If you haven’t heard this cliche while discussing your neurodivergency with someone, then I envy your luck. Yesterday I fucked up, I feel shitty, but also I am pissed.
Our brains are impulsive af and tend to forget the most important information. We mess up, our RSD (and empathy) kicks in, we feel terrible, we vow to be more careful, but guess what? Thats fucking exhausting.
As a result, we start overthinking our every waking moment, stressing over every little thing. Because, we are trying to be aware of the things we cannot perceive.
At some point, hopefully we realize that we cannot live like that, and we start to arbitrarily ignore our compulsion to overthink. Most often that works out great because most often the threat is not real, but sometimes we make the wrong call.
The times we overthink are still more than the times we do not, and we still mess up. Let us have our fucking peace.
I read a Simon Sinek book as part of a management book club and even hit bullshit misinformation on ADHD in there. It’s fucking pervasive and, as a millennial, I am now primarily just fighting against my own shitty internalization from years of passive aggressive bullshit.
I am a manager with ADHD who manages some people with ADHD and it’s hard for all of us - I try to give my reports space to fail and overcome ruts “If you find yourself in an unproductive mood don’t beat yourself up - if your performance is an issue I’ll let you know well before any administrative actions are taken” and it’s still an issue.
I am hoping it isn’t as deeply beaten into genz but school absolutely wailed on us for momentary distraction… I remember being in a parent teacher meeting (there were a lot of those) where my mom asked “And xmunk is doing well on tests and retaining the knowledge?” And the teacher replied “Well yes, but he’s rarely focused in class and is disruptive during our quiet study time.” … I seriously want to go back and slap that teacher ‘Study time doesn’t benefit me, and if I’m being disruptive to others just fucking send me out to run around in circles in the playground or some shit.’ But no… my grades suffered not because of academic failures but because I was partially graded on my ability to mask.
Be fucking kind to your brain - there is an expected level of performance for your job and as long as you’re above that you can give yourself a brain break and you should not feel guilty about it.