Ask HN: How do I rebuild at 36yo after a checkered career of undiagnosed ADHD?

I'm a similar age. I was diagnosed with ADHD a few years ago. Things got a lot better after my diagnosis.

Firstly, work with your health care providers. ADHD medication works well, even though it doesn't really feel like it works. (Even now I feel like my medication doesn't really do anything but if you compare my life before and after it's night and day).

Reading your post, it looks like you're having a rough time. Job hunting isn't easy, especially when you have ADHD. Rejection hurts for even the most well adjusted people. When you're feeling low it's very easy for your thoughts to spiral out of control. Try to notice when and how this is happening. For example:

Me: "I'm 36, I'm too old to ever get hired!" Also me: "Is it true that no one over the age of 36 gets hired for jobs? Do I know anyone in my life who got a job over this age? Oh, my uncle was laid off 5 years ago and he got one."

There are many different cognitive distortions like this. You can google to find examples of them or work with a therapist to help notice them. Try reading "Feeling Good" by David Burns, he has lots of good examples to draw from.

It might seem a bit counterintuitive, but being kind and forgiving of your shortcomings can often make you more effective and productive. Imagine procrastinating for 4 hours in the morning and getting nothing done. It's easy to think "Damn, I'm worthless. I just can't focus. I can't stay on task. I'll never get a job at this rate." Now you feel awful. When you get back from lunch, you're much more likely to procrastinate to distract yourself from these negative thoughts and feelings.

Instead, try accepting and forgiving yourself: "I didn't do anything this morning. It happens sometimes. I'll try to just doing a little this afternoon and see how it goes.". It's true, you might still procrastinate, but you have a better chance of getting to it now that the negative emotions are smaller and more manageable.

I also recommend Taking Charge of Adult ADHD by Russell A. Barkley as a good handbook, especially if you've been diagnosed recently.

I now have diagnoses of rapid cycling bipolar II and moderate autism, but in the early Nineties I realized I was dealing with ADHD. I was fortunate that one of my autistic abilities was being extremely good at mathematics and computer science. My important adjustment was becoming a computer consultant on projects that lasted several months. I can attack new projects with great intensity, but I fry out after a few months.

While I did great in the Nineties, I didn't leverage my work into a network of contacts. Giant mistake as the Dot Com crash destroyed me professionally. I went from making $65/hr to being homeless living in the woods.

I reinvented myself by going back to college working towards a Ph.D. in mathematics. I ended up concluding that I didn't have the communication skills needed to teach mathematics or the publications needed to be a researcher.

Ultimately I had to give up being a computer professional. I could no longer get intellectually and financially appropriate work. I have continued to work on a number of projects over the last twenty years, so I have preserved much of my programming skills. I have had a popular website for twenty years on http://tetration.org covering what exists beyond exponentiation.

I learned that something one must be ready to completely reinvent themselves to have a chance at happiness.

How tf do you come back from being "homeless in the woods" to "working towards a mathematics PhD"?

Also, as what did you reinvent yourself in the end?

I got a job working one on one with an autistic teenager. The first month I lived in the woods, but I did have a car to drive to work. A year later I returned to college and lived off student loans for some years. Academia didn't work out, but I made a number of connections with significant mathematicians. A large portion of mathematicians have little coding ability, so I help some amazing people out, learn lots of mathematics and have lots of fun. I just don't make any money, but I'm retired now so it is no longer an issue. I'm now a gentleman of leisure.

I have one of the main websites on tetration at http://tetration.org. Recently I worked on machine language comprehension of mathematics, https://fangornforest.org. I completed a four decade project working with Stephen Wolfram for Mathematica to support fractional iteration https://resources.wolframcloud.com/FunctionRepository/resour....

I now operate as a social activist helping people and non-profit organizations out.

(Joke) Yes, usually the path is reverse.

This could be me as well - I’ve had a few careers and similar neurodivergencies, along with a nice smattering of trauma. This wasn’t asked for so take with a grain of salt, but as someone who had “rapid cycling bipolar II” as my closest dx which never felt entirely correct, I found looking into dissociation and dissociative disorders to actually fit the bill for me after decades of muddling around with “almost but not quite right” models. I only say so because it would have saved me a lot of time if someone had even mentioned the possibility to me.

