Post #25: The Protection/Connection Dilemma

Wednesdays for Women and Men (Excerpts)

(Below are excerpts from chapter nine of my book, Journeys Through ADDulthood.

I referenced this yesterday in Post # 24 called Masks.)

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One summer, I gave myself a milestone birthday present of a two-month writer’s retreat in a beautiful part of New England. I lived in a small cottage out in the country, on a beautiful piece of land in an idyllic setting where I wrote. Even though I had rented my own cottage, I was living on the same property with its owners, a wonderful retired couple. I was happy for their closeness and enjoyed their company. At the same time, though, I was there for a limited time to write. I knew by that point how I operate, and how delicate my attention is.

The challenge I had to confront was how to continue to protect my own needs and limited time while also developing a close relationship with these people. Such special circumstances required that I examine this dynamic in depth. A couple of times each day there would be a phone call, a wave from the deck, or a knock on the door with some kind of nice invitation. I frequently needed to find a way to say no without sounding as if I didn’t want their company. I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t home. I couldn’t refuse to answer the phone. I couldn’t pretend there were other things to do, other places to go, or other people to see. I couldn’t shove the issue under my mental piles and focus elsewhere. There was no running away from this issue—this was a stark and frightening reality for me.

Somehow, I would have to discuss my differences in a way that didn’t sound apologetic or false or ridiculous. I had to somehow explain my rather extreme need for focus. Whereas other people could take more breaks and shifts without losing theirs, I needed to guard against being interrupted. I knew it would be hard for them to understand me. Intensifying my dilemma was the fact that as much as I wanted to write and stay focused, I also desired the pleasure of developing this potentially deep and satisfying relationship.

The Protected and Connected Self

When I returned home after my summer in New England and shared this dilemma with my clients, they immediately related to it. Over time, I realized that to resolve a dilemma of this sort, one must learn how to navigate what I call the “protection/connection continuum

We have talked about the importance of knowing how to protect yourself and your uniqueness and knowing how to make your life work for you. But protecting yourself should be done in a healthy way, rather than defensively. Otherwise, you may end yourself feeling lonely, with few meaningful and satisfying relationships.

Even when you know how you operate and what your needs are, you might still enter into a relationship or a situation where you forget all about your own needs and focus on what the group demands or what an individual close to you needs. In this case, you would be too far over on the connect side of the continuum. If you spend too much time on the connect side, you will become overwhelmed and may feel out of control or angry or resentful or depleted. As a result, at some point you might decide that relationships take too much of a toll on you and wind up too far on the protect side, feeling isolated and depleted.

We all need to protect ourselves, but it should be in a way that actually promotes relationships rather than moves us away from them. Boundaries and limits are the protective devices for everyone, not just those with ADHD, that make us feel safe in relationships so we can be intimate and close without getting swallowed up and disappearing.

Protecting Yourself Mentally

If you have difficulty achieving this delicate balance with a person or in a situation that is apt to cause you problems, one approach is to find a way to protect yourself mentally even if, in reality, you are deliberately going to give up some of what you need in order to protect yourself. This conscious control and self-talk will make you feel less trapped and out of control and resentful. For instance, there are times when you will weigh your options and make the decision that, because of other values or needs, you will forgo your protection in order to connect. You might, for example, have a lot of work to do for a project but decide that you will go visit your grandmother who is lonely and who has called you up to invite you for a visit. You make this decision because visiting your grandmother is important to you, even though you know it will mean you will stay up very late that night to work and be tired the next day. This is different from automatically overcommitting, not choosing consciously, not knowing why, and just feeling overwhelmed and out of control. It’s about choice, and it’s about connecting when you want to, when you need to, when you choose to, not out of shame or guilt, embarrassment, or not knowing what to do.

When you are mentally in control and making such choices, you are aware of the reasons for your behavior. Anticipating the consequences makes it more likely that you’ll be able to compensate for any problems you foresee. In the above example, you might cancel something less important scheduled for the next day, knowing you will need to catch up on sleep. These choices are short-term decisions, not an everyday lifestyle. It’s analogous to choosing to go out in a thunderstorm to care for a sick friend, even though you are risking more than you would if you stayed home.

Connecting Verbally

When you can’t fulfill your desire or another person’s desire to actually connect, another alternative is to let that person know how much you want to connect with him at a specific time or in a certain situation even though you are unable to do so right now. When you decide you cannot give up the time or focus you need, the goal is to talk things over and make a plan to connect at some future time, and then follow through on this.

Whichever strategy you choose at the time, it is crucial somehow to convey to the other person how important he or she is to you. In addition to the obvious benefits of this, choosing one of these approaches defuses anxiety or avoidance, either of which might seriously damage the relationship. Sometimes it’s best to connect instead of protect.

Many of these situations may not seem like a big deal to people who don’t have ADHD. For instance, most people are able to act in accordance with how much they care about other people, but for people with attention problems it is much more complex to always act out of a sense of their own values; they have to be taught to look at these issues this way. Their lack of follow-through on maintaining relationships is often misunderstood as a lack of caring. This is one of the painful parts of having ADHD. As one woman told me, “People are often unable to see my heart.”

@2023 S. Solden not to be reprinted without permission

(Original publication was 2002)

Please write and let me know where you fall on the protection/connection continuum.

Do you tend to spend your time on one end more than the other or in the center where you are able to maintain both healthy connection and healthy self-protection?

What happens when you go too far in one direction?

Can you remember a time when you were either over-protecting or over-connecting?