I have to admit something, which is: once I started on this series of posts about the 5 steps of acceptance of one’s ADHD diagnosis, I got bored with it and wanted to write about something else. One of the ever-increasing number of ironies attached to ADD – “I’m bored and don’t want to keep writing about the same thing in my ADD blog.” Or “I keep meaning to work on my ADD blog but I just can’t stop procrastinating.” Or “I have a really great idea for my ADD blog but I can’t find it! It was just here a minute ago! Ok I remember the phone rang and then I set it down and then I picked up my hairbrush…oh damn it all to hell!”
Who is this on my internet radio? Is this Kate Bush? She is so weird. Oh, no, someone else. Whoever it is, I haven’t heard of her but she has a weird Kate Bush-type voice. That’s what I get for listening to the folk station I guess.
But yes, back to ADD diagnosis and the havoc it can play with your brain/life/loved ones/amazon.com account. So far ADD has brought us relief, denial, anger, irresponsibility, and guilt. Let’s see what else is in store, shall we?
Step Four:
ADD IS COMPLETELY MADE UP - JUST ONE OF THE LIES I HAVE BEEN TELLING MYSELF
Somewhere in my progression towards acceptance of my diagnosis, I became extremely fearful that ADD wasn’t real. I can’t tell you how but it somehow spun out of me being relieved that I had it combined with being embarrassed of my symptoms. I was suddenly so aware of all of the little nutty things that I did through the day than I had been before the diagnosis and therefore so grateful that this new awareness came with an explanation for all the little nutty things. I clung to this so much that I became paranoid that I was going to lose it – ADD was my safety raft from having ADD. It didn’t make sense but then my brain didn’t really either.
I think this sprang from me trying to find a balance between my 2nd and 3rd stages of diagnosis. I had realized that I couldn’t just say “Sorry, I have ADD” every time I did something spacey or inconsiderate, but I also was trying to stop beating myself up when my symptoms appeared. I was working on having a “kinder self-dialogue.” (Yes, I got that phrase from my shrink.) But my self-dialogue has always had a bully side to it. It’s the side that would make me think about Freddy Krueger when I was 8 and alone in my dark bedroom telling myself “Don’t think about Freddy Kruger. Don’t think about Freddy Krueger. Damnit, why am I thinking about Freddy Krueger?” This “Wah ha!” part of my brain started pointing and laughing and saying things like “You’re so pathetic. It doesn’t matter how many books you read or how many hippies tell you to feel good about yourself; this is all a lie made up by drug companies to make money. You’re just buying into it because you don’t want to take responsibility for your lost credit cards and your messy bedroom.”
My head-bully is so mean, right? But my mean head had help, because a lot of people – people who don’t live in my head – don’t believe that ADD is real (unlike the people in my head, who are very real). Or they think people with ADD shouldn’t be medicated. Or they think that it’s over-diagnosed. I actually had a conversation with an HR person at a former job of mine who TOLD me “You know, I really don’t know anything about ADD.” After we had talked about it for a while, me feeling so great that I was spreading knowledge and understanding, she finished by saying “But you have to admit; it does get over-diagnosed all the time.” She didn’t know what it was, but she did know that it was over-diagnosed. She didn’t know what was being over-diagnosed! I really hate it when people have really strong (and, in this case, redundant) opinions on things they don’t know anything about.
People really seemed to feel very strongly about whether or not ADD existed. Especially people who didn’t have ADD and didn’t know anyone who had ADD (sort of like Gay marriage…). Blogs were dedicated to the subject. The internet was full of postings on “health news” sites about it’s illegitimacy. The fervor was nearly religious. I suppose I can see how, if you thought there was a disorder that was made up just to sell drugs that are mostly given to children, it would get your blood pumping a bit. But time and time again the people who were so adamant about denying its existence seemed to be people who didn’t understand it at all. They also didn’t understand that the medication was not a sedative to knock out hyperactive kids but actually a stimulant to help them focus when they weren’t getting enough or the right kind of stimulation.
Anyway. There were all too many voices out there to fuel my nasty self-dialogue. But I researched. I read. I went to support groups. I met people. I talked to friends. And I finally realized that, whatever angry ADD-haters said, the only part of ME that didn’t believe my ADD was real was the part that wasn’t ready to accept myself and like myself. Once I was ready to do that, I stood up on the mountain top and proclaimed:
Step Five:
CAN YOU PLEASE EXPLAIN WHAT ADD IS AGAIN? I DON'T THINK I WAS REALLY PAYING ATTENTION THE FIRST TIME...
One could also call this step “synthesis.” It was me stopping swinging from the extremes and learning to balance my approach to my ADD. Now I walk a sort of tightrope when I examine a certain symptom of my ADD. A tightrope that is very short so that I don’t bang my head or get rope burn when I frequently fall off and need to get back up again. For example: I have one messy-ass apartment. Really, if you’ve come over to my apartment and thought it was clean, that’s because I ran around for a half-hour before you got there and stuffed everything in the closet/bathroom/car. So I’ll come home and look at my apartment and say “Jesus, who lives like this? Oh yeah, me…” But I try to remember that I have a certain brain chemistry that, for some reason, makes me want to “organize” using the “pile system.” I don’t know why this is but almost every other person I know with ADD also has “piles” in their house. It cracks me up because it’s almost like you can tell who we are from our footprints or our scat. So I tell myself “You know what, organizing and consistency are not the easiest thing in the world for me.” However, I don’t leave it at that, because I don’t WANT the apartment to be messy. I don’t want to use the ADD as an excuse – maybe I’ll give myself a break and realize that it doesn’t need to be perfectly clean. Maybe I’ll look for a fun way to clean it or ask for help cleaning it. But the important thing is that I stop saying to myself either “This place SHOULD be clean” or “I can’t clean this place. I have ADD. It’ll always be a mess.”
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to find something to do to distract me from cleaning my apartment.
