I want to do something, anything, but organizing/participating in orgs is really hard with how my brain works. Theres chapters/locals out here, dsa, psl, frso, etc., but i feel like i cant participate.
I get overwhelmed by noise and large groups, especially if those groups are shouting or chanting. Protests and marches and demonstrations are a nonstarter cause having panic or anxiety incidents at those does more harm than good. Ive tried attending meetings and discussion groups, but theyve been so incredibly difficult for me and i end up contributing nothing and taking nothing away. I cant hear what people are saying cause if multiple people are talking it all blurs into a single sentence. And my body dumps literally all the cortisol into my blood and i have to recover for a good while afterwards.
What can i even do? Like, i could admin a *nix box that serves stuff, i can cook, i can do (very basic) firearm safety, i can do things, but the social aspect is really hard for me. Organizers want to fire people up, but that firing up incapacitates me. How can i attend a meeting when that meeting is geared toward not-me and within 15 minutes im in emergency mode and lose the ability to form solid memories from the meeting, or lose the ability to speak? Last one i went to, it started with chants and that was kinda it for me. I stayed thru the end, but it was really intense and i needed to lay down cry and be held afterwards. I cant participate in those kinds of things in a manner that is sustainable for me.
I want to do stuff, i want to contribute, i want to make the world even just a little bit better, but i feel like all the activities and actions that are available to me are things that are either veryvery difficult or incapacitating for me.
The good thing is I'm already a bit ahead of this and I have gotten a diagnosis. I have tried the treatment and it works.
The bad news is how I got there. Couple decades of beating myself into a pulp and now having to un-learn all that while being held hostage by the privatized healthcare industry. It's something I struggle to deal with independently and constantly fall in and out of treatment.
What I really don't know how to deal with is guilt. I have many privileges like being white, living in the 1st world (Baltic States) and many people rightfully critique me for my lack of action and demand support from me. Even though having ADHD and my trans identity is quite troublesome, it just doesn't compare to what others go through.
99% of advice I get when it comes to solving my problems is to get a job so I've been trying to do that. I was hoping someone would help me, but it's a bummer every org I reached out to has ignored my requests. What's even worse is my country does not recognize adhd as a Condition adults can have, so I can't get help with adhd through the national healthcare. It's a mess.
I'm trying to at least like document my life. Do you think it'd be worth it to try to write like a small book that can maybe be used to save those who come after me? I been thinking, but then it's like nobody seems to be interested in helping me circulate information either so I'm probably wasting my time on that.