Mules can see their hind legs in their vision, which is why they were apparently stubborn AF, because they were like, "you dumb human, I'm not putting my leg there, I'll fall" when crossing narrow passages & shit like that. A fun fact for your day.
Horses can remember small details on trails they've used, so they can become startled if a bush is missing, or a branch is missing from a tree. They have insane memory, and pay attention to every little thing, but cannot remember your birthday...kinda like people with adhd.
Poop fact #1: Of the 25% that's solid, the biggest component is bacteria, with the rest being a mix of indigestible food matter, fat, inorganic substances, and protein. Your poop is (usually) brown because of the way bacteria work on bilirubin, a pigment in bile that's the end result of dead red blood cells
This sounds like me to a T. If there is something I TRULY want to work on, I will be laser focused, but otherwise my brain is all over the place. No wonder I always have 8 instances of chrome open at a time with 40 tabs each. When I go back through them I just think to myself, how the fuck did I get from landscaping to the best southern bbq rib rub.
Maybe I should go see a doctor and get something for this. I always just feel like I'll be dismissed rather than have the doctor actually consider I may actually have ADHD.
I couldn't focus worth a shit in university unless it was a subject I cared about. I leave work until the last minute even though I know better than that by now (I'm 35 now). And I can't sit down and read a book because 10 pages in I realize I haven't been paying attention to the book because my mind is elsewhere but my eyes just kept on going.
ADHD doesn't just mean you "can't pay attention." You could actually be more prone to hyperfocusing on the things you "like", becoming absorbed and then burned out by them in a short amount of time.
Oh I know exactly what you're saying. I definitely CAN focus on things. I actually find that when there is a project I'm working on or something I want to do, it basically takes over my life. Currently working on landscaping my yard and building a cafe racer motorcycle......ALL I can think about is this stuff even though there is other stuff that is more important to take care of, but somehow it doesn't seem to matter. I obsess over stuff that I care about, and everything else just falls through the cracks until the very last second or until after it's too late.
I am the exact same way, always have been. I'm 25 now so not quite as old as you but all throughout my school career and now into my professional career it is still the same. If something falls into that category of "I truly want to work on this", it gets my full undivided attention and I fucking explore everything even remotely close to it. I study all the material, I watch all the videos, and I follow thru and do the thing. But any other category it's just like mehhhhhh i'll slowly work on it, push it til the last possible minute and constantly multitask on other things.
That's absolutely one of the most defining characteristics of ADHD. It's also something that's oddly similar to OCD. I often wonder how the the disorders may be related and why I rarely see anyone talking about that.
This is my life, and at times it makes me hate myself for it. I really am starting to think I need to see a Dr. of sorts to see what/if there is anything I can take or do to try and fix or at the least lessen this burden, though Im not entire sure where to begin. I feel like its starting to affect my work life and personal life to an extent.
But that's such a generic feeling. Like it's so prevalent that it might as well just be a cognitive personality style for people. It's like a personality paradox.
I've always seen mental faculties like a river that's always going to take the path of least resistance while being consistent. It's in flux, and they aren't all quite the same.
Mental illness, comparatively, would be an interruption, stagnation, or pollution of the stream.
If the river flows east, and you want to sail north, the problem might not be the river.
But if the river is dead, runs dry, or teeming with filth then something's wrong.
ADHD has always struck me as an issue in the former scenario, largely, but not entirely.
This was me in college. Left with 100+ credit's for multiple majors. Would 4.0 a course then fail the following course.
Hoping that coming back 5 years later things will have changed.
The cool thing about it though is that you know a lot of random things that other people don't. People with ADHD have very unique personalities because they are made up of a lot of interests.
The only question though is how much time we were interested in a subject before we moved on to something else, so sometimes our knowledge on something can be superficial, but we're usually knowledgeable or informed on most things.
This is exactly how my ex was too. He had really bad ADHD and I didn't realize it would have an impact on the relationship when he mentioned he had it.
He would hold off on school work until the last minute and, on top of constantly being stressed, he would have no time for me because he would wait to do everything during the only times we could actually see each other. He would spend one full day making one little poster I could finish in 15 minutes. He would always forget about my birthday and holidays. He would repeat the same things I told him, as if I never said them to begin with. He would tell me the same interesting and unusual facts over and over again. If he managed to get engrossed in something then all of his time was directed at that one thing, and he would spout out random stuff about it constantly. He was always freaking out about the future but would do nothing about it.
I was always there to help him with the stress, anger, and hard times. And he let me go regardless of me sticking with him through how bad his ADHD really was.
I've been on the other side of this exact relationship. This was heartbreaking to read.
The relationship ended semi-mutually due to problems related to an international border that ultimately made living together impossible. But, when we did live together, my problems strongly contributed to our problems.
I'm almost 30 and I still can't do the necessary things to start a career going.
He said I deserved much more, but he later admitted he broke it off for selfish reasons. A relationship was just too much for him to handle since he struggled to just handle daily tasks. My friends always said I was the most patient and forgiving person though, so I never understood how I could have added stress when I thought I was eliminating it. I did all I could, but I hope he is able to find someone as patient again.
It adds stress because we know the things we do hurt you, and if we love you, stressing out about what we might do to you just compounds the rest of the stress, even if we know you won't mind or be supportive etc. A lot of the stress comes from overthinking and hypothetical situations
Yea he did think he was making me miserable. And the overthinking and hypothetical situations are bringing back some memories. It makes a lot more sense now knowing his ADHD played a huge part in everything that went wrong.
This is exactly me. I can recall random bits of information in meetings but as soon as my supervisor asks me to summarize a meeting I just got out of I just sit there with a stupid look on my face because I can never remember the specific details.
I also suck at telling stories or jokes because I get hung up on the absolute stupidest details and am constantly fumbling over my thoughts or trying to come up with the perfect word when any number of them would do.
