Me: I need to leave this community. What if these memes are just making me think I have ADHD when I don’t.
Also me on literally every meme that’s posted here: haha, hard rel8
All these ADHD memes have several times made me think if there’s a light version?
But from what I understand everyone can experience ADHD “symptoms” from time to time, but people who are diagnosed with it have symptoms that are several orders of magnitude more intense.
I’m gonna sound like a broken record here but my favorite thing is:
Everyone pees but when you pee 60 times a day you go see a doctor
Not diagnosed till late 20s.
I’m “twice gifted”, so my intelligence can help me mask my ADHD in some ways. Looking back, all… ALL the signs were there, but no one was looking, or just didn’t understand. Lots of “you just need to apply yourself” kind of shit.
Anyway, check out Russell Barkley, if you’ve got a thing for educational videos, his are interesting enough, I feel, since he’s talking about me.
He made me feel a lot more confident that I have it, despite 3 different psychs already agreeing I do… and made me feel a lot more comfortable with who I am.
I hate explaining ADHD to people because it’s a completely unintuitive disorder. It’s like “I’m easily distracted” yet at other times I’m completely incapable of tearing my focus away from something. I have continual thoughts of things unrelated to my current focus, and other times I can’t think of anything at all, I just can’t hold on to any thoughts. I’m fidgety, almost all the time, but I can sit still and drive a car on the freeway for several hours with absolutely no issues.
It’s like, for every symptom I have of the disorder there’s always a “but sometimes” caveat that is present. It’s just a nightmare to try to make someone understand especially when they’ve never struggled with the disorder or anything like it. It’s a complete conundrum.
I have no problem staying committed to a task when my life depends on it. For all other cases meh.
It’s not that you don’t have attention, what your lacking is the control over your attention. This means that you have a harder time directing your attention to what is “necessary”.
The result of this might be not being able to focus your attention on something, but it can show also as not being able to shift the attention away from something.
It’s actually not two different sides but rather the same.
Totally it’s like when you’re a kid and you say “I’m not hungry” and then someone brings out a cake and you’re like “well obviously that doesn’t count for cake” but it’s 100 PERCENT TRUE
Feel like my forgetting where I put things have any exceptions that aren’t average NT on my best days or because I have a system that most of the time works (it’s been a while since I’ve had to search for my wallet and keys because the basket is right at the front door now and immediately getting out of work clothes is a top priority, so removing the usual pocket stuff as I enter happens 95% of the time - the atypical stuff usually gets accidentally left in the pockets and remembering to lock the door on my way in is still RNG).
I like to describe a normal persons focus as a laser, it has a good balance between being able to aim and its power
Meanwhile adhd is an extremly high power Death Star laser, however you cannot aim it at all for better or for worse
This is unironically me. I just went through a lengthy diagnosis process that determined I do not in fact have ADHD, despite ticking an alarming number of boxes. I call myself ADHD-adjacent now.
Wow does that feel worse? I mean ADHD or no, you’re still beholden to your neurology to some degree.
Even if isn’t a common diagnosis for the kind of thing you are.
It felt pretty bad at first. I wanted to be able to help myself somehow, and I thought this was a great place to start. It was like starting back at square one. But practices and therapies that assist with ADHD also tend to help me out, so at least I got something out of it.
deleted by creator
I’m considering a second opinion, after a rest period. The process took a lot longer than it was supposed to and stressed me out quite a bit. The person who started my assessment left the company before she could finish, so someone else had to take over, and no one knew this fact. Took months to get an answer. Sigh.
At age 41, I just figured out I have ADHD, I assumed my entire life that I had a complex set of flaws.
I figured it out last year, I was 39. You’re in good company.
I just couldn’t figure it out until I came across information about ADHD and everything clicked. I’d be lying to say that I haven’t had moments of self doubt and imposter syndrome like the op suggests.
To me, at the end of the day, whether I’m actually ADHD or not, I have very similar tenancies and traits and the treatment works for me. That’s all that really matters.
I am 50. After reading a lot about the subject, I also suspect I am affected - my whole life. Getting an appointment with a psychiatrist to be sure right now. It would explain so much…
Well good luck - Vyvanse has a generic version now and has been working wonders for my 40 year old self… Except for the insomnia tonight.
i was diagnosed early in childhood. my parents chose to believe it was fake and more than once actually pleaded with me to explain why beating me senseless every other day didn’t make the behavior stop.
