ADHD Chronicles

In the past few days, I have started to focus more on my ADHD. I'm trying to figure out a way to be able to proceed with life. I started to try some small methods which I previously refused to try, and I hate to admit but I think they might be working, or maybe it's just April and the sun.

Hi, I'm Saina, and you're reading Sainaslife.

I'm gonna be honest, I haven't been at my best performance. It's been over 4 years that I am unemployed, and I try doing things and learning things here and there, but eventually, the urge to work is killing me from within. I tried applying for over 30 jobs in the past year, and if you have lived in Estonia, you would know that's a lot of jobs! The market itself is pretty bad, and being a foreigner adds to the problem. Why lie and gaslight myself when I am almost sure that my nationality reduces my chances of getting a job, even though everyone screams otherwise.

One thing with ADHD is that the more you're stuck in a situation, the harder it gets to come out of it. It's the looping thoughts that keep telling you you're to blame, and eventually, that wears you out more and more until you don't have the energy to apply for a job or simply do anything in your life. So it kinda justifies why I haven't been able to achieve anything in 4 years, and in my own dictionary, I have wasted my life.

Now I told you that I have started to try some new methods which I knew about but also was so resistant to trying them. Once my therapist told me that I should start slow. I know, easy right? Wrong! Even starting slow is difficult when you have ADHD, but it is less hurtful than going right into a task. For instance, if I plan to learn a digital skill by watching a video online, which is about 4 hours in total, my mind goes nuts. How? It doesn't think about the 4 hours; it thinks about the preparation ritual that goes into getting to those 4 hours. It feels like you're stuck in some kind of glue, and moving is extremely hard for you. So in this case, that 4-hour course is like a 4 km walk; for a neurotypical person, that might not be that difficult, but a neurodivergent person has to walk through 4 km of glue. So because the brain knows the difficulty of this path, it concludes that it's not worth it, or to put it better, it says, "The path is extremely scary."

The brain of an ADHD person is kinda primal; it mostly performs in a survival setting. It is always and never ready, kinda like standing on the edge of a cliff. So this method of starting slow makes it a bit easier for an ADHD person to start something. If I think that I have to walk 4 km in glue, I'd immediately say absolutely not, but if you were to tell me that I only have to walk 10 meters and then that's all, it's much easier. Though it's still difficult to walk 10 meters in glue, my mind finds it manageable, and since my mind is thirsty to achieve something for that dopamine, it accepts the little risk for a little reward.

Now in reality, watching that 4-hour course is like that 4 km walk in glue. But if I just choose to sit behind my PC and open the website, even though it is still difficult, it is manageable. The important part is that it should only be that much work for that day; I shouldn't open the videos and start watching immediately. The goal is to show my brain that it is hard but manageable, not to overwhelm it with lots of things on the same day. So how it works is that the next day when I wanna move forward with the idea of learning this course, I take a look back at the last day, and my brain now knows that it's manageable and I'm not gonna die, so it allows me to push forward a little bit more, like opening the first video or taking a look at the structure of the course.

Here's where it gets interesting: ADHD is annoying and exhausting, but if you get the hang of it, you'd know how to use its positives to cancel out the negatives. If I come sit at my computer every day for a few days and each day I pick small steps, suddenly the "hyper-fixation" kicks in, and then you can't even stop me from doing what I'm doing. I don't eat, I don't drink, I don't even breathe if I can, but I get things done. In this case, I will watch the whole course in one day. And that's the difference between a neurotypical and a neurodivergent; the timeline kind of stays the same for both, but the method is different. Both get the job done, but each in their own unique way.

What we can conclude from this post is that people with ADHD should not be punished because they can't do the job in the way a normal person does. They must be respected and understood in their own way and recognized for their unique way of performing. Hopefully, the world starts to realize that ADHD is not a difference to treat, but a variation to be treated differently.

As always, see you in the next post!

Best of wishes,

Saina.