ADD and holds grudges

[ellamama]

Reading this site, one of the “positive attributes” associated with ADD is not holding grudges. Although I have ADD and may forget a lot of things, I can hold a grudge WAY too long. Am I the only one? My husband and I can have a skirmish about something and a few minutes later he’s totally unphased while I’m still steaming about the disagreement de jour.

Just curious if others are in a similar boat.

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[Anonymous]

+1

My short term / working memory and my emotional memory are two entirely different things.

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[Anonymous]

i excel at grudging, unfortunately. i wish i could forget about things that have hurt me as easily as i can forget about things on the to-do list.

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[Anonymous]

Happens to me all the time. I daydream too much, so I have a tendency to re-visit things that I should probably have left behind me a long time ago. Always puts me in a bad mood and keeps me there.

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[Anonymous]

I am famous for my grudges.

I also revisit every personal slight or faux pas and feel the embarrasment all over again.

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[Anonymous]

I am the same way with holding grudges! My husband can also be upset one minute , and go in the other room and come back whisling or humming a tune, I on the other hand am still fumeing over whatever happend… If the grudge was with my husband I would stay up all night and let it bother me, but now I tend to have picked up his way of things and I can most of the time let it go!!!

But, My mind still wounders over and over again on what I sad, or could of said, Or should not have said… and I sometimes stay up all night if something reallly is bothering me.. going back and fourth in replay mode.

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[Anonymous]

Actually I tend to hold grudging pretty well. Too well in fact.

Just ask my ex best friend.

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[Anonymous]

There’s a post somewhere around here entitled to err is human to dwell on it is add. it’s so true. i don’t hold grudges against people who make honest mistakes. i hold grudges against people who have hurt me without caring about it. not as much as i used to because i have learned that karma has delivered their comeuppance to them so i’ve been able to put away some of it. i do tend not to be able to forgive myself for mistakes i made and decisions made and the path not taken. or things that i did not pick up on because of my adhd that i should have. for example, some girls give me VERY subtle hints that they like me and i don’t pick up on it and dwell on if i did and all the relationships i missed out on. even if they ended badly just ask any guy we would have loved to have taken that path even if the end is bad. the opposite-and this one i’m particularly embarrassed about-some guy is hitting on me and i don’t pick up on the fact that he is gay until he gets WAY TOO friendly and I’m in a pickle. he then said something explicit that i won’t repeat here and i bolted. i keep saying to myself i can’t believe i missed that!!!!

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[anniea]

I hold grudges but not like I used to..I have been thinking lately that I don’t process the whole day for days sometimes, and things can get by me and I get the “shoulda, woulda, couldas” for a while….mostly grudges are held against mean spirited people that had their agendas I know nothing about…and karma does come around, and I have seen some of these mean spirited people get bit…I have also prayed to get close enough to one person to step on her foot with a high spike heel….god has been good enough NOT to grant that prayer….and when I say this person not long ago…I didn’t have high heels on and I laughed at my self and walked away…life is too short …. and mostly life is good.

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[Rick Green – Founder of TotallyADD]

I held grudges for decades. Decades! All those chemicals running through my body. I could stir myself up and have imaginary arguments in my head, long discussions, where I win every point and the other person would be humiliated and floundering…

I could spend an hour of my life in my fantasy scenario… an hour I just know I am going to want to have back when I’m on my death bed.

I’d literally work myself up to the point where I’d be breathing hard, full of adrenaline, and righteous rage.

Then at my high school’s 25th reunion I met one of the guys who bullied me and made fun of me.

And he came up, threw his arm around me, told me how he tells all his friends about me and how he knew me, and now that I was on TV he couldn’t wait to tell people.

The joke was on me. He had no memory of what he’d done. Or if he did, he probably dismissed it as, “Hey, we were just guys, just teasing each other.” At the reunion I also learned a bit about his troubled home life, which I vaguely knew in high school.

Long story short, as someone said, “Holding a grudge is like taking poison and expecting the other person to die.”

I thanked him for his compliments and kind words.

Here’s the thing…

People are doing the best they know how.

And when they do something mean, it’s all they know. They’ll justify it in any way they can. “It will teach him a lesson.” “It will toughen him up.” “He’s making a big deal of it.” “That’s how life is.”

Grudges mean the other person has control over you.

I can still go there, but man, it makes me feel almost sick with the ‘fight or flight’ chemicals surging through me.

I suppose when I become perfect, never hurt anyone’s feelings, make sure every relationship that ends is perfectly handled, and when I never go back on a promise or fail to deliver… then I’ll be in a position to hold grudges.

Ha ha.

The thing is, letting go of stuff took a huge weight off my heart and added years to me life.

