Since its ADHD Awareness Month, I thought I would tackle something that has been on my mind of late. And that's how we as a society handle the effects of ADHD on day to day lives. A lot of us are used to hearing "don't use your ADHD as an excuse", especially when it comes to things that we're not interested in. But what a lot of people don't realize is that if affects things we want to do as well. Something I've noticed about how I operate is that I need to be motivated to do anything. And it's easy for me to lose that motivation once I have it, and not so easy to get it back. Yet it's so easy to be labelled as lazy or unmotivated because of it.
And because of that negative label, I feel like I need to appear more productive in order to justify my whole existence. Even though it would be easier to work with my ADHD instead of against it, I find myself trying to justify my whole career choice. If you didn't know, I ended up being a full time content creator so I could have flexibility in my work times, in case I had a "fog day". But not everyone sees that, and might assume that I'm just sitting around doing nothing. And because of that, I rarely take a "fog day", though I've had many reasons do, whether it be a genuine brain fog, emotional turmoil, or burnout. And because of that, I'm having less confidence in myself and it's leading to an erratic schedule.
As a content creator with ADHD, I try to have a simple schedule that gives me enough structure that I don't go off the rails, but enough flexibility that I can move things around as I need. But when you start taking on more than you anticipated, you tend to forget the main things on your schedule. Schedule bloat is something I've been dealing with lately, and it has led to me burning out. But I rarely talk about it because of the need to feel "useful". Even before I had gotten an ADHD/Bipolar diagnosis, I felt like I was weighing down everyone around me because of an unfounded assumption that they had to pick up the slack due to my "unreliability". And because of that, I tend to avoid telling people that I'm struggling, even when it would help me. I would rather work through it in the hopes that my sheer stubbornness gets me through whatever I'm supposed to do, or be known as the guy who doesn't stick to anything. Because it's easier for me to be viewed as bad than try to get someone to understand why I'm struggling. And with my fight or flight reaction skewed towards flight, and my inability to communicate how I feel adequately without feeling useless and incompetent, I generally make more problems for myself.
Regardless of all of that, I've tried to make things easier on myself, but until the stigma around ADHD and how it affects our day to day life is addressed, a lot of us will end up in this cycle. And the more I look back on some events that happened, the more I realized that I was trying to overcompensate for my ADHD and failing. And that lead me to giving up on myself. Despite that, I'm trying my best to live a life where I feel proud of myself, and not relying on others to be proud of me.
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