In my 2nd post on perfectionism we're gonna get personal and I'm going talk about how ADHD and perfectionism affect my school work
Yesterday, I had a thesis meeting with my advisor. I was not particularly looking forward to this meeting because I was ashamed at the lack of tangible progress I had made on my thesis over the last two weeks.
Where did this shame come from? Oh boy, you better buckle up. If you're a neurodivergent individual, this may seem like a very familiar place, if you're "neurotypical" maybe this will help you understand the ND people in your life a little more.
To give you an idea of why I went into my thesis meeting with so much dread, let me brief you on the previous two weeks.
My last thesis meeting went well and I felt like I had momentum coming out of it, what I didn't realize was that imposter syndrome was about to take me for a roller coaster ride.
Somehow after leaving that thesis meeting a couple of weeks ago, imposter syndrome convinced me I knew nothing about the composer I was writing about, nothing about the theoretical models I was using to base my analysis on, and also, that I knew nothing about French history.
I have literally passed my cumulative doctoral exams in music theory and music history and yet somehow I was convinced I knew nothing and was a fraud. So, I did what any reasonably irrational academic would do and I hit the books. I spent two weeks researching and reading as much as I could about all of the above.
So, if I spent 2 weeks heavy into research why did I feel unprepared for my thesis meeting?
Because I hadn't really written very much. I had SO MUCH TO SAY after all that research but I didn't know where to start putting it in words. I learned so much about my topic and had so many ideas about where I wanted to go with the project that I got.... OVERWHELMED.
So, I knew I had done a ton of work because I had sat down and done the darn research. But I had really nothing to show for that research other than my pages of notes and quotes from all the reading I had done.
And the writing? It just wasn't happening. I didn't know exactly what to do with all of the information I had and I didn't know how to channel it into making sense in prose or how to organize it to help with my argument. And because I felt unable to write.... I then felt more shame and my imposter syndrome kept telling me "obviously you haven't done enough research and you don't know enough, otherwise you'd have written something by now."
Does this type of analysis paralysis sound familiar to you?
So, before I even got to my thesis meeting, I had spent the last 2 weeks ruminating in shame. Shame because I felt so woefully uninformed on my own topic, shame because I hadn't written as much as I said I would, shame because the writing I had managed to do was really poor in quality, shame because I did all that research and had spent hours working on my thesis stuff and had nothing to show for it.
So, I had just been hanging out in this shame spiral and thankfully I have a wonderfully supportive and kind advisor who said "Remember, be kind to yourself." She also helped me make sense of all the info I had and all the work I had done. She helped me clear a path and asked me questions to help guide me on how to turn the research I had done into actual content for my thesis.
You see, with ADHD I'm really good at making connections between seemingly disparate ideas. I'm incredibly detail oriented, which is good when you're fine tuning a piece of music, but can be detrimental when trying to condense a lot of information down and write. My brain moves faster than I can keep up, sort of like when you type really fast but the computer is delayed so by the time all the letters show up, you're already onto the next paragraph and there's just a jumble of what the computer managed to latch on to left.
Ok, so perfectionism plays into all of this how?
I realized my biggest problem was that I was so worried about "getting it right" that I was frozen into inaction because nothing "felt right." And it wasn't because I didn't have ideas. Nor because I hadn't done the work. Not even because I don't want to do the work. It was just because I couldn't.
I couldn't visualize the end product of what that information was going to do. And since I didn't know what my end product was, I was too anxious to get started for fear of working in the wrong direction.
I see this happening with my students all the time. When I ask why they didn't reach out to me sooner, I get the same answer I would've given my advisor if she asked me why I hadn't told her what was going on: "I was ashamed." Other responses have run the gamut from embarrassment to shame, or even guilt, to "I didn't know what to do" or "I was afraid to ask for help." Or even, "I thought I was supposed to know what to do next."
This blog post has already gotten pretty long, so I'll end it here reminding my friends and colleagues to exercise compassion and empathy with our students, because we don't always get the full picture in a music lesson.