This blog has been around for a bit of time, without a major direction. However, as my focus in life and interests have changed, so should this blog’s focus.
Recently, I found that I have quite a message to share. Due to some self-exploration, recent experiences, and research, I’ve come to the conclusion on what I have been dealing with all this time. I was recently diagnosed with Inattentive ADD, Depression, and Anxiety. Learning about this, and having some enlightening conversations with varying people I’m close to, brought more to light than I could have ever imagined. I’ve come to terms with where I am truly going, and meant to go as a writer, researcher, blog site editor/manager, and understanding of my situation. I learned where my traumas stemmed from, why I’ve felt tortured through my childhood into adulthood, and also why I’ve felt I no longer belonged in the jobs or life I built for myself.
Where My Traumas Started
All my life, I struggled to understand the behavior of those around me, and see why I was being targeted. I did my best to get through each incident, sifting through all the memories, and the reactions I remember. At first, I came to the conclusion that it was something I was/wasn’t doing. It turns out, I was only half right. What I was/wasn’t doing were catalysts for everything that happened in my life up till that moment I spoke with a close person in my life.
This special person I grew up with threw me for a loop with their behavior, and it was hard to grasp the reasonings for the strange behavior this individual exhibited.
It turns out, during a rather open conversation, that this person wanted my attention, and I was in a whole other world. I learned I am an escapist; I escape into other more interesting worlds where characters and happenings, I felt, made more sense than the reality I existed in. I escaped into movies, books, music, and worlds I tapped into when writing my fiction.
As a child, I played with dolls, cars, and erecter sets my father created and built for me. I lacked nothing in my life, save for a Nintendo game system. During the conversation, they said they tried to get my attention in any way they could. I was unreachable, and they needed company. When that was told, I then asked myself the question, “Could that have been the reason everyone acted that way toward me all my life?”
Well, needless to say, that conversation spurred me to delve deeper into the research I already started. I had factors that jumped out at me, showing me that I wasn’t normal in any way. I learned I failed at trying to fit the molds of what was expected of me in society. I learned my Ambidexterity and sibling’s clinical diagnosis of ADHD lifted my chances of having ADHD to 85%. No need for clinical diagnosis to get me to start learning more, and checking my symptoms. Although, I did eventually get professionally diagnosed recently.
ADHD Truths and Comorbidities Revealed
During that time of first notice on ADHD, I came to realize that my struggles in my simple job were connected to ADHD. I knew then that I needed to explore better avenues that would suit me as a worker. Reception, Customer Service, and Sales certainly were not on that list. I found that I like routine, I like to know what to do next, but my ADHD symptoms tend to thwart those efforts, causing chaos to ensue, and I scramble to stick to plans. Deadlines, I learned, were never on the menu, and randomness gave me a freedom I never knew I was secretly seeking.
Randomness isn’t usually seen as a good trait when deadlines exist, or when schedules are important. I have learned that not only am I random, not just in actions, but also in thoughts. I can surprise people on where I’m going next, including myself. However, something else was complicating this formula; Depression. Depression made it hard for me to set foot into my desires, caused me to stay in a chair for 6 years that got me nowhere, and stunted my growth as an individual. It even thwarted the random ideas that sounded great to do at the moment. However, Depression was also attached to a comorbidity that brought depth to my ADHD mind; Inattentiveness. That gave me the indication that I had something different from what my sibling had. I learned I was on the other side of the spectrum; Inattentive ADD.
During my time as a youth, when a lot of trauma happened, Inattentive ADD wasn’t even a thought in anyone’s minds. ADHD was just starting to be recognized in boys at the time, and it was taking hold in grade school settings. Of course, my sibling and I had no clue what our issues were called, or even that they were issues at all. We believed they were personality traits we must’ve gained from our parnts, and ancestors we never met, or knew much about. So, at the time, there really was no way we could give these puzzling traits names.
These traits made life hard growing up. It hurt a lot to be misunderstood, and I felt like I was always missing something whenever peers ganged-up on me, or turned their tunes toward negative actions. All my youth, I asked myself, “What am I doing wrong? Why am I hated so much?” Turns out, nothing. I wasn’t doing anything wrong, I was just confused, lost, and missing the social cues due to cognitive dysfunction, and then reacted emotionally regarding Emotional Dysfunction Syndrome, which happens to be a comorbidity ADHD sufferers can experience.
I eventually learned that ADHD can have a web of possible comorbidities one can suffer from that can cause confusion, misdiagnosis, and complications for managing symptoms. Emotional Dysregulation Syndrome symptoms are debilitating when one can’t regulate their reactions to emotions and triggers that bring out those emotions. It can cause the sufferer to experience PTSD like symptoms that can fling them back into the moment a trauma occurred, and they can’t bring themselves back into the present without a struggle. Not only that, but Rejection Dysphoria is another problematic comorbidity that causes those who suffer to force themselves to be perfectionists in order to lessen the chances of rejection, as it can be debilitating, and spur Depression on a deep level.
Having these traits linked me to the big three: ADD/ADHD, Depression, and Anxiety; I walked on egg shells around myself, and my self-image. I held high expectations of myself, and was hard on myself whenever I failed somewhere. It was very hard to grasp what to love when I couldn’t meet my own standards, all to avoid feeling those negative feelings I felt whenever I failed to achieve my daily perfectionistic goals. Needless to say, these were the big three that caused me to lose my footing throughout my life. Only thing is, they remained hidden from my cognition simply due to me not being easily diagnosed. I was seen mainly as introverted, and anti-social. Surprisingly, these symptoms appeared in my late 30s and early 40s.
