What I Enjoy

A large part of my struggle in Al-Anon has been learning to live my own life. This involves pursuing my own goals and finding ways to enjoy my free time. My co-dependant coping mechanisms meant that my goals and motivations are based entirely on what other people think and what I believe they expect of me. When I initially stopped to try and figure out what is important to me and what could motivate my life in recovery I found myself looking into a giant empty void. I didn’t have the first clue about what I wanted, enjoyed, or could motivate me.

Last night I was talking to my pseudo-sponsor about this and realized that playing my guitar and learning about the world are two things that I have always done for myself and that still give me a lot of pleasure. It feels good to now know at least this tiny bit of what makes me happy. I often feel that my recovery is not a process of returning to sanity that has been lost, but rather of building a new and healthy person who can learn for the first time what sanity is. Finding these two things feel like a first step towards building a personality that isn’t simply a reaction to abuse, neglect, and alcoholism. It is a part of me that is neither running from nor trying to deal with my past. It is a part of me that is completely and totally in the present moment.

I am so grateful.

My dinner with Kevin

I had dinner with my sponsor last night because I was feeling very down at the end of the day. We talked about the usual topics of abandonment, co-dependency, the steps of my recovery, and some issues I have been dealing with recently. Toward the end of the meal I was beginning to feel a deep emptiness that I was having trouble describing or understanding.

Recently, I feel directionless and disoriented. I was describing how my mental committee often tells me that I need to keep accomplishing things with my life. I have listened to them a lot and have lived my life believing that accomplishments and outside admiration are the keys to happiness. These beliefs have given my life direction from school to sports to my social life to my relationships.

As I get more in touch with myself I am losing my drive to impress people. Any energy that goes into me diminishes my ability to monitor, anticipate, and accomplish the things that impress the outside world. I am afraid that people will stop admiring me.

As I continued to talk to Kevin I began to see for the first time how much every action in my life revolves around the expectations and desires of other people. I can’t control the expectations of others. I can’t always fulfill the expectations of others. Living my life according to others has made me miserable. In order to recover I will need to sever my attachment to expectations and learn to live for myself.

These realizations brought me to a very deep, dark bottom.

I don’t know, nor can I imagine what would give my life meaning or direction if I didn’t rely on winning the approval of others.

What other people think and feel is completely out of my control. If I try to rely on them I will continue to get jerked around for the rest of my life. The best I can do is to live my life based on what I think and feel. I’m not sure I understand yet what that means or how to do it. This will take a while.

“Fame or integrity: which is more important?
Money or happiness: which is more valuable?
Success of failure: which is more destructive?

If you look to others for fulfillment,
you will never truly be fulfilled.
If your happiness depends on money,
you will never be happy with yourself.

Be content with what you have;
rejoice in the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking,
the whole world belongs to you.”
-Tao Te Ching

About Me

I am unsure where or how to start the story of my ADHD because it only occurred to me as a possibility when I was 23 (about 18 months ago). There is so much I am still learning about it even though my dad and sister were diagnosed almost 10 years ago. It never really interfered with my grades – until college – for a few reasons:

1. I have a good deal of natural intelligence. I don’t say this to boast only to try and explain that building conceptual models in my mind for how the world works has always been easy for me. In classes that meet 5 days a week this is enough time to incorporate the model and learn a few facts well enough to pull a B.
2. Listening to other people talk – especially lecture – is very soothing for me. I’m not always paying attention but I am able to sit still because I feel calm.
3. At a very young age I came to believe that any love I received and any self-worth I could attain would come by demonstrating my perfection. Achievement equaled acceptance.
4. Since I can remember I have loved to daydream.

I had a few years – third grade, fifth grade, sophomore year of high school, and sophomore year of college – when the grades didn’t come. But on the whole I was a B+/A- student.
I think my ADHD interfered more with my view of day-to-day life than with anything in textbooks. As far back as I can remember I couldn’t think about the end of the day without becoming depressed because I knew that it would never arrive. Getting through school or work was never a realistic possibility because it seemed too far away to even consider. I would go through periods of believing that I was doomed to live a moment-to-moment existence of boredom for the rest of my life. It sounds gloomy but I couldn’t recognize it because I had nothing to compare it to. It astounded me that others could look forward to the end of the day with excitement and not notice the insurmountable hours that lay in between. I would look at them and wonder if they were in denial?

