What it's like being an adult with A.D.D.

I notice there are lots of articles out there for parents to address how to raise a kid who has A.D.D. or is on the Autism spectrum. And for good reason! There are unique challenges and difficulties that arise in helping a child to grow whose brain wiring and personality are different than the norm. I get that. Mostly because I was that child, and I have that/those child(ren). 

I used to write a lot as a child - sometimes inventing imaginative stories, sometimes just chronicling my life. It was a way I could cope with all the world around me. And I dreamed of being a writer someday - of putting my thoughts on paper and seeing them reflected back to me, and imagining others would read my words, and they would land in other hearts. Like an arrow going out from my inner life and landing in the soul of another. And as I grew and had my struggles, and faced my woes (I was a lamenting type of soul from very young, apparently), I made a sacred vow to myself. 'Never forget.' Never forget how you're feeling, how others aren't understanding you, how you are suffering, how the adults around you don't get it. Never forget what it is like to look out through these 8 year old, 10 year old, 13 year old eyes. Keep these thoughts, feelings, impressions alive, and make it to adult-land and spread the news: What it is like to be me in this complicated world.

Perhaps this is why I retain so much of my young life - between that and trauma, which imprints the brain with memory stronger than most anything. I hung onto the sense of aloneness and alienation. Of having to comply with orders, requirements, expectations, and trying to learn to keep my mouth shut and just write things down instead. 

Part of my writing voice comes from having my real voice hushed over and over and over. Silenced, more like, even to the point of physical suffocation. My voice has been trapped within me for many, many years. In time, perhaps it will make its way more to the surface...in time.

For now, I think back over the weekend, the month, and I sit in a shame-fog-struggle. Welcome to the struggle-bus! I've been a bit more depressive of late, and it's understandable - I give myself grace and space to be as I am. It feels shameful, embarrassing, awkward. Everything is off just a bit. And I sometimes tell myself I shouldn't go anywhere, see anyone, or say anything when I'm in these darker moods and seasons. And I should've taken my own advice. But the A.D.D. part of me is so super distractible, I fail to remember and heed my own advice. So I go places, and see people, and even show up to a few social settings (which sometimes social phobia with fear and trepidation keep me away from). And then I leave and shame-explosions erupt within me. "You said that? Out loud?!" my inner critic says. Inner critic is not entirely to be dismissed. She DOES have a point. "Why didn't you just keep your mouth shut?" I attack myself. 

So what do I do with all this shame? All this reproach? 

Shame is toxic to my soul, to my well-being. I reflect on it and allow it to surface. "Here it is, God. I just want to crawl into a hole and disappear. I should never show up and be around people in social settings. Will you help me never to go out again, and just become a secluded hermit, like, forever?" And God says, clearly, 'No. I will not help you do that. How about let's look at this together. Come, let us reason together.' (Please, know I'm not speaking for God here. Prayer is partly an imaginative exercise). 

Ugh. I hate the shame. The embarrassment. The way I go unchecked and say things. I get dragged into overthinking, overly self-conscious. Worrying about offenses I've caused. Worrying that others are going to hate me forever. I tell myself to be more guarded, more aware. But people get me talking, or I just begin talking and I say things that are sitting in my head and forget normal people have a filter. They think about the things they're going to say. A.D.D. at its worst means I simply have no filter.

I remember in my late 20's getting properly diagnosed with A.D.D. My Doctor (God bless her!!) helped me figure it out. I mean, I knew I had it ever since digging through a filing cabinet during my college years. My parents had discovered my challenges early on, and wrote to some researcher who wrote an article in a news magazine they had read in the mid-80's. It mentioned a new thing, Attention Deficit Disorder, and they, being far off in Hong Kong, and under-resourced in the newest educational research, thought they'd reach out to the writer of the article. There was a letter from that same writer in our files, giving them some insight into this condition. In my late 20's my doctor noticed I never followed up with any other referrals: You need to see a dermatologist, a podiatrist...etc. And I'd come back a year later and say, "I just need you to be my everything doctor. I just don't get around to looking at the number on the card, picking up the phone, dialing it, and making an appointment. That requires executive functioning of the brain, of which I have about zero. So you need to be my everything doctor. I have A.D.D. I'll likely never get around to any follow up appointments." She is an amazing doctor. She knows her stuff. She looked back at me and said, "Have you ever been tested and diagnosed?" And I said, "No. But it's obvious from my whole life," and I told her about the letter in the files my parents had. And she took her notepad and wrote out the titles of two books, and told me to go to the library and read them. I did so. And that began everything to help me on my way.

