Joanne Smith argues that eliminating all stress is impossible and undesirable, especially for people with ADHD. She pushes back against advice to choose a stress-free partner or lifestyle, saying it would shrink her life and prevent her from taking up space and becoming who she wants to be.
What am I— what stories am I telling myself about what the future is going to bring? Because if the current story is, I can't have stress in my life, I need to eliminate all of that. I was told— I think this is why I get quite passionate about this, because I was told that you need to have— remove stress from your life. What, because having ADHD means that you shouldn't— you should avoid stressors? Well, how on earth am I going to do that when I've got families? I've got a family, I'm a human, I've got jobs, I've got work to do. How on earth am I going to prevent that? It's not possible. And then they say choose your, choose your, um, your, um, husband wisely, um, and all this stuff. So if my story is that I have to, um, do everything in a way that I'm not gonna put myself in any stress, I'm just gonna live a really small life and I'm gonna not take up space in the world and I'm not gonna be the person that I want to be.
