“Welcome to the real world! It sucks! You’re gonna love it.”
Hi, I’m Alex, and I’m obsessed with the TV show, Friends. Despite all of its flaws (and there are many), the show brings me tremendous joy and comfort.
I’ve watched it almost every single night before bed since sixth grade and know every episode by heart. I know it so well that I don’t even have to look at the TV to know the exact line that is about to be said.
Apparently, this is a pretty common coping mechanism for people with anxiety. Watching the same things over and over can help ease an anxious mind because it’s predictable and brings comfort. It also doesn’t hurt to laugh.
Anyway, if you’ve seen the pilot, you may remember one of the show’s most iconic lines: “Welcome to the real world. It sucks. You’re gonna love it.”
Monica says this to comfort Rachel since she’s now starting her life over in a completely different way than she expected. It’s a line that resonates with so many people who have felt thrown into adulthood without a safety net.
I personally think of this line every time I think about my journey from college to “the real world.” Sure, it’s hard for any young person to navigate the workforce, but it’s especially challenging for a person with learning disabilities and/or ADHD.
When I first started the interview process, I remember thinking how important it was to share that I have dyslexia and ADHD. While I understand that no one is obligated to share this information, I thought it would help my potential employer understand that I was uniquely qualified and “cape-able” of anything. I also thought it would help them prepare for the accommodations that I would require in order to thrive.
Spoiler alert: 22-year-old me was in for a rude awakening.
Not only were there no accommodations, but I was hardly given the basic tools I needed to succeed. I didn’t want to fail so instead of asking for help, I would just say “yes” to everything. I thought that my boss was only asking me because they knew I was cape-able of doing the task. They knew my limitations so they wouldn’t ask me to take on more if they didn’t think I could do it right? WRONG. They would ask me to do more work because they knew I wouldn’t say “no.”
The problem was that I didn’t know how to juggle what was already on my plate. I didn’t know where to start in helping myself, I didn’t know what questions to ask or what accommodations needed to be made to make the tasks more manageable. I was beyond overwhelmed and had this tremendous fear and anxiety that I would fail. All of the tools I had in my figurative toolbox no longer made sense. All the “flaws” of my learning disabilities and ADHD were now on full display--the ones I spent years and years trying to hide and deny.
I was working long hours because staying late meant I could have a quiet office all to myself. I was burnt out and my mental health suffered. I always had anxiety but now I needed to be on anxiety medications after having panic attacks multiple times a week. Needless to say, I was a complete mess.
In my head, I kept saying “ok, I got the part where it sucked but why didn’t I love it?” I kept thinking, “is this what everyone feels like when they start working? What’s wrong with me and why was this so hard?”
Maybe your story is similar to mine. What I’ve learned over the years is that my story is a lot more common than I realized.
It’s taken a decade of working professionally to understand how and why I fell into those patterns. I have grown SO much since then and now that I’ve had time to reflect, I can see why I was struggling so much. For starters, I no longer had resources to help me stay on par with my peers. So when nothing was available, I began to revert back to 8-year-old me before I had resources. The problem with that is that none of those tools I learned in school or when I was eight really applied anymore.
Since that time in my life, I have done a huge amount of self-reflection, therapy and re-learning what my needs were as an adult in the workplace--starting with asking myself “what does success look like for me?”
This also meant I needed to:
Figure out who I am
Find my strength
Learn how to advocate for myself so that I could thrive
Learn the difference between challenging myself and setting unreasonable expectations
I’m not going to tell you that I have it all together every day. The most triggering scenario for me is when I hear a list of a hundred tasks that need to get finished alone. Whenever that happens, it’s as if I am frozen in panic. I instinctively know the proper way to finish the little tasks, but I am also self-aware enough to know those little tasks take me a lot more time than I first expect. But I’ve learned how to break down those tasks in a manageable way for me so that panic doesn’t stay for very long.
Over a decade later, I now understand the second part of the quote. “You’re gonna love it.”
I love that I have found myself in the process. I love having the freedom to do work that I am passionate about, naturally good at, and that fits my style of thinking. I love that it’s challenging and exciting but it’s not hard for me. So if you are struggling, know that you are not alone and you have an opportunity to make the changes for the better. With the right support (maybe from me), I hope I can help give you a reason to love it too.
