How fucking hard it is to remember daily and recurring tasks. Taking meds, brushing teeth, checking email, cleaning up, cooking, laundry, on top of stuff related to work.
Another one is that we are blind. Unless I expect to see it, I cannot see it. I literally dont see clutter. Only when I force myself to think about what I’m staring at do I realize there is a bunch of crap on a table. Its really easy for my room to get messy because of this. Because it hardly exists for me.
Unless I expect to see it, I cannot see it.
I don’t know if it’s a gift or a curse, but around my house, I’m the only one who can find anything - but it’s not because I scan the room and see it, but because at some point in the past, I happened to notice, and I just remember where nearly everything is, whether I want to or not. I guess it’s my coping mechanism.
Hey, it’s me! Have you tried one of those weekly medicine pill dividers? I did. I think I filled it once, then went back to my daily routine of forgetting my meds. ADHD fucking blows.
Anxiety over missing my meds keeps me (mostly) on track, I do however forget to request refills until the last bloody moment though, love how the process for ADHD treatment is so anti ADHD…
Yep. Same thing happened with me.
Living on my own I was really good about any mess I made in an instant being dealt with immediately. Dishes would not pile up, etc. Any problem with a longer accumulation time might as well be there forever though, dust bunnies can have eternal lifespans.
I didn’t find it so bad, but a switch to living with someone who just does occasional cleaning can throw your living space into chaos. The tiny psychological difference between “making a new mess” and “contributing to an existing mess” has way too much impact on what tasks will get addressed, and it’s difficult as all hell to break free from that.
We I have the fun combination with (undiagnosed) autism and t Which one had primary control at any time is a scrap shoot.
Even medicated I can not see the clutter… Until it’s all I can see and I start AuDHD cleaning.
That me starting work at 2 am is not my choice, it’s my brain’s choice
At least that point in time exists.
It is hard when your brain decides to start work at √-1am
Aye.
Lord Almighty, I am not lazy.
While yes, it looks like I’m sitting there on my phone, my functional part is screaming at me. Get up. Go do the thing. Do your work. You wanna get fired? Get up. Get the fuck up… As I click on another meme or post or video.
You do you, but if getting yelled at worked, things wouldn’t be so fucking shit in my life.
There will be pleanty of people yelling at you. Previously, and in the future. They do not need your help.
Peace.
It should really be called Intention Deficit Disorder.
My phone has my undivided attention, there is no deficit here.
Phones are shitty tablets, and tablets are really really shitty computers.
Phones are definitely easier to take with you though. But why would I leave the basement unless I had something to do? And when you have something to do, you can’t use your phone. (IMO)
just riffing off the op. Phones are the worst possible way to do anything that isn’t a phone call.
To add to this.
Just because i failed to act on the stuff that needs doing doesn’t mean i had it easy or that am not exhausted.
Usually the reflective awareness of my stuck state drains me way more then if i would you just be able to get up and do it.
I understand that this may come across as flippant and possibly condescending, so apologies in advance, but I mean it as a genuine question.
What would it take to break the… inertia?
I imagine you’d move if your chair caught fire, so there must be some line. How low can the bar be set?
Meth. Anything less will only result in eventual and catastrophic failure. Source: I have ADHD and have tried everything else, several times over.
You mean Methylphenidate? Because people when understand a different thing when you say meth…
That or Methamphetamine mainly, most likely
My understanding is that stimulants alleviates ADHD symptoms. That meth is a type of stimulant. And that specialized ADHD meds are based off of meth (according to my nurse mom and sister).
But also, I am being intentionally hyperbolic for the purposes of comedy.
Once I started taking metered doses of meth my symptoms stopped getting in the way. I can focus and accomplish the things I need to do and I don’t feel miserable after they’re complete. Picking different spots on my arms/legs is annoying because you don’t want to develop sores and other gross things but mild inconvenience compared to the mental clarity I get.
