ADHD Thoughts

My recent diagnosis of ADHD has been such a life changing event.

Before I went in to see my doctor, I knew something was wrong but just couldn’t figure out what it was or what I even meant by that. But….things were just…off.

Now, before I get into this, I do want to put a little blurb in here about how not funny ADHD is and how no, it doesn’t only affect young boys in school, like we’re taught. ADHD affects a lot of people, and actually women are extremely affected by it but they go undiagnosed for years.

I’m just going to give you a little glimpse as to what life looks like as an undiagnosed ADHD woman:

For me, my ADHD presents itself in chronic unorganization, extreme depressional episodes, anxiety to the point where I couldn’t leave my house without the fear of something terrible happening, complete paralyzation where you physically can’t move yet your brain will not stop racing, insomnia for years, and the never-ending ability to never show up on time for anything.

My whole life I have thought that there was something wrong with me. I’ve battled that voice in my head from as far back as I can remember. I just always felt different. I knew I was different. I didn’t “get” things the way other people just seemed to “get” things right away after it was explained to them.

For example, if someone were to give you verbal instructions on how to get somewhere…you’d probably be able to remember them enough to get to where you need to go. Not for us ADHD’ers!

Verbal instructions??? HAHHAHAHAHAHAHAH JUST FORGET IT!!!!!!!!!

I can’t retain information that long let alone remember later, because odds are I’m going to see something else that is going to distract me and take me on another journey going the opposite direction of your original ones.

And this is just ONE example people!!!!!

But it’s hard. Because now as I’ve gotten older, started doing my own research, and then finally went in to get tested…..so many effing things are making sense. It’s just unreal.

People will ADHD have a very hard time with time. We actually have a thing called “time blindness” where literally 5 minutes can pass, or 3 fucking hours can go by, and we won’t know the difference. We have no concept of it. Hence, why being on time for stuff is really hard. We think we have all this time to get ready, but we get distracted doing something else that we swear will only take us “5 minutes” then it ends ups being “3 hours later” and we have no idea why we did that or why that happened. But here we are, getting yelled at for being late.

Another thing we struggle with is emotional regulation. Truly. ADHD brains work differently than others do. We don’t have the same chemical balance that you do that regulates stuff. So, ADHD’ers tend to have extreme emotions, anger issues, cry a lot, and are usually very sensitive. We experience things much bigger than normal (I think?) and we feel our feelings so much deeper than I can even explain. And what is so damn frustrating about this is my whole life I’ve had people tell me to quit being dramatic but I always felt so crushed when that was said. Because, to me, I wasn’t being dramatic. I was feeling my feelings. And ADHD’ers have big fucking feelings.

Calling us dramatic during these moments doesn’t help. At all actually. I’ll tell you what it does do in our brain though; we feel immediately unsafe around you, we know that we absolutely cannot express ourselves around you, and will ultimately just begin to full “Mask” whenever we’re around you.

Ahhhh, yes. Masking.

Some of you may not know what this is. ADHD’ers are fluent in masking and I’ll explain what that is now. Masking is knowing how you SHOULD look, act, talk, and feel. So that’s how you ACT, by putting on a metaphorical mask; where you smile instead of cry, you laugh instead of scream, and tell everyone how god damn happy you are while mentally you’re drowning. So, by doing so, we can hide our real feelings, and just “go with the flow” so everyone else is happy. You are not happy on the inside, but nobody cares about that. People just really like the mask.

We learn to mask at very young ages, because we know we’re different. So, we observe. A lot. We watch what other “normal” people seem to be doing and then mirror them. It is a learned behavior and a few minutes with google will tell you all of this as well.

So we mask. And pretend. A lot.

But, the truth is. ADHD is hell. It’s not funny. It’s not a trend. It absolutely fucks with your life, your friendships, your credit score, romantic relationships, etc.

Once I got my diagnosis and started rabbit-holing again, my jaw was on the floor with similarities between my life and what I was reading.

It was like…..ADHD people tend to struggle with:

• being on time

• being organized

• remembering to eat

• remembering to brush their teeth

• paying bills on time

• future plans

• appointments

• crippling depression

• paranoia

• stomach problems

• dementia symptoms

• anger issues

• etc.

I mean…the list goes on people.

And yes. I’ve already had someone say “oh god…well that’s ALL OF US!” or “ok yeah but that’s just an excuse”……..

OK. I hear you. I’ve heard all of that. But when you know you have actual ADHD is when all those things start fucking with your life, and not in a little way or a funny way. I mean, it can actually fuck up your life.

Imagine that you have a handful of spoons. And each spoon in your hand is meant for a thing you have to do for the day. So, what “spoons” do you have in your hand? Most likely, your spoons would be; 1. go to work, 2. go to the bank, 3. pick up kids from practice, 4. get groceries for dinner, etc. Right? Those things seems normal to you? And that was about 4 spoons. So you have 4 spoons in hour hand.

Now, I’m going to explain how the brain works with spoons for ADHD people; 1. wake up and get ready. you have to get ready today. you just have to. 2. put on deodorant so you don’t stink. do not forget this. 3. brush your teeth. don’t forget this! you forgot yesterday and your breath stunk horribly, so you can’t forget this. 4. go back and make sure you turned off everything you used in the bathroom (water, curling iron, etc.)

