Exerpt from email to my pdoc: long post

Proceed with caution, it's a long post.

My pdoc was cool enough to give me his email address so I could send all the pent up stuff I've been needing to talk about. I haven't had a doctor or therapist to tell all this stuff to.

I've been coming and going around here for a while. I think it's high time I posted some of my story. The kind people I've known here really know little about me. It's really long so I'll cut it down. It's also incomplete so I'm going to add it and find some place to post the whole thing for the interested person to view.

This doc has diagnosed me with Adult ADHD and it seems to explain a lot. So, phew. I'm not sure about this, I'm scared of what everyone will think, but I feel the need to share this:

So here's where I am now:
I'm having all sorts of morbid and aggressive thoughts. I'm failing at my job so instead of returning to my previous position I want to quit and move somewhere that nobody knows me and hide from everyone. From the moment I was hired I worked hard and behaved like it was a forgone conclusion I would someday be promoted to trainer. It's crushingly embarrassing and humiliating that 3 of the 4 people hired after me are now permanent trainers and I'm still in the lesser role.

I'm afraid I just can't do the job but I don't want to admit if I still have to work around these people. I've already told the head of the department that around the rest of the team I feel like a mentally challenged kid allowed in the room because, oh he does try so hard, bless him.

At the moment, fighting the urge to run hurts deeply. I have a strong urge to tell people off and to start fights. I've never explicitly self-injured but I believe my inability to quit smoking weed is similar. I know it doesn't produce physical dependence so my inability to stop is down to motivation.

I find it hard to care about much of anything right now other that what other people are thinking about me, none of it good. Basically I've run out of the energy to cope. Again. I feel I've failed at my last chance to make something of myself before I'm 65, poor, never having done any of the things I constantly ache to do, knowing I could if I were well.

In all the varied jobs I've had my current one looked like I was actually on the road to some sort of success. Now, my boss has basically suggested I consider quitting. I just don't know how to undo 40 years of having no idea how to relate to people in a meaningful way.

The feelings of failure, bruised ego, embarrassment, self-doubt, worthlessness, defeat, are all so overwhelming this email is the only way I have been able to express them.

Most of my teachers disliked me because of my behaviour. I was very bored and tended to fidget and absently make noise. Homework assignments were too easy and I'll admit sometimes I didn't do them just because they were too easy. I tended to read ahead then do the homework while the teacher went on to the next topic.

I day dreamed a lot. While I was daydreaming I would often hum or whistle. The following two incidents I will say were the most traumatic of my life:

My second grade teacher always treated me in an abusive manner in front of the other students. Once, while daydreaming, I was also whistling, she warned me to stop, but I was waiting for the others to finish their work so I drifted off again and again started whistling. She put masking tape over my mouth for the rest of the day. Another day I had been disruptive in class, I guess, and then I asked to go to the bathroom. She denied me and wouldn't relent when I told her I needed to defecate. She sent me back to my desk and I was unable to prevent doing it anyway. That was something that I didn't live down until I finished
elementary school.

There are a whole host of instances where I display the following:
Inability to form strong, deep, lasting relationships, I don't really feel close to anyone, including my family.
I fall in and out of love easily,
Friends are limited to a few at a time, almost all women.
I'm prone to fits of extreme anger over my own mistakes,
I'm extremely clumsy and forgetful,
so easily distracted i can lose the thread of a coversation even when looking right at the person i'm talking to;
at the same time if I'm really absorbed in something I completely block out the outside world, i.e. zone out either way.
I talk to myself aloud even when others are present,
I often rehearse conversations I'm going to have with people.
I feel like crying a lot of the time but I almost never cry at all
I have stood in the middle of an intersection yelling a lot of foul language at a bus and giving it the finger.
Often, I speak without thinking and then immediately regret what I say.
I'm swapping the consonants in spoken sentences increasingly often.
In the last year I've identified that sometimes I will repeat an expression over and over.
Even the smallest task has to be boiled down to the most minute detail and specific discrete steps.
I constantly pick apart my behaviour and criticize the smallest detail.
I always need to know the time. I get agitated when I'm without a watch.
I apologize all the time, including things for which I'm not responsible, and most of which are so minor as to not merit any apology or are the kinds of annoying things I do on a continual basis.
I'm a penny pincher but I always have to have money in my pocket or I feel extremely uncomfortable in public. Whenever I make a cash purchase, I will count out whatever change is needed to keep the small change in my pocket to a minimum. E.g. if a purchase is 14.62, I will give the clerk $15.12.
Long periods of deep depression are followed by short periods of normalcy, then... I feel great and am finally going to get all my problems resolved, save
money and go on a trip, finish writing the story I've been working on and, oh yeah, I've just had another good idea, I'll write that too. Oh, and I wonder if MIT
is still hosting the 1st year course Physics lectures on it's website.... Usually the upbeat mania and creative energy degenerates into a constantly angry state
where I'm mad at the world for everything no matter what it is, such as I am now.
Anyway, right now I'm embarrassed even to step foot in the building where I work. I get chills and shortness of breath at the thought of having to deal with
people at all.
My anxiety level is off the charts.
I've lost interest in most things but my sex drive has increased. Incidentally, historically, I have not had many serious relationships (3 in total) but a large majority of my friends are women and I've had "friends with benefits" arrangements with several of them. I have a very difficult time tying emotional attachment to sex. For me they are so far two separate things.

