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Rachel Leviss Reveals She Thought She Was ‘Dumb’ Before Her Official ADHD Diagnosis; Details Here

Rachel Leviss Reveals She Thought She Was ‘Dumb’ Before Her Official ADHD Diagnosis; Details Here

Rachel Leviss recently shared her story of being diagnosed with undiagnosed ADHD growing up on her podcast, Rachel Goes Rogue. She explained that the change in status after receiving a diagnosis was life-changing for her.

Leviss, 29, reflected on her school years and said they were very difficult. She said, “I always thought I was stupid because I couldn’t do my multiplication tables and I couldn’t read as well as the other kids in class,” the Vanderpump Rules alum said. “I just thought I wasn’t intelligent.”

It wasn’t until college that Leviss was officially diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, a common form of ADHD characterized by problems with attention and concentration, task performance, and organization.

Rachel Leviss Opens Up About ADHD Diagnosis: ‘It Was Like Living With an Invisible Disability’

When Rachel Leviss first discovered she had ADHD, she found that receiving a diagnosis felt like she had been living with a disability her entire life that was invisible to her. She found that a diagnosis allowed her to take control of her situation, get appropriate support, and improve her life.

“I realized that I had been living with an invisible disability my whole life,” she said. “Once I was diagnosed, I was able to take control of my life and get the accommodations I needed to succeed in school. That was truly life-changing for me.”

During her podcast episode Rachel Goes Rogue , Leviss introduced listeners to the process of masking with the help of Paige Layle, an autistic and ADHD activist. Most people wear masks when they go out in public, and doing so could reduce the likelihood that an AS person is who they are.

“When you’re wearing a mask, you can’t be authentically yourself,” Leviss said. “You’re just processing things differently, and you’ve spent your whole life taking in data from other people and figuring out what the social norms are and, you know, shifting things within yourself to present yourself in a certain way so that you can survive socially,” Layle, author of But Everyone Feels This Way: How an Autism Diagnosis Saved My Life , explained of masking.

Leviss described how masking affects one’s ability to be authentic, while Layle, author of But Everyone Feels This Way: Sharing Their Experience of Masking, How an Autism Diagnosis Saved My Life, delved deeper into explaining that masking is about constantly adapting to society and changing yourself to survive in it.

Rachel Leviss Opens Up About Masking

Leviss explained that masking, while useful for protecting yourself and others, also erases people’s true selves. She explained that masking puts you in front of a persona that you think people want to meet, which essentially prevents them from speaking to each other.

“When you do that, it keeps you safe, but it also takes away your authenticity,” she said. “You get lost and you present yourself in the way that you think other people should see you.”

Leviss realized that she couldn’t be herself and pretended to be someone she wasn’t for a while just to stay alive. Because of this, she lost contact with many of her friends, because she pretended to be someone she wasn’t.

“And, in order to be safe, I had to not be myself, no matter who that person was. I would just be whatever everyone wanted me to be. How could I not be safe? But then I had so many connections that weren’t real at all,” she continued. “Because I wasn’t real.”