ADHD and Worthlessness

My undiagnosed ADHD has made me feel worthless for most of my life and has had drastic effects on my self-esteem.

As a young kid – until about 3rd grade – I was constantly at the top of my class in terms of intelligence, athletic ability, and social skills. Everything I did was right and it felt natural. As I progressed into the grades where more sustained study and effort was required, my self-esteem began to suffer because I couldn’t make myself work the way I knew I needed to. I could see clearly what I needed to do to get As, but just did not have the energy. I still felt smart but also started to feel like I was always behind – always trying to catching up. This is when I started to overeat and became one of the kids who were always about 20 pounds overweight. The weight gain and poor performance in school hurt my self-esteem a lot.

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 continued the same behavior into college and right after graduation suffered and emotional collapse in the form of a panic disorder. My self-esteem was almost non-existent.

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 almost impossible. 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 be and should be very proud of that.

Getting Towed

So I was leaving to go to work this morning and my car wasn’t where I had left it last night. Our parking lot is contiguous with the shopping center across the street so when I came home last night and there were no spots left in our lot I parked in the shopping center lot – something I have done numerous times before without ever thinking twice. It turns out overnight parking isn’t allowed and my car way towed early this morning.

My thoughts usually follow a predictable pattern when stuff like this happens:
1. This is going to be such a chore and I don’t have the patience for it
2. How dare those a**holes do this to me
3. Of course this would happen to me because I am stupid and don’t pay attention and probably deserve it.
4. There’s no use getting angry or frustrated because no one cares and life is unfair so be a man a stop crying
5. I have no right to get angry because there is so much other pain and abuse going on the in the world that it is childish to lose my temper over a car

The last point is the one that I usually get stuck on because as much as I tell myself to be calm I am very angry and - like a normal human being - want to justify those feelings. I try to remind myself of all the horrible stuff that happened while I was growing up and to use that to squash the current frustration. At some point I came to believe that if I concentrate enough on memories of alcoholism and abuse that I will forget about what is going on in front of me. This is my insane defense mechanism that inflicts so much more pain than it relieves.

I hate feeling angry! But if I concentrate on old pain I just feel depressed and worthless which is so much more familiar. This is insane.

I called a cab and then took out one of my daily Al-Anon readers. I probably read 30 days of entries by the time I got to the impound site. I was still angry but at least I felt I had tried to cope in a healthy way. As I stood in the office filling out the papers to get my car back I could hear one of the employees in the other room on an intense phone call. I heard her hang up and angrily describe the exchange to one of her co-workers. It made me feel better because I had maintained more composure even after having my car towed than she did on a phone call.

I realize this type of self-righteousness is contrary to what the program teaches. I also realize that I was feeling better at the expense of another person. But this is at least a start because I didn’t get into my normal routine of self-deprecation and depression which would usually last all day. I did something new and even though it wasn’t perfect I now have something to work with. I was able to maintain a little more of my sanity than usual and I’ll call that a victory.

The 12 Steps of ADHD

The 12 steps of ADHD

1. We admitted we were powerless over ADHD – that our lives had become unmanageable.

I started to write out the 12 steps of Al-Anon and apply them to ADHD by inserting ‘ADHD’ in place of ‘alcohol’ or ‘alcoholism.’ It turns out that only the fist step mentions alcohol and the rest are about our own minds, attitudes, and relationships. This is incredible!

I am without a doubt powerless over my ADHD and it has made my life unmanageable – unlivable at some points – for just about as long as I can remember. It has impacted and continues to impact every area of my life I can think of:
Self-esteem
Education
Career
Relationships
Family
Friends
Sleep
Exercise
Eating
Drinking
Hobbies

I used to think the alcoholism in my family of origin was my biggest problem and was responsible for why I felt bad so often. I am starting to feel like although the alcoholism created some pain and shaped how I act in relationships, my ADHD is mostly the cause of my day-to-day frustrations and disappointments. Throughout my life, I could see what needed to be done but never had the energy or concentration to do it. Because of this I would punish and criticize myself for being lazy. I thought of myself as a very intelligent person who was wasting my talents.

My prevailing attitude in life has been: “Every desire I have is wrong or detrimental.”

In school I hated sitting still for every class but science.
In sports I hated practice but loved games.
I love playing music but hate practicing.

Not only did I hate studying, but most of the time – no matter how hard I tried- I couldn’t do it. There were times when I couldn’t read even a single sentence without feeling a deep physical revulsion. I approached studying the way most people approach scraping dog shit off their shoes. Where I think the alcoholism comes in is that at the same time I desperately needed approval from everyone in my life.

