Dancing with the Dictator
ADHD wants freedom, and autism wants predictable structure. The combination creates a tension that feels a lot like the world does right now.
I’m starting to think I may be ready to write a book. In my mind the title is “Dancing with the Dictator”.
There’s a special kind of tumult produced internally with the combination of autism and ADHD. I’ve always craved and created predictable structure for myself wherever possible. I work in highly structured tech companies, I use complex task management software to capture and prioritize my to-do list, I got a physics degree to learn the most rigorous scientific methods. Structure. Frameworks. Predictive models. I build a model of the world inside myself and try to navigate the real world by relying on that model.
My ADHD wants novelty. It wants passion and emergency. It wants to act on impulse. It takes all that autistic structure and blows it all up. My elaborate task management software starts to feel ominous, like an uncomfortable constraint. It starts to embody all the things I should do. “Fuck that!”, says ADHD.
My autism wants predictable structure. My ADHD wants freedom and surprise. It wants to blow up all that structure.
With these two seemingly incompatible parts alive in me at the same time, my body is somehow never at rest. When I add structure, I’m satisfied and comforted, and also a pressure starts to build. The structure starts to feel like constraints. Eventually I start to avoid it, because my instinct is to avoid discomfort. What is comfortable is no longer structure, but freedom from that structure.
With all that structure thrown by the wayside, I’m free. I’m stepping outside and breathing fresh air and feeling the sun on my face. But later, I start to feel too free. All that freedom starts to feel uncomfortable. I’ve left home, I’m out in the cold. I need to come back home.
And what is home? Is home the structure I’ve been missing? Or is it the adventure I’ve been missing?
All my life, I’ve oscillated between the need for predictability, control, and the simultaneous need for freedom. How can they possibly coexist? I don’t know, but I’m living proof that it’s possible to persist and thrive within this paradox.
I’m living proof that it’s possible to persist and thrive within this paradox
The world right now is oddly mirroring the power struggle inside of me. All over the world I’m seeing folks who desperately need control, exerting their control over … anything and everything. And on the other hand, everyone wants to be free.
How did humans evolve to exist with a brain that is constantly seeking control? The other organs in our bodies don’t seem to try to be the brain. But we do have a heart. The heart doesn’t seem to respond to control. The heart just feels.
Control, and love. They seem diametrically opposed. How can control coexist with love? They can’t — one organ can’t do both — so the body gave control to the brain, and feeling to the heart. The brain, however, had to accept a compromise. You can have control, but you must accept the heart as part of your guidance system. The heart needs to be heard, acknowledged. The heart needs freedom in order to feel.
The brain needs control, but the guidance system is the heart.
I’m realizing that my connection to my heart has always been critical to my survival. It has provided a direction, and I can tell when I’m on the right track because I can feel it in my body. Without that feeling, I am untethered. Adrift. There is no direction to go in that is different from any other. Directionless. Any action feels arbitrary, without purpose.
So life fundamentally has a direction. A preference. The universe is not symmetrical. There is a preferred direction to my actions. The preferred direction is always the one that creates the most love. Always. Love is a vector in consciousness space. Love points the way.
Love is a vector in consciousness space. Love points the way.
When the dictator shows up in me, he claims to know the right direction. He requires that I give him control. He replaces my intuition with fearful obedience. “This is the only way to survive,” the dictator says. He shows me the path of fear, and offers me protection. The protection comes with a structure, a system, that must be obeyed.
The dictator is the part of me that needs control. And if I give over that control, I’ll be protected.
Except I won’t be protected, will I?
Really the dictator has an impossible task. Predict the unpredictable. Control the uncontrollable. It’s constant stress that never resolves. The controller becomes hungrier and hungrier, consuming more and more resources. Now, control is all that matters.
Control and love. They never seem to coexist together. That which I love I do not want to spoil with my control. And when control is everything, love is oddly silent.
And yet control and love DO coexist: inside of me. In my body, they’re somehow both true at the same time.