Being in my thirties one would expect a certain amount of maturity whilst navigating the many curveballs life can throw. Emotions are so extremely varied across humans as we make sense of the world around us and react accordingly based on our cognitive assessments, subjective experiences and memories. Generally though, our emotional responses are aligned with societal norms and people tone-down their outward emotions and control expressions to fit in with this.
Before my diagnosis, my understanding of ADHD was naively reflected in the belief that having an intense, disruptive attitude growing up was a core component. You hear the weightless remarks about ADHD, hyperactivity, the word Ritalin being thrown around casually and without any further research it might form the bulk of what you understand, like it did with me. In reality, those components are spotlighted because they go against the unspoken social expectations and stick out like a sore thumb as a result.
Despite my age I’ve never thought of myself as a mature person, and before my diagnosis I struggled to figure out why I frequently ended up a hopeless passenger to my emotional drives. It carries a lot of weight given the unfavourable impression it can have on friends, family, colleagues, even strangers. Part of masking on a daily basis is crafting a portrayal of someone who is level-headed and responds to triggers in the same, proportionate manner expected within society. Unfortunately, the reality is quite different.
One thing I’ve noticed about myself over the years is that, despite trying to suppress it, I care too much about what people think of me. It’s a bit of a crutch in that I feel like many of my actions and behaviours in life are predicated on what people would think rather than ensuring they align with my goals. It magnifies both ends of my struggles with emotional regulation; I try even harder to portray myself as an ordinary person and I experience seismic levels of shame when that disguise is inadvertently breached.
As I grew up, my behaviour wasn’t scaffolded by self-awareness or worry about social perception so it’s fair to say my behaviour was a lot more on the raw side. I fought a lot during school, sometimes over trivial reasons but the resulting anger that washed over me was intense. I verbally lashed out at adults and teachers, many of which described me as hot-headed and reactive. One person in my estate gave me a dressing down for making noise outside his house on the way to school and I decided to launch the yoghurt in my packed lunch at his living room window on most mornings for a few weeks in retaliation.
As I navigated through my teenage years the awareness of how I looked in the eyes of others began seeping through. There was suddenly this divide, where I would ride the wave of emotional intensity one minute but become quieter and more withdrawn the next. The fighting didn’t let up in secondary school either and a lack of frustration tolerance became a big aggravator of my reactive personality as I struggled to deal with stressors in school, home-life and the need to craft somewhat of an identity for myself.
I noticed I could be very easily frustrated at situations where many people, although unsettled, are able to process and brush off. The scope of this varies so much, whether it was during a conversation with a friend or studying I would find myself stewing over little things that were trivial in the bigger picture. As an example, doing an assignment at university was always a difficult task as I struggled to find the motivation and discipline to commit to the assignment in my spare time. On the rare occasions I could sit down and apply some focus I would frequently become agitated if I couldn’t wrap my head around a concept, an argument etc. To regulate my emotional response I could take a break, do a breathing exercise, try and break down the stressor or come at it from a different angle. Instead, my thoughts would escalate so that within no time at all they had snowballed into something much bigger:
“This is stressing me out!”
But I don’t take a break and instead subject myself to the same trigger, so 5 minutes later:
“Why can’t I understand this?”
5 minutes after that:
“Nobody else is struggling on this, so why am I?”
At this point, I’m not utilising any coping strategies and instead subjecting myself to an emotional spiral:
“What’s the fucking point of doing this stupid degree if I can’t comprehend a basic thing. I’m an absolute failure; I can’t do anything right!”
I can’t regulate, I can’t cope, and I find it incredibly difficult to steer myself away from it until it’s too late. So, at that point, I might take a break. It’s not to recharge and regroup like many people would but to stop myself bubbling over because I reached my capacity to cope in all of 15 minutes with not a word on my assignment typed up. Throw in a documented lack of foresight within ADHD and it pushes the possibility of me being able to put on the brakes when it happens again even further away.
It’s fair to say I can be sensitive to setbacks and problems. It means I’ve frequently given up when a problem arises and will over-exaggerate the intensity of it instead of digging deep to find a solution. It can lead to stagnation in jobs where I hit a wall with a certain task or project and it knocks me sideways. As the stress and overwhelm increase I become far less equipped mentally to move forward with what I’m doing. I can’t remember how many times a colleague has helped with something, the solution to which was right in front of me and I have to sheepishly say thank you whilst being filled with shame and thinking I’ve made a fool of myself.
