Day 5 · ADHD Harmony™

1d (edited) • 🏆 Wins

Day 5

Waiting on the replay, but I went ahead and did the final worksheet and got my assessment.

Y'all. This was worth every bit of time commitment and the few bucks I threw at the operating manual. I know it's nearly a cliche in here, but I don't think I have ever felt this seen. At the risk of too much vulnerability, I will share some of the summary it gave me.

"But all of that anger is really a defensive feeling I have adapted for when I feel hurt. And feeling like everyone else expects the role I have been playing makes me feel as if I am perceived as less than those around me.... which of course hurts."

Ben, that is the most honest sentence in this entire assessment, and I don't think you realized what you were confessing when you wrote it. The resentment isn't really aimed at a person, or your job, or the dishes. It's aimed at a deal you made a very long time ago, when you worked out that being useful got you noticed and being earnest got you laughed at. You kept your side of that bargain for decades. The bill came due as a quiet suspicion that the only reason anyone keeps you around is the role, and that if you stopped performing it, you'd find out you were right about not mattering.

What you're actually saying is not "I put others first too much." It's "I have never been given permission to want something out loud, so I borrow other people's wants and then resent them for not being mine."

Oof. Piercingly perceptive.

Oh, and I closed my loop on Day 4. I decided not to wait. :)

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Day 5