Reflecting During Mental Health Awareness Month

May is Mental Health Awareness Month and I’ve spent the last few weeks reflecting on the connection between learning disabilities/ADHD and mental health.

To me, these subjects are so deeply connected and have so much overlap. When I think about the times in my life that my learning disabilities and ADHD felt like a heavy burden, anxiety and panic attacks were always present.

The more I meet with my clients, the more I understand how common this response is. Our anxieties often stem from similar experiences, and today on the blog, I wanted to share my journey with anxiety and my fear of failure. I hope it inspires you to dig deep and unpack your anxiety “origin story,” so you can let go of what’s holding you back!

My Anxiety Didn’t Start Overnight and Neither Did Yours

Fourth grade was a pretty pivotal time for me. My family had just moved to our new town which was known for their exceptional special education programs. As I shared in my previous blog post, the school district I grew up in didn’t have proper special education resources, and my family ultimately decided to move a few towns over. Despite the stress of being a “new kid,” I was excited to go to resource room and get help learning how to read. It felt like I was finally given a chance to catch up with my peers. 

My teacher was “Mr. Macy.” That wasn’t his real name, but for the sake of this post, let’s call him that.

He was loved by most of my classmates, he was young, he was funny and he also worked at the local day camp where many of the kids got to know him before school. Me? I wasn’t as excited. I was scared of being in a new school with new people, and I was was anxious because I had a hard time reading and I didn’t want my classmates to think I was stupid. Spoiler alert: I am not stupid. I just couldn’t understand why the kids in my class could do something so easily and I didn’t even know where to start. 

I was called-on in class at random times because I didn’t want to raise my hand often. If I didn’t know the answer, he would make a joke and everyone in class would laugh. Sometimes he would get really frustrated and ask in a stern voice if I was paying attention and then proceed to yell at me in front of everyone. Sometimes he would stop the class to pull me outside to yell at me. He was over six feet tall and he would tower over me as he would question me continuously until I would cry. I would sink deeper into my chair every time and wanted to disappear. 

I knew I wasn’t stupid but I didn’t understand why trying hard and succeeding didn’t correlate. As a coping mechanism after school, I would eat my feelings. My favorite foods brought me the comfort I couldn’t otherwise give myself, and gave me a sense of control. I was so frustrated because I knew I wasn’t actually stupid, but for some reason, many adults seemed to think I was. They made it clear that they thought embarrassing me in front of my peers would motivate to “change.” Here’s another spoiler alert: it didn’t help.

I kept thinking, “BELIEVE ME— if all I needed to do was ‘wish’ that I could read and keep up with my friends, don’t you think I would do that already? Of course that’s what I want, too!”

“Mr. Macy” had a very strict rule about extra help. He would say, “If you are coming in for extra help, you need to come in with three prepared questions for us to go over.” He continued, “I am not a babysitter, so you are not welcome to come early and have me watch you. I am here to help, that is all.” I would come home and try to explain to my parents what I was working on, but honestly, I didn’t really know. It made it even harder to grasp and ask questions because I didn’t even know where to start. My mom suggested she would drop me off at school early for extra help but my anxiety and panic set in deeper. 

With tears streaming down my face, I started breaking out into hives from head to toe. I was experiencing one of my first full-blown panic attacks in my parent’s bedroom and it wasn’t the last. I couldn’t breathe. How could I possibly go in for “extra help” if I couldn’t even explain what I didn’t understand? I had no idea where to start let alone come up with my three questions.

I was terrified of him and no one seemed to understand why. “How could you hate “Mr. Macy?” He's the best!” But I had intense stomach pains all year, I was absent almost 20 days that year and ended up in the hospital under distress. To say that year was scarring for me was an understatement.

In 6th grade, my social studies teacher “Mrs. James'' had a policy about tests that, to this day, makes me cringe. When she was finished grading tests she would call up each student, one by one, who scored below an 80 to show them their grade. On average, I was a C-student in her class and would usually get test scores in the 70’s which was fine for me. Sometimes I would fail. But EVERY TIME she called me up to see my test score, I wanted to burst out into tears. Why did she think humiliation was going to help me or the other students do better next time? My friends immediately ran after me to say “Alex what did you get? Did you fail?” I remember staying after class and saying to her how humiliating it was and I didn’t feel like it was anyone else’s business what I scored on my tests. But she basically said she was a few years away from retiring and she was changing for no one. 

I was traumatized by teachers like “Mr. Macy” and “Mrs. James” and several other teachers all the way through college. Many of these teachers were frustrated that I couldn’t follow along. But instead of encouraging me when I asked questions or stayed after school, I was yelled at in front of my classmates and sent home with notes that I would be too embarrassed to show my parent. I recently found collections of those notes in my desk at home after I graduated college. That’s how much shame I had about it.

I talk about my dyslexia and ADHD openly, but until recently, I didn’t realize how much my anxiety and depression were related. Did you know that 80% of adults who have an ADHD are likely to be diagnosed with another disorder such as anxiety? There’s a great read about it in ADDitude magazine. I don’t know about you, but that felt like a real ‘aha’ moment for me. All this anxiety, trauma, and fear of failure— it was all related to the fear that I somehow wasn’t good enough. But I finally realized I wasn’t failing. These teachers failed me.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve put enormous pressure on myself to be perfect. My work should be flawless and people should look at me and think, “Wow! I can’t believe you have learning disabilities and ADHD— I had no idea.” It’s given me a strong work-ethic, it makes me a hard-worker, determined go-getter, and incredibly dependable. But it’s exhausting.

That fear of failure is what looms over me because the humiliation, and the constant demeaning and demoralizing language that was used on me and many other people with learning disabilities and ADHD. It makes perfect sense why we would have anxiety and depression. In a lot of ways, it’s made me who I am, but it’s not all of me and it’s not the best of me either. 

So what can we do with this information? It reminds me of a book I read as a kid. “Were going on a bear hunt.” Each page has a similar segment of their adventure and these lines are repeated on almost every page.

“We're not scared. We can't go over it. We can't go under it. Oh no! We've got to go through it! ” 

My point is that it is important to know that we are not alone, our feelings are valid, and it’s not our fault. But now we have to face our fears of anxiety, depression and trauma. We can’t just get over it and we can’t just tuck it away any longer. We have to go through it and deal with the pain that has been holding us back for so long. If this sounds like you, I can’t recommend working with a therapist or mental health professional enough.  

It can be life-changing to have a therapist in your corner, a doctor you trust to discuss if medications with, and a coach (maybe me) who can help you strategize and manage your personal and professional workload. Having a coach help you through the day-to-day grind makes a huge difference, and having a supportive team can help you rebuild a stronger, more confident version of you.

I can’t tell you that I am fully over all of the trauma but I can tell you I am not burying it anymore either and it feels really good to be on the other side of going through it. “Mr. Macy” and “Mrs. James” are no longer living rent-free in my head. I have confidence in my abilities and surround myself with people who are supportive of me and appreciate my strengths. So come join me on the other side and let go of what is holding you back!