This is me. I hate it and love it. I was diagnosed years ago and I pretended it was bullshit for a whIle. Amphetamines aren't a sustainable fix though and that is irritating because I would just like to get rid of my ADD. I wish I could do things. Inattentive type is so hard to explain. It's like your brain is in purgatory for half of the day.
Your comment somehow really blows my mind. I was diagnosed with Auditory Memory Processing Disorder as a child and ADHD in High School. I never attributed it to my executive function. I know a TON of random shit.... Sometimes I think I must come off as a know it all, bc I'm able to chime in during any conversation with random facts regarding whatever subject is being discussed. Never thought to connect the two.
Yeah, all that bouncing around on the internet ends up making you too knowledgeable sometimes in conversations. I've learned that people end up feeling insecure if you come off as too intelligent. Most people operate at an A to B level, they don't go beyond that and make connections between things, or ask "what if?" People with ADHD tend to be good at seeing how things fit together in a larger context, and can develop relationships between ideas or concepts well because they're equipped with a lot of random knowledge.
I think part of it is because we move along branches in search of stimulating information, so we learn how things are connected more broadly so we can navigate information and ideas in search of something new or exciting.
Other people tend to live inside their brains locally, going from one task to another. ADHD people venture all over the place, like we're flying through the atmosphere of our imaginations and any stimuli available to us.
Oh I completely understand, but seriously though I find myself saying stuff like, "alright we're going to fucking get this done.....no messing around. Focus focus focus." Then I go to get back on the task, get distracted, and realize I've spend 45 fucking minutes not doing what I was actually supposed to be doing.
My short term memory is garbage too. People will tell me something and I make a point to try and remember it, then when they ask about it, I'm like, "GOD DAMMIT I forgot again"
Do you know how many times I've left my lunch in the fridge or on the floor by my shoes on my way to work? Seriously this doesn't feel normal.
edit: I also wanted to mention the book thing again. Most people could sit down and read a novel in a weekend if they had to, even if they weren't into the book/genre/whatever. For me......that sounds like a nightmare and I honestly don't think I would be able to do it.
hey, go see a doctor! the feeling that someone may think you're lazy instead of diagnosing you with adhd is normal—ive got adhd and most of us have felt that way. from what you described, it sounds very likely that you've got it too. you deserve to get help sorting your brain out, it'll change your whole life.
I'm going to make it a point to see someone about this soon. Hopefully I can turn things around. There are some many things I feel like I've missed out on, but I always just thought I had a shit memory and I was lazy. .....not to mention the guilt for not living up to what I feel is my full potential.
I always just thought I had a shit memory and I was lazy. .....not to mention the guilt for not living up to what I feel is my full potential.
I call this, "High self confidence, low self esteem" and to me it is one of the biggest hallmarks of living with undiagnosed ADD/ADHD. The feeling of knowing you CAN do something but hating yourself because you also 'know' that you're 'too lazy' and 'irresponsible' to get it done.
Knowing now that my brain is physically and functionally different than that of someone without ADD has made the most enormous difference in my life.
Yeah that was me before I got diagnosed. I've never had any problems in life then suddenly I started going backwards in progress at work. It was a comfort when I got diagnosed. Mind you I still have issues with the "just do it, why can't I just get it done." at work, but I currently hate what I do and am not challenged at all. Which I discovered is my main motivation.
Also that test they give you made me feel like an idiot child. I had no idea what I was in for, or what is typically. The administrator ended up stopping early and diagnosed me before it was sent off for the "official" results.
So if I may ask, what do you find changed. Like, did you notice your personality changed? Did you lose any sharpness or creativity? I work in design and NEED my problem-solving and creativity, but I also do some photography work and am worried I'll lose my eye for something like that.
nah, stimulants do have some annoying side effects but losing creativity isn't one of them for me. it feels like putting on glasses for my brain when i take them. everything is clearer, crisper, makes more sense to me. without them i feel stunted, creatively—like any ideas in my head are going to get washed away in seconds by another more distracting but much less important thought. like i can "feel" an idea but can't conceptualize or articulate it whatsoever. like i WANT to create but can't focus on the most open ended low pressure creative tasks. i don't mean to take away from anyone who has suffered a loss of creativity when on meds, but i think it's not as much of a problem as it's made out to be.
i did a podcast interview about adhd once, talked a lot about my experience with meds and getting diagnosed. if you're interested in listening, PM me and i'll link you! (but if you have an attention span of about 1 minute and podcasts aren't your thing, i understand :)
Did you have any issues with being dismissed? That's my biggest worry. I feel like I've always kind of known my brain worked a little differently than most, and I've joked around about it, but I'm afraid a doctor is just going to say, "Just get some more sleep and exercise, that's all it is"
In university, I went for an assessment since I just couldn't focus. The woman in charge of screening said she had never seen anyone as ADD (non-hyper) as me. The psychologist ruled I wasn't ADD primarily because I didn't struggle in early school (despite EVERY report card saying that my mind was always elsewhere).
OMFG you have just described me, in addition to the browser tabs, in order for me to focus while I am working, I have to have some streaming video going on too. I never watch the show, its just I can focus better with it going on.
I usually have some sort of video or podcast on in the background at work because I find if it's too quiet, my mind wanders even faster.
To sleep, I usually put on my TV with a rerun of something I've already watched just so my brain can half-focus on that instead of jumping all over the plan and never letting me get any sleep.
I often wake up in the morning feeling like garbage even though I've had 7-8 and sometimes even more sleep. I wonder if this is related.
Same. I had a professor explain that to me. It was that ability that made me think I didn't have ADHD for awhile but he thing is those with add ADHD often CAN focus. Super fucking well, likeyou said and I know but we have to care about it. If I even slightly don't give a shit, it's not going to happen.
