Feeling Crappy, Screwups, and Decisions

1.  Feeling Crappy

Turns out, I didn’t have a hangover the other day.  It was the beginning of my PMDD/Migraine/Depression/Misery Days.  At least they don’t drag on for as long as they used to.  There’s that.  It was particularly rough this time, though, and the inner critic really capitalized on the opportunity to run rampant.  I remind myself that it has been far worse in the past, but it’s still so hard to get through when it’s happening in the moment.  Things are getting back to normal now, since some time Thursday.  Phew.

I have noticed that during Hormone Hell Week (hereafter to be affectionately known as HHW), I am far more likely to misunderstand things people say, or to misread their energy.  It occurred to me the other day that a situation with my therapist that happened back in August, where I completely misread and misunderstood her and more or less mentally “checked out” from the whole process for a little while, probably happened during HHW.  I looked back on my calendar this morning, and sure enough, it was smack-dab at the beginning of HHW for that month.  Going back through emails to my therapist in the few days around that time, I can really see how I was melting down.

So, I have added a recurring reminder to myself in my calendar, to appear every fourth Monday: “HHW – Don’t let it get to you.”

*  *  *

2. Screwups

So, I went to the doctor’s office Wednesday (my GP’s office), intending to talk to the nurse practitioner about trying some ADD medication.  I’d already spoken with my therapist about it, signed a release, and she’d faxed the information to the doctor’s office last week.

When the nurse (or medical assistant?  I’m not sure) called me back (almost a half hour after my appointment time, although it’s common for that office to be running behind), I noticed she was new and I took an immediate (and at first, unexplained) dislike to her.  I smiled anyway and tried not to let it show, aware that I’ve been tense and hormonal for days.

I got on the scale, and while I was standing there waiting for her to move the little slidey-things and find out my weight, she was reading a note on my record.

I see you called in recently asking for a prescription for Yaz.”

“Yes, that was taken care of.”

“The doctor isn’t going to prescribe Yaz for you.”

“He already did.  It’s taken care of.”

(This was almost four weeks ago, when my prescription had run out and I’d had to cancel my annual gynecologist appointments a few times because of other issues, and the gynecologist wouldn’t call in another refill because she hadn’t seen me.  I asked my GP to call it in once, which he did, and then I saw the gynecologist last week.)

“He won’t do it again.”

“It’s ok.  I don’t need him to.”

“Yaz is dangerous.  There are problems with it.”

“L (who has worked there for years and years) called me last week and we talked about it.  I’m aware of the issues.”

“The doctor won’t prescribe that for you.”

“I don’t need him to!”

Why wouldn’t she mind her own business?

Then we went into the exam room and did the whole checking-blood-pressure and going-over-my-records thing.

“Is this a follow-up?”

“It was supposed to be, but I didn’t do my blood work yet.  I kept the appointment because I want to talk to her about ADD medications.  My therapist faxed over the information on Friday.”

Nurse-Or-Medical-Assistant rolled her eyes and said, sardonically, “She probably didn’t do it.”

“She did.”

Don’t'choo be talking bad about my therapist.  My hackles were up.

She searched my record on the laptop.

“Who was supposed to fax it?”

“My therapist.”

I told her my therapist’s name, and spelled it.  Twice.

“The cardiologist?”

“No.”

Seriously?  Did she really ask me that?

“Who was supposed to send it?”

“My therapist.”

I spelled her name again.

“And what was she supposed to send?”

“An ADD assessment and the release I signed.”

There’s nothing here.  She didn’t send it.”

“She sent it.  But if you don’t have it, there really is no need for me to stay today, since I didn’t have the blood work done yet.”

“Well, let me go check.”

She left the room.  I waited, and steamed, and finally decided she had five more minutes and I was going to leave, when she came back in (now more than an hour after my scheduled appointment time) and told me that they had received the fax but didn’t know where it was.

I stood up to leave.

“Wait.  Don’t you want to talk to her anyway?”

“About what?  Without that fax, there’s nothing to talk about.”

“Why don’t you just talk to her anyway?”

She’s not going to prescribe me amphetamines based on my saying I want them!

I left.

Oh well.  I had some reservations, anyway, about ADD medications, because I’ve already had problems with medications that affect neurotransmitter levels, and because of some other possibly illogical “terrors” that have arisen around the whole topic (“What if I don’t really have ADD?  What if I’m just lazy?”, or “What if the things that appear to be ADD symptoms are really just the cognitive symptoms of Fibromyalgia / Chronic Fatigue?”, and, “What if the meds make me feel crazy or out of control?”)  So it wasn’t terribly difficult for me to just walk way and drop the whole idea of meds anyway.

