Self-Improvement – Robin Simonds Fitch

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I got good grades in school, but it wasn’t because I worked hard and studied and applied myself. It was because I knew how to be invisible so that I didn’t get called on in class, I had an intuitive ability to figure out the correct answers on multiple choice tests, and I could bullshit my way through an essay. I never felt like I’d applied myself 100% on anything I ever did, even the 80-plus page novel I handed in for a creative writing assignment in grammar school (which I’d already been writing on my own), because I felt like it needed editing and the plot was weak. I was lucky I did as well as I did because I was easily distracted, I made careless mistakes, I had trouble following instructions, I procrastinated like it was my job. I was a model terrible student, and all of my bad habits followed me right through to my adult life.

At some point it occurred to me that maybe I had ADD, and I took an online quiz which said, yep, you certainly do, but online quizzes tell you that everything is wrong with you, so you don’t necessarily go searching for psychiatric help because of them. It wasn’t until I realized that I suffer from mild bipolar disorder (I always mention the mild because it is actually pretty different from full-blown bipolar disorder) and my psychiatrist, in the course of treating me, screened me for ADHD, that I found out that I officially have ADHD without the H, or old-school ADD.

She asked me if I wanted to do anything about it. I said, Let’s focus on the bipolar, and hey, maybe it’ll get better once that’s out of the way. And when that medication started to work and I started to come out of my mild depression, I did become more productive, so that was cool. But I was still easily distracted, still made careless mistakes (which is a problem is a detail-oriented job like mine), still did all those lovely little ADD things. So I bought a bunch of ADD books and even read one of them, and I made schedules like I’ve been doing for years and I didn’t follow them and I set alarms to remind me to stay on track and I still wandered off into emails and websites when I was supposed to be working and I still made careless mistakes and said things without thinking and all that fun stuff.

After it seemed like the bipolar medication was working pretty well, my psychiatrist came back to the ADD, and I had to face the truth: I couldn’t accept my ADD as a medical condition. I know that ADHD is a real and legitimate disorder. I didn’t question the validity of ADHD or ADD. I questioned the validity of my ADD. My whole life I had thought of myself as scatterbrained, lazy, disorganized, a procrastinator. This wasn’t a disorder, something outside of my control. It was a flaw in my personality, something that I could control if I just tried hard enough, and I obviously wasn’t trying hard enough.

I think the hardest part, the part that made it most difficult for me to deal with the diagnosis, was the hyperfocus. When conditions are right, I can focus on a good book or on writing or even a good movie or TV show to the point where the rest of the world disappears. It’s pretty much the same as flow. But since I can focus on things that are fun or engaging, shouldn’t I also be able to focus on things that are boring? Other people can focus on difficult tasks or conversations (I can’t even concentrate on conversations with people I want to talk to!). Why can’t I?

Because there’s something wrong with me. And it’s not my fault.

I think it’s going to take a long time for me to accept that, but for now I’m trying to move on despite my reluctance. I’ve been taking Adderall for about a week and I’ve actually accomplished things, reasonable, normal things. I haven’t cleaned the house from top to bottom but I’ve done the laundry and the finances. I haven’t single-handedly done six months’ worth of work, but I’ve cleaned out my email inbox. I didn’t finish my novel, but I did a good amount of writing. And this is my first non-ROW80 blog post in four months. This is apparently what I’m capable of. I still have to decide to actually do a project, but once I start, I know I have a good chance of finishing it, and finishing it in a reasonable amount of time because I won’t go wandering off for an hour looking at Facebook or my email. I can still get distracted, and I still have trouble following a schedule, but I feel like now I have a chance. I may never be able to put in that 100%, but maybe now I can put in 90 or 95%. Even 85% would be an improvement. And if I try hard enough, maybe someday I’ll be able to accept that this is okay, that I’m not cheating, I’m not using medication to make myself better than everyone else, but to make myself the same. To make myself normal. I used to want to be special. I still do, just in a good way. A functional way. Hopefully this will help get me there.

