2-17-09 Updating your Personal Narrative:
Tuesday, February 17th 2009 @ 2:55 PM
Sari’s Blog 2-17-09
Updating your Personal Narrative:
Begin To Tell Yourself A New Story
In these times of economic distress many people are thinking about updating their resume, highlighting their recent accomplishments.
With ADD it’s just as important from time to time, to do a personal narrative update and rewrite the story you have been telling yourself about yourself for many years, one that you may not have updated to include all you have become and all the personal growth you have accomplished. Even when your symptoms persist, you need to account for how you have managed in the face of great struggles.
As you read this I know some of you may be saying to yourself,
“But I have not accomplished anything positive.” You might start pointing to all the evidence of how you “mess things up” because of your ADD. If so, it may be time to learn to tell yourself a new story about your life.
I can’t tell you how many people I see and listen to who are unaware of the fact they are leading quietly heroic lives. Maybe they are kind to their aging parents or helping a very difficult child get what they need at school to succeed. Maybe they are coping with chronic illness or struggling to keep a family together financially even though they have great challenges. Maybe they are funny or warm or make people laugh or think new ideas that give those around them a fresh way to look a situation. Most adults with ADD don’t see these things in themselves or they dismiss them as unimportant. They only see the way they are late for an appointment or have a messy desk. These other inner qualities are easy to miss if you are only looking for evidence to back up your negative narrow view of yourself. You might be leaving out the positive impact you may be making in the lives of other people.
It often takes a long time for our self image to catch up with our new reality. Many of you still may be continuing to view yourself through a lens that sees your self at a much earlier time or age .
Don’t wait until your symptoms disappear to let your self notice, appreciate, and integrate these other parts of yourself and enlarge your story. You have had a rich and complex experience and you need to update your narrative to reflect this. Once you do that everything will flow from there- your relationships, your communication, your choices.
Take a little time and begin to examine whether the story you tell yourself over and over again about yourself, almost reflexively at this point, really accounts for all the character traits you possess that help you carry on despite all the obstacles. Maybe the story you repeat to yourself without really examining it doesn’t include the part about your values or the personal attributes that probably go unnoticed by you as you continue to think of yourself in a frozen way.
Just as your computer needs you to stop from time to time and do an update, install new programs if it is to continue to operate as effectively as it has the capacity to do, you need to pause periodically and consider if your internal programs need some updating.
At my online community, www.ADDjourneys.com
my messages are based on my book Journeys Through ADDulthood. I describe the shifting challenges adults go through long past diagnosis and early treatment as they learn to form a new sense of identity and meaning.
When you re-write your personal narrative to include all your successes and begin to describe your struggles not as deficits but as evidence of how you persevere even with your challenges, when your story doesn’t leave out your personal attributes or your values, then you can begin to tell yourself a new story, one that will help you view whatever happens from a different perspective.
You just may be surprised to discover a heroic story about a person who has made a contribution either in their work, with people, or with their talents as a result of their intelligence, their kindness, or determination and despite great odds. I encourage you to sit down and bring your personal narrative up to date to include all of who you are, all you have struggled with, and all you have given the world and those around you,
I’d love to hear how you have re-written your story. Let me know at ADDjourneys.com