…and how to cope with it
I had a friend who was a highly regarded psychologist. Last year she casually mentioned to me that I had ADHD, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Oh yeah, I knew it the first time I met you.”
I was shaken by this and in denial- until I read about the condition and found myself relating vividly to the experiences recounted by diagnosed ADHD people. Then so much about me and my own past experiences made sense. I moved gradually from denial and then depression towards acceptance. I had to remake my self image and modify my self understanding. I reinterpreted my daily life as it unfolded.
My particular flavour of ADHD is the inattentive style.
While I can now accept this is how I am and put practices in place to lessen the effects, I have to recognise that there is something odd about my brain. It is quite capable of holding two incompatible pieces of knowledge in place without seeing the incompatibility.
The other week a close friend proposed a Saturday out together. We would take the dog and go on a coastal drive, have a nice lunch out, walk on the beach and go home for dinner and a board game. I agreed to this and she cleared her day for me. The problem was that I agreed to it knowing that I had also previously been engaged to perform at a musical gathering all Saturday afternoon and evening. It wasn’t until Friday night that I realized I had double booked. I felt bad having to let her down, but also a sense of being ashamed of how I am.
I missed the rehearsal for the performance also thanks to my ADHD. I had been helping my landlady dismantle a bed in another flat and gone to my kitchen tool/junk drawer (come on, we all have one, right?) to get a hammer. After we had taken the bed down I couldn’t find my glasses. I couldn’t find them for days! It meant I couldn’t get to the rehearsal without them so I had to let the band down and tell them I couldn’t come. A few days later I found the glasses in the back of the junk drawer. Of course! I had put them there without noticing when I got the hammer out.
During a break on the night of this same musical performance, I went to a quiet space to sit in a bean bag and call a sick friend. In the middle of the call I noticed a rainbow toy over the other side of the room and went to pick it up (shiny!). After the performance was over, I realized I had lost my glasses (couldn’t drive home at night without them) and started looking under where I had been playing, under tables outside, in the bean bag and everywhere over and over. I had about six people also looking, with torches and phone lights. I felt so embarrassed! Finally I went back and scanned the quiet room, and there were my glasses next to the rainbow toy I had completely forgotten about playing with while I was on the phone. I was glad I had found my glasses and could call off the search party, but along with the relief again came the shame of having put everybody out because of my stupid, inattentive brain.
Of course none of these events are of life-and-death importance. And embarrassment is survivable. Shame too, but doesn’t wash off as easily as it goes to self esteem. I’m pointing out the shame dimension of this syndrome partly so that maybe a fellow ADHD person will feel less alone, and partly to counter the idea that by accepting my ADHD identity I am jumping on some trendy psychobabble bandwagon (you do hear this quite a bit). It is something I am not proud of, it is a club I would often like not to be in. It is a difficult fact of my life that I have to accept and allow for every day, and which will still come into play every so often despite my best efforts to be aware of it and compensate for it.
If, like me, you suffer from a sense of shame about ADHD (or even something else completely unrelated), it can potentially be quite debilitating. I have in the past spiralled into despair and depression. Inner questions would scream at me ‘Why am I so useless?’ And even ‘Wouldn’t everyone be better off without me?’ We can see the danger in this line of thought. The best way to deal with this inner critic is to raise the spirit of self compassion. ‘This is something which is a flaw but it’s not my fault. I am doing my best.’ I would add to this a sense of humility and gratitude towards people who forgive me and understand when I have put them out and who love me anyway.
After all, we are all just walking each other home.*
*Ram Dass, ‘Be Here Now’
