hirakumblr:dubiousculturalartifact:hollowedskin:merindab:huffingtonpost:This Comedian Nails Why The
hirakumblr:dubiousculturalartifact:hollowedskin:merindab:huffingtonpost:This Comedian Nails Why The Mental Illness + Creativity Connection is RidiculousI used to really worry that medications would harm my creativity and it’s part of why I resisted taking them. It hasn’t. If anything it’s allowed me to be more focused and able to complete things. My imagination hasn’t changed just because I’m on anti-depressants.a lot of my family didnt want me to start medications because they thought it would impact my ability to create, and I believed them.Now im getting better and better with my art because i dont have to fight through the brainfog or the constant panic attacks and can dedicate my energy to my work.Antidepressents didnt take my emotions away, they made them easier to handle.also Van Gogh was literally in an asylum receiving mental health treatment when he painted ‘Starry Night’. It was one of the most stable & productive periods of his life, despite the fact that wasn’t hugely effective treatment, because they didn’t really have modern understandings of what things work on mental illness. Like, you know. Medication.This is why we don’t romanticize mental illness or chronic disease.Aaaand on the same note, can we please stop referring to ADHD as a “gift”. It is not a fucking gift. It does not make me more creative, more spontaneous, or have more ideas. No, Dad, it’s not a “trade-off” where I “can’t focus” but somehow get super creative. It’s a goddamn mental disability. Key word DISABILITY as in there are things I LACK THE GODDAMN ABILITY to do. It does not make me more creative, it holds me back from creating art. And succeeding in school. And functioning as an adult. And everything in life. If someone offered me a magical cure to ADHD right now, I’d take it in a heartbeat. I would lose absolutely nothing of value, and I would gain so much- like the ability to actually succeed at trying stuff (not even succeed in general, just successfully TRY). All those times people point out really successful people with ADHD and go “oh look his ADHD made him such a great entrepreneur/artist/leader/creative person/computer programmer” or whatever as if I should view my disorder as a good thing is a fucking insult. When you say, “hey look, their super-duper ADHD gift made them REALLY successful at life, don’t feel bad about having ADHD” what you’re really saying is “well, their ADHD made them GREAT, so what the fuck is wrong with you?” In the words of Russel Barkley, people like that “didn’t succeed because of their ADHD, they succeeded IN SPITE of their ADHD.”Maybe sometime far, far, in the future, it will be helpful for me to try and think of positive aspects about my disorder, strictly because I’m stuck with it for life and some cognitive dissonance about just how much it holds me back might keep me from going crazy. But right now, it is vitally important for me to call it a disability, and recognize it as such, because it’s been eating away at me, emotionally and mentally, my entire life, and undermining everything I do, every single day of my life, and I’ve spent 20 years metaphorically running headfirst into brick walls and wondering why it didn’t work when other people are going through those walls like they don’t even exist. If I think of ADHD as a gift, if I don’t learn everything I can about it and understand exactly what it is and exactly what my brain can’t do because of it, I’ll keep trying the exact same shit and keep running headfirst into that brick wall. I have constantly failed at things my entire life, and I can’t figure out how to do the goddamn things if I don’t know why I can’t do them in the first place.also shush with the “don’t say can’t” and “think positively”. I am thinking positively. I am refusing to lie to myself anymore about what I can and can’t do. I have to stop saying “it’s ok, I’ll do it later” because I won’t, and telling myself I will just lets me ignore the problem. Telling myself “I totally CAN go to bed before 2 am without hiding my laptop at 10″ or “I CAN totally pay attention to the road without my meds” or “I CAN totally do my homework on time and therefore take 21 credits next semester” is just making the problem worse, because no, I really can’t. You know why? I have a diagnosed lack of executive function. If I lie to myself like that, I’ll just try to do the things the exact same way, and fail the same way, and hate myself a bit more the same way. I need to be allowed to say “No, I can’t do that. It simply doesn’t reliably happen. Therefore, I clearly need to try some other way to get the thing done because the way I have been trying consistently results in failure.” It’s a productive “I can’t”. There are probably other people for whom “I can’t” is a defeatist statement, but for me, it’s acknowledging the truth of how my brain works so I can find a way to do what I want without just ignoring the real problem.and newsflash: if “trying harder” worked, it would already have worked, because I’ve been “trying harder” my entire life. Trying harder to beat down a brick wall with your fists just gets you more broken knuckles. People only say “try harder” because the brick wall doesn’t exist for them and they can’t fathom that it exists for you. -- source link
#adhd#rant