stupid people

Tags

food, stupid people

me: “I am supposed to eat. Today I hate eating. It’s hard to chew. Food tastes funny.”

xx: “Sounds like medication side effect. I couldn’t handle all that at all. Have you tried GAPS diet and mindful eating? Whole new approach to food..”

me: “I am on Concerta, and have not had this experience before. No, I haven’t, and I don’t do well on carbs at all.”

xx: “Worth looking into then, I’d say! I Have given up carbs and sugar and now, relatively at least, I feel and look great. Using water kefir to get past the carb/sugar cravings really helped..”

me: “ok. I am not interested in discussing diets and looks. thank you <3”

xx: “You posted about diet, am just sharing something that helped me.. Not selling. Good luck finding what suits…”

me: “not a word about diet in my post – i posted about eating and food, not diet – that’s all in your head.”

xx: “Ahem. The food you eat is your diet. It’s a technical term. Like I say, good luck..”

then xx goes on to post the oxford dictionary definition of ‘diet’…

ALL definitions and examples contain some reference to eating according to a specific regiment for a very specific purpose. I.e DIETING.

Some days life is full of STUPID people.

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shame

Tags

guilt, shame

I found this and thought it might be interesting.

The Shame Game and ADHD

Why people with ADHD struggle with feelings of shame and how they can overcome them.

by William Dodson, M.D.

Shame Is Not Guilt

Shame is one of the oldest known English words that originally meant to “hide or cover up.” As such, shame is the hardest thing to deal with since it tends to be hidden and never addressed. Feeling shame is different than feeling guilt. Guilt focuses on what one has done. Shame focuses on who one is.

Feeling Separate and Unequal

For ADHDers, shame arises from the repeated failure to meet expectations from parents, teachers, friends, bosses, and the world. It is estimated that those with ADHD receive 20,000 more negative messages by age 12 than those without the condition. They view themselves as fundamentally different and flawed. They are not like other people.

Feeling Bad About Oneself

It is especially painful when well-meaning people in an ADHD person’s life point out that he has failed or fallen short. ADHDers are accused, directly or through implication, of being lazy or willfully disobedient—as if they set out to fail. It’s hard not to feel bad about yourself. In fact, one expert believes that “low self-esteem” should be one of the criteria for diagnosing ADHD in adults.

Anger for Those Who Criticize

Those with ADHD who feel shame withdraw into themselves—or hide behind a rage at the perceived source of the negativity. This may explain why people with ADHD fear letting others get to know them intimately or to see how they live. The ADDer harbors two horrible secrets: Their future is uncontrolled and uncontrollable and life can inflict wounding shame just as easily as it engenders success.

Problems with Trying to Be Perfect

Shame causes many ADHDers to try to be perfect. A person thinks: “If I look and do everything perfectly, I can avoid shame.” An ADHDer who holds this belief is constantly evaluating everyone in their lives—friends, family, children—to see what they approve of and value, and gives it back to them. The person with ADHD forgets what he genuinely wants from his own life.

Just Giving Up

Many ADHDers who feel shame stop trying to do things—at work and at home—unless they are assured in advance of quick, complete, and easy success. They do not have the ability to sustain effort for long if they are not succeeding completely. This is often misinterpreted as laziness, leading the person to feel more shame and more misunderstood. This is one reason video games are so popular. If you fail, only you know. You reboot and move on, as if nothing happened.

Shying Away from Help

Shame gets in the way of ADHD adults and kids asking for help. For many people with ADHD, telling a doctor about their failures and asking to receive medication to help them succeed is unthinkable. They have tried everything, and it hasn’t worked. Many children would rather flunk than ask the teacher for help. This is why many parents feel blindsided when they discover how badly their child is doing in school. Their child didn’t tell them because it was so shameful to admit it.

Blaming Others

Many with ADHD equate blaming someone else for their failures with fixing the problem that caused them to feel shame. Once they have found someone to blame, they wash their hands of responsibility and accountability for correcting the mistake. The goal of breaking the cycle of shame is to adopt financier George Soros’ view: “There is no shame in being wrong, only in failing to correct our mistakes.”

Laugh the Shame Away

For the ADHDer, humor is one of the best weapons against shame. Laughing at a situation that has gone wrong or a mistake you have made brings more self-acceptance and softens the often-harsh attitudes he developed about himself in childhood. Humor takes away shame’s power over us.

Accept Yourself—Warts and All

Although people who feel ashamed are intensely focused on how the outside world sees them, the first step in combatting it is self-acceptance. Unless a person with ADHD is able to accept and value herself, even though she is not perfect, she can’t really believe that others can love her just as she is.

