So I have ADHD, with a side-ordering of Sensitivity Rejection Dysphoria. In practice what that means is I sometimes get carried away with speaking very frankly about stuff, and then feeling disproportionately hurt and peeled raw emotionally if someone implies I was "too much" in some way. I have spent many years trying to rein in my impulsivity, but it also has very serious side effects. My mother killed herself partly because of the combination of those 2 same conditions, and they actually drove me to a very serious suicide attempt 10 years ago, from which I'm still suffering physical health effects. Anyway I joined a new messaging group based on being the parent of my DC who has a hobby. Don't want to out myself, but think like a hobby-based group of parents. Today I was feeling a bit overwhelmed by the demands of the thing around which the group is based (think: challenging hobby requiring lots of time, input etc.) And so I did post a couple of posts on the group mentioning both my ADHD and that I was struggling. A couple of people responded with helpful suggestions and I put it from my mind. Then logged back in later and saw that 4 people had left the group. Now it is a huge group, and many people leave periodically. But I'm also not blind to the fact that maybe me mentioning ADHD/struggling was viewed negatively by those people....which is fair enough. But in addition to that I received a pm from a stranger in the group. She was trying to be kind - that really was her only intention - and said to me that maybe I should not overshare stuff in a group of strangers (she didn't say "like ADHD" but that's what I took from it). I take her point and the kindness with which it was intended. But....but....it still hurt me and made me feel so ashamed of myself. Like I'm this idiotic loser who can't function in normal social situations. I was so shocked that a total stranger had - even for kindness-based reasons, and it definitely was kindness - basically felt confident enough to know definitively what is correct behaviour and message me to tell me....and yet again I obviously didn't know what was correct social behaviour and messed up. I felt so shocked and winded from it. All those feelings of being alien and different that fed into my suicide attempt years ago peered their heads around a door I was desperately trying to slam shut.
I responded back that I was trying to accept my condition and to speak about it normally, in the same way that other people would speak about any everyday stuff. Also responded that I had only posted a couple of things - a total time of maybe 10 minutes....thinking if ppl didn't want to read, then they scroll past? Finally I made the point that if someone saw my posts and thought anything outside the range of reactions from "don't care/scroll past" to "hmmm...brave to be open about a condition that is often shrouded in shame" then maybe I wasn't the one with the problem? So as not to drip-feed, I had a very unstable childhood, passed around relatives, many different schools etc. So shame and self-loathing at myself for being the cause of that with my behaviour (when I actually genuinely wasn't: the adults in my life had their own serious issues) has been such a defining feature in my life. I was shocked at the spiral in which I found myself from these events that somebody else would be able to brush off with "folks don't always see eye-to-eye but just forget it!". Can anyone impart a bit of wisdom or sense of proportion my way? Or tell me ways in which they learned to check their impulsivity especially if they have ADHD? Side-note: even now I feel scared to post this here. Even though this is anonymous; folk say all sorts of stuff on here etc. I still feel even the same creeping shame I had as a reaction to a message that was surely meant to be kind....