I do feel a little sad, though.  I had begun to imagine less noise in my head.  Being able to grasp and focus on what is important and needs my attention at the moment, rather than ruminating about things that just aren’t important right then and don’t necessarily even serve a useful purpose at all.  I’d begun imagining what it might be like to be able to stay on task more easily at work.  My job isn’t ideal for someone with ADD.  There are a lot of interruptions, often layering over one other, and while I multi task pretty well during the higher-intensity moments of being interrupted by more than one person who thinks their problem or issue is the most important thing in the world at the time, it’s the getting-back-to-whatever-I-was-doing-before that is so hard.  And with each new interruption, the getting-back is harder and harder, until I finally just sit and stare.  I had anticipated that becoming easier.

And reading.  I so miss reading for pleasure, and being able to follow the plot of a novel without re-reading the same sentence or paragraph multiple times, and being able to remember which character is which, so that the next time they appear in a scene, I remember how they fit into the story.  I miss that.

I’m leaning toward asking my therapist if she can recommend a psychiatrist.  If there is one she recommends who is also on my insurance plan, I might make an appointment to talk about the meds.  After doing some further research to find out if maybe, by altering the amino acids I take to keep my neurotransmitter levels where they should be, and by not taking ADD meds every single day, I could avoid the sort of neurotransmitter damage I experienced before.  I think the ideal scenario would be to find a psychiatrist who incorporates a bit more of a holistic approach into their work, and perhaps would be willing to order tests to monitor my NT levels once or twice a year.  Other than my PMDD times, I seem to be in a really good place right now, so I would think that whatever my levels are during my non-PMDD weeks would be a good base line to go by.

Just thinking.

*  *  *

3. Decisions

PMDD time is a bad time for me to make decisions, and ironically it’s also a time when I keep ruminating about decisions I shouldn’t be making at the time, but can’t seem to let go of.

One of those is whether or not to do NaNoWriMo this year.

On the one hand, I participated for the past five years.  This will be number six, if I do it.  It’s become such a big part of my fall.  I’ve loved writing for most of my life and it’s fun to prepare for NaNo, making notes and brainstorming with Sister to come up with the framework of a story.  It’s fun to plan what kinds of snacks I’ll have available while I write, and it’s fun to go to write-ins and enjoy the social aspects of the whole thing.

On the other hand, I have a lot of other things going on this year.  My older nephew is getting married in November (my younger nephew just got married in September).  I’ve been working on my clutter problem and preparing for a very special visit in December.  This last week or so, I’ve been pulled away from decluttering because I’ve been working on getting my taxes filed, since the extension I filed for back in April will expire on the 15th, and then I spent a few days in “dialed-down” mode because I didn’t feel capable of much other than dragging myself into work and home again.  In order to completely immerse myself in NaNo, I’d like to have the decluttering done by the end of October, and I’m just not sure I can do that.

I also have this other pressure-feeling this year, that since I finally won last year, I have to win again this year.

I did decide that if I do NaNo this year, though, I’d rather not continue on to the third novel in the series I’ve been working on, simply because without having finished either of the first two, it becomes more and more difficult to keep starting the next ones.  I’d really like to finish one or both of the first two before moving along to the third, even though I have notes and a basic outline and time line for the entire series.

I decided I’d like to do something completely different this time, if I decide to do it.  I thought about it, came up with a couple very loose starter-thoughts, brainstormed with Sister (who, on hearing my first loose starter-thought, said, “And then what?”, and I said, “That’s all I have so far.”), then brainstormed some more with SS, then with Sister again, and then even more by myself, and . . . I think I’ve got it.  It’s an exciting concept, to be done in a somewhat unusual way.  It’s getting more and more exciting, the more I work on my notes and the more thinking I do about the plots and each character’s individual story.

And that, I believe, means I’ve made a decision.

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Then And Now

This isn’t from my yearbook, but it’s from the year I would have graduated, had I not taken my GED and gotten out of Dodge a year early because I hated high school.  (If the curiosity about whose yearbook it is is too much to bear, feel free to email me at the address on my Passwords page and I’ll tell you.)

But this post isn’t just about high school.  It covers a span from somewhere around 3rd or 4th grade onward, until high school, and with some residual effects even now, although I hadn’t realized how far-reaching it was until fairly recently.

It’s about bullying.

There were several girls who enjoyed humiliating me in different ways.  I had a good friend named Tammy as a kid, and she used to say that the “popular” girls who look down on or humiliate others usually grow up to be fat and ugly.  I always had to laugh when she would say that, and I must admit a very small part of me that never grew up finds great pleasure in imagining these girls looking exactly the way they criticized others for looking.

