Rosie - What do you run on?

What do you ‘run’ on?

In a shocking display of consistency here I am again. This time I’m asking why am I like this?

Again. Here’s my latest working theory!

Last week I read an article about how coffee in neurotypicals is a stimulant but for people with

ADHD it can help calm brain noise and help with focussing. Whilst I have certainly met some

neurodivergent people who are charming but not necessarily calm when caffeinated, I felt like I

could relate to it. However, there was a problem – the neurodivergent people in the article were

consuming coffee not to help them regulate themselves but because of the additional stresses

and distractions of unadapted work environments. A dopamine regulation aid was becoming an

excuse to not need to make work places more inclusive. People were regulating their brains to

run on alien software definitions of ‘focus’.

It overlapped with a lot of what I’ve been experiencing in trying to manage the blessings and

curses of having a busy brain and a low boredom tolerance. When I’m fully charged my running

brain can be exciting. I get things done and keep the self-criticism and anxiety at bay.

But my brain makes me nervous. It doesn’t turn off. Ever. It’s an endless torrent of ideas,

decades-old memories, pointless meanderings, random counting, anxious fixations, reems of

song lyrics and occasionally useful insights that only come from the bouncing around and

connections of half-thoughts. There is value in thinking differently – but trying to translate the

process to the alien medium to be ‘useful’ is endlessly frustrating. I have to fight hard to keep my

brain on a positive track as it runs just as efficiently on self-hatred. I have to keep it to the

societal directions I have been handed to make it to a destination I can accept as ‘success’.

My brain feels like chaos sometimes and it relies on dopamine, effort, discipline and energy to

keep it on its leash. It feels like I wake up and I start running, desperately hoping I don’t trip

before I make it through the day’s agenda. This is even harder when the agenda and the success

destination is externally set because as much as bracketing tasks can help order my thoughts,

my brain does not always comply and trying to focus on the ‘boring’ or frustrating tasks takes

immense effort.

I deploy all my tricks – I use coffee to slow my brain or at least distract it with an interesting

sensory sensation so I can focus on what I need to get done. I deprive myself of sleep or

overexercise to keep my brain doing different things or render it too tired to distract me. I flip

topic every 10 minutes to keep my interest up. I don’t take a break to keep momentum and

suppress the doubts that I have picked the wrong route or that I’m about to hit translation

roadworks. I am desperate to be seen as useful. I create risk and pointless challenges to make

the more boring tasks exciting and to create a chance to achieve and make the struggle worth it.

I permanently set targets to achieve to keep the sadness away. It is exhausting to drag yourself

through, to feel like you’re fighting or corralling your brain all day and that at any moment it can

throw its toys out of the pram and spill the anxiety everywhere. In the end, I ‘achieve’ but I don’t

feel celebratory, I just feel relieved that I didn’t collapse before the finish line. The fun I used to

have in the ideas and targets is no where to be found. Trying to avoid the low, I double down and

set bigger targets to get external recognition.

I often overshoot. The coffee doesn’t hit right that day. I am too busy falling asleep to type. I get

so overstimulated by the ideas of all the different topics and feel like you can see the steam

coming out of my ears but no words reach the page. I get angsty or blocked in my task list and

the momentum slows. I take too big a risk or the anxiety of the pressure of all the mini targets

becomes all consuming and too much change in one go so I can no longer think of anything

else. I burn out and endure the horrible sensation of being too mentally, emotionally and

physical exhausted to respond to my still running and still bored brain. I want to scream at it to

shut up. I want it to stop but I feel resigned knowing that I will repeat the same self-sabotage

tomorrow and keep running the faulty code.

Alongside this I struggle with rejection sensitive dysphoria meaning I react dramatically to any

perceived rejection – I immediately attribute someone sighing as evidence of my unloveability

and being 30 seconds late has me screaming and self-harming. My busy brain has no problem

seizing on this train of thought compounding my distress by recalling every previous failure or

mistake of my life and relentlessly chanting ‘You’re so stupid. You should have been drowned at

birth. What the hell is wrong with you.’

It’s the worst of both worlds – all the creative connections and focussed energy of my busy brain

directed to self-destruction. When it eventually passes, I am intensely embarrassed at my

malfunctioning and terrified of triggering the feeling. It makes me try to avoid any activity where I

might succeed because the risk of failure feels too great, maybe it’s why I always push it slightly

too far because I believe I am a failure.

I set an incredibly high bar for success which ultimately I will always fail to achieve. It suits my

demand avoidance – the guilt and hatred I hold to my busy brain and its ‘failures’ means I deny

myself comforts of self-care as punishment for my malfunctioning. I can also avoid the ‘real’

responsibilities through elaborate play-pretend targets that create things that feel easier to

achieve but are ultimately meaningless. Part of the reason I can become so unhinged by being

30 seconds late is because I have channelled all the busy brain worrying that I will fail to meet

neurotypical standards onto what feels like a simple task – being on time. When I fail in this it

feels like I haven’t just missed my timings, I have failed at being a human. I explode and collapse

much like when I overshoot.

What do I run on? Coffee, exercise, ideas, mini targets, naivety. At the minute my fuels are also

the things that burn me out that drive self-destructive targets. They all keep me in my playpretend

as the real world is too full of potential for failure and has no clear roadmap to follow.

To keep going, I keep setting targets and the neurotypical world gives me lots of inspiration for

that. Desperate to achieve their success despite the hostile terrain I keep running with all the

mental, physical and emotional self-abuse that entails. Subsequently, I also keep tripping,

falling, ‘failing’.

It’s not that things that I run on are necessarily bad, it’s that I apply them restrictively and I don’t

balance them. They’re meant to be tools to help me navigate my brain not to allow my brain free

reign over my body. If I lived more in my own reality and accepted that some of the extra

anxieties that push my brain into overdrive aren’t internal, I might be able to recognise the

overshoot approaching a bit better and take a pitstop to recharge.

My definition of success is externally defined and instead of working with my brain I use my fuels

to try and keep pushing through – like the over-caffeinated ADHD workers in the article. Each

time I ‘succeed’, I obscure the labour and energy it took to wrestle my brain onto the ‘right’ track.

People see only the final one-page article not the 8,000 word first draft containing all my brains

random side-tracks and which I worked all night to cut down. I also forget this reality in my

attempt to not fail in meeting these new expectations and start the day without the physical

resources needed to marshal my brain to ‘productivity’ – I fail at being consistent, I appear lazy

or unfocused.

The lack of understanding as to how my brain works and my embarrassment to share its engine

structure from a desire to mimic the norm keeps me being held both externally and internally to

standards that pursuing make me ill.

What do I run on? Mostly I run on empty.

I’m trying to learn the importance of an MOT, of responding to the check engine light, to balance

the running tasks with the kind of stimulants that aren’t as destructive – to accept that stupid

quizzes, subscribing to 20,000 newsletters, needing to be alone instead of socially celebrating

or a passion for puns aren’t failures to be normal they’re just alternative fuels for an economy

that we haven’t transitioned to yet. I’m trying to adjust the Sat Nav to redefine success – maybe

completing one thing but having enough energy to complete another one tomorrow is better

than completing four things in a day then crashing for the next week. It feels risky but so is

running on empty.

Maybe I don’t have to be constantly running to be seen as worthwhile.

Speak soon

Rosie xxx