As always, you can watch me talk about this here, listen to it below, or listen wherever you listen to podcasts.
Backstory
In December, New Year’s Eve to be exact, my family got back from our Christmas vacation. We’d been in Florida visiting my parents, and I was frankly ready to get back to my routine. Trips and vacations can kind of mess ADHD brains a bit, and I really wanted to get back to feeling less like a slug.
As we stopped for gas, my husband turned to me, a frown on his face. “My throat itches, and my nose feels a little congested.”
My husband never gets sick, and the allergies had been a real problem the last couple of days, so I waved his complaints away. “It’s probably allergies.” I said. “I’ll go in while you pump gas and get you some Claritin or something.”
As promised, I brought him a random antihistamine, he took it, and we went about our day.
Fast forward to that evening. We’re all exhausted and trying to while away the hours until we can finally go to bed, when my husband sighs and says without warning: “I think I’m getting sick. My throat is still itching and my nose feels worse.”
Oh no.
I ask him a few questions – I’m proud to say “HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME?!” wasn’t one of them – and finally resigned to the fact that he’d probably be out of commission for a few days, which he was. For about three days, he downed Nyquil, napped, and ate the meals I made and delivered to him in bed (I make really good toast and I hear my OJ pouring skills are world class).
Night three, I was up all night with an itchy throat. He woke up saying he felt better, then asked me how I was doing.
“Sick.” I croaked back.
And like that, January 4th signified the end of any hopes for a good month.
Don’t get me wrong: I wasn’t simply sick that one time from the 4th to the 31st; instead, that first sickness –a really shitty flu– lowered my immune defenses enough that when I wandered into a store a few days after feeling better, the COVID that someone kindly left on a random shelf decided to make itself at home on my skin. I got exactly one week of optimism before I was lying in bed, wishing that my fever would just go ahead and melt my eyeballs already.
By the time I left the bed, I was weak and exhausted. Being able to move to the couch was nice, but I still couldn’t really do much for another week. In case you’re not keeping score, that means that I didn’t really fully recover until the full-damned-end of January.
A full month of no routine, no intentional action, no real focus on anything except for sitting in bed and binge-watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
And I remember specifically standing in the middle of my living room at one point, feeling like I should be doing something, in fact able to think of several somethings I should be doing, and only thinking now what?
Fuck. I was back to square one. This was practically pre-medicine Arianna. SO I was asking a really good questions: NOW WHAT?
First? I’m gonna cry.
I’m not kidding. Right before I came to write this, I actually sat at my kitchen counter and sobbed. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that ignoring strong emotions doesn’t do anything but allow the wound to fester.
And honestly? I feel so many things that I help ADHDers get over all the time. That’s my secret, how I’m able to understand this stuff so well: I’m always fighting these feelings myself, like some sort of ADHD Hulk.
You know the emotions I mean: disappointment in yourself, even though you know it’s not your fault; shame, because you’re watching everyone else do things you want to be doing but can’t; fear, because you don’t know if you can ever really get clear of the fucking mire that you’ve gotten sucked into. You feel stupid, insecure, frustrated, and a host of other not-so-nice emotions. And while it’s not fun to feel these, it also isn’t a good idea to try to just….not feel them because then you can’t analyze them. You can’t think of how to make those feelings better if you’re not acknowledging them in the first place.
So that’s what I do first: acknowledge it. All of it, as much as I hate it.
Next, I’m gonna think.
More specifically, I’m going to journal, because trying to do this all in my head is asking for trouble.
I feel like people hear “journaling” and think this is just about writing down your feelings and random thoughts. It can be, but I’m doing it to answer three very important questions:
- What do I most want to get done NOW?
- What do I most want to get back long-term?
- Which thing do I want to start working on first?
Notice I said “thing,” and not “things,” because if I try to fix everything at once, I’m going to keep falling back into this pit of despair. Think of it this way: it takes time to get a good routine into place. There’s no way one can just fall back into something like that after a bunch of time without it. I have to look at it as rebuilding a block tower that got knocked all the way down.
If you’re reading that like “Oh my God, Arianna, just thinking about having to do all that all over again makes me want to just…not do it.”
I feel you, especially now, but if you’re in this situation, I want you to remember that you already did it. No routine is done by thinking of the whole thing at once and getting upset that it isn’t successful immediately. It’s done by taking steps each day, misstepping, and starting again. Is that fun? No. But crying in the middle of my kitchen isn’t fun either, so I’m picking the least not-fun of both options.
Finally, I’m going to try to focus on rebuilding one thing at a time.
Am I going to be kind of mad at myself as this happens? Sure. Am I going to want to throw things every time I eat a protein bar but don’t find time to read like I wanted? Of course. But I’m also going to feel better little by little as I find that my energy is more consistent, and then that I’m writing every day, and then that I’m moving more. Each victory is going to be its own, and the rest of the good stuff will come with time.
Using that block tower example from earlier, remember that rebuilding isn’t about gathering up all the blocks at once and tossing them together in one fell swoop; it’s about setting the foundation again, then re-adding all the different levels until you’re done. And, who knows? Maybe you’ll figure out a better way to rebuild as you go.
By the way: I almost didn’t share this, because a piece of me feared that it would make me seem less like I know what I’m doing, like I’m a hot mess or something.
But you know what? This is part of why I’m good at what I do: I get it. I’ve been through it, still go through it, and I know what makes it easier. So if you’re looking at this like “aren’t you a coach? Sounds like you’re broken.” Then you haven’t gotten what I’m about in the slightest.
We’re in this together, y’all. Period, point blank. I’m right there next to you. We got this.