All the external indicators of success, like grades, were above average but I felt like they were a façade. I didn’t talk, think, or act like the other “smart” kids in my classes. I always felt different. I was always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

My world view slowly began to materialize in high school as persistent low-grade depression that became the background noise to life. It was almost impossible to notice at first because it felt like it had always been there. The only clue I had was that other people appeared to take joy in the most trivial tasks – talking to friends, working out, going on a trip, or reading a book. Anything I did in my free time was an escape. I smoked cigarettes, I ate compulsively, I sat in front of the TV for hours, and I had sex whenever possible. I also developed the ability to daydream in exquisite detail. I dreamed about being a star athlete or a Nobel prize winning scientist. Why live in reality when I could create my own world?

I had one recurring daydream about owning a remote control that could pause time. I could pause a test to open my textbook so that I would never have to study. I could pause at recess to look under the skirts of the girls in my class. I even dreamed of making a device that could pause and unpause time 50 times a second while I was running so that it would look like I was moving at incredible speed.

As my eating and smoking got more out of hand I began having recurring daydreams about having a computer that would allow me to custom design my body. It would allow me to precisely design my muscle tone, body fat, teeth, eyes, speed, sleep patterns, and disease states. I would never be fat or tired and all the cigarettes in the world would never slow me down or give me cancer.

But my fantasies were only that and I continued my moment-to-moment struggle against frustration. I began to believe that I did not deserve happiness because all I ever wanted to do was complain. I saw myself as a cry-baby. The few experiences of true contentment that I remember from growing up were during summer vacations. After about a month of doing nothing but eat, sleep, and watch TV I would start to forget about the misery and stress of the school year. I would regain interest in reading and learning at my own pace. My passion for science, math, and computers would return and I would dedicate myself anew to my education – each year vowing to remain motivated and not get sucked into my old habits of frustration, boredom, pessimism, and self-pity.

Growing up in a family with a lot of abuse had also led me to the conclusion that nothing was more important than the approval of others. Sometime before I went to high school I concluded that doing well in school was the only way I could get approval. I also noticed that people respected academic accomplishments more when the person played sports. My ADHD was going to make it very hard to do well in school, and sports just took up more energy. I was fighting a constant uphill battle because I thought I was supposed to. My self-esteem was as low as it could go because others were doing the same stuff as me with little or no effort.

I overextended myself at every opportunity. I abandoned the hope that I could motivate myself and relied on the fear of approaching deadlines. The fear of failing out of school made me study. The fear of looking like a fool on the football field made me exercise. I could never focus on anything but my exhaustion and depression. I thought the only solution was to keep moving.
I set myself up for failure because I have always thought that I could feel good if others approved of me. My criteria for approval involved academic success which my undiagnosed ADHD made extremely difficult. I spent years beating myself up for being lazy.

Recently I am learning that my criteria of approval and success are all self-imposed and artificial. My self-esteem right now is questionable but that is higher than it has been in a long time. I am taking time to value myself and beginning to realize that it has taken a lot of energy and determination to fight my ADHD for so long. I never gave up and have even accomplished some things with my life. I can and should be very proud of that.

The learning environment in college is what finally broke my denial. I could not study and there was far too much material to learn by going to class. My trips to the library to study became marathons of frustration and self-loathing. Other people in my program would talk about getting a big cup of coffee and studying for two, three, or four hours for finals. I would sit down with a pot of coffee but would never drink it because after 10 minutes would want to scratch my eyes out and tear my hair in clumps.

I tried so hard freshman year that I nearly made myself sick. I finished with about a 2.8 GPA and I was so embarrassed. Never in my life had I put an honest effort into a task and come up short of my own expectations. I had made sacrifices like going to the library on Saturday nights and letting my weight get out of control. Sophomore year I wanted to put the same effort into my classes but just couldn’t muster the energy. I all but stopped doing homework and started to party on the weekends with my roommates. I almost never went out more than one night a week but I always felt guilty. I never missed a class but I always felt like I should be doing more. I felt guilty when I woke up, when I went to class, when I worked out, when I watched TV, and when I went to bed. Quitting never crossed my mind because I knew it wasn’t my major – it was me.