Testing it for fent beforehand is super annoying though. So much is cut with it. But if you know where to get it pure or mostly pure, you’re golden.
But if you know where to get it pure or mostly pure
Albuquerque?
I imagine you’d move if your chair caught fire
i’d sit up, try finishing the comment I’m writing, realize my pants are on fire, extinguish them, and then finish the comment, and then look at the fire
And be angry at the fire for interrupting you? And forget what the comment was about and just send it, hoping the response made sense but it doesn’t matter anyway because you forgot what the comment you were replying to is about and what the post was about and hey let’s open another app?
Neuroscience answer: Dopamine is responsible for (among other things) motivation and the feeling of reward when you do something. People with ADHD have chronically low dopamine levels because they have more dopamine transporters than most people do in their brains, so their brains burn through it quickly.
In practice, people who are unmedicated tend to do whatever they can to try and get a little more dopamine to get them through the day. It’s why smoking, risk taking, illicit drug use, gambling addiction, etc are also correlated with ADHD: all those things give you a dopamine boost.
So when someone is sitting there scrolling through memes on the phone, they’re hunting for the dopamine. The dopamine is almost never at The Task. It’s incredibly frustrating to understand all that and still not really be able to do anything about it until it escalates into an emergency, at which point you don’t really need dopamine to deal with it anymore, now that you have adrenaline. But that’s obviously an unsustainable way to do things on a regular basis.
it escalates into an emergency, at which point you don’t really need dopamine to deal with it anymore, now that you have adrenaline.
Oh, that’s why that happens
Depends. Are we also depressed? Is there actual anxiety tied in with that flippant apparent physical lethargy? How hot is this fire?
If you want us to do something with some consistency make us feel obligated or change it enough to keep it interesting.
Are you me? Or am I you? The crazy thing is that when I work, I wooork. Like 12 hours without peeing, drinking water, eating, or taking any breaks.
When the iron is hot, the blacksmith is swinging. The water and peeing thing is probably something I would work on.
Have you tried bribing yourself with Kool aid or tea or something that will get you to drink water? Maybe a mini fridge next to the desk so you don’t have to leave the desk?
Hard pass on the piss jug idea. You can make it to the bathroom, I believe in you. Terrible habit. I’ve known some who travel that dark path. That’s why I live alone now.
So look, I am not trying to talk down to you or make you feel inferior. The reason I use words with WAY too many syllables tucked into precisely worded sentence structures is because my fucking brain decided it didn’t want to remember the normal damn way of saying it.
Also, our brains glitch. As in it literally feels like some wires crossed. Due to this some situations/days/hours can be torture. Please be kind.
Have you ever considered not paying attention to what people say back?
If it makes you feel better, you can pretend they said good things about what you said.
Have you ever considered not paying attention to what people say back?
I have never considered doing that at all. It happens naturally in the middle of conversations.
Yeah. I don’t actually remember anything they might have said though that reminds me: Do you have a good spaghetti recipe? Cause I’m somehow seeing a correlation between people being jerks and spaghetti right now.
Don’t worry, everyone else. We will actually return to the original topic in about 15 minutes.
“Just do [X]” does not compute, whether X is “yoga”, “sports”, “[specific diet]”, “the laundry”, or simply “it”. It is never simply “just”. The inability to “just” start doing a thing (especially without any immediate reward) is one of the central symptoms of ADHD and if you say “just do [X]”, you’re essentially saying “just don’t have ADHD”.
ADHD also doesn’t mean you are/were bad in school. Not by a long shot.
I’ve generally found starting the easy part. Maintaining is where it gets hard. Habit building nearly impossible.
You must hate Nike
We don’t Grant wishes
Speak for yourself.
Sometimes I do, if it falls squarely in the realm of one of my obsessions
You are a disgrace to our kind
…what?
No wishes
Sorry what were you saying? I was busy thinking of what I would do if gravity reversed.
Please don’t “trap” me and force my attention on to you.
I literally cannot subvert my attention from what I am focused on. Please just say my name and wait a moment for me to context switch myself.