You see? I’m on 4 spoons and I haven’t even left my house yet. Your spoons usually are big, full things that you have to do. ADHD spoons are one spoon per one basic task.

WE ARE NOT THE SAME.

And while many people have suggested to me, well why can’t you just stop doing that!

Well, Karen, you see…the thing about the brain is, you can’t just magically change it on your own. I like don’t have a jug of dopamine laying around my house whenever I need to get a hit of it.

That’s the same thing as telling someone who uses a cane to walk to just not use it anymore. Tell your mind you don’t need that anymore.

????????????????????

That’s not how it works.

And believe me, I wish that’s how it worked. I wish more than anything I could just wake up one day and be like, “Ok. I don’t want to live like this anymore so now let’s just magically fix everything and start living better.”

That would seriously be amazing, actually. But, that’s not real. Dang it.

So, I’ve had to learn how to manage a lot of it on my own, and now with the help of some meds as well.

The more and more I learn about this though, the more and more peace I feel with myself. It’s like I always knew there was “something wrong” with me. I knew it. And I can’t explain how I knew that, but I did. I just knew I was always different.

And now, the ADHD thing is making so much sense. And I feel relieved after getting my diagnosis. I feel seen. I feel heard. I feel like for the first time ever I understand that there actually was “something wrong” with me…an actual chemical imbalance in my brain that causes me to react differently to things.

Also, I don’t mean “something wrong” with me in any bad, sad-sacky way at all!!!!!!! I just mean I knew I was different….like I always cried way harder than other people, I would get my feelings hurt SOOOOO easily, I would have these angry outbursts that I could not control, etc. That’s what I mean. I just always seemed different.

And now I know why. It’s because I am. And having a reason for that is what has allowed me to accept myself and learn how to deal with it. I’ve had to research a lot of things that can help the ADHD brain and so many things are helping.

I am going to continue on this journey of researching and speaking out about ADHD because I think a lot more people have it than we think, and most people don’t know how to deal with it.

Also, for those of you with children who have it, I encourage you to start doing more research as well. Often times, kids with ADHD seem like they are arguing with you, when in reality they are just extremely confused and need more clarification. Or they are extremely emotional so people think they need to be on meds. The list goes on…..

I plan on continuing to shed light on living with ADHD through the good, the bad, and the ugly. In the hopes that maybe someone else recognizes some symptoms in themselves and can start extending themselves some grace, instead of self-hate (which is very common for us ADHD’ers).

Lastly, while I am a million percent aware that ADHD is not horrible disease or anything like cancer, it still does cause problems in people’s lives and there’s a very high suicide rate in the ADHD community. I’m talking about it because while it may not be as extreme as cancer, it can affect people’s lives to the point where they don’t want to live. I hope that by talking about it and sharing some truths about it, we can all learn more and grow together.

I promise you, someone in your life has ADHD; they are either excellent maskers or their lives are completely a mess. Either way, next time you want to judge someone who seems like their life is in chaos, or they haven’t eaten in 3 days, or their house is a mess, or they just seem really scattered….maybe stop and ask how you can help. That’s it. Just offer to help. Don’t make the obvious judgements of the chaos that we already know exists. We don’t need the judgement. We need help.

Because now that I understand that seriously, not everyone has an internal dialogue in their head or not everyone has to make to-do lists to remind themselves to brush their teeth every fucking morning, I eased up on myself tremendously.

Here I have been just torturing myself, beating myself up religiously about what a failure I am, what a loser I am, why can’t I just be normal and do day-to-day simple fucking tasks?!!?!?!?!?!?!?!? Oh man, these conversations never end.

But anyways, once I realized that other people don’t struggle with that because, again, I have ADHD and it’s a chemical thing in my brain, I forgave myself. I forgave myself for how mean I’ve been and how hard I’ve been on me. No shit people who don’t have this don’t understand….they don’t have to collect spoons for simple everyday things. They just wake up in the morning and are programmed to do it. WE ARE NOT. That’s the difference.

And that’s ok. That’s why I’m sharing this. To shed light on it. That that IS ok. But, it’s also a chance to remind yourself (if you have ADHD) that those people giving you advice or judging you, truly have no idea what they are even saying, so you just have to let me be where they are at and move on. Just let them.

Now that I know what I know, I’ve given myself a lot of grace and I’ve also done the same thing to others. I mean, if I didn’t know I had this until now, how in the hell was anyone else supposed to know? But, now that I do know, it’s made things so much better. Just the knowledge. Just having that to lean on when I’m spiraling, to remind myself that this is an ADHD thing…it’s ok.

Again, none of this is an excuse, just more like a lightbulb. If any of you might be struggling with similar things and your life is starting to suck because of it, I’m telling you it might be time to go talk to your doctor. To any of you out there who think this sounds like one of your kids, please research it and how to respond to it. ADHD’ers are very sensitive to rejection and we struggle with feeling extremely unloved, and this is especially relevant in teens and they are not doing shit to annoy you on purpose, I promise. (If it’s from ADHD. Sometimes teens are just being assholes and I get that too!)

For now, all I’d like to say is be kind to everyone. It’s getting pretty rough out here these days and people are battling things we truly know nothing about. Just be nice and be kind, and go to the doctor if you think you have ADHD. Life is too short to manage all that madness on your own.

Happy Trails,

Em