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My Starting Point : A Loss of Control

My Starting Point : A Loss of Control2014-05-15T18:24:24+00:00

The Forums Forums Emotional Journey My Story My Starting Point : A Loss of Control

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  • #125165

    AllAboutControl
    Member
    Post count: 11

    Hello,

    This is my first post. I’m going to apologize right now, because I know how I get with posts like these: there are going to be a lot of words, so many that I may in fact split this story into several posts. I’ll split them into sections and give them titles; feel free to read the ones that interest you.

    My Background

    I wasn’t diagnosed with ADD/ADHD until I was in my twenties, and I know why: I was a smart kid.

    I excelled academically throughout my elementary and high-school years. I was usually one of the more intelligent kids in my class and I won’t deny the fact that I liked school, at least the academic aspect of it. I also had a structured upbringing: my parents knew I was smart, so they had high expectations of me, which led to me developing high expectations of myself. So they made sure that I did all of my homework and that I did well in school. It paid off – if it weren’t for nearly failing pre-calculus, I would have been third in my class, which isn’t really much to write home about considering that I’m from a middle-of-nowhere rural community. You would not believe how much I hated typing that. I don’t like drawing attention to myself or bragging; call me modest or humble instead if you would prefer to do so, but I can’t take a compliment to save my life.

    Looking back, I can see signs of what was to come, both in regards to the ADD and to the events that led to my current state. I guess I’ll start with the warning signs of ADD:

    I think that my structured upbringing and my enthusiasm for learning would have masked any inattentive-type symptoms that I would have displayed. I definitely showed some hyperactive and impulsive symptoms – I talked a lot and fast, always had to shift my position or fidget, would blurt out answers, and was prone to interrupting people. The one thing that I still wonder as to whether or not it was ADD-related was my tendency to obsess over hobbies; if I got into something, I would really get into it, both time-wise and interest-wise. I would think about those things all the time, almost like they were stuck in my head and kept playing on repeat. I continue to see these characteristics in adulthood.

    The biggest warning sign for the events that were to come were my expectations for myself: I remember crying once when I was still in “middle” school because I got a “low” mark on a test, which was still high by a lot of people’s standards. I also had a fragile self-confidence; I was easily knocked off my game by small mistakes. Being bullied didn’t help either – suffice to say that I continue to bear psychological, social, and emotional scars.

    This section is definitely larger than I had intended it to be. Let’s continue…

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    #125166

    AllAboutControl
    Member
    Post count: 11

    University – Undergraduate Degree #1

    I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life, so I ended up following a career path that my parents suggested. I won’t deny that the field and the subject matter were interesting and that I liked the idea of working in the field, but I was never passionate about it. Several preceptors had asked me within the first few years whether or not this was what I wanted to do with my life – hindsight is 20/20.

    I continued to do well academically, although I learned quickly to lower my standard. The only class in which my grades were not above average were the classes that were discipline-specific. The major reason for that was the clinical component – where others excelled in clinical practice and had to put the effort in academically, I was the opposite. In the end, I was putting in extra time and effort into the clinical/practical aspect of my program only to not get as much out of it as my classmates. My struggles were primarily with organization and with “performance anxiety” whenever I was being evaluated.

    Outside of school, I was struggling as well. As an introvert, living in a residence where people were prone to partying was not an ideal situation. I went from having a circle of friends to not knowing anybody at all; I had nothing in common with my classmates or the people I lived with, so I found myself incapable of forming any meaningful connections with any of them. It took its toll, and I was forced to see a counsellor by October.

    Things did improve: I joined a sports club, which I am still involved with; eventually moved into an apartment with my older sister, a fellow introvert; accepted that I had nothing in common with most people my age; and eventually became part of my city’s geek scene. It wasn’t and still isn’t perfect – I still can’t form any meaningful connections with people and I continue to see a psychologist without really making any noticeable progress.

    University – Breakdown

    Unfortunately, my struggles with the practical aspect of my program became increasingly obvious as I advanced. I ended up failing a summer placement that was a prerequisite for half of the courses that made up my final year, which meant that Year 4 became Years 4 and 5. That was only the beginning…

    The first semester of Year 5 was a full-time specialty practice placement; I spent my days in the field and did homework when I got home. I had started living on my own during the summer, but this was the first full-time/full course load semester that I was on my own. My supervisor noticed that something had changed after the Thanksgiving weekend, during which I was out of town for a tournament; I’ll never know for sure what it was that would start what would become a downward spiral.

    It was a progression: I became increasingly distracted and disorganized, my confidence levels dropped as my levels of anxiety rose, and I was an emotional wreck. I felt the pressure, and the slightest mistake would set me into a spiral of self-doubt that meant I failed more than one evaluation, which in turn upset me and either led to reduced confidence during the next attempts or, on occasion, outright tears. I spent more time on-site than any of the others, but it wasn’t enough. I put all of my energy into passing, but I was running out; eventually my focus became just keeping myself afloat.

    I put my all into it, and consequently put everything else on the back-burner. I stopped exercising, socializing, making food that wasn’t quick and convenient or junk food, cleaning my apartment, or taking care of myself in anything other than the basic ways. I had no energy to devote to anything other than “Clinical” or “Homework”. It took its toll emotionally, psychologically, and physically.