Let's say I fit the neurodivergent stereotype, and this sentence especially fits most of my attempted careers down to a T - "I ended up concluding that I didn't have the communication skills needed to do X".

At times (I feel like) I am a great communicator, the other times I can see people thinking I'm damn slow, and most of the time it's bimodal like that.

I am almost 36 as well, never finished a damn thing in my adult life.

Your 36, not 56, so don't worry about your age.

ADHD is part of the 'neuro-divergent' group I believe.

I've had a similar experience. I'm almost 30. I did a tough degree, but dropped in/out and had to drag my arse across the finish line. Same as school. Top student some days, worse than the worst other days. My grades are a literal sine wave if you track them yea-on-year, month-on-month. Same with work. Also, jobs have been very tough. I've had similar experiences with interviews. But I just got a job offer, after many trials. Before that offer (literally happened today), I was made redundant from a toxic role.

Like you, I'm very capable, and smart (enough) - the ADHD just makes me very inconsistent and emotional. I can barely recall any information from my degree, my knowledge has literal gaping holes. But I did not know I was trialling through ADHD at the time, I just thought I was an idiot and that I couldn't handle things like most people.

But, it will get better. I'm medicated now, have been for a short while and it has helped me focus, but on top of that, the ADHD (has always) given me an insane drive compared to most people I meet.

So now I'm hopeful, and I see a new job as a new start, first time medicated and understanding this ADHD thing.

I have faith it will work out for you. If you need to, consider doing a 'lesser' job/role in the meantime until you feel stable and your medication is working. It will get better, you are still young. You can be the best you on medication (and you can pick up other healthy habits too).

Also re your goals. Know thyself - both strengths, and weaknesses. Lean into the strengths, whatever they may be. Be aware of the weaknesses.

Find a job that is on the intersection of what you know and what will fit you.

I am 35 and have been diagnosed with ADHD ~year ago. Meds did help, like by 50% with my ability to start and complete things. On the other hand, country I live in is somewhat stingy on psychopharmatics, so I am glad I have at least the meds I have.

Meds don't help with memory, unfortunately, you will need to keep your system you have cobbled together over years.

The meds actually do help with the rejection sensitivity more than I anticipated. But this seems like the thing you will actually need to work on to compensate for. It can be hard, things that will work for you will be counter-intuitive, but becoming some sort of "trustworthy professional that is nice to work with" is doable and worth price in gold.

One of the epiphanies that led me there was ... people don't actually need perfection, they mostly need to be able to rely on what you told them. Work with them, pairing helps me there.

I work in QE for a big corp - specifically RedHat. I now know I shouldn't look for jobs that sound interesting but would require me to self-manage. I need other people to keep me on track and reasonably well defined goals.

But I also need novelty and exploration.

So QE works. I would assume SRE would work as well, and possibly a technical enough support role.

Working in a big-enough corp to allow for latteral moves is helping plenty too.

Firstly, this is a disability and not your fault. There are many workplaces now that acknowledge this as such. Medication will help you continue bettering yourself. 36 is not old. Most great people didn't start making their careers until late into their 50s. The best way forward is to acknowledge your disability and continue to work on your strengths.

For me this is very early stages, too early to tell. But it might help, so figured I'd just throw it out there.

Currently something I'm going to try is to use my musical imagination. I've always had it since I was a kid, and I'm having a small breakthrough with it in terms of boosting certain moods. I should've done this way earlier but I just never thought of it.

So if you have a musical gift like I do, I'd propose to do that. The broader generalized version of this is to use your imagination to induce specific emotional moods into you and help that to make that your motivation.

I went through this exact same scenario. Late 30s, recently diagnosed. Couldn't hold a job more than 2 years because I'd get bored/burned out really fast.

The way I did it was similar to what you've already done except I started doing yoga and jogging as well. It helped me stay calm and think clearly when combined with meds. If you haven't tried doing yoga, don't sleep on it.

