I'm So Tired

[seabassd]

I’m so tired right now. I’m tired of reading books about ADHD. I’m  tired of taking medication. I’m tired of struggling to stay on top of work. I’m tired of falling behind. I’m tired of trying new strategies and techniques that I only use for a little bit then give up.

I’m tired of doubting my diagnosis. This is the big one for me. I wonder if I’m all that different from other people. I feel different! Mainly it’s the fact that I can’t even make enough money to stand on my own two feet. For God Sakes I’m 48 Years Old! I feel guilty for thinking I’m different. I feel guilty that I don’t have any interest in all the things that others find interesting. It feels lonely. What if I’m not different and I’m just not accepting the reality of life.

I’m just so tired right now. I feel like it’s my fault. I should have this stuff under control by now.

I’m tired of being on guard all the time, looking out for the next request on my time and hoping I’ll be able to handle it.

I wish the burden was lifted. I wish I could feel that there’s a plan for me and that I knew God had my back. I wish he could carry the load for me.

I’m not trying to sound despondent. It’s just the way I feel right now. I just wanted to hear from others. I wanted to share my burden with you.

I know this will pass, I’ve been here before. I just wish I didn’t feel this way right now. I don’t want to make another  list, or listen to a podcast, or try to meditate away the pain, or pick up a book. I’m tired of that stuff. I just want to share. That’s all I feel like doing.

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[Cassatt]

I am really impressed with all the things you have been doing to learn more about ADHD.

Listening to podcasts, meditating, reading….. and all the mental processing that goes on  – no wonder you feel tired.

Don’t worry about what others find interesting. What interests you? What activities increase your sense of well being?

There is nothing wrong with being different.

We are all unique human beings.

 

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[lindsey3]

Hi seabassd,  life is like swimming upstream isn’t it – not just sometimes, like for people without ADHD, but pretty much all the time for us with ADHD. I particularly relate to your feeling of being on guard all the time – self monitoring, being careful not to overspill or reveal your random thoughts, jokes, observations and so on  – hiding your true self when out in the world. This is incredibly tiring in itself.

Maybe it is time to quietly accept your diagnosis, and sort of put it in your pocket. Through therapy I have managed to rid myself of all the complex thinking around ‘ought, should and must’ regarding my professional and personal life. Inherited roles and definitions of who we should be, are exhausting and ultimately lead to shockingly low self esteem and crisis when we have ADHD.

What would you really like to do with yourself? No must / ought / should – just you with all your self knowledge and awareness – it may be something that has nothing to do with your current profile and expectations! My instinct is for you to think forwards and not try to be a round peg in a square whole. You have done the thinking, done your homework, and some kind of action is round the corner now. Time to plan a life with a new set of goals that include simply being yourself, and may be even getting happy.

Can you tell that I am in a similar place to you right now!

Best wishes x

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[daycruncher]

Hello!

I just joined and I’m definitely not experienced with ADHD, nor am I any kind of expert.  I just figured out that I have ADHD about 3 months ago and I’m still waiting on my evaluation.  But I do read a ton, and what I wanted to mention is that I think you simply need to make sure that you spend time right now doing nothing, and just rest to let your limited energy for “executive function” type of thinking to recharge and replenish.  I keep hearing that it’s important to make sure you take time out doing nothing, such as some simple meditation or lay down and just chill out with eyes closed, in quiet, etc.  It’s really personal what you would do, but it must be something that doesn’t tax your executive function type of thinking at all.

Also, I have heard that ADHD is really more of a problem of motivation than attention (since as you know, we can hyperfocus and zone out into our interests for hours, at times).   So maybe you can, when you feel UP to this study again, try to brainstorm and learn of techniques to motivate and keep an ADHD person more organized and on track in a project or activity.   I have heard, for example, that we tend to forget things that are not in our line of vision, so then creating visual reminders such as posters, notes, etc can help keep us more on track and knowing what comes next.  Then also, since we have a major problem remembering how we feel positive about a project, we can instill some artificial system of rewards and consequences.   We need to experience the feeling of reward (by setting up artificial rewards, in some system, and this can even be gold stars or points!) and consequences (subtract points or remove gold stars or whatever?)  in the DAILY experience of the project or else we tend to not perceive the real life consequences as real.  All real life consquences and rewards come much later!  So then we just don’t care, because we feel no reality to those far distant rewards and consequences.

Hope something I said might ring a bell, and help you to accept your feelings as normal for what you experience, cognitively speaking.  And the great hope in this is that you actually have the capacity to work hard and be much more motivated, but only through a strategy geared towards your ADHD situation, in particular.

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[seabassd]

@Cassatt Thanks for the quick reply. After I posted I was sitting there refreshing the page over and over looking for a response. Strange how I wanted to work things more and more and neglected the obvious, as you said, “all the mental processing that goes on  – no wonder you feel tired.”  I keep forgetting about this. I’ll work myself into exhaustion and then wonder what’s going on. It takes me a week to recover sometimes longer. So I sort of took and am taking daycruncher ‘s advice and not pushing myself as hard. I say sort of, because I don’t really have any choice, my mental faculties are “kaput”. So again I’m realizing that I’ve been pushing myself daily in a way that is not sustainable long term for me. lindsey3 is absolutely right on target about acceptance and about trying to be a round peg in a square hole. I’m not sure if it’s the way I’m approaching things that make for a bad fit, or if I’m simply choosing things that are a bad fit. Either way, the core issue is acceptance. One of the things I have never fully accepted is my hyperactivity. I’ve pushed that so far down inside me over the years that I barely recognize it anymore. It’s pretty bad. There’s really not any amount of meds that can knock it out, unless I want to be a zombie. I actually think I use depression and rumination to temper it…fear and anxiety too. The funny thing is that I have a desk job. I’m probably waisting a lot of energy keeping this side of me in check. So I probably need to find a way to vent this which I haven’t been doing, then see how other sit down activities are affected. I was hoping that meds would nock this out. I do remember some situations where the combination of meds with physical activity have worked to compliment each other. Maybe I’ll explore this more.

Like daycruncher suggested, maybe when I’m feeling a little more up to it, I’ll explore options that work for me and my specific needs.

I feel acceptance is the key issue here. It’s been 3 years since my diagnosis and it’s only now that I’ve felt some of the grieving others have talked about experiencing.

Thanks So Much Everyone

 

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