LATE BLOOMERS - LATE DIAGNOSED ADHD: The hidden cost of going undiagnosed for most of your life

Episode Date: May 21, 2025

“For most of my life, I thought I was just a bad person — lazy, dramatic, messy, and too much”. In this episode of LATE BLOOMERS, Rox shares the raw truth about being diagnosed with ADHD in adulthood, and how it changed everything. Alongside Rich, she reflects on the years of masking, people-pleasing, addiction, and breakdowns that came from not understanding her own brain. Together, they explore the emotional weight of a late diagnosis — the grief, the relief, the shame, and the transformation. If you've ever asked yourself “Why am I like this?” — if you’ve ever felt like you’re failing at life for reasons you can’t explain — this episode will hit home. Because sometimes, a diagnosis isn’t just a label. It’s a lifeline.

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These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. This week we are talking about diagnosis. What life was like before Rox got diagnosed and why it was important to her. We are going to look at childhood clues, adulthood clues, the costs of pretending to be normal and the actual impacts of growing up not knowing that you're neurodivergent and we're then going to get to some good bits about when you find out and get to rewrite your personality as not a total failure, but someone that just needed a bit of help.

Welcome to Late Bloomers where we are getting our lives together. Eventually. Right, so I think it would work best if I just ask you questions. Are you interviewing me? Because you are. I'm going to interview you because you are well ADHD. Yes. And you have lived quite a long life without being diagnosed ADHD.

Yeah, mid to late 30s. Yeah, and a shorter period of time diagnosed. Yes, that's so true. I'm going to start at the beginning, if you can remember that far back, is quite a lot of decades ago. Is that, are you going to be all right? I'll be fine, thank you very much. Cool. So talk us through any childhood clues.

So looking back, knowing what you do now, what were some of the clues in your childhood that maybe suspected something wasn't quite right? So believe it or not, I was actually a gifted child. Yeah, okay. That doesn't surprise me, right. So believe it or not, I was actually a gifted child. Yeah, okay. That doesn't surprise me. Does it not? No, you don't. This might surprise you.

I was really good at maths. Oh wow, you're not good at maths now. I know. And English. What happened there? I don't know. Driven by the desperate need to achieve and to be loved. So that's really common in a lot of neurodivergence. Not everyone, but very often gifted kids who are in the gifted kids program end up burnt out messes when they get older.

And then stumble across a diagnosis in later life. So yeah, just always scoring high on tests, doing really well, having multiple interests in loads of things. So for example, when I was at senior school, I had ballet one night, gymnastics another night, French lessons another night, clarinet another night, piano lessons another night, rugby another day. So I was constantly doing different things and I could never pick one to focus on. So that sense of needing to always be on the go and needing to always be stimulated by something new and something different, but being unable to choose one thing and dedicate myself to that. So kind of all over the place with

interests. I also had anger issues as a kid. And a lot of ADHD kids do experience that because of the emotional dysregulation element of ADHD. And unfortunately that's why kids can be seen as aggressive or naughty or trouble. So I remember, yeah, just having like screaming meltdowns if things didn't go my way, really struggling with change. So one story was year seven, I'd gone shopping with my mom. So wait, year seven, you were 11? 11. I'd gone shopping with my mom to Marks and Spencer's and because I was at 11 in the UK, you go to big school. I really wanted to get these kickers shoes that had a heel, like a two inch heel. But I wasn't

allowed to wear heels, but I sort of like slid it through, was able to do it. And then when I got home, her and my dad had a conversation and decided they were going to return the shoes. And I went into complete meltdown. The dopamine would have been raging high after getting the shoes. It was all I needed. It was everything. I was obsessed with them. So they said they were going to return them and I was going to need flat shoes. And I just had an absolute meltdown. My parents didn't know what to do.

And I remember going up and locking myself in the bathroom and just screaming, crying, melting down. But you're only 11 so you don't know what's going on. So emotional dysregulation, I remember I had an older brother, we'd get in fights, I'd be really aggressive. I've punched, I've scratched, you know, it's kid behaviour, but it goes outside of your sort of normal functioning. And when you don't know that you are neurodivergent, that is then categorised as aggressive, naughty trouble from a very early age. And also memory issues. So I was a gifted kid, but I've told this story before, but it really highlights it. I used to always

run into our patio door because it was made of glass and just forget. You used to run into it? Yeah. Trying to run outside in the summer. That's hilarious. Yeah. So then my parents got like a little stained glass paint kit that I could paint and stick it on so I would see something, but even that I'd not notice it and keep trying to run through. And I think that is like the ADHD experience, running

