That was when she knew there was something deeper going on. “I thought, ‘if you don’t pursue this now, you’re going to burn out, or your little boy’s not going to have a Mum anymore.”
I didn’t want to get to 50 and wonder what could have been
Jessie was determined to push harder this time. “I didn’t want to quit. With all my mental health advocacy, my curiosity about how my brain works really helped,” she said.
Initially she didn’t want to go down the medication road, but at this point she was prepared to try. “I didn’t want to be medicated, which I think is why I held off for so long. I went in just to better understand myself more than anything.”
In the end she decided, if she had the option, she would trial it. “I thought ‘I’ll give it a go, because I don’t want to get to 50 and wonder what I could have been if I had pursued this now.’”
Dual diagnosis
Jessie spoke to her new GP, and her sister who works in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, and both suggested something she had never thought of.
“They both said they thought I was more on the autism spectrum than ADHD, and I was like ‘hang on, what? Nah, that’s not possible.”
Like many, Jessie’s frame of reference for autism was one end of the spectrum. “I felt rude, but I was thinking about people who were non-verbal or not social. Whereas I’m so outward. I’m unapologetic and unashamed. But the more I started exploring it, the more I started to think ‘oh shit, you are!’ So, I went down the dual diagnosis route.
The pros and cons of ‘having both’
Jessie was diagnosed with AuDHD (ADHD and autism combined) and found medication did help. She also grew to understand the ups and downs of having both conditions.
“It’s really interesting having both. You get the bonuses of ADHD in terms of ‘I’m gonna do the things,’ and the bonuses of autism, where you can somehow control your environment – but the push-pull between the two of them, it’s so painful.”