Don't take it so personally

If you're an anxious overachiever like me, you probably know exactly what I mean when I say that no matter how constructive the criticism I receive is, I have a hard time not taking it personally.

Living with high functioning anxiety means looking successful but feeling like a failure. For me, I can never say no to an assignment. I am always willing to help out when asked, and therefore I always look like everything is under control. Add in a healthy dose of perfectionism and ADHD, and we've just created the perfect recipe for extreme self-doubt and possibly disaster.

In fact, what many do not realize, is that ADHD and anxiety/depression go hand in hand. There is a common misconception that ADHD is only a condition that children, particularly boys, experience. In fact, ADHD can be experienced by both sexes and manifests differently in each. This means females are often diagnosed late in life or not at all. And if you manage to do well in school, you can almost forget about getting a diagnosis because of the difficulty of demonstrating the criterion of having displayed symptoms before the age of 12 (it's that no one noticed). Sometimes people manage their symptoms so well by developing compensatory skills that these issues don't become a problem until the person is in a more difficult academic or professional setting, where these compensatory skills are no longer working.

This is what happened to me. I have always been an anxious person, but that's all I thought it was. It didn't really strike me as odd that as a fifth grader, I was so anxious that I couldn't fall asleep. I figured it's just part of my personality. I did fairly well in school and through college, except in a few classes that I didn't care for. By law school and grad school, I had not really developed good study or organization skills. I managed to do really well in the classes I enjoyed (immigration law, international human rights law, legal writing) but terribly in the classes I did not like (tax law, economics, statistics).

This trend has continued in my professional life. I will throw myself head first into an assignment that interests me (research projects, writing assignments, and client engagement activities), but it is almost impossible for me to get started on something that isn't that interesting (entering billable time and other tedious tasks). I also cannot organize for the life of me and am thankful for having a great assistant. I am impulsive and always worried about pleasing my bosses and my clients.

You might see where this is going. I am a nervous wreck all of the time, but more importantly -- I am inconsistent in my work. In some areas, I excel, and in some, I really struggle. This means I have to accept a lot of constructive feedback. Because I live with high functioning anxiety, it is very difficult to accept this feedback without getting defensive or upset. But constructive feedback is part of the growing and learning process.

Despite feeling a great deal of stress, I am always outgoing, punctual, high-achieving, passionate and enthusiastic about my work. But underneath all of those positive attributes, inside I am afraid no say no for fear of letting my boss down, biting my nails until they bleed, ruminating constantly to the point of insomnia, and being told that I am "difficult to read" or "very professional," where "professional" in this instance means uptight.

Part of understanding these aspects of my personality and brain wiring is accepting that: (1) I am going to receive criticism; (2) the constructive criticism is not meant to hurt me or be a personal attack on me as a person; and (3) the negative self-doubt and shame that I feel when I receive criticism are just thoughts and nothing more.

I am forcing myself to accept constructive criticism and have asked my boss for a monthly one hour meeting for just this purpose. It is not inherently wrong to feel upset when given less than positive feedback, but it is important to recognize when these feelings go too far and become unproductive. No one likes being told they could have performed better, especially those of us with high anxiety. But we can at least overcome our negative thought patterns to help the medicine go down more easily.