. What should we do? This is what a missed our can look like. It is one of the most heartbreaking examples. But people like Adam, they just go unnoticed in this world.

[00:05:05]They became unvisible despite of being brilliant. And like the story has has stayed with me. It doesn't go away because every time I think of Audi HD, I think of Adam.

[00:05:19]>> Such a heartbreaking story, Kuram, and thank you for sharing it. I think it's a tribute to Adam and it shines such a bright spotlight on the importance of the work that yourself and many people are doing to raise awareness. I think I'm certainly thinking of someone I'm sure many of the listeners and viewers are thinking of someone that they know as well their own version of Adam who is deeply struggling who perhaps it's themselves who feels deeply misunderstood. What can undiagnosed ADHD look like?

[00:05:56]>> The contradictions they will live in contradictions. People have come to me that they have they have said to me that they were not sure whether they were autistic or ADHD for a very long time.

[00:06:08]They were too organized to be um to be ADHDers and they are too disorganized to be to be autistics.

[00:06:16]But at the same time they things that they tried there was a push and pull factor. they would not be able to achieve the full potential. Um something stops them and they don't understand what's stopping them. The disparity, the contradictions that we spoke about, for example, wanting something but unable to achieve it. Having the attention span and the concentration but not able to sustain it for a very long long period of time unless they go into phase of hyperfocus where is there's a consequence attached to it. A lot of these people they work in very stressful environments because the stress is leading the way and stress is helping them achieve or finish things. You take away that stress and if you put them in a very boring environment where there's no consequence, their work will be a very substandard level because there's nothing enticing them, there's nothing stimulating them towards it. And for an Audi HD, it's it will be a story of shattered dreams, broken hearts, complicated interpersonal relationships, um losing friend constantly without knowing it. So show showing passion and aversiveness both at the same time towards their partners and towards friends and towards family. And people who cannot understand it and people who do not have the lens to understand these patterns will all of a sudden they will move away from them and they feel themselves to be lonely.

[00:07:47]>> Do you think having ADHD is generally a lonely experience? In other words, is it hard to maintain con connections, friendships, relationships when in order to do that, you need to put a true version of yourself forward? And it sounds like many people with ADHD don't have a good understanding of who they really are.

[00:08:04]>> Yeah. And and they they start masking it and masking takes a lot of energy and masking led them to be what they're not.

[00:08:13]the the burden of carrying that mask in those relationship can be intense and they can be volcanic eruptions from time to time because they unable to sustain it for a period of or they could be burnouts because they unable to have that energy to sustain that mass for a very long time.

[00:08:30]>> What emotions crop up when someone discovers they have ADHD?

[00:08:36]>> It's a spectrum of emotions, a spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spe spectrum of responses that you would get from people.

[00:08:41]Um some people who have been who did not come on their own valition but again their partners or their their friends kind of urged them to come they can go through a state of denial um and then from there they they would like to learn more about themselves and eventually embracing but it takes a lot of time.

[00:09:03]Some people get very emotional. Um they they cry, they grieve and they grieve because they look at the missed opportunities. They they look at the parents. Why would not parents able to pick those up? And I always use this analogy. I said eyes can't see what the mind does not know. Like if the professionals are missing so much on on these diagnosis or these conditions, how can you expect somebody else who is not a professional who have not been taught who have not been educated about it to be able to understand that? So that helps them to to kind of ease their pain. Some cry with joy and satisfaction and said that I always wanted that but I wanted it to be rubber stamped. I'm satisfied.

[00:09:50]I I feel that I'm whole now. I feel that I'm able to think from that very perspective. One of the most common thing is when people cry, cry with joy because they now know that the things that they're looking for. They found it now because they were kind of throwing arrows in the dark. They're shooting arrows in the dark. They did not know what it was. And if you don't know what it was, how you going to manage