into a glass door and never learning that it's there. That feels very true to adulthood. As the facilitator of this interview, I must say, lovely answer, but you can't take that long answering each of these questions. I've got a few questions for you. I've got seven. Right. I think you've picked the wrong person to interview there, my love. If you keep it more punchy, that would be great. Okay, I'll try. Okay, so the same question, but in adulthood, because obviously you live a different experience in adulthood, because presumably, like thinking back to some of your struggles today, weren't really a problem

in childhood because you had parents to tell you where to go. The first big one, and by the way, 18 isn't adulthood, but it is markedly different from being 11. I was a dad at 18. Yeah. Was that up head for me? Come on. That's another episode. So I moved out for the first time and I went to university and that's when everything fell to absolute pieces. Because even though my parents didn't know and home life wasn't very happy, I've spoken about it a lot, but lots of affairs and secrets in my house, my mum was very supportive. So my mum would help tidy my room and clean my clothes. And without even knowing it was

due to ADHD, she knew there was a struggle and she helped me. And she was also just incredibly loving. So I always had a very loving person. You go to university, you lose all of that support and structure. And literally from day one, I had a completely different experience than everyone else at uni. Day one, you go, you get your forms, you go and register. I didn't do it. I couldn't figure out where to go, how to get my forms, how to fill them in. So from day one, I was already behind. That just got worse and worse and worse. I remember missing loads of lectures, finally getting up the courage to go to my first lecture. I'd probably missed about a week. Getting my little map, finding my way there, really struggling with directions, really struggling with time. Get in there, sit down, panicked, sweating, realised I'm not in the philosophy lecture.

I'm in a computer science lecture. Stayed for the whole thing, took notes. You took notes. I was too embarrassed and anxious to leave. You didn't even pretend to take notes, you actually took notes. I was like, as I'm here, I might as well, which is so embarrassing. And that experience extended over three years. So my attendance was about 5% at uni.

years. So my attendance was about 5% at uni. I was behind. My room was an absolute disgrace. And it was at that point that I started to just make a bit of a joke of it. Like, you are messy. Like, I don't care. Like almost wherever it is an anti-badge of honour. Because you have to find a way to coach explain why you're such a mess while you're so behind. It makes me think just, just picking up on something that you said about your mum and although you weren't diagnosed, you were clearly struggled. So she would be doing a lot of things for you. It just made me think and it's probably worth mentioning if any of the listeners have got kids with ADHD. I don't know what the answer is, right? Because in adulthood, you were always going to struggle for organization and tidiness and stuff like that. But the

answer isn't just do it for you because then you get to a stage where, and it was obviously meant with love and care, but what that meant is you had no strategies or you hadn't developed anything to be able to be organised and tidy and stuff like that. So it's something that you probably need to tackle quite early. I think it's, you know, now we didn't even have this word, but now it's body doubling. Just doing it alongside someone, explaining. I feel such a key thing of ADHD is that we don't learn by osmosis. So a normal kid grows up, you watch your parent doing it, pick up, you learn, you do it. Done work like that for us. I could have watched it a hundred times, unless I'm in it, doing it, understanding it, finding my own weird little quirks to make it a motivating thing. I'm like a duck out

of water, just drowning and it made university such a shame because I didn't make the most of it. I spent nine grand. I did end up with a degree, but I think I did more drinking than I did studying. Yeah. And what about like after uni work and relationships? I was very good at getting jobs. Yeah, I'm sure you were. I could come across unreal in the interview. I'd send in a colour coded CV.

Like I was so impressive at the start. The ability to mask as like a high achieving person. And then every time just flopped, just fell on my face, fell behind. And I'd leave that job, find a new job. This is my new passion. This will be the one. Same thing over and over and over again. And I'd stick it out for maybe a year, two years.

And then I'd just fail again. Strangely enough, the jobs I have fond memories of, or the one job was working in a pub. And I'd done that on and off in summer holidays from 18, probably up until late 20s. I would work in a pub if I was really short on money. Obviously I was an alcoholic, so maybe that's why I liked it. But I could do it. And once I got to know where the buttons were and the drinks and got over the anxiety, I was really good. Using my hands, using my body.

Meeting different people. There was variety. It was really fun. But when you've grown up a gifted kid, you aren't allowed to enjoy working in a pub. You need to go and be an accountant or a lawyer. But those were the areas where you are flopped hard and you end up feeling so rubbish. Okay, so pre-diagnosis, quite a picture you've painted. And you know, adulthood, struggling at university, then in work.