I noticed that very intelligent and/or educated people got a lot of approval and thought that this was my best option. Whenever I fell short in school it meant that I was failing at life which made me depressed. But I also noticed that depression helped me to sit still and hating myself gave me the motivation to study. Depression and self-criticism became my tools for squashing my perceived character defects. I entered into a battle royal with my ADHD that would be a fight to the death. Surrender, compromise, or relaxation were not viable options. If I couldn’t win then I would make sure there was nothing left for ADHD to claim victory over.

I’m not sure exactly when I came to this conclusion but I was still very young. How does a kid come to such a morbid conclusion?!?! This is true insanity! It’s not an insanity that I am solely responsible for creating, but it belongs entirely to me now.

If I were looking at someone else in my shoes now, what would I tell them? Forget about your family and focus on yourself. Find out what makes you happy. Find out what you like to do. Find some little way to experience enjoyment every day. Learn what it means to be happy. Learn what it means to be calm. Learn what it means to love. Do whatever it takes to be happy because you need it.

Life is funny. Life is fun. Life is interesting. My life is much more manageable and I am thankful everyday.

An Aimless Friday

I’m feeling especially aimless today. It could be that it’s Friday, or that I’m trying to scale back on the amount of meds I take, or just that shadow of existential doubt that likes to crawl into my soul from time to time. I am also perfectly content at the moment which is a bit of a new feeling and may be part of the problem. Contentment is foreign and thus disorienting.

I want to go to medical school but I don’t want to change. I’m scared of doing this job for the rest of my life but I am fairly happy now. I used to know what I wanted but I was miserable. Today I have no goals but am content. My discomfort is perpetually caught between the future and the present. My brain tells me that the present is all that matters – my gut tells me to keep moving, don’t look back, I must become something.

I initially thought this was a result of my ADHD but I am also coming to notice that survivors of childhood abuse often have a deep driving need to never stop moving. It’s a compulsion. It’s rooted somehow to the belief that I can never let my guard down at any time or for anyone – not even myself.

BUT some of the most successful people in history also had a relentless desire to achieve.

I am a container of objectless ambition. I think this is the point that some people start to ask if there is anything more to life. I am starting to hope there is less to life so I can make some decisions.

I went to a concert last week with a friend of mine from college – lets call her Sharona – because she grew up with the members of one of the opening acts. She got free tickets and I bought the drinks. Her friend’s band was okay but the other opening act was called Nashville Pussy and rocked so hard that I nearly had a mental orgasm. Despite their name (or perhaps because of it) the bassist and lead guitar players were both women. The bassist was young and slim and dressed like the chick from Guitar Hero – tattoos and all. The other woman was perhaps 40, a mess of head-banger hair, and undoubtedly one of the top three guitar players I have ever seen live. Her style is what you would expect if Slash started to play a lot of ZZ Top.

By the time it was over I needed a cigarette, a sandwich, and a nap. I found myself wanting to get home to my little fender strat and see how long it would take me to learn a few of their songs. I wanted without a doubt to play guitar for the rest of my life. I looked at Sharona – noticing the curves of her body – and imagined what she looked like first thing in the morning. I was three quarters of the way to falling in love with her.

I finished my beer as we watched the main act set up. We were tired and decided to go home – after all, the tickets had been free. By the time we got to my car I had forgotten about being a rock star and my love for Sharona. I was thinking about the new episode of South Park my roommate had taped and about doing laundry the next day. The laundry didn’t get done for another week. The whole experience is my life in microcosm.

My God Complex

I remember when things started going bad in my family it seemed like my world was coming apart and nothing was manageable. The alcoholism in my house mostly took the form of quiet neglect which left me a lot of time to think. I was only in sixth grade at the time and I remember feeling like I could only be disappointed if I relied on other people for something and they didn’t deliver. I don’t remember exactly when I made the change but by eighth grade my thoughts and feelings were completely separate from the emotions of others (with a few rare exceptions). I had made the decision that I could only rely on myself and that if a solution was not forthcoming then I must not be working hard enough. My character armor was to convince myself that I could do anything and that I never needed any outside help. I got to the point where I wasn’t afraid of failing at anything because I didn’t believe it was possible for me to fail. This was a very effective survival tool inside my alcoholic family but wasn’t a sustainable way to live.

One of the many problems with this approach is that when I didn’t get something or it didn’t work out just the way I wanted, it was because I was lazy or unmotivated. The thought that something might be out of my power was not an option I could comprehend. I started to test myself by pushing for the hardest thing I could find. I became a 3 sport athlete, I got into a great college, I joined the military, and I tried to become the most perfect person possible. By the time the wheels started to come off my express train to disaster I had no idea what it felt like to do something that made me feel good.

