36: Part 1

Observations and pontifications from my ADHD brain

I turned 36 last December (and I’ve been working on this post ever since, if you can’t tell by the length). I never got around to posting it. But, with my birthday rolling around again, I figured there was no better time than the present.

The last few years have been a whirlwind and some of the most reflective I’ve had in a while. I’ve discovered a lot about myself and loss, identity, grief, loneliness, possibility, hope, sex, communication, and more. Consider this a reference list for the things taking up space, rent-free, in my chaotic brain.

I’ve broken the post up into several parts to make it a bit more digestible.

1. Go to fucking therapy (soap box #1)

Going to therapy has been one of the best decisions I’ve made in the last 5 years. It’s hard, can be expensive (I had to pay out of pocket, which is a privilege I know everyone can’t afford), and will probably make things “worse” at first rather than “better.” But, for me, it’s transformed the way I look at myself and the world - making me a more thoughtful and empathetic human.

Although there are certainly days when it feels good to go and get shit out, that’s not the main benefit of therapy for me. The biggest change is that I’m now better at recognizing thought and behavioral patterns in my life and understanding the way they affect my choices, emotions, and how I relate to others.

For example, I know that when I feel an overwhelming urge to do something or take immediate action in a particular situation or relationship, that’s pretty much always a sign that I’m dysregulated and trying to deflect complex emotions rather than work through them. I used to confuse this with authentic spontaneity or emotion (which I fully endorse and try to act on). It took me a lot of work to distinguish between the two.

I know now that when I’m dysregulated, my body is tense. I often have indigestion/what feels like something right in the middle of my gut. I feel compelled to act, almost as if I’m not in control. I’m on edge.

When I’m regulated, I’m excited and passionate - exercising my ability to choose to do something out of a desire or thankfulness for another person or an experienced thing. It can still feel risky, but it’s a different kind of nervousness/risk than when I’m dysregulated.

They feel very different to me now, although it can still take time for me to sort out which is which.

So now, instead of acting on an impulse and potentially passing my dysregulation onto other folks (often in a way that isn’t healthy or causes harm), I take a walk, bake bread, talk through it with a trusted friend, or do something else creative/generative to reregulate. Then, I take stock again and see if that feeling or impulse is worth acting on or if it was simply an unhealthy coping response.

I have countless examples like that, where I’m working towards health (both mental and physical), where there previously was anxiety and dysfunction. Get ya some therapy. You’ll be better for it.

Feel free to ask me more about my experience. I’m happy to share!

2. Both things can be true (and learning to live in that tension takes practice)

I used to try to fit my experiences into neat little categories with clear dividing lines. It was simpler.

Christian/secular, right/wrong, good/bad, male/female, us/them, black/white, gay/straight, true/false . . .

I tried so hard to make it work. But now, life feels infinitely more complicated and intricate than that to me.

People who genuinely love me have deeply wounded me. I’ve seen religion provide healthy purpose/meaning for some while simultaneously serving as the basis for unspeakable acts of cruelty, meanness, and even genocide for others. Some of the poorest people I’ve known have had the most to give. And some of the wealthiest I’ve known have been the most needy.

But with variety and nuance comes tension. For me, it’s taken practice to try to better live in the tension. I’ve learned not to trust my first reaction to something and instead examine it, especially if it’s an intellectual response to someone with a significantly different lived experience than me.

In those contexts, I think my first reaction is often a defense mechanism, a well-meaning but underdeveloped part of myself whose default is to resist new evidence and the possibility of destabilizing change.

With practice, I’ve gotten better at living in the tension — recognizing multiple things can be true/valid even if they seem contradictory, assuming less, and being more open to change.

And, I feel/hope that’s made me a more thoughtful and empathetic person.

3. Put your body in spaces where people are different than you . . . and listen. It will change your life.

Head knowledge is important. But, there is nothing as powerful as lived and embodied experience. I’m still not very good at this. But, I’ve been trying to put my actual physical body in more spaces where I, as a cishet white man, am not in the majority and listen more than I talk.

One way I try to practice this is by being involved in a pro-Palestine book club where I am pretty much always in the minority. It makes me quite uncomfortable at times to have my presuppositions challenged — which is so healthy. I’ve learned a lot, and I consider much more carefully when I do speak, because it actually matters. People in the room (and their relatives) are living every day what I’m just theorizing about in my head.

When ideas become embodied in the lives of real people, something changes. You pause. You listen. And you have the opportunity to either expand and grow, or contract and entrench. But either way, you are at least forced to consider somebody else’s perspective and lived experience (which is not the case when you isolate or primarily hang out with people who look like and believe the same things as you).

4. Nothing matters . . . everything matters

“Everything, Everywhere, All at Once” is one of my favorite movies, and I think it legitimately changed my brain. It does such an exceptional job of pointing out how absurd and purposeless life is/can feel in one sense — nothing matters . . . while simultaneously pointing out how impactful every little point of human connection and interaction is — everything matters.

Yes. Life often is bleak and pointless, especially for those at the bottom who have little power or influence. That shouldn’t be downplayed. There are truly scary things going on in the world. History repeats itself, and it can feel impossible to hope. It’s powerful, deflating shit.

But, the hand of someone you love brushing yours, a kind word earnestly meant, smiling when you make eye contact with a stranger at a stoplight who is also jamming to their favorite tunes, butter on warm bread, your lungs burning from the frigid air on a clear winter night when the stars all decide to come out and dance at once — these are also powerful things.

They matter.

They have weight.

They are totems of goodness.

Pathways back to the earth.

To feeling again.

To living again.

What Gerard Manley Hopkins would call “the dearest freshness deep down things.”