If you work in IT, look into MSP work. MSPs can be tough but they often have lower barriers to entry due to high turnover. If not, there is probably something similar in your field.

https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/what-is-managed-serv...

As someone in middle age who has also been struggling with ADHD and frequent mental paralysis throughout their life I can very much relate to your words and observations, and therefore wish you all the best on your future journey.

Making mistakes is not failure, failure is giving up on your dreams and aspirations.

There is a lot of wisdom and knowledge out there that can help you making slightly better decisions. For me it was learning more about ADHD-associated rejection sensitivity, attachment theory or C.G. Jung's concept of the man-child.

Look into Acceptance and Commitment Therapy or ACT.

https://www.actmindfully.com.au/product/the-reality-slap/

Everything you’ve been through is pretty normal, you just need to figure out what is most important and make moves in that direction, don’t beat yourself up.

Group coaching has been a godsend for me. Find a local group or join a virtual one like https://www.adhdrewired.com/about/

Also lots of great resources here: https://romankogan.net/adhd/

Man, posts like this just make me depressed. It's full of "have a career so you can have money to solve your problems". If you're un/underemployed you're out of luck.

One of the major side effects of stimulant medication is that it can exacerbate obsessive thinking. I can see a lot of that over thinking and rumination in your post. This can evolve into delusions, paranoia, etc.

Be mindful of the side effects. Other than that, don’t take yourself too seriously. Study up, have fun, and appreciate life. You are not “rebuilding”, that framing is bad. It’s a long wonderful journey for all of us, truly.

Setup your own firm doing what you are good at. Do just that and let other people do what you are bad at and be open and honest about it.

To add to this: ask people around you what they think you are good at. Often you will find they mention things you never even thought about. You don't think about it because they are so easy for you that you can't even imagine someone having trouble with it.

Your own innate strengths can be a huge blind-spot.

One thing you could try is to get into a field that skews older. Most people don’t enter the trades until they’re in their 30s, so a 36 year old apprentice wouldn’t be out of the ordinary. From your post, it doesn’t seem like you’ll ever be cut out for knowledge work, but you didn’t really share any details so it’s hard to say.

You're not alone. Join ADHD support groups. Kaiser has a few. There are other groups (or sub-groups) among tech people online.

Of all the popular books, I liked The Mini ADHD Coach. Also ADHD 2.0.

36 is young. Be glad that you understand yourself better for your next 20-30 working years, and be sure to get a good prescription for meds

I have ADHD as well as a bevy of other stuff - autism, a dissociative disorder and trauma that in bad times meets the criteria for ptsd. To be clear, I have not solved this problem for myself, but I figure it might be helpful to share notes - what may be your solution is inevitably going to be an individual one to you, so maybe with some raw materials to work with you can come up with one.

Mindsets:

- What works best for me is to not think of myself as being impaired, but unfocused. When there is a specific goal in mind that we worked towards for a long time, we organize all the parts of ourselves in order to meet that goal. When that breaks down, its usually because there are key needs that we are not taking care of - maybe thats a need for novelty, maybe thats self-care, maybe thats time to relax. Finding what those needs are and getting them met is the first step.

- Burnout happens because we have needs that are neglected or not taken care of. Discovering what those needs are, and how to recover when they are neglected for a long time can take effort. This ends up breaking structures that were working but unmaintainable.

- "Parts work" works. Blank-mindedness, inability to think in detail, struggling to think in a clear structured way, can often mean that there are internal paradoxes or conflicts. Being able to see that both sides of the paradoxes are correct, or contain truths that the other side doesn't, rapidly resolve these problems. Understanding that you can contain seemingly opposing values and weights simultaneously is the first step to understanding this.

- Confidence has a lot to do with building and recognizing a cohesive identity with yourself. In interviews, its about understanding who you are in the interview room - what your positive traits are, and what you struggle with. Its about being ok with the things that you struggle with and think that its reasonable that you struggle with them. Its about celebrating your positive traits. This is where both ego and anger, long derided, actually helps. Developing an ego helps you build something worth protecting. Anger is a sword and shield that helps your ego stay intact. Your anger at yourself is actually love for yourself stuck in a horrible pattern. Unlearning emotional self-harm as a coping mechanism and building self-compassion is an incredibly tough but also amazingly worthwhile journey.