Yeah hyper focus can be very intense. I think it's a reason so many of us do very well at jobs where the shit hits the fan such as emergency services, fire fighters, intense crazy deadlines, stuff with Adrenalin. We can be great in a pinch. I'm sure in the days long before desk jobs when tribal warfare and hunting were common we were champions...farming though probably not so much.
LOL, this made me laugh! No shit! I'd be a horrible gardener or farmer back in colonial times.
I would almost bet that John Wilkes Booth had ADHD. He was an actor, had fabulous hair, was an assassin, and was incredibly stylish for the time period. He was good at fencing, was a horseman, was described as an "indifferent student" who was considered smart.
Yeah I've tended to think of it as variance disorder. We can be Incredibly on. And that fools people around us who think we should be able to accomplish this all the time. I'm lucky my executive functioning is okay. But yeah I'm an inattentive type and I definitely miss things. My mom is a semi hoarder and when I had to move home for a bit it was killing my ADHD. I could never find anything once I set it down, it would just disappear into the mess. I tried to explain to her once that the way she lived was like having someone not only fail to supply access ramps but also having them kick my wheelchair constantly.
That's why I like to call adhd variable attention syndrome. Because one thing can just in trance me. And others I no matter how I try I can't get going.
This is me. I can't focus for more than 3 minutes on pretty much anything, but when I'm passionate about something I could work on it for hours on end.
Same here. Anything physical, right in front of me? I'm the best there ever was. I'll outperform a lot of people.
Anything administrative that requires remembering to do paperwork, call important people, schedule appointments, and remember to go to the appointments? Good luck. Sometimes I can nail it down, most of the time I simply forget as I have moved on to something present and in front of me.
Fuck yes! I have hyper focus issues badly. Which sucks because I have switched my college major so many times because of it. So far, Chemistry has not fallen into my hyper focus cycle, so I'm hopeful i make it to the end of this degree.
So this is an actual thing in ADHD, it's called hyperfocus. There are usually a few things that a person can devote all of their attention to, but won't even notice others calling their name, or anything else not having to do with what they are focused on.
Same. Either I hyper focus and GET SHIT DONE or am completely out of tune and my life crumbles. My meds and understanding friends/family/work/etc help me maintain a healthy balance.
And for me, all the medication does is make various tasks 'interesting' to me that normally wouldn't be. In fact, I would argue that the medication makes me more easily distractible in the sense that it makes everything else also look appealing.
But yeah. All in all, I would be a way less productive worker if I didn't have my medication because I just wouldn't give a shit about projects and requests. Stimulants allow me to immerse myself in my work. They're miracle drugs.
So much this. My Horse is a fucking thoroughbred, although if he is not interested in racing, he puts himself out to pasture and could give 2 fucks about anything more than a few minutes at a time.
I refuse to medicate myself and rather power through it. I find breaking up my large tasks into small tasks fixes that issue. So even if my horse is out to pasture, I can convince him to gallop small distances.
100% if I want to learn something I can obsess on it for months. If not, it's impossible for me to pay attention. While I read material, I day dream, I'll have to read a paragraph 4-5x to comprehend it fully. And also, I lose Interest in something as quickly as I gain it. My latest thing is flying, I'll probably stick at it until I fly a few times then get bored and move on to the next thing. highly unlikely I'll see it through to a certificate. Also can only read something or play a game once and then it's dead to me after.
For me it's like my horse is always gallopping. If I don't put a ton of effort into into guiding it it will end up running down. The wrong path and I have to circle back to find where we went turned off. Medication makes my horse run even faster but also improves my ability to keep up with it most of the time. But if I "miss my turn" I can end up way more lost than if I were unmedicated, leading to a lot of "wait, why did I walk into this room?" Moments as my mind starts thinking about something else in the mental downtime of walking between rooms.
My horse is interested in a lot of different tasks. It's not that he loses interest in the task at hand, but, suddenly, another task presents itself and he insists we go work on that. And then another, and another. Some tasks are interesting, some are urgent, but they all lose precedence to the next task that comes to mind.
I always said focusing (for me) was like trying to hold tightly onto a wet bar of soap, I'd have it for a moment then it would shoot out of my hand and I'd have to chase it down, and by the time I got it back I was already behind, then I'd just lose it again
My parents never remotely understood that concept, so it took my 7.5 years to graduate college
Also I'd often lose focus without even realizing, like in class I'd be listening then suddenly catch myself staring into space and singing an old sitcom theme in my head and I'd think "wait then the hell did that happen? it's been 10 minutes? fuuuuck!"
This sounds so fucking familiar it's like I wrote it myself. I'll just drift off and not even realize I'm not doing what I'm supposed to be doing. FUCKKK
And when you do try to focus, you end up focusing on how hard it is to focus instead of focusing on the teacher (my middle school experience) and realize "shit, I stopped paying attention again." And on and on.
Can I ask what motivated you to go to college and what your degree is in?
My son will be a junior in high school next year and is ADHD. School's always been a struggle because of his condition--I've heard it described that being in the classroom is like being in a cage. If that's the way you felt, then as a parent, I'm really curious why you decided to further school. We're hoping he does the same, or finds something he's interested in pursuing. Thanks.
The bar of soap analogy is really spot on, because it takes so much concentration and effort to hold the "soap" (focus) that it actually completely overrides your ability to actually focus on what you're TRYING to make yourself focus on.
Every time I've tried to force myself to "focus" on what a person is saying/doing/thing I need to pay attention to, I end up focusing way harder on some bizarre random detail and suddenly I'm totally lost. Like, I sure as hell didn't catch what the person was saying, but I memorized the shape of their teeth and lips as they spoke and THAT was what ended up drawing my focus instead of the information I was actually trying to pay attention to.
Except when your horse starts to stray off the path you've told it to go, often you won't even notice until you're already far down that other path. Sort of a "What was I doing again?"
Reddit is legitimately the worst thing to happen to people with ADHD yet.
