Roadblocks

All right, this episode is going to be a little bit different because I have a guest.

This guest is a dear friend of mine that I've known for a very long time. In this episode, we're going to be talking about emotional and mental roadblocks.

On the off chance that you don't know what a roadblock is, it is any condition, physical barrier, or circumstance that delays, hinders, or altogether prevents progress towards a specific goal.

Before we get into the emotional side of things, it's pretty much just a barricade or checkpoint set up across the street or highway.

The way to get past roadblocks and continue on the path is primarily through momentum, tactical impact, or bypassing. But sometimes the roadblocks can prevent us from getting past them.

When that happens, we have to change the route and go around the roadblock, also known as bypassing. To get a better picture of this, imagine that you're driving toward a destination, and suddenly there's a giant sign that says road closed.

Most of us wouldn't sit there forever and decide that our journey is over. We also wouldn't assume that we're terrible drivers because the road is blocked. We'd probably pull over, look at a map, and find another route.

Mental health roadblocks work the same way. Anxiety can put up a roadblock that says this isn't safe. Depression can put up a roadblock that says there's no point in trying.

ADHD can put up a roadblock that says starting is too overwhelming. Trauma can put up a roadblock that says don't trust anyone. OCD can put up a roadblock that says you can't move forward until everything feels certain.

These roadblocks slow us down. They can make us frustrated, exhausted, and even question ourselves. But a roadblock doesn't mean the destination no longer exists.

It simply means the original route isn't available right now. The problem is that many of us spend so much time arguing with the roadblock that we forget to look for another road.

We think, I should be able to do this like everyone else, and we keep trying to drive through the barrier. But healing often looks like taking a detour.

Detours can be therapy, medication, accommodations, support groups, rest, boundaries, guarding techniques, asking for help, or doing things in smaller steps.

Yes, they may take longer, and they may not look like everyone else's route, but they still move us forward. A roadblock is not a stop sign for your life. It's information.

It's your mind and body saying, this path isn't working right now. Let's find another way. The destination, healing, growth, peace, connection is still there.

You may just need a different road to get there. And to be completely honest, you wouldn't call yourself a failure because a road is under construction. So why call yourself a failure when your mind is going through construction too?

All right, now to pull my guest into this rabbit hole. How have you noticed mental health being a roadblock in your life? Like how does it stop you from getting where you want to go?

Hey, thanks for having me here.

So I have ADHD and depression and some compulsive tendencies.

So roadblocks in my life look like all sorts of things, from struggling in school and with friendships, to having depressive episodes that leave me unable to get out of bed or take care of myself, and ADHD making it impossible to pay attention to anyone or anything. ADHD, for all its unserious ideation in social media, can actually be quite debilitating. Things like memory loss, executive dysfunction, and visual and auditory processing disorders make living day-to-day life really difficult.

I was the classic example of a super gifted genius student when I was in grade school, when I had recesses and breaks, who slowly burned out as I got older and ended up barely passing high school.

I didn't realize until very recently that I was an ADHD kid failing in a system that was not built for us.

I spent a long time blaming myself for not trying harder, for not being as smart as I could be, and for not being perfect in all of my classes, because I knew I was capable of it.

This constant blame and pressure on myself to do better, to be better, led to some severe depressive episodes in high school. Let me be clear, this was not me giving up or not wanting to do good. Quite the opposite.

Actually, I love school. I love learning. I love the social aspects of it.

I desperately wanted to do good in my classes, to make good friends and keep them. But no matter how much I wanted it, I could not seem to pay attention fully in class or understand all of what the teacher was saying.

I physically could not get myself to finish my homework or read anything in a textbook. Now, this was not for a lack of trying, and not because anything was hard or confusing, it wasn't.

Heck, two of my favorite classes in high school were AP Physics and AP Calculus. Hard classes, but the material was super interesting, and it was easy for me to understand for the most part.

I now know that there was just not enough stimulation for me, especially when doing assignments and homework. I spent a long time blaming and, quite frankly, hating myself for something that I could not control.

