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

LATE BLOOMERS

Rich & Rox Pink

Self-improvement, Education

5.0 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 21 May 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“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.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This week we are talking about diagnosis, what life was like before Rock got diagnosed and why it was
0:05.1	important to her. We are going to look at childhood clues, adulthood clues, the costs of pretending
0:13.2	to be normal and the actual impacts of growing up not knowing that you're neurodivergent.
0:18.8	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,
0:25.8	but someone that just needed a bit of help. Welcome to late blooms where we are getting our
0:29.7	lives together. Eventually. Right. So I think it would work best if I just ask you questions.
0:40.0	Are you interviewing me?
0:41.2	I'm going to interview you because you are well ADHD.
0:45.5	Yes.
0:46.3	And you have lived quite a long life without being diagnosed ADHD.
0:52.0	Yeah, mid to late 30s.
0:54.0	Yeah. And a shorter period of time diagnosed.
0:58.0	Yes, that's so true. I'm going to start at the beginning. If you can remember that far back,
1:03.2	is quite a lot of decades ago. Is that, are you going to be all right? I'll be fine. Thank you very
1:08.5	much. Cool. So talk us through any childhood clues.
1:13.3	So looking back, knowing what you do now,
1:15.9	what were some of the clues in your childhood that maybe suspected something wasn't quite right?
1:21.1	So believe it or not, I was actually a gifted child.
1:27.1	Yeah, okay.
1:28.1	That doesn't surprise me.
1:29.5	Does it not?
1:30.1	No, no.
	...

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