**It’s more like things about neurotypicals: **
- They don’t have an iron will; actually, their willpower is often much weaker. But their frontal lobe rewards even little things such as clearing the dishwasher right when it is done with little dopamine shots, which they crave and and seek out, almost involuntarily.
- When they face a task, they don’t break it down into little steps with superior conscious intellect. They see the goal, e. g. a tidy kitchen, and their frontal lobe breaks it down and tells them what the next tiny step is to get a dopamine fix. They are not overwhelmed with all the little things that need to be done and what could go wrong, e. g. that wiping a surface could fail when it turns out that the cleaner is in the bathroom or there is still dishes on it.
Executive dysfunction is damn near disabling when I’m not medicated. I struggle with it & decision paralysis even when medicated. It’s an unfortunate issue that I’m unsure I’ll ever work through.
We have excess focus just no control over its direction.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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…
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.
That or Methamphetamine mainly, most likely
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?
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.
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.
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’s your brain. Advice like “think of what could you have done differently” or “slow down and consider the consequences,” etc. does not help in the least, because the part of your brain that does the thinking and the considering and the slowing down is the part that has the problem.
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.
When there are no more spoons, you need to just go to bed.
What? I wash and reuse cutlery indefinitely
Not those spoons, spoons.
I know those but how would they ever run out?
Thriving on chaos.
Feeling the calmest when in a tempest.
This one exactly, while every normal person loses their mind in s stressful situation, adhd people can be calm and collected.
That it is not some magic fucking “gift”. The hyper focus isn’t a super power. It sucks, and gets in the way in all the wrong places, bills, school, career. I would trade places with anyone who doesn’t have it becuase it plain fucking sucks.
Hyper focus is a real problem for me. I don’t even realize I’m hungry or that my bladder is full until I’m feeling nauseous or light headed. What feels like 15 minutes is actually hours.
At the same time, if I don’t complete a project from start to finish in one sitting, it’s nearly impossible to restart.
I don’t get basic things done like laundry or remembering to make appointments because I’m stuck on one task. Sometimes I’m afraid to do things I love because I can’t just do it for 20 minutes. Especially video games. I want to relax after work and play but I know I can’t let myself or I might not eat that evening.
I can’t not think
I can’t rest
To stop juging by looking: it’s not because i have a neutral expression that i am not enjoying the moment, it’s not because i am silent that i am not listening to you and it’s not because i don’t talk to you that i don’t care about you.
Also, people often forget how hard it is for people with ADHD to make a coherent structure when writing a long essay or doing a presentation.
Sometimes, i know i have work to do, i know i have a project i’m doing, but i just can’t. It can look like i’m lazy, but even i am desesperate in moments like theses. I can understand why people don’t get that.
I’m aware that I am a very messy person and I desperately wish I wasn’t. My executive dysfunction makes cleaning and keeping things clean so damn hard
It isn’t fun.
Yeah, all the stereotypes of the wacky ADHD guy squirrel lol, but it’s not like that on the inside.
We are lost in the goddamn fog, chasing phantoms and mirages that disappear when you look at them too long. We are constantly running to catch up and flailing for context. What looks capricious and funny is mostly just desperation. We aren’t bursting with unlimited energy, it’s as exhausting as it looks. Taking five attempts to actually get a task done because you just forget halfway through. Forgetting where you put the thing, every time. Feeling your working memory slip away like waking from a dream. Fucking up all the time, then having to work twice as hard to fix it, and feeling like shit because you can’t get anything right.
It gets old, man.
It’s comments like this that make me think I don’t have ADHD and I’m just a bit slow.
My therapist says I’m likely ADHD and I align with a lot in this thread, but this description is about 1000% more dramatic than my day to day life. I guess it’s all a spectrum, but I’ve never felt like I’m living in a fog, I’m very very aware of all of the things I’m fucking up, but my mind doesn’t tell my body it’s worth fixing yet.
I never “forget” to finish a task, I remember that task needs to get done every 5 mins after I leave it not finished and it pains me to look at it every time I walk by it. But there are more important things to do. Like scrolling Lemmy or IG.
Seriously, neither you nor your therapist knows unless you get assessed by a qualified psychologist with experience doing this. Everyone has some characteristics of ADHD (to put it like that) because ADHD is just exaggeration/minimization/mistargeting of functions everyone has. Whether your pattern fits the disorder can be difficult to know without a good assessment.
Your third paragraph is describing executive dysfunction, a symptom of ADHD.
Damn dude 100% very well put
No I’m not trolling you, I literally do not remember what you asked me to do. I don’t care if you asked me 30 seconds ago; I legitimately forgot and I apologize for that.
Yes I know, I should just knock it out now before I forget again, but my low dopamine levels won’t let me. No I’m not just being lazy; you might as well ask me to move a mountain. That’s just how difficult is for me to complete the most basic of chores. It is completely out of my control, and no amount of Adderall will fix it.
The wife and I have this argument all the time and it drives me crazy.
How do I upvote a million times?