At the same time, though, it's also the best thing to ever happen to people with ADHD, and that's why it's the worst thing.
It's the absolute perfect dopamine machine. I spend more time on subs like /r/gaming, /r/movies, /r/television, etc than I do actually playing games or watching movies or TV or whatever. I'm distracted from my distractions.
So you think "Well, I'll delete my account and cut myself off." But the issue is reddit is actually incredibly useful in certain ways and it's helped you a great deal with other things. It's a double edged sword.
Have you joined r/adhd and subscribed to YouTube's "How to ADHD"? The creator of How to ADHD is engaged to a guy who didn't get diagnosed until mid 30s either. They'll soon be doing a special about life as a late-diagnosed person. :)
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Ps: welcome to the Cool Kids Club! :D one of us. One of us. One of us.
Ah! That's so fun for the munchkin. He's got someone just like him to share all the ADHD secrets with...! :)
Best of luck to yall. I don't have any spawn, but I definitely think growing up w/ a diagnosed parent would have made life a lot smoother.
Don't get me wrong though, mom did a fantastic job, but I definitely owe her a cabin in the mountains for all she had to endure. X'D.
Yes. It is. At the same time, it's tough not to look back at failed relationships, career ventures, etc and think "what if I had been diagnosed earlier?"
It's like there's a mourning process for what/who you might have been. I also sometimes get down on myself for not having more self-compassion when I was younger.
When I catch myself feeling that way, I usually end back up realizing that if things had been different then, I wouldn't be who I am now - and that any of those changes would have meant missing out on so many of the people & experiences in my life that I love so much. The "what if" game can go both ways.
Treatment helps with some stuff - but I still find myself repeating patterns. The difference is at least now, for example, I know, "ok - I am super enthusiastic about XYZ right now, I love it, it's the best thing ever, it's life changing, it's my new favorite thing above all other favorite things.....and in 3 days or a week or a month, I'll have moved on and have a new favorite thing". Somehow it not being "my fault" makes it easier for me to "own" and have a sense of humor about it - instead of how I used to just get embarrassed about going "all in" on something, only to never follow through.
How did you manage to write all that stuff about me?? My timeframe is a bit longer, usually 6 months to a year of HEAVY immersion.
That's actually the cool/bad thing about Reddit. You found a new hobby? Here are a few hundred people who know everything you need to know and talk about it constantly!
Never put two and two together, but you are absolutely right! I always go back and check to see how many upvotes my comments get; really had no rational reason why but dopamine definitely makes sense.
I have an addictive personality, so Reddit just further feeds that.
Awe shit we are just like Instagram hoes. We think we are better but we are all the same, we just don't have big asses or pretty faces. Or we are too arrogant.
I delete my accounts every now and again, this one is due being toasted too tbh. I recognised that I was having fun just getting the reply notification rather than enjoying the discussion.
get up to fill glass of water. If I didn't have a glass in hand, I might get to the kitchen and forget why I walked there. Yep. I've actually sat back down and been "aw man, I was going to the bathroom" and somehow did something else instead.
I need to go do the dishes! Oh look the trash is full I will take that out then do the dishes. When I get back in the house I hear the dryer stop so hey gotta get those cloths out. Start that, I gotta pee, Oh now I'm thirsty, oh shit the dishes are still not done. Wait wasn't I going to scoop the cat boxes?
Yes I understand I can make lists and I CAN stay on task but it is really damn hard sometimes. Eventually 3/4 of everything gets done. But it takes me a lot longer than it should.
One time, my wife woke up and went to the freezer to get some ice cubes and then yelled "why is your underwear in the freezer?"
That's when I realized why everything felt so drafty to my undercarriage. I had showered, then I went to get the laundry to get dressed, then I fixed myself a glass of ice water to take my Adderall with and sat down at my computer. I forgot a step. Thankfully I didn't have to work that day.
That is hilarious! And sounds just like my son--16 years old, and ADHD. I always joke that he'd make a terrible criminal cause he'd leave evidence strewn all over the crime scene.
I would say I have decent will power, but specifying how much energy trying to concentrate on just someone talking to you face to face is spot on. So I can blend in with all of my peers the first round, but if it comes up again in a short amount of time is where the ADHD crowd stands out.
So I would describe that as running laps. We are all in gym class, and the coach tells you and your peers to run a lap. I can force myself to do it and end up with everyone else from the coaches perspective, but if when we finish the coach says "run another lap now," some of us just haven't even recovered our breath while others have. In other words, "choosing" to focus on something when needed seems to be a pure will-power issue to me. But the amount of energy it takes to do so is where the actual disorders come into play.
I feel like I have a natural state where I can let myself be "distracted" by whatever I want to do, which usually involves getting hyper focused on things and going down different rabbit holes, but whenever I actually have to do something like study or even follow through on one of my personal projects it's like the energy required to do that becomes a finite resource unless of course it's the night before a deadline and suddenly I kick into gear while kicking myself for how much easier it would've been had I started sooner and split up the work...
We say we're exhausted but meanwhile we're over here doing jumping jacks while bench pressing instead of running, while some people are legitimately exhausted by the effort the actual task took, the coach thinks we are just assholes who refuse to listen to him. I mean to say its not the actual task that causes the mental effort, its doing one specific task. I know you probably already meant the running to be 'focusing on one thing', but I just wanted to elaborate.
Just this weekend I bought $25 worth of Chinese food, ate like 1/3 of it and closed it up to put in the fridge. Something distracted me. 6 hours later I look over and see it still sitting there and I realize I just let 2 meals go bad on my desk. I was so mad. I need to start medicating myself on my days off.
The amount of food I waste is ridiculous. at the grocery store, "Oh man that steak looks delicious, I can't wait to BBQ it tomorrow" A week later I go in the fridge and find a steak starting to turn green because I've been going out with friends or ordered a pizza. FUCK.
