With Good Intentions
š« Wanting and trying desperately to do the right thing, whatever that is
Hey friends,
Iāve always tried to do the right thing.
Itās not easy, especially when your brain seems to work differently than most people around you. It seems I often get in my own way, and then someone tells me Iām getting in my own way, which just making things worse.
Iāll have great plans in my head for doing something brilliant and wonderful and worthy of love. But then I forget to remember to do something important at the time that it matters. Or I miss a small detail that makes the entire effort moot. Even when I think Iāve gotten everything right, sometimes it turns out that Iāve misread a social cue or missed out on another crucial piece of ācommon senseā that thwarts my efforts.
Honestly, I think I would be okay with this if it wasnāt for the way people interpret the results.
Rather than any sort of charitable level of understanding, Iāve gotten a lifetime of looks that say āwhatās wrong with you?ā and āwhat were you thinking?ā
My good intentions sabotaged, and I get labelled as difficult and a troublemaker. Names that imply action taken with bad intentions.
I donāt mean to just wallow in negative feelingsāIām just honestly kind of unsure what to do with them. How many more kids have to hear so many negative messages (up to 20,000 more negative messages than their peers by age of ten according to an estimate by Harvard professor Michael S. Jellinek), when none of it is their fault? When theyāre trying to do the right thing? When they have good intentions?
One of the greatest gifts you can give someone with ADHD is assuming that their intentions and their motives are pure.
Stay focused,
Jesse J. Anderson
P.S. Iām planning to do another reader Q&A in the near future! Theyāve been a lot of fun so far. While obviously the primary focus will be about ADHD, feel free to ask me about other topics as well: the book-writing process, parenting, substack, productivity tools, movies, content creation, hobbies, video games, etc. If you have any questions youād like me to answer, send them to me here.
Iām experimenting with a new section, Shiny Objects, where Iāll share links to a few fun distractions (books, tv shows, articles, music, etc) going on in my world outside of my main writings on ADHD.
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Shiny Objects
Things that grabbed my attention this week