me having a memory of being six years old and reading all the books of the school year in one day. He was excited. He had inhaled them, absorbed in fantastic lands and magical beings and self-righteous endings. When I finished, I ran to my teacher. She was full of words, eager for him to acknowledge how smart she had been, how good a reader she had been, how conscientious she had been. As he chatted about the characters he had met and the places he had been, he slammed his hand down on the table.
“Just sit down!” he yelled at her.
I remember the way those words felt as they went through me. I wasn’t smart or good or conscientious. I was bad. Annoying. I was wrong
When I was a child, I was in a lot of trouble. I was like a cat that is always underfoot; in the way of people, say something stupid, be too much. Well, a lot of kids are annoying. But I was so at odds with what I thought I was doing: From my childhood perspective, I was trying really, really hard. I remember the feeling of watching other students, teachers, and parents, and trying to understand how easy they seemed to interact with the world. When I imitated him, I was usually sent out into the hallway.
I never had any idea what I had done, except that it was Bad. He didn’t know what lesson he was supposed to learn and the more he tried, the more disappointed the adults seemed. As I sat in the hallway thinking about six-year-old things, I felt my body ache that they didn’t like me. A tightness was forming in my chest. I thought of the words they used to describe me and filed them deep inside. Lazy. Selfish. Mischievous.
Over the years, I developed a reputation for being difficult to be around. I was smart but difficult, and I was always grounded, usually for disrupting class, making too much noise, not turning in my work on time, and answering back. Anger burned my bones. I acted on purpose, to meet your expectations.
He couldn’t remember why he thought it was bad. She just knew it was true.
The way we are taught to think as children stays with us long after we leave school and build careers and families. It becomes the foundation on which we build our identities. “My teacher told me he was a bum” becomes “I was a bum” and eventually just “I’m a bum.” These words become core beliefs. The inherent and fixed elements of our personality.
Our little selves are still there, yelling at them to sit down.
Much has been said recently about ADHD. Some legends have posted funny tweets about how it’s a fad, possibly just a way to get legal amphetamines. So clever! It’s definitely easier to navigate the entire mental health system and pay thousands of dollars for a diagnosis than it is to ask your partner where people buy their meth now.
I was diagnosed with ADHD last year, at age 38; Like many other women my age, I sought a diagnosis after my children were diagnosed. When I read about what they might be experiencing and how to support them, I immediately recognized myself. Difficulty focusing. hyperfixation Disrupt the class. Talking too much. Not being able to finish tasks. Get into trouble. being bad
I reread the old school reports. Anna could do well if she put her mind to it. Anna is only enthusiastic about topics that she finds interesting. Anna doesn’t live up to her potential.
I saw that girl in the hallway, her face wet, trying and unable to understand what she had done wrong. And I understood that there had always been a reason.
I had been in therapy for decades, but had a new psychologist helping me with my anxiety and teaching me about my young self. I talked to her about how I was feeling right now (scared, tired, hungry, tired, angry), and she helped me make links between those feelings and what happened when I was little.
So she encouraged me to talk to that girl.
Like, to have a real conversation.
“That’s stupid,” I said, pretending to be a rational person who isn’t in constant dialogue with her cat.
“Try it,” she said. “What would you say to yourself?”
I tried. From my therapist’s couch I found, in my memory, a little blond boy alone on a swing in the schoolyard. She had been kicked out of class to “calm down”, so she was twisting her chains and then loosening them to make her spin. The air was fresh. Fall. Through the window, I could see other children painting bright colors on butcher paper.
I imagined sitting next to her on the other swing. Why are you here? I asked, and she said, I’m naughtyand the chains would jingle as they unraveled.
But yesI would say, Did he know you were doing your best?
No one had told six-year-old Anna this. She had only been told to be something different. I felt something click in my chest.
After I had used up all the tissues from my therapist and gone home, I continued to visit this past self. I found her in classrooms where everything seemed too noisy. I found her hiding under her bed from people yelling at her, panicking over report cards, forgetting about her homework. I found her screaming, crying, laughing, wishing she could be someone else. This anxious and tied up girl who fights against everything in her life.
I poked my head under the bed. I know you’re doing your bestI told.
For months, I cried for that girl. I became a strange “time traveler’s wife”, creepily visiting a new little human who was trying to make sense of the ridiculous complexities of human society and its expectations. I apologized over and over again: I’m so sorry you were made to feel worthless; I’m so sorry I let you believe it was true. I told her about the present and how much I wanted it to get there.
Then something else began to happen: the past became less familiar. Memories are peculiar and changing things. The old photos that she had stored were transformed into new ones. The words that had taken possession of me in my childhood floated loose in my body. Lazy? Selfish? That didn’t describe me at all.
The longer I sat in the genesis of my identity, the closer I got to who I really was as a person. While talking to my younger self, my current self changed. Fear turned into acceptance. Resentment turned to forgiveness. Anger turned into love.
As adults with ADHD or anxiety or other brain issues that people don’t understand, we carry a tremendous burden. It’s trauma, the self-belief that everyone is mad at us, that we deserve to be in trouble, that we always don’t try hard enough.
But the truth is that the framework we were given to create our identity was flawed. It contained adult language that dismissed our reality. We adopt and embody value judgments and structure our lives around them, even though they have never been described to us.
Now, as more and more adults are diagnosed, we’re working on a few things. There is sadness, anguish, pain, regret. God hurts me. But after that, there may be something else. Our six year old selves can still hear us. There is consolation. There is understanding. And there is a recognition of who we were all along.
