Since I spent most of my life undiagnosed, all kinds of things have piled up in weird places both inside and outside my mind. I didn’t realize how restless I was, or that other people ‘think things to death’ or freak out wanting to relax for a little while. My life has been kind of tricky because of this late-arriving information—my daily life and overall structure, or lack thereof, has been the worst for an ADHD brain. I believe in life as a collection of lessons, I believe we create our own lives more often than not and I constantly look for {and document} the wisdom I’ve learned from my life experiences.
Learning about executive functions didn’t occur to me until Pina the ADHD alien said that’s something we struggle with and posted a video on her Twitter feed. I don’t like Dr. Russell and I do like Dr. Ned and I did get a quick breakdown of what executive functions are. To truly understand them, I needed to personalize them—so I wrote 8 blogs, one for each skill and one to overview {and provide links to each post, yay internets}. I worked really hard on those pieces and part of me really doesn’t care because I want more attention.
Yesterday I was having a hard time with life because sometimes I get these headaches that make my eyes hurt really bad and there’s not much to do about it. My spousums reminds me to take a few decongestants, since humidity was bad and that will give me sinus pressure—but mostly I sit/lay somewhere and keep my eyes closed. The past several days have given me much to think about, even more so today—but I’m writing now, with intent to get everything worked out.
Work on the website has been very satisfying lately, but also somehow kind of nerve-wracking and I don’t know how that’s possible. Probably something to do with the fact that soon we’ll be “out there” and people will say things or want stuff or ask questions or be like ‘did you realize this post has a weird grammatical error?’ or whatever. Regardless, I’m doing my best to keep records of our progress because Zeffy’s feeling very NOT fabulous because of his testosterone stuff {it’s not my issue to elaborate on, so that’s all you'll get from me}. We really are a power team sometimes, it’s surreal and extremely temporary when we’re not.
Sitting on the couch with my eyes closed; newly gathered information dances in my mind and ideas are formed. Researching ADHD during the past few months has me feeling unsatisfied with the available information and discussions. Personalizing executive functions, those essential 7 skills, made me realize how important it is for raw information to be filtered. Who comes up with these terms? Who knows how to read the big book of diagnosis tags and psychobabble observations? {I’m talking about the DSM—Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Health}
At some point in human history, medical doctors got together with philosophers at a mixer with too much alcohol and that’s where psychologists and psychiatrists come from. I could be wrong, don’t quote me. Regardless {according to Google} in the 1950’s Ritalin was marketed to adults as a stimulant stronger than caffeine—though it wasn’t long before it was being used to combat symptoms of ADHD.
So many children were popping Ritalin on the regular in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s which has made for some fascinating adult ADHD cases. I’m grateful for the improved attention on children with neuro-divergent brains and I love the awesome people supporting these challenging brats.
I’m not a child, though, and I didn’t receive a diagnosis until I was 30—which means I have a fat collection of issues none of these children share, which is awesome for them, omg. What I’m getting at is the fact that finding information that benefits my life is challenging and I’d like to change that.