When I buy meat, I freeze it all except for what I plan to eat one day at a time. And if something comes up and I know I can't make it for a few days, I'll throw it back in the freezer again (although you shouldn't do this infinitely, I try to only re-freeze things once).
For produce, I have a day where I just cut a week's worth of things up and have them ready in sealed glass containers. I find that I am much more likely to incorporate veggies into my meals if they're ready to go (throw them in with an omelette, stir fry, tacos, etc.).
Pots boiled dry on the stove, food found in the microwave the next day, heck I even forgot to pickup a bag of groceries after setting it down in the elevator and didn't notice until my wife asked me where the frozen pizzas were.
Once I forgot to put away three bags of frozen food we had bought for the cabin. Just set the groceries down and left the room and it never even crossed my mind that they even existed.
People without ADHD love to say "Oh we all get distracted!", but seriously, people with ADHD will walk away from the thing they're currently doing and forget it ever happened. I've gone in to the kitchen to make breakfast and spent 2 hours cleaning the microwave. If I didn't have a family that kept me on track I'd probably starve.
what medication works for you? Which ADHD subtype?
I am hopefully going to get medication within the next month. Damn paperwork involved in getting diagnosed, treated, reimbursed is definitely the hardest thing. My social life had been devastated because no one respects me anymore since graduating from a pretty advanced degree and yet not being able to take off from there and live a secure life.
my kiddo is ADHD inattentive type and while it mostly effects his school work, he still takes it on weekends and holidays because he still needs to be able to function and be responsible on days off.
I too suffer from ADHD. The absolute best description of it I ever saw was from a commenter on reddit. And I've always saved it to share with people that are struggling dealing with a child who has ADHD. Longwinded but an EXCELLENT read for those interested. He even gave great examples on how to deal with ADHD. I must apologize I never intended to repost this so I did not save OPs username.
ADHD is about having broken filters on your perception.
Normal people have a sort of mental secretary that takes the 99% of irrelevant crap that crosses their mind, and simply deletes it before they become consciously aware of it. As such, their mental workspace is like a huge clean whiteboard, ready to hold and organize useful information.
ADHD people... have no such luxury. Every single thing that comes in the front door gets written directly on the whiteboard in bold, underlined red letters, no matter what it is, and no matter what has to be erased in order for it to fit.
As such, if we're in the middle of some particularly important mental task, and our eye should happen to light upon... a doorknob, for instance, it's like someone burst into the room, clad in pink feathers and heralded by trumpets, screaming HEY LOOK EVERYONE, IT'S A DOORKNOB! LOOK AT IT! LOOK! IT OPENS THE DOOR IF YOU TURN IT! ISN'T THAT NEAT? I WONDER HOW THAT ACTUALLY WORKS DO YOU SUPPOSE THERE'S A CAM OR WHAT? MAYBE ITS SOME KIND OF SPRING WINCH AFFAIR ALTHOUGH THAT SEEMS KIND OF UNWORKABLE.
It's like living in a soft rain of post-it notes.
This happens every single waking moment, and we have to manually examine each thought, check for relevance, and try desperately to remember what the thing was we were thinking before it came along, if not. Most often we forget, and if we aren't caught up in the intricacies of doorknob engineering, we cast wildly about for context, trying to guess what the fuck we were up to from the clues available.
Perhaps you're getting an idea of why we have the task-management skills of a five-year-old - and why we tend to have an "oh fuck" expression on our face whenever you interrupt us in the middle of something.
On the other hand, we're extremely good at working out the context of random remarks, as we're effectively doing that all the time anyway. I've lost count of the times my wife has said "Hang on... how the hell did you know what I was talking about?"
We rely heavily on routine, and 90% of the time get by on autopilot. You can't get distracted from a sufficiently ingrained habit, no matter what useless crap is going on inside your head... unless someone goes and actually disrupts your routine. I've actually been distracted out of taking my lunch to work, on several occasions, by my wife reminding me to take my lunch to work. What the? Who? Oh, yeah, will do. Where was I? um... briefcase! Got it. Now keys.. okay, see you honey!
Quite often, if there's too much input, we can get kind of overwhelmed, like a new puppy surrounded by excited children. It's a flustery, unpleasant state to be in, halfway between excitement and anxiety, with no emotional component either way, but all the pacing and twitchiness of both.
Also, there's a diminishing-returns thing going on when trying to concentrate on what you might call a non-interactive task. Entering a big block of numbers into a spreadsheet, for instance. Keeping focused on the task takes exponentially more effort each minute, for less and less result. If you've ever held a brick out at arm's length for an extended period, you'll know the feeling. That's why reddit, for instance, is like crack to us - it's a non-stop influx of constantly-new things, so we can flick from one to the next after only seconds. It's better/worse than pistachios.
The exception to this is a thing we get called hyperfocus. Occasionally, when something just clicks with us, we can get ridiculously deeply drawn into it, and NOTHING can distract us. We've locked our metaphorical office door, and we're not coming out for anything short of a tornado. I've sat reading a book on a deathly-quiet country train platform, and not noticed a honking great train pull in about a foot from my nose, until someone tapped me on the shoulder. The same can happen with certain video games - what the fuck, it was light, now it's 4am.
Medication - ritalin, in my case, takes the edge off. It reduces the input, it tones down the fluster, it makes it easier to ignore trivial stuff, and it increases the maximum focus-time. Imagine steadicam for your skull.
It also happens to make my vision go a little weird and loomy occasionally, and can reduce appetite a bit.
Ritalin (non-SR) is in and out of your system within 4 hours - it comes on in half an hour or so, and fades out fairly slowly.
Is this of any help?
EDIT: Holy crap, so many awesome responses, and holy crap, 8 gilds, and in general... holy crap!
A couple of common responses:
Pomodoro technique for productivity, google it.
