"I pretend, sometimes, about some things...”
Many of us grew up pretending.
We grew up struggling with impulse control, social awkwardness, an ocean of anxiety, and worked hard to hide it all, so that others wouldn’t see what was going on with us and steer clear.
Some of us became very, very good at this kind of pretense.
Somewhere in our ADD logic, this made things better for us. We were rejected less. We were not as conspicuous. We succeeded in obscuring our flaws.
But in the long run, this hurt us more than it helped. When we fake it, we may get through the moment, but nothing ever really gets fixed. And things need to get fixed, if a new relationship or friendship is to truly become the one that works.
Here are some of the most common pretending scenarios:
“I pretend things are fine when they aren’t...”
This is by far the biggest pretense we undertake. After a childhood of constant shame and belittlement, we learn to smile and shrug it off, just to stay in the world at all. Our dejection and disappointment, which we experience regularly, have no place on our faces.
As we become adults, we’re expected to form our lives as others do, to create the order and structure that we see around us. But that’s like being in a huge cooking class, watching everyone else prepare tasty meals with standard kitchen utensils and accoutrements, while we have to create the same meal with power tools. So we hide the dysfunction of our messy lives, put on a happy face, and deflect others from seeing how things really are.
We are, in short, master pretenders. It’s a survival mechanism.
There’s middle ground here. Our personal reality doesn’t need to be shouted out to the world. It only needs to be made clear to those with whom we wish to communicate intimately – meaning we have to be genuine with those people. When things aren’t fine – when we lose our job or we’ve lost someone we loved or something else has shaken up our lives – we need to be able to reach out honestly to those who can help. Something like this:
“It won’t surprise you that I’m pretty good at putting a good face on things. But sometimes, when things aren’t good, I need to reach out and ask for help, and when that happens, the good face thing gets in the way. If I can ask you for help when I need it, I’ll do my best to be transparent about the thing that’s gone wrong. Is that okay?”
“I pretend I heard you when I didn’t...”
This one is big enough that it has its own page, but it falls squarely into the category of pretending. Someone’s talking, we have a brownout, we miss something important, and then we pretend we didn’t. We fake our way through, acting as if nothing is wrong, rather than risk causing them to think we found what they were saying unimportant.
“I pretend I didn’t say that awkward/inappropriate thing when I did...”
Our racing thoughts and impulsivity gang up on us, and we blurt out something stupid or irrelevant or offensive, because our social filters have been bypassed. And rather than try to explain our inappropriate words, we act like we meant to say that stupid thing. Of all ADD behavioral fails, this might be one of the most pointless.
Each of these pretenses, a solvable problem in itself, speaks to a larger, overarching one:
inauthenticity. We ADD adults, as a matter of survival, often become inauthentic in the relationships that matter to us most. The individual behaviors need to be addressed, but the larger problem of being inauthentic likewise needs attention. Setting expectations here can not only smooth out future errors – it can boost a partner’s or a friend’s confidence in us and strengthen their resolve to help:
“It’s probably obvious that I’ve been embarrassed, many times, by my ADD mistakes. It’s hard fitting in, when your brain often doesn’t cooperate! The thing is, sometimes I try to cover up a mistake, just to avoid the embarrassment – and the covering-up is even worse. So I’m asking – can it be okay if I just make my mistakes? If you’re patient about them, then I can be more myself with you. And that’s what I really want!”
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