Author: Eilidh

Journalist, dreamer, author, psychology enthusiast and quasi-spectorial fantasist.

Broken seems to be the hardest word

Or, at least the word appears to be difficult to hear for most of the ADHD podcasters. I’m not sure exactly when it became obligatory to end every episode with a ‘Remember, you’re not broken – just different‘, or something in the vein of that. To that, I have precisely one thing to say: Fuck off.

This type of message can be construed as the speaker is telling someone how to feel. There’s a word for this; invalidation.

American psychologist Dr Jamie Long defines invalidation as:

“The process of denying, rejecting or dismissing someone’s feelings. Invalidation sends the message that a person’s subjective emotional experience is inaccurate, insignificant, and/or unacceptable.”

Long goes on to explain that telling someone they shouldn’t feel a certain way ‘conveys contempt and superiority’. Regardless of how unintentional it may be, invalidation can be ‘one of the most damaging forms of emotional abuse’, according to Dr Long (2017).

You can read the article in full on her website, by clicking this link.

With some facts to justify my opinion and highlight the importance of acknowledging others, I’ll get on with my rant.

To my knowledge, no prophet worth their salt ever claimed to be one. Apart from Brian, perhaps, but we all remember that he was just a ‘very naughty boy‘. Yet, a horde of mental patients turned self-proclaimed neurodivergence experts have come to think of themselves as the second coming, or perhaps a little closer to the big man; omniscient.

They seemingly liken themselves to the Messiah of the looney bin – leaders of the un-broken newly diagnosed. Behaving as if they have all the answers makes them a potential danger to themselves and others, just because they’ve been diagnosed with something that made them crawl into a seemingly bottomless search engine wormhole, or even crack a book in some cases. Ironically, in true ADHD hyperfocus fashion, they seemingly forgot to check the facts or look for more sides to the story when they’d had their fill of research and decided their newfound knowledge must be broadcast to fellow sufferers, because now they have found the answer! Come off it.

As Attitude puts it in their well-researched article on hyperfocus, once in this state, we can often become ‘so engrossed we block out the world around us’. Which, of course, can be good for our personal learning.

However, it can make some people forget that the information we devour might not be applicable to others. I particularly find this to be the case with podcasters with AuDHD, which shouldn’t come as a massive surprise, seeing as some of them struggle to see past their own nose on a good day. Put in a more delicate way, in an article by the NHS on autism in adults, people with autism ‘find it hard to understand what others are thinking or feeling’ and can ‘take things very literally’. These traits, combined with hyper fixation and a WiFi connection, is perhaps a concoction best left to sit safely behind an unhackable paywall. Which, in fairness, someone with AuDHD would likely be able to set up, given they have a special interest in computer programming.

Anyway, we are back to the initial phrase. The ‘you are not broken‘ness of it all. Due to AuDHD podcasters innate quality of having trouble putting themselves in somebody else’s shoes, they may fail to see how this statement might make someone slightly more emotionally inclined feel as if their feelings have been dismissed and trivialised. Because some of us actually need to feel a little broken, in order to put ourselves back together again.

Either way, someone with an extreme need for attention might not be the best educator. And if you’re the host of a podcast where you are the main attraction and self-proclaimed expert, you should’ve guessed it, you are bordering on narcissism. It’s like going down to Speakers’ corner and shouting your opinion for everyone to hear, but the problem is that, since you’ve invested in a mic and some audio editing software, people are likely to think that you’ve actually got something of value to share, outside of your own lived experience.

I’m not saying all people with autism are narcissists, nor do I mean to claim that all of them are utterly devoid of empathy, I am simply pointing out the damage something unintentional can cause if you don’t stop to take all of the facts adhering to a diagnosis – and not least differences in personality and/or lived experience – into consideration before you present something as a universal truth.

Invalidation (and autism) aside, there’s something to be said for letting yourself really feel what you feel, in order to achieve a sense of control over the emotion – rather than having it control you.

Don’t get me wrong – I don’t think wallowing is particularly good for you either. But surely you are sending some conflicting signals to your unconscious if you let someone else dictate how you feel. I suppose it can be nice to hear that someone else thinks that you should think that you are a good human specimen just as you are, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that you yourself feel as if you are in dire need of repair.

Most of us can’t just adopt a mantra of saying ‘I’m not broken’ to ourselves in the mirror until we’re blue in the face and hope that some sort of unbrokenness will manifest all of its own – we have to acknowledge and respect the process before we can trust it.

So what if I am a little broken right now. But it is crucial to my recovery that I can be allowed to acknowledge that and start learning how to rebuild myself over time – adopting new, healthier coping strategies that will keep me from falling a part too quickly the next time life throws me a few curveballs. Your telling me I’m not broken really isn’t helping when that’s how I feel. And I am sure others feel the same way.

My process is my own and I need to work through it, without someone else trivialising my emotions or my situation. I need to be able to imagine for myself a life in which I am a little more together in order to find the steps to get there.

I forget who said this, but I think ‘there is beauty in something that has been broken and put back together, because its new composition makes it stronger and more unique‘ is a good quote. Might have gotten it from a Hallmark movie, actually. Anyway.

We can all feel a little broken sometimes. That should be okay, shouldn’t it? It shows that we’ve got some perspective and self-awareness.

The fact that you feel a little fragmented right now, doesn’t mean you won’t at some point become something that feels a bit more whole – or that you should come to believe it’s a permanent state. Quite the opposite – we just need to find all the pieces and the right adhesive before we start piecing it all together.

There is great strength in admitting weakness. And you can quote me on that.

See you next Tuesday, for a special Piemageddon update!

Here are some sick Bad Religion tunes as a reward for reading. A proverbial potpourri of punk at its very finest. Enjoy!

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Fighting for our rights, or simply screaming for vengeance?

Fist

I run the risk of making myself very unpopular here, particularly among those who won’t bother reading past the first paragraph, but I think it’s time we took a long, hard look at how feminism is perceived by those who call themselves feminists (i.e. neofeminists), having mistaken own-gender favouritism for ‘equality’.

First, let’s look at what feminism is really all about.

You can date feminist protests back to the 3rd century BCE. When the “first wave” of feminism first arose in the 1800s, it was from a need for constitutional and social equality, in a society where women were subjugated to men. This need for equality between the sexes, or fight against oppression, is still very much a key cause in modern day feminism.

The European Institute for Gender Equality defines feminism as follows:

“Political stance and commitment to change the political position of women and promote gender equality, based on the thesis that women are subjugated because of their gendered body, i.e. sex.” (EIGA, n.d.)

On the same page, there is additional information about the workings of modern day feminism:

“Contemporary feminisms’ main focus is either a re-evaluation and reconceptualisation of women, their positions and roles, or a deconstruction of covert forms of gender discrimination and exclusion.”

This is important stuff, people! So, why am I in such a huff?

Well, nowhere in any of the above quotes did we read that modern day males should be punished for the norms and legislations of a society they did not help build. Perpetuating these norms today in plain ignorance should of course be subject to both criticism and consequence, and I think that this can be read between the lines here, but simply being born with your genitalia on the outside of your physical body does not a criminal make.

Back to the misapprehension aspect of neofeminism. Which is different from new feminism, by the way. Look it up. Neofeminists tend to glorify the female aspect. Not very equally inclined, if you ask me.

Thus, in their attempt to ‘take down the patriarchy’ by trying to flip the coin and make persons of the male gender feel inferior, these neofeminists take the focus away from where the feminist movement is still sorely needed because women’s rights are not equal to those of their male peers.

I am talking about the places and societies where women still don’t have the right to vote (Eritrea and Vatican City), where they aren’t allowed out in the open without covering themselves up, where they are forced to remain silent until their husband, brother or other male family member allows them to speak, where they do not have the same educational opportunities as their male peers, where they cannot speak up about sexual harassment in the workplace in fear they will lose their job – where they are subject to very real oppression.

That is where we need political change.

And I am not talking about religious practices or beliefs here – to each their own – but behaviours and customs that become a breeding ground for hostility, fear, hate and megalomania.

To me, feminism represents working towards creating opportunities for those who wish to have a say in how they want to lead their lives, like having a career in a field where their gender is unrepresented and therefore overlooked – and not because they are unrepresented due to lack of real interest.

Gender quotas are bullshit. Especially when it comes to leadership in the workplace. Anyone who has studied leadership and better management styles will know that a true leader needs to have a real passion for their work in order to do their job properly. If something holds precedence over the leadership role, you should find something else to do. And the quality of being able to put your job first pertains to a certain type of person, regardless of gender. So, a leadership role shouldn’t go to a woman that applied just to see if she could get it, just because she’s among the underrepresented few, when there are highly qualified men just dying to do the job and make the required sacrifices to do so. Why apply for a job when you don’t absolutely want it?

And when we are on the subject of work, there’s the issue of equal pay. This new generation of patriarchy fighters seem to think that they are entitled to the same pay as their male colleagues, despite taking a week ‘off’ each month, where they demand to be left to their own devices so that they can deal with menstrual cramps, chocolate cravings and mood swings. If you’re not going to do your usual workload to a respectable standard for one week out of every month, how do you expect to get paid the same as someone who does do their job and manages to pick up the slack after you? And, don’t get me started on the type of women who apply for a job, only to accidentally get pregnant and go on maternity leave within 3 months of signing the contract.

In demanding this type of preferential treatment at work, how do you think that makes the rest of us look? Everyone will think we are equally weak, demanding and ignorant of others’ needs. Saying it should be your right as a woman to make such demands makes the whole equality aspect of feminism evaporate. In fact, it’s akin to taking a huge, bloody dump all over everything the feminism movement has accomplished to do and to this day works hard to fight for. It is the opposite of equality and has already had enough negative consequences to create a rift and perhaps make some people think that women should be put in their place.

So, when fairweather (now former) friends would ask me, in a rather accusatory tone, ‘and you call yourself a feminist?’, in response to my opinions or behaviour, my reply would be: ‘No, I don’t.’ And, I really don’t. Not because I disagree with the ideology, but because I don’t want to be associated with them or their misinformed view on something so important.

Whatever happened to fighting the power, together? Equality? Unity? Solidarity?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for equal rights and applaud the movement that secured our right to vote, not least to own a fucking credit card. But I’d rather not be associated with these self-proclaimed feminist that are under the impression that being a feminist means blaming and punishing men for everything that’s gone wrong in their own lives. You blame patriarchy for enforcing societal norms that aren’t suited to women, when in fact women are often the ones perpetuating (or enforcing) them. Mothers telling girls how to behave so that people will like them, teachers doing the same. Women treating men like they’ve done something wrong by simply existing. Women treating other women like dirt and playing games, just to cause confusion and fear. This type of behaviour is alienating, not community-building.

Then there’s linguistic trends, such as the emergence of the term ‘mansplaining’, for instance… There’s no one more guilty of explaining things in a way that makes the listener think they are cognitively bloody impaired, than a misinformed feminist. The fact that it’s been dubbed mansplaining and not overexplaining goes to show just how far some people have gone to put men in a derogatory light. This is opinion, of course, however educated it may be.

Anyway, that’s what irks me this week, and all the live long day.

If you’re going to fight for something, fight for equality, not for the glorification of one specific sex. We are all just parasites on this planet anyway, and before long, we will be but stardust in the solar wind.

See you next Tuesday (unless an asteroid wipes us out within the next few days)!

Also, you should listen to some nice tunes. Have some Lita Ford, some Blondie and some fucking Judas Priest (links below):

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Invasion of the neuro-fluencers

Illustrates the interrupting noise of inaccurate podcasts

In our day and age, anyone can take to almost any media platform and build themselves a brand and dub themselves an expert – no qualifications needed, other than being able to use your own computer and having access to the Internet. To create your own podcast, the ability to speak comes in handy as well, and you might require a microphone or some sound editing software, should you happen to care about the listener’s wellbeing at all. It appears you can also decide how your pod is labelled. Herein lies the danger.

Today, there are a million different ADHD/mental health themed podcasts across the many streaming apps and podcast platforms, many of which I have found helpful myself. But the amount of self-proclaimed experts creating these self-help pods is shocking. Many of these podcasts are categorised as “educational”, and almost all of them have a star rating of 4 and over (out of 5). If you have recently been diagnosed and are desperately looking for tools to help you tackle your symptoms and how they impact your everyday life, this will be exactly what you’ll be looking for.

After a day of sifting through various “recommended” (by Spotify) podcasts, it became very clear to me that there are a lot of people out there with no medical background, other than their own diagnosis and the advice they got from their doctor, that are presenting their personal experience as ‘one size fits all’ facts.

They are doling out advice on anything lifestyle related, from weight loss and exercise to medication and how everyone is so different to you that you should only surround yourself with others with the same diagnosis, without even having the odd expert on as a guest once in a while to offer some balance.

Then, I came across some woman claiming you should drink 4 whole litres of water or more in a day, without mentioning the fact that gulping it all in one go isn’t particularly healthy and can lead to low blood sodium levels, among other things… Worst case scenario if you drink too much too quickly? Brain damage. You can read more about overhydration on Healthline.

Of course drinking enough water is extremely important, especially in hot summer weather – dehydration has its own challenges – but let’s have a look at what happens to the brain when it’s in danger of overhydration, shall we?

We learn from a 2024 research article published by Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet that “a healthy adult needs around two litres of water per day, or 30-34 millilitres per kilogram of body weight. That includes both the liquid from what we eat, which may be roughly one litre per day, and from what we drink” (Odlind, Karolinska Institutet, 2024). You can read the article in its entirety by clicking any word in this sentence. The general gist of it is that you should drink when you are thirsty, and not too much in one go.

The article goes on to explain how our kidneys may struggle to filter out excess water if we over-hydrate within a short space of time, and that we can experience swelling of the brain cells if our sodium levels become too low in relation to the water levels in the body.

Even though overhydration is rare, it does happen. After what I can gather, most cases are seen in athletes performing strenuous exercise, such as marathon running or similar. If one drinks too much before a race, instead of distributing one’s water intake over time by replenishing when thirsty or too hot, it can have a detrimental effect. We are not camels; trying to fill the tank before a race will not make us go for longer without water – according to the article, quite the opposite happens; it sends a signal to the body that we have more than enough water and should get rid of the excess.

In conclusion, the so-called advice from the podcaster is potentially quite dangerous. I will not mention any names here, as I don’t want to ruin anyone’s day, but I did give them a poor rating in hope that it might help others.

Needless to say, this was the last drop for me – I had had enough of soundwave cowboys.


The above example is quite extreme, of course, but let’s delve into some of the other dangers of globally broadcast misinformation. The fact that you have a diagnosis does not automatically make you an expert on that part of the medical field, in the same way that being able to use search engines efficiently does not make you a researcher. The fact that you can use Google does not make you a scientist.

Your diagnosis might (should, with proper psychoeducation) help you become an expert on yourself and help you in your day-to-day, but it ends there. Although there are many commonalities in sufferers of the same disorder (controversial word in some circles, I know), we are all different. Your experience with a certain type of medication is not universal.

In fact, your preferred type of medication can be harmful to others, who may have comorbidities different to yours. Factors such as body type, gender, hormone levels or hereditary conditions may also affect how they respond to treatment. Only the patient’s personal medical practitioner is qualified to advise that person. I am not saying that you’re not allowed to have an opinion, but you need to realise that there is no cure-all for everyone, and that what your doctor told you is very rarely applicable to everyone else.

I know that you found your own research to be extraordinarily helpful, and that you want this same revelation for others that may struggle in the same way. But without any qualifications, your experiences are just that; YOURS. And a lot of it is just opinion. YOUR opinion. Newly diagnosed individuals may have comorbidities that you don’t know about. They need to discuss their diagnosis with their clinical therapist, neurologist or psychiatrist. Being in a vulnerable state, they may take your advice for fact. This is a real danger, people!

Sharing is caring, as they say, but remember to back up what you share with scientific evidence if you are going to present your findings as something other than opinion.

No links to any ADHD podcasts this week, as most of them are shite and I have gone off listening to them. If you want something gloriously witty, interspersed with a huge dollop of charms and filth, however, I can recommend Three Bean Salad (links in the Spotify and Instagram icons below). Go on, you know you need a laugh after this rant.

See you next Tuesday!

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Statistics, diagnostics and the media – why certain news should only be distributed by experts

Sad person attacked by opinions

This is a double-edged sword. On one hand, we have the right to information that concerns us, yet on the other, the information gathered from these reports is often misinterpreted by uninformed journalists and thus miscommunicated through news outlets that fit their headers to accommodate the most clicks, instead of conveying what the researchers have found. (By uninformed, I mean that most desk journalists lacks the specific expertise to be able to understand properly the context and how scientific research is conducted, not that they are unintelligent.)

Uncritical A/B testing practices symbolises the death of integrity in modern media.

In short, psychological research should be published via professional channels and localised to the target audience, to prevent misunderstandings that can lead to the spreading of false information, or worse; greater socioeconomic inequality.

Because the fact remains, that mental health articles published by your bog standard online news outlet often refers to sufferers from mental (and physical) illness as a ‘them’; a third-person object.

I recently read somewhere, that ‘poor people have mental health issues and mental health issues lead to poverty’. That was the gist of it anyway. With that whole ‘third person’ mentality, one could assume that the tabloid readers and the more affluent members of society will take this to mean that the mentally ill are a burden on society. Maybe even the reason why the economy is in the shitter, so to speak. I am inclined to believe that news sites relying solely on A/B testing to increase their readership make matters far worse in those few instances they’ve got some actual news to report.

It’s the same with any articles on certain diagnoses; they are presented as a peculiar subject, something weird or bizarre, rather than something that affects a lot of people, both directly and indirectly. Of course, so-called reality shows such as The Undateables aren’t helping. And, no, I will not link to such horrific social pornography (for lack of a better term).

The solution to changing how mental illness is viewed is simple; psychoeducation. If the general public was to be presented with proper explanations and definitions by mental health experts, they, WE, would understand that everything is not as black and white as the media presents to us in its current uncaring and often ignorant state.

There are plenty of official networks and non-profit mental health organisations that publish research findings and psychology related news through easily digestible articles, but they are drowned out by the noise. Some of these, however, I will link to at the bottom of this post.

So, why should we care about psychoeducation, especially if we are not experiencing illness ourselves? I’m glad you asked. The World Health Organisation published numbers from 2019, indicating that as many as “1 in every 8 people worldwide are living with a mental disorder“. It would be fair to assume that more than one of ‘1 out of 8’ of us have carers, family or friends, or even colleagues, that are indirectly affected by our illness in some way. Not to mention that a lot of disorders can be hereditary. If we understood everything a little bit better, it might be easier to cope with certain things. Mass media are not the right communicators for this particular job.

Psychoeducation is important in a patient’s journey to recovery from or management of any mental illness, regardless of age. One can argue that it is essential – in order to understand yourself and your condition, you must first understand how it affects you. Science Direct has a more in-depth article on psychoeducation available on their site, if you want to learn more about what this entails.

Furthermore, psychoeducation can provide you with tools for when the mental health services close down after office hours or on bank holidays, which, for some, can be the most challenging parts of the year. As a bonus, proper psychoeducation can help everyone around you to understand things a little bit better as well. Wouldn’t it be nice if the nuanced field of psychology could be presented by someone with a passion for it, rather than someone that’s been told to ‘make the headline clickable’?

That’s probably more than enough for today – and I have some psychoeducation of my own to get back to. Thanks for reading!

See you next Tuesday.

Here’s a list of excellent outlets for those of us who want to learn more about ourselves and our loved ones:

Mental Health Mates UK

The ADHD Foundation

OCD UK

Depression UK

Anxiety UK

I would also like to recommend the following two podcasts, one of which tackles how mental health issues affect our daily lives in delightful, laidback, and sometimes emotional, human conversation, and the other an ADHD specific podcast, which offers interviews with leading experts on the field, as well as well-known guests.

The Life of Bryony

ADHD Chatter

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The Power of Luff*

Blue pills and opened pill bottle.

Recently, I was rewatching the first series of Santa Clarita Diet on Netflix (brilliant show, by the way), where the husband, Joel (portrayed by the brilliant Timothy Olyphant), mentions a possible cure for his wife Sheila’s altered, undead, state. Sheila (played by the one and only Drew Barrymore), however, is hesitant, as she is getting so much done, now that she has more energy and needs less sleep. At one point, she even exclaims: “I can parallel park in one move now!”

You might wonder where am I going with this long-winded introduction, other than displaying my love of gore and humour intertwined. Rest assured, I am about to get to the point (rather than rambling on about how I, too, would like to be able to parallel park in one move).

Although I am not undead now that I am medicated (unlike my experience with antidepressants), this really made me think; do I really want to go back to the old me? Can I be successful in life without medication? They’ve had such an immense and immediate effect on me, that I am afraid to go off them. To illustrate:

Within 30 minutes of having taken my first pill, something bizarre happened, in the way I have always imagined an acid dream might feel like. Before this, I would compare my brain to a chaotic second-hand shop, where you really have to dig around to find the good bits. Now, someone had switched on the lights and mister Cerebellum had transmorphed himself into a neat library, with every book and folder in its designated place, on long aisles arranged in alphabetical order. Even my photographic memory – that I thought I’d lost to years of drinking – has started to come back. For me, this was a life-altering experience.

Now, I am not suggesting medication is for anyone – this is about my personal experience, which is why I have excluded the type of medication and whether or not this is the only medication I am on. I am not a medical doctor and do not offer any advice on medication. The featured image is for illustrative purposes only.

Anyway, for someone previously so anti-pharma, this was a point of reckoning for me, that led to some serious soul-searching. I could not discount the effect of the medication, and it helped me focus enough to start and complete three exam papers in as many days. Instead of having to stop and think about everything to remember, I was now able to enter a room and do the thing I had gone in there to do, instead of shaking my head in frustrated confusion as to why I had moved in the first place after crossing the threshold. The song lyrics I’ve written myself, but find so difficult to remember, just poured out of me when the time came to sing them. I stopped doubting myself all of the time. The intrusive images that have haunted me for as long as I can remember were gone. My impulsivity halted and my compulsion to continue drinking or eating when I’d had enough evaporated. This, in turn led to less stress and I started to feel as if I could breathe properly.

Eventually, the effect subsided within a few days and I had to up my dosage to get an effect. The same happened again after another week or so. Then, it just sort of stabilised and the fear set in: Had I imagined the effect out of pure desperation? Would my symptoms come back little by little?

Naturally, I quickly started setting myself up for failure by pushing my boundaries, slowly breaking the new, healthier routines I had adopted, like an obstinate child. I remembered myself elatedly saying that, ‘If this works for only a week, I’ll be grateful to have had that one week where I was normal. Among the living’. Now, the Id had taken over and was on a mission to convince me that I had somehow jinxed myself by uttering those words. Of course, the anxiety caused me to fuck up. I started forgetting things again, struggled to regain focus, let my impulsivity get the better of me.

Although, what I now realise, is that I am still significantly better than I was before I started taking my meds. It is not a placebo. My natural constant hankering for dopamine makes me think that the fact that I don’t have my world turned upside down every time I take a pill, means it’s not working.

Demonstrably, my attention has improved – I am able to focus on everything when needed, not only what I am interested in. I no longer get distracted by the sound of a car driving slowly over rocks on the street outside my window. My working memory has vastly improved. But I am still me; curious, empathetic, caring, fiercely passionate about justice and equally perturbed by injustice.

I might be a bit sensitive-skinned sometimes, or reading too much into things, but at least I now know that that is down to my rejection sensitivity and that I don’t have to walk around thinking that I’ve hurt someone simply because I texted them back ‘OK’ with no emoji. (At least I texted them back, eh?)

I do wonder if I’ll ever feel strong enough to go off the meds, though. In the meantime, I’ll be here, diligently teaching myself new coping mechanisms and preparing for a life in the real world. I will persevere, somehow. I always have done. Will I succeed? That depends on how you define success.

See you next Tuesday.

If you liked my writing and fancy checking out my book, you can head on over to the section where I’ve written all about where you can get a copy – available in paperback and digitally.

If you want to watch something beautiful and thought-provoking, you should check out Sensitive Skin.

For anyone craving a gorgeous listen, you can check out the Gary Numan album I’ve linked to below. Should be played with headphones on, or through proper stereo speakers for max effect. Excellent running music!

*Luff (noun): the act of sailing a ship nearer the wind

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Are traditional recruitment styles discriminatory against the neurodivergent?

If you are a recruiter reading this, I will recommend a great podcast at the very bottom of this post, that will provide a simple explanation for our career-swapping and hopefully make you realise why ignoring a lengthy CV might cost you the best person for the job.

I cannot count the number of times I have seen the following phrase in job listings: ‘CV cannot exceed two pages’. To me, this means that I would have to cut more than a decade of my work experience, which in turn will make it look like I didn’t start working until I was in my 30s. Not all of these jobs will be relevant to the one I am applying for, of course, but at the very least they help to show that I managed to work full-time through all of my years at uni.

Furthermore, most recruiters fail to notice that I managed to run my own business alongside these other odd jobs for over a decade. This makes me wonder if self-employment has any merit for the recruiter.

Then there is the issue of my education. Anything other than your standard BA+MA doesn’t sit well with recruiters. It is as if they cannot fathom that one person can manage several degrees or, indeed, different fields of expertise. Never mind the vast amount of certifications and online courses I have under my belt, in addition to my BA and MA.

I get it – my professional background may appear slightly haphazard or even schizophrenic to the naked eye. But wouldn’t you be at least a tiny bit interested in seeing who is behind all of this wizardry? After all, my CV is the result of my very real undying thirst for knowledge.

The reason why I haven’t stayed in a relevant position for more than 18 months at a time is that my background only gets me fixed-time positions lasting an average of a year. (In the service industry, however, I just got bored and/or understimulated, but I did learn a lot about stress management through my bar work – and I have been headhunted for my White Russians alone.)

Ultimately, I had to create my own niche and become self-employed in order to do something I loved, that required additional learning on the job. The bar work came in handy when I needed to find a better flat, pay my taxes up front or purchase new office supplies (or pay for all of those online courses).

Do you have any idea how much admin self-employment entails, by the way? How much networking? How many working hours? How many 24 hours-or-less turnaround times? Didn’t think so.

Additionally, my masking of my ADHD symptoms has made me a natural at fitting in anywhere and with anybody. Especially for short periods of time, of course, but I have done this for almost 40 years and am quite capable of keeping up appearances for longer. Just don’t put me in an open-plan office.

Unfortunately, my years of masking also makes it quite impossible for someone like me to fill out one of those personality compatibility tests recruitment agencies seem to love with any accuracy. The reason for this is that I will always tick the box that I think that you would like me to tick. I will make myself into the person you need me to be.

So, in my attempts to impress the recruiter or recruitment agency, I hide the qualities that make me a good fit for the actual company that is hiring.

Now for the thing that prompted me to write this piece. There is a very interesting educational podcast by the name of MissUnderstood: The ADHD in Women Channel. They do lovely, wee bitesize episodes in addition to their longer ones, and I have found a lot of support through the Tips From an ADHD Coach segment, with coach Jaye Lin.

The episode on changing careers often (Spotify link below) really struck a chord with me, especially as it highlights how our impulsivity and dopamine deficiency combined with our all-in personalities can lead to burnout in the wrong environment and have us apply for a different job somewhere else, only to repeat the process.

Our dependence on dopamine, however, make us more resilient in facing challenges. We thrive off of making the impossible possible – it’s what keeps us going.

As you can see, the episode shows the good and bad sides of how our traits can affect how long we can manage to stay in the same position over time. I do however find that the more I learn about how I’m built differently has made its marks on my professional pursuits, the better I am able to approach things differently. Unfortunately for me, I wasn’t diagnosed until I hit mid-life, so I wasn’t able to reign it in before going to uni.

There are many people like me out there, that have had to come to terms with who they really are and start everything anew after a late in life diagnosis. We can’t change the past, but we can help others like us by being vocal about our experiences. I hope you are listening.

See ya next Tuesday!

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How masking my ADHD traits enabled my OCD

Disclaimer, I have no scientific proof of this… But I got your attention, didn’t I?

I was recently diagnosed with ADHD, something that I quite frankly knew very little about up until that point. What’s more, when I was a kid, most teachers and clinicians alike still thought that this was something that only affected boys, and I think that this deterred me from investigating further when I started noticing certain things about myself.

Today I find myself hurling towards the ‘wrong side of 40’ at warp speed whilst trying to come to terms with my diagnosis and realising how this condition explains so much about my past and how I have tackled certain things – some horribly and others exceptionally well.

As with every little thing that catches my interest, I got the sudden urge to learn everything I could about ADHD in the shortest amount of time possible, which has led me down a rabbit hole of research papers and ADHD podcasts. This curiosity and insatiable need to learn is something I have discovered can be quite common in people with ADHD. You can learn more about some of the strengths our neurodivergence may cause in this article from Catalyst Care Group.

Through my extensive research, I came across the topic of masking, which made me suspect there might be a correlation between trying to hide my ADHD traits and the emergence of my OCD. I can recommend ADHD Chatter and MissUnderstood: The ADHD in Women Channel if you want to learn more about ADHD in general. I should add that, even though there are many similarities between people with ADHD, every individual’s experience can be very different, so there’s no ‘one size fits all’ element here. There are also a few different sub-categories to ADHD that I will not go into, but there’s a spectrum.

Now, onto the birth of my monster – the OCD – and its suspected origins.

From a very young age, I have been made acutely aware that there is something wrong with me. I’m too much, too interested, too active, too clever, too me. One teacher even sent me to the principal’s office twice – for being possessed by the actual Devil. (No, Satanic Panic was not a thing where I grew up – but the punishment of atypical children was very much in vogue). I’ve recently learned this shepherd of the lord has passed on, presumably to join his mother in her fellating pursuits in another dimension and wish them all the best. I digress.

Needless to say, I had to learn how to hide the real me if I was going to have any chance of fitting in anywhere. Or, more importantly, making it easier for my parents to be perceived in the way that they wanted. Their having a ‘difficult’ child was getting in the way of that. So I learned how to become what every situation called for. A social chameleon, if you will.

This sort of behaviour makes it easy to navigate new social settings, but what that takes away from the individual is the ability to create and maintain meaningful, sustainable relationships. You need to have certain qualities for that to happen, and if you change your behaviour according to the situation you’re in or the people you interact with, you become very unpredictable to the people you meet more than once or twice. Getting to know you is almost impossible.

Thinking that if I only managed to become enough, ‘perfect’, I would at some point be accepted and acknowledged by my parents and I wouldn’t have to hide who I was anymore, so I didn’t factor in the consequence of that never coming to fruition.

The longer I carried on hiding the real me, the more she squirmed and screamed to come out on the inside, leading to frustration, depression, nervousness, anxiety and violent outbursts directed at myself. Realising that this was an indefinite situation made everything seem impossible to me and I lost all sense of control. I needed to regain it somehow, just so I could find a routine, some predictability, that I was in control of.

Then I turned 12 and the hormones came flooding in. Overnight, my juiced up brain had found a solution – magic.

As you can probably gather, with the emergence of hormones and teenage angst, all that nervous energy and tension I had worked so hard to suppress needed to come out. One way or another. I needed some soret of coping mechanism. So my brain channelled the agitation and restlessness into strict control patterns with very specific rules as to what was required to avoid horrible outcomes.

This was when my intrusive thoughts started. The stress resulting from my hopelessness made me feel like I was in a body that wasn’t mine, so my OCD “helped” me create an eating disorder so that I wouldn’t risk gaining weight. It “helped” me to sit still in class (trust me, you’re not going to move if you know that the consequence is that you’ll get HIV). It “helped” me to act in a way that was palatable to others.

Until it didn’t. The ADHD is strong in this one, and the fact remains that my brain is wired differently. Of course behaving in a way that was the opposite of what was natural for me was bound to be detrimental. And the OCD is selfish. It is a tool of self-harm. It has no respect or empathy for the individual, which makes the individual lose respect for themselves. OCD nurtured the masking, whereas the hyperfocussed me was trapped behind its riddles and punishments, only to be able to show itself in those milliseconds the OCD wasn’t paying attention.

I would start getting vocal tics in public, that I hadn’t experienced – and long suppressed the memory of – since childhood. I would cut off every spot that dared show itself on my face with toenail scissors. I missed the bus to school on so many occasions due to climbing the stairs ‘incorrectly’ and having to redo them and my emotional dysregulation gave me terrible guilt for being so bloody useless. This, in turn, exacerbated my OCD.

At some point, I lost track of who I was and how I needed to cope in order to really live. At the same time, I was able to hide my ADHD traits well enough so that no one would notice or make sure I sought help. And when I finally did, as a fully grown, completely dysfunctional adult, I kept on masking because I didn’t realise how that could have helped me from the start. I mean, I wanted them to help me, I didn’t want them, too, to think I was too much.

By some miracle, I met an expert that recognised it despite my beautifully appointed mask and to them I am eternally grateful.

But that didn’t happen until I was at least 18 months into my so-called recovery journey, with countless failed treatments behind me.

Therefore, I would advise all mental health professionals to look up from their pad once in a while, because maybe then you will notice the fidgeting, the nervousness, the intense stare we get when we are interested, that can make a lot of people get the wrong idea about our intentions. This can make you realise that the OCD is a comorbidity to ADHD and not just an add-on to CPTSD.

See ya next week! In the meantime, you can read a book or, maybe listen to a podcast. Be good to yourself.

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Is system failure causing human rights violation?

I was listening to a podcast episode on psychodynamic understanding (link to the episode at the bottom of this post), where one of the problems with the Norwegian mental healthcare system is addressed by one of the speakers; the fact that you, as a patient, need to be awarded the ‘right to treatment’ (by some overworked soul at your local District psychiatric centre, who hardly looks at you when you’re filling out the many, often poorly translated, forms they need to be able to pigeonhole you, I might add).

Then, if they deem you deserving of treatment (i.e., if you’ve ticked enough boxes), you will be allowed 12 short, yet excruciating, weeks of treatment before you are either referred to the next level or chucked out on your arse with more questions than answers and expected to be all better so that they can award the next person in the queue some added trauma by giving them the same treatment. This 12 week period, I might add, will only be sufficient time for some diagnostics and very little actual treatment. Effectively, we are left activated yet untreated – worse off than when we came in.

And now we have to explain everything, again, to someone new.

Before I go on, I must state that I do recognise that there are exceptions within the mental health care system – there are some extraordinary mental health professionals out there, and they will do their absolute best to see to it that you get proper treatment and that it lasts as long as possible. They will look you in the eye, engage you in conversation and show some of their own personality in the process. The are not so interested in dehumanising themselves or the situation – they genuinely want to help and find their work both fascinating and rewarding. They show you that you have value.

The only problem is that you will rarely meet such an individual during the initial stages of your treatment, as they are often specialists. What’s more, they have to fight the system in order to succeed. Regardless, I applaud these people – GPs and specialists alike – and wish there were more of them, so that they wouldn’t have to work so hard to fix things that should have been handled by someone else at an earlier stage in the process.

Now, back to the rant.

For many of us, our trauma or emotional wounds are embedded in our unconscious and deeply rooted in something we experienced in childhood, and to treat that, you will need a lot of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to create new neural pathways and change your perspective and life for the better. More often than not, you just need the opportunity to talk about your past and discuss your diagnosis and the way forward with an expert. Talk therapy isn’t even on the table in Norway – seemingly, they only want to make you fit into one of their perfect little boxes to see which prize you get in the diagnostics lottery and send you on your way whilst patting themselves on the back for a job well done. The fact that we, as patients, are traumatised and, for those of us with a neurological disorder, have been trying to fit in by masking our symptoms for our entire lives, are ignored by the people that are responsible for referring us to the next treatment facility (if they decide to do so).

We do not want to be ill, we are not used to asking for help, we are ashamed of ourselves and our inability to be normal, we don’t feel as if we are even worthy of help, yet you expect us to honestly and accurately score ourselves using a scale that ultimately shows us how useless we are and, indeed, how unworthy.

Additionally, we have already had enough people telling us that we are ‘too much’, and very often feel so bad for the therapist – knowing that they will have to carry with them the information you give them – that we simply hold back and try to act as if it’s not as bad as it might seem. When, in fact, it is almost always far worse.

A professional with a manageable workload would probably be able to see through such self-effacing behaviour, alas, this is not the case in public healthcare.

If there’s anything I’ve learned from being in the system since I was about 16, mental health issues need a hell of a lot more than a meagre 12 weeks of yourself filling out forms and never touching on the issues at hand to be worked out. What’s more, due to the heavy workload, there is a lot of illness in the public sector, so in a lot of cases there’s inconsistencies and halts in treatment, not to mention office hours and holiday closures. Weirdly enough, mental illness doesn’t operate after any office calendar, and the patient is left feeling that they made their therapist so ill that they needed a break from them or that they don’t matter enough to get the number to an emergency service or similar. You see, someone that’s entirely broken down mentally and emotionally, wouldn’t do themselves the favour of asking for said number.

To most patients with severe trauma, their illness is all-encompassing – it affects nearly every aspect of your life. To the individual, it is like a cancer of the brain that is shutting down your body bit by bit whilst hacking away at your will to live. So, whoever decided that we are expected to fix ourselves in 12 weeks time and not want to kill ourselves after – because now we feel more alone, dirty, useless and more of a burden than ever – can take a long walk off a short pier. In my humble opinion.

Furthermore, a lot of us patients have trust issues. Also, who do you know, that would happily just start talking about traumatic events they’ve experienced throughout their lifetime to a complete stranger, unless they’re a complete narcissist? Establishing trust takes time – the fact that you are a licensed professional means very little to the person sat across from you, that has yet to meet anyone who hasn’t betrayed their trust at some point. Why should you be any different? People break their confidentiality all the time.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) states the following: “Every human being has the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health“. Promoting “good health and well-being” is the third of the UN’s 17 sustainability goals. The very first article in the UN’s declaration of human rights states:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights (UN,n.d).

I would argue that failing to treat mental illness in the same way other chronic illness is treated is a violation of our human right to equality in dignity, because we certainly are not dignified enough as human beings to deserve anything other than pity from the Norwegian healthcare system. We hear you loud and clear. You mean to say that we are a pest and a burden and should therefore be treated as such, so that we will understand that our place in society is beneath everyone else.

Well, the joke is on you – we already felt that way anyway.

Now, one can also argue that mental health issues is a pandemic, yet unlike the corona virus, it they are not being treated as such, even though a mental health patient is much more likely to have an unwanted effect on those aroung them, or even society as a whole, (financially or worse) if left untreated, as opposed to someone that suffers from covid.

Take, for example, the children of a parent that suffers from an untreated mental illness, that might become victims of emotional incest or parentification. Their emotional wounds alone would need treatment, not to mention how the hereditary nature of most mental health illnesses could mean they are undiagnosed as well. With a parent that isn’t paying enough attention to them, they will likely not seek help themselves until it is far too late. It is a vicious cycle.

In fact, since mental health sufferers often don’t get the help they require, they are spreading the disease to those close to them due to its toxic nature. Surely, that’s something we want to avoid, yeah?

This is just the tip of the iceberg. I could write books on this topic, it is that close to my heart. Oh, wait, I have done just that! Well, one, anyway. If you’re interested in reading it, you can go to the Buy the Book section of this site and do just that. A follow-up is currently in the works.

See you next week for another reflection.

If you want to (and is a Norwegian speaker), you can listen to the Psykiateren-podcast episode by clicking on the Spotify icon below.

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What is love?

To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t know love if it shat me in the face. Pretty sure love wouldn’t do that, though, if I’ve understood it correctly. Unless that’s something you would ask for specifically. I’m not here to judge, but maybe consider the risk of e. coli or pink eye before you do that without a mask on? I mean, they certainly don’t do that in any romantic comedies I’ve seen. Probably more of a Jane Austen thing, perhaps? I digress.

You might be thinking by this point, ‘why on earth would she write about a topic she knows nothing about’? Well, regardless of the obvious fact that I know very little about it, love has always fascinated me. It’s one of those things you’re conditioned into thinking that by some miracle you will one day find. “The one” and all that shit.

It’s not that I’m incapable of feeling things. I’m lucky enough to have nephews, and it is the unconditional love I have for them, something that manifested instantly and quite frankly knocked the breath out of me, that is the reason that I am starting to think that romantic love can manifest in the same way. Not since my grandad was still among us have I felt such compassion for another human being and not questioned whether or not it’s reciprocal, because it does. Not. Matter. You shouldn’t have to search for it or work on it – it just is.

Romantically, I’ve been in a couple of serious (for me maybe a little too serious) relationships, but they were all with the wrong person. Even though I care deeply about these people – not in a romantic way – to this day, we were never meant to be together like that. What’s more, I do not care for the thing I become once in a relationship; needy, jealous, anxious, I feel suffocated when they reciprocate and distraught to the point of desperation when they don’t. I also somehow try to become the person they want, so what I like or want no longer matters – including my friends. I can only have one person in my life at a time, ta very much.

I also think that someone with severe mental issues should be very careful when it comes to letting someone in. I’ve always felt as if entering into a relationship, especially when I know that my OCD is coming with me, would be very selfish. But I want to be proven wrong here. Maybe the right person will actually be able to handle me, even at my most me of times.

So, I found a book a while back. Turns out the brilliant Kerry Cohen, PSYD, LPC, has written a book called Crazy for You. Mesmerised by the title alone and thinking it was another autobiographical book like Loose Girl, I pressed the purchase button, only to find that it’s a psychoeducational guide for ‘breaking the spell of sex and love addiction’.

And so it remained at the top of my to read list until I felt like I was strong enough to look some of my harder truths in the eye. And here we are, I’ve brought Dr Cohen with me on my beach holiday, to find out how I am going to change my perspective a little bit. Not if, how.

It was a good thing I waited. Had you asked me to do something that would entail caring for my own wellbeing just a year ago, I would have told you to fuck off. Especially when it comes to this love thing, that’s haunted me for as long as I can remember.

I once received a chain letter (an actual pen and paper letter, real old school, folks) while I was still in school, that told me I was going to be unlucky in love for the rest of my life, lest I put this burden upon another unsuspecting victim. Filled with rage and hormones, I ripped the thing apart and dropped it to the floor, stomping on it as if it were on fire, before I ran to class Although, once I had sat down, my OCD started screaming at me, anxiety pulling me apart and telling me that I had to retrieve it and fulfil this prophecy before it was too late. Yet, when I got back outside, the letter had disintegrated in the rain and I thought I was doomed. FUCK CHAIN LETTERS.

Anyway. Doomed, blah-blah-blah, story of my life. Back to the book and one of the first things that really resonated with me:

Emotional wounds are the deep, stubborn beliefs we have about ourselves, which were needed inside us by our relationships with our parents or caregivers and by traumas we’ve experienced (Cohen, 2021, p. 34)

Now, any semblance of love I received as a child was conditional. I was a difficult child, they told me, so I had to change in order to be worthy of any special treatment, such as not being shouted at or pinched so hard I thought I was going to have to explain the bruse at school, or indeed receive any praise.

I can’t tell you how many times I have thought that I am simply unlovable. I mean, if your own parents have realised how shit you are… It turns out, shockingly, that only experiencing conditional love, as opposed to unconditional love, can make you think that you don’t deserve being loved just by being yourself. That you need to do something special in order to qualify for it.

So in a relationship – friendships as well, because of course I can’t be any old friend, I have to be the best – I go out of my way to give gifts, write lovely notes, cook a shit tonne of food and bake cakes no one ever wanted, hell, I’ll even put on a dress and wear high heels just so you won’t think I’m not doing everything in my power not to lose you.

Cohen goes on to explain how an understanding of what your emotional wounds are and where they are coming from is a useful tool in finding enough compassion for yourself to actually want to help yourself.

The book is filled with thorough explanations and reflection exercises for you to really get something out of the material. She writes with compassion and brevity, yet with enough detail so that you understand that there’s a spectrum and that you are not alone in being on it. You can’t help but feel that she cares. You even realise that maybe you’re not doomed after all.

Read the book if this applies to you, or share this post with a friend you think deserves a bit of unconditional love in their life. I will include the link to the book again below, right next to a link to a Type O Negative song that might resonate with us love junkies. See you next week!

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Is singledom the road to ruin?

Several times a day, I am bombarded with emails promising discounts for all sorts of holiday activities and fantastic members only deals. Having little to no impulse control, I of course click my way through to the virtual promised land of an affordable lifestyle, only to be met by the unmistakable message that I, as a single, child-free adult, do not possess enough value as a human being to deserve such a luxury.

Instead of whisking myself away to faraway lands, I am faced spending another of so many Seasons in the Abyss.

Perhaps a home of my own will turn my existential grief into joy?

I try to apply for a loan to get myself onto the property ladder, since the cost of living and rent prices now far exceed that of the cost of mortgage payments and utilities in Norway, but am denied because the bank fails to see how I will be able to take care of my finances all on my own – despite the fact that I’ve never missed a payment in my life and have managed to save up and present the required equity capital. The property ultimately goes to a two person income couple, or someone whose parents are able to offer their own property as collateral for their offspring’s loan application, who ends up renting out the property to someone like myself to pay off their loan.

In the UK, you can apply for a council tax reduction, if you are the only adult living in a household. In Norway, a similar discount used to apply for single parents, however these funds have been reallocated to an increase in child benefits, as of 2023. What’s more, certain tax benefits are available to those who are married or legally registered cohabitants in Norway. There are no such tax breaks for the singleton.

What then, if you feel the need to escape reality for a bit? I might try to treat myself to a lovely, much needed, holiday, but am discouraged when faced with the fact that I will be forced to pay an extra 20 percent fee for beds not used (which is ridiculous in itself, unless you’ve requested twin beds). And, God forbid I try to book a cruise to Denmark without owning a car or having a partner to fill the other bunk in my cabin. I could have included the names of several package holiday providers here, but it was impossible to find any travel agents offering single person deals, so one can only assume that none of them do.

In short, anyone failing to settle for just any old romantic partner in this country, does not matter to the corporate world. Which in turn, surely, result in people entering into or staying in toxic or loveless relationships solely for economic reasons. Is this sustainable?

Included in the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals, we find that the need to eradicate hunger and poverty, improving health and well-being and reducing inequality are central to the social dimension of the development of society as a whole. Article 22 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights explicitly states:

“Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality”

(UN, n.d.)

It is our collective dignity, I fear, that is at stake here. With this ongoing single-shaming (a ridiculous fad in an increasingly overpopulated world, that those choosing not to contribute to said overpopulation are being punished), there are instances where I feel some acknowledgement of our existence might be in order.

In particular, every holiday newsletter or greeting card reads ‘to you and yours’, which, quite frankly, feels like a slap in the face. You can’t even be bothered to customise your greeting to spare us from feeling even more alone than we normally would during any holiday that’s even slightly family-centric. Especially since you’re now stuck sitting alone in your rented, insect infested, Fritzl-style basement flat – the only thing you can afford that has an actual bedroom – while everyone else has fucked off on the holiday that you had to forgo because you were unable to justify spending an additional 2000 NOK on the empty space that is to accompany you on your holiday.

How is this fair? In this economy, wouldn’t it make more sense to sell out the empty seats, rather than alienating the undesirables? Left feeling like a burden on society, it is far too easy to dig oneself into the endless hole of depression, which in turn will require some help from mental healthcare professionals, whose work is funded by taxpayers’ money.

Supermarket chains offer family discounts and the option to bulk-buy for cheap, but unless you have a freezer or the metabolism to burn through a gazillion calories a week, most food items would have expired long before a single-person household would be halfway through the doomsday provisions, leading to more food waste and lost funds for the singleton.

Perhaps, if we weren’t denied so many of the potential benefits that couples are seemingly entitled to, we would be less of an actual burden to society?

Or maybe companies could filter their mailing lists a little bit better, so that those of us not meeting their requirements could live in blessed ignorance of the existence of such special offers?

It is time for the corporate world to acknowledge single people as a consumer. Eradicate socioeconomic inequality.

Benefits for all, or no benefits at all.

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