Walking on the road to recovery ........ 🤔

Dear @Teej So much going on, so of course many feelings and ups & downs.

As @Shaz51 says

Still being here is a BIG plus

Thanks @Maggie

@outlander The hand emerging from the forested mountainside is stunning.

It's been a while since I've been here 😳

Im not sure of where to start or what to write.
The last few months have been very much centred around learning about me. I've had lots to learn. I've been learning lots about ADHD and how it has shaped my world. I've had lots of eternal battles about the fact that I'm still so dysfunctional and it's only ADHD. I've struggled with understanding why I'm so sensitive. Part of the understanding has come through reading about rejection sensitivity dysphoria. I think as a child this has shaped my world largely. The only way I found to cope was to mask and avoid and hide my weaknesses with a smattering of bravado at times. Raising four boys that were born within 5 years was the biggest mask. It covered so much. There was always a plausible excuse for my chaos. Now they are all adults the mask has been removed. There has been nowhere to hide. It's this that has essentially created so much suicide ideation in its crudest form. I am only now learning to adult. It's scary and sometimes I feel like I'm getting there and sometimes the fear and anxiety that I won't be able to do this get the better of me still and si comes back in.

Today I'm in the zone of practising how to adult. After my trauma stuff I had nothing to hold on to. I'd never had a routine and in fact I'd never formed one habit that stuck. I have been learning about creating new habits. Much of the advice is about attaching a new habit to an existing one. I've struggled so much with this because I don't have the first habit to start with. It's harder with having no real internal locus of control. Pretty much everything has been external in my life up to this point. The last week my one job has been to shower before 10am. I made one day and that's it in nearly two weeks. I have achieved other things but not the one goal I set. For me the feeling like a different person every day and the not being able to follow through with anything from one day to the next is a huge thing for someone in their sixth decade of life. I've always had a partner to help with picking up the pieces for this. Dealing with my chaos on my own has been overwhelming to say the least. It's what has kept me stuck. It's what I'm finally beginning to address but it's a day to day, minute to minute thing. It's shame ridden and guilt fueling but I'm trying to accept it is what it is.

learning to adult is hard.

@eth , @Appleblossom , @Snowie , @Maggie , @outlander , @Sans911 , @CheerBear , @Faith-and-Hope , @Zoe7 , @Mazarita (I've just tagged a few but no need to respond, only if you want)

Beautifully written @Teej and so very poignant. It really does sound to me like you've been learning in leaps and bounds and making huge progress in your understanding of yourself. I think it must be a huge challenge having ADHD, not 'only' that at all. And I can tell that even if it's minute by minute, you are striving constantly and doing the best that you can. Try not to pressure yourself too much about the every day shower in your routine. I'm new to working with a routine too and am learning to not give myself too hard a time about what I don't get done, which includes the shower for me too. If I get to it every 2nd or 3rd day that's still a lot better than I was before. i.e. baby steps. Some improvement is better than none. And reward yourself when you do get things done on your list. I have written my routine down, but have structured some flexible times into it. I think that's important. I'm on day 8 or 9 now and overall quite pleased with how it's going. but it's still evolving and a work in progress.

Do take care dear @Teej Being here when you can is fine. I don't think anyone has a problem with you looking after yourself. That has to come first for all of us I believe.

xoxo

It has been important for me to have a few friends walking on this road to recovery.

It is a very mature post @Teej

I believe you have done a lot of adulting already, but getting clearer on a few personal things maybe ...

Lovely to hear from you.

You have been gone for quite some time @Teej andI never stopped thinking about you or wndering if you were okay. It's super lovely to see you. And you often write thoughtful, interesting posts.

You say you didn't reach your goal of showering before 10am but in actual fact you did. You did on one day. 'Every journey begins with a single step'. And yes, you are so right. Adulting is super hard. There are so many expectations placed on us on top of our own expectations. Just know for now you are doing the very best you can. And that is more than enough sweet lady.

@Teej You are so brave. You share your ‘ raw’ as you might say ‘ vulnerably ‘.

I don’t do vulnerable well, or at all. It shows , to me , your strength. 💜💜

Dont be in too much of a rush to grow up @Teej , I’ve heard from some who have, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

Really lovely to hear from you when you can. 💕💕💜💜

@Teej 💛🧡💚💙💜

Dear @Teej 👋💜🌷💕

Its always to good to see you whenever you're here .....

I think @eth wrote what was on the tip of my fingers to write ..... and I relate so well to the words from @CheerBear @Appleblossom @Sans911 and @Maggie as well.