Fast forward to recent months, when I have been writing on the effects of bullying that still fuel my inner critic to this day, albeit not with as much power as in the not-too-distant past.  I began to wonder whatever happened to those girls.  I joined classmates.com and looked a few of them up, but only found one.  Two others, who were particularly big on the humiliation thing, weren’t there.  The other day, however, I received an email from classmates, asking if I remembered Michelle (I’m leaving last names out).  The next day, I think it was, I got one asking if I remembered Anne.  I had to laugh.  Then I got curious and looked them up on facebook, and found both.  I saw their pictures.  Neither of them is fat, but they both look . . . tired . . . unhealthy . . . and kind of unhappy.  I felt bad for them.

An ex of mine used to say that happiness is the best revenge.  I’ve been experiencing a deeper level of happiness in my life, lately, than I had in a long time, possibly ever, but I no longer feel any need for revenge.  In fact, I wish them happiness, too.

*   *   *

This is a rerun of an old entry that I wrote for my old online diary back in April of 2008.  I had run into another girl who sometimes picked on me, but didn’t leave the same lasting negative effects as some of the things Michelle or Anne or some of the other kids did.  This girl was fun to be around, and she and I were sort of part-time friends, in between our bouts of her turning on me and my disliking her for it.  I see that when I wrote the entry, I was pretty dismissive of my whole bullying experience.  That was before I was able to see so clearly the impact it had on my life all these years, and the role it played in my inner critic gaining the kind of momentum it has had all this time.  I guess I finally had to see it for what it really was before I could start to work on defusing the power of that inner critic.

I also noticed that I told a story that involved Anne and (I believe) Michelle, in that entry.  It’s the pencil-dropping incident.

Here is that entry:

34 years later
Wednesday, Apr. 16, 2008

A couple months ago, I ran into Peggy, a girl I went to school with from about the third grade or so. I think we went to junior high and high school together, too, but I’m actually not sure. I mostly remember her in fourth grade. That was when she made the biggest impact on my life. During that year, we were on-again-off-again “friends”, but she was also friends with some girls who were part of a group that didn’t like me, so I guess it’s safest to say that she was my friend occasionally, until she wasn’t again.

These other girls were catty and bitchy – you know the type. I didn’t have good skills for dealing with kids who picked on me. Mom said “Ignore them and they’ll stop because it won’t be any fun anymore.” I thought “ignore” meant “pretend you don’t hear/see/feel them doing whatever they’re doing.”  Boy, was THAT a misunderstanding of advice, and it didn’t work.

When you’re 43, looking back, it’s eye-rolling childish crap that doesn’t warrant much thought anymore, but when you’re 9, it sucks big time. They did the typical stuff (although it’s really tame compared to things I’ve read about what kids do to each other now) – whisper and laugh while looking at me, pull my hair, call me names (usually having something to do with my wiry hair, my glasses, or my weight), stuff like that. One time, I had a pair of shorts on, and I don’t remember anymore if they were more see-through than I’d realized or if they were too short or if they had a hole in them or just what the problem was, but evidently my underwear showed if I bent over.  So, one of these girls, while accompanied by a few others (I don’t remember if Peggy was one of them or not) dropped a pencil and asked me to pick it up for her. Sure, no problem. It rolled right over here by me. But when I bent over, I guess my underwear showed and they laughed and laughed. Again, when you’re 9 . . . Oh, and that was in the 1970’s, way before thong underwear, back when having your underwear show wasn’t a fashion statement.

But that isn’t the point of this entry.  It’s just backstory, to set the stage.

So, Peggy was fun and cool, and kind of quirky. She was famous in our class for holding her breath until she would pass out. That was always cool. At recess every day, one of us would usually ask her to do it. She’d ask someone to stand behind her and catch her, and someone always did. I could turn my eyelids inside-out, which brought mixed reactions (the boys liked it much better than the girls did), but Peggy could pass out!  Wow.

I went to church once or twice with her and her family.  It was my first experience at a Catholic church, and I thought it was really interesting and different from what I was used to.  I had a dress I wore to church, and once in a while to school, that was grape-bubble-gum-purple with tiny lime green polka dots. It had a belt made of the same fabric as the dress, and the buckle was a huge lime green plastic apple. The fabric the dress was made of was thick and coarse and didn’t move or bend very much.  Peggy called that my “cardboard dress”, and we would laugh about that every time I wore it.

Those are my main memories of her – the passing out, going to her church, my cardboard dress, and her peripheral connection to the girls who picked on me.

And then there is the big memory I have of her.  The one that made such an impact.  She was the first person to ever call me a lesbian.

I still remember her sitting there at her desk, turned sideways so she could look at me, her braids hanging down in front of her shirt. She kept looking at me, and finally, when I asked her, “What?”, she said, “You’re a lesbian.”  I didn’t know what the word meant, but from her tone of voice, I knew it couldn’t be good, so of course I said, “I am not.”

