So much of my days consist of me trying to figure out my own brain. That and I have to also do my job, keep my cat alive, keep up with my family and friends, keep my apartment looking like an adult lives in it, finish paintings, start paintings, and remember to feed myself. Oh and drink water.
Lately though my attention has been very focused and drilled in on (some would call it hyper-focused) the fact that I am ADHD. I don’t have ADHD and I don’t suffer from ADHD. I just am. I was also diagnosed with persistent depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder. Odds are the last two are a result of not being diagnosed with ADHD until the 11th hour.
Anyway! Some of the things that I’ve learned about this new situation is that my lack of emotional control, emotional manipulation, need for constant attention, missing self esteem, staunch fear of rejection and people leaving or “abandoning me” are all a direct result of ADHD. Well maybe not all, but because I have a differently wired brain I am less likely to know the appropriate ways to respond to things.
I have a tendency to be passive aggressive. I get bothered by tiny cues and vibes I think I am feeling off someone and I don’t think before I react and speak and I end up sounding like a child. Things I think are going to come off playful and funny end up turning into a form of emotional manipulation to try and make someone feel bad for not reacting in the way I found it to be appropriate. This is a harmful reaction. This is where I run the risk of actually pushing important people away. I’ve always dealt with my assumptions of hurt with humor.
Just ask my dad! It was funny when I was younger to threaten to go back to therapy if he didn’t do what I asked of him. Now, I’m 33 and it’s just flat manipulative.
I do the same thing in most other relationships in my life when things aren’t going according to my assumed plan. “I’ll say this.. they’ll say this.. and THEN I’ll be happy”. What actually happens is I’ll say _________ then they don’t respond in the way I imagined and I react to the hurt so I try to hurt right back. Emotionally. Rarely does this work in my favor. Mostly I end up looking like a lot of work.
What is actually a lot of work is thinking before I speak. When I started down the path of the supposed ADHD diagnoses I was mostly concerned with my lack of focus and memory. I can’t find anything and I get explosively frustrated because of it. I forget to do tasks at work all the time and I beat myself up for it for days. All of a sudden though this whole world opened up to me. A world of living with a brain that misfires from time to time. I am not going to sit here and say my irrational overreacting is entirely ADHD... although odds are a very large portion of my tendencies is due to that very thing.
I do not want to rely on this diagnosis as an explanation for everything I do and say and just rest there. I am happy to see that I’m not just crazy and emotionally imbalanced.. I just am actively focused on not letting it rule my every whim.
I am trying.
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