While my inability to harness and direct my focus is certainly one of the more annoying and hindering aspects of my ADHD, I think the worst part for me is the emotional dysregulation and the way negative emotions can effectively become a lightning rod for my wandering attention.
Like right now. I’m pissed off at something going on behind the scenes, and I literally cannot think of anything else. Can I distract myself? Yeah, sure, for about ten minutes. But can I do anything meaningful? No. Because I’m expending all my energy and attention on not thinking about the thing that’s hurting me. And then something reminds me of the fuckery going on, and the rage comes back full force like a blunt force blow to my chest, and I’m left gasping in the wake of the intensity to both escape the situation and to turn around and inflict the exact same damage back.
The impulsive part of my brain knows the latter would be quicker. It’s easier to lash out than do the work required to move on. It’s more rewarding because I’d get the immediate emotional catharsis my dysfunctional, dopamine-deprived brain is craving.
In the barest of terms, the anger is stimulating. And that’s dangerous.
If you’re not careful, that’s how you burn not just bridges but yourself as well. (Not to mention the people around you.) And right now, the entire inside of my head is a tinderbox of petty fuckery that won’t accomplish anything if I act on it, but fuck me if the temptation to drop the match just isn’t there all the time.
Anyway, I’m filling out an ADHD worksheet for a workshop I’m supposed to be doing, and I’m annoyed that all the questions are about productivity, with zero mention of literally anything else. And, like, granted, I knew there would be an emphasis on productivity going into this because there always is. But it’d just be nice to see mention of the other things and their importance rather than just treating them like a footnote.
I’m more than my inability to focus. I’m an entire array of dysfunctional fuckery that needs to be wrangled on an hourly basis, and it’d be nice to have it acknowledged how much energy that takes. That’s all.
I just finished the book “Earthed”, by a woman who moves to a smallholding in southern England and breaks down and is eventually diagnosed with ADHD. I’m recommending it on this post because it puts emotional dysregulation front and centre - the high highs, the low lows, the furniture- and plant-destroying levels of anger, the numbness, the self harm and suicide thoughts, the overwhelm, the anxiety, the exhaustion of trying to manage emotions. The woman gets CBT for a while prior to her ADHD realisation and it’s helpful to hear about how *un*helpful it was for her.
I read that already and liked most of it, though I did not like her calling the term “time blindness” ableist simply because she experiences the opposite of it.
Some of us genuinely do not percieve time and fail to process it, even with visual aids and reminders. We are time blind. Calling it that is not ableist just because she (and some others with ADHD) can’t relate.
Also, in case it helps anyone, I’ve found DBT more helpful than CBT. It actually gave me the skills to accept what I was experiencing and self-soothe, rather than constantly trying to analyze my way out of it and get even more upset, which is what would happen.
CBT makes me hyperfixate on the bad thing and I get stuck in a loop trying to think my way out of it. Because I know what I should do, I know it. But the emotional dysregulation of ADHD paired with hyperfixation that often makes it more painful and sometimes even traumatizing to try and do.
(Thats also how we figured out CBT was enabling re-traumatization for me when I was trying to treat my c-PTSD. It wasn’t until I made the switch to DBT, EMDR and somatic therapy that I finally started to make progress.)
DBT lets me sit with my feelings, acknowledge them and find ways to self-regulate and soothe until the fixation ends or at least becomes manageable. It helps me know I’m not a bad person because I can’t logic my way out of certain thought patterns. I’m just someone who needs a lot of time and space for my big emotions, and that’s okay.
(via withthingsunreal)