Find a Cheerleader

Having someone—a friend, neighbor, coach, or grandparent—who accepts and loves a child or adult with ADHD, despite his faults and shortcomings, is vital in overcoming shame. This is the opposite of perfectionism, in which approval is contingent on what the person has done lately. The accepting person acts as a vessel that holds the memory of you as a good and valuable person, even when things go wrong.

Strength in Numbers

An ADHD support group can be a welcome island in an ADHDer’s world. Finally, the person is understood. The other people in the group have been in his shoes and know the shame of failure and being different. The group sees the person as he is and corrects the distortions that result from hiding in an inner world of shame. What’s more, self-help groups set ADHD-specific goals that are more realistic and loving.

Uncover the Truth

A doctor and therapist need to be vigilant for signs of shame because most ADHDers hide it from the world. It is key to proper diagnosis and successful therapy that therapist and patient are aware of the emotional intensity that is part of the patient’s life. A lot of patients attempt to hide this emotional component, fearful of being wounded further if the truth were known.

Additional Resources

Join our online community, ADDConnect, for support from others touched by ADHD.
Read Why ADHDers Act the Way We Do: Understanding ADHD Behavior.
Check out 16 Sayings for ADHDers to Live and Laugh By.
Download Smart Comebacks to ADHD Doubters, for free.

 

my inner lizard

Meet my inner lizard. In scientific language his name is AMYGDALA, but I call him Herman. Herman is in charge of everything that has to do with any raw emotions. Like FEAR, ANGER, JOY, GRIEF and LOVE.

Every time I experience a feeling, it is Herman’s doing. He is very good at his job. His job is to respond to what happens inside me or around me, and specifically alert me if there is danger nearby, and prepare me for either flight, fight or hide mode. If he did not do this, I would perhaps be at risk of getting killed several times a day. Herman is very important to me.

As I said, Herman is very good at his job. Sometimes, though he gets stuff mixed up. You see, Herman is also in charge of the memory of feelings I have had in situations where Herman has had to warn me about something dangerous. So, let’s say that Herman once warned me about a car turning the corner just as I stepped off the curb. Herman HEARD the car, and yelled “DANGEROUS CAR!”, and flooded my brain and blood with adrenaline, so I could quickly step back onto the sidewalk. The sudden rush of adrenaline and appearance of the car just inches from me created a memory of fear in me, associated with the sound of a speeding car.
Herman is good at his job. He is not very bright though, he cannot tell real from not-real. So next time he hears a speeding car f.i when I am safe on the sidewalk on my way into a store, he will yell “DANGEROUS CAR!” and flood my brain and blood with adrenaline AND the memory of fear.

There is no speeding car to be afraid of, but Herman can only remember the SOUND and the FEAR, he cannot check if there is a car.

This affects how I respond to the sound of speeding cars.
Herman has hundreds maybe even thousands of ideas about what is dangerous to him and me. But since he is not very bright, and cannot tell real from not-real, he needs me to keep him informed about the realness of stuff he warns me about. If I didn’t give him that information, he would keep himself and me in a constant state of panic.

Luckily for me, Herman is not very fit. He can’t keep flooding me with fear and adrenaline for more than a few seconds at a time (10 seconds at the most), before he needs a breather. When he is taking his breather, there is room for ME to step in and either tell him to calm down or divert him by adding a stimulus that is not connected to what Herman is freaking out about.

Music is very good, or positive white noise like cat-purring. Something that will catch Herman’s attention in a good way.

home-assistance

Tags

accepting help, cleaning, clutter, home-assistance, shame

today was home-assistance day. i hate it. not because it means i have to do household chores like cleaning and washing dishes. i don’t like doing any of those, but it’s ok to do it  together with the home-assistants. i don’t like it because i have to ‘socialize’. i have to ‘be in charge’ and ‘know what needs doing’ and that takes a lot of energy. then there is the ‘crowdedness’ of having ‘strangers’ so close. it is draining. i often have to spend the rest of the day unloading and decompressing.

accepting help is difficult, because although i know that i need the help due to my neurodifference, it has not always been that way. there was a time when i did not know i was neurodifferent, when the difficulties i had with cleaning, washing dishes, going to appointments and such were labeled, ‘laziness’ , ‘slobbiness’ and ‘unwillingness’. all this created a lot of shame. shame that accompany me every day, and most intensely when it is time for home-assistance each monday and friday.

