I was recently in a DBT workshop (Dialectical Behavioural Therapy) and the therapist talked about this idea of The Great Surrender. This is something that really hit home for me and I wanted to share it here.
As a woman and a mother there is a lot of pressure to have everything running smoothly all the time, to remember all the appointments and birthdays, to always be thinking 10 steps ahead to make sure the right food, clothing, medicine, and gear is ready for my family. BUT as an ADHD woman and mother of two ADHD kids, that’s just not our lives.
I wasted so much time and energy trying to make our lives into what I thought they SHOULD be that I was stressed out and unhappy all the time. The Great Surrender is all about acknowledging that things will be different in your life than in neurotypical lives. Not better. Not worse. Just different. And different is (say it with me) morally neutral.
The Great Surrender can look like many things. It can look like leaving an outing to head home because things just aren’t going well. Denying the pressure to attend or stay at events that aren’t serving myself or my family. Putting baskets where I usually find doom piles1 around my house so that my doom piles are at least contained (as opposed to feeling guilty every time I walk by said doom pile and don’t deal with it.)
It can look like only signing my kids up for one extra curricular at a time because our family just doesn’t do well with activity-loading. It can look like a lot of pre-packaged food in school lunches as opposed to the freshly cut up vegetables and homemade whole grain muffins because the important thing is that my kids have fuel during the day.
Often my Great Surrender comes in the middle of a fight, usually between my kids. I sit down and surrender to the moment. When the kids eventually join me, we can all calm down and say, “That sucked. Let’s move forward now.” Cuz trying to fight my kids into not fighting is just pouring gas on a fire. No one’s coming out of that unscathed.
An important note is that the Great Surrender can also free you from the guilt or shame of a past mistake. Like this, “Wow, we tried to go to the movies, but little Billy lost his shit and we had to leave after paying so much money for tickets and popcorn. That sucks. But we’re home and calm now, so let’s show each other love and forgiveness, and figure out where we went wrong to try to do better next time.”
The Great Surrender is incredibly freeing. By surrendering to the fact that your brain and your life is just not going to work in certain ways, you can drop a lot of those external expectations, focus on what works for YOU, and find yourself thriving in an environment that you built for yourself and your particular needs.
Don't fight against your brain (you're not going to win) but learn to love your brain, accept its differences and build a life that works for you and your loved ones.
A doom pile stands for Didn’t Organize, Only Moved. It’s that collection of stuff that gets shoved together with the intent of then organizing it and properly putting it away. I have 2 doom piles on my kitchen counters, one in the laundry room, and one on my desk. My kids hide their doom piles under their beds and proudly display them on their desks, shelves, and floors. What can I say, kids are naturally gifted at doom piles.