‘People think people with ADHD don’t pay attention. That’s not true. We’re paying attention to everything’

Louise Barry first considered the possibility that she might have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, in November 2021.

“I went to my GP ... and he went on the computer and he was looking at the symptoms and he goes, ‘Yeah, this could be something all right’.”

Although the singer’s doctor had known her a long time, she says “he didn’t know the depths of the difficulties I was having because I was trying to be normal and multitask and present as having my s**t together. You don’t go in there going, ‘My life is a complete mess’.

“I rang ADHD Ireland and they said to me, ‘Come along to the meetings because it takes a long time to get a diagnosis and see if you resonate’ . . . When I went on the meetings, the support groups, there’s loads of people there who don’t have a diagnosis, who just think that they may have ADHD.

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“In the meantime, I’d signed up and I’d been referred to a psychiatrist to get an assessment. By the end of I’d say, two or three months in, I was nearly going, ‘oh my God, I hope I do get a diagnosis because these people are so bloody cool and I resonated with them so much’.”

Louise was 43 when she was diagnosed with ADHD (Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). It is a condition that affects people’s behaviour.

“They told me I had severe ADHD. [The psychiatrist] said when he got the paperwork back for me, he realised that underneath all of my presentation, I was having a lot more difficulty socially and interacting with people and with my work, than I was even presenting with when I spoke.”

In spite of all her difficulties, ADHD had never been on her radar growing up, Louise says. Her symptoms started to become disabling during her early 20s.

“As I said to the psychiatrist, it was fine when I had a bedroom to manage, but when you’ve now got a bedroom and a kitchen and a living room and a garden, it’s much more difficult to organise all of those things.

“When you come out of secondary school, and you go to your history class and your geography class and they tell you exactly what to do and where to be and how to go on, that’s grand you’ve got structure in place for you.

“But then when you go into third level . . . your intelligence and your ability hasn’t changed but what has changed is the dynamics of everything. So now you have to be self-reporting, you have to manage your timetables. You have to think about how long it takes to do anything.

“People with ADHD will be very, very chatty, and talking, talking, talking. One of the great things about that is you can be the life and soul of the party, you’re a great entertainer.

“But one of the downsides of that is you might have talked at somebody, or you might have talked more than you’d like to have spoken and that can become a weird thing. I felt that throughout my life really. I never wanted to dominate a conversation, I didn’t want to say the wrong thing, so I stopped talking alto

gether. That’s the beginning of masking.

“But when it came to me being a creative, or working with communities or young people, it was such an asset, because I could talk to them. It’s a funny thing, a lot of ADHD symptoms, they’re negative in some ways but they’re very positive in other ways.”

In school, Louise says, she found the need to sit still very challenging.

“Being made sit at a desk and being made to do this kind of work, and focus on this and not be allowed to move, not be allowed to talk, not be allowed to be yourself really, for a person with ADHD it’s like having your hands and legs tied together on a chair, it’s disabling.

“I remember when I look back now at the child that I was, I was daydreaming out the window or I was switched off, because I was bored.

“A lot of people think that people with ADHD . . . we don’t pay attention, but that’s not true, we’re paying attention to everything.”

Louise explains that she struggled with interpersonal skills and her “out of sight, out of mind” tendency caused difficulties in her friendships and relationships.

She takes medication to help her with the symptoms of ADHD.

“I felt that I had gone through a lifetime of difficulties, stresses and hitting walls, so for me I was open to the medication. I personally have had great success with it and it’s made a huge difference to my life.”

She feels it’s improved things for her in terms of friendships, relationships and work.

Looking back, Louise has memories of finding it very difficult to sit easy in class and swinging on her chair as a way to “self soothe, almost”, she explains.

“The teacher wasn’t happy about it and she started to get the kids to sing Humpty Dumpty to me every time I swung on the chair.”

Louise says she didn’t have a supportive environment to come home to, where she could explain these things were happening.

“I didn’t have that support at home, so I internalised all of this. From a very young age, you’re taking on board that you’re not a good kid, you’re not doing things right.

“I came from a very unstructured background. I spent time in foster homes and in an orphanage. Occasionally, I was back with my own family. I didn’t have any ongoing parent in my life. I didn’t have any ongoing person who would be a witness to my life or who could say, ‘oh Louise was like this when she was six, or this is what was happening to her, or this was ongoing’ because I was literally being flit from one place to another.

“I suppose one of the difficulties is that any time I put myself in front of a psychologist or psychiatrist over the years, they always went, ‘oh well you had a difficult background’, and that was what it came down to.

“But I knew I was having issues. I didn’t feel that I was upset or having these difficulties because of my background and that was what frustrates me the most. And it scares me that if you go in front of professionals and you say this kind of stuff, that you get almost put into a pigeon hole.”

One thing Louise feels hasn’t been discussed is the impact women’s menstrual cycles have on ADHD symptoms.

“I’d gone to my doctor and told him that every time I got my period I was getting extreme lows. I actually said to him one day, ‘I think you need to put me on Valium for about three days every month’ and he would just laugh it off. And I was ‘no I’m deadly serious . . . I actually can ruin my own life in three days’.”

Diagnosis came as a great relief to Louise.

“It all finally made sense. When you’re putting yourself in front of professionals and you’re saying ‘something’s wrong, something’s wrong with me’ . . . and they’re going, ‘oh you went through a lot and it’s normal’ and I’m like, ‘no, there’s so much more than that’ . . . you almost lose trust in yourself and trust in your own interpretation of you.”

As a musician and a creative, “ADHD is like a superpower”, Louise says.

“You become a really good team player and an innovator. My focus for myself in my life is getting bigger and stronger and the process of my work is getting easier. I’m beginning to put structures in place for myself because I understand where I could possibly let myself down in a week or two.”

Accepting support from friends is invaluable, she explains.

“But I am only able to do that because of the lens of ADHD and understanding myself.”