I limped across the finish line of sophomore year after having failed electric circuits class and accumulated a 2.09 GPA – pathetic. I was so depressed all summer that I couldn’t sleep at night and couldn’t get out of bed in the morning.

Junior year miraculously found me with a moderate amount of motivation that allowed me to re-take and ace my failed class. My motivation was that I was sick of feeling like a fat idiot. I pulled my grades back up to their previous C+/B- level and lost a bunch of weight. I was always hungry and became obsessive about running. I lived every day feeling like a fraud. I constantly felt like I was on the edge of getting fat and failing out. Throughout Junior and Senior years it is difficult for me to remember one thing that I did for myself. What did I do for fun? Nothing, because doing anything would involve letting my guard down. It seems so logical to me now that my world began to crumble into a giant smoldering panic attack halfway through senior year. A system can only withstand that amount of stress for so long before something gives.
After the anxiety started the ADHD took a back seat. The revulsion I felt toward studying was barely audible in comparison to the daily feelings of impending death.

I began to deal with it again when my anxiety subsided in the winter of 2005-06. The thought of getting an office job – especially the one at a big government agency I had worked at in college – scared me because I knew how bored I would be. I remembered vividly how miserable I had been as an intern there during college. My options became more and more limited and finally I applied for the job.

It was hell at first. I did more online Sudoku and Crossword puzzles than I care to admit. Over time I developed certain strategies and coping techniques that too the edge off and allowed me to get some work done. It’s incredible how much constant boredom and frustration can wear a person down emotionally.

My depression kept popping up every few months and my shrink would increase my medication. On the whole my life was improving because I was learning to take care of myself but it felt like I was taking 2 steps forward and 1.5 backward.

Finally, last year – after many months of discussion – my shrink started me on Vyvanse for ADHD. Those first few months were miraculous. It was as though the clouds had parted and I saw my life from a whole new perspective. I knew that the euphoria wouldn’t last but I also knew that I had discovered a huge part of myself. At first I was so productive at work that I never wanted to leave. After years of doing just the work I knew others expected of me I could finally do a project completely and take pride in what I was producing.

Because I no longer used all my energy to fight the ADHD I could start to see patterns and problems with other areas of my life. It became clear to me that I had endured a lot of abuse from my family when I was a kid. I had the desire and energy to recover so I started attending Al-Anon meetings. They have started to teach me the tools I need to take care of myself and build a little self-esteem.

Although it may sound cliche, my life is far from perfect – but I am so much happier. The honeymoon I had been on with my medication came to an end a few months ago and I had to accept that it is not a silver bullet cure for my ADHD – it’s an important tool that I can use to manage my symptoms. I still go a little crazy in the afternoon when it wears off, but I have learned to take some time for myself to deal with it.

I still have trouble with intimate relationships because it’s difficult to give a woman the attention she expects. I still lose things all the time. I still forget almost everything if I don’t write it down. I still get distracted at work and am not always as productive as I would like. But now I can appreciate (sometimes) that all these qualities belong to me and make me who I am. I am working – feverishly of course – on accepting my limitations enough to gain some peace and serenity.

Until then it feels good to let myself just go crazy sometimes!!!

I called my mom at about 1 this afternoon to talk some business for this upcoming weekend. We had a very pleasant conversation and I got back to work. She called me about 20 minutes later and I could hear the tears in her voice. Her sister Gina had just called to say that their mother - my grandmother - had just died.

Grandma has been in a hospice facility for about 2 weeks so I knew it was just a matter of time but it still hit me hard. Somehow it came as a great surprise. She was diagnosed with aggressive lymphoma about 2 years ago and after a few months of treatment went into remission. It came back about 6 months ago and she has been on a downward trajectory since. At about noon today she vomited a lot of blood and then became unresponsive.

What surprises me is that I don’t feel sad or scared – just empty. I sort of feel bad that I haven’t taken more time to keep in touch with her. I called her about 6 weeks ago and we had a nice talk. I sort of wonder if I should have done more but between all my aunts, uncles, and cousins I feel like she had all the love she needed. I doubt I could have added anything substantive other than one more person she felt obliged to talk to.

I am also happy that her suffering is over. Chemotherapy and radiation took a lot out of her and she has been tired for a lot of the last 6 months. I am grateful to have known her and to have many memories. My dad’s parents died when I was about 5 so I never really got to know them.

