345 BITESIZE | The Life I Could’ve Lived: Grieving a Late ADHD Diagnosis - I Have ADHD Podcast

Podcast Summary: “The Life I Could’ve Lived: Grieving a Late ADHD Diagnosis”

Podcast: I Have ADHD Podcast
Host: Kristen Carder
Episode: 345 BITESIZE | October 23, 2025

Episode Overview

This bite-sized episode centers on the emotional aftermath of receiving an ADHD diagnosis in adulthood—specifically, the grief, regret, and processing of missed opportunities that often follow such a revelation. In response to a heartfelt voicemail from Dana, a listener newly diagnosed at 46, host Kristen Carder shares her guidance and compassion on navigating complex feelings about a life lived without awareness—or support—for ADHD.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Dana’s Story (00:55 - 02:15)

Dana, 46, shares how her recent ADHD diagnosis has been transformative, especially after starting medication.
She expresses regret and frustration over not having known earlier and asks Kristen how to move past these feelings and grieve the “life she could have lived.”

“I feel myself pretty frequently like looking backward in my life and kind of having moments of frustration after the fact…” - Dana [01:31]

2. The Grief of a Late Diagnosis (02:15 - 04:30)

Kristen empathetically acknowledges Dana's pain and notes that many listeners share similar feelings.
She frames the predominant emotion as grief, tied to the “what-ifs” and misunderstandings endured pre-diagnosis.
Kristen insists that grieving is necessary and valid:

“There is so much grief connected to the what ifs... to all of the misunderstanding that you endured... the decisions that you made that you know you would not have made had you been diagnosed, medicated, and supported.” - Kristen [02:45]

She highlights that suffering through four and a half decades without answers is significant and warrants a grief journey.

3. Permission to Grieve, and How (04:30 - 08:18)

Grief isn’t glamorous; it’s the “pathway to acceptance.”
Kristen offers practical strategies:
- Journaling to facilitate access to buried emotions.
- Movement (running, biking, walking) to unlock or process feelings.
- Allowing tears, if accessible, or otherwise simply sitting with sadness.

“I invite you to access those deep emotions however you can.” - Kristen [06:10]

She clarifies that this is complex grief—cumulative over a lifetime, as opposed to acute loss.

4. Embracing Complexity: “Two Things Can Be True” (08:19 - 10:15)

Kristen introduces the idea that conflicting emotions can coexist:
- Regret over the past can exist alongside gratitude for present understanding and support.
Applying this mindset brings relief and a more honest self-connection.

“You can regret a decision and understand why you made that decision, knowing what you know now.” - Kristen [09:09]

5. Forgiveness and Moving Forward (10:16 - 13:27)

After grieving, Kristen urges self-forgiveness:
- “Pardon yourself for your past mistakes,” as you were missing vital context and support.
- Use compassion to replace hindsight critique, recognizing you did your best with what you knew.

“It's not really fair to go back to those different situations and judge yourself with what you know now. It's much better to just apply compassion and understanding…” - Kristen [12:45]

Many late-diagnosed clients have similar regrets—lost jobs, failed relationships—but every story deserves understanding, not shame.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Naming Grief:
“I think that one of the main ways that adults diagnosed later in life need to... make sense of their lives is allowing for grief.” - Kristen [02:30]
On Complex Grief:
“It’s more complex because it's the losses over time that have accumulated that you've kind of half dealt with, but not really dealt with.” - Kristen [05:40]
On Compassion:
"...I still think you're a good person who's had a really hard time... It's much better to just apply compassion and understanding..." - Kristen [12:46]

Timestamps for Important Segments

[00:55] Dana’s voicemail: regrets about a late ADHD diagnosis
[02:15] Kristen’s empathetic response; explaining grief
[04:30] Practical strategies for grieving
[08:19] “Two things can be true” mindset
[10:16] Process of self-forgiveness
[13:20] Kristen’s closing support and encouragement

Tone and Style

Kristen’s tone is warm, direct, and validating, blending practical tools with emotional honesty and a gentle nudge toward self-compassion. She acknowledges grief as misunderstood and “unsexy,” yet fundamental to healing.