    Near the end of the semester, my supervisor and teacher actually staged an intervention and told me that I had to see a professional, which I did; my appointments with that psychologist ended up being focused on keeping me afloat. In the end, I found out that I had failed; apparently, I had actually failed a month before but nobody had figured it out. Had I had enough left in me to be relieved that my struggle was over, I would have; I was empty, I had nothing left to give.

    That ended up being the straw that broke the camel’s back. I was done…

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    #125169

    AllAboutControl
    Member
    Post count: 11

    No Direction, New Direction

    I knew then that things were broken beyond repair; I probably could have salvaged things and kept going, but I wouldn’t. I wasn’t cut out for that field, nor was it cut out for me. I wished that I could have realized this sooner and that I could have avoided this situation entirely, but I had no choice but to cut my losses and learn from it. It wasn’t a complete waste: I learned a lot and gained a lot of skills that will help me in the future.

    I didn’t know what that future was going to be, because the life plan that I had was completely off the rails. I had spent so much time struggling that I wasn’t sure that I knew who I was when the struggle finally ended. I didn’t have the slightest idea who I was anymore, let alone what I wanted to do with my life. Any sense of routine and good habits was now gone, and in its place was an inability to initiate anything that took effort other than school and poor impulse control.

    So I started seeing another psychologist, as well as one of the university’s career counsellors. The different tests that she administered suggest the areas of Healthcare, Medical science, Counselling and Helping, Social sciences, and Science; this was highly ironic, because my degree fell within one of those fields. Eventually, I decided that I would start a psychology degree – I had spent enough time around psychologists to know that the idea of psychology interested me and that their approach felt much better suited for me than my former degree’s “assembly-line” approach to care. I always want to explain things, to know why something happen; I think this translates easily into a fascination for the things that make people tick.

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    #125173

    AllAboutControl
    Member
    Post count: 11

    Okay… This is too much… Cutting myself off for the night.

    Apparently a tendency towards wordiness and hyperfocus lead to me writing so much that I’m actually having trouble posting or editing what I write – I keep getting error messages.

    That’s it. I’m done. I’m sorry. This won’t happen again.

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    #125175

    blackdog
    Member
    Post count: 906

    @AllAboutControl…..

    Phew! I actually made it through all of that. (With just a little skimming. )

    First, welcome to the forums. 🙂 Long posts are pretty normal for a lot of us.  And you did a good job of breaking yours down and making it easier to read for people who have trouble concentrating. The error messages you got were probably because you tried to post too many times, too close together.  It makes you look like a spammer to the system. Its okay to put everything in one long post. As far as I know there is no word limit.

    A few things that stood out in your story:

    “The one thing that I still wonder as to whether or not it was ADD-related was my tendency to obsess over hobbies”

    The answer is yes, it is absolutely related to ADD. We can focus on anything that is interesting. And as long as it is more interesting than anything else, keep focusing on it. There is also a sort of feed back loop that happens in our brains that might have something to do with it. We have a tendency to obsess and go over things and go over it over and over again in our heads. It keeps me awake some nights.

    “…where others excelled in clinical practice and had to put the effort in academically, I was the opposite.”

    “I put all of my energy into passing, but I was running out; eventually my focus became just keeping myself afloat.”

    This is also very typical with ADD, and I had a similar experience with post secondary education. Started out fantastic, passed everything with flying colours, made the dean’s list. Then second term, started to struggle a little. Work placements, complete failure. I expended every bit of energy I had trying to keep up. Eventually the lack of sleep and food made me sick, which made me fall further behind, which meant that I had to work even harder, which made me sick again…..I remember actually doing a face plant in my mashed potatoes one night.  When I came to I just went and crawled into bed. I was so exhausted I don’t even have the energy to eat.

    My experience with every job I have had has been very similar. I have no problem at all understanding anything. Doing it is an entirely different thing.

    And finally:

    “geek scene” and “sports club”….should not appear in the same paragraph. 😉

     

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    #125200

    AllAboutControl
    Member
    Post count: 11

    @blackdog

    Thanks for the response. I’m sorry to have put you through that.

    To be honest, I was getting really disappointed with myself. I considered just never posting again because I was just that embarrassed. Nobody had said anything about the length and frequency of my posts, but I still felt like I’d messed up.

    Your reassurance that long posts are normal definitely helped me decide to give this thing another shot. I would have thanked you earlier, but I am amazingly talented at putting things off – I actually put off being a member of this forum for quite a long time, and put off posting until several days after I had joined.

    I will probably finish what I started, but it’ll mostly be in the form of posts in other threads.

    Thanks again.

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    #125204

    blackdog
    Member
    Post count: 906

    @AllAboutControl

    You’re very welcome. Don’t worry about messing up around here. Remember, everyone here has ADD/ADHD, or has family members who do. And we have all messed up. Many times. Some of us more than others….

    It is better if you can keep your posts shorter because it’s more likely that people will read them that way. But  it isn’t always easy. I spend hours trying to edit mine down some days. I sometimes end up having to give up and copy and paste it to my notepad to finish later. Which, of course, I never get around to doing.

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