Continuing her personal story for ADHD Awareness month, Kay Szawlis, Senior Trade Mark Paralegal at Springbird IP, writes:
The reason I referred myself for both ASD and ADHD assessments is one that will be familiar to many parents: one of my children was diagnosed.
It wasn’t a huge “WOW!” moment for us. The process had been long, thorough and, at times, exhausting. We had to push in some places and advocate even harder in others. By the time the diagnosis came, we’d already had plenty of time to think, reflect and digest what it all meant.
Our reaction was largely, “Well, that figures.”
But somewhere along the way, a seed was planted in my head.
What if I clash with this child so much because we’re wired in a similar way? What if some of the things I recognise so instinctively are things I’ve experienced myself? What if they got it from me?
The similarities seemed impossible to ignore.
The sensory sensitivities. The emotional outbursts, which I was beginning to understand might actually be meltdowns. The ability to become completely fixated on some decisions while feeling utterly paralysed by others. The tendency to replay social interactions long after everyone else had forgotten them ever happened.
I went down the rabbit hole.
I completed every questionnaire I could find, from the questionable BuzzFeed quizzes to the more reputable screening tools available online. The boxes kept getting ticked.
Of course, all of this was accompanied by a healthy serving of imposter syndrome.
“But surely everyone does that?”
“Doesn’t everybody overthink conversations?”
“Isn’t everybody secretly exhausted by social situations?”
It took me a long time to move from curiosity to actually seeking an assessment.
I wasn’t looking for a label. I wasn’t looking for an excuse. I wasn’t searching for a reason to explain away every challenge I’d ever faced.
I was looking for understanding.
Partly for myself, but also for my child.
I wanted to be able to say, hand on heart, “I get it.”
I wanted them to feel connected to their family. To know they weren’t the odd one out. To feel that some of what they were experiencing was shared and understood by the people closest to them.
So I went through the assessment process.
And it turned out I do not meet the diagnostic criteria for either autism or ADHD.
Now that was the shock.
I had fully prepared myself to emerge as a textbook case of AuDHD. Looking back, I realise I’d almost written the ending before I’d reached it.
At first, I struggled with the result.
Not because I thought the clinicians were wrong. The assessment was thorough, thoughtful and professional. But after spending so much time viewing my life through a neurodivergent lens, I had expected the conclusion to fit neatly into place.
Instead, I was left sitting with uncertainty.
For a while, I found myself questioning everything.
Had I misunderstood myself?
Had I convinced myself of something that wasn’t true?
Had I somehow jumped on a bandwagon?
Was I an imposter?
The irony wasn’t lost on me that I was overthinking my assessment outcome with exactly the kind of intensity that had led me there in the first place.
What took me time to understand is that not meeting the diagnostic criteria doesn’t mean the traits disappear.
The sensory sensitivities are still there.
I still overthink conversations.
I still get stuck on decisions.
I still have coping mechanisms and strategies that help me navigate life.
The difference is that, according to the assessment, those traits don’t meet the threshold required for a diagnosis.
That doesn’t make them imaginary.
One of the things I was most grateful for was the response from my neurodivergent friends.
Nobody asked me to hand back a membership card.
Nobody accused me of invading their space.
Nobody suddenly decided I didn’t belong.
Instead, they gave me room to process. They asked thoughtful questions. They listened. They reminded me that understanding yourself isn’t dependent on a diagnosis.
And perhaps most importantly, they helped me realise that self-awareness doesn’t have to be validated by a piece of paper to be worthwhile.
The experience also gave me a different perspective on my child.
If the traits I recognise in myself don’t meet the diagnostic threshold, yet my child’s clearly do, then the challenges they experience are likely far more intense than my own.
I don’t pretend to fully understand what goes on inside their head. But I do feel as though I have been given a small glimpse into it.
A point of reference.
A tiny window into how their brain might experience the world.
And that has made me a more empathetic parent.
As for me, the process revealed something else.
Many of the ADHD and autism traits I recognised in myself may actually be linked to my Generalised Anxiety Disorder. At the beginning of this process I assumed it was the other way around. I thought the anxiety was simply a consequence of being neurodivergent.
It turns out that human brains are rarely that straightforward.
Different conditions can overlap. Traits can look similar. Coping mechanisms developed for one challenge can resemble those used for another.
The lines are often blurrier than we’d like them to be.
But the strategies I discovered along the way? They still work.
The adjustments. The coping techniques. The self-compassion. The understanding of my own limits.
None of those things became invalid simply because I didn’t receive a diagnosis.
If anything, the assessment gave me exactly what I was looking for from the start: a better understanding of myself.
Just not in the way I expected.
And maybe that’s the point.
Sometimes the value of an assessment isn’t found in the diagnosis itself. Sometimes it’s found in the questions it makes you ask, the assumptions it challenges and the insight you gain along the way.
I started this journey looking for answers.
What I found was understanding.
And for me, that has been enough.
Another thing I realised was that I hadn’t actually been seeking a diagnosis for practical reasons.
I wasn’t looking for workplace adjustments or accommodations. In many ways, I had already stumbled into an environment that worked for me.
My workplace is remarkably neurodiversity-friendly. There is flexibility, understanding, clear communication and, perhaps most importantly, acceptance that different people work in different ways. Nobody is expected to fit a single mould.
Looking back, I wonder whether that’s one of the reasons I had managed for so long without questioning things more deeply. Many of the adaptations that might have felt essential elsewhere had already been built into my day-to-day working life.
A diagnosis wouldn’t have changed my role. It wouldn’t have unlocked support that I was missing. It wouldn’t have transformed my working environment because, fortunately, that environment was already working for me.
What I was really searching for wasn’t accommodation. It was explanation.
And my colleagues were updated live on my progress on the journey (whether they asked for it or not! :D)
And whichever way your journey goes – whether you get diagnosed or not – you must be prepared for one thing: someone WILL question whether ‘they’ got it right. I had a lady tell me on LinkedIn that I am clearly AuDHD and she can tell it from my profile picture. Slightly less than scientific method of diagnosing people, if you ask me – but what do I know? 😉