A Place to Begin
Recently diagnosed with ADHD and not quite sure what comes next?
You’ve been diagnosed with ADHD. Now what?
Maybe you’ve been reading everything you can find.
Maybe you’re looking back over your life and seeing things differently.
Or maybe you’re still sitting with the diagnosis and trying to work out what you think about it.
A Place to Begin is a free, self-paced learning experience for those early days and months after an ADHD diagnosis.
It won’t tell you how you should feel or give you another list of things you need to fix.
It will simply help you begin making sense of ADHD, and what this new understanding might mean for you.
Free • Self-paced • Take your time
A PLACE TO BEGIN
Diagnosis can answer a question. Then come all the others.
Do I really have ADHD?
How did nobody notice this before?
Does this explain why some things have always felt so difficult?
How much of my past do I now need to rethink?
And what am I supposed to do with all of this information?
It can be tempting to respond by trying to learn everything about ADHD at once.
You don’t have to.
A Place to Begin gives you somewhere quieter to start.
What you'll explore
This isn’t an ADHD crash course.
It’s an introduction to some of the things that can help when you’re beginning to make sense of a diagnosis.
The feelings that can come with diagnosis
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Relief, curiosity, doubt, grief, anger, hope, overwhelm. Sometimes several of them at once.
There’s no particular way you’re supposed to feel.
Looking back with new information
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Diagnosis can change the way you understand experiences you’ve carried for years. You’ll have space to notice what is beginning to look different, without needing to make sense of your entire life at once.
ADHD beyond the stereotypes
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ADHD is about much more than being distracted or unable to sit still. We’ll gently explore some of the less obvious ways it can show up in everyday life.
Why ADHD may have been missed
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Our understanding of ADHD hasn’t always been as broad as it is today. You’ll explore some of the reasons people reached adulthood without ADHD being recognised, including why girls and women were particularly likely to be missed.
A place to go from here
You don’t need a five-year plan. We’ll finish with five simple places to put your attention for now: learning, observing, support, rest and curiosity.
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A Place to Begin is a self-paced, interactive learning experience.
Along the way, you'll find short pieces to read, moments to reflect, questions to consider and space to capture what you're noticing.
More than something to read
There’s nothing to pass and no right answers. Just take what feels useful and move through it in your own time.
Learn in a way that works for you
A Place to Begin is an interactive online learning experience, designed to work across desktop, tablet and mobile.
Move through it in your own time, pause when you need to, and come back when you’re ready.
No special software. No downloads. Just open it in your browser and begin.
A note from Pauline
When I was diagnosed, I thought understanding ADHD would be the hard part.
What I didn’t expect was how much I would start reconsidering about myself.
Things I’d struggled with. Things I’d blamed myself for. Memories that suddenly looked a little different with information I hadn’t had before.
I created A Place to Begin because I know how easy it is to disappear down the ADHD rabbit hole looking for answers.
There is plenty of time to learn.
For now, I hope this gives you a little more understanding, and a little more curiosity about yourself.
Pauline
You don’t have to figure it all out today
You don’t need to know exactly what you’re looking for.
You don’t need to have made sense of your diagnosis.
And you certainly don’t need to have figured out what comes next.
A Place to Begin is free, and you can move through it in your own time.
You don’t need to know exactly what you’re looking for yet.
Just bring your questions, your curiosity, and whatever you’re making sense of right now.