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?
I will spend ten times as long beating myself up about not doing the thing than it would take to just do the thing, which should make it crystal fucking clear that if I could just do the thing, I would fucking just do the thing.
And then, if I DO do the thing, I will spend twenty times as long as it took to do the thing afterwards replaying in my head exactly how I did the thing and beat myself up over every little imperfection.
Sometimes I have to really hold myself back from editing messages that are perfectly fine because I feel like I’m being too random and thus need to explain myself and add context
And this is while medicated, too.
Hello me. Be kind to yourself
10 times as long beating yourself up? How about at least 35 times at a minimum? Had to fix a little bit of text in some presentation slides for a class, I had from December 24 until January 6th to do it, and I kept beating myself up for not doing it until the night between January 5 to January 6, where I did it all in one sitting, taking me about 6 hours to do it all, and I could have done it even sooner than December 24, all the way back to the beginning of December, but I procrastinated it as well… Fucking hate how I cannot get myself to work on shit until the last fucking minute
wow, this sounds like my regular day. Maybe I have that same thing ?
the problems sound similar to “what everyone has” but they arent the same
Yes everyone struggles motivating themselves to do chores but it’s not the same when you have adhd.
Yes everyone has trouble concentrating during a boring lecture/lesson but its not the same when you have adhd.
Yes everyone has the urge to buy stuff they don’t need, but its not the same when you have adhd.
so it’s those but more of them
It’s those but so bad it’s a disability. Like how just because most people don’t hear something from time to time doesn’t mean they’re all hard of hearing
not necessarily more, but more intense. Like it’s borderline physically painful sometimes to force myself to do something. It feels like I’m being very cruel to myself for no good reason, its just a dishwasher after all
people who have never been depressed tend to think that depression is just laziness
YoU jUsT nEeD sOmE fReSh AiR
Yeah it’s always „why don’t you just…“ or „why can’t you „
yeah there are only two reasons why someone doesn’t do something and it’s because they can’t or the don’t wanna. If they want to do something but don’t it’s because they can’t and some pedestrian advice like “Just think how much nicer it will feel after you’re done” is not gonna help.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
If you do get into hyperfocus on something you need to like work or a project or whatever, someone or something breaking you out of it is incredibly frustrating. Like not because what ever the interruption is isn’t important, but because hyperfocus is difficult to get into on something important, so hard to switch focus from, and there is an almost painful obssessibe need to have completed where doing.
Edit: accidentally hut submit too soon…
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.
**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.
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.
Perhaps this is some sort of internalised ableism but I used to have this internal dialogue where I’d reflect on how difficult it was to do “boring” things and a straw man NT person would sarcastically imply that “it must be nice” to have an excuse to get out of “boring” tasks.
Um, fucking no. If you think about it for like two seconds, you realise how much of being a happy, independent and healthy adult relies on being able to complete tasks that aren’t immediately captivating. Those tasks still need doing, I don’t want someone else to do them for me. You’re left with either waiting on when the ‘inspiration’ strikes you, having to improvise some game or arbitrary reward structure just to clean two dishes or you just rawdog your way through the task and you feel every second of the boredom and come out the other side feeling worse than when you started because no satisfaction from completing the task can pay-back the effort you put into completing it.
That’s why ADHD adults burn-out. Without medication, every day you end with a ‘motivation deficit’ where no satisfaction from completing tasks can cover the costs of the determination and focus one spent to start those tasks. Eventually you just ‘default’ and you can’t do anything any more.
Stimulants to me feel like a small loan on every task. It’s a fine balance but they actually let me come out of tasks semi-regularly with more energy/motivation than I started. And when you have a surplus, productivity begets productivity.
What is that medication ? you just described my daily experience, I wonder if maybe I’m suffering from the same exact thing. I knew everybody didn’t struggle like I do
Elvanse (Vyvanse in some parts of the world).
Hello me, that was very succinct. I don’t get how so often they say “oh, everyone dislikes doing x, you just do it” ah, see that’s the problem right there
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.
No, you don’t have ADHD just because you get bored sometimes.
dont like that approach since mental illnesses are typically underdiagnosed rather than overdiagnosed. If someone says they have adhd they do until proven otherwise.
It’s undiagnosed because you don’t have it. Mental health is an extremely complex thing that only somebody with the right qualifications should comment on.
wow thats hostile, fuck you too buddy
I thought I was hostile until proven otherwise?
go fuck yourself you piece of shit,
a) I am officially diagnosed dont know why you assumed I wasnt
b) not everyone has equal access to healthcare and might have no choice other than to self-diagnose and medicate any range of illnesses
c) there are systemic issues like e.g. racism, sexism (sexism is double the issue in mental health than it is in physical) paired with the superiority complex of some doctors constantly leads to psychiatrists dismissing and downplaying their struggles and not diagnosing or writing prescriptions a patient needs.
but glad you keyboard warriors who never had to deal with this shit got it all figured out
“a) I am officially diagnosed dont know why you assumed I wasnt”
Do you need to be officially diagnosed? You’ve made it very clear you have the power of Google and YouTube on your side.
“b) not everyone has equal access to healthcare and might have no choice other than to self-diagnose and medicate any range of illnesses”
If you could diagnose yourself you wouldn’t need any of those things.
“c) there are systemic issues like e.g. racism, sexism (sexism is double the issue in mental health than it is in physical) paired with the superiority complex of some doctors constantly leads to psychiatrists dismissing and downplaying their struggles and not diagnosing or writing prescriptions a patient needs.”
Oh, so now I see. You don’t even need doctors because they’re racist or something because they didn’t give you the diagnosis Google said you had.
Do you need to be officially diagnosed?
Helps with access to medication
If you could diagnose yourself you wouldn’t need any of those things.
In a perfect world everyone would have access to what they need, until then a lot of people will have to make do with what they got and if its not a licensed doctor then google will have to do.
Oh, so now I see. You don’t even need doctors because they’re racist or something because they didn’t give you the diagnosis Google said you had.
They did. I am officially diagnosed by a licensed psychiatrist with ADD and I get prescription medication for it. Still don’t know why you assume I am not. Yet still there a lot of doctors which are racist, sexist, transphobic and mis- or underdiagnose because of their biases. A white wealthy male doctor might have difficulty relating to a black poor woman and not understand the issue they’re facing. On top of systemic racism, for instance it’s well documented that, especially in psychiatry, a lot of the research is centered around USian college students, because those are the easiest test subjects to find, which makes the research rather biased.
And there are a lot of people that don’t even get to see a doctor due to poor health coverage who have to make do with what they find online.
What an absolute cold-blooded dismissal of other people life-altering struggles.
The amount of misinformation that’s out there about it.
Around 50% of TikToks about ADHD are misleading. I feel like we can expect similar results in other social media.
It’s really tiring to just exist inside your own head.
I’ve described it before as a box filled with a bunch of bouncy balls just bouncing off on every direction, off the walls, ceiling and floor, all the time. Every one of those balls is a thought, it’s really hard to hold onto just one, it’s hard to keep one once you’ve caught it.
When I’m resting usually I just put in some youtube video/TV show/audio book and play some mindless game for a while. On the outside it looks like it just played solitaire for 3 hours straight, but on the inside I’m just trying to follow one line of thought while keeping the rest of my brain occupied and quiet for a second.
That we aren’t content with our “laziness”. I hate being “lazy,” but people seem to think being lazy is a conscious choice. Another big one related to “laziness” is the fact that laziness is just the tip of the iceberg, it changes how you think, act, perceive things etc. in a way neurotypicals just can’t comprehend.
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
