The world doles out many defeats to the ADD adult, perhaps more than can be counted.
ADD adults often dole out even more defeats to themselves.
Life with ADD is an unending parade of challenges, but often we set ourselves up to fail. It’s not as simple as overreaching, biting off more than we can chew; we do plenty of that, of course, but the problem goes much deeper. Many times, we set out in pursuit of some success that’s important to our career or to us personally, then sabotage our own efforts unconsciously, because in the back of our minds we feel we don’t deserve to achieve our goal.
We get within reach of our goal and talk ourselves out of grasping it. We can’t get there; we can’t do it.
We’re not good enough.
This kind of thinking has always been with us. The world has always sent us this negative message, back to early childhood – and we’ve been echoing it. Over the years, we develop a new voice – a voice that reflects our growing confidence, as we push back and achieve and hyperfocus our way to real competence and accomplishment – but even so, the two voices exist in our heads at once, often generating discord.
ADHD coach June Silny:
“I teeter daily between self-confidence and self-doubt; never sure which will win. Some days, I jump into unknown situations with a confidence and clarity that shock even me. But inside a little voice is always telling me I’m just a child, an impostor of a grown-up. That negative self-talk can nag me for days, taunting me to push myself harder to prove myself. And I usually succeed. But, it’s exhausting and painful to reclaim my confidence again after that monster called self-doubt begins shouting, ‘Who do you think you are? You’re getting in over your head. Stop pretending to be someone you’re not.’”
If an ADHD coach still struggles with these two voices, what hope do we have?
For myself, I have to say that despite my confidence in my abilities today, which is pretty high, I do still hear that negative voice, pushing me to quit, to move on, to abandon my best efforts. Even when my confident voice wins, it’s exhausting.
Here’s where it’s not only a good idea to share with a partner or friend that the second voice is there inside us, but that we could use a hand in drowning it out:
“Something you should know about me is that I sometimes shoot myself in the foot! I know we all do that sometimes, but I seem to do it more than most. There are times when I’m trying to get something done, and I kind of give up on myself. I stop believing I can do it. If you see something like that happening, a word of encouragement would be welcome! I know I need to develop the self-encouragement to shut down that giving-up thing altogether, but until I do, your support is a big help!”
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