Forcing the attention takes away from what I want to focus on and what you want me to focus on (usually you).
I’d second this as something people don’t get about ADHD.
So I work in IT support. If I’m absorbed in something complicated and you ask me to stop immediately to help you with your “more urgent” issue, please don’t take it personally if I seem annoyed while my brain short circuits trying to deal with the sudden gear change.
Is this an ADHD thing or a normal human behavior?
Many adhd symptoms are “normal human” behavior/traits, but in people with adhd they are more exaggerated than in neurotypical peeps. So while something like this might be slightly annoying for a typical person, for someone with adhd it is likely worse.
It’s worse for ADHD. It’s an outsize irritation. Also, once the focus is broken it can be really hard to pick back up the original task.
Also why we endlessly do the hip wiggle to avoid going to the loo until it hurts.
Ever almost shat yourself because you were focused on something else?
Yes
Normally I’d be ‘that guy’ to call out ADHD vs NT behaviours but for this - particularly when hyperfocus is involved - there is 100% a difference.
In general, if someone ND is complaining about X, equating it to NT X doesn’t work. They have the same name, yes. That’s because we don’t have words for X2 or X3 etc. Imagine if house cats, ocelots, pumas, and tigers were all called “cats.”
“A stray cat wandered in and it looks hungry.”
“So, what’s the big deal? We have three cats at home. Just give them some kibble.”
“I think it plans on eating me.”
“Stop exaggerating.”
This also works as a reply to OP’s question.
We have excess focus just no control over its direction.
It isn’t just “struggling to focus.” The same way that depression isn’t just “being sad” and anxiety disorder isn’t just “getting nervous.”
When my ADHD is at its worst, I literally become almost illiterate. As in, I read a single sentence, and by the time I finish the last few words, I have completely forgotten the rest of the sentence.
I have to read that sentence 4-6 times over and over before I actually comprehend what the meaning is. The words are being sounded out in my head, but my brain doesn’t store them in short term memory, and certainly not into long term memory.
My brain is too busy processing random other things to dedicate enough attention to the thing I am trying to read. And I’m not taking about Shakespeare or Tolstoy, I’m talking about trying to read a basic email from my manager.
Imagine the feeling you had when you were in school struggling with your toughest subject. Maybe it was math, maybe chemistry, whatever. Remember what it was like when you were focusing as hard as you could to solve a problem on an exam or a homework assignment. Remember that feeling of mental exhaustion? Where it felt like your head actually hurt, you were physically tired from how hard you were focusing? Maybe for the next hour, perhaps even the rest of the day, you couldn’t think hard about anything else?
Well that’s how I feel doing the majority of trivial tasks I have to do all the time. Getting dressed, brushing my teeth, making breakfast, getting my work bag together, remembering to cash a check or pick up a few groceries. Working out, texting back a friend, responding to emails, scheduling a doctor’s appointment, etc.
I start the day mentally exhausted and foggy, and I end the day even more so. And most of the things that nuro-typical folks do without hardly a thought, I have to expend final calculus 3 exam effort to do.
The most frustrating part? Sometimes, seemingly at random, my brain will just kick into gear and I will be able to focus on something for hours without any effort at all. I can’t seem to cause it to happen, I don’t know where it comes from. But on those rare days, I am a god. It actually makes me depressed, because I always think, “if I could be like this just 25% of the time, I would be unstoppable.”
The most frustrating part? Sometimes, seemingly at random, my brain will just kick into gear and I will be able to focus on something for hours without any effort at all. I can’t seem to cause it to happen, I don’t know where it comes from.
I reorganized my grandfather’s entire tool shed in 5 hours but the chlotes in my room are still on the ground… this sucks
Yep! And I can’t direct it either, which is also super frustrating. If I’m productive, it’s always in a direction my brain wants to go, not where I actually need to be productive.
It’s doing something for someone else vs doing it for you. For some people, it can serve as a “hack” to engage the hyperfocus.
