No, I didn't recognize it at all, thus I didn't have to ask a medical professional anything since my presentation was evidently obvious. The only advice I can g

No, I didn't recognize it at all, thus I didn't have to ask a medical professional anything since my presentation was evidently obvious. The only advice I can give, or what is close to advice as I can get, is to recount how I moved from ignorance to action in my own situation, and to emphasize the importance of getting in front of a professional psychiatric diagnostician as soon as you can. They will know what to ask you. no need to guide them to any particular conclusion, nor would I recommend trying this. Due to coincidence I happened to have a professor in college who was the same person my parents had been referred to (on my behalf) for behavioral examination and intervention following a sudden precipitous drop in school performance between ages 8 and 9. This person had given me a battery of performance tests yielding unambiguous data indicating that the deficiency in academic performance (and comorbid peer group socialization problems) resulted from an excess of raw ability. Emphasis on 'raw.' In those days (80's) this was quite counterintuitive, and perhaps still is. Separate classes for gifted students did not yet exist in our district - "gifted" was still a novety also. Skipping a grade (the conventional solution) was likely to aggravate the problem instead of addressing it. So my circumstances prompted the creation of a trial program mainly so that I could attend it, though I resented being singled out and separated from the few friends I had. to my great relief half a dozen or so other students quickly joined once the program became a reality. Once we both acknowledged that we had encountered one another many years before, my professor asked whether I had interest in testing again, because they saw that well over a decade of growth had done little to improve the fundamental challenges I faced, though I had become much better at masking them from others as well as from myself. In the intervening time, the diagnostic profile of ADD had become formalized and increasingly visible outside medical circles, though still mainly centered on early childhood dev stages. They recommended that I look in to getting a formal diagnosis, because although they believed they saw pretty obvious signs I fit this profile, this did not amount to a professional diagnosis. I, being a teenager still, reflexively rebuffed the entire notion that I might need psychiatric evaluation, or could be meaningfully affected (much less improved) by medication - something I associated with "weakness." This would turn out to be a catastrophic misjudgement, and although I did eventually get a formal diagnosis and a protocol, delaying for more than a decade was the most regrettable self-inflicted setback of my life, one that unquestionably cost many millions over the next 20 years.