Then I went home and asked Sister, who was 16 and an authority on everything, I believed, “What’s a lesbian?” She said a lesbian is a girl who loves other girls.  Well, that didn’t seem so bad to me.  Not bad at all.  So what was the big deal?

I don’t recall Peggy ever bringing it up again, but a few weeks later, when I was staying over at my friend Cindy’s house, I made the mistake of telling Cindy that when I grew up, I thought I’d be a lesbian.  Cindy told her sister, who told everybody, and I spent the next seven-or-so years learning all about homophobia.  I never experienced negativity from anyone as an adult, when I actually did have relationships with women.  But I experienced a whole lot when I was too young to really even know who I was.

So, I saw Peggy once, several years ago, in a craft supply store, but she was too far away from me to say hello, and I was too nervous anyway.  Then I saw her a couple months ago, and I didn’t even know it was her until she told someone her name (she was picking something up).  I turned to her and said, “Peggy (Last Name)?”  She didn’t recognize me.  I told her we’d gone to school together and then I told her my name.  Her face lit up and she hugged me.  It seemed genuine.  Sometimes adults do the hugging thing to be nice, but it meant a lot to me anyway, since it was something that “those girls” in school would have frowned upon her doing, back then.  It was acceptance.

She quickly blurted out a short bio of her life now – where she works, how many kids she has, etc. – but I didn’t catch most of it because I was lost in my own memories of my cardboard dress and her braids and her being the first to ever call me a lesbian.  I seriously doubt she remembers any of the same stuff I do.  It would be weird if she did.  That isn’t the way it’s supposed to work, anyway.

But she will probably never know what a huge impact she had on my early life.

*   *   *

And on an unrelated note, did you notice I finally succeeded at NaBloPoMo?  Yay!!  What a beautiful thing that is!

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Changes at Work

A year ago, I would have felt threatened.  I would have been indignant.  I would have been highly offended.

But, fortunately, I’ve had time to get my attitude in check and work on some issues that helped my overall outlook, and so I’m relieved.

I’ve been at my job for almost 12 years.  I work for a small company and have done all the “office” type work for that length of time (except for the two and a half years I shared the work when Mom worked with me).  My job has always included bookkeeping; phones; scheduling (we are a service-oriented business); database entry and maintenance (and design as it’s needed); service agreement renewals and new offers; periodic mailings to customers; trips to the bank, office supply store, and accountant; permitting; and lots of little odds and ends.  I design and maintain the company web site, though it doesn’t take much time, and I’ve done a good portion of our print ads over the years.  The bookkeeping alone accounts for about half of what I’ve been doing.

Well, I can look back over all the jobs I’ve had since I started working as a teenager, and I can see evidence of the effect ADD has had on my work, although I didn’t know that was the reason for my problems all those years.  Then it got a lot worse about five or six years ago.  Everything started to get worse around that time, in fact.  And everything just spiraled into something worse as time went, until I finally started to find answers and change the things I have changed (diet, supplements, going into therapy).  I’m headed in a very good direction now, but work is still troublesome (although not nearly as bad as it was).

My boss had every reason to fire me years ago.  He has a business to run, after all, regardless of whether he likes me as a person, or likes my family.  He has a right to expect work to be done properly.  I am grateful, however, for the fact that he evidently does like me as a person, and likes my family, and has given me chance after chance over the years.

When I found out about the ADD, I told him.  I’ve read various opinions on whether that is a good idea or not, but I did it.  I wanted him to know that my work problems were not an indication that I was lazy or not trying hard enough or just didn’t care.  I printed up some information from a web site that I had found extremely helpful, and I gave it to him.  He never brought it up for discussion, and neither did I.

About a year or so ago, he hinted a couple times that he might have someone from our accountant’s office start doing some or all of the bookkeeping for us.  Occasionally since then, he has made these cryptic comments about how things were going to change, never saying exactly what he meant, but raising his eyebrows to demonstrate the importance of his words.  Eventually, a few months ago, I couldn’t take it anymore, and I called and asked him, directly (though conversationally rather than combatively) what sort of changes he had in mind.  He said he hadn’t been planning to tell me yet, but that I’d “dragged it out of him”, and so here it was: his wife was going to start doing some of the bookkeeping.  He said over the next several weeks, she would be coming in so that I could teach her how to do the work and that she would eventually start doing it at home.

I was actually quite relieved to hear the news.  Of course, I was still concerned that it might be the first step in a plan to put me out of  a job: have her take over the bookkeeping, which I would need to teach her since nobody else knew how to do it, then hire someone to answer phones, and little by little, shift my responsibilities until it was easy to just let me go.  It would make sense.  He wouldn’t want to just fire me outright and then have to figure out how to do what I did and wade through all my paperwork to figure out what’s what, if there was another option.