ADHD is literally a neurochemical imbalance. We have weak executive function and impulse control. We are time blind and inattentive.

We have poor object permanence and are hyperactive in many different ways. And we crave structure and schedules and rules, but are completely incapable of making them for ourselves. And all of that is just the tip of the iceberg.

Of course, these things vary from person to person, and characteristics present differently in women than they do men.

Personally, ADHD has created roadblocks for me that look like inattentiveness, object permanence that extends to people, not just my keys, executive dysfunction, and a lot more.

In school, taking notes in class and studying for tests is really difficult. I have a very hard time paying attention to the professor and following along, if I'm looking down at my notebook.

And for the life of me, I cannot study for exams, because it is boring. And my brain would quite literally rather die than do something that boring. It is very annoying.

When making and keeping friends, I, for the life of me, cannot remember things. I love my friends.

She does.

They're important to me. But do I remember their birthdays or what their favorite color is? Absolutely not.

I do, however, remember what piece of jewelry they looked at for a minute longer and mentioned in passing five years, two months, and 27 days ago.

This is very true.

At home, I cannot create a routine for the life of me, which makes me very inconsistent with household chores and contributing to mine and my husband's lives.

I will unload the dishwasher one day, vacuum a month and three days later, and make dinner maybe twice in between that. It's very annoying. Now, depression has also created roadblocks in my life.

Depression and ADHD go hand in hand, because ADHD basically says, I cannot and will not do anything that is not fun or stimulating in some way. And depression basically says, there is nothing worth doing.

So of course, that makes doing everything more difficult. My compulsive tendencies also cause me to get extremely upset if something is not done in the way that I was taught or believed to be the right way.

I know there's not like a right way quote unquote, but still. So I was, and still very much am, a perfectionist for a lot of things, which makes living with another human being difficult, occasionally.

Especially because he's a man. Thank you for sharing that. Honestly, it's not even just about living with another human being, it's being a human being, because it's like the expectations of being human, the bar was set so high, I feel like.

I mean, okay, I know that's kind of dramatic, but I feel like it was set very high. But my next question is, what can be done with the roadblock? How do we bypass it?

Or if it can't be bypassed, how do we navigate around the obstruction?

Yeah.

So I'm going to be so for real right now. I have no idea for a lot of things. I am still learning.

I just started therapy, like six months, four months ago. Yeah, you just buy AP. Yeah.

I just started. So genuinely, I have no idea for a lot of things. But there are a lot of things that I can share that I've learned from.

Yeah. So there's a content creator that I love listening to. He's an ADHD keynote speaker and has quite a few podcasts on it.

And very sorry if I'm pronouncing this wrong. I don't know how to say his name, but his name is Matt Raicledoom.

Raicabooom.

Just kidding. I have been watching his and a few other content creators stuff for a couple of years, and they, along with my own research and therapy, very important to do your own research and therapy, do not go straight to content creation.

They have helped me understand quite a bit about ADHD and why I do say or feel the things that I do. Very helpful. So a few things that I have learned are routines and schedules are huge, even though it is completely paradoxical for ADHD.

As a person with ADHD, I am not physically or mentally capable of creating and sticking to a routine that I create myself. I cannot do it.

I can try and create one all I want, and I can do the same thing every single day for a month or even a year, if I make it that long, and I will still be able to drop the routine like it's nothing. It does not make an impression on me.

However, having a job has helped me. That is part of a routine I can't drop or ignore because there is pressure, external pressure, from my bosses and coworkers.

External pressure is by far the most effective tool that I have, especially when it comes from people I know and trust, like my husband or peers or friends, things like that. Another thing that has really helped are meds.

I know that's not the best path for everyone, but for me, it helps by taking away a lot of my brain fog and helps regulate my brain a little bit so I can focus on the things that I need to do.

Yeah, totally.

I've noticed that when I'm struggling with my anxiety and I feel like I can't run from it or ignore it, it gives me even more anxiety. Super helpful for my brain. I'm stressing about being stressed instead of being just plain old stressed.

