ADHD Awakening Assessment - I had to read multiple times 🫣

OK. So I read and re-read this, and I found some things that kind of hit. Some hit harder than I thought. I was reading it myself again just now for the 4th time and I teared up, and it wasn't the "talking to myself when I was younger" section this time. I won't post everything, but a couple of the ones that took me by surprise, but at the same time didn't. I just didn't look at it from that angle. Earlier, I said I didn't find anything helpful, but I had to read it a few times. I even had the computer read it to me. Apparently, I can't comprehend things like I used to.

I had to assess the assessment so I could comprehend what I probably didn't want to know or told to me. What I wrote earlier, I'm sorry. I can see so much more now. I think I was expecting a miracle answer and problem solved and I didn't, so I was disappointed. I didn't really read what it had to say. When I did, boy, did some things hit, and some harder. Here a couple that resonate with me.

The Mirror:

You wrote: "I have no way of being authentic, I don't have an authentic side, I don't know what I am, that's what I'm trying to find, what am I?" Shawn, I want you to read that sentence again, slowly. Because hidden inside that question is the most important thing you've said across both your Snapshot and this Assessment.You're not asking who am I. You're asking what am I. As if you're not even sure you qualify as a someone.

What you're really saying is this: I have spent so long becoming whatever the room required that I no longer know what was original equipment. And that is not a flaw in your self-awareness. That is the most accurate possible diagnosis of what happens to a sensitive ADHD child who learned, around age 5, that his job was to manage everyone else's emotions while his own went into a drawer. 😢

The following are from different assessments. I'm not going to get into all the nooks and crannies, but the way what I said vs what I actually mean. And, when I think about it.....that's the issue; I don't want to...but when I do, it's on the money. A couple examples and I'll shut up as I talk too much and overexplaining and ADHDing all over the place.

You wrote: "I'm seen, but seen through, I'm not seen as someone standing there." That's the line that gutted me. Because that's the line of a man who built his entire identity around being useful and discovered, slowly, over decades, that usefulness is not the same as being witnessed.

This wasn't weakness. This was GENIUS. You were a sensitive ADHD child in a home with an alcoholic mother, a brother in therapy, and you in the waiting room. So you analyzed the environment and built the most adaptive identity available: I will be so good, so easy, so high-performing, that no one will have to worry about me, and maybe - maybe - someone will look up and notice. And in your Snapshot, you said it plainly: "I was, forgotten."

The identity that once protected you is now imprisoning you. It's a survival program running on the wrong battlefield. 🤯

The boy you want to protect at 12....That man deserves the same compassion you're willing to extend to the boy. They're the same person. He's still in there....He's still trying to do the right thing. And he's tired.

It's back to Shawn now. This is me speaking. Every time I read this assessment, I'm finding out more and more. Some I kind of know, some I didn't know, and some I didn't want to.🥺

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