I could blame a lot of things for making me the way I am, but no one forced me to treat myself like shit for so many years. Even though I may not have known better, most of my wounds are self-inflicted. This was such a liberating thing to learn because I immediately stopped doing the things that were killing me the fastest. But that doesn’t mean I am to blame either. I can’t change anything that happened to me or anything I did in the past but trying to place blame will not help me heal. My happiness, serenity, and well-being are what are most important to me now. Finding something to blame is the same thing as finding a place to focus resentment, and resentment isn’t something I choose to have in my life.

A little humor for Friday

It’s Friday so I thought I would try to think of something funny to write. The following true story also took place on a Friday back when I was a senior in college. Hopefully it shows that although alcohol has had many negative influences in my life it also has its positive attributes (like humor).

A friend of mine named Tim, lived in a big house off campus and he and his roommates were throwing a big party that night. I went over early to help set-up and after a good deal of cleaning, organizing, and drunk-proofing the house, 5 or 6 of us were standing around the keg before people started showing up.

The group was about equally split between those who had been raised Jewish and those of us who were raised Christian so one of the guys (lets call him bill) volunteeres a joke: “A priest and a rabbi are sitting on a bench and a soccer ball rolls by. A young boy runs up, picks up the ball, and runs back to the playing field across the path. The priest leans over to the rabbi and say ‘Hey, you wanna screw that little kid?’ and the rabbi says ‘Sure, out of what?’”

We all give the joke a little chuckle, nod our heads, and most of us forget about it.

Fast forward about 8 hours – the party was a ton of fun and after the keg dried up most of us went bar hopping. At about 4am – and after the equivalent of a full work-day of drinking – Tim and I find ourselves at the only after-hours place we knew. Bill is doing his best to bring home a blonde girl who is way out of his league except for the fact that she is obviously under 21 and he is buying all her drinks. He’s slurring his words and stumbling like a champ, but still trying his little heart out to impress this young lady who is quickly getting fed-up. He’s pulling out all the stops and Tim and I hear him shout

“SO A PRIEST AND A RABBI ARE SITTING ON A BENCH.”

It just so happens that he yells this in that unpredictable moment between songs when a new DJ should have a seamless transition, but instead allows a tiny fraction of silence into the otherwise unbroken wall of sound that is mandatory in bars like this. Bill’s opening line is so clear and so audible that I can see the head of everyone within a 20-foot radius whip around in surprise and anticipation. The blonde barely bats an eyelash, disinterested, but he charges ahead like a bull in a china store.

“and a ball rolls by with a little kid chasing after it and the priest looks at the rabbi and says…uh…uh”

The music has resumed so everyone who heard the initial remark is pushing toward the speaker – trying to get a front-row seat for the impending disaster. The blonde glances at him.

“Oh yeah,” says Bill confidently. “The priest says ‘do you wanna fuck that little kid in the ass,’ and the rabbi says ‘sure but can we steal his wallet afterwards?’”

The blonde looks at Tim and me. We back away. Bill goes home to sleep in the bathtub.

Unpleasant Realities

One of my readings for today talks about the fact that sooner or later we will all face unpleasant realities and the only positive way to deal with them is acceptance. Right now I am in the midst of applying to medical school and am terrified about not getting in. I applied last year and after a lot of time and money was turned down. Although my undergraduate degree provides me with a lot of options, the program was rigorous, and my GPA is not as competitive as it could have been if I had chosen standard biology or liberal arts. I have a lot of career paths open to me and yet this is the only one I have wanted for as long as I can remember. I feel selfish sometimes that I have so much and still want this.

I have studied the stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance – and although most of the time I feel like I have accepted my situation enough to keep working toward the goal; other times I glide smoothly from anger to bargaining or anger to depression. I can get very resentful that my ADHD wasn’t diagnosed before I went to college and then start bargaining about how much better my grades would have been if that had happened. I think about all the nights I couldn’t sit still long enough to finish an assignment and then giving up to get my usual C homework grade. I always did well on tests because that was the kind of high pressure environment I thrive in.

Only recently has it occurred to me that I may never become a doctor and I cringe. I suppose that is my denial breaking down. There are always options open to improve my GPA, but at what point would I need to accept that it’s just not going to happen? It feels like a huge gaping hole in my life that so much unrealized potential could haunt me for the rest of my life. I’ll be just another sad story of someone who never got to live their dream. I know logically that life is about dealing with disappointment but the feeling of loss is so much more painful than the uneasiness of knowing that it will happen some day. A feeling is so much more real than a thought.

I remind myself to be grateful for all the positive things in my life like my job, my friends, and the sobriety of my family members. I am still an intelligent young man who has most of my life ahead of me – even if I now have to figure out what I’m going to do with all this time. I am grateful for all the blessings in life and although having to give up my dream my distract me from them, it doesn’t detract from the joy they can bring me.