Backward Engineering From Unhappiness
My reading about ADHD and meditation this week has been really helpful to my own practice. I’ve come to some tentative conclusions about the situation I’ve found myself in and how to back out of it and back into the embodied state the human body is meant to be in. Shall we?
Here is the latest cause & effect placeholder I have drafted for what’s up with me:
I am and have been perpetually unhappy/insecure most of my life.
The unhappiness has been caused by chronic negative thinking
The chronic negative thinking is a coping mechanism my mind developed very early in life. It is not just “who I am”.
My mind developed chronic negative thinking because I had undiagnosed ADHD
My undiagnosed ADHD caused ripple effects in my psyche, including the inability to securely attach to my caregivers and therefore myself.
I was unable to securely attach to my caregivers because I was born a hypersensitive human being and my caregivers, unfortunately, didn’t have the capacity nor knowledge to notice I was hypersensitive and do what they could to help.
My caregivers didn’t have the capacity nor knowledge to support a hypersensitive child due to their own family system backgrounds, the knowledge & values of culture at the time, and much more.
All this is subject to change, of course. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that I was blaming everything on religion. Now I realize my experiences in religion were partially symptom of something much deeper (all the above).
Anyways, with this tentative understanding of the state of Marie, I have been contemplating what changes may be needed to back out of this chronic negative thinking habit that I’ve gotten myself into. And big note, yes, it is a habit. And like all well-practiced habits, it is going to take some time to change. So how am I going to do that? Here are some ideas I’ve come up with and have begun practicing:
Having brave conversations with my parents about my childhood, their parenting, our family system, and, perhaps, retroactively securely attach to them. My parents are also both healing and reflecting on their lives, our family, and their own originating family systems and contexts. Being able to share with them my experiences and for them to share their new self-knowledge with me this year has been profoundly healing, probably more than anything in the rest of this list. My dad is learning about emotion regulation, self-awareness, and so much more. And he has been supporting my mom in this as well. This shift in their psychological health is monumental and something about it makes me feel like a daughter again. I feel part of something bigger than myself… a healing family tree. One of my newest mantras after a conversation with my dad is, “heal with your family”. It encourages me so much to know my family is doing the work, too.
Speak kindly to myself and help myself make peaceful and healthful choices for myself. It’s all about context, right? So even now, I am struggling with chronic negative thinking; however, contextually, my attention and my energy is pointed right at it. I am getting support and I am massaging it out. I have to remember that life-long habits (specifically thinking habits) can be very hard to change. Accepting that allows me to expect the chronic thinking to return again and again.
Take stimulant medication. I’m on 20mg of Adderall XR for my ADHD. It alone has not solved anything. In fact, there have been quite a few days where I have ended up using the extra focus that Adderall gives me to push myself even harder. But Adderall along with all these other methods has had me tapping into waves of contentedness that I have never felt before.
Slow…. down….. it isn’t just ADHD. I know that. It’s our entire planet right now. Or maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s just Americans. I dunno. Regardless, the water I am swimming in has values of competition, urgency, productivity, FOMO, and more. That is further compounded by an ADHD mind that has tried to work 5x as hard as a neurotypical to meet these expectations of life. Where am I in a rush to go? To be healed? To achieve or obtain something that I think will resolve the discontent in my own being? Nah, dawg. I’ve already invested the “prime years” of my life playing that game and it does NOT pay off. I’m ready to try a different path. Not just slowing down my obligations and the external factors of my life, but slowing down my thought process. Taking time before starting something to set my focus. Being ready to pause anything I’m doing to tend to my body and my mind. Not seeing being late as the worst thing ever. Prioritizing inner balance and peace over all other things.
Meditation isn’t just for the morning. Make your life a living meditation.
Have a regular meditation practice, or, as I call it a “remembering” practice. In my meditative practice, I have a few things I do that each have their own intention and focus. When I start my practice, I remind myself that this time is for remembering that I chose a focus. I chose to remember a focus. So it’s not about trying to stop anything. I don’t think I could stop my thoughts if I tried (I’ve tried). But I can remember that I didn’t intend to mindlessly watch my mind chatter for this period of time. So during my practice, it is the practice of remembering & noticing that I’ve been watching my thoughts when my intention is to watch my sensations (or whatever focus point I picked). Something about this has made meditation make more sense to me. Feels a lot like lifting weights except instead of massive muscles and strength, you get peace, clarity, and a sense of gentle control over your choices.
