The enabling perspective hurts and causes pain

As some people on the network know, very recently I was diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder - ADHD. A diagnosis that, although it came in my adulthood, did not surprise anyone. Especially not my family, who suggested that I take the test. It was what I call a masked and late diagnosis. In my early 20's I was diagnosed with General Anxiety Disorder - GAD and added to that was my Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, therefore, even though I knew that "something else was going on", it was not easy to understand that further investigation was necessary.

Receiving the diagnosis was a relief for me. My psychiatrist is very loving and humane. She asked me to read, to be informed, to come back with doubts as many times as necessary. She was very clear about the option to medicate me and she accompanies me every minute of the process. The diagnosis allowed me to make a historical revisionism of my life and to bring justice and love to that inner child that was deeply wounded: "you are stupid" "you don't lose your head because you have it stuck" "butter hands, you lose everything" "you live in Babia" "babieca" "you are always on the moon" "another time you got an A, what a nerd!" are some of the phrases I lived with in my childhood and adolescence.

But this post is not about my diagnosis but about an experience I had in recent days and that, beyond the deep pain it caused me, gives me even more strength to continue fighting for a more just, equitable and inclusive world.

Last Friday I traveled to Malaga for work. It was the first time I was going to meet in person the team I have been working with for a little more than half a year in a project I treasure together with Club de Malasmadres . The meeting went very well, it is a solid team, professional and above all... we had a lot of fun!

It was a beautiful day that coincided in turn with an increase in the dosage of the medication I take for #ADHD. In the afternoon we celebrated, more people from the site joined us and I was happy. But, despite all that joy, I was in immense pain in my mouth. Four days before I had braces, metal brackets, and my mouth was hurting more and more.

One of the things the medication helps me with is to keep track of my stimming . Stimming is a self-stimulatory behavior, movements that I do repeatedly and unconsciously, that help me calm my sensory and energetic overload. I tend to be always bouncing one foot - "crazy foot"-, bruxing at night or tearing the skin off my hands until I deeply hurt my fingers.

What I had not registered until that moment was that during the day I also bruxed and that this compulsive movement of my mouth, added to the fact that I could not stop running my tongue through the brackets, was causing important lacerations in my mouth. Far beyond the bruises and the "normal" pain expected at the beginning of orthodontic treatment.

On Saturday the pain was almost unbearable and although I spent a divine day of farewell to the team, with laughter, lunch on the beach and drinks watching the sea, in the afternoon I was very dazed. As soon as I set foot in Malaga airport, on my way back to Barcelona, I collapsed. Airports have always been a big trigger for me, especially when I travel alone, but the change in medication dosage, the large amount of stimuli of those two days, and the intense pain were an explosive combo.

After passing through security, the nightmare happened. My whole body was shaking, I had tachycardia and I could not read the flight information signs. It was impossible to decipher what I was reading. I had a low battery, plenty to go back, but that added to the feeling of suffocation and I began to wander around pointlessly, unable to sit down anywhere. Malaga airport was crowded because of Easter and I could only hear the conversations of the people around me while in my head there was a deafening white noise.

I managed to send a message to my partner who began to assist me from distance. I remember the first thing he said to me was "breathe, breathe, you know you have to breathe". I was able to sit in a bar with outlets but was told they had no electricity so I remembered I could charge my cell phone with my laptop. I put my headphones on with a song on repeat, which is what I usually do when I need to focus on a task, and started looking for open dental clinics on a Saturday night to have the braces that were driving me crazy removed.

My son also supported me from Argentina, and also my dear friend and colleague Cecilia Luca , in charge of People of the Malaga site, because that is the kind of People person we have at Globant . Between everyone's support and the task of looking for information, I started to get out of the eye of the storm, stop crying and was able to board the plane. The flight was very difficult, the stimming of my mouth had become an involuntary and violent opening and closing of my mouth, which sometimes hurt my lips and sometimes my tongue.

As soon as I landed I took a cab to the clinic where my partner, who had already arranged an urgent appointment, was waiting for me. When I entered the office the first thing I did was to tell the dentist that I wanted to get my braces off, I told him I had ADHD and asked him if he knew what I was talking about. He replied - literally - "yes, those people who get distracted". I explained as best I could through tears, and the plainest language possible, that it was a little more complex than that. I described my self-stimulatory behaviors, how I was compulsively hurting my mouth, with no control over it. I told him I was just coming out of a panic attack and needed him to please remove my braces.

