Treated for anxiety for 10 years — turns out it was ADHD. What finally tipped your doctor off?
Ten years. Three SSRIs, a lot of very earnest CBT, "partial response" written in my chart so many times it should be my epitaph. Then a new psychiatrist asked the question no one had: "okay, but what is the anxiety ABOUT?"
And it all fell out: deadlines I couldn't start. Things I'd forgotten. The permanent low-grade terror of the dropped ball I hadn't found yet. She went quiet, then started asking very different questions — school, childhood, all of it.
Treated the ADHD. My "anxiety" is half gone. I'm 39, in Ontario, and I have complicated feelings about the decade.
Two asks: if this was your arc too, what was YOUR tipping-point moment? And for the clinicians — what makes anxiety-that-causes-chaos vs chaos-that-causes-anxiety so hard to untangle, especially in women? Because from inside, I couldn't have told you which was which.
2026-07-18 01:51683 views
2 Comments
cafe_froid_recharge
Adding the nuance my psychiatrist gave me for the 'which is primary' question, since this thread will get searched: hers was 'we treat what explains the most.' For me treating ADHD deflated 70% of the anxiety; the remaining 30% needed its own work. The either/or framing is itself part of what delays women's diagnoses — it was both, in a specific causal order.
2026-07-19 04:15 588 views
doom_pile_curator
Nine years for me, 'treatment-resistant anxiety' in my chart and everything. My flip moment was almost identical: new GP asked 'does the anxiety show up on vacation?' It didn't. It had never once occurred to me that anxiety with a day-off switch might be pointing AT something rather than being the thing. Two years post-ADHD-treatment: I still have some anxiety. It's just proportionate now — it matches its causes.
2026-07-19 10:02 590 views
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