Re: Successful ADDers annoy the h*ll out of me.

[sdwa]

@DubRod:

Yes, I love what you’re saying. Self-acceptance means being willing to recognize what I’m best at doing, and to do those things, instead of struggling to improve in areas of difficulty. I could do that, I could try to think like an engineer, but there are many others for whom that kind of thinking comes more easily and who would do a much better job. I have to do certain types of thinking where I work, for which I’m not particularly well-suited. Rather than pursue more education and training in this area, I prefer to shift my attention to what comes naturally to me, what’s easy for me. It takes a lot of energy to try to do what I’m bad at, and can require a vicious cycle of psyching up to perform and then crashing from exhaustion, always feeling like an impostor who might be found out, etc.

The best things I do are organic extensions of myself, my thought process, where my mind wants to go – which tends to be toward visual art and/or writing and editing. (Not as an ADHD trait, but that’s just who I am.) There’s nothing wrong with the comfort zone. If I could afford to pay people to do the things I don’t do very well, I would.

@totallyforgot

(great name, by the way, lol)…

I completely agree that berating ourselves is a pointless activity. Destructive, really.

I think I used to do it all the time because I believed I could bully myself into becoming better – telling myself I should do this, should do that, must straighten up and fly right, should be sent off to boot camp with “the word’s strictest parents” – cataloguing every mistake, haranguing myself for every faux pas, thinking if I got seven things right and one wrong, I had failed and was a bad person, and any act that could be shaded toward the negative, I would interpret negatively. Fighting, constantly fighting against myself.

Much of what I now perceive to be the truth has been completely counter-intuitive for me – like Alice through the looking glass, not at all what I expected. One such realization is that the voice of self-criticism, self-hatred, self-blame, self-recrimination, guilt, shame, fear, etc…is not my ally. I thought it was, but it is actually my nemesis. That voice is not even remotely useful. It’s nothing but a big bully! It’s total B.S. I could have killed myself listening to that voice.

As I’ve practiced ignoring and dismissing it, I’ve come to feel more centered. It’s like I can finally hear myself.

As I read somewhere…”May you be who you are, and may you be blessed in all that you are.”

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