Honestly, I was in a similar spot. It was only in my mid-30s that I got a diagnosis, and it was because a lot of my coping mechanisms for keeping ADHD under con

Honestly, I was in a similar spot. It was only in my mid-30s that I got a diagnosis, and it was because a lot of my coping mechanisms for keeping ADHD under control were failing. I struggled a lot through HS and college, which I mostly attributed to having a sort of shitty childhood and generalized depression. But when I started my career and depression issues naturally went away as a result of independence, my issues of attention and focus actually got worse. A lot worse. I could only function in high stress environments with strict deadlines. Which is great when you're working on live ops issues, but bad when you need to complete a big redesign and you have a few weeks to do so. And the stress was having other negative effects. So I finally got fed up and started talking to people. The more I explained my thought process and how hard it was to hold onto one coherent line of thought and attention, the more I realized this was a problem specific to me. It wasn't something everyone went through, other people could naturally just sit down, work on something and that was it. In many respects, we have far less control over our brain than we think. So we develop strategies to deal with deficiencies and don't think about why those strategies are necessary in the first place. Recognizing what we don't have control over is a step towards gaining control, and being on ADHD medication made me realize what that actually meant. So you shouldn't think about it as having less personal control, but finally having more.