Hire an ADHD coach. Starting next month, I will be working with an ADHD coach. I have yet to know what exactly I’ll get to focus on with her, but I’m excited to talk through some of the stickier behavioral, physical, and cognitive habits I have that don’t serve my beautiful ADHD mind.
Hire an ADHD therapist. I have a neurodivergent therapist with whom I am going to be unpacking my childhood experiences to help me heal some of those experiences and put into context what was happening.
Get peer support. I participate at times in the groups that are hosted by ADD.org. I will never forget the first time I dropped in on a group and saw all those faces that have ADHD like me. And hearing them talk about their experiences and feeling like I wasn’t some kind of cognitive monster. That I have a neurological family who understands me.
Journal. I journal throughout the day, using Custom Journal. Taking notes on my experiences helps me focus on what’s going on so that I don’t get stuck in thoughts and can move toward a more positive action. It also helps me notice patterns or problems that maybe I’ll need extra help with from others.
Taoism. I will not pretend to understand Taoism, so read the rest of this with that self-proclaimed ignorance in mind. But I have philosophically been drawn towards the idea of Taoism (as a metaphor) for how I best think I can contextualize “who” I am and how to engage with that person. I tentatively am holding that “I” is many things. There is “I” the thinker, the ego, the one who thinks they have an identity, a Self, something enduring about them. That “I” thinks it can control things, thinks it knows why I did XYZ. But with what I’ve experienced in the last 1.5 years, I realize that “I” is an illusion. It’s just another circuit board in my brain that thinks it’s separate and unique from the body in some way. What “I” am is actually the witness. The witness of “I”. The witness of thoughts. The witness of my pains. The witness of my pleasure. The everpresent watcher. And I sense that that “I” doesn’t actually have control over anything. It’s just awareness. But it’s who I am moving towards identifying as, instead of the ego. So it seems to me that it is rational that the witness’s view of itself and its role in existing is to peacefully witness the flow of things it cannot control. I see “myself” as someone sitting by a massive river. Peacefully sitting. Noticing what comes down the stream. Not diving into the river to grab anything. But just witnessing. And with that attitude, it allows all that is in that river to continue to pass through, untouched, unmanipulated, just witnessed with compassion and peace. I am exploring this embodiment of The Witness and it feels very right for me.
Mind/body connection restoration. For many reasons, my mind is not well networked with my body. Narratively, my mind has seen any messages from the body as attacks. Whereas, now I see those signals not as an attack but as ME… but speaking another language. My mind and body presently think they are separate. So my mind is bothered by my body’s intrusion when it’s hungry, thirsty, emotional, or in pain. I am working on turning my attention into my body, creating aware space for its messages to be felt and heard, so that I can start living a life as a full human being and not just as a mind/ego that is resentful that it’s stuck in a belligerent body.
Human anatomy and brain education. I wasn’t interested in all of this until I realized I had ADHD. Then you kinda have to learn about the brain because that’s basically what’s going on. Also, learning about human anatomy & physiology has helped me respond more rationally to those messages from my body. It’s helped me connect to my many parts. It’s helped me visualize what’s going on inside when something hurts. And therefore helps me make good guesses at how to address some of the pains.
Focus on taking the next best step, moment to moment. A lot of my chronic thinking is catastrophizing and worrying about the future. What if this happens? What if that happens? It happened before! Touching back on Taoism, I am integrating my truth that I cannot possibly prepare for everything that will happen. And, in fact, the best thing I can do is practice BEING in and responding to THIS moment. Why? Because life is improv. And what helps people be good at improv? Anticipating anything and everything that may happen in a “scene”? Nah. Just practice. Creativity. Spontaneity. A loose mind. And so when I start to think too much about what’s next later today or tomorrow or this year or on my death bed, I try to remember I can’t possibly control or anticipate any of those things. The best thing I can do is get really good at responding to things in the moment. And to do so, I need to practice BEING IN the moment. So then my decisions and choices will be made in the NOW instead of out of a reaction to a hypothetical future.
Observe. Detach. Choose. These were the three words I took from the book I read on ADHD and meditation. Start with activating The Witness, aka observe, aka notice. Once the practice of noticing has gotten stronger, then the next step can be to detach from that which you are noticing and coming back to the focus. And in some situations, the next step would then be to CHOOSE. Consciously choose your next step instead of reacting from that which was unobserved but is driving your decisions.
