adjusting expectations | ADHD Information
Hi Ursula,
You don't post a lot, do you?
Merry Christmas, btw!
howdy all ;-)
i was raised by 2 alcoholic & undiagnosed (not surprisingly at all, for those days, of course) ADD adults, so let's just say there was a bit of a deficit in the parenting department....
nonetheless, i have always had high and heretofore unmet expectations for myself--even after knowing about my own ADD. i firmly believed in my heart of hearts that i SHOULD: be wildly successful and wealthy; accomplish all sorts of great things; have a clean house; be married with children and be WONDERFUL at both; be thin and beautiful; be fabulously well organized.
i suppose you could say that having been a teacher and a mental health case manager and in currently being someone who works with autistic children, i have "accomplished great things," so ok, that one i'll give myself
the others, well... not so much....
my work with autistic children recently led me to an insight i'd like to share. it is that just as i have to adjust my expectations for those children, i need to adjust my own expectations of myself. i don't fault those wonderful, adorable kids for not being able to talk usually until the age of 5 or later, if at all. i don't fault them for needing to "stim", to do things with their bodies or their voices to help calm themselves. i try to redirect them, but i don't blame them because i know they can't help it; that's how they're wired.
ADD is how i'm wired. that coupled with my afore mentioned "parental deficit" makes certain things a lot harder for me than for people who are wired differently and who were raised with things like emotional support, consistency and CHORES!
all this to say that i think it's unrealistic of me to expect myself to have a clean house without help 
i have decided to view myself as a BEGINNER at this whole thing (can't afford coaching or professional organizing or a cleaning person and i'm uninsured so i can't afford meds either) and give myself 2 simple chores to start with.... and let that be ok. so for a couple of days i did them and i looked in the mirror and told myself: "GOOD JOB!!!" and meant it for a change... as opposed to "good job for a loser like me"....
anyhow, i think all i've posted before this is a hello, so welcome to my world and thanks for listening 
~~Ursula~~
good for you!!!i was watching Ray Mears on the TV the other day (i don't know if you have that programme in the States - but i love it). it's all about extreme survival etc.
and there was such an interesting situation where a boat sank and there were two lifeboats so the captain went in the first one with half the passengers and the first mate went in the second one with the rest and they tied the lifeboats together with a long rope and shared out the rations equally.
they were at sea, drifting for five or six weeks before they were rescued - but in the first boat the captain had totally lost any kind of psychiatric control and had given up and in the second boat the first mate and the passengers had kept a strick routine, swabbed out the boat regurlarly to make sure they didn't get salt water ulcers. made sure the rations were perfectly fairly rationed.
when a boat finally found them - the guys in the second life boat were all FINE, they could walk off the lifeboat onto the rescue boat, none of them were ill or even slightly injured. in the first lifeboat the captain had actually died the day before, and not one of the passengers could walk off they all needed intensive care for all the salt water bloatings and swellings and illnesses they had contracted from not eating right and letting the water come in and were seriously critically ill - yet they had had the exact same conditions as the second liferaft just had given up had a hopeless psychological attitude.
so it is ALL psychological - the moment you find the right psychological attitude for you and stop beating yourself up, you'll be flying!
chjones39045.3549305556
Welcome Ursula! With an ADHDer, there are things totally beyond our control but I agree with chjones that a large amount of it is up to us. If we sit around thinking about what we can't do (or haven't been able to do so far), we are severely limiting ourselves.
Remind yourself of what you have accomplished, about the good things about yourself and you will realize that much of that is probably due to having ADHD. You are most likely creative, articulate and fun.
How many times has their been a situation that stumped people and you have suddenly had the answer pop into your head? Things like that happen to me a lot. As a matter of fact, many of our founding fathers had ADHD symptoms and many inventions are the result of ADHDers creative side. Don't sell yourself short.
I agree that learning to keep order in your life makes a huge difference. If we make a habit of putting things away, of keeping a schedule and checking it daily, etc, we are less likely to forget important things. If we keep reminding ourselves how important it is to stay on task and finish what we started, to remember the goal and how important it is, we are more likely to finish. I'm sure you found that out with college. It wasn't as easy for you as it was for friends without ADHD but you did it because you had a goal and knew it was important.
Recognizing that you have it and being willing to do something about it are the first steps in learning to live successfully with it. You've taken that first step. Good for you! 