Since being diagnosed, I've learned that those with ADHD don't receive dopamine as easily as most people do, and so they often find themselves feeling depressed, anxious, burnt out, and/or overstimulated. Alana, a professional ADHD coach, put it this way on Instagram (@coachingbyalana), "We're constantly balancing between what is called overstimulation and understimulation... [which occur] when our brains are trying to process too much at one time, experiencing sensory overload...[or] aren't getting enough stimulation and causing us to either shut down or turn to certain actions to get dopamine." As coping mechanisms and seeking feelings of joy, ADHD individuals may participate in risky or dangerous behaviors that give them momentary highs, or they suddenly will hyper-focus or fixate on things that create dopamine in them.
Most recently, with starting my ADHD medication and studying more about how my brain works, I've been able to notice a ton of behaviors that I didn't realize I was doing before, and it's helped me to navigate new or uncommon ADHD territory. The biggest obstacle I've been currently facing is definitely hyper-focus, and, to my surprise, it's been over a person, which honestly terrifies me because, besides it being unhealthy, it's also a horrible reminder of my past and trauma I've experienced.
Since childhood, I've developed many unhealthy thinking patterns regarding others. I had many people say that they were my friends, but it would often turn into toxic relationships or I would be abandoned. Even after graduating high school, I still experienced "friends" isolating me, turning others against me, degrading me in a multitude of ways, lashing out/gaslighting me, and in Jr. High, I even remember some friends often physically abusing me, laughing, and making a game out of trying to see if they could get me to bruise since I didn't bruise easily. But, although I was being mistreated, being alone was much more painful, until my mindset changed.
Somewhere along the line, with these types of relationships constantly coming and going, my mind decided to stop trying to make deep connections, and to this day, I still have to make a huge effort to remember the names of people I've recently met/been introduced to. It's second nature to close off and discard this kind of information, my mind having already decided that it/they won't be relevant in my life and that I won't be relevant in theirs. It's taken years of therapy and forcing myself to be open to others and allowing myself to love them and for me to feel loved by them too. But, even with this progress and being able to establish healthier relationships, there is only one other time in my life that I remember being hyper-focused on a person, and that was my best friend in third grade.
Hyper-focusing on an individual, like I said before, isn't healthy, especially if you don't realize you're doing it, which, people with ADHD usually don't in the moment. Third grade was an extremely traumatic year for little me. Unbeknownst to me or my family back then, I have hypothyroidism, and when I hit that age, I suddenly began gaining weight and couldn't lose it or keep it off. This caused a lot of problems that I won't get into here, so we'll leave it mostly as an "insert childhood trauma story," kind of thing. My whole world, how people treated/saw me, and how I saw myself changed in deeply damaging ways. Every day was a struggle. I felt worthless, like a failure, that I could never measure up, and I would try desperately to find things that made me laugh or things that I could do to make others laugh because it would give me momentary relief.
When I met my best friend, I felt genuinely happy. Whenever we played, I found myself laughing all the time and enjoying life again. I felt like I had hope and that I really could have connections, despite everything I was going through. I didn't realize at the time how attached I was and how much I relied on her until she started to resent me, and I didn't realize how much she resented me until she cut herself out of my life.
Looking back, I wonder if I was smothering her in some sort of way. I wonder if my excitement, laughter, and joy were just too much. I don't have the answers, but when we were in fourth grade, I heard from my sister that their family was moving to another state, and my sister wasn't even really friends with her older sister. I remember being devastated and going to school and asking her if it was true. One of our other friends had known for about a month and they told me that they hadn't let me know because they "weren't sure how I would react." I felt confused and hurt, but then, for the first time, I could see that although she was my best friend, I wasn't hers.
The way she looked at me that day was more with annoyance, and I wonder still how long I had been so blissfully unaware. But, even after recognizing that, I wanted to salvage our friendship. Just because she would be a few states away didn't mean we couldn't be friends. We wrote letters back and forth for a while, and I remember talking on the phone with her many times, feeling that our friendship was repaired. Her family even invited us to visit and for me to sleep over. Because of my hyper-focused attachment, again, I was overly optimistic and somehow glazed over many subtle and not-so-subtle cues. One day, while on the phone, she became very irritated and told me that the call was too long, especially being long-distance, and so we hung up. I felt really guilty, thinking that she was suddenly legitimately upset about the potential cost of the long-distance phone call, and who knows, maybe she was, but after months of this, adult me still doubts it.
Being naive and still overly optimistic, I began writing her letters more, since calls were "no longer practical," I'll say. I'll never forget the letter I received from her that severed the friendship. She wrote that she no longer wanted to write letters or talk on the phone and that she had gotten a cellphone. She told me not to contact her unless I got a cellphone myself, and with being the youngest of five kids in a home where we couldn't get a phone until we were eighteen, it all sunk in. All of the cues I had written off as "bad days" or "we can fix this; we're friends" hit me. It made me angry. I felt betrayed. But most of all, it hurt. It hurt me so much.
No comments:
Post a Comment