Healing Emotionally and Physically

I haven’t written in ages. I tried once during the spring. I’m still keeping up with creativity, just not writing. I have been drawing lately. It has been difficult two years for me emotionally and physically. I am slowly healing and getting stronger.

My block started when my father died. I haven’t been able to write since then. I haven’t been trying to push myself, either. I understand feelings need their own time. It hasn’t helped that I have been suffering from sciatica just after the New Year. I have been putting my energy into healing both emotionally and physically. I have written down ideas for blog posts and my story. I want to write more about my character creation. I’ve also been suffering from writer’s block as I don’t like the scene I’m writing right now. I have decided to start fresh. I am keeping what I have written, and I will use some of it, just not the bit that annoys me. I have gotten to a start with a new start. I have heard lots of advice about not throwing anything away so everything will have a file somewhere.

Physical recovery hasn’t been too easy recently. My back seems better even though I still have pain if I sit too long. I am hoping I can start recovering more during the autumn when the weather cools down. Please take care of your body the best you can. I’m learning the hard way (again) that the back is very important, and when it breaks, it puts on the brakes. I haven’t been able to sit down on the computer chair as much, but luckily I can sit comfortably in other places. It’s a good reason for me to draw! I have drawn at multiple points in my life and am trying to get into the habit again. I don’t have any story-related pictures at the moment, but I am working on them! I have lots of creativity, and it cannot be stopped!

Emotionally, I am trying to take it easy. I know putting extra stress on me isn’t going to help. I have restarted doing mindfulness. For me, it’s mainly breathing exercises and using petting cats as a grounding exercise. I try not to listen to the voice in my head that says I am lazy and I should function like a normal person fully abled person. I will never be fully abled. I would be very happy with half-abled. I find it important to realise where that lazy voice is coming from. It helps me to stop listening to it. It’s not an instant fix, but you can have a big impact on how you feel by changing how you think.

I am also trying to keep busy. I am still continuing my psychology studies and learning more about what it is like to be a human. I am eagerly waiting for the next course to start! I am hoping to get some ideas to write blog posts from my course too. I have a lot of ideas listed, I just need to crack on them.

This post is basically about life goes on. This is also your message to take a deep breath and relax for a bit. Take a moment to enjoy your moment.

What does my ADHD look like?

Everyone who has ADHD has different symptoms. There is some overlap between these, but the whole range of symptoms varies heavily. I have something called combined ADHD. It means I have symptoms from both inattentive and hyperactive. The symptoms I list are when I am not medicated. They change quite a bit when I am taking meds.

Things that I have struggled with the most are keeping my attention on one task for long periods of time. I will stay focused for a few minutes. I often check my phone, Facebook or Twitter. Sometimes I go to check a word or concept I thought about. Most of the time has nothing to do with what I am doing, except some weird jump of thoughts that make no sense to most people.

If I have instructions with multiple steps or steps that are very complicated, I forget half of it. I have a tendency to remember the last bits, but not the beginning. In school, the instructions were often verbal, and I had no chance. I always ask them written now if it’s possible. I will also forget to follow through with them and miss steps. I am always thinking about what to do next, so I forget what I was supposed to do now.

I feel like I hear everything and they take away my attention. I can hear the train nearby, dog parking, one of my cats just did a tiny eek sound. All this is taking away my attention as I am here writing.

I will put down something, and it will be forever lost if I don’t put my whole focus on it. I wish I was kidding. I also have a habit of leaving stuff in weird places. Again I wish I was kidding.

If I have to focus longer periods of time, I will get tired and cranky. It uses my brain in a way that it’s not meant to. To me, it’s like sprinting when you are supposed to be having a nice walk. I do also tend to walk or run too fast than it’s comfortable.

I have trouble staying seated or still. I will want to move. Even right now, my feet are rubbing against each other in order for me to keep moving while writing. I cannot sit down without having something to do. When I read for uni studies, I tend to have something in my fingers. I have a few fidget toys and they do help.

I have also a tendency to buy things when I don’t need them, just because they are pretty. I am lucky that I have a very strong sense of not buying more than I can afford, but not everyone is as lucky as I am. Dept and money problems are often part of ADHD. It doesn’t help that seeing the big picture over longer periods of time is not easy. We tend to be quite here and now creatures so the end of the month can seem a very long way away.

I hate waiting. I want things to happen here and now. One reason is that I’m impatient, but also because I will forget in the future. When I have medical appointments, I have two reminders. One for the day before, and the other an hour before I need to leave. I would be absolutely lost without my phone.

There are some things that are heavily linked to ADHD that I do struggle with. The first one is emotions. The prefrontal cortex is a big part in control and this is the part that doesn’t work like neuronormal people prefrontal cortex works and it can be measured in fMRI. It controls our behaviour, which stimuli is important, emotional response, thoughts. Some people describe it as a secretary that handles all incoming information and forwards the important to the boss, the brain. With ADHD, this secretary quit. They are not there so everything is coming full force to the brain. Because this control centre is not working full time, emotions can run amok a bit. I often feel that I get very strong emotions. When I feel happy, I am extremely happy. When I feel sad, I feel like I can never be happy. I am on a constant emotional roller-coaster ride. This is not similar to bipolar, where I understand the emotions run for days, weeks or months. For me, I can feel extreme excitement, joy, sadness and go back to the excitement, in one hour. The emotions are also distractable. The right thing can make me feel best again. And I take rejection very personally. Most of the time it is not real rejection. It’s most of the time perceived rejection or something someone says about my work, my appearance, how I talk. It can be an offhand comment, and I will feel like I am not good enough and I am being rejected.

A lot of us feel like we are not good enough. Mine comes from trying to be as good as neuronormal people. I was trying to keep up in school, at work, in life. I have had many burnouts in my life, mainly in school. I was trying to keep up with other students. I put 150% into my work and I didn’t get good grades. I worked harder than most people in my class and I wasn’t good enough. Even with my diagnosis, I still feel like I need to compete with neuronormals but it’s impossible.

If you are reading this and you do not have ADHD, I hope you can understand us a bit better. If you do have ADHD, I hoped you liked reading it. If you do not have ADHD, but a lot of this rang a bell, I’d suggest taking an online ADHD test and taking it to the doctors and asking for a referral.

Who am I?

As you visit this site regularly, you will start to see some themes. There are a few things that are imporant to me, including the environment, adopt don’t shop, psychology, mental health and my writing.

Psychology is important to me. It even comes up when I’m writing my story. I have hidden quite a bit of psychology in my story. It comes in ideas of 54321 method for example. I am a psychology student in university. I can’t help it.

This blog will be in two parts. One of them will be a more personal blog with my thoughts and ideas. The other part is about my writing. It will include what I have struggled with, what was easy and short stories.

A fw things about me that you might find interesting!

  • I have four autoimmune diseases, which include t1 diabetes, hashimoto’s and coeliac
  • I have two cats but I would love to get a dog or two
  • Like I said, I am studying psychology, but this isn’t my first time in uni
  • I have previously studied English philology in university
  • I am not native English speaker. I am a native Finnish speaker!
  • I have always wanted to learn how to play cello