Did you know that cleaning a humidifier can remind you of your neurodivergence, make you wonder if you’re a selfish jerk, and also make you astonished at how hard just surviving can be? That’s because basic care tasks reveal how autism and ADHD can look like selfishness—but aren’t.
First, the humidifier. I currently have COVID; having my room feel like a jungle helps me sleep at night.
Still, humidifiers freak me out a little. Back when my kids were little, I heard dirty ones can send flesh-eating protozoa directly into your brain.
I did not use the humidifier for ten years after that. No thank you, protozoa!
But in my last bout of bronchitis , I got desperate enough to sleep and breathe that I stopped caring if my brain got cannibalized. I’d always thought cleaning the thing would be a major pain in the butt, but it turned out to be fairly manageable—AND it helped me sleep. I was sold.
And then I told my husband about my newfound love of the humidifier. And his response gutted me.
He said, quietly, You do remember that, back in the day, I tried to use it for the kids? And you told me you would, under no circumstances, be able to clean it? And that we could not use it if it weren’t clean? That you kinda got angry about the whole thing?
When he mentioned it, I did remember. And remembering made me feel like an asshole.
One feels just the slightest bit selfish, remembering when one drew a clear line in the sand about children’s respiratory health, and stood on the wrong side of it.
I thought about the time it takes, cleaning that humidifier. It’s about a five-minute job, with maybe another five to reassemble and refill at night. Could I really not spare my children or my husband ten minutes back then?
Here’s what an autism diagnosis has given me:
No, I realized. No, I couldn’t. Or at least, I understand why it felt that way.
Today, I realized that though I still feel chagrinned, I don’t really feel selfish. I just feel sad for my old self, and for my husband, and for all the years of bewilderment we’ve spent together, both wondering what in the hell makes me tick.
Since getting diagnosed with autism and CPTSD, and understanding their intersection with ADHD, my humidifier-cleaning aversion makes much more sense to me. I still don’t like the memory, but I have compassion for it.
And I want to spend a few blog posts exploring what made cleaning the humidifier hard, and how it is different than selfishness.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll talk about executive function and its relationship to neurodivergence. I’ll explore the three parts of executive function: working memory, flexibility, and self-control—and how struggles with them might look like selfishness, even if you actually aren’t an asshole.
We’ll talk about the first of these, working memory, next week. It turns out that if, like me, you don’t have it, everything takes a lot more effort, including humidifiers.
In the meantime, if you feel like your way of being makes you feel either selfish or like a complete hack, I’d love you to take my creative personality test. I think creativity is any kind of human ingenuity that helps us survive with joy—and honestly, when we feel ashamed, we need all the help we can get. If you’re overwhelmed, I’d like to offer you some good news about how your way of being is just fine—and how you might kindly help yourself get stuff done or do stuff that matters to you without having to get a brain transplant. Take the test here.
Photo by Intan Yuhanis on Unsplash
