The dreaded library fines …
Ever found yourself unknowingly racking up a library fine to the value of an evening out in a nice restaurant ? ! 🙋♀️ Guilty as charged! 😅 Turns out, I've been renewing books diligently on my son's library account (so organised), blissfully ignorant of the ten (yes, ten!) kids' books silently accumulating fines on my own account. Library fines, the silent ninjas of the budget world, striking when you least expect it!
Thankfully, the lovely team at Lincoln Central Library wavered the charges, because it was an honest mistake, right? With ADHD, when these things happen, some of us who do things like this time and time again, never have an internal narrative of 'it's ok, I'm completely in the right, this could happen to anyone, don't worry about it.' We go through – catastrophising thoughts, self doubt, crying!, deductive thinking, negative internal put downs 'you're such an idiot,' how could ANYONE make this mistake? 'why didn't I notice the additional ten books around the house?' 'Why didn't you check the bloody emails properly' etc etc .... So, what do we need to do?
👏 Self-Regulate, what’s the worst that can happen?
👏 Nip the negative dialogue in the bud
👏 Future focussed, not going through everything we’ve done in our lives that’s similar to this
👏 TEXT A FRIEND – they’ll tell you you’re not an idiot, and they’ve probably done lots of similar things and you can joke about it, not cry about it
And then we can explore where these ideas about ourselves might have come from ..