Through the journey of events, I did end up taking medication for a season and what an amazing breakthrough that was for me. Among other things, it was the first time in my life that I experienced what it is like to have a mental/verbal filter. I remember thinking things and having the wherewithal to not say them. It was a huge mental, emotional, and even spiritual learning curve for me. I wrestled with many theological issues - doubt, regret, shame. I thought, 'I prayed and prayed for years that God would help me with impulse control. I fasted, a I changed my diet, I eliminated all food dyes, I cut out gluten, I looked at gut and psychology diets, I took supplements, I even tried exercising (brave, I know), I tried sheer-will-power-discipline, you name it, I tried it, and a simple chemical compound packed into a tiny pill did what all that effort and striving couldn't do?!' I was dumbfounded. Don't get me wrong - all the other stuff is great, kind of, if you're convinced of that, don't let me stand in your way. But I really had to come to terms with the fact that my brain was simply wired in such a way that all the other lifestyle corrections was simply not going to address. Medicine helped me immensely, even if only for a season. And during that/those seasons, my brain would increase its learning, experientially mostly, by giving me opportunity to practice what it is like to have a filter, now that I had the super power available to me. And the learning stuck even when I wasn't on the medication. God bless the scientists who figured some of this out!! We thank God for ALL His good gifts, even pharmaceuticals. I'm sure there are Christians in that field who actually seek to use their intellect and gifts to the glory of God by finding great resources in nature (like, the periodic table of elements!!) and putting them together in such a way that they benefit people like me. (Sorry if I'm stepping on toes here, I just simply love science combined with decent logic).

So, through prayer and the amazing answers to prayer - the resources God supplies, including medicine, I journey with more than one limp. I have so many I lose count, and my non-neuro-typical brain can handle not knowing all the limps I have because I might be overwhelmed if I did.

But what about the shame? What about the deep difficulty of being me - of living with an unpredictable mouth that seems to think for itself, disconnected from wise discretion? 

Yes, it does suck to be me at times. Combine A.D.D. with Depression and you get way worse muck than you might otherwise. I still think I should just not go places and see people, given the unpredictable things I might say. It is embarrassing.

But I'm driven then to take my pain somewhere. And the only place I have to go is to the heart of God, to my Rescuer, Jesus, to my comfort, the Holy Spirit, all one and the same loving and welcoming God. His Spirit is with me and in me, and I run hard to Him and bare it all and say, 'See, see this!! It's horrible! This is me! Help! I don't know what to do with myself!!' God allows me to come to Him like this. Poor, helpless, suffering, ashamed, needy. I crawl in close and nestle on His lap and tell Him how awful I feel. At times I just want to be relieved of the pain. Then I come to a place of repentance. I really struggle with the word repentance. It seems to represent shame to me. But it's something I need - I need an unleashing of the old, and turning away from the yuck and towards the new, the life, the hope, the right (as in, correct :D), the healing. Repentance is turning. And shame tells me: turn - please turn, as fast as you can!!. 

There is safe haven with Jesus. I can't imagine doing life without Him. 

I'm sure there are some reading this who don't know Him as I do. It would be my greatest joy to share more of what it is like to know and live life in love with Jesus. Sounds sappy and sentimental and perhaps even a little unorthodox. But it's not even about me loving Him as much as it is Him loving me. John, the apostle, says, 'We love Him because He first loved us.' And I have to agree. His love is the softest pillow for my shamed-self to land on. 

I don't have all the answers. And I'm not sure it's answers I truly need, truth be told. It's really Jesus I need. It's Jesus you need too. 

Let me tell you about Him sometime.

                                                                                (Photo credit: David Logan)