I know I launched this website with the ambition of writing about a wide range of different themes and subjects – but here I am again, sitting at my laptop to write about ADHD…
This time I want to write about ‘procrastination’ – or, as I tend to call it, ‘Buffering Mode’…the times (the many, MANY times) when I’ve got pressing demands on my time, things I need to achieve, work to submit, projects to complete, deadlines – and instead of just getting on with them I’m faffing about doing twenty other (pointless and unhelpful) things OR doom scrolling on my phone or lying in my bed, looking like I’m just being lazy and opting out.
I can’t tell you how many times this has enraged and frustrated people around me. Teachers, tutors, employers, clients, family, friends, and – above all – myself. Because I know what it looks like. I know how irritating it is to ask something of a person and be let down – again – by their apparent disregard or disrespect. By them just not delivering what they said they would.
I know that this ADHD paralysis looks like a choice. That “why can’t you just do the thing?” seems so simple – and that it’s basically impossible to explain to those who don’t live with it themselves.
If there were a physical disability, something people could actually see, impacting someone’s time or ability to Just Do The Thing, it would be easier to understand – and to support or empathise with. It would at least make it less frustrating, because even if it’s inconvenient, it’s obvious that there’s a reason for the failure…but when the disability is your own brain, and there are no words that effectively explain what’s happening, it just looks like laziness. Like opting out. Like giving up. Like not caring. Like failure.
Trust me; if there were a system that consistently helped, we’d all be using it – and there are countless options available that DO help others (those without ADHD, or with great support systems…) – but I’ve invested in THOUSANDS of different tools, technologies, diaries, planners, systems, electronic programmes and all the rest – and though many do help in the short term, none can change who I fundamentally am, or that I have ADHD, which requires constant, consistent and variable methods of support in order to make me do anything like a convincing impression of A Functional Adult Woman.
I have looked and looked for resources that adequately explain what’s happening inside me. What’s happening TO me, when I look like I’m just lying down and opting to fail at Just Doing The Thing. I have seen tens of thousands of similar experiences from people with ADHD, in books, on TikTok, in blogs and all over the web – and though I can see lots of shared experiences, I have yet to find that one magic answer that will FIX IT.
I am medicated – and that does help, enormously – in that I have more capacity to function, and to complete tasks (or at least to start more of them than previously…) but my biggest takeaway from the meds is that they are still just one small factor, and require a range of other systems, tools and avenues to support in order to actually help consistently.
For the most part, when I’ve taken them, I find that I have more ability to Do A Thing – and more capacity to Finish The Thing I Did – but I still don’t always have much say in where that capacity is spent…for example, the first two weeks of being on elvanse, I was waking earlier, and had more energy, but rather than getting more work done I was…ironing?
IRONING.
Who is she?!
Thankfully that disturbing period passed, and ironing slipped back to being something I do on very rare occasions, if it absolutely cannot be avoided (apologies to my children and their uniforms…) but though I do feel like I get more done now, I still very much feel like I’m failing and dropping more balls than I’m juggling effectively.
This is especially true if there is any kind of stress or anxiety linked to The Thing That Needs To Be Done (deadlines, medical appointments, money issues, phone calls…) and the more Things I have on my list of Must Be Done, the more likely it is that I will simply shut down.
It’s like my brain becomes overloaded and just makes the Windows bing-bong noises of nope, and turns me off. Like a broken automaton. Big feelings? Stressful activity? Let’s not about that…
It is AWFUL. I find myself lying on a bed, or sitting at my desk, with my phone in my hand, flipping between the same few apps, playing Farm Heroes Saga, watching TikToks, ignoring notifications, and outwardly look like I’m just not doing anything – but inside my own mind it is a cacophony of screaming.
Apparently there are some people who don’t have an internal voice narrating their movements – which is baffling to me; I wish all I had was one calm voice, narrating like Morgan Freeman, making my mundane life sound somehow more poetic – but what I have is a bellowing, shrill chorus of dozens of voices, all listing the things I should be doing right now, reminding me to stop being so shit, listing my many previous failings, and that nobody could possibly love or even tolerate me when I continue to BE SHIT.
When my body is still the noise inside is deafening. Constant. A fizzing, electrical buzz of stress and anger, and – the longer it goes on – loathing. I am so angry with myself for not just doing what I know I should be. For not just putting my phone down, picking up what I’m meant to be focused on, and DOING THE FUCKING THING…but it’s as if I’m disconnected from my own flesh. From my own thoughts. From any access to the FUNCTION I need.
I call it buffering because that’s what it feels like; like I’ve hit the ‘do the thing’ button, but the signal between that thought and the physical act of DOING the thing is missing, and I have to wait for some invisible, mysterious connection to land.
Did you ever watch the bouncing logo of a DVD screen saver? Did you watch it bouncing, not quite randomly, until it hit the exact corner of the screen?
That’s what it’s like; the ‘go and do it’ capacity is there, bouncing around inside the screen saver of my functional brain, and I can’t DO the thing until the stupid bloody capacity logo hits the precise corner of my noisy mind. I can sometimes override it, and force action, under duress – but the capacity that takes is far more than was actually available, so overriding results in then being unable to do any OTHER things, because my brain insists that We Have Done A Thing, and that is that.
If you don’t have ADHD you can’t possibly understand what it’s actually like, living inside a mind that betrays you so often, and what the nauseating, endless pressure of knowing you’re doing it again brings. There is no choosing in this situation; there is no ‘Just Do The Thing’ option, and it’s impossible to convey to anyone else that I WANT to do it, I’m TRYING to do it, but I…can’t.
I can’t give any reason for why I can’t…I just…can’t?
Getting diagnosed, and researching what ADHD really is, how others experience it, what they do to overcome those difficulties, has been incredible – it’s given me so much understanding of my own mind, of my life, of the mistakes I’ve made (and in many cases continue to make) and it’s given me enormous insight and empathy for those difficulties – but being diagnosed (and being medicated) haven’t magically cured me. I’m not a different person, post diagnosis. I’m just a person who better understands my limitations.
Understanding them doesn’t make them less upsetting. Less frustrating. Less shameful.
Shame is the biggest emotion I’ve felt, most of my life, because even when I know that this is something often outside of my control – something entirely dictated by the way my brain formed and functions – I still carry that internalisation of every criticism I’ve ever faced, the burden of every failure, and the knowledge that when I Do The Things I can do them so brilliantly – but that I’m incredibly inconsistent. Even to myself, I hear “you can do it, so just do it” and “you’ve done it before, do it again” and every time I’ve DONE the things is evidence I can – so surely, if I wanted to, I just…would?
If only.
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