Bagels,Lox,cream Cheese and a little bit more of me

March 22, 2009

Bagels, Lox, and Cream Cheese (with a little bit more of me mixed in)
 
I wondered today after breakfast out with friends, why I felt a little better than I usually did after these kinds of get togethers. 

I reflected on other Sundays over bagels and lox, when I hardly said a word, or if I did talk a lot, why I often came away with this vaguely uncomfortable feeling.

No, I don’t think it was the food.  I think I had gotten into a habit without even noticing, insidiously over the years, of just keeping more and more of who I was, or at least what I was struggling with, to myself.

It wasn’t that I was hiding deliberately anymore and it wasn’t out of shame any more. But at some point in time, mostly when I was away from my ADD friends and colleagues, it had become easier just to hold back.

Maybe, as Hope Langner*, coach and expert in ADD and women once put it, I had gotten tired of “always having to say the hard thing.” These hard things were subjects which in one way or another centered on how either I, or someone in my family, was just plain different. The explanation seemed to require a great deal of effort when speaking to people who I thought weren’t as intimately familiar with differences. 

For adults with ADD it’s not always about the ADD itself that they are familiar with.  It’s often that along with ADD many times, come children with ADD or other challenges, and families who for many reasons don’t lend themselves to bite size descriptions, easy to digest over a bagel and cream cheese on Sunday morning.

The stories that many adults with ADD have to tell, as one person put it to me, are all “long stories.” So sometimes, people, including me, get in the habit of  swallowing down more of the truth , the twists and turns, the challenges- in other words a lot of the really interesting stuff!  The point of conversations become to get through them without having to explain too much.

Eventually, what you notice over the years with this kind of strategy, however, is that little pieces of you in your relationships get slowly nibbled away at. This can leave you with a vague sense of hiding, and feeling disconnected and isolated. And  it hurts your relationships. You may fear that revealing more of who you are may push people away. And in reality, it might push away some people away who you should leave behind.

But, in fact, counter intuitive as it might seem, when you are with someone you trust or want to become closer to, what actually makes you attractive to someone else, is your capacity to be yourself. Your openness invites other people to tell their stories, to relax their guard, to reveal their vulnerability.
They might have a completely different set of issues. They might not have any idea what you are describing when you talk about something related to ADD. But they will take the cue from you that you are comfortable with yourself and that you are strong enough to discuss your challenges without diminishing your value or your strengths. They will understand that you are someone who they can trust to accept them when they tell you their story.

It is a great gift, a compliment, to trust someone enough to invite them in -not to dump on them, not to focus only on your problems or only on yourself. It’s akin to opening up the door to your real self and giving someone else a peak inside-not just of the neat front rooms but the messy little secret areas that everyone has- ADD or not.
 
So you may want to examine whether you have developed a habit of holding back a little too much because it’s become easier. You may not even have noticed over the years -a little  truth here, a little less of you there, a little silence here, a slice of you there.  Choose carefully! Don’t go overboard with disclosure, or even with the label of ADD. But at the right time, with the right people, you  might consider mixing  a little bit more of your real self in with the bagels, lox, and cream cheese. Everyone at the table will come away from a breakfast like that feeling- not just full, but filled up as well.

Visit Sari Solden’s online community at  http://www.ADDJourneys.com

*You can find out more about Hope Langer here.