"In her coaching practice, Laurie met many people diagnosed as adults as late as middle age. Often, they had functioned well in school, at work, and in their relationships, until their lives suddenly seemed to fall apart--at which point they were finally diagnosed. Laurie developed the concept of a "tipping point" (similar to what I call "hitting the wall") to describe this phenomenon. She then looked for patterns in her clients' lives to explain why these bright, successful adults were able to function so well for so long, and then suddenly could no longer do so.
Tipping points occur because undiagnosed people have always had an ADHD brain with ADHD strengths and weaknesses. However, these traits may have never disabled them before because they found ways to compensate, and their physical and social environments allowed them to do so...
A person may have an ADHD neurotype (for example, dysregulated dopamine systems in their brains, delayed prefrontal cortex development, and reduced prefrontal cortex activity during executive function), but they may only have the disability ADHD when they can no longer compensate for these traits or their environment makes these traits a sufficient liability to cause disability and distress. Thus, a person could theoretically go back and forth over their lives between having ADHD and not having ADHD!"
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