Did anyone ever have a ADHD diagnosis before learning that it was OCD? The ADHD symptoms appeared as secondary to OCD? I never fully fit the ADHD diagnosis, however I knew something was extraordinary about my mind. According to my research, ADHD and OCD cannot occur together despite conflicting stats. Anyone have anything to add?

I have been formally diagnosed with both. I was first diagnosed with ADHD and took stimulants for a year but my performance was nose diving and my stress was unmanageable. My psychiatrist noticed I was picking at my skin and ruminating on thoughts so she wanted to test to see how significant these “ocd tendencies” were. It turns out the form of stimulant I was using for my ADHD was not only ramping up my stress but exacerbating my OCD. When I went to take the evaluation to see how bad the “OCD tendencies” were with my ADHD, we learned I had moderate OCD (with few compulsions and instead it was PURE O) and the ADHD was secondary. I know go to ERP once a week, have switched off stimulants that make OCD worse and instead to a better stimulant that I can manage. I also am on medication for the OCD which has balanced out my mood and side effects. Some people will say it’s impossible to have both. I know I have both (from diagnoses and working in therapy to address how they function differently). In my experience I have found that I have to treat both OCD and ADHD because only working on one makes the other twice as bad.

There is actually high comorbidity between the two disorders, but at the end of the day, diagnoses only exist to inform treatment plans. Your brain is unique; a certain diagnosis (or diagnoses) might not fit your experience exactly, but it can lead you to a larger and more specific array of treatment options.

I’ve never heard of not being able to have both simultaneously and don’t understand why that would be the case. In fact, I have them both. In my experience they are two different things that have their own set of difficulties. I can tell when my adhd is at play and when my ocd is at play. They are very distinguishable. That being said there are some similarities and there are some moments where I’m not sure which one is the culprit. But most of the time that’s not the case.

My therapists and I are fairly sure I have both, although we’ve never bothered to get me formally diagnosed, because at the point of my life I’m at, the official diagnosis would just be a fun label in my file. The ADHD affects my life less than the OCD does, and the only reason to formally diagnose me with ADHD would be to allow me access to accommodations or resources, but at my current stage of life there aren’t really any accommodations that would be available to me with an ADHD diagnosis that aren’t already available to me with my other diagnoses. The thing is, though, that the exact label(s) you get assigned to you aren’t set in stone, and your diagnosis might not exactly match your symptoms. The point of diagnosing you is to get you the best help possible for you to succeed and thrive, so if you’re getting help that works for you, the exact names you’ve had assigned to you don’t really matter. I know diagnoses are really important to some people, and I think my perspective is influenced based on having been diagnosed and re-diagnosed repeatedly since the age of five, but as far as I’m concerned diagnoses are just tools doctors use to help match patients to treatments.