I am also grateful to have my program because otherwise I would feel the pressing need to do something. I would probably start to imagine the invisible expectations that everyone had of the perfect grandson which is my key to insanity.

I would also have experienced the burning resentment that my mom’s emotions used to arouse. It would have been difficult for me to see past the old feelings that my mom’s tears bring up. I would have been more focused on my repressed emotions than on grandma.

My grandmother lived a long life and was surrounded by those who love her. She knew that I loved her and that gives me peace.

Letting Go

Al-Anon teaches me to turn my will and my life over to the care of my higher power. Many people in the program describe this as “turning it over to god,” with the “it” being the hardship of whatever current moment they are in. Since my higher power is the knowledge of the program, and doesn’t lend itself as easily to the personification necessary to turn something over, I prefer to “let it go.”

Let it go.

This works for me because I hold on so tight. I have held on tightly to pain and fear, and am now ready to let them go. I have held on tightly to my emotions so that they would never get out of control. I have and continue to hold on very tightly to what others think of me. I have held on tightly to life in general and have succeeded in choking the life out of life and making myself exhausted and sick in the process.

In letting go of this mindset I am ready to start loving myself and paying attention to myself. I am ready to pay attention to what I want and what I feel. In the past I have tried so hard to ignore or destroy any shred of desire or emotion. I am beginning to understand what is meant when people say that before anyone can love you, you must first love yourself. It would be like hating the state of Virginia with every breath of every day and yet still expecting to fall in love with someone who was born and raised there. I need to learn to love me, and only then can I have any respect for the love that someone else shows me.

I like to say that I am ready to start loving myself. I AM ready to start loving myself. I have a lot of great and loveable characteristics. I am a smart guy and I am good person. I deserve to feel love and happiness. I deserve to feel love and happiness. I deserve to feel love and happiness. I am a good person and that is completely independent from any relationship I have been in, any people I have angered, or any shortcomings I have had. I have always tried to do the best I could with the tools I had available at the time.

I am ready to let go of the habit of thinking about others first. I am just as important as everyone else in the world and deserve just as much attention. I am unaccustomed to paying attention to me and as a result can infer the attitudes of others with ease but don’t have a clue about how to look at myself. What would I see if I turned the same skilled observation tactics on myself that I constantly use on others? Right now I see confusion.

I see a person who doesn’t know what to do without the cues of other people. I see someone who is bored a lot of the time and exhausted the rest of the time. I see someone who needs a break and a hug and someone to listen. I see someone who is scared of being like other people and making the mistakes that others make. I see someone who is very scared to be average. I see a child who wants with all his heart to be unique and special and powerful and loved. I see a child who started telling himself that these feelings were wrong before he could ever understand why.

I never allowed myself to explore these feelings and so I was never able to come to an understanding about their powerful dynamics. Selfishness is when we take the principles of caring for ourselves too far and start infringing on the rights of others. The only way to learn where the line is that transforms self love into selfishness is by exploring it. I was always so afraid of imposing on others that I never wanted to go anywhere near the line. I never wanted to risk my needs becoming a burden to anyone so I tried not to have any needs. I deserve to make mistakes.

I deserve to be loved.
I deserve to be cared for.
I deserve attention and I deserve to be happy.

This is my brain on ADHD

One time I remember sitting in the library and watching a guy read a page in a textbook straight through. His eyes started at the top of the page and moved progressively along each line to the bottom. HOW IS HE DOING THAT!! There was no flipping back and forth to other pages or nervous fidgeting. I tried to imitate him but by the time I read the first sentence I could feel my skin start to crawl. My eyes began to search the page for an illustration or equation or other object to focus my attention on. I would realize what my eyes were doing and return them to the first sentence again. I looked back at the studier again for clues as to how he managed to read each sentence in succession. He appeared to be just sitting there. He made it look so easy. I returned my attention to my book and the first demonic sentence. I could feel a physical revulsion in my chest and stomach toward the textbook. I wanted to set it on fire. I wanted to throw it out the window. I wanted to throw my mind out the window. I needed to get up and go back to my apartment because the library was driving me crazy. Maybe if I played a few video games it would settle my mind and then I could study. Yes, that’s what I would do and then study later. I packed up my books to leave knowing that I wouldn’t be studying anything for a few days.