He said he had no plans to fire me.  Of course, the paranoid part of my mind said, he would say that if he wanted me to stay long enough to make a smooth transition.  But on the other hand, I can’t know if there is a hidden agenda there, so I may as well ride it out as if I’m not going anywhere and cross other bridges if I come to them.

He did also say that he would like to have me be more involved in the marketing and ad design, since he has always liked the creative work I’ve done and I am particularly drawn to it.  I was really happy to hear that, not only because I do love creative work, but also because it said to my paranoia, “So there”.  (And incidentally, I’m really proud of our Yellow Pages ad that just came out, which I did shortly after that conversation!)

Well, Mrs. Boss began coming in a few days a week and we worked out a great plan.  She wasn’t sure exactly which work Boss wanted her to take over (and it turns out, neither was he), but I made a list of everything I do and we talked over the logistics of the whole thing and decided on which functions would become hers.

We were perplexed for awhile about how to handle the fact that we can’t both use QuickBooks from two different locations, and since she’s working from home, that had to be figured out.  We looked into the online version of QuickBooks, but our company file is too large, and there would be some functionality we would lose even if our file had been small enough to convert.  Finally, we decided on a secure online backup system and we each have our days when we use the file.  Before working, we download the latest backup, and we email each other at the end of each of our “QB Days” with the last transaction information, so the other can make sure the download is indeed the most current version of the file.  It’s working really well.  And I’m breathing a sigh of relief as I’m able to focus so much better on my other work.

It’s also been great actually getting to know Mrs. Boss.  I’ve known her as Mrs. Boss for almost 12 years, but I didn’t know her very well.  I’ve gotten a much clearer sense of her personality in these last couple months, and it turns out that she really is as nice as she has always seemed.

But the best part of all of this is that I’m realizing that my problems keeping up with my work haven’t been all my fault.  I’ve been all too willing to take all the blame and chastise myself for sucking at my job and being a screwup, but I’m seeing clearly now that the problem hasn’t all been me.  Not at all.  I don’t know if my boss will ever realize that, but it doesn’t matter.  I know.

Some of it is the fact that Boss tends to sit on paperwork before passing it on to me.  Part of it is the number of interruptions I experience in any given hour.  Part of it is the volume of work.

And she told him.  She told me about it last week.  She said he had asked her if I was just not managing my time well or what, and she said she told him that it’s obvious to her, from watching me work these last couple months, trying to balance the load with all the constant interruptions from phone calls and coworkers and people coming into the office, that I have simply had too much work for one person to do.

I believe the interruptions are the part that wreak the most havoc with my ADD.  I can start out fine in the morning, and after being interrupted about twenty or so times, having to keep finding my place and trying to regain my concentration only to have it ripped away again 30 seconds or a minute later, I reach a point when I more-or-less shut down for the day.  I go into the mode of doing what I have to do to make it through the day, which is to handle all the interruptions as they happen and try to get something done that doesn’t require too much focus.  And because I know I reach these points and, in effect, stop trying to regain that concentration that I keep losing, I feel guilty and take on all the blame for everything that is wrong, even things that aren’t my fault.

I told Mrs. Boss how many times over the years, when Boss would ask me, “Why are you behind on this?” or “Why did this mistake happen?” or other similar questions, that my mind would go blank in those moments and all I could think was that it must be because I was stupid, irresponsible, lazy, and just plain bad at any job I’ve ever attempted to do.  I realize that many of us second guess ourselves in times like that, and reading David’s blog post from within just a day or two of my discussion with Mrs. Boss was a good validation that we aren’t alone in that.  She even said she does it herself.  The trick is getting to the place of being able to calmly recollect all the circumstances that led up to the place of the “Why” questions being asked, I suppose, but it sure is a huge weight lifted to see my work through her eyes and realize I’m not totally bad.  I’ll even veuture to say I’m pretty good at a lot of what I do.

Structure, ADD, and Ingrained Attitudes

This entry contains some revelations that are intensely personal to me.  Part of me has hesitated to put it out there publicly like this, while another part of me can’t help but think it may be good for me, to do so.  And who knows, maybe it may help someone else at some point.  (Some of what comes up in this entry is what I was referring to back in February when I said there would be more about what I was writing about in my next post.  Yeah, it took me several “next posts”, I know.)

Two weeks ago, my therapist and I talked about structure. I kind of freaked out (“kind of” being a little bit of a minimization).  That was due in large part to some other stuff that isn’t related to this post, but I can see that some issues I’ll include in this post played a part in some of my reaction.

About a year ago, I took my parents with me to a session, and then another time within the same period of weeks, I took my sister with me.  (I’d wanted my therapist to meet them because they are very supportive of me and I thought it might be helpful for her to meet the people who are my immediate support system, and it was.)  The topic of the lack of structure in my life came up during one of those sessions, but I don’t remember which one it was.  (This was long before I knew I had ADD.)  It was either my mother or my sister who commented about being concerned that my job seemed to be my only structure – the only thing that made me do something at a specific time.  And it’s true, as much as I hated (and still hate) admitting that.  If I won the lotto tomorrow and didn’t have to hold down a job anymore, my life wouldn’t have any structure at all.

