I just explained my issues with executive dysfunction to my dad and holy shit he gets it!
I described it like this:Â
Imagine youâre back at AllPro(where he worked) with fifty phones and theyâre all ringing. You want to answer them all because theyâre all equal priority. Thatâs an environmental cueâ phones are generally a ârespond immediatelyâ cue.
Picking up a phone is a simple thing. You know itâs as easy as deciding which phone to answer and reaching out to pick it up, but your brain is saying âI must answer all of them!â The phones are ringing, and you canât make your body reach out to pick one up because you donât have fifty arms to reach out, you donât have fifty ears to listen with, you donât have a brain that can process and respond to fifty conversations and you donât have fifty mouths that can all say different things all at the same time.Â
Either you do it all simultaneously or nothing will happen. You can want to do it so bad it makes you cry, and you canât make a decision because no choice seems like the right one. So the task stays unfinished and you get frustrated every time somebody reminds you to âjust do it, itâs not that hard!â Because yes, it really IS that hard.
Now, if you had somebody who could point to which phone to answer, you can do it fine. Thatâs a prompt. Prompting removes the âmiddle manâ thought that says âdo it all at onceâ and gets you to focus on tasks one at a time instead of seeing them as some towering insurmountable mess.
Dad looked at me for a couple of seconds and said something to the effect of, âI didnât know doing things were that hard for you.â
This is a major, major, major breakthrough between us because dad had it in his head that I left things messy because I didnât care. While thatâs crappy of him to assume, teaching him how thatâs not the case and having him really understand it is a huge deal.