On a Sunday evening last December, my husband and I were watching “Dexter” when my lower back started to ache. We’d been putting up Christmas lights outside, so I figured I must’ve overdone it, and went and got the heating pad. As I laid on the couch watching the show, the pain started to worsen and began to spread to my abdomen. Okay, I thought, it’s about that time of the month. Lower back pain and cramps are par for the course, although these were a little worse than usual.

It got so bad so fast that within minutes I was curled up in a ball on the couch. I had to pause the show mid-scene because I couldn’t focus on it anymore (thank goodness for DVRs). I couldn’t focus on anything but the pain, which had settled in the right side of my pelvis and felt like something was trying to chew its way out of me with sharp little teeth. My husband, who has his EMT certification for his job, says he told me, several times, that I should go to the hospital, but I don’t remember this. I probably didn’t even hear him, although I did ask him at one point if there was anything in that part of the body that could kill me. He said it might be appendicitis, and that time at least I do remember him mentioning the hospital.

When he described appendicitis to me I was pretty sure that wasn’t it because the pain wasn’t in the right place, so instead of the hospital, I went into the bathroom and shut the door behind me. I’d heard those stories where someone goes to the emergency room in a panic and it turns out to be heartburn or gas pain. I didn’t want to be one of those people who made a big deal over nothing. I didn’t want to be a joke. I started vomiting, but that didn’t mean anything; sometimes my migraines made me throw up, that wasn’t reason to go to the hospital. I was, believe it or not, worried what people would think of me. I was afraid they would think I was a hypochondriac; that I was pathetic to think this was painful; that I was stupid to think it might be serious. That was why I asked if it was something that could kill me: because if it wasn’t life or death I was willing, for a while at least, to live with the pain rather than risk the possibility that strangers might judge me and find me lacking.

Eventually, after what felt like an eternity but was probably more like a half hour or so, I gave in and agreed to go to the emergency room. Luckily we live in a city that’s big enough to have its own hospital, but small enough that there’s hardly ever anybody in the emergency room, so I was in a private room talking to a doctor relatively quickly. He was pretty sure it was a kidney stone, but they had to run some tests to make sure. Because I have a bad relationship with NSAIDs, he had the nurse give me some morphine, and finally I was able to get some relief. As I lay there waiting, all I could think was, I hope there’s really something wrong with me. I felt like a kid waiting for a test to be graded, like the doctor was going to come back and say I’d failed, I really was a crybaby after all, coming in saying I was 9 out of 10 on the pain scale and using up their morphine for no good reason. I didn’t want to have a kidney stone, but since I was already there, since I was already in pain, I wanted my misery to be justified. I wanted them to tell me that yes, this was a legitimate reason to come to the hospital.

It was. I did have a kidney stone. They wheeled me up to get a CAT scan, then gave me a prescription for Vicodin, a sheaf of instructions and a little strainer to catch the stone when it passed, and sent me home. The weird thing was, I still felt like it wasn’t real, like they were just humoring me. I still doubted myself. It wasn’t until I actually saw the stone, and went to the urologist and saw the CAT scan, that I really believed it. How sad is that? Why couldn’t I believe my own body? Why couldn’t I trust myself that I wasn’t blowing things out of proportion, I wasn’t overreacting? I didn’t have a history of running to the emergency room for every twinge or muscle ache. The fact that my husband was telling me to go should have been enough to move me past my doubt, but even if he hadn’t been, even if I had been home alone, I should have had the strength to make that decision on my own as soon as the pain went beyond my normal threshold. It wasn’t weak or stupid to go the hospital; letting doubt and fear prevent me from going sooner was.

So I’m trying to see this as a wake up call, not just for my health, but for my writing, and my life in general. I suffered longer than I needed to because I doubted myself and because I was worried about what other people would think of me. I need to learn to trust myself and stop caring so much about other peoples’ opinions. These are lessons life has tried to teach me many times over the years, but apparently I needed to be hit over the head (or in the kidneys) with them. Hopefully I’ve finally learned them, because I’m afraid to see what form the lessons might take next time around!

Do you suffer from self doubt? Here are some resources that might help you deal with it (when you’re not dealing with a kidney stone!):

7 Simple Steps to Conquering Self Doubt

5 Great Ways to Conquer Self Doubt

Overcoming Self Doubt

If you have any resources or tips that work for you, please share in the comments!

Goodreads