High-stimulation, reactive tasks (Quake 3 is perfect) to relax. What you need is not less input, as you just bounce off all your inner thoughts, but to stop trying to filter.
Personal whiteboard, in reach of your chair, for task management. Nobody else to touch.
Don't overload the short-term memory of an ADDer. Give them a string of tasks, and they'll forget all but the last one. Give them a list, and ask for their full attention when they can give it, instead of asking them to pause for your request.
If we are managing to be productive, don't for god's sake interrupt us unless it's urgent. You can totally derail us for five times as long as the interruption/break itself. We'll get coffee later, but many thanks for the offer.
I resonate most with your explanation, so can I ask you a question? do you think it impacted your creativity? I feel when I trying to stay on task and cant, is when I come up with most my "creative" ideas
Just as an FYI on the subject of creativity, when I was on medication for my ADHD I lost my creativity in exchange for the ability to stay on task. I didn't notice it at first but after 9 months I could play guitar better than before but I couldn't create music like I could before.
I found it did wonders for my creativity overall because creatively I almost think in puzzles, i piece together ideas and thoughts and it took a while for that to transfer to music, since ive mostly written music by feel, but as I struggled to write music i realized my issue was that i limited myself to that sense of "feel" and explained for myself why i would always feel so much writers block.learning that helped me focus more on my songwriting and building a song over just letting one sort of pop in my head.
It's a hard switch when youre used to something feeling so organic and just spontaneous, but that helps me a lot.
I really appreciate this. I write music in progression, I start with something that "feels" good and then build off of it. Once I was on medication I couldn't create that first step anymore. However changing the way I approach creating music may help with this. Thanks!
This. With meds, I can follow a idea through the not fun parts. Instead is having a fleeting idea and it going away. I'm forty and just got diagnosed and have a new job. I have to teach myself pretty much everything I need to know to do my job well. Not only am I able, but it triggers ideas and instead of assuming I'll come back to it (never was able), now I'm able to fully chase it down. I'm already making an impact where I work because of my curiosity and ability to get shit done.
Precisely. It's a long process. I'm still figuring things out a couple of years after. The difficult thing is defeating those bad habits, lack of motivation that still creep up, but it's freeing to be able to follow through on things you always knew you were capable of but just couldn't quite stick with long enough to do.
This is exactly it. I always hear people say that medication kills their creativity but for me it was the exact opposite. It like helped me harness my creativity to actually create things that I wanted to create rather than just having random doodles instead of class notes. It's definitely a different approach because I need to put it together but its still there and if anything I can use it way more effectively. Idono. I'm glad you feel the same.
Edit: before the "feel" would guide the creativity so things would just happen. But now I guide the creativity so I get control over what gets created.
How do you get away from writing by feel? I think i do this too and have writers block problems, but I don't think I understand what you're saying you changed.
Random tidbit here, but the inventor of LSD was convinced that in low doses it would be used to medicate ADHD-like disorders. I wonder how that would affect creativity...
Well in low doses it does act very much like a classic psychostimulant, and the creative aspects at higher doses do have limited research support, so it wouldn't surprise me if it were pretty effective
Our brains want to connect the dots and make the "story" make sense. So if I'm thinking about Jesus Sermon on the mount and my brain horse decides to think about having a cooking show then I'll look for a way to connect those two things. Which is how I ended up doing a sermon pretending I was a chef doing a cooking show a couple weeks ago. This I believe is how my own ADHD creativity works. Often times I find a unique way of connecting very different ideas.
My brain isn't inhibited by my own need to focus on something specific. So I just ride it and often it takes me fun "creative" places.
Inattentive is associated with a greater capacity for abstract thinking. ie: details are stripped away to form abstract connections between things. Hyperactive is more your thoughts bounce from one to the next which can allow you to make quick associations between things. ie: "sees a tutu - why are tutus pink? girls like pink. girls like ponies. OMG PINK PONIES!!! I wonder what's for lunch..."
To add to the analogy train, my psychiatrist when I was a kid had a good one.
Most people view the world like they are looking at a TV. They can change the channels and watch different things, but they still only watch one show at a time. You have a wall of 20 TVs in front of you, and normally they are all tuned to different channels. Occasionally, they will all be on one channel, which is when you become hyper-focused to the point where the rest of the world doesn't exist. What you need to learn how to do is use all those TVs to your advantage, without dealing with the chaos of 20 different shows at once. You need to learn how to control your remote to get it down to 2 or 3 shows."
It was really helpful to envision that while learning meditation techniques to practice and strengthen my ability to focus. Medication was absolutely critical, but meditation let me actually become more functional from day to day by retraining my mind's chaos.
I'd argue it's less that you have an inattentive horse, but rather, you're riding a tiger. It goes where it wants, when it wants, but when it DOES focus, hot damn.
I am diagnosed with the opposite type. And the problem here is that i am too focused. It annoys people, including myself. I lose focus whenever there is a screen in front of me. Luckily that's almost never!
this conference is actually quite long and has several videos. He explains adhd from every angle it can affect your life. I have pretty bad ADHD, even went to a school that specialized in teaching children with ADD in high school. The guy in these videos was able to put to words and explain problems that no other teacher or doctor seem to understand, or at the very least explain to me. It really opened my eyes to problems i had been facing my whole life.
I usually describe it as magnets. Concentrating on The Thing requires us to smoosh together two magnets that want to repel one another. Most people have fairly weak magnets, holding them together isn't too much of a strain. My magnets are fucking huge and powerful, so it takes all of my strength to pinch and twist and squeeze and hold and force them together, and it never lasts long, and it's exhausting. Most people just think that I suck at holding magnets together, but I just have busted ass magnets.
For me, the main problem is sustained effort. As Dr. Barkley's further videos explain, humans have a set of brain functions that make us able to "regulate" the cerebellum at the very back of the brain, which, among other things, control gross motor movement, but also makes us act. Now the cerebellum is hardwired to react (or "act") on sensory stimulation, impulse, body information (heat, hunger, cold, sleepiness, sexual arousal, emotions, etc.), which is about as far as animal behavior go.