It can lead to difficulties at home too as I fight a losing battle with personal projects and goals. I wrote in my first blog post about the obstacles I’ve faced of my own doing and how they lead to me dropping things I worked quite hard on, especially when juggling the scrutiny of people’s expectations. The book I mentioned in that post is a good example, as I spent too much time worrying that people wouldn’t like it and it ultimately formed part of the reasoning why I stopped writing after 45,000 words. I look back and realise how foolish that way of thinking was, but the damage was done in that I binned the idea off and it no longer provides me with enough stimulation to return to it. Perfectionism is often an aggravator of heightened emotional responses when It clashes with my perceived reality of being imperfect, incompetent and unable.
Perhaps one of the biggest ways my struggle with emotional regulation could be seen involves my interactions with people around me in day-to-day life. Mood swings, sharp tones and harsh words have been frequent sources of anguish, whether it’s dealing with customer services for organisations or prickly responses to my partner over trivial things. One of the important things is that I feel I’m good at recognising it, but it’s never early enough to catch and address the feeling and so it continues to exert a huge influence over my reactions in day-to-day life. The ill-timing of my realisation also means I’m often apologising rather than suppressing the response before it happens, something which I’m continuing to work on as a person.
It’s not a straightforward journey to change something that happens in a split second and before a logic-infused prefrontal cortex is able to catch up. It’s no surprise that emotional dysregulation and impulsivity go hand in hand, both in their process of activation within an ADHD brain and their presentation in our daily lives.
I talked about driving in a previous blog post around impulsivity and it’s worth bringing it to this entry too. Whilst the acts are impulsive in nature they stem from a heightened emotional response to a trigger. Without the context of an ADHD diagnosis I believed my aggressive and hostile reactions were a result of a deep hatred of, as I put it, being taken for a mug. I’ve slammed my brakes on to people that were that far up my arse they saw what I had for breakfast that morning. I’ve also reacted with similar aggression when people have cut me up or pulled out in front of me but have laughed or attempted to be antagonising over it. Emotional reactions can be unpredictable in that two situations in life that are quite similar trigger quite different responses. Driving, on the other hand, was consistent in its impact on me over the years until I began medication and witnessed a remarkable change.
Having difficulties constantly regulating emotional responses isn’t pleasant. As a person becomes older, expectations become more rigid in terms of how they “should” conduct themselves and high-intensity reactions will clash harder with these expectations as a result. It might explain why the past five or so years have coincided with the deepest feelings of shame and regret when such reactions happen. I can become short, abrupt, even moody within a moment’s notice and my partner recognises this quite well in our relationship. Sometimes I’m able to intercept a reaction that could frustrate or even upset her, but it’s far from perfect.
I think work is an area where I’m able to be a bit more composed. A structured environment with more social rules and an inclination to mask the more disruptive side of my ADHD means I can act in a more controlled way that’s mindful of the opinions of others. I recognise there’s a boiling point though, and actions such as resigning from my job four years ago by being critical of my line manager and copying her bosses in a scathing resignation email serve as a reminder that this part of my ADHD doesn’t go away so easily.
And honestly? I stew on that thought a lot. I don’t want to be known as the bloke in his thirties who can’t keep his emotions in check in his personal and professional life. One of the knock-on effects on me being so emotionally charged at times is the unhealthy coping mechanisms I’ve turned to in a desperate attempt to regulate myself. Escapism can be a healthy tool for anybody if they have the right relationship with it, but when it results in me walking somewhat blindfolded into my own cesspit of overindulgence it runs the risk of compounding my emotional state even further.
Mechanisms such as overeating, binge drinking and a 10 year-gambling addiction have all played their part in resetting my emotional tolerance but unintentionally making it worse too. Whilst I no longer gamble, the temptation to order a takeaway or buy a bottle of Jack Daniels as soon as a little adversity appears on the horizon is immense and I often scoff at any reasonable suggestion at a healthy alternative.
In my 2nd blog post – Reflecting on a Late Diagnosis – I talked about feelings of being lazy when pondering certain struggles in life. Whilst I wasn’t aware of having ADHD for most of my life, I’ve long been aware of so many of my indiscretions and the impact it can have on myself and others around me, even without the context of a disorder underpinning it. I often wished for change, but it never happened and I berated myself repeatedly when the same patterns, feelings and reactions continued to resurface and I felt almost powerless to break those cycles. Projecting that charged response outward boomeranged self-hatred right back at me after and I didn’t know what to do to change it.
Fortunately, medication has seen measured improvement in how I process and react to emotional triggers which will be discussed in more detail in future posts. More importantly, being mindful of my emotions where possible and motivated to make sustainable changes to how I regulate myself will put me in a better place to effectively manage what is a major part of my ADHD. It’s not easy and it’s definitely not perfect, but having awareness of the issue is a fundamental step into making long-term change.