Final Takeaways

Late diagnosis brings both relief and emotional turmoil—a mix of gratitude, regret, and grief.
Griving past losses is necessary and can be catalyzed through journaling, movement, or quiet reflection.
Conflicting feelings can coexist; acceptance means recognizing both.
Compassion—including self-forgiveness—is essential in moving forward with new understanding.

For listeners wrestling with similar feelings after a late ADHD diagnosis, Kristen’s main message is: your pain is valid, you deserve to grieve, and there is hope for a more self-compassionate future.

Transcript

A (0:02)

Hey, what's up? This is Kristen Carter and you are listening to a bite sized episode of the I have ADHD podcast. I am medicated, caffeinated, regulated and ready to roll. This little episode is one of my favorite clips from the podcast. It's perfect if you're not in the mood for a full hour long listen because let's be real, some of us ADHDers just don't have the patience for all of that. But if you are a die hard listener, think of this as your midweek pick. Me? It's Thursday, y'. All. Friday is right around the corner. If you love this clip, check out the show notes for a link to the full episode. And remember my friend, drink your water, take your meds, grab a snack. Now let's get rolling. All right, let's move on to a voicemail we're going to hear from Dana. I am looking forward to this. So Dana, what's up?

B (0:55)

Hi Kristen, My name is Dana Young. I am a newly diagnosed with ADHD adults. I am 46 years old and found out very recently in the last couple of months that I have ADHD and I have started medicating and it's been a game changer. My question for you is for people who are diagnosed as adults so late in life, how do you move past the regrets or the looking back at your life and feeling like you missed all these opportunities because you didn't know that you had this disorder until you were older? And I feel myself pretty frequently like looking backward in my life and kind of having moments of frustration after the fact because I understanding my situation now, I feel like I could have handled those things so much better if I had been medicated earlier in my life. Yeah. Anyway, I love what you do. I appreciate the podcast very much. I'm pretty new to it, but the information you provided has already been extremely helpful. So thank you so much for what you do and yeah, I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks. Bye. Bye.

A (2:15)

