ADHD, Anxiety, and Eating Disorders - OH MY

Have you ever seen the movie Being John Malkovich?  If not... well you should watch it! Otherwise the whole thing is kinda complicated to explain, and will end up being a shitty metaphor.  Either way, I'll give it a whirl... the basic premise is that people get to inhabit the mind of a person for a short period of time, after which they are tossed into a ditch on the side of the New Jersey turnpike.

Ditch and Jersey Turnpike aside, I have this visceral need to be understood by others. Yet I feel fully incapable of explaining what it's truly like to be me. 

Sometimes this leaves me wishing that someone could sit in the passenger seat of my mind. I can't help but wonder how validating it would feel seeing the look on a person's face as they landed in the ditch, just having experienced the full treatment.  

At the same time, the idea of being "found out" scares the life out of me.  Such as this is, I find it hard to not feel isolated and misunderstood a great deal of the time.

I also have extreme anxiety about what others think about me.  Logically I know this should not play such a large role in how I live my life, but sometimes logic and emotions do not play well with each other in my world.  ;-)

Because I was not having enough fun sorting that stuff out, why not stir in a heaping American sized serving of eating disorders, and ADHD too.

So anyway,  I find myself torn, living between two extremes.  Isolation out of fear, and the fear of isolation...


Can anyone else relate to this?

I have been meaning to write a new post for a while now, so much has been going on, I don't really know where to start.

These past few weeks have been really tough, and in the past I probably would have been really self destructive in order to "cope" with it all.  The results of which usually only lead to more difficult situations and behaviors.

However, somehow I managed to keep myself distracted just enough from the negative thoughts and emotions to stay functional.  It can be really hard for me not to loose sight of the positive things in my life.

I have to distract myself from the negative thoughts, while trying to not loose grasp of every last little shard of positive thinking and energy.

I say shard because sometimes I have an amazing ability to distort, shatter, and destroy even the most positive aspects of my life.  I could be in a field of butterflies and rainbows with a cool drink in my hand and the sun on my face, yet still find fault in every bit of it. 

Keeping myself happy and productive can feel like a very elaborate performance put on by me for an audience of myself.

Sometimes when I reflect on my situation it can feel quite bizarre.  I have argued to my therapist that it can feel like a farce, I am fooling myself, I am putting on a show, living a lie, and others only see the fake me anyway, what is the point?  Of course there are bits of truth in all of those, but none of them are absolute.  There are also lies in the lies, life is more about perspective then trying to find the absolute.

I have to remember to ask myself the question, where would I rather spend my energy?  Helping others makes me feel better about myself, but in order to do that I have learn how to help me.

For me it does not come naturally, I have to work hard at learning how to help myself.  To some this may sound pretty lame, others could find it obvious, and probably even more write it off as cliché, but I don't care anymore.  :-)

Continuing on like I had in the past was no longer an option. As they say, change happens when it's need becomes self evident.