#72🙀 The Fear of Being Wrong: An ADHD Journey to Curiosity

How emotional dysregulation and cultural upbringing amplify fear and how you show up for others.

Welcome to Tech Atypically 👋, your weekly blog for navigating the challenges of ADHD and being in the tech industry.

I am an ADHD and product management coach helping you change one belief and take one action each week.

Part 14 of the Performance and Productivity series.

🐼A coach, a therapist, and a VP walk into a bar…

Join fellow neuro-spicey tech professionals in group coaching cohorts. It’s a space to learn about ADHD with peers that can help support both your professional and personal growth.

It will be led by 3 neurodiverse individuals who work in the tech industry.

• An ADHD and product management coach (me)

• A vocational therapist

• A tech company VP

🦋The Takeaways

Belief: Everyone has a constant fear of being wrong like me.

Reality: Your fear of being wrong may be amplified by emotional dysregulation from ADHD and your upbringing.

Action: Practice choosing curious over crazy.

⭐️Introduction

I wish I didn’t talk and write so much I want to shorten my newsletters but can’t get one out shorter than 1000 words.

When you have ADHD, being concise can feel like an unobtainable goal. I feel like everything I have to say is important.

Why?

Because underneath my verbosity is the deep fear of being wrong.

Today I explore how dysregulated emotions from ADHD and your past can impact how much your fear of failure gets in the way of your life.

I hope I’m not wrong in writing this story.

😵‍💫The Belief – Everyone experiences as much fear as I do.

One of my biggest challenges in life and being a product manager is being wrong.

I feel this harsh sting whenever I get negative feedback, no matter how big or small.

When it happens, I snap into fight-or-flight mode. When I fight, I can come off as being defensive and not listening. When I flee, I shut down or become unconfident.

In both situations, I typically talk more. I provide unneeded details and context in hopes that I can avoid the feelings I need to process. I throw up a shield of words in hopes you don’t notice my perceived failure.

This can be a big challenge as part of one of the core jobs of a PM is to navigate ambiguity. You’re constantly making choices from a feeling of not having enough data or time.

This means you could be in a constant fight-or-flight state at work. Making each day a Groundhog Day of uncertainty and anxiety I’ll mess up soon.

The story I tell myself is that it’s because I’m not good enough.

It’s because I’m stupid. Or I’m here because of luck and this moment of challenge is where it all falls apart and unmasked as a fraud.

I thought this was a normal experience that everyone shared. To a certain extent, it is.

However, dysregulated emotions from ADHD and cultural upbringings can amplify your fear of being wrong to its special place of challenge.

🤝The Reality – Emotional Dysregulation creates real barriers

Emotional dysregulation is the symptom of having disproportionate emotional reactions to events. It can be described as having exaggerated or big emotions in the face of seemingly mundane comments or tasks (source).

In short, it’s harder to control emotions such as anger, irritability, fear, and frustration, when you have ADHD.

In the US, emotional dysregulation is not a diagnostic criterion under the DSM-5 for ADHD. However, in the EU, it is. (They 100% should be in my opinion)

Rejection sensitivity dysphoria (RSD), a common symptom reported by ADHD patients, is an “overwhelming emotional reaction to real or perceived rejection or criticism that can interfere with daily life” (source).

If you experience RSD, it makes sense your fear of being wrong is amplified because it hurts more when you feel wronged.

It’s not all ADHD’s fault though. Sometimes it can be how you were raised.

As a 2nd generation Chinese, Thai, and Indian American my mom always maintained an unrealistic sense of work ethic and blame.

Got an A? Why didn’t you an A+?

Got sick for any reason? It’s because you don’t eat healthy.

Got a Fulbright Fellowship? Why would the government give you a scholarship to kickbox in Thailand?

Feeling sad? Don’t think about it, just work harder and you won’t feel sad.

Shame. Shame. Shame. That’s what these examples taught me.

As a result, I unconsciously believed love was conditional. And that the condition was work and success (aka not being wrong)

Being wrong meant not being worthy of love.

Combine an unhealthy model of how to connect with others and ADHD emotional dysregulation, and you get a PM with ADHD who can struggle with deciding or speaking up because he’s too afraid of messing up.

Photo by Justin Heap on Unsplash

🛠️The Action – Curious over Crazy

To move past my fight-or-flight response and regulate my emotions I’ve adopted a self-affirmation of “practice curious over crazy”.

I use it as part of my post-exercise affirmations or a quick chant before a hard call I have to join.

Inspired by the line “Get curious or get crazy” in the book Dare to Lead by Brene Brown, the line is a reference to you having the power to choose what you do in moments when your emotions overwhelm you.

You can choose to react with curiosity to learn more about what’s happening within yourself or others.

To stop (take a deep breath) and have the courage to ask if there’s more going on than what you’re aware of.

Or you can choose to be crazy and give into emotional impulses that harm more than help 99% of the time.

To say and act on whatever comes to mind.

To allow yourself to be a victim to the false self-narrative that “I’m only good enough for conditional love”. Or whatever stories you create to shield yourself from pain.

It’s important to remember this is a practice because you will fail to choose courage every time.

Sometimes you will choose crazy and it will suck. However, you can always recover and come back to curiosity.

This affirmation isn’t meant to solve your emotional dysregulation. It’s meant to be a reminder of what direction I need to be moving in when I’m at my lowest.

✨Conclusion

I set out to write this issue in a shorter format because I need to reduce the time I spend writing it each week. My goal was 500 words in 1 to 2 hours.

I failed at that.

I wrote my typical 1100 words in 4-5 hours. Oops.

What I did find, however, was the courage to discover what was under my fear of being wrong and how I connect with others. I learned more about a story that I tell myself and how it shapes the stories I share with others.

My story isn’t short, but I choose courage over crazy today.

I’ll try to do it again tomorrow.

🐼Join other Atypical tech workers in finding their courage by joining my group coaching cohort.

⏭️Next Week

Strategies to negotiate your role and salary when joining a new company.