Neurodivergent people live with dysregulated nervous systems so often that we’ve learned to see hyperfocus as being in flow & I can’t stop thinking about how wild it is that so many people say this trauma response is a specific ND strength. I’d kinda like to be able to stop and still feel good about myself, rather than work with unending anxiety, terrified that not finishing will prove I must genuinely be incapable of getting anything done on time & therefore make me completely worthless, ya know?
[ID: The boss from that movie Office Space is a white guy with glasses, a red polka-dot tie, a blue shirt and red suspenders, standing with his coffee cup, hand on his hip, with white graphics in capital letters that say, “ Can we stop making everything urgent, that’d be great.” Hyperfocus comes with a sense of urgency too. Flow does not. End ID]
You now live in fear of your hyperfocus, because when it comes, you know if you hop on that train it will run away with you, and that's enough to knock your battered nervous system off course for a week.
Then you do it anyway, because you are and have been in burnout... nothing is getting done, and nobody else is going to do it. We've struck this deal to get things done before, it won't kill us?
Oh, wait. It almost did.
Guess what I did today anyway? Guess how I feel now?
The evolution is that at least this time I wasn't surprised by the consequences.
Haven't managed to dream a way out of the conundrum, not so far. Noticing that there is a constant looping "you haven't done enough yet, you haven't really done anything yet..." that has no grounding in any sort of reasonable expectations of what a human animal can achieve in a given period of time. Objectively, I am often far exceeding said reasonable expectations while I berate myself for laziness and inadequacy!
I echo the others in sensing an eerily high degree of resonance between the timing of this writing and the details of my own lives experience through time...
SANDRA : omfg. I feel like you having intuited then written them shared this - you’re like...showing me there’s a door / key whatver it is out of this MADNESS I feel like I should be “pleased Vs the alternative of never doing anything cos ALSK eventually u will fix it surely that’s just maths - big news for me that’s bad maths” - like that ... YES ITS EXACTLY WAHT UR SAYINF I NEVER ENever eve never connected all fo these things like I never even thought of the “I’m dead to myself if I don’t “achieve” an elusive “I’ll know it when I get to it” goal - as a problem of hyperfocus which is a problem
Of fucking trauma not flow - I can’t explain - this post is making things fly and click togejter (that I know u have long spotted but that I don’t think I could’ve ever expected this level of OH SHOT WAIT no that’s like - EXACTLY what’s happen INSIDE me during this experience Omg thannk u and also eek!!!
Burnout power up:
You now live in fear of your hyperfocus, because when it comes, you know if you hop on that train it will run away with you, and that's enough to knock your battered nervous system off course for a week.
Then you do it anyway, because you are and have been in burnout... nothing is getting done, and nobody else is going to do it. We've struck this deal to get things done before, it won't kill us?
Oh, wait. It almost did.
Guess what I did today anyway? Guess how I feel now?
The evolution is that at least this time I wasn't surprised by the consequences.
Haven't managed to dream a way out of the conundrum, not so far. Noticing that there is a constant looping "you haven't done enough yet, you haven't really done anything yet..." that has no grounding in any sort of reasonable expectations of what a human animal can achieve in a given period of time. Objectively, I am often far exceeding said reasonable expectations while I berate myself for laziness and inadequacy!
I echo the others in sensing an eerily high degree of resonance between the timing of this writing and the details of my own lives experience through time...
SANDRA : omfg. I feel like you having intuited then written them shared this - you’re like...showing me there’s a door / key whatver it is out of this MADNESS I feel like I should be “pleased Vs the alternative of never doing anything cos ALSK eventually u will fix it surely that’s just maths - big news for me that’s bad maths” - like that ... YES ITS EXACTLY WAHT UR SAYINF I NEVER ENever eve never connected all fo these things like I never even thought of the “I’m dead to myself if I don’t “achieve” an elusive “I’ll know it when I get to it” goal - as a problem of hyperfocus which is a problem
Of fucking trauma not flow - I can’t explain - this post is making things fly and click togejter (that I know u have long spotted but that I don’t think I could’ve ever expected this level of OH SHOT WAIT no that’s like - EXACTLY what’s happen INSIDE me during this experience Omg thannk u and also eek!!!
Oh my. Are you in my head? This is so real. And so now. That last part. Uffa.