Um, but I suppose my question is how did you cope? Because you got here and that sounds horrendous. Uh, at university I coped by drinking. I coped by drinking. I was the party animal. So you get your self-esteem from being social, drinking the most, being the girl that drinks with the boys, loads of kind of romantic things going on. So that just keeps you feeling good about yourself when your life is falling apart. At work, I just tried to force myself every time, drinking and drugs, a big part of my twenties as I entered the realm of work. It was at that point, I'd done an accountancy thing for a bit. I'd been an assistant for

a bit. I'd trained as a sales trader for a bit. It was at that point music really came into my life. Music was a coping strategy because I could sit down with a guitar and sing about how I was feeling. I felt human for the first time. It's so strange because it's not a normal thing to do, but it made me feel quite normal. And I think the love of music and the fantasy of making it in music kept me going through a time when I was definitely not, there weren't many reasons to keep going. And in my early twenties, you know, you're chaos, you're changing jobs, you're in debt, you're changing houses. My mum had also died, so I'm dealing with horrendous grief but not processing any of it. You can kind of get away with it. Early twenties,

sort of like manic pixie dream girl type vibe. Lates, the shame starts to catch up with you because my friends were getting married and buying houses and there'd been five years in jobs and getting promoted and I was still leaving another job back in the pub, another relationship breakdown, racking up debt. it really starts to hurt. Well, my next question was, coping mechanisms, drink, drugs, and then shame. So my next question was, how was your mental health at this point in your life? By late 20s, it was off a cliff and I didn't know, we didn't have the awareness. So I was drinking myself and taking sleeping pills every night, just to numb out, just to get to sleep. I couldn't

exist sober, I was running from so much. My mind goes to the, I lived for three years in a basement flat in London. I was 27 to 30, worst years of my life. Worst years of my life, I lived alone. Basement flat was messy, disgusting, mold growing, dirty clothes everywhere, disgusting bed sheets, drinking every night to just make it through. I had problems with self-harm, which is often seen as a kind of teenage thing, but it stayed with me until my early thirties. Relationship

breakdowns, getting in debt, bailiffs at the door, had my electricity meter removed and replaced with a pay as you go. Couldn't figure out how to top that up so often. I'd just be sat in darkness. So like pretty horrendous. Like definitely haunted by thoughts of like it could be easier not to do this. But then you just go to the pub and have a few desperados and you feel okay. Pizza Express was in it. I remember you telling me when you lived in your London flat. Let me see. Let me remember if I get this right. You used to go and have a glass of white wine. And two large glasses of Moscato.

Is that white wine? Yeah. Like it's kind of sweet. Was it a salad? It wasn't a pizza you used to get, was it? It depends what mood I was in. Some, if I was on a health kick, I'd go for a salad, but I wouldn't eat cause I'd wake up at two or three in the afternoon and then

wait, wouldn't eat all day, float around and then go to Pizza Express six or seven. That would start the drinking, go to the corner shop on the way back, buy a six back, come back home. Often I would write songs in that drunken haze. A lot of, if anyone knew any of my early writing and dance music, that was often written in a drunken depressed haze. A lot of, if anyone knew any of my early writing and dance music, that was often written in a drunken depressed haze in my basement flat after Pizza Express. Okay, so quite the life so far. Yeah. Like knowing you as I do now, and even going back to when I first met you and you didn't know you had ADHD, I would imagine you were pretending to be normal in speech marks, certainly

not have any of these struggles. So how on earth, how did you do that? I mean, the pretending to be normal has been there my whole life. You know, even I go back to the worst three years of my life in that basement flat. I wouldn't let anyone see, nobody knew what I was going through. I kept it secret because I was so ashamed. And shame just breeds in secrecy, doesn't it? So, you know, I wouldn't let anyone see how disgusting it was. If someone was coming around, I'd hide stuff under the bed. I'd have a semblance of normality. No one knew what debt I was in. No one knew how much I was drinking. around, I'd hide stuff under the bed. I'd have a semblance of normality. No one knew what debt I was in. No one knew how much I was drinking as I've had different groups I'd drink with or take drugs with or socialise with. No one knew I was taking sleeping pills

most nights. So you hide it all away. And anyone I did meet up with, I just painted the face on and party girl, everything's great. Yeah, let's go out. And I would imagine that that would have been taking its toll as well, right? Like that. There's a huge emotional drain when you're pretending to be normal. There's a huge cost to it because no one ever knows who you are. So you never get any actual connection. So you're very, very, very lonely. And it takes all your energy. It's like all the energy that I probably needed to help myself was going on pretending to fit in, in the outside world. So I feel like the ADHD experience for a long time is total denial and

rejection of your actual life. Yeah. In sacrifice of pretending to everyone else, family and friends, that you've got it together. But your actual life is crumbling to pieces in your own hands. It's so sad that we choose the image of being okay over actually being okay. Obviously a few years later I get sober. I'd understood and I'd messed up my life with alcohol so bad. I realized that was a huge common denominator in a lot of issues. So I walked in an AA meeting and that was the time alcohol needs to go out in my life.

