'The judgment hurts. Usually the judgment doesn’t come from other people, however. The anxiety makes me judge myself. All the voices from my childhood return: I'm lazy, spacey. I beat myself up for struggling to live in a world not designed for my brain.'
Half of us. And that’s those of us who are diagnosed. The numbers are not broken down by gender, but I’d bet women have a higher instance of it than men. Women tend to be diagnosed later in life and absorb those messages longer. On top of that, we’re expected to be the organizers.
I have to remember which shoes fit which child, and which can be saved to fit a younger sibling. I have to remember to put up the holiday decorations. I have to remember when I last cleaned the oven, and when I may need to do it again. I have to remember the dates of birthday parties, diving meets, permission slips. These things jolt me awake at 3:37 in the morning. They set me shaking in traffic. They slam me in the Target checkout line.I am medicated for anxiety.
When you’re neurodivergent, It’s impossible to adult perfectly. When I can’t adult effectively, the world judges me. The world judges me when my house gets so messy I can’t have guests: when the dishes pile in the sink, when the dog hair becomes noticeable, when the Amazon boxes accumulate, and I forget trash day again. The world judges me when the kids eat fast food for lunch because I forgot to run to the grocery store.The judgment hurts.
I go to therapy to blunt the judgment. I try to remember it, to repeat it: You are not wrong for the world. The world is wrong for you. My neurodivergent mind should be accommodated, not shamed or blamed. People who judge me, my therapist reminds me, should be cut off. They enforce that cycle everyone created for me as a child; they enforce that misery I endured, which gave me anxiety in the first place.
Most of all, I need to learn to spot those anxious thoughts coming, hear them, and answer them. Today I can. I am not spacey or lazy or forgetful. I have ADHD. And my neurodivergent brain is perfect the way it is.
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