I often wish I could just sit back and not be so staunch :(
I remember having lengthy debates with myself in elementary school about how strictly I adhered to my personal convictions. It seemed like most people didn’t care, or could easily let go of things. I wanted so badly to stop caring about the specifics of things and just be chill like everyone else, but I just couldn’t let go. Without empirical evidence to prove me wrong, I just wouldn’t budge in my convictions. I was practically in tears about it at times.
Many years later, in my late 30s, I found out that I have a severe case of ADHD. The doctor who diagnosed me had her PhD in ADHD studies and had been working as a researcher and therapist in the field of ADHD for 11 years. She said I was the worst case she’d ever seen.
Most of my childhood was lived through the '80s-'90s, when ADHD was just the “hyperactive kid syndrome.” If you weren’t constantly running around screaming and disrupting everything around you, you were considered normal.
I was always bursting with energy and internally screaming when I had to sit still for more than 5 minutes. But everyone just chalked it up to me being an energy-filled kid with a wild imagination and a love for playing outdoors. The fact that I could sit still meant that I was “normal.”
But as the decades rolled on, our understanding of ADHD has increased and it turns out, it’s a lot more complicated than we originally thought. Obsessing over details, pouring over concepts again and again to form strong opinions, and then refusing to change those convictions unless definitively proven wrong is 100% an effect of ADHD.
Not saying you have ADHD, OP, but your situation is very familiar to me, and ADHD was the answer I lacked for many years.
I remember having lengthy debates with myself in elementary school about how strictly I adhered to my personal convictions. It seemed like most people didn’t care, or could easily let go of things. I wanted so badly to stop caring about the specifics of things and just be chill like everyone else, but I just couldn’t let go. Without empirical evidence to prove me wrong, I just wouldn’t budge in my convictions. I was practically in tears about it at times.
Many years later, in my late 30s, I found out that I have a severe case of ADHD. The doctor who diagnosed me had her PhD in ADHD studies and had been working as a researcher and therapist in the field of ADHD for 11 years. She said I was the worst case she’d ever seen.
Most of my childhood was lived through the '80s-'90s, when ADHD was just the “hyperactive kid syndrome.” If you weren’t constantly running around screaming and disrupting everything around you, you were considered normal.
I was always bursting with energy and internally screaming when I had to sit still for more than 5 minutes. But everyone just chalked it up to me being an energy-filled kid with a wild imagination and a love for playing outdoors. The fact that I could sit still meant that I was “normal.”
But as the decades rolled on, our understanding of ADHD has increased and it turns out, it’s a lot more complicated than we originally thought. Obsessing over details, pouring over concepts again and again to form strong opinions, and then refusing to change those convictions unless definitively proven wrong is 100% an effect of ADHD.
Not saying you have ADHD, OP, but your situation is very familiar to me, and ADHD was the answer I lacked for many years.