24.09.2026 Diary XXIV Needle for yourself, sack needle for others
Read properly, the proverb says to start the measure with yourself. But for someone with ADHD this sentence has a side that works backwards, and I wrote about it.
24.09.2026 Diary Page XXIV
Starting the measure with yourself is a good habit. Applying the measure only to yourself is a sickness.
Thursday. There is a proverb stuck in my head today: stick the needle into yourself, the sack needle into someone else.
What it wants to say is clear and right. Before you do something to someone else, do it to yourself and see whether it hurts. Before criticizing, look at yourself. Before judging, look in the mirror.
A good sentence. But for me, for years, it worked backwards.
The backwards version of the sentence
For someone who grew up the way I did, this proverb has a problem: the needle part is already being done, and more than enough.
For twenty-three years I stuck needles only into myself; after the diagnosis it went on for a while. If a job was left half done, the cause was me. If an appointment was missed, the cause was me. If someone's face fell, I had probably done something.
There was no need to say this proverb to me. I was sticking the sack needle into myself too.
This is a common place for people diagnosed late. After hearing for years "be more careful," "make some effort," "you are not using your potential," you learn to look for the cause of every mishap in yourself. I wrote about this accumulation in the piece on shame and self-compassion.
So this proverb does not say the same thing to everyone. For someone who is generous toward themselves, it is a brake. For someone who is merciless toward themselves, it is a new whip.
The matter of measure
What the proverb really says is not about hurting, actually. It is about measure.
The measure you use when judging a behavior, you will also use when that behavior comes from you. The reverse holds too: the measure you apply to yourself, you will apply to someone else as well.
The real problem is the two being different. For years I carried two different rulers.
When someone else answers a message three days later: "They must be busy, these things happen."
When I answer three days later: "What kind of person am I."
The same event, two different sentences. And this is not kindness. It is injustice.
My father's keys
The clearest example that showed me this I had also written about in the working memory piece: my father, a man looking for his keys. Every time he looks, finds them, and goes on.
I do not remember ever getting angry with him even once. It felt natural. A person looks for something, finds it.
When I looked for my own keys, though, the event did not stay the same. The keys turned into a symbol: a symbol of my messiness, my clumsiness, my not being able to pull my life together.
The difference between these two ways of treating them taught me more than most of what I learned about ADHD. The problem was not in the keys. It was not in the measure either. It was in whom I applied the measure to.
So what should be done
I am not throwing the proverb away, I am changing its translation.
The version I need is this: use the same needle. On both.
That is, show yourself the understanding you show someone else. And test the measure you apply to yourself on someone else too: "Would I say this sentence to a friend?"
This question works very well for me. Because the answer is almost always no. I do not say "what kind of person are you" to anyone. I say it only to myself.
If you do not say that sentence to anyone, you have no right to say it to yourself. Justice is like that: it does not work in one direction only.
And there is this too
There is one more side to this sentence and I do not want to skip it: the sack needle side.
People who are merciless toward themselves are not always gentle toward others. Sometimes they expect from someone else what they put themselves through. "I do it, why doesn't this person?"
This is the other face of the same sickness. And the solution is the same: lowering the measure. For everyone.
Learning to be fair to yourself is the precondition of being fair to someone else. I learned this late.
I will continue tomorrow, because this subject has a "stopping the fight" part too.