One reason many people with ADHD dislike making mistakes is because of what they decide a mistake means. If you think in an all-or-nothing way, there are only really two choices in life – you win or you lose, you’re right or you’re wrong, you’re smart or you’re dumb. ​

With those options, every decision you make and every action you take risks losing, being wrong, and feeling dumb. It’s easy to get stuck in life when every other step can be right off a cliff.

Let’s be clear about something. This isn’t a matter of thinking more positively. ADHD is a different way of experiencing and perceiving reality.

As part of what ADHD means for me, I experience time-blindness. You know that experience when you have a 3pm appointment, so you do nothing all day but watch the clock? If you’re time blind like I am, you don’t experience time passing, so 5 hours may as well be 5 minutes. ​

So without a structured way to use the time between now and then, there’s too much risk of choosing to do something that’ll take you down a rabbit hole of hyper-focus and risk being late or missing the appointment altogether.​

What I found helped me get beyond the confines of the default settings that come with ADHD or any other form of Neurodivergence, begins with self-awareness.

The kind of self-awareness that’s able to notice what you do while you’re doing it, to be curious and observe your thinking and feeling without judging yourself harshly.

That kind of self-awareness requires support and guidance from someone like me who has walked that road and knows where the quicksand is.​

You know this too, but only you can take the action of reaching out to me and saying “I’d like to get to know myself better, so I can be a lot more kind to myself.”

Please ask any questions you have, and thanks for being you.

Brian R. King, MSW