Dealing with Emotional people

First I'm going to apologise for my quality of writing. I've got pretty bad cold and I'm very off right now.

Then to the point:
This is something that a lot of people don't get, is how to deal with someone, who is drowning in an emotion. There are few very important ground rules:

1. Never every blame the person in any way about the situation. Part of it might be their fault, or all of it, but pointing it out will make the person who feels like they are drowing already, feel  A LOT worse. They know they did wrong. They are beating themself up for it already, you don't need to do it for them. Do not even hint in this direction!

2. They have a right to their feelings. So respect them! They are allowed to feel them. Especially someone who is drowning, they have all the rights in the world to feel them. When the emotional feedback lessens, then you can suggest what to do next time or offer help or advice. But the person needs to be calm to accept them. If the person isn't, it will feel like the other "helper" isn't listening to them or is trying to tell that "I don't have the right to feel". Person drowning in emotion isn't too rational.

3. This is the most important thing in the whole depacle: LISTEN! You do not need to say anything, but listen. You can affirm the other person with "that sounds horrible" or whatever fits. It will make the emotional person feel like they are being believed and listened. These feelings are really important. Also saying stuff about your own life, it is taking a big risk. Sometimes it can help, but sometimes it can make the emotional person feel like the other person is trying to take over the conversation with their own problems. Like I said, not thinking rationally.

This is actually called active listening. Most important is to listen what the other person says, and taking it all in. Not just keywords, but the whole message. Someone who is very emotional, won't be able to think straight and will feel like being attacked, if the other isn't listening. It's one of the worst feelings, especially if it's someone close to you. It will feel like an attack. It will feel like the other is saying that you don't have the right to be upset or sad, etc. There is a moment for feelings, and moment to fix the problems, but it's not at the same time. The person needs to be calm to be able to think clearly and start fixing things. That person needs to have all their strenght, because fixing life is one of the most energy consuming things you can do.

Why am I writing this? Well two things, one is that this is what I do automatically, when someone is upset. It's propably part of the reason why people often come to me when highly emotional. Two: because of ADHD, my emotional control isn't same as someone with normal brain function. We have somewhat hightened emotional responses. Now I'm talking bit generally, but some with personal experience. One reason for our hightened emotional responses is that the part of the brain that control emotions (and controls everything like impulses, etc) is working at lower rate. So, emotions in ADHD are a bit wild. Our emotional state can change really rapidly and go from one extreme to the other in seconds. Two, a lot of us have been told that we're not good enough from early age, because we have problems focusing. People with normal brain function don't understand what it's like for us. Focusing is hard for us when the whole world and all the small parts of it are calling our name at any given second. Not all of us are diagnosed at early age. I was diagnosed pretty late. I felt like I wasn't good enough because I can't sit still for longer than an hour. Or I had trouble understanding physics because it has so many different parts that affect one another. Everyone else can, so I should too. I suffered from really low esteem when I was in school. I'm smart, but I'm horrible in school. Then I started to realise, that my brain doesn't take information the same way as other's do. I started to realise, it's not a bad thing. I just have to do things differently! Then I got diagnosis. But this is why people should be very careful about blaming us and accusing that we're not workng hard enough. I've had three burn outs in high school, because I was trying to keep up with others. We have to use more energy in focusing than neurologically normal people, so we give more. Then saying that it's not enough is a slap to the face. Very hard slap that will sting really long time.
Also someone with emotional control issues, one emotion can bring about dozen more. I'm like this. I make a small screw up, I sometimes don't get upset because of the small screw up, but over everything that is going on at the same time and possible the last six months. Depending on the situation and people around me. Life isn't merely a roller coaster with ups and downs, but when there are ups, there can be many thing wrong. Life is never simple!

I think that is enough message for one day.

Breaking expectations

I love breaking people's expectations about me. I know I can look a certain way. If I'm working, I look quite professional. I work in a relaxed place, so I look bit too secretary at times. On my free time, I tend to look bit like a vampire queen. One of my exes actually didn't know I dressed that way normally, and got bit of a surprise. When we dated, I wore pretty normal clothes because of weather and he saw me in my natural look after we had broken up. That was fun!

People often assume I'm goth. I'm not. I think vampire is more accurate. I wear often black clothes. I like the colour and I tend to prefer bit unusual cuts as well. I do wear purple as well. Some people expect me to be all angsty and moody because I wear unusual black clothes, and then they get happy, easily excited and hyperactive me! Also black looks good on me!