My therapist and I have talked about schedules before, but we talked some more about the fact that having a list or a plan or knowing that “today is Wednesday, so that means I need to do this and this today” removes a lot of the decision-making that trips me up so badly.  I can’t count the number of times I’ve walked out of a grocery store emptyhanded, for example, because I didn’t know what I needed or wanted and couldn’t make a simple decision.  It’s why I eat essentially the same thing every night for dinner (with a few variations).  If I were to try to plan something different each night, or run out of something that is required for making one of my few standard dinners, I’d be likely to have so much trouble deciding what to make that I’d end up eating ice cream for dinner, or tortilla chips out of the bag.  Yes, I’ve done that, on way too many occasions.

My inner critic, while having lost some ground in some areas, is still going strong in others, and the issue of structure and schedules is one of the latter.

I’ve figured out where some of it comes from.  I was one of those kids who was picked on.  I’m not saying this in a “Feel sorry for me because I was picked on” way.  The bullying that went on when I was a kid was tame compared to what goes on today (kids being beat up and having the whole thing videotaped and posted on YouTube for the world to see over and over again – how horrible), and it was 30+ years ago, for crying out loud.  It shouldn’t still be an issue now, and for years (many years) I thought it wasn’t, but I guess some ghosts are harder to “cross over” than others.

One of the things that those kids used to do, which I think was actually worse than the general name-calling and fight-picking, was to pretend to like me and to pretend that they wanted to be friends with me, and then laugh and yuk it up when I, the little fool that I was, fell for it and actually believed that they (choke) could really (gag) like me.

And so my inner critic still chastises me over foolish thoughts and emotions, like hope, for instance, or trust, or even spiritual faith, and these have become even more deeply ingrained resistances of late.

Some of the kids who picked on me (and who I really wished would like me) had little or no structure at home.  I was raised with structure.  My sister and I had set bed times, chores, rules, routines, and my family ate meals together.  My parents have always been very structured people who find routines comforting.  These kids had absent parents, few rules or routines, and were allowed to do pretty much whatever they wanted.  I was in awe.  I wanted to Be Like Them.  And somehow, during those years, I came to the conclusion that routine and structure at home was for “nerds” (or whatever such kids are called now; we were nerds back then).  I thought that being able do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted to do it, represented the height of maturity and freedom.  Once I reached adulthood, I pretty much threw out most of the structure I was raised with and I became even less and less structured as the years went by, without even being consciously aware I was doing it, or why, or what a negative effect it was having on my life.

Or how so many of my other attitudes have formed around those feelings associated with those kids, as well.

My therapist says not to give myself permission to not do what I need to do.  It makes me think of times I have heard my mom talk about something she is “not allowed” to do, referring to something a doctor advised her against doing or something she knows she shouldn’t do for health reasons.  Her wording has always reminded me of a little kid not being allowed to do something, and I have always made a point of not wording things that way when referring to myself.  Sometimes Mom will ask me about a particular food product and will ask if I’m allowed to have that.  I often want to answer by saying something like, “I’m allowed to have whatever I want, but I don’t eat gluten because it’ll make me sick,” but I don’t because I realize how bitchy it would sound and I wouldn’t want to make my mom feel bad for being concerned and considerate.  I’d never thought it out like this before, but saying something like that would also make me exactly like those kids who talked down to me for everything I did and said.

Not allowing myself to do or not do something is not only a foreign concept to me, but the thought sets off a part of my inner critic that berates me not only for not doing what needs done, but also for even considering the idea of not letting myself off the hook (talk about self sabotage – damned if I do and damned if I don’t).

When I hear someone say they like to set their watch ahead ten minutes to “fool” themselves into thinking they have less time, that cynical part of me wants to say, “Gee, if you can fool your own self, what does that say about  you?  It’s bad enough to be able to be fooled by others, but to be able to be fooled your own self?”  (Of course, we all know that I never fool myself about anything.  Eyeroll.)  It’s that whole “being fooled” thing again.

Well, for the last two weeks, I’ve been consciously working on keeping a more regular sleep schedule, and I made some other schedules that I’m working into making a habit of following, both at home and at work.  These are the stepping stones for making noticeable progress on my more obvious and limiting problems.

My life (or my running of my life, more specifically) is in a shambles, plain and simple.  Granted, it’s better in some ways than it was a few years ago, but the same or worse in others.