Work WITH your brain. I’m still working this out. I am still becoming self-aware of the weird cognitive, social, and behavioral habits I have built up on this undiagnosed ADHD. But I’m no longer investing energy in trying to force my brain to be or do anything in particular. I want to defer to it. If my brain is stressed out by some habit of mine, then I’m not going to tell my brain it just has to deal with it because this is how we’re doing things. I am trying to put more attention to how my behaviors make my brain feel. When my brain is distressed, that’s probably a sign I’m doing something that is not working WITH my neurology.
No more bootstrapping. I have definitely internalized the bootstrapping mentality of America and I’m working on purging that out of me. It’s not that it’s not admirable to want to achieve great things and have goals. However, I am beginning to believe that those great things and goals can be obtained with much more joy, less effort, and higher quality when approached calmly, gently, and compassionately. I have tried to bootstrap myself into growing my coaching business and it hasn’t gone well. I’m stressed about it all the time. Ruminate on it. But in the last 2 months, I have realized that this isn’t working with my brain. It’s better for me to focus on a couple of things at a time. It seems counterintuitive. But, for my brain, this is how things are finally getting done, and done in a way that didn’t compromise my internal systems. Like this month, one of my goals was getting this website up. 100% of that process wasn’t entirely non-bootstrapped (we are unlearning habits at Marie, Inc.; changes takes time), but a lot of it was done calmly and gently. And, I gotta say, sitting here writing this blog on my new site, I am really proud of myself. I have no idea if I ever would have gotten to making a new website with my old bootstrapping mentality. I burned out way too easily and got overwhelmed.
Release all the narratives and thinking. Focus more on being. Like I’ve said, I think … a LOT. Chronic thinker. Constantly writing stories about who I am (mostly bad stories) and about my relationships with others (mostly bad stories). Even when I’m in a better headspace, I still find myself writing stories. This makes me think of the Buddhist idea of non-clinging. Not needing to cling to being a shitty person who everyone thinks sucks and not needing to cling to being (in my case) an enlightened person who everyone values. Neither is entirely true, and honestly, it’s all a bit irrelevant. Writing a story about myself and the world only serves to keep me from accepting ME as I am from moment to moment and it keeps me from accepting the world on the world’s terms. Staying curious, staying present, staying connected to the experienced Self and in the moments with others is how I want to BE.
Powering through discomfort is not a higher path. Just been learning this one in the past couple of days. I’ve been seeing a posture specialist and as part of the assessment, she took a picture of my posture. And I haven’t been able to get it out of my head. I hunch over. My brain inflates how I look to an absurd level and projects that everyone around me is aware of how ridiculous I look and are just patronizing me when they talk to me. Anyways, my mind has been hyperfixated on my body and its positioning. And so I have been overcompensating. I’ve been pulling my spine up, my shoulders back and down, tucking my tailbone. It consumes my subconscious all day long. And what I’ve noticed is that I’m having MORE pain. I couldn’t figure out why. But then it hit me like a ton of bricks this week. I am trying to heal my body tension with the same tools I created it with. I cannot bring peace into my body by violently forcing my body into positions that my brain has deemed acceptable, damn the pain. What I’ve begun to do is to promise myself to not stretch or push my body into pain or discomfort. And if that means that I have poor posture for a while longer, so be it. If that means that my stretches don’t look as cool from the outside, so be it. It’s not about all that. Moreover, even in meditation, I had seated meditation on this pedestal. However, I experience quite a bit of pain when trying to do seated meditation. I subconsciously thought it was the higher practice to “notice” that pain and let it go, blah, blah, blah. But this book I read basically said it’s hard enough to practice mindfulness… why would you make it harder on yourself? I had been bootstrapping my own healing and my meditation. I’m not surprised. But that’s not how I want to do it anymore. If I am in pain, I’m going to adjust. If that means that my meditation becomes a laying down meditation (tsk, tsk), so fucking be it. As the book says, there is no one true path to a peaceful mind. There is no extra credit by making that path harder for yourself for no reason.
Those are my thoughts from this morning! Hope they were helpful. Feel free to engage in the comments with more thoughts and ideas.
