No, don’t let the split personalities fool you. This is Dr. Henry Jekyll and Mr. Edward Hyde as depicted in “The Pagemaster” (1994), two characters adapted from Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous horror novel. If you have been following me since Going the Distance was founded in 2021, you will recall that I have used Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde several times in several blogs.
I bring these two up because lately I feel as if I have sort of undergone a sort of split personality myself when it comes to my day job as a janitorial specialist.
When I’m out of my day job and being an ambassador/public speaker for neurodviersity, I’m essentially Dr. Jekyll: calm, cool and collected. But when I am in my day job, I’m essentially Mr. Hyde, irritable, angry and bitter, although I have to wear an emotional mask when around colleagues and customers.
I gotta tell you, pretending to be Dr. Jekyll at my day job when I am really Mr. Hyde isn’t easy. For the past few years, I’ve been looking to get out of my current day job and find something that gives me security for my SSI, Going the Distance and my overall mental health. It seems that more and more I do this search and stay in the day job that I have, I become more and more Mr. Hyde. It also doesn’t help for the fact that I work with several developmentally different individuals who have no respect for personal boundaries or my own personal time.
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Now, I bring this up for the reason that neurodivergent individuals do have that Jekyll and Hyde personality especially when they are in their desired element of interest or area that they don’t want to be in. If you are a parent or guardian of a neurodivergent, you know this very well. The fact that you want what is best for the individual can either create a monster like Mr. Hyde or someone who is calm, cool and collected like Dr. Jekyll.
Part of the issue is that the individual often has a hard time processing the situation around them and they end up turning into Mr. Hyde as a result. Even before my current day job situation, I would often turn into Mr. Hyde because I couldn’t process certain situations or events and that I also had a lack of self-awareness. This was especially the case growing up in the 1990’s and 2000’s because back then, the resources were not as full as they are now. Plus, when you are a kid and your brain hasn’t fully developed, Mr. Hyde is more than likely to come out.
But I use this as an example because there are other neurodivergent individuals like myself who are in a similar situation because again, we cannot let our differences define us for who we are. We all want to be like Dr. Jekyll in an educational or workplace setting, but Mr. Hyde will come out because the road can be more than difficult in more ways than one.
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Catch you all later!!
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