There is something else you have given me though, which is obviously unintended but very special .... another piece of my puzzle. WH is wearing a mask, which we already know, but what you wrote places a complete context around what he has just done ..... he has replaced our grown-up family and no-longer-mother-of-young-children with new versions ..... thereby starting again, with years ahead available (it seems) with his new mask.

I am so, so proud of you ..... both for that incredible self awareness you have been developing in relation to what ADHD means, and how to apply that knowledge in baby steps to the task of adulting.

I have thrown a couple of tantrums in the last couple of days in response to abusive situations that have arisen ..... :face_with_rolling_eyes:😔😏 ..... and typed up some texts that I thankfully didn't proceed to send ...... and drew courage from the fact that you and others here understand at a soul level.

Its no small thing you are doing, and no small thing the things you have and are working through. It's no small thing to raise four boys under five, no matter how much you may have masked within the chaos ..... you did it ❣️ and did it well in terms of the character development immerging in your sons.

I am grateful that WH contributes to the development of our beautiful children, despite now ditching the entire value system himself ..... it didn't stop positives from growing in.

Please remember that .... amongst all the struggle you have achieved wonderful outcomes, with more ahead of you in this different phase of life.

Hugs and hugs ..... 💜 .... walking with you, and learning from you.

I'm writing here because I don't know how to start again or where to write.

Recovery as it turns out is a long and winding road.......in my case there is no road, just woodland to forge a path through.

So here I am feeling incredibly vulnerable and scared. I don't know how to be in real life or the forum. I am feeling a strange distance with my close irl peeps and I guess on here as well. It is not anyone else but me and my brain, my very insecure and confused brain.

Last night I had a very therapeutic call with the helpline here. I am so grateful to have this service when I need it. I needed putting back together in a big way. Therapy has been confusing and somewhat disorientating of late.

So my reflections go somewhat like this. A change in diagnosis or being newly diagnosed is much bigger than I ever anticipated. It's a bit like learning to walk and talk again. It takes so much time to honestly digest the things you need to learn about how your brain works. It's like looking at everything through a new lens, but everytime you look through that new lens there is more to see. I didn't think I could get much more broken and scattered than I was, but I was wrong.

For so long I've been saying that I need to learn what I can do. I think I am just beginning to understand why it felt this way for the longest time. I know that I will need to understand 'my' brain, not in the terms of a generic diagnosis but how 'I' and my brain work or don't work. I had become obsessed with the main tick boxes of a diagnosis which I would own or disown always creating extra confusion for me about never fitting into boxes and always feeling like the outlier that didn't belong anywhere.

Ive been listening to podcasts from experts and lived experiences. I finally have begun to realise that within any diagnosis the combinations and possibilities of traits are endless. Saying this I am beginning to understand that if I'm ever going to learn to drive this brain I really need to understand and own my particular traits, the ones that create great difficulties and the ones that can be strengths.

It's easy to obsess with 'how to fix oneself' but much harder to learn to live with and work around the behaviours that can't be changed. They will always be there and my behaviour choices will help or exacerbate them.

Who knew self care in every part of your life can make the smallest differences that can help live a better life?? 🤦‍♀️. I think self sabotage will always be part of my go-to-not-very-helpful-coping-strategies. The trick will be to recognise it and change those behaviours. I have just been on an unhealthy emotional sugary food eating tour over the last few months that I am now correcting. I hope that over time I will get better at recognising it and turning the titanic sooner :face_with_rolling_eyes:. I feel much better for eating healthily again even though my circumstances haven't changed much.

So the vulnerable part is that I know my challenges are very different to many others. I've let that become a great source of comparison and shame. I've spent decades masking and hiding it. I just learned that it is fairly common for us to mask and avoid and hide the real person underneath. For me I am terrified of learning who that person really is. I don't know yet because I've spent so much time hating her and having no respect for her. Society doesn't respect her traits so I learned to disrespect her traits too. It is really hard to find a way to live with traits that are not desired in society, especially when you see all those you love also not respecting them. It is easy to hide rather than be you, it's easier to become a chameleon for me than to learn and stand up for who I am. I am scared because I still struggle to see the light at the end of the tunnel where things will be ok again but I draw strength from those I see or hear about going through it as well.

I have written this as an intentionally vague post because I have come to think that a specific diagnosis isn't the central part, it's how we deal deal with the stigma of having different brains (either through genetics or life experiences where our brains have been changed), and how we then do the living with our specific challenges.

These are just my current thoughts. I'd love to hear anyone else's thoughts about how you feel about learning to live honestly with your diagnosis or set of challenges.