mental health | Debby Meltzer Quick, Author

ADHD is a much bigger part of my life than I give it credit for. I’ve most likely suffered from it since elementary school, or even before, but it went without formal diagnosis until I was in my 30s. That’s pretty common for women of a certain age. My age. We had no idea that we had something going on that was beyond our control. It was always explained as a character defect, and we believed it. At least I did. I thought I was lazy, because I couldn’t self-start. I spent a lot of time sitting on the couch, watching TV, because that took no planning, and no skill, really. Well, at least until they invented remote controls, and then even more complicated remote controls. And they you had 4 of them for the various devices attached to the TV, and if you hit the wrong button, you could never turn on the TV again, or you messed up the cable channels, and you couldn’t find your shows, or…

(Going off on tangents is a symptom of ADHD, BTW)

I made it into adulthood without absent mindedly falling through a manhole into the center of the earth. I still find that hard to believe. I think I’ve run into a few metal poles because I wasn’t paying attention. *Rubs forehead delicately* But I made it. Here I am! I still struggle. The struggle is very, very real. Only now I know that it’s not my fault. But now that I know it’s not my fault, it’s my responsibility to get over that fact and do what I can to make it better. To let go of the guilt and self-blame and do the work. I took a great class on ADHD at Kaiser Portland via telehealth during the COVID shutdowns. It was fantastic. The instructor didn’t tell me all the stuff I already knew. She told me stuff based on evidence. Not only about my affliction, but also about things that can be done to make it better. Exercise. Good food choices. Sleep. For some people, medication. There’s stuff you can do to your vagal nerve to stimulate it and decrease anxiety. You can practice mindfulness. You can make schedules, and post little reminder notes for yourself all over your house so you don’t forget to make that important phone call that you couldn’t make over the weekend because the place was closed. I personally email myself to my work email to tell myself to make the stupid phone call. Otherwise, I don’t think about it until I get home after work, see the empty prescription bottle on my table, and slap myself in the forehead in frustration. So yeah, lots of stuff you can try. You can also remind yourself that you’re not faulty because you forgot something. You can explain to others that you’re not faulty, while still taking responsibility for your actions. ADHD is not an excuse…it might explain why you did something, but then you have to come up with a plan so that you can show it won’t happen again. But the most important thing to remember is, you’re not faulty. You really aren’t.

Sometimes, I feel faulty. And that’s okay. It really is. Not in the moment. In the moment, it feels like crap and I’m full of nasty things to say about myself and what I did or didn’t do. No one can beat me up any better than I can beat myself up. And you know what happens when you beat yourself up for something that you just did? Your memory of all the other things you ever screwed up on in your whole life pops into your head, and you beat yourself up for those things, too. Man, I’m kind of a bitch! Never get on my bad side! I can be very mean. To myself.

But then, later, I remember. My brain works differently than those of many people in our society, the people who made the rules about how our brains should work. Then I just get mad at them. We’re not all alike. We all have our own ways. We need to celebrate the way we think, and how it makes us special. Without my special brain, I would never have written 20 books, and now be writing number 21. I wouldn’t be able to have the singular focus it takes to sit there on my couch with my computer, day after day, typing, creating stories, and bringing them to life. I’m not a planner, as I’ve said. It’s too hard for me to sit down and complete an outline, and then stick to said outline. So every time I sit down, I have no more idea of what will happen next in my stories than you do. It’s always a surprise. I love reading back what I wrote. “Oh!” I exclaim to myself. “That’s pretty good! I wrote that? What will I write next? I can’t wait to find out!”

But then I do stupid things. Like last month. I was planning my release of my third book, Absolutely and Totally Smitten, and in preparation for the release, I ordered 20 copies of the book, to sell at the launch event. Well, they never showed up. Grr. I was upset, because I really wanted to have them there. But my guests bought copies of my first 2 books, which was nice, so the day was a success. A week later, the books still hadn’t arrived on my doorstep. Curious, I went to the web site to see what was going on. And of course, what I found out was…I had filled in the order, but I had never hit the last button, the one to send the order in. Oh Lord. I should have known. I rolled my eyes at myself, pushed the button, and closed to the computer, laughing at my silly ADHD antics. Then I moved on with life.

Well, yesterday, they finally arrived! Finally! I took to the box with a pair of scissors and wrestled with the packing tape. I finally got the tape off and readied myself for the reveal of…20 copies of the wrong book. Groan. Yes, in my haste, I had pushed the order button on the wrong book, my first book, titled May I Have Your Attention Please, a book that I already have a bunch of copies of. Well, okay, I’m pretty sure I could sell some more copies of it, so I won’t return them. I went on the website again today, found the order I had started for the correct book, and completed that order. AND HIT THE SEND BUTTON. And then I beat myself up. Just once. JUST ONCE I would like to find that it was a mistake at the publisher. Yes, this is not the first time I have completed a task without checking the details before hitting send. I mean, yeah, right????

