But have developed so many masking strategies for it over the years, that I’m most worried about talking to DH about it. I can afford to have a private assessment, and will, but it’s a lot of money and we always talk about spending those sorts of amounts. My worry about raising it with him is that I expect him to say that ‘everyone’ feels like that/ does that/ loses that etc and I’m just being anxious.
The thing is, I am anxious I guess, but I don’t think I ‘have anxiety’. I’ve spent three years in fortnightly counselling and am much better now at being ‘self compassionate’ and not so hard on myself. But the problems that I was being hard on myself for are still there. I still can’t keep a room tidy, sort laundry unless everyone is out of clean clothes, fetch a bloody prescription FOR MY CHILD before the last one has run out. I have lost hundreds (maybe more) of pounds over the years by not cancelling insurance, missing MOTS, losing cheques.
Now I have a new job. I am entirely capable of doing it, cognitively, but am falling apart with the organisation of the different tasks required. My desk/ shelves/ drawers are stuffed with random bits of paper. I’m on holiday at the moment and dreading going back to it (although I love the job itself).
I can’t listen a lot of the time - I don’t know what people have said to me, don’t really remember things about them (unless I really make an effort, which I do with a few friends and my own children). I can’t retell a film, I can’t remember what I have read, although I enjoy the act of reading while I am doing it. I have a first class Oxbridge degree, which I must have managed somehow as they don’t give them out for free!
I have millions of unfinished projects - crafts that I buy all the stuff for and then never start, photo albums started, corners of rooms tidied. I often start something, like a new routine or idea with one of the DC, and don’t see it through. Poor kids.
I can’t feel the difference between being unmotivated and being tired. I will do something strenuous (like gardening yesterday) for hours without a break, just going on and on, and then, suddenly, crash. And can’t do anything else at all. Other times, I feel like that but I haven’t done anything.
Anyway, all of this stuff, and more (I could write this all day I think) is not visible to anyone really. Well, the desk is! I pass the rest off as normal mess for a busy household, normal to be tired at the end of the day, normal to put things off. I don’t really complain about it or tell anyone how it makes me feel. Well, I didn’t really know how it made me feel until I had this realisation. I thought I was working on my emotional over reactions to normal stuff, the way that everyone else is and copes with just fine. Now I think it’s an understandable emotional reaction to not actually being able to do this stuff easily.
What am I asking? How to cope with DH not really ‘believing’ me? He’s a bit oblivious to a lot of things and would definitely say that he does/ feels some of the things I said above, thereby making it ‘okay’.
I feel a bit better for typing this, even if nobody reads it!