So this probably is a good point to start maybe lifting the mood. It feels like this is the part you're in your early thirties now. 34. I've gone for another breakup. I've moved back in with my dad again at 34. The shame in that man. I'm in debt. I haven't got a job. I just felt like the most useless lump of human flesh that there ever is. But I had sobriety and those days it started to do something to me, which was I can make a change. I can commit to something. I'm doing it. The first time ever, I think I'd committed to something and not sacked it off. And I kept going back and I kept doing it. And my life did start to change because I stopped ignoring the pain. I wasn't going out buying loads of drugs.

So I was not out of debt, but I was not actively adding to my debt. Starting to open the odd letter and be like, Oh my God, I owe five grand here. Just starting to look at the mess of my life and decide to, to work with it. But actually, sorry, I've totally forgot what was the question. Yeah, you've, you've digressed a little bit. So back on the diagnosis route, when was it important then? When was the turning point in your life that you thought a diagnosis was important?

So you take away alcohol, and then I have a mental breakdown a year later. Paranoia, anxiety, self-hatred, grief over my mum, shocking realization of all the debt I'm in and that I'm 34 and it's too late to get my life together. I hated myself really very deeply. It's one thing to have thoughts of not being here anymore when you're drunk every day and in your 20s, but when you're in your 30s and sober it's a bit more scary. So that felt very, very real. And I'd sort of had a secret pact that when my dad

went, I'd just join him. That's my only reason to stay alive. So like, was in a really, even though I was sober, I was in a very low place. That sent me into therapy. Early therapy was about dealing with the anxiety, paranoia, trauma, grief, yada, yada, yada. I hadn't even had time to look at my lateness, messiness, disorganisation. You don't go to therapy with that because it feels small. I'd always just blame me. I'm a messy prick. I'm awful. I'm lazy. I'm disorganised. That's not for therapy. Therapy is for trauma. But after a year of therapy, I've started to feel a bit better with some of the worst symptoms. I hadn't really got to the root cause, but the worst symptoms had subsided with the work

I was doing. And that's when I sort of first bought up in therapy. Listen, doc, is it normal that I've gone the wrong way on a train six times this week, lost my wallet twice, lose my phone every day, can't fill out a form? And it was the first time I had vocalised that those collection of things didn't perhaps feel normal to me and maybe something was going on. She mentioned it could sound like some attention deficit difficulties. And that was it, right up a drainpipe, back home on TikTok, podcast, books. I just absorbed everything. And it was like this, oh my God moment. It is not just me. I'm not the most disgusting useless piece of shit in the world. I think I might have ADHD.

And then you went and got diagnosed. Turns out I did have it. So you know me, I love to oversimplify everything that I ever talk about. So what's really interesting, because you mentioned it like they seem like small things when you mentioned it to therapy, but if I take you way back to when you started to really struggle in adulthood, it started with small things, right? Like it started with organization not going to the right thing, which turned into big things, which led to there were some other things as well. This is an oversimpl which, which turned into big things, which led to, there were some

other things as well. This is an oversimplification, which turned into alcohol to cope because you were always like, and that then turned into bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And then you tackled that and then you were left with the small things. But I just wonder if it was, if it was earlier, like people, you know, on the internet, it frustrates me, but people, you know, saying, oh, everyone's late or everyone, like, it's only your baby in and it's only clean and tidy in and stuff like that. Like they're not big things. They really do add up and that can really lead to some quite dark paths.

It's ADHD is four times as more likely to try and not be here anymore. Yeah. And when you, when you look at it like that, it is, you know, you know, we make light of it and stuff like that. And some of the videos that we do is about time blindness and there's a comical spin on it. But we really do have to give space for. I mean, I get to be comical about it now because I live with someone that fully accepts it, supports it, is part of our love story. We deal with it and it can be funny. It wasn't funny before. And the people on the internet, it's closer to home than that. My step-mum said to me, the only reason you've got ADHD is because you were cuddled when you're younger, my dad doesn't think it's real. It's so damaging, that kind of judgment. It is so damaging because