As if I had been talking to a wall he told me that it was "normal" to have some bruising at the beginning of braces and that I was like this because of the pain, that in a few days it would go away and I would be fine. With the last bit of energy I had left, I explained that I was not "normal", that I was "neurodiverse", and that this self-lacerating behavior was not going to stop, since I could not control it, and I told him that beyond the pain, I needed him to take them out for mental health reasons. That I was collapsing and that I didn't want that in my mouth.

He insisted that it was because of the first days of adaptation. He checked me, told me that he was going to file some braces so that I wouldn't keep cutting my tongue, because if I continued like that, the next day I was going to have a serious injury. I begged him, crying, to take out my braces and he told me no, that he could not do that because he had not put them on me, but that he was going to prescribe me something for the pain and he prescribed me ibuprofen 400.....

I went back home with my partner who had already got another appointment for Sunday morning. My children were waiting for me at home and they were already aware of what was going on. They hugged me and stayed with me in bed until I could begin to regulate myself emotionally. One of the things that distressed me the most, besides the deep pain, was that the next day, at night, I had to take another plane to Romania. It was a trip that I had been planning for a long time and that I was really looking forward to: finally being able to meet in person a team that I have been working with for more than two years. I slept little but I was more relaxed because I was surrounded by my loved ones who understood what I was going through.

In the morning I went to the second emergency appointment. The exact same process was repeated. I explained in tears what was happening to me and the doctor answered in identical words the same as the doctor the day before. That I should get used to it, that it would pass, that he had not put the braces on me. This time I had the strength to get angry and I told him that I thought it was disrespectful. That we had specifically explained before going to the clinic what the reason for the consultation was: to get my braces off and that there was no way I was going to pay the seventy euros they wanted to charge me for nothing... but they wanted to charge me for revictimizing me.

I left absolutely devastated. I called the mutual insurance company and explained the situation. They told me that I did not have emergency orthodontists until Monday. I told them again that I was going on a week's trip that night and that I could not travel like that. Seeing that they did not understand the state of my mental health, I asked to speak to an emergency psychiatric service, trusting that a psychiatrist would be able to describe the situation better. They replied that they did not have emergency psychiatry.....

I remember crying in a bar, unable to even drink a glass of water because of the lacerations in my mouth. It was at that moment when my partner, who kept calling clinics and doctors' offices, told me "I got it, I got a place where they tell me they take them out". We got into a cab and went straight there. When we arrived, I was seen by a young doctor, very young, I began to explain what was happening to me. Already with a trickle of voice because I had no more strength. He looked at me, smiled and said "you don't need to explain anything, if you don't want to have your braces anymore, I'll take them out".

I can't tell you how lovingly she treated me. At all times he explained to me what he was doing, he told me that I was going to feel a little pressure. He counted one by one the brackets he was taking out while I was crying, but this time with joy. As soon as I left the office I was a different person. I could not stop smiling and feeling that my mouth was mine again. I remember that my partner and I decided to walk back home to reduce all the stress we had experienced. We arrived home, packed our bags and left with my children for the airport.

Of course I was scared to go back to the airport so soon after having a panic attack but this time I was accompanied by my family who kept hugging me all the time, winking at me with their smiles, helping me to compulsively check my documents, and reminding me to use my fidgets - toys I use to calm the hyperactivity of my hands - every time I started to tear a piece of skin off my fingers.

I am now writing this post from Romania, after having spent an amazing week getting to know the team and receiving lots of love from amazing people.

I thank Cecilia Luca for her accompaniment, my psychiatrist Ariadna Inés Echavarría Rodriguez for the love with which she accompanies me every day, Jaime Guinovart Urriola the doctor who was my saved angel and the clinic Turó Park Clinics for the quality of its professionals, and Estefani Gibbons who has long illuminated my path and accompanies me to know myself a little more every day.

Remember he enabling perspective hurts and causes pain

Let's be allies and inclusive with the differences.

And let's keep fighting for a world in which I, nor anyone else, has to explain or beg to have something removed from their body that hurts their mental health.

Learnings:

• I'm not going to change the dose of medication if I'm subjected to a lot of stimuli.
• Every time I travel alone I am going to wear the sunflower lanyard to indicate that I am neurodivergent.
• I'm going to ask for assistance a few days in advance, some airports have that system. El Prat has i t

In the photo, the before and after. The hell and the happiness of being who I am.