98. trash can trigger

Living with undiagnosed ADHD for nearly 4 decades can make you weird. 

I mean, maybe it wouldn’t make YOU weird, but it has definitely made me weird, particularly in the flavor of rejection sensitive dysphoria.

This week, my trigger was a trash can. 

I mean, to be fair, it had been a long day and I was overstimulated. After a fast and furious family vacation combined with essential (and mildly stressful) military identification document updates on a Spanish naval base (complete with getting lectured by a gate guard about everything from our car insurance to lack of European driver’s licenses), we made the 6 hour road trip home and crashed into our house, exhausted and at our daily limit of kids whining, complaining, and crying. 

But it was only 5pm, and there was still work to be done, dinner to be made, bags to be unpacked, and one cranky kid who it turned out had a bad ear infection and needed a quick trip to the hospital (but that was later). 

A mom can only take so much dissatisfaction from the people around her.

A neurodivergent, hungry, tired and exhausted mom has a breaking point. 

And mine was the mother-trucking trash can.

Well, to be more accurate, the recycling. 

“Hey babe,” my husband said, in the cautious and careful tone that tells me criticism is incoming, “do you know what this can is for?” 

He was referring to the large gray trash can in the pantry - the one we use for plastic and metal (and of fucking course I know what the can is for, I live in this fucking house, right?)

He went on - “I’m just wondering because I see that there’s a pizza box in here, and an oat milk carton, and there’s not a liner…” 

Inside now, I am furious. I have snapped and gone over the edge. My tolerance for other people’s needs was reached two days ago in a hotel room, and I’ve overridden my needs for solitude, silence, and space for the past twenty four hours to keep the peace.

It is not the fucking time to ask me about the inappropriate mixing of recycling. 

I take a breath, and try to turn on my logical brain, the sensible part of me that knows how to interact with a human being I love, the part that is not a tiger-cheetah-hissing goose meets threatened possum (have you ever seen an angry possum? That’s me when I’m triggered). 

Jokes aside, I really did try. I knew it was totally irrational and wildly oversensitive to get so upset about simply being asked about the cardboard in the trash can. But yes, I’d put it there when I was frantically cleaning the house trying to get us out the door for this vacation, being rushed by two impatient kids who’d buckled themselves into the car forty minutes in advance of departure and were screaming from the driveway, and we didn’t have a good spot for the pizza box from the night before. So into the plastic can it went, to be dealt with later. Perfect ADHD solution. 

It was his tone that got me. The gentleness and overly careful kindness, thinly disguising annoyance that the purity of the separation system had been disrupted. 

I tried to formulate a reasonable response as I stood in the pantry, holding a half-empty bag of car snacks, brain-dead from trying to put them away. But the fact that he was even speaking about the recycling after the day(s) we’d just had was too much. It was late in my luteal phase and this simply would not stand. 

Something like cold fury mixed with hateful shame washed over me, and held my feet in place. The effort to still my tongue from speaking harshly seemed to freeze my body along with my words. The old familiar sensation of being unable to move an inch in any direction rose from my belly into my chest, sending muscle tension into my arms, stealing the depth of my breath and narrowing my eyes. 

I was poised for attack and frozen at the same time.

Part of my brain - somewhere outside the limbic system - told me to go easy, to realize that I was cranky, impatient, tired and not thinking clearly. The other part of me wanted to dive head first into the wound, bring out my inner honey badger and go for the jugular - start a fight, poke the bear and make him feel like a complete jerk for daring to ask me about the recycling, for having the audacity to imply that I was stupid, lazy, or inconsiderate for putting cardboard in the plastic bin. 

I was highly activated to say the least, and we might even say I was well and truly triggered (if we just went by the state of my body), from something so fucking dumb, and I knew it. 

Here’s what I find fascinating - witness consciousness was tracking, and could see that I’d gone round the bend into fight or flight, landed in dorsal freeze, and was making my way to a defensive attack position. This higher mind knew it made no sense. 

But the body did not give a fuck.

A million times before, this scenario has played out in my life, in my house, in my marriage, and ninety percent of the time it does not end well. I mean, ultimately it does, but not before a blow up fight, a big misunderstanding, hot salty tears, a shame spiral, isolation, desperation, and a drag towards reconciliation. 

That pattern is so fucking tired. I am so fucking tired of it. Somehow, this time, even with my frozen tensed body, I decided to side with the witness. 

“I’m feeling really frozen right now and need to just go,” I said. “I’m going to take the space and go to the store. I need to get out of here. I need to just move.” 

The animal part wanted him to argue with me, to start the fight, to try to get me to stay, to ask me why I felt frozen, but he saw that, knew any verbal reply would be an opening, and after 15 years together, he knows better. 

“Ok, I love you. Drive safe,” he said casually, and turned back towards the kitchen sink. Rage flashed within me. Bloodlust for drama, attention, confusion, chaos riled in my being. 

Not today, I told myself, then grabbed the keys, put my shoes on, and walked out the door. 

No one fucking cares about you, said the broken record pattern in my brain. 

They don’t appreciate you, chimed in the old worn groove of an old story. 

He’ll never understand you, piled on the third dumb parrot of the past. 

I kept walking, got in the car, and drove to the grocery store. 

“When you’re frozen, just move,” I said to myself softly, “the stories can come, but they can’t drive the car.” 

On autopilot, I made it to the market, and pushed my cart through the store, picking up essentials. As I navigated in a theta state, absent-mindedly milling the aisles, slowly but surely the grip of freeze loosened and the tightly clenched jaws of fight or flight softened. My breath came more deeply, and by the time I checked out of the store, I was back. 

I have so much more to say about this but for tonight I want to leave you with this: rejection sensitive dysphoria is so much more than a ‘weird’ symptom of ADHD. It may even be an expression of C-PTSD, complex post traumatic stress syndrome - a result of years of being criticized, misunderstood, rejected, or shamed for things probably outside of one’s control. 

But even more interesting to me is the flavor of my triggered self response - it’s a body freeze but an internal fight, a highly charged defensiveness with a bad fucking attitude. 

I was deep diving with a client/friend the other day, and as we explored the personality of her triggered self and the persona of mine, we found something interesting. The triggered self seems to be the same age as one of the original wounds, one of the places where the initial fragmentation began, where we put part of ourselves away to try to get attachment or love. 

I’m not gonna swim in the story of my childhood wounding tonight, but it was illuminating to realize that my highly activated self is not actually 39 and married to an amazing human. 

She’s 14 and she hates pretty much fucking everyone, including herself. She freezes, in large part, because she doesn’t yet know she has the power to speak back with authority, because she’s insecure and unsure of her own integrity, because she’s still learning that it’s okay if other people are annoyed in her presence, and that it’s not her job to make everyone okay all the time. 

It may not seem like much, but this is a light bulb, a subtle shift, and a turning point. Realizing I can be activated and choose differently - in the moment - is actually nothing short of revolutionary. Realizing I’m not 14 anymore, and I can grab my car keys, move my body, and make my way out of the threatened state… well, that shit is life-changing. 

The RSD may not be going anywhere, but if we can learn all this from a trash can, I think we’re gonna be okay after all.