This has ended up longer than I originally intended.
We are halfway through the year, and if all you did was scrape through with the skin off your knuckles, in my humble opinion, you’ve done fine. I worry about the whirl of content coming through about what people should have done by now at this time of the year. What have you managed / achieved / celebrated? What have you ticked off on your list for this year? Output, output, output.
Mid-point reflections or New Year resolutions can be maddening when you live with ADHD. Bit like people who spout on about S.M.A.R.T. goals. (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-Bound for those who’ve never heard that acronym). If I break down a big task into smaller tasks, my brain freaks out because now it thinks I have more to do. While I can see end-to-end processes clearly, when I try to expound on that process, I can find it overwhelming.
This year I have primarily been focussing on healing after a truly terrible, very bad, no good year. 2025 was gruelling mentally, and we do not give enough consideration to the physical toll stress plays on the body. I’m still reeling from a buffet of life-events that happened to our family within months.
- Big birthday, I turned 50 in January
- Serious illness of family member, my Dad had a fall and was admitted to hospital in February
- Bereavement of family member, Dad died mid-March, his funeral was in April
- Sale of house, the family home went up for sale in June
- Change of job, my umpteenth restructure at work began in July
During that six-month shit show, at every sodding turn, the administration ineptitude thrust upon us was a nightmare and it continued unabated until November.
Exhibits A, B and C: Mum was waiting for the death certificate to arrive in the post so we could announce it in the local paper, so we could book the funeral, so I could book my flights. Nothing could be done without that piece of paper. For over a week, Mum rang the hospital, the home where he’d died, the home where Dad and been living for over 2 years, then his GP surgery. Where Mum was told that his file was marked as ‘deceased’, he was no longer considered a patient at the surgery. I know right? That was a fun letter to write.
She finally rang the registrar’s office helpline (from the pamphlet given to her by the home that Dad died in) to be told Dad would need a coronial inquest. As Dad had spent a month in hospital, the GP assigned to his residential care home didn’t want to sign the death certificate. The only problem was, no-one told Mum.
Exhibit D: The coroner’s office. Well, we’re up to almost 50 emails between us and them now. They are not satisfied with what happened, even though it’s almost 18 months since he died, we still not have a cause of death for Dad finalised. We’ve also escalated every which way, it’s maddening. While every one is very sorry for our loss, not one person is pulling their fingers out to get us an answer.
I realise that I need to get specific on at least one thing. One of the worst days was when a colleague’s father died, I was in the middle of my banking app to transfer some money for their collection when I realised I had got nothing from work when my Dad died. They’d been great giving me time when I needed it, including juggling my leave allocation so I could go back the UK. But as I’d glued all my 50th cards and bereavement cards into the same scrap book a few days earlier; the hollow feeling when I realised I got nothing from work to acknowledge Dad, or me, feels heavy still.
I was scheduled to have a call with the EAP, (an organisation that absolves your organisation’s HR department from doing anything useful), about 5 minutes after this realisation. My role had been unmatched, the role they had earmarked me for was written almost a full grade lower. I was taking the free counselling offered to impacted staff with both hands. Before I got on the EAP call, I sent my manager an email saying that I was sad that there had been no recognition of my Dad’s death from my colleagues.
I started the call in floods of tears; we ended up talking about anything but the restructure, but it was a good chat.
The next day, I was told in a very stiff call from my manager that I had in fact told them I didn’t want a fuss. Which is why they didn’t send me anything.
When you have ADHD, your attention is everywhere, it takes a lot of effort to focus on the task at hand. When I’m in an open-plan office, there are people moving around me, talking, on calls, catching-up, the lights, smells and hubbub of life going on around me takes a lot of effort. I knew I did not have the bandwidth to talk about Dad, and then get back to work. I could do one or the other. To add to the fun, if I don’t get regular confirmation that I’m going OK, my brain starts to tell me that I’m not, and I can begin to spiral.
I went back through every email, every Teams conversation, making sure that I hadn’t misremembered. I found the email I wrote to the executives and the managers I worked with explaining the situation, (Exhibits A, B and C) and that while I was in the office, could we please not talk about it.
This could appear materialistic by saying that I wanted ‘something’. But what I wanted was to know that I mattered enough for a card to be sent by anyone. The hollow feeling I got when I was going to transfer money to S, was that I didn’t matter.
Rejection Sensitivity Disorder is one of the hardest emotional roller coasters to navigate with ADHD. Feelings and emotions are also difficult to validate in others, but losing a parent is hard for anyone.
I know my Dad’s funeral was in the middle of the night for Australia, but I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve shown up for people at funerals, including taking a day off work to be there for them. If we couldn’t be there because the Husband and I were COVID+, we watched the live-stream. That I know that people close to me didn’t watch Dad’s funeral, because they TOLD me; saying in the next breath, “I hope that was OK?”
No, it wasn’t. Same hollow feeling, I don’t matter enough to you for you to show up for me.
I was told on a Thursday at my annual review where I’d got “exceeding expectations” that ‘I can’t do what I do without you’, then told on the next Tuesday my role wasn’t matched. No biggie, working in the public sector we have a restructure at least once every two years.
I can’t talk about the restructure too much, but please believe me when I tell you it was awful. Poorly managed and executed, viz. we’d have all staff calls where we could log questions via an anonymous website. If someone asked a question similar to what you wanted to know, you could do a 👍. However, one manager was in the questions deleting the more difficult questions before everyone could read them. So much for transparency.
The final straw when it was complete, was an all staff email was sent out heralding the new structure in, starting “Welcome Team!”. Only problem was, they’d not taken out the people that remained unmatched and would not be part of the team. My phone began to ring, messages began pinging in, “What do you mean, you’ve not been matched?” I had to explain over and over, that the three roles I’d applied for that I was not suitable for, despite being lower than the grade I was working at.
So many things happened in such a short space of time, by September of last year, I was barely functioning. I am aware that my mental health had slipped significantly, we didn’t realise how badly though. My GP eventually signed me off work for a month, I was an absolute mess. Burnout when you’ve a neurodivergent diagnosis is different to burnout as a neurotypical. It can take months for our parasympathetic nervous system to come back online.
I have applied for lots of jobs, worked at one for a month, been interviewed for others, but mostly get nothing back. I honestly do not think I will ever work in an office again, so I’ve set myself up with this ADHD coaching and now provide virtual EA support to entrepreneurs that need an extra pair of hands at 15HoursBack.
I see my GP, a counsellor and a psychiatrist regularly. I eat well for me, I meditate, journal and try to exercise every day. But I also don’t beat myself up if I don’t; not least because it took months for the opticians and I to find the prescription for contact lenses I could run in, as I cannot run in varifocals. For the first time in my life, I am being patient and considerate of my needs.
If all you’ve done for the first six months of an arbitrary delineated period of time is stay fed and watered, particularly with all the additional pressures we’re all living under, you’ve done OK in my book.