Shame is such a strong and powerful emotion. It’s the emotion that can drive addiction and at the same time, the one that can stop you from getting help. That was certainly the case for me. The world has come a long way in its attitude towards addiction. The line “hello, my name is X and I am an alcoholic” has almost become a cultural cliche. Whether thats helpful or not is something I will explore another time - but it shows how some addictions have become more socially acceptable to talk about. Yet others remain shrouded in silence. Take sex addiction for example. Sex is a part of every human story, literally none of us would be here without it. It’s often described as one of the most beautiful expressions of love between two people. But still… we don't talk about it. Many of us would happily discuss our relationship with the toilet before we’d ever admit to struggles around sex. When you stop and think about it, that’s absurd. As long as there are topics we can’t talk about, the...
Never before have I come across a phase that so beautifully sums up how I think about my own brain! And this, for me, does it perfectly. Life as an adult with undiagnosed ADHD is hard. I am not sure how life with diagnosed ADHD would be any better, maybe I will feel a shift from the negative connotations and labels that my behaviour has received over time. But for the purpose of this blog post I need to forget all of the outside input and feedback my ADHD gets and focus more on what it is like for me. This saying, ‘A Squirrel on a Treadmill’, paints such a vivid picture in my mind. I envisage a human sized treadmill with an actual sized squirrel. And I see the squirrel moving frantically to keep up pace with the every rolling road underneath his feet. But rather than just running in a straight line the squirrel darts from side to side. Bouncing off of the invisible bumpers that are the limits of the treadmill track. Every so often the squirrel might let itself stop, in a hope of c...