The Brick Wall

I’m not sure if I’ve made this point clear yet, but it doesn’t matter if I have ADHD or not.

I mean, the questions psychiatrists ask to snag a diagnosis are borderline criminal. They are worded as broad and vague as possible, probably by design to sell more stimulants.

For example, number 21 on the adult test was:

I have blood relatives who suffer from ADHD, another neurological disorder, or substance abuse.

I’m sorry, but your great uncle’s substance abuse problems should have no bearing at all on your diagnosis. Like I said, these questions are about as unscientific as science can get.

So, yeah. None of that matters. What does matter is that I have some of the symptoms. I can’t deny it.

Look, I don’t want to be labeled. And I certainly don’t want to feel like a victim. But it is what it is. I have some of the symptoms. And I imagine some of you do, too, ADHD or no. I’ve been managing these symptoms since I was a child. That’s another part of the point I was trying to make. I would guess these symptoms are common among procrastinators like myself, but they are manageable. Without meds. Without therapy. Without a silly label diagnosis.

Procrastinators like myself can improve. We can make better results for ourselves.

We just have to deal with our obstacles, like the hurdles I was talking about in my previous post.

In my line of work, I have to call doctors and communicate with them about their software. I get nervous every time I need to make an outbound call even though I’ve been doing this kind of work for twenty years. I also get nervous before a speech, a presentation, or before an important meeting. It’s a bit like stage fright.

But “nervous” is too simple a word for what I deal with. And “fright” doesn’t quite fit the bill, either. “Nervous” is just what I tell people who wonder why I’m taking so much time to mentally prepare myself for the thing I have to do.

THE WALL

Between myself and starting the task-at-hand stands a brick wall. This is known in ADHD circles as the “Wall of Awful”. It’s built of my past failures, and so much more.

I’m excellent at phone communication, but a brick wall stands in my way regardless, constructed of my past failures.

More bricks get added every time I fail or get yelled at, or disappoint someone. This adds worry, which adds “worry bricks”. There are also disappointment bricks that pile up because I’m disappointed in myself for failing in the first place. I also get a brick every time a colleague or manager is disappointed in me. Even if I so much as think someone might be disappointed in me (even if they aren’t), I also get a brick, accompanied by another worry brick. It’s easy to see how quickly these bricks add up. And this wall can stand as a barrier to even a simple phone call. It’s an emotional barrier, but a barrier all the same. And it’s in my way.

Everyone has this wall to a certain extent. But for folks like me, it tends to grow … intimidatingly large, to dizzying heights. Still, I know the only way to perform the task I want to achieve is to deal with the wall in front of me.

Trouble is, I can’t just go around the wall … because it’s infinitely wide. There are no holes or cracks in it, either.

I might see the wall, stand in its shadow, get intimated, and walk away (which adds yet another disappointment brick).

Other times, I might spend too much time staring at the wall, and the day eventually gets away from me (more bricks added yet again, but procrastination also creates more urgency to get it done).

Alternatively, I can get really mad and smash through the wall. But this isn’t healthy because I have to bottle up a lot of anger and frustration about myself and my inability to do the thing before I can release that anger and break through. A lot of self-flagellation is involved, which hurts my self-esteem. And, let me tell you, it takes a lot of anger to smash through these bricks.

I’ve mentioned previously that anger and frustration help me overcome my procrastination tendencies, but it only works every once in a while. It doesn’t help me get my book done in a timely manner. There’s…a reason one of my thumbnails showed a depiction of Hulk writing.

Worse, it can make me feel so frustrated, I lash out at others because I’m mad at myself for my own failures. “Fine! I’ll do the thing!” I try really hard to keep this in check, and haven’t done it in years. The way I figure, it’s better to Hulk Smash inwardly than outwardly, even though inward does result in emotional self-harm.

It’s why, even in this blog, I’ve asked myself questions like WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME???

So, yeah. Hulk Smash isn’t healthy. After the dust settles, I’ve done the task, but the wall rises again, strong as ever, ready to impede my progress the next time.

I can’t go around or under it (flight). I shouldn’t go through it (fight). And I shouldn’t dawdle until it’s crisis time (freeze). That leaves only one other option: climbing over it (confront).

The problem is, the wall before me is invisible. So if a manager sees me climbing my wall, to them it looks like I’m just staring at the task, shirking my duties while, in reality, there’s a lot of emotional work going on inside me. I’m preparing myself to overcome that hurdle. I’m taking deep breaths. I’m making the worry melt away. I’m convincing myself that, even though I’ve failed in the past, I’ve had a lot more successes than failures lately, and that I’ve learned from the past and can handle this.

A great example of climbing the Wall of Awful is when a child gets home from school and sits down at the kitchen table to do his homework. But he’s kind of staring at his backpack instead of removing his books and papers like he needs to do. Dad notices the delay, and it gets under his skin. Twenty minutes pass. Dad unzips the backpack and slams down the notebook and pencil in front of the kid. “There! Was that so hard? Do your damn homework!”

If that child was anything like me, they were climbing their wall. Interrupting that process with more disappointment and failure from the parent not only adds bricks to their wall, it will either result in the kid Hulk Smashing (lashing out at their parent in anger), or they will get quiet and retreat inwardly, left feeling even more awful inside as the wall grows taller than ever before.

So why such a reaction? The father throwing the work in front of them is like saying, “Get to the other side of the wall and do the thing right now!”

The only option for the child to get to the other side–right now–is to smash through the wall. And, as I said before, the only ways to smash through is with anger, either inwardly or outwardly.

Anyway, I climb my wall, make the phone call, and … it goes great. But, even so, I feel an immense amount of relief when the call goes to voicemail, or the person on the other end says the issue is already resolved. 999 times out of 1,000, the call goes well, but that wall won’t go away and still harbors my past failures, haunting me.

(Not that voicemails didn’t also used to be a struggle for me. Since they’re so sudden, I would often “freeze”, then stumble like an idiot through the recording. Thankfully, those awkward years of my life are over.)

Now, imagine how worked up I get before a job interview, or a performance review with my manager.

That’s enough about The Wall. I’ll talk about what lays beyond it tomorrow.