shame is a very odd feeling in some ways, as it makes me both want to hide three feet below the floor and at the same time scream and hit everything around me in fury. it is difficult to participate in the chores when one feels like an earthworm on fire.

do not disturb

Tags

mood-swings, mornings, waking

mornings are hazardous living with me (and most addies). more arguments have started in our home right after getting out of bed/waking up than i wish to remember, and the root cause is either of two: me forgetting that even if i am up, i am not ‘awake’ or my wife forgetting the same.

over the years we have used several methods/tricks to get around the sinkholes of my mean morning mood. i say ‘we’, because even though i am ultimately responsible for my emotions and actions, my wife do actually have responsibility for how she does things too.

once it was apparent that my mean morning mood cannot be changed, which was our first course of action – me working on containing the fall-out while being social and interactive right after waking up – which failed miserably because i have adhd and as. then we racked our brains to try and find the reason i had this morning mood. we found many things that seemed to trigger the explosions:

• talking about important stuff
• talking about upsetting stuff
• talking about stuff we disagreed about
• talking about stuff that expressed possible demands
• being woken by the phone
• being woken by any loud noise
• being asked to do stuff that takes thinking

then we thought that it might be HOW i woke up. that if i woke up in a soft and cuddly manner, gently and slow, it would ease the risk of explosive fall-out. to a degree it did. but it is not always feasible for my wife to conjure up the strength and energy to make it happen that way, and some times she could be the paragon of loving-kindness and i would blow up in her face nevertheless. besides, she should not have to jump through hoops to avoid being bitten.

so when it turned out that i almost always had this mean morning mood regardless of what happened we came up with this basic morning rule: do not disturb the bear.

it does not always work, because we both forget, and i assume that it will keep being like this for the foreseeable future – but now we have left the project of trying to fix the sinkhole, and are actively working on finding a way that will help us both remember that the sinkhole is there and to avoid it.

the latest idea – a hat. yes, a hat. a hat that i put on when i go to bed and subsequently wake up wearing, where it says: DO NOT DISTURB!

now what remains is to actually make the hat. when we have it, i’ll post a picture 😀

sense…

Tags

common sense, emotions, neurotypical attitudes

things have to make sense to me as a neurodifferent person. when they do not those things hurt.

most of what neurotypicals do or say when dealing with me or other nds does not make sense. neurotypicals so often focus on the material matters of situations such as employment, workplace, medical practices and education. it is as if they simply do not have the imagination to think ‘outside the box’. they seem incapable of factoring in the human matter. as long as they can claim that they ‘did everything by the book’, what happens to me or other nds as a result, is irrelevant. if something does not work for a person within a specific framework, it is not because of that person, but the fault of the framework, and the people creating the framework. if the ‘book’ does not take into consideration that every person is unique, the ‘book’ needs revising. that is pure common sense.

some days…

Tags

anger, grumpiness, taking responsibility

…i am not fit for human consumption. i wake up grumpy, angry and irritable. things that wouldn’t faze me any other day, sends me off into snapping, screaming, exaggerating my own importance, and eventually blaming everyone else for everything, including my bad mood, my reactions and expressions of that bad mood.

this is not right.  this is wrong. this hurts me and it hurts those around me.

other people are not responsible for how i feel or react – i am. other people have not deserved that i unload my ‘crabby bear’ on them. they are innocent bystanders, and ‘collateral’ doesn’t work in real life – if i wake up with a grievance against life, it is my responsibility to make sure that others are not made to pay for this. my responsibility, no-one else’s.

i have adhd, and part of that means having bad impulse control. i know this. knowledge is power. this means that i can acknowledge that i woke up ‘crabby bear’, and either deal with the reason i am grumpy, angry and irritable or make sure other people are not hit by my bad temper. this also means that when i fail to contain the fall-out of my grumpiness,  i acknowledge my failure, apologize and try to mend any broken souls i ‘left on the battlefield’.

“but i didn’t know people would be hurt…” – bullshit.

pure horseshit.

if i wake up in ‘crabby bear mode’ i have to assume that anything i say or do in direct response to others carry a crabby, angry, irritable taint.

why? because it is human nature. it is human psychology 101. any emotions i harbor at any given moment will carry over in my voice, my words, my general language and be picked up by the person(s) around me.

“but…why would others be hurt, it’s just words and emotions…?”

that too is human psychology 101. snapping, screaming, exaggerating my own importance, and eventually blaming everyone else for everything, including my bad mood, my reactions and expressions of that bad mood hurts others, regardless of what i think my intentions are, regardless of whether i am aware that i am grumpy, angry and irritable. that is how humans work.