Self Respect
I wanted to title this “Self Respect - Where does it come from and where does it go?” That’s just too long. Another blog I read recently Love A.D.D.eral said at the end that “the longer you rely on drugs to feel competent, the less respect you’ll have for who you are without it.”
Respecting yourself for who you are? Hmmm. What does this respect mean? Wikipedia - Respect states “Respect is an assumption of good faith and competence in another person or in the whole of oneself. Depth of integrity, trust, complementary moral values, and skill are necessary components.[1]”
Good faith and competence in the whole of oneself. So things that diminish this assumption of good faith and competence would be what the previous author was talking about. So if you rely on drugs to combat shortcomings and you rely on them to either mask or help you to overcome these short comings does that mean you lose that faith and competence in yourself to do it without the medication?
As my ADD brain is working I see two lines of sight in this. If you use it to mask your shortcomings then do you have self respect to begin with? The person that gets drunk every day at the bar because they are incapable of being home alone or dealing with some type of pain. That would be a mask. The person that wears a girdle to hide their midsection bulge isn’t using a drug but they are masking the truth all the same.
So if medication is used to overcome their shortcomings does that mean they have less self respect? I can’t remember all the notes I typed up from my meeting yesterday. So I print them out and take them with me to my next meeting. What about my planner I use for my calendar? Does that mean the same thing? I can’t keep my appointments straight. It’s not a mask, but a shortcoming.
Now ADD medication is a little different in my life. In my world I am not necessarily hyper active, but I’m active. From a physical/social meaning I am overly sensitive. That’s been good and bad. Sounds other people may not interpret I enjoy. Tastes some may not identify I can thoroughly revel in. Touch sends messages all through me. Even if it’s a friend hitting me in the arm. Does that sound strange? To someone that doesn’t experience this I’m sure. The down side is that sounds that others might enjoy can turn into noise. Food that some might find enjoyable has no value to my tongue. The unspoken word says more to me than the spoken.
ADD Medication changes this. It turns the volume on the sensitivity down. Sometimes too far. Instead of enjoying food I don’t eat. Instead of having a glass of my favorite scotch I can’t taste the subtle wood flavors so I don’t drink. The electricity of touch turns to numbness and I end up leaving my wife alone(which to some degree she’s happy). Does this mask the over reactions I had? Am I hiding it?
On the other hand as my work-home life grew past a point I could leverage with my old coping methods to manage I needed something else to help. The medication is my tool for that. It’s not a crutch in the sense I can’t function without it, but it’s more a means to help me stay focused on the large volume of tasks I have. Do I like taking medicine every day? I don’t think about it like that. I think about it like I wouldn’t leave the house with my cell phone so why would I leave without my medication.
Have I lost faith in myself to function? No. Have I lost faith in myself to excel? No. I went 37 years without it. I am not the owner of Jet Blue or some other multinational company. I’m a guy with a job like anyone else. I have responsibilities to my family, my friends, my company, and my co-workers. My medication is my equivalent of starting to use a planner when before I used post-it notes. For the sensitivity question, while the level of medication does have more of an impact on my life than I would prefer, it’s the same as having on sunglasses, they are just darker than they need to be all the time. A significant point to this is that before I was drinking pots of coffee or caffeine equivalent every day - for over 20 years. So instead of shooting in the dark with caffeine I’m taking something administered.
So to answer my original question, my respect comes from years of learning from all of the crazy things I’ve done. Good and bad. Where does it go? Nowhere. As long as I remember what the qualities are that make me who I am then I will have it. Have I lost it? Yes. Will I lose it again? No. Why? Because besides everything I have done, I have a family that appreciates me for who I am and what I do. Their love is proof enough of my competence and that will always be my source of faith to be who I should be.
Top 5 ADD Moments Today
Some people might mark their day by the one ADD moment of the day. I like to try the top 5. Yes I am over ambitious but when you have so many why not pick the 5 that stand out.
1. On way home and was supposed to get wife diet coke. Very important task. Someone calls - what was I supposed to do? - Sure I can meet you and talk about that. 40 minutes later wife calls - Where are you and where’s my diet coke.
2. Made a list of things I was going to do today. Can’t remember where I put it. That will teach me to write it down instead of using my rtm.
3. Turned into Grinch because of kids chaos. - Oversensitivity to the sound and stimulus - Turned me from a normal fun father/husband to the grinch.
4. Sent email to team for work and forgot the project leader on the email.
5. Trying to work on website and saw a link - 2 hours later I have no idea what I’ve done.
Adjusting To Understanding Why, How, and What
With education comes knowledge. With knowledge comes understanding. So the more I read the more I learn, the more I understand. Sometimes I don’t like what I understand.
How about this for understanding, I learned that increased sensitivity is a somewhat common symptom for people with AD/HD. Now I understand why I can be so highly irritable when I have 3 little boys screaming and running around like madmen when I walk in the door. Why I have never enjoyed putting them to bed as they scream and cry to stay up. For some people they can shut it out, it seems I can’t and even though we go through it every night it pushes a trigger that brings out my highly irritated side.
Now imagine that you didn’t understand that you had been like this and that was one of the reasons your spouse usually put them to bed so that they got the nice warm and fuzzy feeling that their parents liked them before they went to sleep. All of a sudden you see a cause and effect scenario and it’s perfectly clear and that for the last 5 years you’ve been an ogre to your children at bedtime. That just makes me feel great.
I learned that despite my best efforts on controlling spending and cutting back on impulses for the last 8 years I’ve failed miserably. I could never figure out why. I knew that I had made my fair share of mistakes with different things, but we had been blessed with decent jobs and decent pay. Now I understand it. I understand that the chemical that is released into your brain when you become excited releases extra dopamine that helps to balance out thinking. Especially for the person who’s brain might be running a little low on it.
So every time I made an acquisition, started something new, or found something I couldn’t live without I would rationalize my reasoning and buy it. Once in a while that’s ok, but for someone with the impulse control of an AD/HD adult - that’s a recipe for disaster. Now I see the difference. It’s frustrating to see the trail of worthless things I’ve purchased or spent time on that really weren’t necessary.
How about this I learned. People with AD/HD are very good at seeing patterns and having an intuitive sense for different things. Growing up I could look at puzzle and see the pieces even though my mother or others couldn’t. It was literally like my brain was processing the randomness into shape without forcing it to. As an adult I found patterns existed in the riverboat casinos on the slot machines. It was only years later that I discovered the pattern the casinos were hiding in the randomness wasn’t random at all. Seeing this helped me to win a lot of money on the one thing you’re odds are the worst at - slot machines.
What’s scarier is that now that I’m falling into my routines I see the why, how, and the what of my actions. And for the bad, the medication is making a huge improvement. I don’t feel the need to acquire, acquire, acquire. It doesn’t change my ability to hyper-focus or multi-task but it takes the urge for the crutches I used to use to manage my brain chemistry. Just ask my wife, she’ll vouch for it.
It’s not alway pleasant to look back and see your past in a different light, but as I keep saying it’s not the past I have to repair - it’s the future I have to keep from getting broken.
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