[doctormikayla]

Thanks @seabassd as well. It seems a large part of my problem in changing my behaviors at work was that I really didn’t understand the root causes of why I was acting that way. And neither did my mangers. The more I have been learning the more I am finding new strategies that might actually work better than just “try harder.”

Getting out of the anxiety filled environment has also helped me to analyze the situation with a clearer head and figure out what really happened. I have a much better picture now of what my abilities and limits are, and I am keeping those in mind as I look at potential jobs. I may actually be ready to move into a new career in the near future.

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[doctormikayla]

My “superpower” seems to be insight in making connections in my head from widely varying sources of information. I hear something in conversation one day, and immediately connect it to something I heard maybe even 10 years ago. I tend to have some difficulty remember the details or the source from 10 years ago, but the connection is instant and I can often look up the details later. I think this might be a part of my primarily inattentive ADHD. I daydream and spin stories in my head so much that a lot of my life I was living more in my head than in the outer world. It took some comments from a candid friend to make me realize that I was doing this, and that I should be paying more attention to what is going on around me. But it is in those daydreams that I analyze everything from TV plots to information I read in a technical article to general observations of the world around me. Alarm bells ring in my head if I hear information in a advertisement, or from a politician, or from a preacher that does not match what I understand about the world. The silliness of some social conventions and fashions are very obvious to me, and this has been both a blessing and a burden, since not simply going along with some apparently irrational things can make it hard to navigate formal social situations. But I’ve always considered this to be one of my greatest assets.

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[doctormikayla]

Thanks for your words Baba. That last bit especially is very familiar. XD

I have been considering freelancing myself, and doing some relatively small technical projects on my own for education and entertainment. I find that when I am engaged in something I am interested I do well, and when I don’t I fall into a depression. Better to do anything than to do nothing. My challenge is to actually stay with a project long enough to accomplish things that take more than one or two days to finish.

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[doctormikayla]

I may not hold a grudge against someone who hurt me, but I will avoid interacting with them forever.

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[doctormikayla]

I actually do fairly well at planning out tasks and timeframes as long as they are fairly simple tasks and I know exactly how to do them. Planning and estimating for IT Development tasks is generally accepted as something that is hard to do accurately even for neurotypical people. Those things are highly complex and full of unknowns and uncertainty. But if you are an IT Developer it’s something you have to figure out how to do…it’s a requirement on the job, and if you can’t figure it out you get a lot of people upset with you. :-/

About the empath thing, I think there is something to it. I think I have a particular sensitivity to sensory input of all types. I can’t help but think of my poor roommate nearly 10 years ago…he would come in and just start blabbing on about some aspect of his day, and pull me out of my thoughts, and have the TV going at the same time. My attention was like a pinball bouncing around inside my skull, and ended up snapping at him. He didn’t know why I was suddenly so irritable, and honestly neither did I. LOL

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[doctormikayla]

Thanks blackdog. 🙂

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[doctormikayla]

Thanks for the earworm. :-/ Hahaha

I know this situation all too well. Getting focused and getting stuff done only to get set back from some problem that totally prevents progress and getting angry at my stupid self and barely stopping myself from breaking something…. This is a core issue with me that was one of the sorts of things that prompted me to get evaluated. It still happens sometimes so I can’t say I have it beat. But I think the most effective thing for me when I can maintain the proper level of calm and self-awareness (thank you meds) is to just stop and take a few deep breaths and do a mindfulness exercise like repeating “breathing in…breathing out…relaxing…calm…” for a minute or so just to calm down the racing thoughts and self-talk. And then try resolving the problem again or seeing if there is a way around it. And, in a lot of cases, just put it aside for a while (with a reminder) and tackle something else on my list.

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[doctormikayla]

This is me all over—I’d be lost without my iPhone! I don’t know how many times I’ve told my husband that if I need to take kids to a game, or whatever, if I don’t get it in my calendar *immediately* I will forget all about it (so don’t tell me at moments when I can’t enter it into my phone or computer please!)

In order to avoid impulsive looking at Facebook or searching the internet, I have at times set “Restrictions” on my iPhone to disable the internet browser and block installing new apps after I delete the Facebook app. I can also go and turn off the restriction if I need to, but just that extra bit of inconvenience will do away with an unthinking “must look at Facebook!” inpulse.

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