What does Executive Dysfunction look like?

 So one of the things about going undiagnosed with mental illnesses for your entire childhood and most of your adult life is that I’ve had to find coping mechanisms that worked in order to live.  Like, literally, in order to live.  

An example of a coping strategy that I use in order to live:

I am doing Activity A.  I am getting some enjoyment out of Activity A, maybe a sense of accomplishment because I’m in a groove while working or playing a video game, or reading, or something.  Just doing something.  And I think, “huh, I’m hungry.  What should I eat?”

And then I think that there are no leftovers and that if I am going to eat something I have to make it myself.  Mind you, while I’m doing this thinking, I am still doing Activity A.  

And I hate cooking.  It gives me anxiety.  I don’t enjoy standing there.  I don’t enjoy the possibility of messing it up so badly that I don’t, in fact, have something I can use to nourish my body.  So, while I’m problem-solving the “I need to eat something” issue, I have now raised my anxiety level while still doing Activity A.  It is harder to do Activity A, I am doing Activity A stressfully, but I am still doing it.  

So now, I am crisis planning.  “What do I have that I can make that I cannot possibly mess up and can do with the least amount of time and effort?”  Because now the anxiety is actively removing spoons.  Hm.  I’ll talk about Spoon Theory later.  It’s actively using Stamina Points, and if my Stamina hits zero, I will have to go lay down and take a depression nap.  Which doesn’t help.  And I don’t want to do that.  So now I am even more anxious about making food.

And during all of this I am still doing Activity A.  At this point, I am now not doing it effectively or well.  I might be making some foolish decisions that will cost me time and effort later.  I’m not paying as close of attention as I can because I’m so worried about what I need to eat.  I am now stressfully doing Activity A.

Doing this, I might continue to do Activity A for the next 2-5 hours.  All the while not eating.  And then, at the end of it, I might make myself a bag of ramen.  Because even for me, the person who made a small house fire as a child while boiling water, it’s hard to mess up a bowl of ramen in the microwave.  

Which, while is technically food, does not align with my food goals, nor does it help me to feel better about myself.

Coping Strategy 1: always have something in the house that is easy to make and that has a more robust nutritional value than ramen.  I buy a lot of canned soup.  I also will occasionally eat a can of corn.  Because at least then it’s a vegetable.  Basically, always be able to feed myself easily.

Coping Strategy 2: try to think about what to eat much in advance so that conversation can include my husband, who likes to cook but dislikes being rushed into cooking, so that I am not stuck in “Stressfully needing to eat” Executive Dysfunction Land.  

Hooray coping skills and plans.  

Now, this is the fun part.  What if I’m doing Activity A and the thought I have is: “I’m thirsty, I need water.”  I reach for my cup and find it’s empty.  I put the cup down and continue Activity A.  This process repeats.  Sometimes for hours.

All I need to do to fix it is to get up and fill my cup at the sink.  That’s it.  I might have to move a cat.  I might have to pause my game, or my thought process.  Or This Very Writing.  You see why this topic came up now, don’t you.

But I don’t get up and get the water.  I mean, sometimes I do, and it’s not a problem.  But sometimes, I just… don’t.  There is always a little reason why.  And they are little.  They are nothing that cannot be interrupted.  But I don’t get up.  

I try.  I try to stop what I’m doing and go get water.  I try to use my coping strategies.  Sometimes they work.

Coping Strategy 1: Physically out loud tell myself: “Get up.  Kim, get up.  Get UP!”

Coping Strategy 2:  Have a jug of water on hand nearby so I don’t have to get up because it’s easier to break my activity for just refilling my cup where I am.  (This is the one I used today.)

Coping Strategy 3:  Ask my husband, “My love, will you get me more water please?”  I am so thankful that he understands that actions like these are both helpful and a part of my love language.  It makes me feel so loved and cared for that he will do this for me.  He also knows that he can say no and that is also ok.  Honestly, sometimes him telling me no will help to prompt me to get up and do it myself because I don’t want him to feel bad or guilty for saying no.  

If those strategies don’t work, I don’t have a jug nearby, I just can’t get over the hump of “Get up,” then I don’t get up.  I can be thirsty while sitting there for HOURS.  

Just not being able to get up and start the very simple task.  To have that first step that must be taken be such a huge, seemingly insurmountable wall that is preventing me from moving forward.  

That, my beautiful people, is Executive Dysfunction.  This task is so huge that I just can’t figure out how to start.  I even know where I need to start (although sometimes I literally just don’t and I am paralyzed at that point), and I just...  Can’t.

I have stood in the hair care aisle of the grocery store, knowing I wanted to try a new shampoo because I didn’t like how the one I was using was making my hair feel, and not being able to choose a new shampoo, and having the money to spend, and just not knowing which one to pick and then after 30 minutes of standing there walking away without purchasing anything.  

Having coping strategies help.  Like get a suggestion from a hair care professional and just buy that shampoo forever now.  Asking for help.  My husband has literally just existed in my library with me so that I could start cleaning it.  He was messing around on his phone and not even really having a conversation with me.  Because I didn’t need him to.  I just needed his presence there to help me begin.  

And let me tell you about how lazy and useless this all makes me feel.  How hard it is to think of myself as a grown adult who still needs this kind of handholding.  

Ah, but that is the internalized ableism rearing its head again.  Maybe I should start capitalizing that.  Internalized Ableism.  I do that with my Depression and Anxiety because I am thinking about them as an external thing.  Anthropomorphizing them.  They are separate entities that I live with in my body and in my brain.  They are things that I have to live with and work around.  And thinking of them as external factors, not internal ones, helps me to drive the self-hatred outward instead of inwards.  I hate my Anxiety.  I hate my Depression.  I hate my Internalized Ableism.  They are roommates that live with me that I cannot kick out.

Hm.  Well, I’m working on kicking my Internalized Ableism out.  And the Depression comes and goes.  It’s been here for the last decade, but there are very good reasons for that.  I’m hoping that I can kick it out.  

But that Anxiety?  That, I just get to control.  To cope with.  To medicate.  To use strategies.  That isn’t going anywhere.  Because that’s just my brain chemicals.  It is literally how my brain functions.  And I hate it so much.  So if I can hate it separately from myself, I can hate me a little less.  

Yeah, so this one got unexpectedly personal.  I guess that’s the point of these, right?  To get my thoughts and feelings out and maybe to help someone else feel more comfortable in dealing with their own brain chemicals?  That whole stigma with medical conditions, especially with mental illness, yeah, that’s where that Internalized Ableism comes from.  And the only way I’m going to kick it out is to confront it and take away its power.