The quest for enough

A journey of self-acceptance and diagnosis ... and an explanation for where I've been this summer.

I inadvertently took a midsummer reset. That’s a fancy way of saying I fell off the face of the digital world for a month after vacation. Some of it was because of travel. Some of it was because of family visiting. But there were other things going on in the background.

1. I got tested for autism, ADHD, and OCD back in May. Those results came in after my return from vacation, and I’ve been sifting through them and their implications. 

2. I made a decision to stop doing other people’s marketing and to focus full-time on being a mom (we’re in a state of transition as my oldest daughter prepares to go away to college and my youngest enters high school). I also decided to focus in earnest on my writing, both for my book (something that has been tabled for over a year) and this newsletter.

I didn’t intend to stay away this long, but it was necessary that I not just come back from vacation and plunge myself into a mindless routine again. I needed to stop what I was doing in order to determine the next steps.

Navigating the Landscape of ‘Not Enoughness’

I wish I could tell you I have the next steps completely determined. The old me always had a plan. Not having one causes considerable anxiety as does not writing, which is a big reason you’re reading this. But the new me is starting to understand that simply making a decision about what you don’t want to do and what you do want to do, even if you’re not yet sure how to do it, might be enough.

And enough is an important word here, because most of my life, I was driven by not enoughness. I’ve known it for years but only began to address it in the last two as I began the deep work required to heal my relationship with myself and my body.

Not enoughness is something many of us struggle with, and it goes by many names. Unworthiness, unlovableness … you may know it by another. Deep down we just don’t feel good enough the way we are. And there are as many coping mechanisms for not enoughness as there are feelings. Some of us stuff those feelings down or wall them off or spend all our time doing so we don’t have to deal with them.

On some level, I spent my entire life trying to prove my worth. If I was successful enough, it would make up for the not enoughness. But you can’t earn enoughness. All the achievement in the world isn’t going to make you feel enough if you inherently don’t believe you are.

I’m not yet healed of not enoughness—there’s still work to be done. What I can say is that after years of knowing not enoughness was at the root of my suffering, but still not sure how to fix it, something has shifted. For the first time in my life, I feel I am enough versus knowing it logically. And there’s freedom in that.

The Journey to Diagnosis and Self-Acceptance

In taking on more and more marketing and writing work for myself and clients in the last year, I noticed I was struggling to stay focused. My brain was in this sort of manic overdrive, always doing, creating, and churning out new ideas, but there was never enough time to do them all or do them right, so I felt like I was perpetually behind.

I had always been able to hyperfocus on things I was interested in, but it was taking more effort, and I was dropping balls in other areas. I would forget appointments, mix up meeting times, double schedule myself, and leave things to the last minute. I was also more irritated than normal by having to do the tasks that keep our home running. I would wake up in the middle of the night looping on all the things I should be doing.

I started wondering if I had a brain tumor or possibly dementia. I started second guessing.

Had these traits always been there and I just hadn’t seen them?

But there were other questions I had struggled with longer.

Why have I always felt so different? How much of me and my more unusual traits are a product of hard wiring or hard upbringing?

The more I asked the questions aloud, the more my family encouraged me to do neuropsych testing. 

Bringing Down the Walls 

Along with achieving to make up for my not enoughness, my other lifelong strategy was walling.

Growing up with a verbally abusive, explosive-tempered father, this makes sense. It wasn’t safe to show emotions, so I locked them down. But it wasn’t just a safety measure, it was an act of defiance: I won’t let you see you have an effect on me.

Walling worked so well, it became one of my defining traits.

For years, people told me I was the strongest, most capable person they knew. But there were downsides.

I struggled with boundaries. I had a hard time letting people in, even those closest to me. At times, I overcompensated, letting the wrong people in.

I struggled to show empathy. My matter-of-factness often came across as cold and unfeeling. Even when I tried to show empathy, it often didn’t come across the way I intended.

People had trouble reading my facial expressions or body language, so I was often misunderstood. Those walls that served me so well as a child kept me feeling alone and isolated as an adult.

“Most of my life, I didn’t even think you liked me,” my sister confessed a few months ago.

We can joke about it now—she asked me last week whether I even bleed—but it’s taken a crazy amount of work to get this place.

My sister was absolutely convinced I have autism. It would explain so many of my differences. My perceived lack of empathy. My special interests. My hyperfocus. It would make those closest to me, including myself, feel better. But sometimes things don’t turn out the way we expect.

Unmasking ADHD and Exploring Other Possibilities

I was diagnosed with inattentive ADHD a month ago at age 49, having never had typical inattentive symptoms as a child. The psychologist who did my neuropsych testing said high intelligence and trauma can mask inattentive symptoms. Basically, the work I’ve done in recent years to lower my walls and reconnect with my emotions has “made it safe” for me to show inattentive symptoms.

I am still not 100% sure, given how little I’ve struggled compared to relatives and friends with ADHD. My sister remains convinced I have autism. I’m still open to the possibility, but I have started exploring medication and strategies for improving executive function. I’m also looking at other explanations, including burnout and perimenopause. I know trauma has played a significant role in my life, so I’m not disputing its impact, and there are overlaps between it, ADHD and autism.

So this is a long-winded, still-unfinished explanation for where I’ve been.

This has been the most challenging post I’ve ever written because of my evolving feelings on the topic. I started writing almost a month ago, and every time I sat down to edit, I ended up rewriting entire sections. I know I’m not alone in grappling with these and similar issues, but sometimes when we’re deep in our own struggle, it’s easy to lose perspective.

I would love to hear your thoughts and experiences. Have you faced similar challenges or feelings of "not enoughness"? Are any of you in the midst of transition or a time of self-discovery? I’d love to hear from you.