For most of my life, I had a sense I was different. I couldn’t always put my finger on it; just that the way I thought, organised things, felt emotions, and focused (or didn’t) didn’t match most other people. I didn’t know why. Then, at the age of 54, I was diagnosed with ADHD.
Sometimes when I tell people about my diagnosis, I see it flicker behind their eyes- the scepticism and the question they’re mostly, but not always, too polite to ask out loud- “Why bother now when you’ve got by without knowing?”
It’s a question that misses the point entirely. It assumes that I’ve been bobbing along happily all these years with no troubles, when nothing could be further from the truth. Life had never felt easy; any achievements came at a cost. Over the years, I was told I had anxiety, depression, or postnatal depression.
But none of these diagnoses ever felt quite right. I remember thinking, If I’m depressed, why do I feel so cheerful most of the time? I felt like the happiest depressed person alive.
Every time I saw something that looked like a possible answer- bipolar, hormonal imbalance, anything that held the possibility that I could ‘fix’ myself- I’d lose hours of my life to more obsessive research. I was looking for the something that made the puzzle click into place. But nothing ever quite did.
What those labels missed was the chronic overwhelm, the emotional whiplash, the perpetual undercurrent of trying that defined so much of my inner world. Trying to focus. Trying to stay on top of things. Trying not to feel like a failure.

And then lockdown happened and, like so many others, I had the space to really sit with myself. Without the usual distractions and demands, I was left alone with my thoughts and patterns. I started to see things for what they were: the constant overthinking, the difficulty starting things, the way my focus would either vanish completely or hyperlock onto something irrelevant. I’d long suspected the anxiety and depression labels didn’t fully explain my experiences and lockdown gave me the time to look deeper, and to finally move closer to the actual explanation.
So no, getting diagnosed at 54 didn’t change who I was. But finally knowing gave me a lens through which to understand my life.
It felt like someone had handed me the missing piece of a puzzle I’d been assembling my whole life. Suddenly the picture made sense. The diagnosis wasn’t about getting a label, it was about understanding myself and learning to be kinder. Kinder to the me who spent years struggling through daily life, leaving jobs before she got ‘found out’, feeling constantly anxious that she just wasn’t trying hard enough, despite being exhausted from all the bloody trying.
After diagnosis, I did what a lot of ADHDers do: I fell down the rabbit hole. I read, I researched, I absorbed everything I could about neurodivergent brains. I wanted to understand not just myself now, but all the versions of me that had been misunderstood along the way. I discovered that women are often diagnosed 5 to 10 years later than men, our ability to “hold it together” becomes part of the problem. We’re praised for our coping, not seen in our struggle. I also learnt that my experience of being misdiagnosed with anxiety and depression was an all too familiar pattern.

I started coaching with the fabulous Dr James Brown and that was revelatory. It gave me tools, but more than that, it gave me the understanding of how to work with my brain instead of against it. To build systems that support me, not shame me. To start unpicking decades of self-criticism and rebuild something gentler and kinder in its place.
And now, 3 years on from diagnosis, in true ADHD style I’m taking my hyperfocus to a whole other level and am training as an ADHD coach myself. I’ve learned that it’s not about fixing what’s “wrong”, it’s about recognising what’s right and learning to work with it, and that’s something I want to support other people to discover.
So, was there any point in seeking a diagnosis later in life? Absolutely, understanding yourself is always worth it.
Everyone deserves to live a life that fits them, not one they’re constantly squeezing themselves into. To drop the mask and be seen, not as someone who’s flaky or forgetful, but as someone whose brain works differently. Someone whose strengths have always been there, even if they’ve been buried under years of exhaustion and self-doubt.
Because of course it wasn’t too late to bother. It never is.
Author: Coby Drage
Editor: James Brown, PhD