2 posts tagged “jennifer priest”
I've just gotten off the phone (well, Skype, but it's pretty much the same thing) with The Amazing Jennifer Priest. Why is she so amazing? Because in the space of an hour, she brought me up from exhaustion to excitement; from depression to delight; from gnarly to gnostic! During our Skype call, she led me toward an epiphany, and it's put me on the path to something great.
Full disclosure: I may have Adult Attention Deficit Disorder (Adult ADD). All my life, I've had difficulty concentrating, been easily distracted, have never had a moment when snatches of songs weren't running through my mind, was extremely forgetful ... and these things have hurt me. Just as an example, Jennifer gave me a mutually agreed-upon task to help me pursue some of my goals. But two weeks have gone by, and I haven't been able to do them. Last night, I realized that my biggest obstacle is, in fact, my brain. It just doesn't work properly. So I asked Jennifer if we could spend today's session discussing ways to fix that.
We began talking about the different drugs that people with my problem take to alleviate their symptoms. But she said something that hit me like a bolt from the blue. I mentioned that I'm always recycling old song lyrics, great bits of writing from books I've read, things people say that I found particularly clever ... and yet I can't remember to do a simple thing like turn off the garden lights at night before I go to bed. Jennifer said that that's because experiencing pleasurable things lights up the part of the brain that helps me learn and remember things. Things that are onerous, like household chores, or doing taxes, or any of a thousand things, just don't stick with me; in fact, I tend to postpone them, or outright avoid them.
She likened it to sitting in a boring business meeting. You might start to twiddle your thumbs, or drum on the desk, or play with your cellphone -- anything you can do that will add just the tiniest bit of enjoyment to the proceedings. Because without that extra stimulus, you might as well not even be there.
And that concept struck such a deep chord with me, it literally woke me all the way up, and I got really excited. Do you understand how amazing it is to have a big piece of mystery suddenly come loose and fall away, like icebergs calving in the arctic seas? A huge part of my life suddenly made sense! All my life I've been told that I had to pay closer attention, to work harder, to have the right attitude. But it seems that some peculiarity of my brain has made that near-impossible ... and more than that: there's a way to fix it.
Now, I should say that as a whole, I've always had a certain reservation when it comes to drugs of any sort. I'm wary of their effects and side effects, I've seen their abuse lead to the loss of friends and family members ... they're a loaded topic for me. So to consider that I might gain some benefit from taking some kind of pharmaceutical was a huge step for me. But I'm doing it. I'm going to make a call soon to put me on the track to 1) Get myself diagnosed, and 2) To get the treatment I need.
You may be thinking "But it seems so obvious; you need drugs, you go get drugs." But the problem has always been my broken brain. I would always think to myself "Oh, I just need to do this", but 5 minutes later, and it's gone. There have been moments when I've nearly wept, or screamed in frustration at my inability to understand the simplest ideas, or remember the most common sense steps. In a lot of ways, my mind has been my biggest enemy my whole life.
But The Amazing Jennifer managed to turn that around, too. She said that even given that hurdle, that obstacle, what I have managed to accomplish is that much more laudable. Look how far I've come, even with a broken brain: I've managed to keep my First Job in this horrible economy, and am maintaining two secondary jobs at the same time, both of which involve the regular application of my thoughts. I've stuck with my difficult living situation, when others might have cut and run. I can honestly say that I'm thankful that I have my willpower in place, because without it, I might have given up long ago.
Just think what I'll be able to do when I fix my brain!
So there you have it: working with The Amazing Jennifer has been the smartest thing I've ever done. Sure, these steps were always there for me to figure out on my own, but that's the point: I never had. It's taken an outside voice to help me put it all in context, and help me understand why my life is the way it is, and what to do about it.
I'm going to get better, you just wait and see. I'm going to astonish you all.
Today I don't need a replacement
I'll tell them what the smile on my face meant
My heart going boom boom boom
Hey, I said
You can keep my things, they've come to take me home
-- "Solsbury Hill", Peter Gabriel
Part of wisdom is knowing when to seek help. I don't claim any special store of knowledge apart from the common sort that arrives with age, but I do know when I need assistance.
I've come to a point in my life in which I feel overwhelmed by the very act of living. I'm working all the time -- I see my son off to preschool in the morning and I go to my First Job. I work at my Second and sometimes Third Jobs during my First Job, and then I come home to help take care of my son. Once he's off to sleep, I go back to working on my Second and Third jobs. I work until 2 or 3 AM, most days, and sleep (hopefully) until 5:45, when I have to get up to help my co-parent get up so she can get ready for her job. I go back to sleep until about 7:30, and start all over again.
I'm mired in the deepest debt of anyone I know, the result of years of poor decisions that have all come home to roost. Any one of my jobs could conceivably disappear tomorrow, and I have nothing concrete to fall back on. I have nothing in my savings, and no practical training in anything other than writing.
So I need help. I've needed help for quite a while now, and have been trying to tough it out, hoping it would get better.
Fortunately, I use Twitter. That's a phrase you don't often see in the media, but I've found Twitter to be an amazing resource for many things. I've made friends through Twitter, have found work through Twitter, and have expressed my humor, anger, fear, and hope through Twitter. And a few weeks ago, I found help through Twitter.
Jennifer Priest (http://www.jenniferpriest.com/) is a life coach. She's in the business of helping those who need help. She does this by telling you things that you may already know, but choose to ignore, or choose to avoid, for whatever reason. She makes complex issues plain. She sees clearly. She takes that journey of a thousand miles -- which feels unassailable -- and gets you to forget about all the steps it will take you to complete it, to focus instead upon the very first one.
Thanks to Jennifer, I have tasks. Concrete, simple, agreed-upon tasks with a deadline. These tasks are due by the end of the week, and I will accomplish them. Then Jennifer and I will talk, and she'll help me focus on the second step. Sooner or later, I'll come to the end of the thousand miles, and look forward to the next thousand -- but maybe by that point I won't need help anymore.
I'm going to keep this blog updated with my progress, in the hope that it will give me perspective. If I suffer setbacks, as I'm certain I will, you'll know about it. If I learn something important, I'll set it down here. And if, by the end of my journey, I've acquired wisdom, I'll share it with you.
And will this be
Our second chance
Our secret, better lives?
Adjusted freedom, somewhat less unsupervised?
-- "Where They Go Back To School But Get Depressed", The Loud Family
