So I never got around to writing about it here, but I’m in an experiment of subtraction. Removing behaviours and coping mechanisms that helped to distract, and seeing what’s revealed by their absence.
Turns out the answer was more distraction.
This is itself helpful. While not the result I had hoped for, it nonetheless reveals more of the contours of my underlying pattern.
One byproduct of removing my current copes was recontextualizing older behaviours as I fell back into them. Turns out books are a helluva hyperfocus tool.
I hadn’t thought to look at my reading habit as a teen in the light of my ADHD, but holy shit. Hyperfocus, time blindness, impulsivity, novelty seeking… It’s like a microcosm of the whole thing, played out in one arena.
So, the subtraction stands. The trick, as is often the case, is in the redirection.
I’ve told my son enough times that if he spent half as much energy doing the thing as he spent avoiding it, it would be done in now time. My turn I guess.
One of the things I know from this latest experiment is this - part of me will desperately hunt and scramble for input after input trying to avoid sitting with my uncomfortable realities.
The monkey brain, hunting for more and more kindling to throw on the fire, praying to keep the darkness at bay.
My version of doomscrolling, for example, is listening to good, informative videos about problems I can’t participate in solving. I love expanding out into the big picture, considering and strategizing and thinking about how to help fix the world. I think some of it might even be good.
But.
Gazing at the horizon from a pool of quicksand is not healthy or helpful. I need to feel my problems more than the problems of the world(s). I can’t do shit about shit from here. Doesn’t matter how good my ideas are.
Bring it right down. Boil away anything beyond what I need for the immediate problems at hand. Let it all go and build my circle of concern up from first principles.
Hmm… What’s my emotional equivalent to the rule of threes? Something related to Maslow probably.
What’s the sequence of priorities that helps me solve the right problems in the right order?
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