Keeping Up With Life

fuckingconversations:

pazdispenser:

CBC made a good documentary on adult ADHD and part of it really caught me off guard because i swear they repeated verbatim my life story for the past 3 years

full programme here:

http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/episodes/adhd-not-just-for-kids

My ADHD manifested in excellent in-class work. Excellent understanding in discussions. Excellent participation. 

My ADHD manifested in piles of homework left undone until the last possible minute, while I stared at them, thinking; “I want to get these done. I understand the theory. It would take 10 minutes. I want to start, why can’t I start?” 

My ADHD manifested in fantastic reading comprehension - nigh impenetrable focus on interesting topics the first time I’m reading about them. 

My ADHD manifested in a complete inability to focus on reviews or re-reads, mind skittering sideways and away whenever anything was boring or repetitive. I sat down to study, my books open, my eyes on the text, and my brain clawing its way out the back of my head to focus on something else - anything else. Focus, focus! [No.]

My ADHD manifested in Articulating wings half-finished but still beautiful, in beautiful lineart and half-hearted coloring. In stories written passionately for days until I forgot it existed and never returned. In projects started and forgotten and started and forgotten a thousand times until my bins of project supplies piled up and my bank account shriveled down. No, it will be different this time - I LOVE this new thing. This new thing is my world, my destiny, my Everything. I CREATE and CREATE and CREATE and never FINISH. 

My ADHD manifested in confusion and surprise as time slithered away, hours passing like minutes and minutes seeming endless by contrast. An inability to gauge how much time had passed, was left, a task would take. An inability to hold dates in my head, because time didn’t feel consistent or even real.

 My ADHD manifested in watching someone talk and not understanding a word they said - literally hearing sounds and translating out only nonsense. In thoughts so loud I couldn’t speak coherently. In a conversation across the room shattering an idea I was trying to hold. It’s hard to think when you’re already thinking about everything around you. 

Well, fuck.  

Every time I read about another woman’s personal experience with ADHD, it reinforces my belief that my new GP is right and although I might not have a severe case I do at least have some noticeable components.  The details of the above vary from me, but basically:  Excellent academics, problems with executive function (and homework is a detail that does line up for me here), focus that winds up being either intense or difficult to hold onto, lots of starting projects but difficulty finishing them, time not behaving itself/feeling unreal, and difficulty with auditory processing.  That’s me.  Right down the list, every single thing.

The most frustrating thing is that I knew this about myself, I kept thinking “I wonder if I might have ADHD” because of most of these things.  But I’m not hyperactive (kind of the opposite) and I thought no, I’m overreacting, I’m worrying too much.

I did this with depression too.  I did this with disordered eating.  And still I continued to discount my own experiences and sense of something being…  I don’t want to say “wrong”, but maybe something not working the way I thought it “should”.  (That might have been a clue right there, if I’d been paying more attention.  One of the first lessons I learned in therapy was the insidiousness of the word “should”.)  There are a lot of reasons for that, some of which are social indoctrination and some of which are specific to my personal situation.  None of them made trying to just wish myself better any more effective.

I suppose the lesson here is to trust my gut about mental health.

[Image description:  Five still frames from a documentary, alternating between a person speaking to camera and another person walking around on what appears to be a college campus.  Subtitles across the five frames read:  “Classic case of Attention Deficit Disorder is the 19 year old female university student.  They go off to university and everything starts to fall apart.  It doesn’t fall apart because they’re partying too much or they’re not mature enough […] It’s because for the first time in their life that exoskeleton wasn’t there.  Then things didn’t go well and they’re left with this feeling of ‘I’m not as good as everybody else, I’m not as smart as everybody else’.  [They] show up at the university health services and the psychiatrist says ‘well how long have you been depressed for?’.  And the psychiatrist has slid the young lady into the psychiatrist’s comfort zone of depression and anxiety.”]

(Note that the documentary is not available outside of Canada.  There is some text at the link given by the OP, though, which could be of interest.)

(Source: despazito)