This is somewhat related, but i have literally never met a single ADHD adult who wasn’t the chillest person ever. I suspect that a lifetime of learning to go easy on ourselves and set reasonable expectations for ourselves transfers pretty well to being patient and kind with others.
Ah shit. I need to learn this.
It’s an important skill, and I don’t think the NTs value it enough.
I had a nervous breakdown in university, where I had gotten a huge, highly selective merit scholarship under strict performance conditions. I had thrived - relatively speaking - in a traditional classroom, because it was so structured. I murdered tests because it was quiet, structured, and distraction free. Homework was hit or more frequently miss, I struggled socially, and although clearly not malicious my teachers gently noted that my classroom behavior could be a challenge “to the other students’ learning”, but I was brilliant enough at tests and classwork and highly motivated by my toxic dysfunctional house to get out that I had successfully gotten my golden ticket.
University, where you had to set and enforce your own structure? I couldn’t cope. I got a lot of flack on “you never learned to study”, “you just don’t know how to do really hard things, now that it isn’t easy for you”. I missed deadlines for administrative work, I forgot assignments, I struggled to remember the instructions to follow them.
I remember a day just before I hit that wall - I was in the study cubicles in the library, trying to work on some critical midterms for a challenging course. I only had the cubicle rental for a set amount of time and needed to meet my long-suffering roommate for a ride home at a given time - they were also very busy and I was not helping their life by being late to everything constantly. I checked the time to see how much longer I had and went back to writing, but realized I hadn’t actually internalized the time so I checked again. Within 10 seconds I couldn’t remember how long I had again, so I checked again - tried really hard to remember! Said it out loud, was shushed by my cube neighbor. Looked up at them - forgot time. Checked again, pen to paper to write it down - I had forgotten already.
Frustrated as hell, I got up to get a drink at the water fountain, hoping the walk and the water would “clear my head”. At this point I had forgotten I even needed to check the time. I sat back down at my cubicle, picked up my pen to start writing for this midterm, began brainstorming – I was at the water fountain again, although I didn’t remember choosing to go or any of the not-short walk there. Puzzled but not surprised, I thought “I must have been thirstier than I knew”, and made sure to get a BIG drink this time. Walked back to the cubicle. Pick up pen. “Focus”. Deep breath. Consider the themes of –
I am back at the water fountain. Hand to heaven I did not choose to be here. I do not NEED to be here. I am not thirsty. I return back to my cube without getting a drink because “I am not rewarding myself for wasting time”.
I walk back to the wrong cubicle because I have forgotten the cubicle number I rented.
I end up back at the water fountain trying to remember my cubicle by retracing my steps - it’s not like I haven’t walked that path half a dozen times today already, how did I just now forget??
I get another drink. I finally make it back to my cubicle. I start working on the midterm again, but in the-reading the prompt sheet realize I have not been working on the prompt I actually signed up for this whole time - not that I have written even a paragraph yet. Frustrated to tears after years of this constantly and feeling like a failure, my phone buzzes angrily - somehow during all of this NOTHING, 4 hours came and went, and I am now late to meet my roommate, who is threatening to leave without me.
When I finally finish the paper, it is submitted by my professor for a “best paper of the semester” award and places second.
2 months later, seeing the campus psychiatrist after my mental breakdown due to “overwhelming anxiety”, he listens to me for 45 minutes. He promises we will talk about the anxiety, which is very real and distressing, but also maybe I should consider this other thing. He takes a paper from his filing cabinet, folds over the top so I can’t see what the title is, and presents me with a questionnaire asking me to rate myself from one to five on every moral failing that has ever disappointed and frustrated me and everyone who claims to love me. I am sobbing within 5 questions – there is a name for this?? This is treatable?? I’m not just a lazy failure?? No, I have no idea what the title of this questionnaire would be.
“Adult ADHD Assessment”.
Most people, it turns out, DON’T have a childhood nickname of “space cadet” or “nutty professor”, can finish a sentence in a linear fashion, can sit relatively still, don’t interrupt their psychiatrist 5 times in 20 minutes, and can remember what they have and have not discussed in a 45 minute time window. It also turns out that being a high achiever in a strict scholarship program as a member of the honors college in a challenging major at a prestigious university with “the WORST case of ADHD I have ever seen” is not super easy, although I can’t imagine why.
Within days I am on my first day of Adderall, although I am told not to expect much at this dose. I almost forget to take it, but my roommate forcefully reminds me as we drive, and I never remembered to take the prescription out of my bag so I still have it. I walk the 15 minutes from the lot to the library.
