Patricia Kihoro – I didn’t leave the house for 2 months…even to take the trash out
Patricia Jean Wangeci Kihoro has opened up about being diagnosed with ADHD. Speaking on the Engage YouTube page, she urged the audience to speak up when they needed to
“Every once in a while, we encounter a crisis of identity, and if you are like me, you’ve asked yourself, maybe once, twice, thrice, who am I?
What am I doing, and why? There’s been nothing to draw from. And it’s been something that has been such a defining factor for the last 3 years.”
Before 2020, she was acting, singing, emceeing, moderator, radio show host, and digital creator, “I was really doing just a lot of things. I was very busy. I didn’t feel like I was busy, I was doing a lot, but because of the momentum, I felt like I was ok. But deep down I felt like there was something wrong with me, something broken.”
But deep down she was convinced something was wrong,
“But because I kept myself busy and because the momentum kept me going, I was like oh that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what I feel as long as I’m doing this, and I enjoy this, and people can see that I am enjoying it, and people are feeling it, then everything is ok.”Â
Then the pandemic happened, “I didn’t leave my house for two months, I didn’t even leave the house to take the trash out. I didn’t open my door to leave.”
Things picked up later, “I was embarking on new frontiers and life, and unfortunately the momentum that I had built up before the pandemic wasn’t picking up.”
She said she felt like things fell apart. “This was the beginning of 2021 for me. Everything just fell apart. Things were looking up, I was falling apart, I knew that something had to change, I had to seek help because everything that I’ve been doing to keep things together up to this point is not working.”Â
She sought treatment for things she never considered she could have. “A therapist, or psychiatrist was recommended.”
She went for her first-ever professional assessment. “Now I studied Psychology in University so I felt like I already knew things and I got an official diagnosis of something I had suspected.
The psychiatrist told me, ‘You are typical you have ADHD.’ So I had suspected over the years I had ADHD, because I struggled to like focus.”
She spoke about that broken feeling, “There is so much more that comes with it. I remember the first thing I felt was relief and then grief.”
Watch her admission below: