Finding the "Why"

in which I realize anxiety can no longer be my primary motivator

Since being diagnosed with ADHD and starting treatment, I have been taking a long look back at my life so far. It has been illuminating, to say the least. Pre-pandemic, my schedule could only be described as Borderline Psychotic. I worked a lot of 14 hour days. At one point, I was going to grad school, working a full time job, and running a theater company. How? I don’t know. However, despite my ability to do it, it was a struggle. Always. The fact of the matter is that most of the time I didn’t actually WANT to do any of the things I was doing, or I did want to do them, but in order to actually do them I had to apply the Method. No, not that Method, the KBQ Method™.

The KBQ Method™ of Doing Things Pre-Diagnosis:

• Be like “I AM GOING TO DO A THING*”, or was assigned/tasked with a Thing

• Feel incredibly self-confident about ability to do said Thing OR have crippling doubt about my ability to do said Thing, with no in between

• Try to start Thing. Either I start the Thing and do not finish, or procrastinate heavily by deciding to Marie Kondo my drawers or cooking a very elaborate dinner (in grad school, I put off writing a 25 page paper in favor of making Ina Garten’s Coq Au Vin recipe, which took longer than the recipe says, and it was worth it)

• Let Thing get very large in brain

• Thing no matter how big or small is now The Hardest Thing I Have Ever or Will Ever Have To Do

• Thing looms, anxiety swells

• Anxiety brain and ADHD Brain have an intense meeting about what a lazy piece of shit I am

• Anxiety and Self Loathing morph into Panic

• Freak out and berate myself to the point where the Thing has become the only way I can prove that I am not, in fact, a terrible worthless person

• Hyperfocus on Thing. This is where I am true magic. I can be in the throes of a literal panic attack but suddenly bull through it and obtain a laser focus that would be the envy of a neurosurgeon

• Thing Gets Done

• Collapse into heap of exhausted burnout until the next Thing

*Thing can be as difficult as writing an entire play or as easy as taking an Amazon return to the post office.

Anxiety is terrible, but it can also be motivating. The secret fear that everyone would inevitably discover what a massive failure of a person I was would create an adrenaline burst that I imagine winning cyclists get towards the end of the Tour de France, which gave me the dopamine I needed to get it all done. Dopamine is a chemical your brain needs to regulate itself, and people with ADHD do not make enough of it on their own. My brain decided the way forward was to give me dopamine through anxiety, which meant putting enormous amounts of unnecessary pressure on myself, because I knew that if I didn’t put pressure on myself, things would not get done. This is why, on paper, I am a successful person. Thank you, brain, for your assistance over so many years. You are a magnificent beast.

The problem with this is that as I got older, and my symptoms became harder to mask, this anxiety was causing paralysis instead of motivation. Not only that, it was taking a toll on my already tenuous self esteem. When the pandemic hit, and I was left in the position of not being as busy with very few deadlines that weren’t self imposed, I lost my identity. I was The Lady Who Gets Shit Done, and then there was nothing to get done. I was lost without my overscheduled stressful life. When the world began to re-open, and things needed to be done again, I found myself sometimes unable to. I was miserable, unfocused, and frozen. I was binge eating, abusing substances, and playing more hours of The Sims 4 than I care to think about (not me on the 7th generation of my legacy family, which is 5 rotating households).

Now that I am medicated, my way of doing things is different. I still experience self doubt, and sometimes paralysis, but I am no longer working myself into a tizzy over tasks. There is no longer an extensive fight with myself over it.  This is both good and bad.

As an anxious person, I got used to my anxiety just being around. Anxiety is like that friend that you don’t really like and annoys the shit out of everyone, but for some reason you keep inviting them to stuff. The anxiety was the thing that would kick me into action and kept me from sitting on my couch all day eating nachos and binging reality television. Now that the general free floating anxiety I experienced has been dramatically reduced, I feel like I am completely re-learning my brain. My motivation has to come from somewhere different now. I am no longer so terrified of everyone finding out how much of a struggle it is to do anything, because it is no longer as much of a struggle, and I also know that the struggle isn’t my fault. My self esteem and self confidence were shattered, but I can slowly feel both beginning to return. The motivation is a different problem. For so long, my fear and my anxiety was the way I found my Fucks to Give.

From whence do the Fucks come now?

This is a good question. I have more energy and focus, but I wouldn’t exactly call it propulsive. If I say “I have to do a thing” - and it is a HAVE to, not a WANT to - I will just… do the thing. This includes tasks like going to the grocery store, taking packages to the post office, cleaning, and cutting my cats’ claws. It feels like a magic trick. It’s a tremendous relief to be able to do a simple task without my brain screaming “YOU LAZY BITCH JUST GET OFF THE COUCH” while watching six hours of Below Deck and never actually getting off the couch. The other stuff - like my creative work - is trickier. Since I am no longer that anxious about my career or my work for a variety of reasons, including but not limited to the ongoing collapse of the American Theater - finding the motivation to create is difficult sometimes. I had long ago realized that being motivated by anxiety and low self esteem was not the way, I just didn’t know how to change it. The question of “why” is more complex.

The “why” for this Substack is easy. I wanted to help anyone - especially women - struggling with ADHD symptoms to realize that they are not alone, and to talk about it openly so that there might be less suffering in the world. It also gives me a place to write on the internet that is not a dopamine slot machine run by a whiny, inept, Nazi-adjacent manchild. The “why” for the rest of it is a little harder. I’m trying to approach it with curiosity rather than fear. The truth of the matter is that I have been a writer since the day I first picked up a pen, and theater is one of the only hobbies I ever picked up that stuck. Being a playwright means I get to do both. I realized that it is okay to view it as a hobby again, even if I do occasionally get paid for it. If I can find the joy and excitement in it again, that will motivate me.

Joy as motivation is an entirely new concept for me, but hey, we all need new strategies as we continue our lifelong quest of Fuck Finding.