i believe that there's hope, buried beneath it all

me: why’d you emotionally abuse me my whole life? we all have questions …good night

Your happiness depends on the approval and appreciation from other people.

You are too quick to say yes and you have a hard time saying no.

You are too apologetic.

You work harder if it involves helping someone else, but you slack off if it only helps yourself.

You feel depressed when you experience criticism or confrontation.

You can’t make a decision without consulting other people.

You feel you are being taken for granted but you do nothing about it.

You care too much about being liked and you fear the loss of approval.

You are losing a sense of identity. You’ve been pleasing other people for so long that you lost of little of yourself.

You have low self-esteem and lack confidence.

Executive dysfunction is not: laziness, lack of motivation, lack of willpower, lack of self-control, bad attitude, an excuse to not do something Executive dysfunction is: an actual deficiency in the function of the frontal lobe that can be seen and measured in an MRI scanner, associated with neurodivergencies such as autism and ADHD, and mental illnesses

When you can’t do something because of ED, it’s not because you aren’t motivated enough or lack self-control. It’s because your brain literally isn’t running the commands needed to make your body move and do the things you need to. You may be hella motivated and determined to do something and you still won’t be able to because you don’t know where to start or how to proceed to the next step or what to do at all. You may be very hungry, know that you have a frozen pizza in your fridge, yet not be able to do the “fairly simple” steps to cook that pizza because of ED.

Executive dysfunction cannot be helped with more motivation, rewards, hard work or whatever. The part of your brain that is supposed to break the task into steps and guide you through them isn’t working right now, and no amount of rewards or discipline will make it work. The only things you can do is accommodate for the lack of this function: either ask someone near you to guide you through the steps of your task, or have a list of steps prepared beforehand, while your frontal lobe was more merciful. Shouting, crying, blaming, punishing yourself, etc won’t do one bit to help it.

And for people who don’t know what it’s like to have ED and have people around them who do have it, here’s the thing: instructions have to be very precise. I know you never pay attention to this because you don’t have to, but here’s the deal - even the smallest steps have to be akwnoledged. For example you may think that an instruction to make tea looks like this:

1. Fill the kettle with water and boil it. 2. Put a tea bag in your cup. 3. Add sugar if you want 4. Pour hot water into your cup 5. Take the bag out after a minute or two 6. Enjoy your tea

But it has many, many intermediate steps that a typically functioning frontal lobe will figure out, but a person affected by executive dysfunction won’t be able to do. So instead that instruction will look more like this:

1. Open the kettle 2. Open a bottle of water/turn on tap water 3. Fill the kettle with water 4. Turn off the tap water/close the water bottle 5. Close the lid on the kettle 6. Push the button to turn it on

And so on. So that one step in the first instruction is actually six steps in the second instruction. And giving a person with executive dysfunction the first instruction probably won’t help them at all. And btw this is might be the reason that person in your life leaves the lights on or doors open or products out of the fridge all the time - their brain just doesn’t guide them through it.

You either consciously or subconsciously think, “I don’t want to hurt this person’s feelings” or “If I say no, then they’ll hurt me” or “It won’t really be that bad” or “I can handle this” or “I need to do this to prove myself” or “I deserve this”, or you forget that “no” is even an option.