As a kid, I was diagnosed with ADHD. The diagnosis itself was devastating to me, not because I thought that there was something wrong with me, but because I knew there wasn't. I knew that what they were pointing to was something real, but everything about the label "Attention Deficit (Hyperactivity) Disorder" felt off to me.
I felt emotions more than other people. You know when you see news or watch a movie and someone suffers greatly at the hands of others, and you imagine how the victim must feel and it makes you feel sad or angry. I don't process things like that the way many other people do, and I don't feel it's because my brain works differently, I feel it's because I look where other people don't look.
I feel the pain of the victim, sure. I also feel the pain of the perpetrator, all the suffering that may have led them to commit the crime. I feel the pain of ancestral trauma before and after the events and shitty situations outside of everyone's control. I imagine myself in both positions. I don't look away from any of that.
I don't want to because I don't think I should. I knew enough as a kid to know that looking away only leads to more suffering, be it today or tomorrow, by my hands or by someone else's.
I allow my mind to make correlations in an instant that bring up all the similar situations that I've heard in my life, and I feel all of that too. I could stop it but I know that stopping it would limit my understanding and I find that painful and unfair. How can we look at things so one sided and claim to know anything at all? How can you empathize with only the victim and claim to have a useful opinion?
You may think that this has nothing to do with focusing in school...but a heightened awareness of multiple perspectives led me to recognize a massive amount of contradiction in the classroom, on the news, and in daily conversations with others.
School was basic as fuck, and so was the news, and most conversations.
People are only just starting to recognize this now, as they perceive the world to be falling apart.
This is has not been a curse, and I wouldn't change it for anything. It's allowed me to understand many things on a much much deeper level than I otherwise would have. But no, it's not conducive to classroom learning, which is more about socialization than education (and remember, basic AF). It's not conducive to working at a company where profits are the bottom line.
Society sees me as a defect, whether people acknowledge that or not.
Some may see it as a choice, while others see it as "non-normative", some people call it "being an empath", but all it's ever been for me was a preference to see the world how I actually see it and not force myself to live with blinders on. I feel comfortable with a certain level of exposure on my camera, I don't like how the pictures look when a certain amount of light isn't shining in my world.
It's a choice but it's an obvious choice to me. I know I have the agency to turn it off, and I've tried many times. I just find that I become a hallow shell of myself when I do. I feel dead inside, and I don't want that.
Because I live life at a higher exposure setting, school was INCREDIBLY painful for me, in ways that I don't know how to describe. It wasn't bullying or being disappointed with my grades, just the simple act of sitting in a chair against my will was excruciating. I would have preferred child labor any day of the week.
Gabor Mate calls ADHD a trauma response and he is absolutely right. Imagine being aware of color in a world that refuses to acknowledge it's existence. That was ADHD for me, and it still is.
I let more light in.
I'm getting much better at working with it, but it still makes it harder for me to be consistent. I fall into irregular sleeping patterns. I spread myself very thin and don't always know how to maintain relationships. I find most aspects of mainstream culture incredibly distasteful, the same way you might find it when someone picks their nose at the dinner table.
I know some of this sounds arrogant. I don't care anymore.
I went through many years of depression and emotional instability because I felt like the world didn't really have a place for me and, I was right!
But I made peace with that over the course of the past 10 years I've resigned to making a place for myself or die trying. And that's what I'm doing now.
I don't know if I will succeed but I'm giving it all I have, and you can think whatever you want of me, because I don't have anything else to give.
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An ADHDier told me that, leaving with ADHD is like leaving 50% behind, and I think he was making sense.
I manage mine gradually and always try to have control over the symptoms by leveraging more protein intake.
Just being a little curious, do you take medications?
I don’t feel behind, I feel way ahead, but it’s hard to wait for other people to catch up and so I get restless. Because I’m waiting for others to catch up, I try to find things to fill my mind with, and that’s where the attention issues come from. While I’m waiting for them my mind gets absorbed with many things. And because my mind works quickly, I have a habit of overfeeding it.
Imagine you finish a test way before anyone but it’s not time to hand in the test so you start thinking about other things. Then you forget to hand in the test because your mind was so busy in order to make waiting less boring. Then it becomes anxiety because you have had this kind of thing happen so many times and suffered consequences for it. That’s ADHD.
It’s just like a song with a different rhythm from the songs on the radio.
I took medicine for 1 year in junior high school . It killed my emotions and didn’t help my attention much. It made me worse I think.
The thing that helped me was learning to manage my focus. I surround myself with easygoing people and don’t read the news much. I learned to manage my emotions as well. The his helped a lot
This!
へぇー、そうなんだぁー。
アメリカってそういった診断、すごく進んでるもんねぇ。
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Interesting to know people have different mindsets and various ways of feelings things. There are those who just get in the shoe of the victims and act as though they are the ones being harmed. Some even go to the length of crying. I hardly feel that way.
You don’t feel empathy for the victim?
I think I can’t help but want to look at things holistically. I don’t always succeed but to look at one side or one aspect of something is really unsettling to me. I can’t help but feel denial is what allows negative cycles to perpetuate
Being diagnosed with ADHD is really crazy. So many people will think different things about you. This makes me remember a child who was in my class then she diagnosed with ADHD, he was mostly neglected because of his behavior and misunderstood
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So much I can relate to!
I love how you manage to put this into words and how you fit all these pieces into what resembles an actual puzzle
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Beautifully written. I resonate with you so much. I recently just got diagnosed (at 27!!!) and everything made sense to me now. I've always felt different and now I see why.
ADHD as a name I agree with it being incorrect. It should be called something else. HealthygamerGG on Youtube thinks ADHD is a disorder ONLY because of how society and the world works right now. If we are to live in the woods to hunt or whatever, that "disorder" is very very useful and a key to the tribe's survival. Nowadays, the world's demands is about working in a corporate job, sitting at an office... society thinks if you jump from one hobby/career/interest to another then you don't have commitment and you're seen as a bad person. I resonate with you saying we feel and see the colors around us better.. before my diagnosis, i have found that very annoying because I needed to focus on one thing but I hear one sound outside on the streets and I try to investigate lol. While I see it as a strength, it takes a lot of time to adjust (at least for me) to quit the thinking of me being lazy, disorganized, emotional, etc and focus on the positive sides.
I haven't read Gabor Mate's book but I have it here already. I just had to finish Dr Hallowell's ADHD 2.0 which I still haven't done so because... ADHD... lol