Now, humans have a highly advanced frontal lobe that intellectually can understand very abstract concepts such as time, distant rewards, pros and cons and consequences that might lie very far down the "causal" line, but without any system that can turn that into regulation of the activity of the cerebellum, a human would be compelled to act only on impulse and sensory information that comes in the present.
And this is where people with ADHD are more impaired than others. I can make plans, I can understand the consequences of my actions, but for some reason, I consequently fail to act very well in regards to them. It often shows itself as "lacking self-discipline" or just a downright pathological inactivity and passivity. I can spend weeks literally thinking about something that needs to be done almost every waking hour, yet somehow fail to do it, even if it's a minor thing such as wiping my desk of dust.
That combined with me having a pretty lethargic personality by nature, has led me to waste years of my life doing... Nothing... Like nothing at all! I'm not the quirky, spontaneous, charming, ADHD stereotype. I'm the tired, distant, aloof, downright lazy guy who just can't seem to "apply" himself. I think I make a very serious and distant impression, and that usually get people's expectations on my performance up, which I rarely fail to disappoint.
I often just kinda "forget" about friends and that I have to put some effort into keeping my friendships up, which have left me kinda alone during parts of my life.
For years I had no idea what was wrong with me, a few years ago it had gotten so far that I was casually and cynically thinking of ending my own life because I couldn't stand the shame of becoming a burden on my family and society. Luckily and ironically enough, I lacked the motivation to actually go through with my suicidal thoughts.
I was diagnosed almost a year ago. At the age of 26, I hope my life can finally begin...
That was all the self-pity I've allowed for myself for today. Now I'll go and do something fun.
That's a great explanation. I have been seeing a therapist for a couple of years now, and I always said that my brain was like having a giant tank of fish that is my thoughts. I don't feel in control of which fish comes to the surface, and when I'm in an environment where I need to hold a serious conversation it feels as if I see that fish with my particular thought, but I often come up with another one that is irrelevant instead.
Do you think there are some kinds of processing/thinking that this is beneficial for? I can't really imagine this state of mind because I haven't experienced it. I'm thinking maybe it would be really good for rapidly surveying a novel situation and forming a quick and dirty strategy or something like that. Or do you just see it as basically a universal handicap?
Your analogy is spot on. I don't have any issues with future planning like the speaker said, but I do have massive issues staying focused. I think this plays in to I have never know a stupid, or slow, adhd person. They tend to be super smart and can multitask incredibly well, which makes concentrating on a single item even that much harder. If I want to watch a movie, and pay attention, and write a story or pay a game on my phone, I can easily. If I choose to do only one of those, it gets hard as my mind starts to wander off.
i have ADD too, and i am 28 years old. I was on medication when i was about 13-16 years old but i stopped taking it. For me, it really depends on how interested i am in the thing i am trying to concentrate on. i really have no problem focusing on something for multiple hours as long as i am interested in it. When i was a teenager of course i was interested in everything else but school. So it was obviously hard. But now that i am studying exactly what i'm interested in, i have no trouble ( or at least not more as anyone else ) sitting through the lectures. But i am exceptionally bad with planning ahead.
What do you do about motivation? My doc always said that the medication will help me focus but it wont do much if i cant motivate myself and he was absolutely right. Even a couple years after being prescribed meds its something i struggle with regularly.
It is unfortunate that society is structured as such that a large people need to take medication to function in it. Having worked within the ADHD space for a drug manufacturer, my biggest take away was that ADHD is not people having an illness as much as there is just a large number of people with certain personality types that don't function well in the system of education/work that we primarily have in most countries. Not like I have a better solution, but it is unfortunate because the medication 100% does have physical ramifications. The physical effects are essentially the same as if someone was taking (safe?pure? legally manufactured?) cocaine but I feel like most people are not that informed on this. I come across way too many people who think they are just taking a doctor prescribed medication so there is no way there is anything too bad happening to them but that's not necessarily true. I'm not saying the medication isn't worth taking because in the experiences I am personally aware of, it certainly is. It's just that so many people I meet aren't even aware of the effects it has on your body that are exactly like taking other extreme stimulants. I can't emphasize how much I'm not shooting down the benefits of dextro/levoamphetamines, I just wish more people were aware of the negatives as well because it is essentially a legal and safer cocaine and based off of mental and physical side effects, that is not really an exaggeration.
This sounds like me. I always wondered why school was so difficult for me, and never would have guessed it was because I had ADD. Most of the kids I knew with ADHD were the "hyper" type -- acting out, fidgeting, etc. I sat quietly in my seat, but my mind was millions of miles away. I'd be daydreaming, doodling, reading ahead in the textbook, whatever. Unless the class was covering something I was interested in, then I was the sharpest, most engaged kid in the room.
Pretty similar to how I feel. I had to learn in order to be successful in college I could not study around other people, I had to avoid heavy reading classes as in order to comprehend what I read I have to read every world sometimes multiple times. So while my comprehension is in the 99%, my reading speed is in the 3%.
I have the hyperactivity though too. It helped for my athletic career (DI athlete), but can be a hinderence in my working life. I did a brief stint with Ridalin (or however it is spelt) and didn't feel any different so instead focused more on controlling my environment. Working at a cubicle job can be difficult since we have low walls and noise travels easy, but headphones have helped with that area a little bit.
If anybody else is out there taking adderall please be safe, it's a dangerous drug with a high capacity for abuse. I've been on it for 6 years now and it's like a miracle to me. I take 20mg of XR and I feel normal for a solid day and a half.