In this entry I’m mostly going to refer to one aspect of my life that is out of control.  This is the part of this entry that is so intensely personal and difficult to admit publicly: My apartment is in chaos.  Similar to (but on a lesser level than) the photos you may see regarding compulsive hoarding, except that I’m not compelled to collect or acquire more things.  Years ago, I can remember things I did that make me wonder if I may have been headed in that direction, but I didn’t.

This article breaks Compulsive Hoarding Syndrome down this way:

Dr. Randy Frost defines Compulsive Hoarding Syndrome based on three criteria:  accumulating and failing to discard perceived useless possessions, cluttered living spaces, and significant distress or problems functioning caused by hoarding.  Sufferers exhibit an obsessive need to get and save objects, and have anxiety throwing them away because of a possible need or value.  They also may form emotional attachments to the objects, leading to saving things for ‘just-in-case’ scenarios.  The feeling of doubt sets in; what if I need this and I’ve thrown it away?

This compulsive collecting of and attachment to objects and anxiety around getting rid of them seems to be the main criteria for Compulsive Hoarding Syndrome.  I don’t feel an emotional attachment to most of the stuff I have, unless it is a sentimental item that was handed down in the family or that someone gave me, and even then, there is a line of distinction.  I actually enjoy getting rid of stuff I don’t need or want.  My thing is (mostly) becoming overwhelmed by the clutter (which sounds like such a benign little word for describing something that is such a life obstacle) and not knowing where to start.  Of course, my lack of structure plays into how it gets that way to begin with.

It begins (for me) with procrastination.  (“Here’s this big pile of mail I just took out of the mailbox.  Most of it is junk mail and needs to be thrown away, but I’m doing something else right now, so I’ll do this later.”)  Later never arrives, and the piles get bigger, fall over, spawn new piles, occasionally get picked up and dumped into boxes, bags, or plastic storage tubs, but they still need to be gone through so that the important stuff can be sifted out and filed (or shredded, if it contains information that shouldn’t be included in the regular bag of trash).

Since my “situation” differs so much from that definition, I don’t think I fall into that category, except for the similarities of the results of the clutter.

The second criteria can go unnoticed.  Living spaces become amply cluttered so as to prohibit activities for which those spaces were originally designed.  With more possessions going in than coming out, it isn’t unusual for the build-up to cause narrow pathways where clear hallways once were.  It can easily pile up, taking over everything, from floors, counter-tops and chairs, to entire rooms, prohibiting the use of bedrooms, kitchens, or garages.  It becomes impossible to use the rooms for their actual purpose.

I haven’t used my office room as an office in a few years.  My computer is on my dining room table.  I still use my other rooms for their intended purposes, but going from room to room, or even from one part of a room to another, is like running an obstacle course.  Step over this and around that.  It’s extremely frustrating and claustrophobic.

The third condition involves the anguish caused by hoarding.  People who have Compulsive Hoarding Syndrome have trouble with problem solving and processing information.  The irony is that sufferers are actually perfectionists who are in constant fear of making a mistake.  To avoid mistakes, they take longer than normal to make a decision because they face severe difficulties in doing so.  In fact, a lot of time is spent “churning”; moving one pile to another, instead of disposing of anything.  Social activities are also hindered as embarrassment prevents sufferers from having company over.

The last couple days, I’ve been entertaining the possibility that maybe, just maybe, a small part of my reason for isolating (which I’ve only touched on in this blog and I’m not really ready to write about in any detail) is because I try very hard to appear “normal” to most people, as if I have structure and normalcy like everyone else, and (1) by the time I get home I’m exhausted from trying to appear normal all day, and (2) if anyone saw my apartment they would know I’m not normal and I wouldn’t be able to fool myself into believing that I’m carrying out the illusion anymore.  For awhile, my therapist wondered if the purpose that my clutter serves for me is to keep people away, and it may be, to a degree, but it does seem like it works the other way as well, that I keep people away to keep them from seeing not just the clutter, which is embarrassing enough, but the truth of what it represents: that I am not normal.

I did make a fair amount of progress on organizing and cleaning out stuff several months ago, but then I let it come to a screeching halt when a situation I’d been looking toward as a deadline was changed, and I’m just now picking up (close to) where I left off.

A part of me actually has been wanting (craving?) to establish a detailed schedule and live by it, and the inner critic, voice dripping with condescension, usually says something along the lines of, “And do you get a gold star for everything you do on your chore list?”, making the whole idea seem childish.  Only children need schedules.  Adults should know what needs done and do it.  (Typing that last sentence reminds me of how many times, growing up, I heard my mom tell me that I should know what needed to be done in the house without being told; that I should be able to see that the furniture needed dusted or that the floor needed vacuumed and just pitch in and do it.  She shouldn’t have to ask or tell me to do it.  But the thing was, I was always oblivious.  I don’t know if that is part of the ADD thing or if I’m just clueless, but even now, I need reminders in order to know what I need to do in most situations or I’ll completely forget.  ”Out of sight, out of mind” really applies to me in a big way.)