Note that little of this has to do with ADHD directly, but it is very commonly relevant to most people who grew up neurodivergent or different.

Medications:

- I found that in most ADHD focused spaces, there are a lot of people for whom stimulant medication just works and that is the end of things for them. I find that people with additional problems on top of ADHD often have a harder time with stimulants, due to a high amount of side effects. Try them as a first line, but its also okay if they don't work as they don't work for everyone.

- Beta blockers are cheap, incredibly safe, don't have many interactions or side effects, and are easy to get a prescription for. They block your body's physical panic response. Taking it has been astoundingly positive for me for interviews, any time I'm going to do something I'm stressed about, or when I'm panicking for any reason.

- Anti anxiety meds especially benzo's work for a short bit of time and then hook you on them, and then its difficult to go off of them. They're hard to get perscribed for a reason.

- Alcohol, nicotine, and to some extent weed all mess with your sleep, and make cognitive side effects for at least few days afterwards, up to a month with chronic use, even if you don't feel hung over. If you haven't experienced being off of those for a while, going off of them may help. This is often something you do later when you're feeling up to the task of removing a very real crutch.

Hey, same boat.

On interviews:

I've had the same problems. "tell me about the problem you've solved" was a huge a challenge for me. 'cause I couldn't remember frankly. Find a mentor (a buddy, coworker, someone) and ask for help. Practice. Go back in your employment history and try to come up with a story about things that you've done.

On getting organized:

Pick a strategy like GTD and go with it. Medication helps, but you need a structure. If GTD doesn't work, continue trying. Something as simple as a list of tasks that you review every single day is super helpful.

Good luck.

First: You're not alone as you can see from all of these comments. That doesn't mean it doesn't suck and feel hopeless at times. Acknowledge it and ask "What can I do?"

Second: Give yourself credit for taking these steps to improve. I personally struggle with this and have to verbally say "I did x". I immediately have a negative voice say it's not enough, etc and I have to say "Thanks, what can I do next?" It feels silly but sometimes it's enough to prevent the reactionary thought train that follows if I do nothing.

Third: Be careful with the stories you tell yourself. There's a thin line between being realistic and just wallowing. You don't seem to be doing that and using "I feel..." language is a nice way to separate yourself from your thoughts/feelings. Again, it feels silly, but the way we speak has an effect on how we see ourselves.

So, you are capable of inspiring confidence, but you struggle with it. You inspired confidence in me to create an HN account to reply to this, so... put that in your evidence locker for when you doubt that.

And... I feel you on the interviews. My worst interview performance was a twofer: I scheduled the interview and didn't realize it was a pair programming session. We had to reschedule.

For the next session, already embarrassed, I hop on the call (on my phone, in Starbucks, without headphones because they died) and proceed to forget javascript array basics for 30 minutes. I literally only wrote 1 line of code and I'm pretty sure the guy worked through the interview.

What's hilarious is that right after the call the answer popped into my head. I had 6 years of experience at this point.

I sat down and listed everything that went wrong and why. It all boiled down to practice and preparation. Have everything charged. Have a spot you're comfortable in if possible. Double check what you need to bring, etc.

For practice, I literally took as many interviews as I could get as long as they were jobs I was actually interested in. This built some rejection resilience and highlighted specific things I needed to practice.

It's not perfect. I still freak out. I went on meds after that experience which helped me build up some habits and more resilience and I eventually came off the meds. I eventually got a job, became a manager, got laid off, and then got to my current gig as a founding engineer.

I journal, meditate, and workout as close to everyday as I can get, and when I miss, I just start again and write about how annoying my shaming inner voice can be. This (+gratitude for literally whatever good I can find in the day) habit has helped me a lot.

My current struggle is building things -- just getting started much less "completing". I've had a raspberry pi I've been meaning to install docker on for a month now so I'm going to go do that now. I'm 40. I'm an adult no?

Cut yourself some slack. Be kind. Prep. Practice. Get outside. Lift heavy things. You're moving the right direction. Check back in and let us know your progress.