So I was diagnosed with ADHD in my late thirties and before that I was a mess, job to job etc. then got lucky and worked for a company that afforded me the chance to study for my dream job without work pressure.
I am now a software developer and although I went from being the smartest person in the groups I roamed to the dumbest person at work I still have half a foot in my old life of drugs and poor decisions (although the usage has dropped by 95% and I’ve got a good routine and go to bed early).
I feel like a pretentious dick when at a party and someone asks what I do for work, I kinda feel ashamed saying I’m a software developer. Like a fraud I guess.
How to stop this?
Stop caring? It’s just your job, there’s also doctors and lawyers and architects and …
You reply you’re a software developer. Either the topic ends there or how it often happens you get follow up questions like “What do you work on?” or “How to learn programming?”.
People are usually curious instead of jealous or annoyed. It’s just a conversation.
Stopping caring and ADHD don’t seem compatible, but I do think I can try and be less neurotic.
You’re correct with the follow ups, although the last one was “I don’t know what that is” and it ended after I said I hit keys and sometimes it works, others it doesn’t.
I too press keys in response to pixel patterns on a screen, hoping the presses yield new patterns that look pretty to others.
The syndrome is real. Undiagnosed ADHD until 42 and a hell of a time getting correctly treated thereafter. Im in therapy again because doing so very well after years of anxiety and depression is itself very disorienting.
Just know you aren’t alone in feeling like an imposter sometimes. You are also a survivor and are stronger than you will ever get credit for, unless you grant the credit to yourself!
I think what they are expressing is a sense of alienation, being between two socioeconomic strata and feeling like they don’t fit in with either and that maybe they feel they betrayed the former.