the first step is making space
Being diagnosed late creates this funny paradox.
You figured out you have ADHD — yay! But now what are you supposed to do? The thing is, if you’ve spent your entire adult life with undiagnosed ADHD (or autism), no matter how accidentally high-functioning you are, how organized or successful you are on the surface, there’s a good chance you’re riding the tide of momentum and five steps behind you at all times is absolute chaos, just waiting for you to make one wrong step.
I know that for me, for all it takes is a few late nights in a row. Or a few bad days at work without a proper decompress. Or too many plans, too many days in a row. Then, the whole thing can fall off the rails leaving me leaving work early just to lie down on my bed in the dark. Not great!
The first thing you need to do when you have ADHD or autism is create time and space for yourself so you can figure things this stuff out.
Which brings me to the first step of my “state of okay” process……..are you ready? It’s controversial. But hear me out.
Stacy’s “State of Okay” post-diagnosis system for the late-diagnosed adult:
PHASE ONE: SPACE
Tell your family to fuck off (otherwise known as “delegating”)
This means - yes I’m saying it - saying “no” to your family. GASP!!
This might be really, really difficult for you, and I get it, you have all the reasons in the world not to. Really important reasons. But if you want to ever find a way to not be in constant chaos, you have to find a way to say “no” to your family. Not all of the time, just some of the time.
This might mean giving up some control in how the household runs. For example, maybe your husband needs to be in charge of dinners (planning them, making them, and cleaning up after). I’m talking complete takeover of responsibility. Or some other tasks you do all the time that could be done by someone else: oh, look, your son can learn how to vacuum. Your girlfriend can go do the grocery shopping without you. Someone else is in charge of laundry now. Your kids wash the dinner dishes. You get the idea. I’m talking about delegating.
You might have to put both feet down, because we tend to be people pleasers. So maybe those around us are used to us doing everything. Perhaps this means these tasks aren’t done the way you would do it (which, let’s face it, is the right way), or not as often, or at ALL. But the point of this phase is that you have to take some things off of your plate…and leave them there.
Put down the reins. Step away. Don’t look back. You really, really need to focus on yourself for awhile.
However you can manage it, find yourself some time and space, at least on a weekly basis, but ideally, daily. At least a good hour or two per week to have some space or a room to yourself or a table at the coffee shop or whatever it takes to just put on some music and focus on yourself and your newly-discovered disorder.
If you don’t do this part, it’s not going to happen. So make it happen.
Tell yourself to fuck off (or, the people pleaser in all of us)
Oh, this thing called guilt?
Particularly the guilt women tend to feel when we put ourselves first, especially when we have families and dependents (or careers, or pets, or close friends…it goes on and on, doesn’t it?)?
The guilt is real, and it’s a bitch. When you feel that paralyzing guilt wash over you whenever you try to shut out your family or your work or your partner or your dog or whatever to focus on yourself and only yourself, you need to tell that guilt to fuck off and fast.
Guilt is for suckers; do you think men feel guilt whenever they head out to play golf for an entire day on the weekend or shut themselves in their offices to “work on their (fill in the blank) project” — or, as Ali Wong put so succinctly in Baby Cobra: lock themselves in the bathroom for 30 minutes right in the middle of the busiest part of the morning? As she discussed, women don’t even poop when there is other shit that needs to get done (sorry). This is our socially-inherited guilt telling us that we need to serve others. So shut it down immediately and focus on you.
Tell everyone else to fuck off too, while you’re at it
This counts for other areas of your life as well. You know how you say yes to everything and then regret it after? How you take on jobs even though you know you can’t, or take that call from a friend right in the middle of the day when you’re supposed to be working, even though you know it’s going to mess up your whole day? How about when you drag yourself out of the house on a Sunday night for a family dinner even though you know you could really-really-really use a night in?
And even though you know at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter, it’s not going to all fall apart without you? Why do we do this? Because ADHD!
Well, all of this stuff you can put right into the fuck off category, too.
This step is all about creating space for you to breathe and take a moment to analyze yourself and how you live, quite literally. It would be great if you could find an ADHD-specializing therapist to work through all of this with you, but in the meantime, start with the space; for now and to keep it simple, just see where in your life you can create some hard non-negotiable space for yourself. Explain to your loved ones that this space is necessary for your mental health, which will benefit everyone around you in the long run. If they love you they’ll listen. If they don’t, they’re assholes anyway and you might want to question your choices (kidding).
What you are going to do with this extra time
Why? Why am I creating problems with you and your loved ones? Am I demented? Do I want everyone to be single like me? Maybe.
No. I’m telling you to draw hard boundaries around yourself so you can breathe and think.
You need to learn about your self. You need to study yourself. You need to get to know how you tick. You’re going to spend this time in reflection, writing about your experiences and your days, recording things that you try and things that you notice work and don’t work. By doing this, the goal is to over time start identifying patterns. Maybe you notice that when you eat a certain breakfast it puts you in a shitty mood, or when you don’t get to bed by 11 your whole next day is fucked.
Maybe every time you spend time with a certain friend, it’s really fun but takes a lot out of you, so your energy tanks and it throws you off for a couple of days. So you can start planning “exit plans” when you see that friend, to minimize that. Or, you thought that you didn’t like your job and you were on the verge of blowing up your whole life by quitting. But through recording your days you notice that it’s actually a certain task you have to do that stresses you out because you can’t do it fast enough, and it makes you feel stupid and afraid you’re going to get fired, so you’re always overcompensating and it makes the whole experience really uncomfortable. So, armed with this information, you can be proactive and talk to your boss about finding someone else to take that task on, or another way to do it that will work better for you.
Maybe you notice over time that when you go to the grocery store after work to get stuff for dinner, you get really frustrated because it’s crowded and you’re tired, so you rush and forget things, and then you’re not eating the best meals, and also you’re resentful of your family or your partner when you get home because you’re thinking “Why the hell am I always doing this? Are their goddamn legs broken?” And then you’re fighting before bed and everything sucks. So from that, maybe you can figure out that if you plan to go shopping on Sunday mornings instead, it’s quiet and you can take your time and get everything you need for the whole week, which sets you up for way better eating and less time figuring out meals. Plus, maybe you can be aware of the resentment you’re experiencing and have a talk with the partner about it, instead of having shitty exhausted fights.
It’s not all bad! On the positive side, maybe you notice that you have really good days after you go to a certain evening yoga class, or that walking after dinner makes you feel calm before you go to bed and you have a better sleep. So you can start to incorporate these things intentionally into your schedule, which you are now diligently making, which we will talk about in just one moment.
This is what I mean by taking time and space to focus on yourself. You are literally getting to know how you live, how you work, what routines work best for you, so you can start to design your life to work with your disorder. No more randomness, no more dealing with one crisis after another, no more chaos. Intentionality.
This is all well and good, you might be thinking. But how do I keep track of all this?
That’s what I’m going to talk about in my next blog post: having a PLANNER (and actually using it).