Having ADD or ADHD does not mean your thoughts, ideas and creativity are not valid! So many of us with ADD/HD have grown up in a world of invalidation and it has affected us throughout our lives—in our careers, in our relationships and worst of all in our own personal worlds of creative thinking.
Adders have brilliantly creative minds. I have said that before and I will say it again. You are a creative genius and you have ideas with the potential to be great! Yes, indeed you do! I have never been more serious about a subject than this. If nobody has ever told you that you are a creative genius, well, that ends now. You are a creative genius! Get up and go look at yourself in the mirror. You will be looking at a person who can create and not just any creations, creations of substance, of meaning and of relevance!
Who am I to tell you this? Who am I to validate this? I have lived my whole life suffering from invalidation and being told that I don’t know what I am doing. That I can’t learn. That I can’t do this or I can’t do that. I have been told I am lazy and I have been told that I am stupid and I have been told so many negative things I have trouble remembering them all. And why? Because, my mind works differently, that’s why! That’s it. My mind works differently!
I will be honest with you: I have a good job and I work for a company with great meaning. For this company I do many creative things and I am appreciated for them. But, I would never have been able to do what I do, with my creativity, if I had let my childhood lessons dictate my life forever. As an Adder child I grew up being considered lazy and not smart enough to do normal class room work and not social enough to get along with friends. I was frequently told I would never amount to anything, or I would be stuck digging ditches.
It is tough growing up as an Adder. I know it firsthand. When I was in school I spent a lot of time writing, drawing and creating. My teachers did not appreciate any of it. If I was not able to do normal class room work, in the way it was required, then everything else I did was wrong. I loved writing and I loved telling stories, but, I just couldn’t grasp English Class. I also loved to put together designs, but, I was told that wasn’t worth anything. The bottom line was, if I could not do normal school work, in the normal school setting, then nothing else I did or cared about was worth squat. The terribly unfortunate part of this story is that I started to and did eventually believe what I was being told. I wasn’t good at anything and what I loved to do was worthless.
The only person who really believed in me and my creativity was my Mother, but that was not enough. With everyone else invalidating my attempts, her voice became that sound far off in the forest. Mother’s love their children and will try to tell them things to support them and I knew that, so, I felt she was biased and just being nice. And she too, was often perturbed with my performance in school.
I grew up misunderstood. As an Adder or anyone with a learning disorder you too are also more than likely misunderstood. I had to learn the long and hard way that the misunderstandings of others cannot dictate the way I live my life and the way I think of myself. When I finally discovered that my creations were worth something I was shocked and I was amazed. It took me a long time to believe in myself and change my thinking from what I had been told.
How much negative feedback has helped develop your thinking and the way you act today? Consider that and consider that maybe, just maybe, you have value beyond any negative feedback you may have received in your life. You have a genius within you. I believe it whole heartedly!
Here is one example of one of the most important things I have learned lately: punctuation does not make a good story teller! A person with a creative mind and fresh ideas makes a good story teller! For a long time English teachers made me believe otherwise, so, I stopped writing, because I could not understand punctuation or remember what a preposition is. If punctuation was the end all and be all, Blogs would have died a sudden death in their second day of existence. And not to mention that editors exist for a reason! As you have noticed, I have started to write again… how am I doing?
You are a creative genius and your ideas are valid. Find YOUR way! Your way is the right way for you.
~Bryan
