Thursday, September 8, 2011

Priorities

Some people have no idea how to prioritize.  My mother is great when it comes to her own life.  She makes sure to eat healthy, get enough sleep, exercise; she's always at least on time, and usually early; she is the queen of organization.  Outside of herself, she hasn't got a clue.  She's decided that I need to be "fixed", that is, that I have an abundance of problems and that she is exactly the person to clear all of them up.  This is wrong on many levels.
First, people don't change unless they want to (and right along with that goes the more you push the more most people dig in their heels to resist).
Secondly, she knows what is wrong with me, but she's decided that I don't know myself as well as she knows me, so I'm wrong about all my problems and all I have to do is whatever she says. 
Third, she seems to be clueless about what problems are big, and what problems are small.

Lately, she's decided that I have ADHD.  That's probably the one thing I don't have.  I have Social Anxiety Disorder with a little bit of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder tossed in for good measure.  She thinks that because I can't sit still that I must have ADHD and that's what needs to be fixed.  No, mom.  I can't sit still because I'm obsessing over all the bad things that could be happening right now.  I have to check on everything because I'm terrified something will go wrong.
And while she looks in the wrong direction to solve my problems, I'm exhibiting self-mutilating behaviors (sometimes known as "cutting" or trichotillomania [pulling one's hair out], depending on what type of mutilation is occurring).  The soles of my feet look like they're being run through a cheese grater and she's busy worrying that I don't sit still often enough. 

I sound ungrateful.  I'm glad I have a mother who loves me and wants to make everything better for me, but how can she look at me and not see me at all?