Ben Fogle doesn't think he should let ADHD “define” him.
Ben Fogle doesn't think he should let ADHD 'define' him
The 50-year-old TV star, who presents ‘Countryfile’, revealed that he was diagnosed with ADHD yesterday (15.02.24) after suffering a “recent mental health storm”. Despite noticing "some aspects of life had become a struggle”, Ben has insisted he won’t allow the diagnosis to define him.
Speaking to the Daily Mirror newspaper, he said: “I had what a lot of people call burnout last year. I was pushing myself too hard, with too high expectations.
“That coincided with seeking a little bit of help and actually getting a clinical diagnosis of what I’ve known for a long time, that I had ADHD.
“I don’t think that it should define you, but it explains why I am often really enthusiastic about things because my emotions are extremely high and very rarely low.
“Because of this little burnout I entered that low which I’d never had in my entire life and that’s why I was able to understand how my brain works.”
Ben revealed that a trip to the Congo for a new TV programme, ‘Into The Congo with Ben Fogle’, helped him massively after being diagnosed with the disorder, and insisted that “no therapist, no medicine could ever be as powerful as spending time with those beautiful people.”
Despite heaping praise onto the country, the presenter admitted he did have a few several bad experience during production, and pointed to an encounter with a deadly snake that he believed was a fish at first glance.
He said: “I genuinely thought it was a little fish and had I been bitten that would have been it.
"Probably the greatest risk any of us face is on roads. In the Congo it comes from every direction and the most unexpected places. I didn’t anticipate something so deadly from tiny waterholes.
"When I climb Everest or row across the Atlantic, there are breathless headlines, ‘Isn’t Ben brave’ or ‘Isn’t Ben stupid’ or, ‘How dangerous is that?’"
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