The first time I was diagnosed with ADHD, it was a long time coming. At 16, after years of barely being able to focus in conversations, struggling to study for tests, and always feeling as though my brain had a thousand thoughts competing at once, I finally realized that my inattention might be a real issue, not just a quirk. So I told my parents (who backed up my self-assessment), made an appointment with a psychiatrist, and before long found myself with an official diagnosis and a prescription for Ritalin. Cautiously optimistic that I’d finally be able to slow down the hyperdrive I’d lived in for as long as I could remember, I started taking the pills each day, working the dose into my morning routine.

And then, three weeks later, I stopped.

The Ritalin made me more focused, sure, but it also made me feel blank and disconnected, my mind perhaps too cleared of its normally chaotic thoughts. I didn’t like feeling inattentive and antsy, but I also didn’t like feeling like a zombie, so I decided to stop the medication. I didn’t really need it, anyway. At least, that’s what I told myself. Hadn’t I been doing just fine so far—a B-plus student, member of a myriad of after-school clubs, reader of a book a week, even—all on my own? If I did have ADHD, it clearly wasn’t so bad.

Life in Hyperspeed

When I stopped the medication, things went back to normal—which, for me, meant spending the next decade telling myself to focus, focus, focus every time I inevitably zoned out in a conversation or classroom. Like so many other women, who are as just as likely to have ADHD as men but get diagnosed and receive treatment far less often, I made do with coping mechanisms. I learned to memorize entire chapters an hour before a test (since none of the lectures ever made an impact), took public transit instead of driving (following verbal directions and staying at a consistent speed never went well), and making strict to-do lists on several different platforms (just writing on one meant I was likely to forget I’d done so). For the most part, it worked. I graduated college with honors, got a great job right out of school, and settled into adult life in New York.

Except for the fact that I continued to do everything—talk, read, write, eat, you name it—at 100 miles an hour. “I think you just need to slow down a bit” was a constant refrain from managers at work. And they were right; when I was moving so fast, constantly doing a dozen tasks at once, it was easy to miss things and make mistakes. The same went for my life out of the office too. When I started dating my now boyfriend, he’d tease me about how easily I forgot things he’d told me just moments before. “Weren’t you paying attention?” he’d ask, and I’d guiltily say no, even though much of the time, I hadn’t even realized I’d been tuning out.

Still, I tried to reason with myself, unwittingly echoing the thought process of countless girls and women with the disorder. Maybe I didn't have ADHD. Maybe I just wasn't trying hard enough to be better.

ADHD in Women

Boys and girls are equally likely to have ADHD, according to the CDC. But paradoxically, girls are diagnosed with the disorder at less than half the rate of boys—just 6.5 percent of girls were diagnosed with ADHD from 2014 through 2016, compared with 14.5 percent of boys, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

The reason, at least in part, is one you’ve heard countless times before: gender bias.

Since boys are “socialized generally to be more physically active and rowdier than girls,” their ADHD symptoms are noticed more quickly, says Sabrina Gratia, D.O., a psychiatrist specializing in children and adolescents. Girls with ADHD still struggle with the characteristic inattentiveness and constant distraction but are typically less hyperactive—they often fly under the radar. “A female student who daydreams, doodles in her book, and takes a longer time to complete her assignment does not raise as many flags as a student who is loud, throws, and runs out of the classroom,” Gratia explains.

The pressure placed on women to do well and not make trouble doesn’t help. Without an ADHD diagnosis, girls can go years—even their whole lives—compensating for the condition rather than getting treatment. Just the way I did.

A Whirlwind of Diagnoses

There’s just one little problem with the “just work harder” strategy: There are consequences to ignoring your ADHD.

I learned this in a dozen different ways over the years. Because my hands always needed to be in action, I fidgeted constantly, with disturbing results: bitten nails, pulled eyebrows, torn-apart lips. I picked at every little blemish, leaving acne scars in their wake. Because I struggled so much with being present, I even had difficulty focusing during sex and often felt like I was missing out on a deeper, more in-tune feeling. I grew angry that I couldn’t seem to rein in my behaviors, and that disappointment was compounded by shame. I felt that I wasn’t “normal,” lacking the self-control and peace so many other people seemed to have.