And I also tend to favour very feminine style. If at all possible, I will wear a skirt! And tops to fit womanly curves. I look pretty feminine. Today I managed to shock people by telling I can fix a bike tire. Seriously. I can even change car tire if I have all the equipment. It's not like it's that hard! And then I turn on my music. I don't really know how this surprises people, because of the goth look, but I listen to heavy music. Right now Disturbed is my choice, especially in the mornings, and other times I listen to bands like Sonata Arctica. Especially at work, people get really shocked when it's my turn to choose music...

And it's fun when people realise I'm a big nerd! I definetly don't look like one. I play board games, watch scifi movies and tv-shows, larp, rpg. Only thing I don't know much is comics and that's from lack of opportunity.

Facebook and ADHD

I'm sure a lot of my friends have notices, I tend to post often, usually several times a day. I think this is part ADHD and part my psychology. I'll take the last bit first. For a long time, I felt like I have no voice, that no one listens to me. I've always felt a bit invisible, at home or in school. I've been ignored for so many years. So now that I have facebook, I want to be heard. Always when I post, one part of me hopes people will read it and at the same time notice me. I always feel so fantastic, when people like or comment. It means they noticed what I have to say. I really am a somebody.

The ADHD part is pretty simple. Part of having ADHD is poorer control on our emotions. If we have 10 different emotions a day, it's pretty boring day. So that also causes us to easily respond with emotions. And Facebook posts often have some form of emotional influence. I often post something when I'm happy, hyperactive or excited.

I've been in lots of ADHD support groups and I can say, that those are VERY active. I can't keep up with the posts. Even in a group where there are only handful of people, it's pretty common to get five posts per day and the talking in them is very active. And one post can easily have couple hundred comments. They usually start at the topic, go round the world couple of times and sometimes ends in the original topic. Our slogan "ADHD, highway to, hey look a squirrel!" is very accurate! We get distracted on a drop of a hat!

I'm doing bit of a squirrel thing now. I also want to change my facebook picture pretty often. I tend to curb that impulse, but I do update it every couple of months, or if I get a cool new pic. 

Another add. I always try to read the whole newsfeed. It's important to me to know what and how my friends are doing, but I also want them to know, I read them. There was someone who took the time to read your post and noticed it.

Perception vs Reality

I've gotten some comments in the past month. Three of those stuck to my head: I'm strong, calm and I've got stable and healthy mind. I've got to say that I don't own any of those things! But it's how people see me. People see me as strong, because I have to keep going no matter what. They don't see me crying in bed for hours because I just don't want to face the day. It hasn't happened often to me, maybe twice in the past two years. But I do have days like that. People just see me keeping my head high and pushing forward. They don't know that I don't have the option of being weak. I haven't had people to ask for help in my life. I've had to learn how to survive through shit on my own. I've started learning on how to lean on other people now, on how to ask for help. It's still not easy.

I've lived through too much. I haven't had easy childhood. Teenage was pure hell. On top of normal stuff, I was physically very sick and I had ADHD. I guess my tolerance for shit has gotten pretty high after all of that. I've had to survive all of it. Not just learn how to cope with it all, but survive and thrive. I've got a lot of scars. I have lots of problems still, I've got four phobias and several fears, including fear of abandonment. I'm terrified of being forgotten and replaced. It keeps happening in my life over and over again. I'm an awesome person. I'm warm, open hearted and minded, I care fully about others, I don't judge anyone, I'm really good friend, I'm one of the most loyal people in the world, I always look for the good and I'm pretty and intelligent. But I'm not loud and beautiful. I'm not remarkable at anything. I'm average. It's very easy to overlook me.

Few days ago my coworkers told they were surprised to learn I've got ADHD. They said I was too calm for that. They have some experience in ADHD. I think all of my coworkers have basic training on learning disabilities. People who know me a bit see how I'm really not. I tend to jump in my place when I've got to wait for something and should be still. I run around for no reason sometimes. I like walking instead when I could just call. Once at my work place, I ran the stairs up and down three times just because. My coworker was a bit taken aback by that.