So all that being said, does anyone want a signed copy of May I Have Your Attention Please? Because, I just so happen to have a few on hand!

$16 USD for the book, and $4 for shipping (US only). So $20 for a signed copy that someday, may be worth, well, less than $16! If you’re in Portland, hit me up, and I can bring it to you personally!

Let me know. I’ll send one to you. Real quick. If I don’t forget! Damn ADHD!

My books can be found here.

Have a great week, y’all!

I am first, and foremost, a social worker. I have been a social worker for many years, even more years than I’d like to admit. Well, I have already admitted in earlier blog posts that I grew up in the 70s and 80s and was in the class of 1986, so do the math. Maybe I wanted to be a sports caster on Boston TV when I was in junior high, but that hope came crashing down when I didn’t get into the communications program at the college I chose to attend. It was probably a blessing in disguise. I have seen women sportscasters in the past 30 years. It would have been a huge challenge to make it in that field, and it would have been very competitive. Sometimes degrading. But it was pretty easy for me to fall into the social services after majoring in Sociology in college.

I was very quickly typecasted into working in the field of mental health. My first job out of college was working in a group home for adults with mental illnesses. It was a huge wake up call. I didn’t know anything about mental health, but I was about to learn quickly. One of my main characters in the fourth book of “McKinney High Class of 1986” has a very similar experience as me, even though her experience is made up, for obvious reasons. It was really challenging to learn everything that needed to be learned about mental health while already employed in the field. I attended many trainings and got on the job training. I learned about interpersonal communication skills, and crisis management. I was exposed to various people, with various diagnoses, and I quickly realized that you cannot define a person by their mental health diagnosis. And people with mental illnesses need so much support and advocacy. It actually turned out that I was pretty good at this stuff, so eventually I decided to pursue a master’s degree and a career in social work.

Through it all, writing was still my true love. I wrote my first “novel” in the early 2000s, but it was basically abandoned when I had my daughter. You lose a lot of creativity when you have a child, and you no longer count sleep as something you can depend on each night. So I didn’t sit down at the computer again and attempt to create a new story until the world was struck by the Omicron COVID variant in November of 2021. And then the words just exploded out of me, non-stop. It was a bit exhausting, but it also felt like something inside of me had woken up. For me, it was a relief from the anxiety brought on by the pandemic. It was an escape. I got to imagine a different reality, one where there was no COVID, and I was not stuck working from home for another six months because new variants delayed our return-to-work date, yet again.

I had some very certain ideas for my first real novel. I wanted to see what would happen if I took someone out of their comfort zone, dropped them in the middle of a different world, and then brought them back where they came from after a year. And boy, do things change. People change in a year. Feelings change. But one thing doesn’t change. People, even fictional people, have real life problems.

There is never any question in May I Have Your Attention Please about whether the protagonists are going to fall in love. I even state it clearly on the cover blurb. So this book is not full of “will-they-won’t-they” tension like a typical romance. But what does happen, is the world continues to spin in the same direction, even when people fall head over heels in love. They still have to deal with their own reality. And they are teens, so there is the fear of not being accepted for your reality. Hell, most adults feel that way too.

So there are problems in Sally and James’s lives. Real life problems. People get sick. People misbehave. Not everyone likes you. And sadly, sometimes people in your own family are suffering from mental health and substance abuse issues. And sometimes, there are things that you just don’t know about or understand. So our couple tries to work these things out.

As hard as it is to be a person with a mental health or substance abuse problem, it’s sometimes just as hard to be someone who loves that person. There is a feeling of helplessness, of unpredictability. Of just not understanding what is going on. It helps when there are adults in your life to listen, and to explain, but it’s still a lot to work through. And who better to write about this stuff than a seasoned social worker?

As my series progresses, the problems get more intricate, complex, and severe. There are issues with parental abuse and neglect, unexpected traumas, dangerous secrets, loss, and powerful grief. Through it all, there is love and support, and coming of age. And yes, a good deal of romance and intimacy. Because all of these things are not mutually exclusive.

When you read these stories, again, please understand that they are fictional. These are not taken from my own life or the lives of anyone I have ever worked with or helped. They are figments of my imagination, but they are very real issues, and they are issues that we have all had to face sometime in our lives, even when we were teens.

I hope my stories touch you, teach you something, and even make you laugh or roll your eyes sometimes. But also, I hope they make you think, and make you want to learn more about the topic I write about. It’s really interesting stuff, and it’s only a Google search away.

If you or someone you love is experiencing suicidal thoughts, please call your local crisis line, call 988 (in the US), call 911 (in the US) or go to the closest emergency department.

For resources for mental health or substance abuse treatment, please call 211 (in the US) or go to 211 online. There is help out there.

Debby Meltzer Quick, Author

Tag Archives: mental health

Sometimes I Screw Up