Reply To: ADHD out of sync, non-verbals, on-topic

[Sean E Bravo]

I have the same issue, especially when meeting new people or in a new place. The irony being that I’m an entertainer and would happily stand in front of 20000 people in my underwear singing. And then if you Couple distraction with my boar-headed insistence that I’m always right, and my narcissistic assumption that everything is about me, I find myself in trouble. “in trouble” means a lot to me….mostly when maybe I’ve made an assumption, or just plain have read a situation incorrectly and suddenly without warning “everyone” is mad at me.

Most of the time, I’m BRILLIANT! Half the time I’m worried that I’m in trouble…which is what’s distracting me and usually the root cause of everything. The problem? I very rarely know which situation I’m in. So many times I think things are awesome, only to find out later that “so and so” is mad at me, other times I may think everything was terrible, only to find out that the people I just met are really nice and thought I was great. That’s what makes me nervous about talking to people…I’m sure I only remember the times I’m wrong, but I feel like I’m wrong a lot.

TONE – OMG – Sometimes out of the blue, I’ll find out that I’ve been oblivious to some sort of damaging “tone to my voice” that seems to offend many people. It doesn’t matter how correct I was in what I was saying or how nice I thought I was being , every good point I make will fall on deaf ears, because I have a “TONE”. That tone seems to escape my lips whenever it likes, without my knowledge of it. It’s broken up friendships, it’s cost me jobs. At 40 years old, I still feel like I have no frikken clue when someone out of the blue is going to get mad at me and say it was the tone of my voice. No real argument…just the tone of my voice. My guess is that I’m afraid of my issues, and I get defensive about it…that get’s reflected in my voice and people think that I think they are being jerks…which makes me a jerk…Crazy…but that’s what I’ve been able to figure out so far.

I don’t get it. How do “normal” people (humans as I call them) know if the tone they are using is going to be accepted or not by the tribe? I am a very nice and loving person who honestly just means well for anyone and everyone, yet something about the way I say things from time to time sets people off and I’m left feeling like I’m a jerk.

It’s a huge concern to me. There are times I explode because I’m so angry about being “in trouble” (for lack of a better word) that I end up letting my super creative hyper active mind spin excellent arguments as to why this is an injustice…..only to find out that I’m the only one who cares if I was “right” or not.

Bleh, this is turning in to a rant…but I guess this is important to me, and free therapy! 🙂

Anyhoo….the kicker of it all is that I’m a popular, successful, well-loved, personality driven artist who constantly has love dumped upon him…and I can let one little glance or word from someone that I interpret as being “them mad at me” and it wrecks my whole day. Like all I can see is the insignificant little bad thing … and I miss the 99% of the compliments and esteem people give to me….which when I’m having a good day(like today) seems like a lot.

So I’ve learned to recognize when I’m being negative in my head, but knowing this is the case… everything is all right….I’m loved….I understand the actual situation…..doesn’t seem to help. Even though I’m conscientiously self-talking positive things…I can’t get my emotions to listen to the rationale. So This whole rant is really a 2 part question….

1) What do you do when someone says they didn’t like your tone as they thought you were being rude….and you honestly were not intending to be rude…words making no difference as your tone supersedes any good thing you may have just said?

2) what does one do when they learn, practice and even actively put to use tools (such as the strategies for managing ADHD found on this site) but your still suffering the negative emotional effects of something that’s bothering you?

phew….did that make any sense?

Anyhoo….I’m sick of being so sure of something that someone did or said (could be anything) and finding out later that what I thought happened, TOTALLY didn’t happen or wasn’t said in the same way as I thought it was. I reacted to the image in my head (which was negative) and people think me rude.

So…yeah….why is talking to new people hard? All up there…that’s what I’m thinking when my wife says “oh have you met my husband? Sean this is…….”

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