Here is a song that's been stuck in my head for a while. It's beautiful, the lyrics, the melody and music video. I just wanted to share, if anyone is reading this. Snow Patrol - In the End

Insights into Life

I've been doing a role as Joy. Her name is Ilona and she represents the childlike happiness, joy and live in the moment spirit everyone has. In the play, different types of personalities are represented as people and how they interact with each other. Joy is the most ignored and everything else tries to push her aside. There is a point to me sharing this. I was once talking with a friend of mine about the role and he noted that my acting in it was natural. It's very easy to overdo it or make it a caricature. This brings to what I've been thinking lately. I'm very upbeat and happy person. I don't get blue easily, that takes a lot of stress! I haven't always been this way. I used to get really upset over mistakes I've made and situations that went horribly for me. I don't know how or when it changed. Nowadays, if I make a mistake, I laugh about it. Like today, I had some lines go really horribly wrong, but I just went backstage and started to laugh about it. There isn't really anything else I can do. I can't change what happened, I could let it bother me, but I choose to learn my lesson and move on. It took me a long time to get here, but I'm glad I've gone through the journey. I choose to believe I'm human and with that I make mistakes. It's unavoidable, but my job is to control how they effect me. I can just do my best, work hard and learn.

I take joy out of small pleasures. I live in the moment, so it's easy to stop and smell the roses. Or in my case, smell the lilacs. I always stop to smell them. I love eating. I love cooking food that's good and surprisingly healthy. I love exercising as well, dancing to music. I fill my days with these. I admit that being happy person, it's easy to find stuff to be happy about. And I never tell anyone how to live their life. I will never tell depressed person to smell the roses. In my experience, they do, but it doesn't give the same pleasure as it does for me. Their brain chemistry works differently, so things that work for me doesn't work for them. But I do want to remind people to be more in the moment. Often things that create most stress are in the future. Part of the problem is waiting until you can do something about it. Only thing that helps is to stop and look around. What kind of weather is it? What does outside look like? Is there anything beautiful out there? What about inviting a friend over for a coffee? The moment is often good. People just forget to stop for a second.

Some Observations

I've been taking bigger dose of Concerta again and boy am I feeling it! I've got opening night coming up next week and I am super nervous. I'm normally not this nervous, not even last year. It's normally this excited nerves, now it's just really anxious nerves. I am thinking Concerta and stress don't mix so well with me. I know for some (a lot?) people it helps with stress control, but apparently I'm not one of them. I don't know if this would settle, since it takes about two weeks for the body to get used to new doses and drugs, but I don't think I can take the risk. With lower dose, I don't function as well as I would with this, but this nervousness is killing me. I have to regulate my breathing everyday so I don't have a panic attack and concentrate of doing relaxing stuff like singing. Well not concentrate but do more of them and just them. And I eat more chocolate! I usually consume lots of chocolate, but with Concerta I don't crave it anymore. Well except now.

I've got to say I'm really excited about the play. It's not "normal" play, it's 7 small plays in one. Each one has different actors, directors and writers. They usually have some form of theme, like this year it's the mind. Each writer has done their own interpretation on the word and gone with it. Well, this year we had bit of an actor shortage. We had more plays and parts than usually, and we didn't have that many new people coming so one actor is in more than one role. I've got two. I'm lead in first play. Then I'm in another play as supporting role sort of. I find it bit funny that in this second role I've got more lines than in the one I'm lead role. I've got just couple of lines in that one, but I'm on stage almost every minute of it. Yesterday we had practise with all the plays and it was the first time I felt like I'm acting since starting rehearsals. We finally had some audience and it felt more real. Some might find this a bit weird, but I felt less anxious on stage. I actually felt really calm. This is what I'm supposed to do! Rehearsals have completely different energy. It's more fun in a way but there is something missing. But when you have an audience, it's home! I hope everyone will experience this once in their lives. It doesn't have to be acting, but that something which is their thing. It resonates in your soul.

State of Being

There is one state of being I really hate and that's being tired and bored! Being bored with ADHD is both really easy and difficult. We can come up with lots of stuff to do really quickly but sometimes it's a killer. Like right now. Bored is better to handle when you're not tired, because you can just think of something to do. But when tired, I can't do anything. Being tired makes ADHD bit worse. I loose the little concentration ability I normally have. So that means if I start watching it, I'm going to get very distracted in about 5 minutes. I'm bored again. Being bored would be OK if I had the energy to stay focused for a while. Now I'd sort of like to go out, but my body doesn't want to move from a very comfortable position in my computer chair (yes it's possible to be in a very comfortable position in these). And my body hurts from yesterday's practise. We had some on stage fight lessons. It was lots of fun but my back really hates me right now. It's screaming for a massage.

Being tired of stimulants isn't fun either. I can't take naps with them. My body just doesn't slow down. Although I've learnt a lesson here, don't take stimulants day after a new workout  routine.

This will be a short post because I can't concentrate on writing. I just want to sleep. But I can't..