25. EVERYTHING YOU DO IS SOMETHING DONE

I was cleaning my bedroom. 

Some people keep their rooms clean all the time. Some don't. Some of us push it to the point that the little angels of conscience that sit on our shoulders float up the our ears and shout "Do something!" Then our eyes are painfully opened and we see the mess we are living in. This pulls us from our typical state of denial.

On this particular afternoon I was forcing myself to deal with the chaotic mess, tiptoeing around the feeling of overwhelm by distracting my brain with the comforting noise of the TV  in the background. I was in the process of dissecting one pile and turning it into three piles when I noticed that Oprah's guest that day was Dr. Daniel Amen, a renowned psychiatrist who specialized in how the brain works, especially the prefrontal cortex. This particular show was focused on adults being diagnosed with ADD - Attention Deficit Disorder. He offered a short test for the audience to see if they might have ADD. The test began with: "How do you clean your room?"

"Do you feel overwhelmed when you clean your room? "

Check.

"When you pick up one thing and go to put it away, do you notice something else, set the first item down, and pick up the something else, repeating the process until you have a bigger mess than you started with?"

Check.

"Are you easily distracted by sounds or smells or noises and have a hard time focusing on the task at hand?"

Check.

I ended up sitting on the edge of my unmade bed watching Oprah and Dr. Amen reveal myself to the whole world.

Not long after, I saw in the paper that Dr. Amen was coming to Salt Lake City and speaking at a conference. They published the date, place and time at a hotel in SLC, so I drove down and walked in to listen. He asked us each to introduce ourselves. Everyone else there was a psychologist, psychiatrist, counselor or therapist. I had not realized this was probably not a public forum, but they let me in anyway. I won't go into much detail, only to say it became clear that I was probably, indeed, owner of an attention deficit brain. Later it was confirmed by my MD. I've learned to see it as a blurse, a superpower and a struggle in one package.

I wish I had known as a young person that this was the way my brain worked. I would have been so much more kind to myself. I had not understood that ADHD did not always mean you were bouncing off the walls hyper, or that you could not focus on anything. I could actually sit for many hours and focus on writing on a song, taking a break only when nature called. And it took considerable self-talk to get my lethargic flesh moving, so no-one would describe me as hyper. It was new information to me that the ability to hyper focus is one way to explain the H in ADHD.

That D on the end of ADHD is a capital D in bold print for DISORDER. We end up with disorder because of our disorder. To be honest, in the process of creating whatever we're creating, it actually feels like we are creating order. Only after the dopamine has worn off are we left with what looks like disorder, and by then we are usually on to some other potentially exciting project. Raise your hand if you know what I mean.

Anyway, because in our little immediate family of six people, five of us are blursed with neurodivergent brains, more specifically ADHD, I found these words to be helpful in getting through overwhelm:

EVERYTHING YOU DO IS SOMETHING DONE.

When I am swimming in too many "to do's" I start repeating this to myself, sometimes out loud. I walk into the space that overwhelms me and repeat the mantra. Then my hands touch something and I am in motion." Just pick up one stray book and put it in the bookshelf, Cori." And that's what I do. Then I tell my hands to touch something else and put it where it belongs.  Don't overanalyze, just move. For us project oriented people, this is not natural. We want to make a plan and move in when we have a sense of outcome. But my kids and I have discovered that sometimes the best way to get anything done is to just do SOMETHING! It all needs to be done eventually anyway. 

So there ya go, our ADD  mantra is to just do one thing. One small thing. Cuz, while it may not ALL be done, at least SOMETHING will be done. And I've found I hate myself less when I do something.

(p.s. I don't really hate myself. I don't understand myself. Raise your hand if you know what I mean.)