the “state of okay” part 2 (why we are like this)
If you grew up neurodivergent and undiagnosed, there’s a good chance you don’t really know what it feels like to put yourself first and take care of your own needs before anyone else’s. And I’m not talking about bubble baths and hot yoga on the weekends - nah, that’s luxury stuff.
I’m talking about basic self care: getting groceries, cooking for yourself, eating regularly, exercising regularly…even remembering to shower and brush your teeth on a daily basis can be challenging for neurodivergent folks. There are several different reasons for this that all overlap and interplay in super fun (kidding) ways, so I’ll break them down here so you can understand what’s going on and start to think about how it’s showing up in your own life, and what you can do about it.
Simple ADHD brain-fuckery (the “easy” part)
The first reason for neglecting self care is our brain wiring and chemistry. Because of our low stores of dopamine, we focus on all the other stuff going on in our lives that are more interesting/urgent/fun, and all that boring stuff like feeding ourselves and showering doesn’t even make it onto the plate.
We just forget about self care.
For instance, even now after I’ve been learning about my own ADHD for four years, I still struggle and often fail to keep food in the house that I like to eat. I still regularly (I’m talking every week) go to make dinner or lunch and realize that there’s literally nothing to eat, because I just… didn’t buy groceries, again. Oopsies!!
But it’s not funny and it’s not cute, it sucks. After literally decades of trying to eat healthy and very frequently failing (not to mention the disordered eating that many neurodivergent individuals experience), it can be very self defeating when you realize yet again that you failed to do the most basic human level of survival.
I distinctly remember a moment a couple of years ago, standing in my kitchen after the millionth time being hungry and not having food to feed myself with, for the first time feeling truly disabled. It was a scary and impactful moment when reality hit home, of just how big this ADHD thing is, and how it’s been affecting my very ability to just be healthy and do the most basic human thing like eating, and how very unfair it is that so many of us are go through this without even realizing what’s going on.
By the way, this a reason why life expectancies of ADHD folks are so much lower than neurotypicals—this basic lack of self care that contributes to poorer health, generally.
So there’s that. It’s not easy, per se, to deal with, but my point is that it’s kind of simpler, in that with concrete tools and medication, it can be improved. There can be a strategy.
The next reason isn’t so easy.
How people-pleasing ruins our health and wellbeing (the hard part)
The second reason (there are others, but these are the two main ones, as far as I’m concerned)
If you were like me, you figured out pretty early on that you were fundamentally flawed. You didn’t imagine this, it was told to you and shown to you by the way other people treated you, and the things they said. In case you’re doubtful, there is research backing this up—one well known statistic estimates that by the time children with ADHD are ten years old, they will have received 20,000 “negative or corrective” comments — and that’s only at school.
Add to that all the cues from family, caregivers, doctors, friends, not mention the social conditioning that girls get on top of all that to be good and obedient, and it’s understandable why many ADHDers end up turning into major people pleasers.
“The social functioning profiles of children with ADHD are marked by impairments across diverse domains as they tend to experience greater rates of peer rejection, have lower levels of social skills, and have impaired social cognitions.”
As neurodivergent kid you figure out which parts of you are unlikeable or get you into trouble, and you adapt — you make an effort to downplay those parts or conceal them completely. Even if these parts were the best parts — the creative, expressive parts, fun parts — those parts might have been annoying to others, disruptive in class, loud, or in the case of many girls, impulsive or vague, “spacey”, as I remember being called. Whatever it was, it got you bad results, so you learned to downplay them, and you might have turned into a bit of a follower, a bit of a copycat, obsessed with being like everyone else (that was me).
And you know what, that shit is pretty time consuming, right?
So over the years as you chameleoned into whoever you were hanging around as a survival tactic, you may have lost track of who you actually and what genuinely makes you happy, under all those layers of pretending and people pleasing.
(Oh -by the way, there’s a name for all this, in case you haven’t heard it already: “masking”. And I just decided that’s going to be the topic of my next post because I’m telling you, when I learned about masking for the first time, it was pretty life-changing.)
So, to fill in that gaping hole where your personality was supposed to be, you may have developed all sorts of likes and dislikes that weren’t even yours, and picked up the habits and traits of those around you. This was probably partly intentional, and partly unintentional because of the conditioning. But what happens is that over time, over years of doing this adapting, you got so out of touch with your actual needs and wants as an individual that you end up neglecting your own health and safety. So you end up doing dumb shit like I did, like following boys all over the world for years, forgetting to, oops, develop my own social life and career. I lost friends that way, because I basically disappeared from my own life for years and forgot to check in on the friends I had, until they weren’t there any more.
I didn’t have time to figure out how to buy groceries and cook food for myself, and exercise regularly, and the things I was passionate about, because my mind was chaotic and I was too busy keeping up with the people around me, whoever they happened to be. I spent two years of my life following an Australian guy around to various ski destinations around the world, and I hated skiing. I mean, this guy was great, funny, and he loved me. But I gave up my entire life to be with him. If I was in any way in touch with my own needs (being warm and comfortable, having routine, not living in a hostel), I would have literally kissed that guy goodbye two years earlier than I finally did and focused on what I wanted to do.
But I didn’t know what I wanted to do. What I wanted to do, I thought, was be with him. That was it. My body and brain were hyper-focused on being loved and fitting in, even if it meant being uncomfortable and disregulated for two years. My dopamine-starved brain chased after the good good love and security that I got with him.
We forget how to listen to our selves. If we ever learned how in the first place.
Okay, okay, now what?
Well, the super great thing is that now that you’re learning about all this, you can start to do something about. Self awareness is the first, amazing step.
Bit by bit, as you make space for yourself to reflect and try different things, you can walk back the stuff that isn’t making you happy, and get back in touch with what does. And actually do them, because - that’s right - you are making time for yourself.
As I’ve mentioned before, this is the fun part. This is the permission you need to start prioritizing yourself because it’s a matter of literal life or death. This shit is serious and it actually kills ADHDers early, whether it be neglect of health or stress or depression or doing something impulsive/dangerous/unhealthy for the sake of fitting in or chasing some high (addiction).
Here’s a video on that subject by Dr. Barkley, that will sum it up for you: https://www.additudemag.com/adhd-life-expectancy-video/
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