Misdirect Hit

Posted by fxckfeelings on January 10, 2013

Deciding whom to blame for a problem you can’t get a handle on is easy if you follow your instincts, but instincts should also tell you that a decision made based on intuition instead of thought is probably wrong. In reality, you need to look carefully at whether a person is doing his or her best with what’s actually controllable before deciding whether what’s missing is better discipline or better luck. Ignore your instincts, assess the uncontrollable and you’ll come up with helpful and constructive ideas by looking for facts, not blame.
–Dr. Lastname

I’m in college, and my problem is that I have ADD and even when I’m on Ritalin, I get distracted very easily if something about a course is hard to understand. Then I wind up fucking around, doing other things, spending too much time with my boyfriend, and falling behind. After two or three weeks, it’s too hard to catch up and I don’t want anyone to know, so I stop going to class. A few weeks after that, there’s nothing to do but drop the course, which makes me feel like a loser. I had the same problem in high school, but I’ve never found a drug or dose that’s made the problem better. My goal is to find a better medication or a way to try harder so that I don’t get behind in the first place.

There’s no doubt ADD is your problem, but another problem lots of people with ADD develop over the years of experiencing learning as a painful, humiliating process is avoidance. It came from your ADD, but it’s its own problem, and not the kind they make pills for.

A lot of people with ADD get good at lying to themselves and others about what they’re failing to do and what the consequences are going to be. It started as a coping mechanism, but it’s developed into a pain in the ass.

After all, when you get stopped by coursework, you probably tell yourself that you need to relax and loosen up before you can tackle that difficult course again, and then that you’ll do it later, and that there are more important things that need doing, and eventually, you’re sure that it’s just hopeless. In truth, you need a firm schedule, a regularly consulted to-do list, and some extra help, but your brain doesn’t figure that way.

Don’t be ashamed of being a liar, because shame will just make you lie more. Instead, accept the fact that you’ve become gifted at rationalizing avoidant behavior, and take comfort in the fact that you’re not alone. It’s a tough problem, and openness and honesty about the problem are two of your strongest weapons in learning to manage it.

Make it your priority to develop tools for honest management before sending yourself back to an unstructured college situation and asking yourself to do better. Use a lab notebook to track your daily performance, from getting up at a chosen time, getting to work on time, making and updating a to-do list, etc. At the end of each week, score your performance for each task, figure out where your weaknesses are and where/if you need help in certain areas, report to your coach, and think of ways to do better.

Medication will help you get your work done once you have avoidance under control, but not before. If you wait for your motivation to improve or try to motivate yourself with fear or criticism, you will be less effective as self-coach and manager. Instead, make sure that your system for self-monitoring daily performance is so simple and fact-based that you can’t wriggle, slide, or bullshit your way around it.

For now, stop trying to boost your performance of tasks you can’t help avoiding and start making avoidance your top priority. Then develop new habits and strengths that you can rely on so you get your medication to work correctly and get all your own work done.

STATEMENT:
“I’m ashamed, as usual, for not having done my homework, lying about it, not getting extra help, and blowing my tuition money, all of which makes me want to tell people I’ll do better next time and please leave me alone. I know, however, that I need to gain control over a bad avoidance habit that afflicts many good people with ADD and that I can best gain control by respecting its power, setting specific behavioral goals for accomplishing top priority tasks, and reporting my daily progress to myself and others with honesty.”

I’m very worried about the way my marriage has gone downhill since I got pregnant. My husband and I used to get along pretty well, but the pregnancy has been hard on me, and the more trouble I have with depression and nausea, the more upset he seems to be that I can’t snap out of it. Then I get upset that he’s not more supportive, and he acts like I’m a whiny bitch, and I think he’s a heartless jerk. We’re about to have a baby, and we really can’t get along or clear the air. My goal is to figure out what’s gone wrong with us.

When you’re depressed and nauseous, it’s nice to have someone around to be cranky with, like a parent or husband. Ideally, family will tolerate you when you’re pissy; nothing makes one feel loved and at home like having someone tolerate and understand you when you’re unwillingly being a hateful monster.

Compared with parents, however, husbands are more likely to target you with their own needs and feel like personal failures if they can’t make you happy. The result of this unfortunate, normal marital interaction is that husbands who are most devoted to making their wives happy are most vulnerable to becoming unhinged when they can’t, and turn their marriage into a magnifier of pain instead of a source of support. As with the person above, your blame is misdirected; the problem isn’t your marriage, but your hormones and his reaction to them.

Regardless of your right to feel supported, loved, and tolerated, many men can’t stand to feel helpless, so the more you share your disappointment, the more likely you are to be convinced you’ve married an asshole—when, in reality, he may not be so bad.

Assume for the moment that you didn’t make a horrible mistake and that his insensitivity doesn’t mean he’s cold and vindictive, just helpless and blaming. Then, instead of telling him how you feel about his so-called help, let him know that you’re basically happy about being pregnant and confident that the two of you are going to get through it and be great parents. Tell him that your failure to glow with anticipation and happiness has nothing to do with your feelings about him as a partner or your hopes for your family (and then excuse yourself to go throw up).

Then let him know what you want him to do, like be around, get you things, and hear you complain without getting negative. If he can do those things, he’s a great man. Unfortunately, you man not be able to reward him with a smile or a kiss—that’s just not the state of mind you’re in—but you’ll go through a lot more pain in order to eventually reward him with an offspring, so there are reasons for him to suck it up.

If he overreacts to your mood, and you overreact to his, and the two of you start to share your feelings, you’ll have a miserable fight that will cause you both to doubt yourselves and one another—an all too normal occurrence, but an unnecessary one.

If you can remember why you married him and keep your statements positive even when your mood is not, you’ll get more support, protect your and your husband’s faith in your partnership, and be a stronger unit as you face raising the child, which is the true test of a marriage, as well as one’s sanity.

STATEMENT:
“I feel like being around my husband makes my unhappiness and nausea worse and that he wants nothing more than to avoid me, but I know how bad feelings can cause doubting thoughts if we aren’t careful to stop them. I know we have a good plan and partnership and that things are basically going well. I will not let my or his feelings change my views or shake my confidence.”