The Adderall didn't seem to work well for me, so the doc has switched me to Ritalin. I'll start taking that today. Will have to see what that's like and if it does well for me.
I also start TMS therapy Monday to deal with my depression so I can get more benefit from the ADHD therapy. I've heard good stuff about TMS and my insurance covers it, so that's a bonus.
I just need a new brain, I think. This one has been nothing but trouble.
I've been taking Adderall for my ADHD for about a month and a half. I can't say that it's offered any lasting effects yet; I still feel just as scrambled as ever, and because I'm not supposed to take it on weekends, I've been getting very depressed on Saturdays and Sundays. I was on vacation last week and it didn't go well at all, so I've been in a pit of despair since we got back home.
It's apparent that I haven't gotten a handle on either my depression or my anxiety, let alone the ADHD. I've tried my hardest for years to figure out what it is exactly that I'm supposed to do with my life. Although I have found a therapist with whom I connect well, I'm on even more meds now than I was before. Why are meds seemingly the answer to everything? What can't I learn to deal with life and working without being medicated?
Who actually lives in a world where they absolutely love their jobs and their home life all the time? I'm certainly not naive enough to think that people are mindlessly simple enough to be happy all of the time, but feeling content some of the time would be fantastic. I used to see people working on their laptops while shopping at Whole Foods and would think THAT would make me happy; making my own hours, working wherever I wanted to be, and not being locked away in an office. Well, since the pandemic, I pretty much have that and I'm just as sad as I ever was.
I need some answers to my questions, or at the very least some probing questions or suggestions to help me find the answers I seek. On a more positive note, the Adderall has helped me see the impulsivity in my eating habits, but I've just replaced eating out of boredom with buying stuff I don't need out of boredom. I can't even discern what would make me happy anymore. I've never dealt with boredom very well. Being bored has led to some piss-poor decisions on my part in the past, but living life everyday can be very boring and I need to be able to deal with it better.
When I was a kid, I could play outside or help out with farm work. I had a vibrant imagination so I could usually figure out something to keep myself occupied, but my ability to do that seemingly disappeared as I got older. Sometimes I long to be recognized for something I do have a talent for, such as writing or genealogy, but that makes me feel like a bratty spoiled child who needs to be noticed or I'll start to cause problems. I know that the world does not owe me a glamorous and thrilling life, but I would like some way to find my normal life as glamorous and thrilling as it is.
One of the hallmarks of ADHD is selective interests. I did fine in school, in spite of my anger and consternation over why I could not study things I was interested in, instead of algebra and physics? It didn't occur to me when I was a kid that it might benefit me to know the basics of algebra or physics. I only knew that those subjects did not come naturally to me and I had little interest in them. I spent most of my school days annoyed and angry because I felt my time was being wasted. I seriously thought about quitting school because I felt like I could educate myself much better than my teachers were doing. My grades were excellent in subjects that I liked, like band, English, and History, but dismal in other subjects like science and math. Whenever I got a less than stellar grade on my report card, it would take more attention than the great grades I received in subjects I liked. My teachers would tell me "You're so smart, if only you would work harder or concentrate more....". I was working hard and concentrating to the best of my abilities, so I ended up feeling like a loser. There was more concentration on my failures than on my triumphs. Luckily for me, my mother understood and always praised me. She suffered with dyslexia and knew that, like her, I had some issues but I wasn't stupid or lazy.
My executive function capability was affected by ADHD as well. Executive function is a set of mental skills that include working memory, flexible thinking, and self-control. We use these skills every day to learn, work, and manage daily life. Trouble with executive function can make it hard to focus, follow directions, and handle emotions, among other things. Verbal instructions go in one ear and out the other for me. I need things to be written down. I've been told many times that I don't "look at the big picture", meaning that I tend to hyper fixate on trivia or minutiae about a subject, rather than seeing all of the parts of the picture. I can look at the painting above ("Guernica" by Pablo Picasso) for a period of time and if you ask me what is the main subject pictured , I would say screaming people. It takes me a bit to remember that there are also screaming animals and dead bodies in the painting. I recall pieces of things, not the whole thing.
These issues contributed to my feeling like a failure because I wasn't "living up to my potential". It's a special kind of hell when you know that you are intelligent and competent, but you seem to constantly disappoint others because you don't want to do what they want you to do. I felt that I was letting people down by not following a career or not using my Linguistics degree to find a settled livelihood. I just seemed to float along with the wind, trying to gain inner peace by looking for what would surely be the one thing that would make all the difference in my life; would put all the puzzle pieces together to make a coherent picture and would make me happy and content. I hope that finally knowing that I have ADHD will help me with that.
I have "pandemic hair". I didn't get it cut for almost 2 years and it's grown to the middle of my back now. If I don't keep my hair tied back, I play with it compulsively; I have no idea why. Hair twisting and my knee jiggling are two of my most noticeable stims.
I woke up too early again today. My ear worm of the day is "Hush" by Deep Purple, a band on which I'm currently hyperfocused. I will obsess about different things, and it's almost all I think about for a varying period of time. If it's a band, I will listen to their music constantly, collect all of their records, learn the history of the band and all of the members. Trivia rules my brain. On the plus side, I get to expand my musical knowledge and listen to bands I remember from childhood.
I consider myself a jack of all trades, master of none. I've never had the attention span to have a "career", only passing jobs that piqued my interest: I wanted more records, I worked in a record store. I wanted more books, I worked in a bookstore. I wanted to buy a house, I went to work for a mortgage company. I've noticed that I get spam that tells me I can do all these different new jobs, but none of them pay well at all. My current job is probably most suited to my interests and it's held my attention for 15 years now. I'm grateful that I found this job. It has offered me stability, which I crave; something reliable to occupy my jumbled brain.
I often wonder what my life would have been like if I had been diagnosed as a child and received treatment then. If I think too much about that, I will get very depressed. It doesn't do any good to think about what was, only what IS. I have to make the best with what I've been dealt.
I've been waking up too early lately. I can't remember the last time my alarm clock woke me up. Around 3am, my brain shudders awake, begins to speed around a mental race track and I start thinking of everything. I feel this intense rush of ideas and creativity in the morning, but the early rising is wearing me out.
I scramble to get some of my thoughts and ideas "down on paper", so to speak before my work starts at 6:30am. Past noon, everything slows down in my head and at 2:30pm, it's time to relax (or try, anyway). Listening to music, reading, walking, or working out will relax me, but being outside will give me the most peace.
When I was a child, I spent half my time outside and the other half in my room, listening to records and reading. Since I've been an adult, I'm inside most of the time, either working, reading, or surfing the internet. Now that the weather is warmer, I start walking in the neighborhood again before it gets too hot.