As I pass the student union building next to the library, I realize something absolutely insane - I know where I am right now, and I remember getting here. Not that I remember every leaf or face I passed, but it isn’t like the water fountain where I only know that I went somewhere because I am now there. Despite having the same routine every day of walking to the library to rent my cubicle first thing, I often “overshoot” and accidentally walk past it and head to the buildings for my major without getting my rental and storing my bag, usually only remembering where I am and what I’m doing once I go to open the door of my first class and see that it isn’t my class in there yet - I’m supposed to be studying in the library for a few hours more.
But not on Adderall - on 10 whole mg of Adderall I successfully went right where I was supposed to be on purpose at the right time and I remembered doing it, and it was so unfamiliar an experience that I cried on a bench in the quad about it.
Random lesser known facts in no particular order:
- You really have to say my name out loud before you start talking out of the blue otherwhise I won’t hear to the whole sentence.
- Don’t break my hyperfocus unless dinner’s ready or the house is burning down. Everything else can wait.
- Dating is either the greatest thing in life or your worst nightmare. More often the second one. No way to know beforehand.
- You learn to condition yourself like a dog trainer, with treats and diversion.
- I wasn’t finished talking, I was pausing.
- No I won’t sing the whole song, just a part of the chorus or the intrumental riff. Yes, over and over for hours maybe. I know, I’m sorry.
Edit: Also, for the parents of children with ADHD get an adult with ADHD and make them interact with your child. You’ll learn more from 10 minutes of that than years of literally anything else.
Everything, but mostly that it gets its name based on what annoys others instead of what bothers us. Attention problems and Hiperactivity are just two tiny parts of ADHD. There are other much more significant symptoms
In general the disorder is related to not properly processing neurotransmitters so everything that is “managed” by neurotransmitters can be out of whack. And some folks seem to have more problems with one kind of neurotransmitters than others.
Neurotransmitters are things like Dopamine, Serotonin, Endorfine, Noradrenalin. Example of stuff that are managed by them: Movement, control of the body, stress, sleep, attention, memory, learning, inhibition, joy, pain relief.
So, just by that you can probably imagine how broad the effects of ADHD might be.
We still don’t know any way to treat the root cause effectively (neurotransmitters being “killed”). The only thing that helps, is forcing the body to generate more of those neurotransmitters, hoping that it’ll process more of them that way. That works even with different stuff. If we generate more Dopamine, the body ends up processing more of the Serotonin it already produces too. That’s why stimulants work so well at regulating us - it floods our brain with artificial stuff that end up “shielding” the natural stuff to let them do their job too.
That is also why stimulants can sometimes make us more relaxed or even sleepy - it’s not that the stimulant itself causes that, but it let’s the body finally process everything properly so it can understand that it is supposed to be sleepy.
For someone without ADHD where the neurotransmitters are processed properly, stimulants will do nothing more than stimulate.
It doesn’t manifest exactly the same in everyone with ADHD
My 10 year old has ADHD, and threads like this have helped my understanding. Thanks for sharing your experiences.
What does my daughter need from me, her Dad? She has an understanding pediatrician and a good therapist. My wife and I have given her freedom to choose how she organizes her day within reason. She has never done poorly in school and has impressive interest in art and science. We’ve been fortunate to have flexible school teachers most years. The kid has developed coping skills of her own, but I can still tell that brushing her teeth or getting in the shower or getting started on her homework are monumental struggles every. single. time. I don’t doubt that she will be fine in the long term, but I would love any advice on how to help day to day life to be a little less exhausting for her while still helping her learn how to function independently.
What are things people have said or done for you that helped you feel seen and loved?
I’ve never had any support from others into managing my adhd so I can’t say what helps for sure, but I can shed some light into it so you can try to find a way to help.
. 1. It’s very hard for us to associate work and reward unless the reward is immediate. If you tell your kid “if you clean your room we can do X this weekend”, they’ll want to clean their room, but their “body” will still see it as a pointless chore.
. 2. “out of sight, out of mind”. Imagine that people’s brains are like an internet browser, with different stuff being in different tabs. For a NT person, there are a few tabs open with the stuff that they are doing that day and anything that is not relevant at the moment is saved on bookmarks to be retrieved at another time. The active tab is the thoughts that are currently going on in the head. For someone with ADHD, this browser would not have bookmarks and in turn it keeps the tabs open forever. As an effect of that, we can no longer manually switch between tabs. Once we switch to a different tab, the old one is lost and the only way to access it again is “clicking on a link to the same page”. But we are so used to switching tabs all the time that everything loads instantly already.
