Judgement is a huge problem. Receiving it, having it poison your life, harboring it, expressing it, and still having it poison your life. It’s never a useful thing, except in those rare occasions when it is objective and requested/needed/welcomed.

It can also come up in very unexpected places and ways. Such as strategies for functioning in one’s life.

A lot of strategies and techniques folks with ADHD use appear very strange and confusing to neurotypicals viewing it from outside our brains. To be fair, though, their ability to decide to do something and then actually do it is equally strange and confusing to us. But those outside voices may judge us, or we may judge ourselves for what is actually the only way we get things done.

A great example is tech shaming. I rely on my phone and its reminder app for running 99% of my life. A lot of people have commented on the amount of time I spend on my phone and the frequency that I consult it. It is sometimes hard for me to ignore those voices and remember that, without this technology, I simply do not function. My executive function, chief among them memory, cannot cope with my life without this aid.

The flip-side of this concept, as I’ve been observing it, is the idea of “because this: that”. The idea that because strategy ABC has this attribute, say endorsement from a celebrity, prescribed by a doctor, prescribed by an alternate professional, written in a book, talked about on the internet, that it automatically is either 100% guaranteed or completely useless. When we lock ourselves into certain mind-frames, or assume, we invariably miss things.

My coach training served to solidify an idea that I’d been working on for some years: something works only if it works. Until you try something, you cannot know, for certain, if something is a help or a harm. That is the bottom line. Coaching is all about finding that unusual solution that just works for whatever miraculous and inexplicable reason.

This judgement thing though... Even when we know it’s in play, we can still allow it to affect us. I still feel shame every time I hear someone say “These kids nowadays with their iThings...” And I am fairly good at not caring what others think of me. It can keep us from embracing our true selves because we aren’t what common knowledge says is correct.

So I say: do everything you can to break free of judgement, from yourself or the world, and embrace what truly works for you, no matter how strange it may seem!

What’s standing in your way?