what you're telling me then is that I am useless, I am worth nothing, I am a failure. And you know, it's not true. And actually, you're so right to point out that I've belittled it by saying it was a little thing so I didn't bring it to therapy. If you don't go to the doctors for 10 years and get your health checks, you will end up, let's talk about me, I didn't go for many years to get a smear test,

my mom died of cervical cancer, but I couldn't open the letter or book the appointment. Open a letter, small thing, dying of cancer, pretty big thing. Well, yeah, that's, yeah. Just to bring the mood down again, yeah. Right, so thank you. I've got one more question. Just for those that are maybe considering it or whatever, what has life been like since diagnosis? Oh my god. So here's the thing. Diagnosis isn't everything and there's a load of other stuff that you need to work on and do, but it is a saving grace. It was life-changing

for me. And here's the biggest thing it allowed me to do. Stop obsessing about fixing myself and then hating myself when I inevitably failed. Every ADHDer knows that they have spent so many years trying to change it. I'll become clean. I'll be on time. I'll be organized. I'll sort myself out. I'll buy a notebook and rearrange my entire life. I'll stay in this job. You burn yourself out, you get depressed, you quit that job, you change that

relationship, you don't make that massive life change, you hate yourself and the cycle begins again. When you realise it's ADHD, you stop trying to change things that you can't change. I ain't going to be great with time, nor money, nor organisation. I'm not going to go and train as an accountant. I'm going to stop trying. All of that time gets to go on to something else. Now, if you're trying to fix ADHD, you're on a losing battle. I started to work with ADHD, support myself, have an incredible partner support me, be in therapy, learn about it, talk about it on the internet. So it was fully integrated and accepted and supported. I wasn't trying

to kick it out anymore. And all of the time that I'd spent hating myself and trying to change, I put into trying to change other things like my job, my music career, my creativity, how I dressed. And guess what? You can change all of those things. My music career has gone from four flops and wasting God knows how many thousands of pounds to being barely successful because I saved all of that energy. I started to love and support myself and started trying to change things I actually could change. One thing, because you know, diagnosed on or not, I suppose you could argue that could be achieved without either. From being a witness, I think what I noticed is you were able to give yourself a lot of

grace for what had happened. Like it was like, oh, I'm not broken. I'm not a horrible, like it helped your self-esteem because it explained so much of the past, the diagnosis. I think there was a lot of that as well from being a witness. Yeah. I hated myself. I hated who I was. I hated my personality. I wanted it to change. I thought I deserved punishment because of all the ways I'd messed up my life. And it was. It's like the grace of God in an ADHD diagnosis that just says, hey, actually, let's look at this as you were struggling without knowing and without support and you had some pretty wonky coping mechanisms, but that's the best you had.

And doing that probably freed up some mental capacity to work on all the other stuff that you said going forward because you weren't wrapped up in what's wrong with me. You can't build a life that you love when you hate yourself. So no matter what I tried to do in my 20s, it was never going to work because I absolutely detested myself. So I was going to self-sabotage it, walk away, leave something good, mess it up, all subconsciously of course. But now I don't hate myself anymore. So I get to try and build a life that I really love and it's working. I have a beautiful, wonderful partner, Step Kids, lovely dog. We do this on the internet trying and I really hope that we do to help people make the same

breakthrough. To come from the basement flat where I'm thinking about topping myself to here. That just shows the importance of it. Well, as the interviewer, I feel like Michael Parkinson through that. Thank you. You actually were on time as well

after the first little nudge. Only because you gave me a kick in the bum. Did you see some of my facial expressions? I did, it was like, hurry up, hurry up. I think you did. I think it was really powerful though. I think it was really useful. It's fascinating for me to hear, and I haven't got ADHD. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I think it's just, it's just helpful providing that this is why it's important. It's not people just scatter brainin struggle to be on time. It's like it can have some impacts. Yeah, it can. Thanks so much for listening. If you liked it, give us a like, give us a follow, give us a comment, give us a subscribe. And if you didn't, please don't say anything because I have RSD. See you next week.

Bye. Did you know that many products for pregnant women do not have their own clinical trials for safety or efficacy? That's because pregnant women are often excluded from clinical studies. Ritual is aiming to set a new standard with their Essential Prenatal Multivitamin. It's the number one best-selling prenatal

and the only leading prenatal backed by its own human clinical trial. Essential prenatal is proven to deliver key nutrients, including folate, biotin, and vitamin D during pregnancy. Moms taking essential prenatal had a lower overall cortisol level during pregnancy than those taking a leading prenatal. Plus, it's designed to be gentle on the stomach. Ritual doesn't just have your back. They have the receipts. Get 25% off at ritual.com slash clinical.

These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.