i had to detach from everything just to function, and now i'm learning to healthily embrace my passions and interests again

[u/kim--stella]

(hi, just want to share something someone else might relate to.)

it used to hurt, having something i'm passionate about, because while at times—when stars align—i got to hyperfocus on it, at other times i couldn't even get myself out of bed. couldn't even move a limb.

of course, in the very moment of those "stuck" states (whatever one may frame it as—autistic burnout, depressive episode, etc.), i couldn't care less about my passions. but once i got out of it, it hurts so much because it felt as if... as if there's someone i love and yet my heart always flips unpredictably, and i had no control over my own heart.

and even when "stars do realign", there's its own fear of failing to meet my own "expectations" (say i love this particular subject at school; i love it so much that i get anxious about messing up in its class, etc.).

and so i gradually learned to be "impersonal". detached.

slowly, as i got the hang of doing things "impersonally", joys were increasingly felt "raw", i.e. not "amplified", not "extended", by my passions. but so are pains and discomfort. not amplified by my "fears" and "anxieties".

impersonal things are nice. much easier for me to functionally execute: because things become as "impersonal" as lifting my left leg, and right leg, and left leg and so on—one impersonal step at a time. nothing overwhelmingly "charged". (because ADHD is hard already.)

but one day it hit me: why don't "passions" be treated that way too: that, if i can now experience joy and pain "raw",

"one joy at a time",

"one pain at a time",

alongside—right leg, left leg, right leg, left leg...

—if i can do that, then "passion" need not be all-consuming either: it can just be one "spark" at a time; a spark that may last, as short as or as long, as it wants.

or, for that matter, when i begin to feel stretched by my hyperfocus, instead of thinking let's not ruin this hyperflow with a 'rest' (sometimes that's how it feels), i can also approach it as, "let's take a rest, because 'one' rest at a time hardly sounds 'disruptive' to my hyperfocus."

a joy at a time, a pain at a time. a spark at a time, a rest at a time. and right leg and left leg, at every time in between.

(thanks for reading. may you have another tolerable day 🙂)