I’ve
spent almost 3 years in therapy working diligently on my Complex PTSD, Social
Anxiety Disorder, and Panic Disorder with Agoraphobia, which stemmed from the
physical and psychological traumas I endured throughout my childhood.
These were monumental challenges which completely rocked my world, and
they caused me to all but ignore my ADHD diagnosis and its role in my
life. In fact, in one of my initial posts on this blog I believe I
called it a “secondary diagnosis” to which I would pay scant attention (see
what I did there? I'm so clever...).
I’m
in the process of picking up the pieces of my life after hitting rock bottom so
hard that I bounced twice, as a great lyricist once said. I was
homeless, jobless, essentially removed from my two daughters, my girlfriend had
just broken things off, and I just completely
de-stabilized. However, I made it into a fairly decent wellness
center, have regained stability, and I'm doing all of the things typical people
do and take for granted in their lives.
After
being here for awhile I finally feel relatively normal. I’m eating
well, sleeping ok, exercising regularly again, and in generally good health and
spirits. Now it’s time for me to develop a new routine that I can
carry with me from here and more or less utilize for a lifetime. So
for the first time ever I sat down and really went to work on developing a
schedule.
When
I say I’m going to “sit down” and do something, that’s a euphemism indicating
that I’m going all-out to accomplish it. I began by doing general
research online and at the library on best practices for developing schedules
and began to refine this research to take into account my
diagnoses. It was interesting how little there was regarding CPTSD
and creating routines and schedules. Then I decided to see what
there was regarding ADHD and it was like hitting the jackpot in Vegas.
I
had always known that scheduling and routine were fairly significant challenges
for those with ADHD, but for some reason it never really registered with me
that I should examine this further for my own benefit. That was a
mistake of titanic proportions because it appears to be the final piece to the
puzzle that day-to-day living has become.
While
started down this path simply to develop a personal routine and schedule that
took my ADHD into account, I ended up learning so much about how having ADHD
can completely ruin a person’s life in various ways. Even more
startling was that, at one point, I actually wondered if either my psychologist
or psychiatrist had ghost-written this particular article because it sounded so
freakishly just like me and my experiences, past and current.
The
research I uncovered on adults with ADHD include how we…
·
are more prone to high-stimulus-seeking behavior,
·
are procrastinators of the highest order,
·
brood and ruminate over bad outcomes because we've gotten
distracted repeatedly from the task at hand,
·
cannot tolerate boredom of any kind,
·
are restless and often need to be on the move,
·
feel constrained by professional conventions and chained by social
norms,
·
lack/lose perspective of the long-term consequences of today’s actions,
·
feel the need to be doing multiple things simultaneously,
·
have difficulty transitioning between close engagements such as
back-to-back meetings,
·
have mood swings independent of what’s occurring externally in our
environment,
·
will obsess and ruminate over a psychological “startle” (some type
of transition or change) that results in a loss of perspective and makes us
feel as though the world is upside-down,
·
must have regular and vigorous exercise or will self-destruct,
·
have a tendency to over-focus/hyper-focus (which can be good or
bad contingent upon how it's deployed),
·
are typically impulsive, tactless in social situations,
I'm
seemingly just using my ADHD to create elegant excuses for much of the
knuckle-headed nonsense I tend to do… at least that how it plays in my own
ears. However, I in no way want or need excuses for anything I’ve done or
continue to do. I completely own everything. It’s on me to figure
out what’s wrong, address the issues, and correct my behaviors.
Yet
I found these themes recurring repeatedly across so many different sources, so
I had no choice but to take it all very seriously. Part of me owning and
addressing my flaws and failures is to determine the "why" first, and
these ADHD-prone behaviors accurately characterize who I've been my entire
life. Take away the childhood traumas and these would be issues I would
grapple with anyway because ADHD is a biological, hereditary condition.
Ironically, I likely got it from my father but, unlike the abuse, he
bears no responsibility for this.
Beyond
correcting the problems, much of the literature stressed taking advantage of
the good aspects of ADHD and learn how to adjust my life and lifestyle to fit
the profile of how my particular form of ADHD manifests itself. Primarily
I'm going to accept who I am and stop trying to force myself into conventions
and norms for which I'm simply ill-suited.
For
example, I'm never going to be the model student or super-organized executive
even though I'm very intelligent, creative, skilled, and accomplished.
I
have to accept and anticipate the inevitable collapse of a certain percentage
of projects I undertake, relationships I have, obligations I take on because I
have always and will continue to take on more than I can readily handle and
there's nothing I can do to prevent this.
I
will take advantage of my tendency towards addictive behaviors and take on
healthy pursuits such as training for a triathlon.
I'm
not going to go through an exhaustive list because you get the point. I'm
simply thrilled to integrate this into my ongoing recovery and hopefully have a
complete plan of action for my life going forward.
My
recovery plan and actions to deal with the CPTSD, anxiety, and panic attacks
have provided very little in the way of applicable remedies for the basic
aspects of my life. I am not saying the treatment hasn’t worked,
because it has. I haven’t had a panic attack in half a year, and
I’ve been coming out of my shell socially in a progressive if uneven fashion
over roughly the same time period. Still I pined for more in the way
of practical knowledge and skills which could make my life better, easier, more
manageable.
Now
it's time to actually apply it and see if it works! I’ve just
finished the lion’s share of my research, and it's difficult to accurately
convey the relief at having found exactly that which I’ve been seeking for a
couple of years now. More to come on how well it works…