The Change of Life
As I grew older, and my hormones changed, my symptoms became more apparent. I began to struggle with emotion regulation; I felt like I was living in a drama series on Netflix, and each day was a new episode. I was easily angered and thrown off by comments, both negative and innocent. I was easily offended, and aggressive, depending on the situations, and it felt as if everyone was after me. I knew I had to do something, as not everyone exhibited those behaviors toward me that caused me to feel as if I was in any danger. I suffered anxiety daily, and my stomach couldn’t calm down the butterflies that were spooked. I turned to Reiki and varying energy tools to help me get past Anxiety episodes, but they always came around at some point later. I realized the tools could only alleviate me temporarily, but not prevent them from happening.
I ended up feeling as if I had issues doing even the simplest of things, such as talking to friends on the phone, or customers at work. I began to think, each time a phone rang, I was going to be chewed out, threatened, or backed-up against a wall. Communication, as a whole, became hard for me, including in person. I knew something big was wrong, but since I gradually suffered, it seemed like the world was changing, not me. Once again, feelings of something wrong with me as a person surfaced, and I started researching a whole other possibility—Menopause.
Needless to say, I found the jackpot when I googled that idea. All over, women were being diagnosed later in their life due to the changes in hormones. I learned that estrogen and progesterone are linked with serotonin and other neurotransmitters that regulate moods in the brain. Well, I came to realize where the stereotype of older women going mad came from. This finding is fairly new, and makes a lot of sense.
After finding that tidbit, I decided to look into supplements, and cognitive therapy treatments that could help regulate neurotransmitters in place of estrogen. Omega 3s, Ashwaganda, and a few other supplements were found; hormone treatments can also work. Only thing is, due to family history of Breast Cancer, hormone therapy wasn’t an option for me. So, supplementation was my go to, and I decided to give it a try. It took the edge off, and helped me regulate my emotions and reactions better, though not well enough as I would have liked. The simple relief helped me to see the light at the end of the tunnel, though, and that was enough for me to keep going and researching.
Soon, I realized I needed to delve deeper in treatment, and looked into medications that could help me achieve more than the edge being softened. Being diagnosed by my doctor was a harsh reality, but I am glad I have proof to present to family and friends. I feel better now than I’ve felt in years, and I believe I finally have taken control of my mind, and my self-vision. With the supplementation, I was able to use a lower dose of the medications prescribed, which helps me to suffer less effects of the medications.
Where I’m Going Now
Needless to say, I’m glad I never stopped searching for tidbits and tips. That research ultimately led me to this moment as I write this blog post. This journey I speak of was quite a feat, and I am glad I’m ending the tunnel of darkness I was lost in for quite some time. I decided to make sure I stay out of that tunnel, and break out into the bright light of enjoying my life, and exploring all the things I missed as well as where my talents and abilities can take me.
Writing is still at the forefront of my desires in life. I am realizing that I need to write, whether it’s fiction, instruction manuals, blog posts, or social media posts. Writing is my main form of expression, aside from singing, and dancing. As artists draw and paint scenes they see in their heads, I express them in words. I am a wordsmith, and I will use that to my advantage in my future from this point onward.
I will be writing more on the subjects I spoke of above. I want to revamp this blog to be more meaningful. I will be writing posts about ADHD and comorbidities through my lens, to give people a sense of what someone is suffering from, from my own individual set of lenses. These findings are huge, and are still being recognized bit by bit by psychologists across the board. These disorders and syndromes are so interwoven, complicated, and vast that they will be the center of studies for years to come.
I hope to reach people who have questions about their own experiences, and hope to shed some light on issues they are dealing with, but don’t know where to look for answers. The new message of this blog is now, “Hun, you’re not crazy, you’re just living differently than the picture you painted.”
Learning that my projected, perfect image of myself was a lie was crazy, and I had no idea how to feel as my paper world fell around me. It wasn’t an easy journey, but it is showing me who I really have been all this time. Life doesn’t have to be zombie-like and dead-feeling. Life is interesting, for sure. People do influence our self-images, and they can also hurt when we aren’t living authentically. Learning what that means is a harsh reality, for sure, but it must be done.
I now have a sense of where I’m going, have taken back my confidence, my story, and my strength. I’m not cowering in fear of things that aren’t really happening to me, no longer scared of my future, my present, or the people in it. Depression is not keeping me from achieving the goals I’ve set, though it’s still a work in progress on habits and systems that work for me. I am no longer as distracted from my goals as I was, though I’m learning how and why I get easily lost in Sparkle Land. I’m not necessarily where I should/want to be, but I’m on my way.
Learning patience for my process is important, and being kinder to myself than I’ve been, is essential.
As I post content on this blog, I will include sources, websites, and video sources that can help with information and guidance. I am, in no way, an expert, psychologist, therapist, etc. I am a woman who has been there, and is pulling herself out of the mud, just like those reading this who are in need of answers. I will not tell you how to fix things, how to get yourself out, nor can I diagnose you. However, I am offering up encouragement through these future posts to help you all get started, and feel like you aren’t alone. This journey is tough, but lovelies, so are you. So, stay tuned!
Rambling Thoughts Abound 