Most people feel pressured by society and/or family to
conform to certain expectations and norms at one time or another. We as ADHDers, especially those of us who
weren’t diagnosed until adulthood, have probably attempted to embrace convention,
either in a career or family life, and found it extremely difficult. We struggle to be organized, we can’t seem to
get a handle on the basics of daily life, and eventually start flailing. Worst of all, we feel frustrated because we
“just don’t get it”, and those feelings of guilt and shame start to color our
worldview. We feel worthless, useless,
stupid and lazy, and this begins the vicious cycle of unhappiness and
failure.
I’ve touched on it before, but we have to own our
position. It’s tough, and it’s not fair,
but that’s the hand we’ve been dealt.
Remember: it could always be much
worse. ADHD, while obnoxious and emotionally
painful, is treatable, and you can learn to adapt your lifestyle. In my humble opinion, there are three ways to
“own” your position in this case:
1) You can be pissed at the world
and use your ADHD as an excuse to be lazy and miserable, 2) You can set goals and say “screw it, I’m
going to find a way to achieve those conventional goals no matter what!”
(basically, make yourself fit your goals), and 3) You can work around your
limitations and find a career and lifestyle that works for you (make your goals
fit you). Hopefully, 2) and/or 3) should
sound most appealing to you. If 1)
sounds the best, it’s time to make an appointment with a psychologist or life
skills coach. For this post, we’ll
concentrate on 2).
So how does that apply to lifestyle and career choices? If you’ve put yourself on a more traditional
career path and have a number of years of experience under your belt, changing
careers may not be an option for you.
And you may not WANT to change careers, for one reason or another. If you choose a more conventional path,
there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, so long as you make your choice
work for YOU. Often, conventional career
choices enable us inattentive types to have a good amount of structure in our
daily lives. Some of us work best in
situations with predetermined objectives and expectations, deadlines and direct
oversight. I don’t do well in jobs with
erratic schedules or where I have to build my own client base. Some ADHDers can’t function in rigid office
environments…we’ll get to you later.
So the path for people like us is to mold our behaviors and
choices to enable reaching our goals. We
have to use unconventional methods to enable our more conventional
choices. For instance, I know that if I
need to get a task done at work, I need to fire up Mixcloud and shut out the
world. I absolutely cannot concentrate
at home with “real pants” on or anything on my feet. So, if I have to get something done at home,
I need to be wearing sweats & have bare feet. It’s important to pay attention to the
conditions that allow you to be most productive. If you need to sit on the bathroom floor wearing
noise-cancelling headphones to make your daily schedule, do it. If you need to crank up the A/C and have the
TV on to get housework done, so be it. The
next time you’re doing something that requires concentration or effort, pay
attention to your habits and your surroundings.
Identify which elements enable you to BEST complete your task.
On the flipside, figure out what DOESN’T work for you and
toss it in the garbage. Don’t waste time
trying to force yourself into using a method or tool that just doesn’t work or
pisses you off. It’s not worth it. Find something else. Also, identify factors in your environment
that distract you or make it physically difficult to complete your task.
So often, because we’ve been told we’re stupid and lazy our
whole lives, we feel like we need to live up to other people’s expectations and
let other people dictate how we live our lives.
Forget about all that nonsense.
Of course, you’ll need to conform to SOME expectations…little stuff like
marriages and working for someone else require it, but you have to take
ownership of how you meet certain expectations and learn to negotiate in order
to ensure success on your part. This is
why it’s so important not to waste time on methods and tools that don’t work. So your coworkers make fun of you because you
have to color-code and label everything…so what? Get over it.
You’re making your environment work for YOU, not them!
That being said, don’t go off the deep end. You can’t expect every situation to be
malleable in the way you want it to be malleable. There will be some instances in a more
conventional life where you have to work in an uncomfortable situation, deal
with other people’s incompetence, and accept unexpected changes. You probably won’t be able to wear sweats and
have bare feet at an office job, so you have to learn to compromise and find
another “comfortable” way to alter your work environment. You WILL have to make concessions to your
spouse in order to make a marriage work.
The key is to change the things you can, and work on adapting your
behavior with regards to things you CAN’T change.
Next time, we’ll talk about choosing an unconventional
career.
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