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Back Again

 Running up hill on sand is tough, a lot of effort with little gains. That is what this past year has felt like. While I feel I have my ADHD somewhat under control, I still struggle with depression, impulsiveness, and emotional fluctuations.  I also stopped therapy. I thought for a while that I was okay and could handle life but only to find that I still need help. I’ll be meeting with a new therapist later this week and am hopeful for a fresh perspective and is someone who will hold me accountable. I feel like my last therapist was the start I needed. I was lost in how and where and what to work on. I feel I was able to get things in motion and found some direction. I confused those first few steps with being well on my way to recovery.  I’m bummed that it took me a year to gain that perspective because if I stuck with it I would actually further along in my recovery. I don’t resent or feel guilt for falling back into old routines. I would only feel guilty if I didn’t tr...
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Recent posts

Slow

My low self esteem dates back to my early childhood. I grew up in a household where I was to be seen and not heard. I was told quite often that nothing in the house was mine because I did not pay for it. I was not allowed to have an opinion or challenge the patriarch and authority. This continued through to my adult life and continued to shape how I felt about myself. I wasn't ever going to be good enough. It weighs deep with me today. I have very low self worth and self esteem. I don't feel like I belong in social situations with people who, from my own perspective, are normal. If they only knew how fragile of a person I am, it would be game over for me. It shouldn't matter to me anymore as I have proven, to myself, that I came from behind to catch up with my peer group from an educational and professional standpoint. It still weighs on me, I feel like others look at me and think that I must not be that smart because I'm only an XYZ at my job and not an ABC.  Of course...
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Rough Stretch

 The past week or so has not been a good one for me. I have not been able to sleep which seemingly has fueled my ADHD which keeps me up at night, and I'm tired fueling ADHD, and I don't sleep. On and on and on.... ADHD combined with depression and anxiety makes for a cocktail of a mess. Depression and anxiety aside, ADHD for me has always been disruptive. Depression and anxiety at least have a function and/or purpose, for me these are protectors from vulnerability. But ADHD is just how things operate, it's nature and not nurture.  I struggle with staying on tasks through to completion, even ones that I get hyper focused on. On any given day when I'm doing a chore around the house, laundry, dishes, vacuuming....I usually get to the 70% completion point, if that sometimes, and call it good. There will be three dishes in the sink vs ten. Most of my laundry will be completed, but a good chunk will remain in the basket and probably get washed a second time as I start putting...
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Spiraling

 I often get caught in an emotional downward spiral and can't stop it. It happens quite often and is most disruptive at night. I can't sleep and can't calm myself. My anxiety really kicks into high gear and I catastrophize everything in my world.  I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough. Everyone else has a better existence than me. Everyone else has a better relationship with their spouse. The list goes on, and on, and on, and on.  I don't know how this starts with me nor do I know how to bring myself out of it. I have talked to my therapist about it and we are working on it, but it really hangs over me. It's tiresome.  I like to think that someday I'll be better equipped to recognize what is happening to me in these moments. I have a lifetime of this in me and takes work, a lot of work, to resolve what's going on. I don't feel like I am always doing the work required. I give in to easy to the decades of inaction and give up and just move on w...
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Night Time is Never the Right Time

 The problem with night time is when everything around me quiets down my mind starts racing. It kicks into overdrive and magnifies anything that is bothering me. Since my mind is not distracted by anything else, it runs through every scenario that brings me discomfort, unhappiness, pain, and fuels my anxiety. I'm stuck in this cycle were I can't stop it and can't be rational.  Like I said before, I struggle over the weekends. Regardless of how my weekend goes or how tired I make myself, I'm left with night time struggles that can sometimes go until 3 a.m. which causes even more problems the next night. I spiral out of control and cannot get any grip on reality to stabilize myself.  As I write this, it is starting to get late into the night. As tired as I am, I am not able to fall asleep, what is currently causing me trouble is how much inflation is having an impact on everything we buy and the stress of spending money on things we don't need has fueled my anxiety to...
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The Protector

 I struggle on the weekends. As hard as it is holding myself together during the week, at least there is routine with work and only needing to fill a few hours of nonstructured time. The weekends can be bad because without a routine, my mood swings to the more negative side. I try to find things to do, projects around the house, exercise, but without those being a requirement like work is, I slack off easily. I tend to thing everyone else is living this great life and loving every minute of the weekend with their friends or loved ones. That feels foreign to me. I spend time with my friends doing things we enjoy and spending time with my family, but in the back of my mind I always feel like a fraud and what I'm experiencing isn't real. I feel like I'm being tolerated by others.  It's not that I want something that others have, I have that, I want to be able to believe and appreciate what I have. I don't allow myself to see that. I know that I am doing that to myself,...
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Ebb and Flow

 There was a several week span from late April to early May were my depression, anxiety, and ADHD were spiraling and was making a mess of things. It had been a while since it was THAT bad. My therapist has told me to try and focus on what may have caused everything. In the moment it is hard to focus on something like that. Those of us (well, at least me) with ADHD aren't exactly capable of spending the time digging into the details of anything.  A few weeks have passed and I'm closer to a more "normal" and stable routine. My depression and anxiety have subsided for now, but my ADHD is commonplace for me. When I look back at those few weeks and try to think of how I got there, I can't put my self in my own shoes and understand. Even now, when things are "normal" I can't dig into why and how I am back to normal.  When my depression comes fast and thick, it takes a lot of effort and energy to hold myself together and move through the day. It is exhausti...
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