Dana, what's up? Thank you so much for calling in. I really love hearing from you and I just want to say, like, I'm so glad that you received a diagnosis. I'm so glad and I'm so sorry that it was in your 40s. I'm so sorry that you had to live four and a half decades without knowing. It's really devastating and I'm really, really sorry about that. And I know a lot of listeners are going to relate to you and to your story and just to your experience of regret and what I'm hearing A lot of is grief. And, and that's what I wanted to talk to you about, Dana. I think that one of the main ways that adults diagnosed later in life need to, like, process and understand and make sense of their lives is allowing for grief. There is so much grief connected to the what ifs. There's so much grief connected to all of the misunderstanding that you endured. There's so much grief connected to the decisions that you made that you know you would not have made had you been diagnosed, medicated, and supported for your adhd. And so I just want to encourage you to allow yourself to go through a couple weeks or a couple months or a couple years of grieving. This is the best advice that I can give. It's not very fun or sexy, and I'm sorry about that. But this is the pathway to acceptance. I promise, promise, promise you. The grief of being so misunderstood, misunderstanding yourself even, and the way that you probably treated yourself over the last four and a half decades, the way that you were treated by others, the way that you had to struggle in school, the way that you had to struggle in the workplace, and the things that were so much harder for you than they needed to be, if that makes sense. Because if you had just been diagnosed, if you had just had that understanding of your brain, if you had just had the resources and the support and the treatment and the medication and all of the things that you're now leaning on to thrive, which I'm so glad about. I'm so, so happy for you that this is your life story now that you, you've like, had that turning point and you have this understanding and you have the medication and you have the resources, like, that is such a beautiful, beautiful turn of events. Right? But it doesn't negate the fact that you suffered. There's a great amount of suffering that you went through in the first 40 plus years of your life, and there's grief to be felt there. And so I just really want to invite you on a grief journey again. It's not sexy, it's not fun. It's not something that we normally even talk about in our American society. We rarely talk about grief. But I would encourage you to begin to allow those deep, deep emotions of sadness, those deep, deep emotions of regret, the. Well, of just maybe even some despair about the choices that you made that you know you wouldn't have made and allow yourself to feel those big feelings. So a couple ways that you can do that. Journaling is a great way to get the ball rolling. A lot of us don't feel like we have access to emotions unless they're like, really overwhelming us in the moment. And so you might hear me say, like, I invite you into a grief journey. Which by the way, sounds so woo woo. But you might hear me say that and be like, okay, like, how do I even access grief? Like, maybe there's grief there, but I don't know how to access it. So what you're going to want to do, I think, is experiment to see how you can kind of bring up those feelings in a controlled environment. So the, the grief that you're experiencing or maybe potentially will experience is what we would call probably complex grief, where it's not this acute grief like somebody passed away and you're feeling that loss immediately, but it's more complex because it's the losses over time that have accumulated that you've kind of half dealt with, but not really dealt with. And now you're looking through those memories with a different lens because you have different information. And so I would encourage you to journal. I would encourage you to however you like, to move your body. Maybe you like to run or walk or bike or kick, kayak, I don't know. But kind of try to access those emotions as you're moving your body and get them out in those ways. If you have access to tears, I think you should cry. I think this is definitely worth crying about. Not all of us have access to our tears. If you know, you know, I am not a crier. And so I feel like a lot of times when I've been in grief, I actually have not had access to my own tears. It just hasn't shown up in, in the way of crying. But if I could have, I would have. Okay. And so I invite you to access those deep emotions however you can. And I just want to, like, circle back to the two things can be true concept because I really think it applies here. Dana and anybody else who is, who's resonating with this, like, two things can be true. You can regret a decision and understand why you made that decision, knowing what you know now. You can be sad about a lifetime of not knowing about ADHD and grateful for your diagnosis now. So I really encourage you as you're in this journey of kind of processing all of this and going through your memory with a new lens. I also invite you to employ the two things can be true concept and really try to find where two things are true in your story, because I think that might give you a lot of relief. I think that will give you a Deeper connection to yourself and the decisions that you made in the past. The last thing that I want to say, so grief, two things can be true. And then lastly, I encourage you, as you kind of complete your grief journey, to pardon yourself for your past mistakes and issue forgiveness, issue pardons, like, kind of like drop the gavel, like, this case is closed, and really forgive yourself for the decisions that you made when you didn't know any better, or you did know better, but you didn't have access to the fullest, like comprehensive resources or understanding of your brain or medication that will help you now. Right? So, like, maybe in the moment, so many of our decisions, like, we know better, but we don't really fully have access to our entire frontal lobe or we don't have access to the support that will help us do better. So even though we know better, we don't have the ability to do better. So I just want to encourage you to begin a process of forgiving yourself for the things, for the decisions, for the kind of like the journey that you've been on, for the way that things have worked out. So I don't know your story, Dana, but I have sat with so many late diagnosed clients who are processing kind of the, the way that their lives have turned out and the way that things have shaped up for them. And I've heard from so many people, like, if I had only known, maybe I wouldn't have gotten divorced. If I've only known, maybe I wouldn't have been fired seven times in a row. If I had only known, maybe my relationship with my kids would be better. And so I totally, totally understand. And I still think you're a good person who's had a really hard time, you've had a hard go of it, and now you have all of this understanding. It's not really fair to go back to those different situations and like, judge yourself with what you know now. It's much better to just apply compassion and understanding and like, I would have done it differently, but I didn't have the ability to do it differently at the time. I'm just sending you so much support, compassion, love, a huge hug. I really, I know that the next 40 years of your life are gonna look really different and I'm excited for you about that. I really, really am. So thanks so much for calling in. I really appreciate you. Thanks for listening to this bite sized episode of the I have ADHD podcast. If you enjoyed this clip, you'll find a link to the full episode in the show Notes. And don't Forget to visit ihaveadhd.com for tons of adult ADHD support. All right, my friends, I had a great time with you today, and I cannot wait to talk to you again next week. Bye. Bye.