My laptop has been open to a nearly-blank WordPress screen for a good five minutes now, prompting me silently to “Add title.” Meanwhile, I’ve been staring out the window, elementary-school-style, letting my mind wander. Embracing the random associations without the judgmental undercurrent.
My therapist mentioned in our session last week that ADHD brains tend to be “nonlinear” when it comes to organization, and will have several processes or thoughts happening at once. I was reminded of a video* she’d shown me several months ago, where someone had narrated their inner monologue as they were puttering around their kitchen, complete with overlapping reminders and random thoughts and a constant earworm, and I had felt totally seen.
I feel fortunate that my therapist has a background in ADHD, with both her clients and her family. She picks up what I’m putting down and rearranges it from a different perspective. I suppose that’s what therapists do in general, but having someone who understands how my brain is processing — sometimes better than I do — is huge.
I think that’s one reason why I don’t blog or journal as much as I once did: I no longer feel the urgency to get stuff out of my head and into words to essentially psychoanalyze myself. (Or use CBT, or ACT, or whatever.) Instead, my tendency to write and document and plan gets channeled into my weekly planner spreads, where I do my damnedest to script the critical moves in advance.
My mental health is very much a work in progress… but at least I’m progressing.
* I intentionally didn’t to try to find the ADHD Simulator video until I was sure I was done writing, because I knew if I went down that rabbit-hole, this would never get this posted, and would go into my Drafts folder with all the other blog entries I’ve started and never finished. I found this video first, which is by the same woman but wasn’t the exact video I was thinking of. It’s worth including a link, though, because it captures the frustration I feel when I’m trying to backtrack through all the prerequisites of a single task.