I'm still in therapy and my therapist recently semi-retired. So I'm seeing someone new. New person and I were talking last week about healthy ways to handle my emotional reactions as I was concerned with telling the difference between when my anger was justified and useful versus when it was not. After about the fourth time I expressed concern that I often overreact, the therapist said "You keep saying overreact but your feelings are real. What made you think you're always overreacting?"
But let's back up a little bit more. After several of the people in my life who have ADHD kept half jokingly commenting that it seems like I have it, I investigated. It presents a lot differently in women and I found a support group specific to the ways it can impact motherhood. Literally every single post, every single listed side-effect, symptom, and story I identified with. They described me and my experience perfectly. I had just gotten really, really good at masking. I also discovered that a really common, arguably defining characteristic of ADHD is something called rejection sensitive dysphoria, or RSD. This basically means that people with ADHD can have extreme reactions to real or perceived rejection - which includes criticism.
*(I do not have an official diagnosis of ADHD from an MD as the cost and time factors are currently prohibitive. Several people who have extensive first hand and professional experience with ADHD agree with my self-diagnosis so I call that good enough for now. If you are going to shit on me in the comments for this, save us both some time and just tattoo "I'm a classist, ableist tool" on your forehead.)
After my therapist asked why I think I'm always overreacting, I thought back to when that started. I was humiliated that tears started to well up. Before long, I was full on sobbing and I didn't fully understand why. Pretty much everyone important in my life has commented at one point or another that I'm overreacting and it happened so much that I cannot recall a time when that wasn't part of my identity: Cyn is too sensitive. And so I started self-editing to an extreme degree. I was texting with a friend recently and made a typo that she didn't even notice. But I spotted it a couple of minutes later, so I sent a correction. I mentioned that I'm constantly editing messages even after I've sent them. She said something like "haha, same." But it's not. Because I mean constantly. I will read messages from weeks ago and think about how I could have written them better. I'm constantly rereading and touching up blog posts here from years back. And I do the same thing in my head. Impulsiveness is one of the symptoms of ADHD I "don't" have because I am monitoring myself almost literally every second. I don't blurt things out, I don't get into arguments, I don't communicate honestly. I spend a ridiculous amount of time mentally reviewing so that I communicate clearly and I still can't get it right. I can spend hours drafting a single message about and emotionally fraught situation only to never send it. I don't tell people if I'm upset, I don't react to offensive comments. Because I'm probably just overreacting. Almost everything about the way I interact and communicate with others is carefully curated because I don't want to come across as too sensitive and create a conflict. I'm well known for being able to hear huge news without giving anything away because I have such tight control over my reactions. (ex: A friend messaged me he was going to propose while I was talking to their partner and I did not react. Also found out I was pregnant and gave nothing away in a house full of 5 other people.) It's so extreme that someone can directly insult me and I will talk myself out of responding or ever addressing it because I don't want to cause "drama." And experience has taught me that's what it will be. I don't have any experience with people having my back in those scenarios where I did express myself, so I don't anymore (except sometimes here). This is also why I was humiliated that I started to cry during therapy. Therapy! The one place where you're kind of expected to cry! Because I wasn't in control of my reaction and I didn't want to seem crazy or overly sensitive to something that wasn't a big deal - which is what I generally believe others are thinking. Add to all that my recent discovery of RSD as a function of my ADHD and I've become even more convinced that I cannot trust my own mind. And remember that I have a TBI which caused actual amnesia and a smattering of mental health diagnoses all of which affect perception and memory.
Do you have any idea how disorienting that can be? To not feel like you're able to trust anything you think, feel, or remember? It seems like I'm completely disconnected from reality or at least from the one everyone else experiences. I am constantly watching others intensely to see their reactions so I can gauge if I'm reacting and interacting in an acceptable manner. Because otherwise I can't tell.
It really sent me spinning because my entire reality and personality are built around how others react to me. I am totally dependent on it. So for the second time in two years, I am experiencing a massive existential crisis because I don't have any idea who I am independent of those factors. What would I like, what would I be interested in, what would I be passionate about if I wasn't constantly looking to others to validate reality for me? Is there anyway to even know? People will say it's unhealthy to compare yourself to others and/or that you can't rely on others to tell you who you are. But I honestly have no other idea how to figure it out. And to some degree, you have to look to others. Right? There are some times, arguably even a lot of them, when for better or worse other people's opinions do matter. We are social creatures and we depend on that structure to survive. If we don't fit, we don't survive, so we make ourselves fit in order to survive.
The short version is that I've been talking to experts for 2 years now and I still hate myself, I'm still unhappy, I still don't trust myself or anyone around me, and I still have no idea who I even am. How can I hate myself when I don't have an identity? I'm really good at being the worst, I guess.
And I have no idea where to go from here. How do you build a person from scratch when they are already in their 30s? How do I turn of the constant filter to figure out what appeals to me and not just what seems to fit best with the people around me at any given moment? Seriously, where do I go from here?
