It’s not as easy as it looks
Relative importance versus field
What is important changes the whole time.
From an ‘autism’ perspective, every input is considered equal. It’s not prioritized based on relative importance. A sound far away can be valued just as important as getting a call that you lose your job.
From an ‘ADHD’ perspective, what is important changes very fast. One second, it is that moving your body is important. The next few seconds, that doing something creative is important. A few moments after that, that communicating with others is important.
What is confusing for the outside world is that this looks like overstimulated kids, bored kids, annoying kids, a lot of movement.
But you are not looking at brain anomalies. They are both perfectly fine strategies in learning what you find important.
You can say, “I treat everything as equal” (autism). Or, “I make this super important, and then I make that super important” (ADHD).
They are both very good strategies for learning what you want to be in life. And yes: if you treat everything as equally important, you’ll run into different problems than if you use a different strategy, for instance. But everything has its pros and cons. People with autism spot details you will never ever figure out. People with ADHD understand social dynamics that you miss when you stare at a PDF for 4 hours straight.
It’s not as easy as it looks.
Replacement thoughts
If you are someone who is too critical of themselves, I can say to you:
“Stop being so critical of yourself.”
The problem is that when you start thinking:
“I shouldn’t be so critical of myself,”
it is the same mistake. It’s another rule of negativity you force on yourself, in addition to something like:
“I shouldn’t talk this much; people don’t like me.”
So what works better is that I say to you:
“Be proud of yourself.”
It’s the same thing, from a more positive angle.
I used to do this wrong the whole time. I guess for some people, or in some cultures, these things come more naturally.
Trying not to do something can give you exactly the same problem.
But when I say:
“It’s okay to cry, try to let it out,”
it’s a positive opposite of:
“I shouldn’t show my emotions because I am a real man.”
The moment I do something, the feeling is gone.
So it's almost like a working memory thing.
I took my 37 years to realize that I didn’t feel the inside of my body
Cliffs
I have two diagnoses:
ADHD – mother’s side
Autism – father’s side
Both are perfectly plausible. My mom clearly has traits (and got diagnosed), and there are a lot of people on her side of the family who are either entrepreneurs or criminals.
On my father’s side, there is a lot of atypical social behaviour combined with very high analytical intelligence.
A few years ago, I got a psychosis. Basically, I got into a weird state of being ‘paralyzed’. I got into a mental institute for the second time. They picked me up with a van since I couldn’t take care of myself. The doctor said: substance abuse (among other things), which was true.
But my brother has the exact same thing, and we lived opposite lives. My brother has never done any substances.
It’s very confusing. I feel like it’s an extreme imbalance in the brain. It’s working either at 150%, top level, or at 30%, but never around 100%, where ‘normal’ people work. Almost like a failing in the electrical circuit. It’s a bizarre experience. It’s like getting dragged into hell a few times a day.
I have to be very careful that I don’t tip over, so to speak.
That made me think: what is actually happening?
If you take me and my brother, we both share the same upbringing. We 100% have had problems there, since we were taught to suppress emotions from a young age (father). Emotions were not tolerated. Also, we taught ourselves to suppress our own voices from a young age, creating enormous amounts of tension in the body.
Can that be the reason? It doesn’t make any sense that it’s happening. When I was young, I was at the top in education (not to brag, but you get the point). I am not stupid by any means. Yet, I seem to fall into these extreme patterns every day.
You could say that my whole body is always in a state of fighting, and therefore I am either at 150% or 30%.
I think we manually create the circuits in our brain, and both my brother and I spend a lot of energy suppressing energy. It’s like we both created a defect in our electrical circuit by manually suppressing things that shouldn’t be suppressed, if that makes sense.
I am pretty sure, and this is the plateau I am landing on, that as bizarre as it sounds, I don’t feel the inside of my body at all. When I work out, I just smash through. I push away all pain. But in day-to-day life, I don’t actually feel pain in my own body. Because I self-taught myself this.