I didn’t have a relationship with myself.
00:03
I wanted to get as far away from myself as possible.
00:05
I didn’t want to be crazy. I didn’t want to be this weirdo.
00:08
I’d have picked anyone else on the street, “I’ll be you!
00:10
“Teach me how to be you! I don’t want to be me.”
00:12
I didn’t learn anything at school other than how to hate myself.
00:16
I couldn’t sit still.
00:17
I didn’t remember to raise my hand before speaking out loud.
00:21
I had so much energy. Bouncing around the walls of my head.
00:24
It was like, “Be-dum! Be-dum! Be-dum! Be-dum!”
00:26
That was my head, like… Just, yeah, nonstop.
00:30
But I just remember being scared all the time.
00:32
It was living in constant fear of doing something wrong,
00:35
of slipping up, of offending someone, of looking stupid.
00:38
I couldn’t keep going as I was, that was the only thing I knew.
00:42
I needed some sort of help.
00:44
The first time I went to a psychiatrist
00:46
was when I was a teenager.
00:47
They diagnosed me pretty much straight away,
00:50
told me they thought I had bipolar.
00:53
I felt relieved. I literally thought,
00:56
“Wow, OK. I have something.
00:58
“That sounds bad, that sounds intense. That would justify it.
01:01
“This is an explanation for whatever is different about me.”
01:05
So, it wasn’t my fault.
01:06
I started taking a medication called Depakote when I was 17.
01:11
I’ve been on anti-psychotics for 13 years.
01:13
Basically, since I was a child.
01:17
University was a struggle.
01:19
It was only possible by pretending to be someone I wasn’t.
01:22
I got really good at pretending to function.
01:25
Like, I was living a lie, to myself as well as everyone else.
01:30
I had this feeling in my gut
01:31
that bipolar just wasn’t the whole picture,
01:34
and it’s only then I started googling anything and everything.
01:37
And I came across descriptions of ADHD.
01:39
It was one of those moments where everything just clicks into place.
01:43
But trying to get an ADHD diagnosis!
01:45
Gosh, like, no-one believed me.
01:48
If you know you have something and you’re trying to tell…
01:52
You try and tell, like, eight different doctors…
01:56
Oh, it makes it seem impossible!
01:59
I felt defeated after going to see one GP,
02:02
and she was like, “No, you already have enough
02:05
“chains around your neck, another diagnosis isn’t going to help you.”
02:08
Oh, that… Oh, man…
02:10
I walked out of that GP appointment
02:12
and I couldn’t even cry cos because I was just too numb.
02:16
Eventually, I thought, “Yeah, this isn’t working.
02:19
“I should just give up.”
02:21
But, then, a few months later, I got a psychological assessment
02:24
for a new job and, when the results came back, the doctor was like,
02:28
“Yeah, you have ADHD and I don’t think you have bipolar.”
02:32
When I first went on ADHD medication,
02:34
the first day, I was like, “Wow!” I was on top of the world!
02:39
I was, like, “Oh, this is what it’s like.”
02:43
That ability to focus was just there.
02:46
It was like, “Oh, my gosh, I have so many things I want to achieve!”
02:49
It’s like making up for lost time, in the sense that
02:51
you’ve always been told, like, “Pay attention!”
02:53
“I can pay attention! I can do it!”
02:56
My whole life, all I wanted was to just be like everyone else.
03:00
But, then, when I got ADHD medication,
03:02
I was able to experience this normal, and it occurred to me,
03:05
I never once stopped to ask myself if that’s what I really wanted.
03:09
I just thought it was the only option.
03:11
Now, I can choose to not be normal
03:13
cos I know what it feels like and it’s not for me.
03:17
The thing that’s helped me the most
03:19
is being able to practise mindfulness, even if that’s,
03:21
“I’m going to try and notice the taste of this bread roll”
03:24
and learning how to sit with the energy
03:27
and how to, gradually, over time,
03:30
be able to calm some of that energy and still it.
03:33
People that see the world differently
03:36
can obviously help create a better one.
03:38
There are so many amazing things about having ADHD.
03:41
I like my energy
03:44
and I have so much love to give the world.
03:47
And who knows where it could take me?
—
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