“Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.”
RUMI
The advice to put yourself first is hard for many women to act on. But having lived so long with undiagnosed ADHD, we may find even the concept itself alien.
What makes it so hard for us to nurture ourselves?
Isn’t it selfish to put myself first?
We think self-care is self-centred, and that just feels all wrong. What about the people who need us?
But about those people who need us. If they care about us, chances are they want us to flourish and be happy for our own sake – as well as for theirs. Apart from anything else, we’re more fun to be around when we give time to our own priorities!
If we just focus on giving all our time and energy to other people, to our job, or (fill in the blank!), we end up overwhelmed, exhausted, stressed, burnt out.
Chronic stress is a huge health risk. It’s linked to so many conditions – heart disease, cancer and mental illnesses to name but a few.
So if we do want to take care of other people, we need to nurture ourselves – otherwise we won’t have anything left to give to others.
What will people think?
We worry what our family and friends will think of us if we put ourselves first. And we don’t just worry they’ll think we’re selfish. We tend to shy away from being judged full stop.
We also feel really uncomfortable at the thought of doing something we believe will upset or disappoint that friend or family member.
So our instinct is to act small. Not rock the boat. Kick that challenge into the future – we’ll put ourselves first another day…
Inevitably some people will react negatively when we start doing things just for ourselves. They’re scared we’re going to change, that we won’t be there for them.
This can be hard to handle when you’re a peace-keeper or a people-pleaser, or simply someone who hates confrontation and causing conflict. Believe me, I understand how hard this is to handle. I’ve had to square up to these challenges and they felt insurmountable to begin with.
So we have to dig deep and wait for the sceptics to come around. It does get easier with practice, though, I promise!
But mostly, what people think in reality is a lot less negative and judgmental than the scenarios we conjure up in our own heads. And given that imagination may just be one of our ADHD superpowers, we’re better than most at conjuring things up!
Since I’ve got better at expressing my wants and needs, I can finally see that the biggest obstacles to putting myself first have always been the ones in my own head. Other people are judging us far less than we imagine – they’re too busy thinking about themselves!
Feeling unworthy
I think this may be the hardest part for us. There’s this underlying belief that we’re not worthy.
Maybe we have a critical inner voice that constantly tells us we’re not good enough, that we’re not worthy of love or care.
This kind of negative self-talk can prevent us from even being open to nurturing ourselves at all. I talk about the dangers of believing our “inner critic” in more detail in this post: Be kind to yourself.
But if we suppress our own feelings and needs, if we neglect self-care, the cumulative negative effects catch up with us sooner or later. So we need put ourselves first now, before we become totally depleted.
Need more convincing?
Good reasons to put ourselves first
- As women with ADHD, especially after a lifetime of believing our struggles were personal flaws, we’re often hard on ourselves while being kind and compassionate to other people. It’s time we treated ourselves with the same compassion.
- Sometimes it’s simply necessary – like when we’re exhausted, when we need time to refuel spiritually to avoid burnout.
- Putting ourselves first will improve our sense of self-worth.
- We are particularly susceptible to stress and depression so self-care is vitally important for us.
- We will never flourish physically, emotionally and spiritually and live a truly happy, fulfilled life if our own needs never get to the top of our list of priorities (it’s obviously even worse if they don’t make it onto the list at all).
- If we’re always invested in helping others we can get so caught up in this perspective that we simply forget to care for and love ourselves. We don’t realise how it’s affecting us. So we need to be intentional about self-care.
- If we want to help others we need to care for ourselves first.
- Our relationships with others will actually improve rather than deteriorate!
- And we will have a healthier relationship with ourselves when we have better self-esteem and treat ourselves with kindness.
Final thoughts
Having lived so long with undiagnosed ADHD, we have to overcome some BIG hurdles if we are to put ourselves first.
We have to accept that self-care isn’t purely selfish and indulgent. It’s essential to every aspect of our wellbeing. And besides, we won’t have the capacity to care for those we love if we don’t care for ourselves first.
Think about it. “You can’t pour from an empty vessel.” “Put your own oxygen mask on first.”
We also need to stop worrying what other people will think of us if we put ourselves first. If they do judge us negatively at first it is probably through fear of change. But mostly, what we imagine people will think is much more negative than the reality!
The bottom line is this: self-care is essential to our wellbeing. This is especially so when we are working towards healing after a lifetime of undiagnosed ADHD.
You DO deserve this gift from yourself – remember, you are the universe in ecstatic motion.
Resources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVPhdG_w3u0 This is a great YT video by one of my favourite wisdom-speakers, Mel Robbins, on the discomfort of stopping people-pleasing – particularly when it’s your default mode.