Aside from stimulants and therapy, learning to live with ADHD is about developing seemingly abnormal coping skills to overcome the barriers it presents. Looks weird from the outside, but it makes total sense to that person because they know it engages something within them that won’t engage under normal circumstances.
It sucks to use and I hate it, but if someone starts doing the thing I’ve been struggling to do, that can engage my ability to do it because I’m doing it so they don’t have to…such as cleaning up one of my messes. Maybe you can use this too?
I remember one time I was hosting a party trying to read the rules for Werewolf, but had to delegate the task to someone else because I couldn’t focus on the words. I ended up just slipping out making a joke about having to take my lithium, so I could take my next dose early without being distracted and losing my Strattera pill
Oh yes, I know that experience well. I’ve had to excuse myself to discretely take another pill many times.
I also don’t like that I’m not doing the things I should be doing. Yes, I absolutely do see that those things need to be done, no I don’t think someone else is going to do them. Yes, I wish I would just get up and get it done too.
Communication is difficult for us. Masking is tiring as fuck.
The more I read all this, the more I understand that I should diagnose for ADHD as those descriptions are just too damn fitting.
I was always sort of smart and stupid at the same time, unable to focus on specific things while being hyper-focused on something not always relevant. Procrastinating like crazy, but when it’s really bad, able to do a lot last minute.
Reading one sentence over and over again and still not knowing what it says is definitely something that did happen to me many times, I’m just focused on something else and cannot help it.
The worst thing for me when I got diagnosed was the realisation of how much of me is just ADHD/ASD. I’m very high masking according to my doctor, and now I understand why I often feel completely drained of energy. It’s pretty mad…
If you feel like you have ADHD, getting diagnosed is absolutely worth it. Even though it will probably wreck your perception of yourself, everything will probably make sense in hindsight. It’s very strange yet liberating.
I would be actually happy if I turned out ADHD, because I knew where to look for a help in an attempt to make my life better. Most of my efforts in self-improvement become futile after all. I wouldn’t care being ADHD at all if I was satisfied with the life I created, but since I’m not, it is all but negative.
Here’s a sampling:
ADHD can feel like you’re putting in 350% of effort 100% of the time but only achieving 50% of what others achieve, and then being treated like you only put in 10%.
My whole childhood & life before diagnosis, my intelligence and literally everything am good at was used as proof up career & academic & household stuff out of spite.
The paradox of #ADHD - being excellent at complex, high-stimulus tasks and fuck- all at routine, “easy” tasks was a weapon in the hands of parents, teachers, & employers and a constant abusive echo in my brain.
What internalized was that accomplishments that were fun or that came easy to me had no value, only the ones that involve effort “count.” But the things that involved the most effort for me were mundane tasks that came easy to others, so they had no value, either.
ADHD involves SO many micromoments of shame. Stepping Over the pile of laundry. Re- remembering the bill you still haven’t paid. The sink full of dishes and the fridge leftovers lurking in the back. The small but recurring should have" is cumulative and it’s painful.
The last one’s text wasn’t "Select"able on my phone
Gosh, the micromoments of shame really really hits home
It’s the last one for me
‘Just write it down’
‘IT DOESN’T FUCKING WORK!!!’
I can’t count the number of times I start talking about executive dysfunction and someone immediately chirps in with “make a list, chunk it down, say you’re going to do this for 20 minutes and then take a break.” I eventually started asking in response, "Do you suggest to your depression patients simply not being sad? Do you tell your anxiety patients not to worry about stuff? Because that’s what I’m hearing, and it tells me you don’t
I find the practice of making daily to-do lists still helps, not because I’ll be able to necessarily do the thing for 20 minutes on the first try, but after those 20 minutes i might look down at my little note and be able to remember what it was I was supposed to be doing… and then I can have another attempt at maybe doing it in the next 20 minutes.
It doesn’t manifest exactly the same in everyone with ADHD
