If you are an ADHDer and stumble on a list like this, the overwhelm and discomfort when you don’t immediately tackle something on the list feel like a little death, like falling into an abyss.
If you are a recovering ADHDer, you might pause and maybe even feel a little out of your body when you don’t launch into a task. A Higher Part knows this pause, this “not doing,” is progress. A space is created where something new can happen, provided it does not lead to a day of total frozenness, which absolutely could happen.
But I digress.
Stick with me.
Moments like this are about circumventing overwhelm.
Looking at a “Too Big List” for too long will bring certain death to the possibilities for this day. If you are an ADHDer, you may not be ready to toss the list. You may return the list to its “to do” folder for later review. This is progress.
Perhaps you calmly remember that a “Just For Today” list is all that works for your neuro-different brain.
If you remember this, you have dodged a bullet.
Who are you kidding?
If you are an ADHDer and saw “to do” but did not read “must do,” you are a rockstar.
Truly, if you neither curled up in bed in a state of overwhelm, crying, and paralyzed nor began randomly hurling yourself at projects until the wee hours, you didn’t just dodge a bullet.
You are Neo!
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This series of articles is of a different kind, a different kind of truthful, “good” writing. It is meant to be experiential as well as informative and entertaining. I hope to give the reader, in a way, an ADHD experience. But an ADHDer’s life rarely has such handholding, and the turning of our pages is rarely sequential and predictable. Does that mean these articles can’t be understood, aren’t chock-full of nutty goodness, and are entertaining as heck?
No.
It means that while the world often loves the insight, wisdom, and creativity of neurodivergent people, it isn’t set up to help us succeed.
Enjoy the experience.
You might be an ADHDer if you could only make it through this article if it was read to you. That said, I do hope you will stay, scroll, clap, and comment, as that is how you can thank me for this little gift. (Read by author, then voice changed in editing, because I thought it sounded funnier… last minute… impulsively, as we do.)
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