Yesterday, Jessica McCabe, author of the YouTube channel How to ADHD, posted a video which is part of a series about training her dog Chloe to be a psychiatric service dog to aid her in her struggles with ADHD and anxiety.
In the video, she said something that really resonated with me: “I grew up feeling really invisible. I felt like my problems didn’t matter because there were people who were struggling harder than I was.” She went on later to say that, “…it almost feels like to justify me needing that help and asking for that help, it feels like I need to be struggling harder than I am.”
I really felt this to the core because that is something that I feel, too. The things that I struggle with are things that everyone struggles with from time to time, so it’s hard to justify asking for help when everyone else seems to be getting through life just fine even though they sometimes forget things or lack the motivation to start a task or can’t find something they set down “in a place they will remember,” and it really doesn’t help when a neurotypical person tells you “that’s not you, that’s everyone.” It really can make you feel invisible when there are so many people out there with disabilities that do not have symptoms that everyone struggles with from time to time.
The thing is, though everyone may struggle with these things once in a while, not everyone is affected the same way. People with ADHD may have the same problems as everyone, but the frequency in which we experience them and the intensity or severity of the struggle can be far greater than that of the neurotypical person. I plan to dedicate a future post to talking about just that because it’s something I find really important.
Midway through the video, Jessica shows a conversation that she had over the phone with someone, telling them how she felt about trying to justify her need for a psychiatric service dog when she felt like her problems were not grand enough to require one and I love how they responded:
“…Let’s take a seizure dog. No one would question that a person who has epileptic seizures having a dog who can alert them that they’re going to have a seizure and get them safe is a legitimate use of a service dog. Do they need that service dog every day?” To which, Jessica replied that the seizure dog was required because the epileptic person doesn’t know when they will have a seizure. The person on the phone went on further to say that it’s the same principle when Jessica has a hyperfocus feedback loop. She doesn’t know when that is going to happen, so it’s perfectly legitimate to own a dog who is trained to notice those signs and help her break out of it. Also true is that she cannot predict on which days she will forget her medication, or when she is going to need help with emotional regulation, but a dog who is trained to, for example, bring her medication at a certain time of day or comfort her when she is having difficulty regulating her emotions, then that, too, is a legitimate service that the dog can provide.
And this doesn’t just apply to service animals. When you need help as a person with ADHD or anxiety or any number of other disorders or disabilities where you have a hard time legitimizing your need for help because it doesn’t feel like a great enough need, just remember that if you need the help, then that alone justifies the need for help, even if it feels like it should be insignificant to you. Even if you feel like it’s help you should not need. We all require different things as humans on this earth, and there is no reason why you should have to suffer more than everyone else.
If you need help, it’s justified.
