On the occasion of Mental Health Information Weeks, Why Doctor met Catherine Testa, an influential business leader who was diagnosed with mixed ADHD at the age of 35. She shares with us her particularities and her journey to free speech and break away from the clichés about this disorder.
- Attention disorder with or without hyperactivity – in the case of Catherine – concerns 5% of children and 3% of adults according to data from Public Health France.
- Diagnosed at 35, she explains: “Before the diagnosis, I felt a lot of guilt and frustration because I thought that everything was my fault, that others were capable of doing violence to themselves and I wasn’t… When in fact, I just have a brain that’s not made the same way.”
- According to her, “we need to raise awareness among others, both at work and in friends and family” because many clichés are still conveyed about this disorder.
“My schooling was not particularly chaotic, I had good and bad grades and I was not a turbulent child”, Catherine Testa explains to me in an interview with the editorial staff. However, by digging a little deeper, the business manager points out clues of her ADHD which was, inevitably, already very present in her childhood. “In fact, I realized that my grades depended a lot on my position in the class. For example, if I was next to the door, I kept losing my concentration. I also had projects in my head, I lived a bit in a parallel world to the class…” But the teenager being of good composition, her ADHD went completely unnoticed, both by her teachers and those around her.
ADHD diagnosis: “It was the missing piece of the puzzle to improve my daily life”
The years pass and Catherine excels in the professional world, until a tipping point seems to be reached. “I had been wondering about ADHD for several years, because I had a bunch of clues… But when you have ADHD, you tend to procrastinate, so I let this idea linger a little. I also told myself that it was perhaps the Barnum effect, that ultimately, we all have concentration problems… But at one point, I found myself in real suffering. I felt like I was going into the background, I was starting a project, then another, and another, without ever finishing anything! Usually what saved me was that I could work very quickly, and then I couldn’t do it anymore. I was taking the train in the opposite direction, accumulating many little things and it was really starting to overflow.”
The thirty-year-old then decides to take matters into her own hands and contacts a psychiatrist specializing in ADHD. “It was complicated because I was afraid of saying that I had this or that behavior, that he would tell me that I should not have self-diagnosed, etc.” Finally, after several tests the verdict is in: Catherine does indeed have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. “It was a real relief to learn this! It had been so many years that I had been asking myself questions, devaluing myself… Thanks to the diagnosis I was able to say to myself ‘it’s okay I’m not crazy’, it was the piece of the puzzle that was missing to improve my daily life.“Very pragmatic, Catherine then uses her energy to improve her daily life and live better with her ADHD.
ADHD and work: “What works well for me is the pomodoro method”
“At first I didn’t really believe in the medication, and eventually, I realized that with the treatment, I was able to do executive tasks for several hours, I could respond to several emails without pain, without feeling wrong dates for example”, rejoices Catherine. The latter also reviewed the layout of her apartment to avoid distraction and the organization of her working time. “What works well for me is the pomodoro method which consists of chaining sessions of 25 minutes of work interspersed with 5 minutes of break. This forces me to take breaks, something I didn’t do naturally, and to set short-term goals, so to stay focused during this time slot.”Catherine Testa shares many other practical tips in her book ADHD so what?published by Michel Lafon editions.
“We need to get away from the clichés about ADHD and stop minimizing the suffering of people affected”
The writer and speaker also insists on the importance of communication with those around you. “We must raise awareness among others, both at work and in the circle of friends and family.”, she says, still recognizing the difficulties that this can cause. “We inevitably wonder if our employees will continue to trust us knowing this… And then talking about it requires a lot of energy because there are a lot of clichés conveyed about ADHD that need to be addressed. The first time I dared to talk about it on a social network, a man I didn’t know told me that it was fashionable and that I had nothing. I was also told that I had been too successful in life to have ADHD. This may seem trivial but these reflections are very violent for me!” And for good reason, Catherine cannot escape these many years of fighting against her mind which never ceased to wander. “People don’t see the notion of compensation that has been put in place behind all of this.”, insists the thirty-year-old. “We need to move away from the clichés about ADHD and stop minimizing the suffering of people affected. Before the diagnosis, I felt a lot of guilt and frustration because I thought that everything was my fault, that others were capable of doing violence to themselves and I wasn’t… When in fact, I just have a brain that doesn’t is not constituted in the same way.” As such, Catherine wants to be reassuring to all these parents who are sometimes helpless when they receive the diagnosis of ADHD for their child: “Just because we have ADHD doesn’t mean our life is ruined!”.
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Info point:
Attention disorder with or without hyperactivity – in the case of Catherine – concerns 5% of children and 3% of adults according to data from Public Health France. This syndrome, as defined by the High Authority for Health, combines three symptoms, the intensity of which varies depending on the individual:
-attention deficit (the inability to maintain attention, to complete a task, frequent forgetting, distractibility or refusal or avoidance of tasks requiring increased attention);
-motor hyperactivity (incessant agitation, inability to stay still when conditions require it);
-impulsivity (difficulty waiting, the need to act, the tendency to interrupt the activities of others).