That’s a dangerous way of thinking, says Gratia. Over time those thoughts can lead to an even more challenging mix of depression and anxiety on top of the ADHD. Almost a decade after I’d decided to ignore my diagnosis, I found myself feeling worse than I ever had. I’d always felt on edge and antsy, but entering a relationship when I was 23—and having someone actually witness just how often I cracked my joints or compulsively picked at my face, and point it out to me with concern—finally made me see just how much my behaviors were spiraling out of control. So I spoke to a therapist, who attributed the tics to anxiety, not ADHD.

This is a common situation for women with ADHD, says Sanam Hafeez, Ph.D., a licensed psychologist. “Mental health professionals, physicians, and educators may not see or may attribute ADHD symptoms in girls and women to other conditions,” she says. They’re frequently overlapping conditions, but anxiety is often the more obvious diagnosis for women. In my case, I had both anxiety and ADHD, but the latter condition never came up in conversation.

I started taking Zoloft for the anxiety; it helped, but it didn’t address my fidgeting or the feeling that I was constantly in overdrive. So I switched to Prozac, but instead of toning down my behaviors, it just made them worse. After a few scary weeks of cracking my knuckles every few seconds and picking my skin until it bled, I stopped the Prozac and moved to Cymbalta, eager for a change. Yet even though that medication was supposed to address OCD symptoms (i.e., my body-focused tics), that just made me feel lethargic and disconnected. So after a while, I stopped that one too.

I was frustrated. Would it really be so bad if I never found the right fit? After all, I thought, channeling my 16-year-old self, wasn’t I happy and successful, with a career in which people who could think fast and multitask thrived? It would’ve been nice to slow down, yes, but I could manage. I always had.

Finally Getting It Right

I might’ve stayed like that—convincing myself that the abnormal was normal, making excuses for my behavior, finding even more ways to compensate—if I hadn’t mentioned during an appointment with a new psychiatrist that I’d once been diagnosed with ADHD. “Really?” he asked, immediately intrigued. “Well, that makes a lot of sense.”

The truth was I hadn’t brought it up before. Even after all the years of ADHD symptoms, it still somehow didn't seem relevant; what did one quick foray into Ritalin back in high school have to do with my life now? The memory of that old diagnosis had faded so much that ADHD hadn’t even crossed my mind as a possibility for what I was experiencing. As the doctor asked me more questions—Do you feel like you’re looking at a dozen monitors at once? Do you need to be in motion at all times, even when you’re relaxing? Do you even know what relaxing is?—I found myself practically aching with recognition, and everything began to click.

This—ADHD, not anxiety, not OCD, or at least not only those things—was responsible for making me who I was, in so many ways. And although I’d managed to get by for so long by finding ways to compensate, I was done doing that. I had a diagnosis that finally fit, and a medication (Adderall, at a low dose to start) to go with it.

Immediately after taking my first dose, I felt things change. Previously the days at work, regardless of how busy I was, dragged on to such an extent that I glanced at the clock every other minute. But suddenly the hours flew by. I still answered emails and wrote headlines at warp speed, but I did each task (and more of them!) one at a time, a big feat for someone who normally couldn’t help but go back and forth between browser tabs while getting something done. I even talked a little slower, and in conversations I actually took in what the other person was saying. Most of all, my tics, while not gone completely, calmed down tremendously. That first day I had a zit on my cheek; I normally wouldn’t have been able to resist touching it and making it worse. Instead I simply forgot it was there, because my hands didn’t automatically fly up to explore.

It’s been a few months since I started taking Adderall, and I’m still figuring out my new reality and the proper dosage with my psychiatrist. But even with a few side effects (the frequent need to pee is real), I have no intention of stopping my meds this time. They’ve made me realize just how much I’d been missing, all those years before, and how much better off I am now: still a fast-talking, quick-moving multitasker, sure, but also a more centered, calmer person than my teenage self ever could’ve imagined becoming.

Rachel Simon is the entertainment news editor at Bustle. Follow her on Twitter @rachel_simon.