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.
Anger On Thanksgiving
Yesterday was Thanksgiving. The day we get together and have fun. Eat, watch a little football, talk to family, your mom critiques something about your life, you get to listen to other family members drone on and on and on…..
Today was a good day for me because I didn’t have to cook. Well actually I forgot to make my dish so my wife got to make it instead. So I didn’t do anything other than bathe the three monkey’s, get them dressed and load up the van to go to Mom’s. Almost my entire family was there with their family so it was a packed house. There was a lot of good food and the kids were having fun.
My mother made a great meal. Everyone brought additional food and there was a great spread. Departing from the traditions of her mother, Mom used paper plates instead of the good silver and China. Very wise on her part with the number of smaller children that have a tendency to drop things. Well the older ones do to. The food was great. I ate a whole plate. I think my family was surprised I didn’t go back for seconds but that’s a side effect of the meds. I haven’t told my family about being diagnosed with AD/HD because I don’t know how they’ll react. It’s met with a lot of doubts.
After the meal we dive into the pie and enjoy homemade apple and pumpkin pie. The kids finish and they’re off. Playing in the yard, running off the calories they just consumed. My wife, brother, sister in law, Mom and step-father are sitting there talking pleasantly and my 2 year old son comes in and climbs onto our laps. It was really nice. It seemed like we were getting along so nicely. (can you sense the but coming?)
My brother gets up and brings back a piece of pecan pie. Then my sister in law gets one. The second they sit down my mother very nicely says explains that we weren’t going to eat that until after my family left. My son is allergic to all nuts. DEATHLY allergic to them. The same son that is sitting across the table from them. My wife, mother, and I try to be very polite about explaining it’s not a good idea to eat that right now. They keep eating.
My wife gets up with our son and storms out. My brother asks me if she left because they are eating that pie. I explain again it’s a life threatening allergy for my son and go find my wife. She and my 2 year old are locked in a bathroom and she’s so angry she’s practically in tears.
This is where my itch kicks in. I call it an itch because I know there’s a right and a wrong way to handle this but the closer I get to the table the less I see the right and my itch is an inflammation and I’m wondering how I’m going to scratch this so it’s not bad. Then I’m thinking how am I going to keep myself from walking into the room and not rip my brother and sister-in-law’s head off. I wasn’t but that’s what it felt like. This entire conversation happened in my head in the space of 1.5 seconds.
I walk in the room and sit down. That’s good. I didn’t do explode. I start out calm, but I think they could see I was upset. I explained that my wife and son were in the bathroom because they can’t be around it. My brother and sister in law at this time start to denounce the reality of the allergy and that it wasn’t anything. ”There’s no way it can be that bad. Do you know how many things are made on equipment that is processed on peanuts.” That’s what he says. I am trying to explain rationally that for every package of food we buy that comes in a bag, box, container, wrapper, we read the labels. They have to print if it was processed on equipment that was processed on nuts.
For the uninitiated nut allergies account for approximately 80% of all food allergy deaths in the world. My son has a reaction if he breathes dust from a grinder. At this point I make a motion with my hand as if I was laying something down on the table and yell “You eating that pie is like putting a loaded gun on the table and point it at my son.” I am enraged. I am thinking that if this goes on I’m going to beat him. He still denies anything is going to happen. That there’s nothing to worry about. How can someone not see that all it takes is for him to pick up his plate put it with the rest of the pie and eat it when we leave in 15 minutes.
I am screaming that if he touches my son, or if the kids pick up the crumbs, or he picks up the crumbs and is exposed it could kill my son. Would you want me doing something around your children that would kill them? My sister in law at this point says “Come on. We don’t have to take this.” They get up and leave.
WOW.
I am so full of rage and anger that I am shaking. I can taste the bitterness in my mouth. I am looking around trying to understand how they didn’t get it. How they couldn’t just show some courtesy for someone other than themselves and put it away. As he’s denying anything is going to happen there were crumbs falling off his plate onto the floor and he didn’t see them.
My poor mother is beside herself. She doesn’t know what to say. I immediately apologize. I ask if what we originally said and asked them was unreasonable. It wasn’t. Now I’ve ruined Thanksgiving. Now it’s my fault. They left because of me. I’m in the family counselor office as a teenager being blamed for all of the problems my siblings have all over again. Why does this always land on me? I’m not the one arguing that nuts aren’t life threatening. I know they are. We’ve already been to the ER once. But it’s still my fault.
I can’t breathe and I all I can feel is rage. After a few minutes I get up and walk outside to smoke. I can’t taste it and it does nothing to calm me down. But my mind is racing. Did I overreact? Was this a by product of my ADD?
In some ways it was. The frustration had been building all day with the kids and the chaos at home. My oldest has ad/hd and in the mornings he’s all go. I was reading the book “Delivered from Distraction” by Ned Halloway and John Ratey. It’s an updated version of their first book “Driven to Distraction”. It’s a good book but it was not as encouraging as their first one. So now I’m a loaded shotgun with no way to unload that is not going to cause damage. Sitting there with my brother every word that came out of his mouth was one more bullet in the chamber and it just blew.
Eventually we made it home and I was still loaded. I tried to relax but I couldn’t get this out of my system. Finally I said I need to do something to channel this energy positively. So I sat down and wrote a post on one of my other blogs, then on a forum I belong to. I needed to feel connected. I needed validation that I wasn’t going off the deep end. Finally after getting it all out I felt so much better. I felt relieved. I could breathe. Now I’m here. It’s 1:20 in the morning and I think I can go to bed.
Funny thing is the people on the forum couldn’t understand their behavior either.