Let me try to give practical examples of what I mean with this:
Say you live on the second floor of a building and you need to take the stairs to get home. Going up you notice the first step of the stairs is broken and need repairs. You make a note of it and continues going up. Thats a thought for the “stairs” tab that is currently active. You go into your house and notice your pet’s food bowl. The browser now switches to the “feed pet” tab, which makes you realize you haven’t done it that day yet. Anything about the stairs is now completely wiped from your head, as if you had never even thought about it. You go feed your pet and on the way you notice a pile of dirty clothes to wash. Your brain now switches to laundry tab and you forget anything about the pet. You start the laundry and go back to your living room, see the pet’s food bowl again and goes “oh yeah I need to feed it” - this puts the pet tab back into your head. This time you carry the bowl with you so it keeps that tab active and you can complete the task. At night you’re watching some show, commercial break hits and an ad shows someone going up some stairs so you go “fuck, the stairs” but it’s night now and you can’t do anything about it. Your wife comes in and asks what are you watching. You have no idea because you’re on the “stairs” tab now. Commercial break ends, you see one character and that puts you back on the show tab, so you instantly remember the name and the whole plot.
If you expect someone with ADHD to do something, there’s only a few ways they’ll actually do it:
- there’s immediate consequences for doing/not doing it.
- there’s something constantly reminding them they need to do it.
- they dedicate their whole day into not forgetting to do it.
That third one is what we’ve come to call “waiting mode”. It’s what we do when we have an appointment at a specific time of the day for example. We hold on to that “tab” so hard to ensure we don’t lose it, that we basically become unable to do anything else until that is done. When we’re in waiting mode, simply looking at a clock will switch the active tab back to that appointment and make us lose track of whatever else we were trying to do. Everybody eventually develops this skill (sacrificing their whole day so they don’t forget their appointment) after missing too many things - so don’t expect your kid to be able to remember to do things on their own.
. 3. Living like this is tiring. Feeling like we have no control over where our own thoughts go. It’s like there are bees inside our head constantly buzzing buzzing. And then at one point you find something that makes the bees sleep. Playing videogames, drawing, solving some logic puzzles - what it is changes for everyone, but your kid will find hobbies that will make the buzzing stop. Such a hobby will give great relief, on top of anything else a hobby gives us. But when the bees are sleeping, we are “frozen” into that tab - if left to our own devices we’ll often forget to eat, sleep and everything else. Initially you’ll have to ensure your kid doesn’t get stuck on their hobby alone. Do remember though that everytime you take your kid off of their hobby, you’re waking up the bees in their head. You may notice that their immediate reaction to it might be to be very annoyed. You’ll both have to learn to manage it, but what I recommend is trying to keep interruptions to a minimum. If the kid needs to do things, try to get them to do them all at once so they can have more ininterrupted time too. If you wake the bees every 10 minutes, it can be infuriating.
. 4. Any relief that we get from doing rewarding things or from “putting the bees to sleep” are also contained to that “tab”. If your kid spends a whole afternoon resting they’ll feel rested during that afternoon, but as soon as you ask them to do some chore, it’s as if they hadn’t rested at all. Imagine like you had a clone of yourself and you have your clone do everything you don’t like doing. It’s kinda like that, but instead of being two different beings, your kid is switching between being the one that only rests and the one that only works. Doing the same chores every day feels more and more annoying every time we do it.
. 5. Kinda repeating one of my previous posts, but anything that is stashed away somewhere will eventually be forgotten. Things that are kept in plain sight will naturally see more use. Things may end up being suddenly forgotten too. For example if the kid is learning to play guitar and they practice every day for months, then one day they don’t and it goes on for six weeks before they even remember they were learning the guitar, at which point the habit is completely broken. Habits in general are harder to form and once formed, we still need to put effort into keeping it or it may just vanish.
I could still write a lot more, but I should get going now, writing this made the bees sleep and I forgot to go to work.
The hardest years are still ahead of you. I have ADHD and was undiagnosed until junior year of high school. I was doing amazing in school until things started getting hard enough that I couldn’t just rely on my current knowledge and had to actually study. Make sure she develops strong study/organizational habits now before she gets into high school, because that’s when things can really start to fall apart. It sounds like you are already doing a great job, and more than my parents did at that age, so you might have far less of an issue.
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
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.
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.”
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
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
Ever almost shat yourself because you were focused on something else?
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.
Yes
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.
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?
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.
Meth. Anything less will only result in eventual and catastrophic failure. Source: I have ADHD and have tried everything else, several times over.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
We have excess focus just no control over its direction.
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.