I don't think I've ever read a full page of text in one go. I stop, go back and start again, then my mind drifts off in ten seconds, so I go back to the last thing that registered. Rinse and repeat. I manage to function in life though. Pretty well actually. One of the important things is to accept your limitations. Medicine helped me just once over a period of maybe a week. It was amazing, I thought "those fuckers who don't have to deal with ADD have it easy". But then it stopped working and I never found anything else that helped during the time I tried. So I'm back to back and forth reading. Never being able to unload the dishwasher and put the silverware in their correct places in the plastic organizer thingy in the drawer. Among others things.
I sucked at menial jobs, the idiots I worked for thought I was a moron. When I was young my then boss told me that changing tires was too difficult for me and that I should perhaps try washing dishes instead. I almost believed him. Fortunately I found a line of work in which I can work around my weaknesses and let my strong points show. It's an office IT job in case you wondered. I loved it initially but after 20 years it's just a job. Something I need to do to support myself and the family.
I want to specifically say this to young folks who fail at stupidest jobs because they are not good at doing repetitive, dumb tasks consistently. First, don't beat yourself up, the job is stupid, you are not. Two: find a job you can live with so eventually learn and grow and have a career that you like. At least mostly like, for a period of time.
I agree, the hardest part is settling down to do the task! I hated medication and stopped taking it mid way through High School. I think now (after years and years of coping and learning from mistakes) i am gotten to enjoy the feeling of accomplishment of having done something early. I will also say i have been burned sooo bad by the ability to deal with the future that now my problem solving skills are on point.
Thanks for sharing this. This talk doesn't ring true for me, but your description really does. I wonder what the difference is between what he's describing here and our experience.
It's also as if work = telling your horse to drive its head into a wall. Like, yeah, you can do it, but after a few pummelings it's gonna turn its head.
I too have ADD and this is a perfect representation of what it feels like. Though I would add that the medicine less affects the horse and more the environment. The air is thicker and slows him and the rider down makes it harder for the horse to buck but still able to go off course if you don't control it. It also destroys the horse's metabolism and appetite.
This really needs a TL;DR for those of us that are also ADD. I started getting distracted during imagine your brain is a horse and thinking that by the 3rd sentence you were going to go u/shittymorph on me.
How do you go about telling your doctor you have ADHD, or them telling you that you have it? This is one thing that deterred me from going. I don't want to have to prove it and look stupid, but everything I have ever seen of ADHD describes me
I don't have a lot of time right now to say everything that needs to be but... Your problem isn't the horse. It's where you are riding him. You can't perform in the environments everyone else is in because their environment is predicated on access to an internal scaffolding that organizes their actions in that environment over time. We don't have that dimension of time.
We will never be able to exist in their space because there is a missing dimension to it. The only way to perform to their level is to make a new environment which creates a simulation of that dimension.
Most normals can do a routine every morning without anything visible to guide them. they are pulled along an invisible string through the tasks. We have no string. So for us to do it we need EXTERNAL structure. Hang the toothbrush on a string. Use colored notes. Keep things like car keys hung up on the wall never in your pocket. Anything that requires "future me" to do you need a way for "present me" to trip over at the needed time.
This is the best explanation I have ever read. Thank you. I hate taking meds because it makes me not feel like I am not me, but I have to be able to function in society so I am forced to take them. If I forget to take them or try and skip them, people around me ask if I am ok or some of my close friends will straight up ask me to take them. It sucks how bad it messes with my mood too.
Dude, please--go watch Barkley's other coverage of AD/HD. The 27 Things Parents Can Do is over two hours long and taught me more about the condition even though I was 23 years post-diagnosis, have an AD/HD son, and have a master's in education. Dr. Barkley is the bomb. His definition of AD/HD as an "executive function" disorder will make perfect sense to you. He has an excellent video on there on "here's how you treat AD/HD according to science." That one is extremely enlightening.
For my ADHD (combo type), I say it's like being in the TV section of an electronics store, and all of the TVs have something different on, many of them have content in which I'm interested, and all of the TVs are at the same decibel level. I'm trying to find the TV I want. But I can't focus on the details, because there's so much going on.
When I'm medicated, it's totally different. Medication gives me a universal remote to be able to turn down the volume on all TVs except for the ones I really should be looking at.
Posting this to one in particular - I have ADHD and mindfulness meditation has really helped. I sit in the morning and evening for 45 minutes. Sometimes for 5 mins a few times a day.
It's like training the horse instead of sedating it. My horse is stubborn and prone to depression - medication was necessary but the problem didn't improve until I began working with my mind(horse) instead of trying to will it to do what I want.
Came here to say this. I fall in the lucky category where I get to combine both the inattentive and impulsive. This horse example is pretty solid and I'd never had a good way of explaining it until I read this.
But I also want to give the guy credit for making the point that the people that have ADHD aren't less knowledgeable or less skilled than anyone else. I mean, I didn't get diagnosed until 25, which was almost 2 years after graduating college. It was a lot easier to get through the tasks then because things were split into more manageable blocks of time. It took a year and a half of full time work for me to realize that I shouldn't have this much trouble getting through shit. Especially since I knew I was just as smart and able as everyone else, but for the life of me I could just not get the shit I needed done.
As a dude who has been dealing with this for over 40 years...I commend the incredible description you have given!
It is a daily struggle...but it does get easier.
I took myself off meds at age 16 and have learned to almost channel it now.
This is a great analogy for what it's like to have it. I was diagnosed with a attention disorder when I was a lot younger and i still notice it's effects to this day.
I feel the exact same about how you can't control your focus as easily as others might be able. I found that for me i tend to have incredible focus on usually one task at a time, however, any minor diversion causes literally all of my focus to swap to whatever that other stimuli was. Ill sometimes completely forget I'm in a conversation with someone when I start thinking about what I want to say because I end up getting lost in thought, or ill need to completely read an entire page of a book again because my foot felt weird in my shoe. Gets really really annoying tbh .
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u/[deleted] May 30 '17 edited Sep 24 '19
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