If you did manage to read the whole thing, please submit comments, particularly if you think it is self-serving.

Hello, Rebound. You have had a lot to deal with. I am glad you are seeking help and I hope your helpers are up to the task.

We are here to provide support. I truly hope you do not allow others to define you. As to whether your email is self-serving, why would it not be? You are the one seeking help.

Thanks for sharing.

Thanks again for sharing your wisdom. I've never been one to write such long posts here but...

I was very fortunate never to have been hospitalized for any reason until, at 39, I suffered a collapsed lung and spent about two weeks in the hospital. I was totally lost. The staff had no idea I had no experience with how things worked at my age and I had no idea how to tell them. By, "the way things worked", I mean I was in a kind of shock where I could not articulate my needs; I was afraid to bother the nurses; I had a paranoid delusion they all disliked me a lot. I felt like everything I did was wrong, e.g. when it came to requesting pain medication. I would wait until the pain was unbearable before calling for a nurse when I could have had it every 4 hours, just because I was afraid of offending them with neediness.

This diagnosis of ADHD at my, now 44, years of age just blows me away. I've always bemoaned and regretted all the blown chances I've had, beating up on myself and making it even more difficult; now I'm not sure whether to be happy that there may be a medical explanation for this, or angry because if I had been diagnosed at a young age I'd have achieved happiness and success instead of the constant drumbeat of self-defeat.

I've never so much as written, let alone posted in a forum, anything like the original post. There is a lot of it that I have never shared with anyone because I felt weak and embarrassed, a failed human being because I could think of no other explanation for my behaviour.

For a long time I blocked out the idea of seeking help from a mental health professional out of denial, then actively shouldered it aside out of fear. So I have yet another thing to blame myself for. It was up to me to seek treatment. I have a really hard time taking ownership of that when I'm down, and use it as an excuse for everything when I'm angry -- which is a great deal of the time lately.

So, the way I act can be explained as the effects of a chronic disorder but I still feel weak, ashamed, and pathetic.

Thanks, Sky.

Hi rebound. YOu did such a good job of expressing yourself and sort of itemizing a lot of the things you have difficulty with. I think doing that is great step towards looking at those things and seeing that you are WAY TOO HARD ON YOURSELF! Its perfectly ok to write a thread that is about yourself, we all do it and its what this place is for. But you seem so down on yourself that it makes me sad. To be honest, though, I am very mean to myself too, but its easier to feel empathy for you than it is to feel empathy for myself. Ironic huh?

Anyway, I hope that you will continue talking to your pdoc and I think its wonderful that he's letting you email him things. Hope things get better or that therapy helps you feel more in control of things.

Sorry that I don't really have advice, but I did want you to know I heard you.

I've written a bunch more stuff since then but I'm not sure whether I should post it. It's mostly a more of the above. I think about these kinds of things all the time but this is the first time I've really sat down and written them out. So, now I want to share them but I'm afraid of what people will think even though it makes me a hypocrite given the number of times I have counselled people here to unburden themselves.

Plus, there's so much of it. Who wants to wade through all that?

Keep adding it on, if people have the time to read they will and I think it will be cathartic for you to write it all out. IMO.