It's actually kind of depressing. Few posts about "how do I manage time better", they're all about "everyone I know thinks ADHD is made up and they just think I'm a lazy shithead and that makes me sad"
Damn. That is indeed unfortunate. It'd be much better if people learned to differentiate between the condition and actual lazy people - they'd (possibly) spend their effort on the lazy folk, to (hopefully) greater success.
Though of course, "normal but lazy" <-> ADHD is a continuum that is hard to pinpoint.
It's like a lot of things in life. Take welfare. Everyone focuses on those that abuse it and are just lazy but 99% of normal people don't WANT to be on welfare, why would anyone want to be?
I don't WANT to be lazy and shitty and I do everything I can (medication is among my tools) so that I can live the life of a normal productive person.
Yep, I think you hit the nail on the head. Sensationalism. It keeps getting worse, too, though it's hard for me to imagine even more clickbaity headlines. And I'm guessing that, ironically, those sites don't actually appeal to "people with short attention spans" (which is the public's conception of ADHD), but rather "people who can't think of what to do with their time" (which is ... the general public)...
Though some people with ADHD (me) don't really try to not be lazy. (At least for me I think it's a learned helplessness thing that has been getting better, but I'm still pretty passive about it)
So some people with ADHD are lazy by choice, and of course there are some that make it an excuse for everything (I do this quite a bit, though mainly to get my self-esteem back up to reasonable levels, and to get out of that learned helplessness by making the problem caused by an opponent as opposed to myself)
Yeah, there are some times when we come together and figure things out. But some times it's just us getting each other through tough moments in one another's lives.
Most people understand what a burden it is to have ADHD. Most people think of it as this fun thing where you just can't focus for very long.
If you follow the subreddit, there are actually several others as well, you will find that ADHD often goes hand in hand with depression and anxiety. There is even a handful of us with OCD. It's an extremely frustrating, depressing, and isolating diagnosis to have. Family, friends, and co-workers either get it or they don't. I've lost many boyfriends and friends because of my ADHD.
Also /r/ADHD has plenty of ways to manage it, it's just that many people can't (parents not believing them) or are discouraged by the fact that the people around them only view their ADHD as an excuse for being lazy
76
u/Aneurysm-Em May 30 '17
It's actually kind of depressing. Few posts about "how do I manage time better", they're all about "everyone I know thinks ADHD is made up and they just think I'm a lazy shithead and that makes me sad"