I have tried, though, over and over again, over a period of several years, to come up with a workable schedule that I know I can use.  Sometimes I’ve gotten lost in the details while making the damned things and other times I’ve made nice-looking schedules that I couldn’t seem to put into practice.  It took me until one night the week before last to realize a big part of what I was doing wrong.

I figured out that I was making them based on what I should do every day once I’m already on-track, like dusting on Mondays and vacuuming on Tuesdays, or whatever.  The thing is, right now, dusting and vacuuming can’t happen until stuff is put away and not piled up everywhere, so the schedules always looked nice but weren’t practical at the time I made them.  The one I’m working on now is in phases, so it includes the getting-things-together phase before the maintaining-things part.

I took 51 pictures in my apartment the Thursday before last.  My plan is to take new pictures every other week and watch my progress.  Being in an actual room, it’s easy to not always “see” everything around me because I’m used to seeing the same stuff all the time and I’m usually looking at just one spot or one object at a time when I look around.  Still photos, however, are glaringly honest, I am realizing.  Even though it’s hard to capture a large amount of space in one shot, the shots nonetheless capture and preserve every single detail with absolute, in-alterable, in-your-face truth.

I may or may not (no promises being made here) post a few of the pictures here at some point, and I most likely will eventually share them all with my therapist, but not until I have the final “after” pictures to go with them.  It seems that will take the sting out of sharing them, if there is a “but look, now it’s better” version to go with them.

It’s interesting that, for years, I have said that I couldn’t imagine living with the level of self-imposed regimentation that my mother lives with, but ‘cha know, living with none at all, while simultaneously beating myself up for trying as well as for not trying hasn’t exactly been a piece of cake.  You know what they say about doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result?

Perhaps it is time to try something new.

Hope & Self Castigation

This entry will be a bit more personal than most, but I just have a feeling it might be helpful to someone if I share.
 

1. I’ve told my therapist on several occasions that I often feel like a fool after each time I’ve let myself hope again.  Turns out, it’s not so uncommon for adults with ADD to feel that way.  Who knew.  In my experience, depression is the complete loss of hope, the loss of ability to believe things can be better, or of even caring whether they can or what it would take to make it happen.  Around the time my last ex and I met, he’d made a list of things he found important, and he ranked hope above love.  He said, “A person can live without love, but if you don’t have hope, there’s no reason to get out of bed in the morning.”
    
2. Even though my IQ is in the 99th percentile and I never doubted, logically, that I’m smart, I’ve had times when I’ve mentally hit myself in the head (ok, yeah, sometimes not just mentally) and told myself I’m stupidstupidstupid.  It’s damned hard not to feel stupid, sometimes, if one has a hard time focusing on what’s important and a track record of screwing things up.  Things that most people would consider pretty basic stuff.

They go together, the lack-of-hope and self-castigation.  At least they do for me.  I haven’t yet gotten the hang of not losing my hold on hope periodically, but I’m getting to be better at not beating myself up over it.  As badly, anyway.  Or as frequently.

On a forum I belong to, someone brought up the topic of the Inner Critic.  This person wasn’t referring to merely an inner guide, like one’s conscience, but that chastising type of inner critic, the type that constantly criticizes, belittles, and berates.  I commented that I’ve dealt with an inner critic for so long that I didn’t think it was possible to change.  And really, it hadn’t dawned on me that I deserved to stop being hounded by that critic, since I actually thought the critic was right.  My therapist has been commenting for a long time now about how mean I am to myself.  When she first began to say that, I thought she was living in la-la land. Seriously.  I really thought that being kinder to myself equated to rewarding myself for screwing up, being stupid, etc.

I had a dream last May, close to a year after I started therapy, about a little girl who is playing with a marble game and she drops the marbles on the floor, and this crabby old man, who in the dream was supposed to be her grandfather, is yelling at her and hitting her for “losing her marbles”.  That was the beginning of the turning point for me, I think, to be able to see a little more clearly what I’d been doing for so long.

My therapist and I have been working on this for going on two years, now, and I’ve been noticing subtle changes all along, but the biggest changes have occurred since the ADD diagnosis.  It’s not stupidity, or laziness, or a character flaw (though I haven’t completely stopped having those moments when I still think it is any or all of those things).  It’s been a new concept for me, to consider that it’s merely an obstacle.  Obstacles can be overcome, and in fits and spurts, I have made a good deal of progress in the last several weeks, as I learn that I can, and that it’s easier to develop different habits and learn new ways of doing things if I’m not flogging myself at the same time.

The critic is starting to become more like that annoying, perpetually negative person everyone knows and mostly ignores.  You know the one?