At the age of ~60, I have, finally, discovered and learned about two conditions I have that have adversely affected my entire life.
Rather than mourn the time I lost not knowing about these flaws, I've found that understanding them, and being able to accept them, is something of a superpower. It lets me forgive myself for past failings, and develop strategies tailored to the condition so going forward I can do better... a little... 😉
One of them is #ADHD - I do regret that I didn't know enough about this condition when I was a teacher. Aside from helping me cope with the job, I could have better served a lot of students over the years. I do plan to do advocacy work in at least my last school.
It's never to late to gain insight...
(Don't ask about the second thing, we don't know each other well enough 😊)
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One thing that I did know about from almost the beginning of my experience with it was #Depression. Sometime in university I kind of figured I had it, but reading an article and finding out about all the other symptoms I had that were also due to depression made it real for me. The article also gave me some non-medicinal remedies (sunlight, exercise) that seemed to help. Again, knowing about it, knowing that the black cloud surrounding me wasn't real, that those thoughts that constantly turned towards the most negative interpretation of things were lies my brain was telling me, helped immeasurably. Having that little rational voice in my head, telling me "this is the depression, don't believe it" was a life-saver when the major depressive episodes kicked in.
Hard to believe I managed to have a moderately successful career as a teacher, with all that going on - moderate ADHD, dysthymia, major depressive episodes every ten years or so... There was only one time I had to take a partial medical leave (I think it was for 1/3 of my timetable - I knew that work was actually healthy for me, just not that much), and I'm very thankful that the people around me were able to pick up some of the slack, and put up with rearranged timetables because of me.
That's the other thing I want to get involved with, at the teacher level - raising awareness of what, exactly, these mental health issues involve. In my last few years as a teacher, I was pretty vocal about it - advocating for understanding of students who were suffering. Some teachers just didn't understand, some were overloaded with work and the first impulse was to be annoyed at the inconvenience. That's a common problem - public education assumes mostly homogeneous classes of 30 students learning in lockstep, and all nicely done by June. The reality is messier, and teachers struggle to help the outliers.
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btw I feel I should add, having mentioned only non-medicinal therapies, that I've tried most of them - various meds, psychotherapy, meditation, CBT; and they all have their place. You gotta use what works for you. I expect to be medicated to the end of my days.
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