Grudges just left me drained and angry and, worst of all, feeling like the victim. Like I was weak. My life sucked because of someone else. So I was clearly helpless, and my life was determined by others.

Yikes.

It’s hard to let go of grudges. It’s almost unnatural, I think.

But the option has no upside, as far as I can tell.

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[Anonymous]

God Rick you just described everything i do to a tee. it felt like your post was a mirror that i was looking myself into. no wonder i like your videos so much. yeah i know what you mean all that crap running through my system. it sucks. i hate it too. ruminating over all the arguements with my family and other enemies.

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[billd]

Life is too short as it is……….. oh, I get angry and want to punch someone (though I never have and know I never would, but I’ve imagined it as at the time it made me feel better to “get even”.)

I’ve not gone to any of my high school reunions since, well, I think it was the 10 year. Funny – those who were so tough, and those who were voted to be most successful were very unhappy people. Divorced, jobs they didn’t like, or unemployed. Those of us who got picked on, or who they said would never amount to anything were the happy ones, having a good time. The others -leaning on the bar drinking, often alone. The rest of us, joking, eating, laughing, married, working, pretty happy over all.

So I guess I don’t have to hold a grudge or get even………..I just think back to my reunion and imagine how sad some of those bullies must be, or how terrible it must be to have to do that to find enjoyment in life.

And like Rick said – I’d rather no one else had that sort of control over me.

My anger any more lasts pretty short times. I’m even friends with a couple of folks who at least in my mind “did me wrong”. I waste enough time without wasting it that way, and stress is bad for the heart.

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[Anonymous]

The thing with forgiveness is that it is the weak that have to forgive the powerful. The abuse victim has to forgive the abusive husband. The rape victim her predator and the victimized child the parents. Another example of that is the white population insisting that the black populationn forgive them for slavery, segregation etc. That’s why the white population likes obama because he says its all in the past. Jeremiah Wright on the other hand is not beloved by the white population because he does not forgive the white population and will not until justice is done for the black population. We love Mandela because he forgave aparteid to the point that NO ONE went to jail which was a crime. That would not have been tolerated by the Jews at Nuremberg. They’re STILL chasing Nazis!!! As a Cuban I live with a population that will not forgive Fidel and has dedicated a half century plus to bringing him down and this is where I agree with Rick. It has cost Miami its greatest potential. We have lousy public transportation. Our education system is int he toilet. Our local treasury has been bled dry and we don’t tolerate any difference of opinion. Freedom of speech is dead here. We took the poison and Miami has been dying for decades. I would never ask my country men to forgive Castro but I would ask them to channel that energy to really build Miami. To make it a world class city like the NYC of the south. But no its a banana republic with facist tendencies. We could have done what west germany and south korea did. make a free land just close by a commie land and show the world the contrast between democracy and dictatorship but no we blew it. it’s also the word forgiveness it makes us feel like we’re giving something for someone. i’ve always advocated synonyms. like letting go or moving on or whatever. one lady refered to it as shitting it out and letting it go down the toilet which is cool because it empowers the victim and reduces the aggressor to excrement. very empowering.

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[Anonymous]

to get back to the topic at hand, yes, i take a long time to let go of mad, but i’m much better at it than i used to be. i’ve learned to walk away when i get angry, and when it’s all worn out in my head, then i can let it go. most of the time. but i don’t dwell on it. i just ignore it. like rick said, dwelling on it eats you up inside. physically and mentally both.

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[Anonymous]

I’m a writer, and the other night at a work party, I hit it off with the wife of a coworker of mine. Her and I got along like gangbusters.

Then, halfway through the night, after we were both pretty drunk, she confessed to me that she had proofread some of my work a few years earlier for a title I worked on. She said she felt really bad about the comments she had made (she had made some pretty snide comments when the work was returned). She said she’s quick and ruthless with her job, and that’s just how she does it, but she felt really bad after getting to know me.

I was furious and upset. The project she was referring to had caused me a lot of stress and grief (mostly NOT because of her) at the time, and it had taken me a LONG time to get over it. I was angry she had pushed it to the forefront of my thoughts again.

Stammering to rescue the conversation, lest I start balling my eyes out, I said “Your comments were nothing compared to what I got from other people on the project (which was true). You were just doing your job.” Then we did some kind of a soul-bonding moment with our pinkies or something (I can’t remember- I was totally sloshed).

At any rate, I spent half the night crying when I went to bed. I had forgiven her, but not myself. It was not a typical writing project (anything more conventional I would’ve had a much thicker skin for) and rationally I know that it’s highly unlikely anybody’s held it against me. But emotionally I still feel like an idiot and a failure when I think about it. And I try not to- I had mostly accomplished this, but now I have to work to put it behind me again.

I can’t even stop to appreciate the fact that I made a new friend.

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