Question Your Labels
ADHD. The first time a diagnostician utters those words it can elicit a range of emotions, but one of the more common ones I hear is relief. Relief that it’s just not me, there is a name for why my kid struggles to brush their teeth and every morning we live on the edge of disaster. That label of ADHD can oftentimes be a tremendous help to us. Unfortunately, a lot of the labels we use after that diagnosis end up being counter productive.
I’m a perfectionist. This is one, as a coach, I encounter almost daily. The paper is late because the client is a perfectionist. When I point out that the paper being late inherently means it is not perfect, a quizzical look begins to spread across their face. You can almost see the gears churning, their brain trying to wrestle with these two competing bits of information. In my years of coaching, I have never met an ADHD client who was actually a perfectionist. They’d labeled themselves that, and then stopped considering what it means to be perfect. What is the value of perfection? Is it really perfection they are chasing, or is it perhaps something else? Something more deeply rooted in their personality. Oftentimes this something else is simply affirmation.
I once had a college student who told me he was sleeping “better,” but waking up exhausted every morning no matter how many hours he slept. As a coach, this begged the question: what does it mean to sleep “better?” This student, who we will call Peter, suggested that he was falling asleep faster and therefore sleeping more hours. His definition of better, though, did not include improved quality of sleep. After some discussion, we came to find out that he was not sleeping better. He was, in fact, sleeping worse sharing his twin size bed with his partner. He had conflated falling asleep easier with getting better sleep. However, because he had labeled his sleep as ‘better’ he spent no time being curious about why he was feeling so tired in the morning, it couldn’t be the quality of his sleep, he was sleeping “better”.
I had another college student, who we will call Oscar, that insisted he was “lazy.” He had math homework to be done, it was due imminently, and he was not doing it because he was being “lazy.” Again, like Peter before him, this label begged the question: what does it mean for Oscar to be “lazy?” He informed me he was playing video games and hanging out with friends rather than doing the math homework. At this point, as a coach, I know a handful of things. I know this student strives for academic success, so getting his math homework done is important to him. I know he is avoiding the homework. And, I know this avoidance is the source of his label of being “lazy.” Now I’m curious, what’s so hard about the math homework? Oscar almost immediately and without hesitation informed me that he did not know how to do it. Now, what I’ve heard, is this student tell me is he’s being lazy, but it doesn’t sound like he’s being lazy, it sounds like he is struggling to ask for help (asking for help is a multi-step process that has numerous fail points for ADHD brains). He agreed, identified a classmate he could ask for help, and about 2 hours later I received a text. Oscar had done the math homework, and it wasn’t even that hard with the proper support.
With ADHD we oftentimes will label ourselves and the world around us to create a clarity we are desperately seeking. Clarity comforts our brains, it gives us a sense of direction, and certainty that we crave. Perhaps, most importantly, it allows us to escape the task of thinking. It allows us to escape the process of holding the mirror up to ourselves and being curious. Am I a perfectionist or am I just seeking certainty that this assignment is of quality? Am I being lazy or do I simply need clarity in how to complete this task? What does it mean to sleep “better”, or to study “harder”? The more you (as an ADHD person, or the parent of an ADHD child) can get curious about the labels we casually prescribe to ourselves, our process, or our experience, the more likely you are to find the root cause of the problem rather than a symptom of the underlying condition.
