WintersweetSenior Contributor
Self-Sabotage vs ADHD “Procrastination”
Hello, ADHDer with a bunch of comorbidities here. I’m uni I assumed that my inability to do anything until I already felt like it was too late was me being lazy, then I discovered I have ADHD and assumed it was because once it felt “too late” I now had a challenge and enough adrenaline to overcome the fear of failure (plus if I failed it was because I rushed it not because I couldn’t do it). Fast forward to working life, I was getting the same feeling, stuck, numb to myself and the world with increasing fogginess when I tried to “Hulk-Smash” (a term by Brendan Mahan https://youtu.be/Uo08uS904Rg) my way through it. All my normal strategies weren’t working and even if I got started I had no momentum and would be equally stuck a minute or two later. Turns out this time it might have been subconscious self-sabotage because I fully believe I don’t deserve my job and now realise I had an inward compulsion to fail so things would be made right (ie I’d get sacked). Now I’m working on redirecting my attention away from what my childhood tells me I deserve and towards doing things that activate my body (e.g. tensing muscles/stimming) to help shift myself out of paralysed overwhelm and into activated focus on something I am able to do.
Long-term I’ll need to do the work of deconstructing and rebuilding my worldview to allow for it to be ok for me to try and still fail (as opposed to being paralysed and therefore never trying) and to accept that it’s ok for me to have good things. That’s going to be a lot of work but I can’t function unless it’s done. Hope this is helpful to others.
