“For most of my life I have struggled with organization, being on time, remembering important details/events and in school. I became aware of these challenges from an early age, which caused me to develop anxiety and depression. My first panic attack was when I was 10 years old, something I continue to struggle with at 29. In school, I would get so distracted looking into different topics and researching that I would never get the actual assignment done. I would spend five hours studying but maybe only an hour of that was real studying. Despite these failures in school and life, I kept trying to push forward and do better, but when I was 25 I was completely burned out.
And when it came to standardized testing and exams—I would read, write and rewrite my notes—when testing day came, my mind would wander helplessly trying to navigate past distracting thoughts or all the information in my head to find the exact answer. Then my time would be up. And I would spend hours ‘working’ on written assignments, seemingly working and not distracted by social media or anything. But then it would be hours before it was due, and I had barely scratched the surface. I wouldn’t realize that all my ideas about the topic or the time spent designing or formatting were distractions from my actual task, which was to write.”
