Love to completely avoid a simple but critical task for weeks only to be reminded that I really need to have it done by now and now I have to make shit up and pretend I’m dumb or lost my notes or my dog ate my laptop, because saying “my brain didn’t give a fuck about this particular task for the last month because there was no real deadline and now I’m filled to the brim with anxiety and I want to hide in my bed for three days because now there is one and it was today” is a valid thing in therapy but some how not at work.
Anyway, ADHD sucks and I get knocked down but i get up again and so on.
If you have a good manager saying “I’m sorry, I lost focus on this and it slipped past me. I work better with clear and consistent deadlines and staged check-ins. Can we set these in future so critical tasks don’t slip” usually works, because you know what managers (and people who are half decent in general) love? Ways they can help you! Especially when it will benefit them and stop shit coming from upstairs. A good manager wants you to be less anxious and for work not to overload you entirely out of their own self interest.
If you have bad management, no god can help you, but also the lying is more likely to work.
I do have a mostly competent manager. I will apologize and say something to the likes you said. I will take my meds, breathe and find words and actions that will make this situation acceptable. I appreciate your words in any case.
But the dread of failure and rejection is so deep seated, it physically hurts. I stare at my problem and I know it’s transient, it’s solvable and it will be okay… And yet my body and soul react to it with a violence that is usually reserved for hearing about events in Gaza or a loved one dying. I have failed a thousend times on similar things and all my brain learned is shame and hiding. I am better now, but it’s still like a baseball bat to the gut. It’s full on fight or flight, and my body is going 100% flight and leaves the fighting for another day.
