ADHD has been around for a millennia as long as humans have been around. A lot of the great hunters of the past were ADHD and that’s what made them so good at hunting because they were able to hyper focus on the survival aspect. You tell a kid growing up that they have problems in their brain instead of figuring out or helping them become their best selves is going to cause problems for that kid growing up. People just need to learn to love themselves.
People always pretend like hyper focus is a super power when it's the opposite, since you can't choose what you're focused on. I'll have a deadline for a paper tomorrow and instead I'll be researching some bs for 17 hours straight, I won't get up to take a leak, I won't eat and drink, I won't even turn around to close the window when I'm freezing.
And yes, sometimes I'll do more in that time than someone else could've done, but nowhere near enough to compensate for all the times I couldn't do anything. Hyper focus is like turning off your pain before doing something painful, it makes things possible that weren't possbile before, but it's also just a matter of time until you do more damage than good.
The real reason why people with ADHD did well enough historically is not because they had strengths that others didn't, it's because ADHD simply isn't as detrimental in an environment with fewer levels of abstraction.
If you're hungry you go get food. How did people do that then? They went to the food. How do people do it today? They go to school for years and do stuff that has nothing to do with food, then they apply for a job, and do a lot of paperwork and theatrics to get the job, and then they go do work that has absolutely nothing to do with food, and then a month later they get paid, and then they go to the food. A brain with ADHD literally cannot anitcipate the ultimate reward, that's why we do bad now and didn't before.
If you constantly focus on the bad, you’re going to get more bad. If you focus on what’s good, you’ll get more good. Learn to love yourself. Help those who are younger and struggling, find a better path. There are plenty of very successful people who are ADHD. That which is ADHD is not the problem. The problem is as humans, we tend to focus on the bad, instead of the good. Again, learn to love yourself.
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u/royinraver 4d ago
ADHD has been around for a millennia as long as humans have been around. A lot of the great hunters of the past were ADHD and that’s what made them so good at hunting because they were able to hyper focus on the survival aspect. You tell a kid growing up that they have problems in their brain instead of figuring out or helping them become their best selves is going to cause problems for that kid growing up. People just need to learn to love themselves.