Yin and Yang: How do you balance work and family?
I certainly do not have any tried and tested advice on this! There’s by no way an expert sitting over here, but one thing I’m extremely good at and proud of is that I never give up! It’s not an option for me and never has been all my life. If there is something I am committed to and feel passionately about, I see it through to the end. No matter how many times I get knocked down. No one can take that away from me – it’s in my make-up and my attitude and I protect it fiercely.
My kids have gone through a lot already in their young lives. I don’t think that’s a bad thing though. The experiences they are going through are making them resilient and empathetic. I believe they will grow up to be good humans. That to me is so important, the rest can follow and be in its place. We as parents need to take responsibility for the children we have and try our best to develop them into great adults.
I am trying to balance life and I will make sure it comes right this year. I’m ADHD which means that time management and routine are great challenges for me. I have to run my life by daily plans and alarms throughout the day. I am severely ADHD, so my life is actually quite crazy. I had controlled it for 25 years without medication but my dad’s murder shattered all learnt control. My other big challenge is that I’m “time blind” – another ADHD trait! This means I lose track of time very easily, so I am constantly on the backfoot. I have alarms throughout the day to remind me to take my meds, my appointments, school pick up, everything! Even though it’s in my routine, there’ll be that one day when I’m focused intently on something and my subconscious will trigger a natural reminder and my conscious brain will ignore it because I’m in hyperfocus mode.
The strange thing is we also can’t focus sometimes at all and panic then get overwhelmed, then breakdown. This is usually due to stress, sensory overload and the fact that our brains run so fast and have 80 000 thoughts in a day compared to 40 000 in the Atypical “normal” brain. We’re incredibly intelligent and creative people, but all these things are a daily challenge for us. If we don’t understand our brains and manage our ADHD well, we fail drastically.
I have “yperfocus” which is a double-edged sword! It’s great when it’s needed and I focus on the RIGHT thing. It’s an intense focus where nothing else matters. We block out everything around us including time.
I don’t sleep much either because my brain has too much adrenaline in it and I enjoy thinking too much. I’m trying. I used to sleep 2-4 hours a day. I’m now sleeping 4-6hrs a day, so I’m getting better. I’ve gone through 6 different sleep medications to bring my adrenalin down and to reset my brain’s sleep pattern, but none have worked. It comes down to self-discipline now, which is another ADHD flaw. Sometimes I hyperfocus through the whole night. A few months ago, I hyperfocused for 14 hours. I write a lot and I started at 4pm and only stopped for water and toilet breaks, then stopped hyperfocusing at 6am feeling tired. Then I got up at 8am and coped as normal for the day. I had no intention of doing that, it just happened on my kid-free night. These things and self-discipline are challenges I’m dealing with daily. My ADHD medication has only just come right after 18 months, since I was re-diagnosed. Things are looking much better now.
It’s important for me to get all of this right for myself and my kids.Once I’m on top of that, everything else will become easier. I’ve been living in survival mode for over 3 years now. Once we’ve achieved some sort of “normal”, we should all fly! We are all such strong characters, there’s no reason not to be awesome!
The drive: What challenges have you overcome?
My mental health has been my biggest challenge, and I’m still not through it.
18 months after my dad was murdered, I had a breakdown. I had been pushing on and constantly picking myself up. So much was going on in my world and my head. My whole life had been shattered to pieces after his murder. My personal life was a disaster. I had very little money and no job. My friends support or interest in helping me just disappeared, all except for a small handful. I was angry and noisy on social media about crime in South Africa. I’m incredibly passionate and loyal, so my dad’s murder totally fired my passion in an angry way. Most people don’t want to be around that headspace, so I don’t blame them. Inevitably I lost friends and family at a time when all I needed was patience, understanding and acceptance. I needed people to understand that I wasn’t just grieving a death – he was murdered. I was grieving the loss of a 20-year relationship and I had 3 disorders unravelling. And I was essentially alone.
My executive function, time management, emotional regulation, decision making, and ability to work were all shattered. I had been trying to cope all along but couldn’t anymore. I had been displaying obsessive behaviours, over-confidence, an abrasive attitude, panic attacks and over enthusiastic interest in nothing constructive. All this led to a mental breakdown and I put myself to bed for two weeks. This came on top of at least 4 years prior to separation, of struggling with my life then and having severe breakdowns on my own. No one really knew. My ex-husband was FIFO and asking for help was not an option. This was “our” problem and his siblings that lived less than a minute’s drive away were not to be asked because their lives were busy enough with their own troubles. Life wasn’t easy. My kids were both in nappies and my son was defiant with sleep, food and behaviour. I had some incredibly dark days that I had to pull myself out of. Sometimes 2 weeks would go by with no family checking in on us.