I struggled with the domino effect of stress for years, to the point that I was having frequent panic attacks, consistent heart palpitations, I couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, had insane stomach issues, was disassociating like a druggie.

The list really could go on for an embarrassing amount of time, so we'll cut it short there. I had no clue how to deal with all of this.

I felt like I had cinderblocks tied to my ankles while I was in the middle of the ocean, with no boat, no floaties, no rescue crew on the way, nothing.

And even though I was being dragged under the waves, and no matter how hard I fought to stay afloat, everyone kept telling me, just swim, that's all you have to do.

Which is an insane thing to say to anyone, because if you think about it, we're all stuck in the middle of the ocean with cinderblocks tied to our ankles. It's not as easy as just swim. Anyway, I was drowning.

But then one day during a psychology course, in my first year of college, I went to talk to the professor after the class because we had talked about mental illnesses and their effect on the body.

I told him that I struggled with anxiety, and that no matter what I did, I couldn't get rid of it. He asked me, well, why are you trying to get rid of it?

I was honestly so confused and went, probably because I don't want to have to deal with the feeling of impending doom anytime I do literally anything. Like, come on, Mr. Psychology Professor, that should know that already.

He chuckled after my sass failed comment before saying, if you're being chased and don't want to be, stop running and turn around. Face whatever you're being chased by and deal with it. Not going to lie, when he said this, I was tempted to yell, boo!

I put him out of the room. Instead, I glared at him for a while before saying, that's going to suck. And when she replied, if you're doing it the right way, it most likely will.

This conversation frustrated me, but it also made me realize something. I was tired of being chased, so I eventually made the decision to turn around and face what had been chasing me.

And not to say I told you so or anything, but it did in fact suck. But reaching out for help, getting into therapy, and facing my demons was also the best thing I ever did for myself. It helped teach me that me and my mental health could coexist.

I just had to stop running from it and trying to fight it, which is so much easier said than done as most things are.

I know that I personally feel very discouraged when I come across these emotional roadblocks, like I'm driving and the path is already bumpy, and then all of a sudden I come across something that's completely in my way.

The path is no longer just bumpy, and it's seemingly impossible to keep going on. Before the roadblock, I was already discouraged, but then I come across it, and all I want to do is quit the journey altogether.

I tend to forget that there is always another way. It's kind of like in the movie Finding Dory, where baby Dory is trying to pick up a shell, and she can't do it. She gets so frustrated with herself because she can't seem to get the shell to move.

She tells her dad that she can't do it. Watching this part of the movie broke my heart and took me by surprise because it was supposed to be a cute kids movie.

Meanwhile, it was making me realize all of the metaphorical shells that I had given up on in my own life. All because I was so frustrated with myself that I stopped looking for another way.

But as Dory is giving up on herself, her dad comes in, tells her, there is always another way, and wiggles the shell loose with his tail to show her that giving up doesn't mean stopping, just pivoting.

As frustrating as it is to admit, sometimes dads do have more to offer than cheesy jokes. At least dads in Disney movies do.

Later on in the movie, Dory brings up the same story when helping Hank the arctic place in the aquarium when they feel stuck and are trying to navigate the complex pipes.

I love this part of the movie because it showed that we can look back on how we got past Roadblocks that we've already dealt with as a guide to help us deal with our current and future obstructions.

When Roadblocks get in the way, whether they're anxiety, depression, ADHD, OCD, PTSD, BPD, bipolar disorder, panic disorder, eating disorders, you name it, there is always another way.

The roadblock is real, the shell is heavy, but heavy does not mean impossible. There is always another way, it means your brain may need a different route. It means accommodations aren't cheating their maps.

It means coping skills aren't weaknesses, they're tools, and it means that when one path is blocked, you aren't broken, you just haven't found your way around the shell yet.

The goal isn't to fight against your brain, the goal is to learn how your brain works and work with it.

Because every river finds a way around a rock, every tree grows around a fence, and every person can find another path forward, even when the first one is blocked. I want to finish this episode with a question.

What shell have you been trying to push that might actually require a different path around it?