Fucking hell sorry your parents were abusive monsters.
It doesn’t help that every asshole on the Internet suddenly has a psychology degree to tell you you don’t actually have ADHD/autism.
“What if I don’t actually have ADHD, I simply share some behavioral issues that make it seem like ADHD because I was raised by parents who did have ADHD and I just kind of adopted it from them?” - Me, like once a week since getting diagnosed.
Oh. Good. I’d gone a few minutes without doing this mental check, thank you for putting it back in there for today. 🫠
What if I don’t have ADHD and just smoke entirely too much weed? Currently working on figuring this out.
My next will be: Maybe I’m just a douche and don’t care about others enough to remember what they tell me. But I do care, I think.
Maybe I’m just a douche and don’t care about others enough to remember what they tell me. But I do care, I think.
This is also me but since people in general still seem to like me despite me considering myself a bit of an asshole I’m then also wondering that maybe I’m just a charismatic psychopath that manipulates people.
I’m more than a little convinced ADHD isn’t really a disorder, society is the issue, and this personality/brain type is actually beneficial in simpler societies.
There are certain aspects of ADHD that would be disordered in any societal structure.
I have been so hyperfixated on something that I have been completely oblivious to my own body’s signals. As a result I have had accidents, developed UTIs, ended up in the ER with electrolyte imbalances, and dislocated several joints.
ADHD and joint Hypermobility are closely linked and while more studies are needed to understand exactly why and how, a lot of people with ADHD also meet criteria for Hypermobility spectrum disorders. In my case, I’ll be focused on a task and I won’t realise I’m clenching my jaw too firmly until the sudden sensation of undeniable pain sweeps over me and I realise my jaw has dislocated. Or ill be struggling with transitioning from a task to a rest, even though my knees are in agony, I can’t seem to force myself to stop.
ADHD is also inherently linked to circadian rhythm disorders, and while yes, delayed sleep phase disorder is only truly a disorder if you’re forcing yourself into a 9-5 lifestyle, ADHD sleep issues are more than just the shifting of the phases. A lot of people with ADHD will describe the sensation of sleep as being “passing out”, because of the way our brains (fail to) regulate dopamine, the way serotonin and melatonin is secreted to create drowsiness is also impacted.
I don’t get tired or sleepy, I get headaches and blurred vision and spasms in my back, and then I know that I can fall asleep if I lie down. I take sublingual melatonin tincture (I find it works better than tablets) and it’s such a strange phenomenon because about 15 minutes after I take it I feel my eyes are heavy and my body is calm and my mind ia slower, aka, sleepy. I don’t experience that without the help of supplements.
And sure there’s the argument that you “people with ADHD used to be on night watch duty”, but sleep deprived people make shit guards. If I’m not physically able to fall asleep until I’m “overtired”, and if being tired makes my ADHD symptoms worse, then I’m no good for anything.
It’s also not like hyperfixations are a super power (God I hate that way of framing things) I can’t choose when or why they happen. If I could, I’d be good at just job, instead, I’m loosing all sensation in my feet because I’m stuck in a fixation trying to pick at the skin on my thighs because I spotted one single ingrown hair while I had my pants down sitting on the toilet. Now it’s 40 minutes later, my alarm is going off in the other room, and I’m frozen, unable to transition away from this task.
ADHD is a spectrum, and for many people there are strengths, but it’s most definitely a disorder and for a lot of people, even if we lived in the most utopian ADHD friendly society, there are still internal issues to face.
For the record, I am unmedicated and always have been due to a heart condition, so maybe my view on the condition would change if I had different treatment and management options available to me.
When it comes to neurodivergences that aren’t strictly universal negatives (for example: anyone would agree that DID is terrible, while modern autism advocacy strongly opposes any sort of “cure”, and even assimilation as opposed to integration), you can easily find the case that they work great as complements within larger groups. Having an autistic dude fascinated by working materials may result in your tribe being the very first one in the area that gets obsidian spears or composite bows, even if he isn’t a very good hunter otherwise.
The problem comes when an industrialized, profit-obsessed society attempts to standarize social customs, goods, living spaces and so on while individualizing responsibility for every aspect of your life despite plenty of its factors being outside any one person’s control. Perhaps you’d have a lot to contribute to society if you just had certain unusual accommodations, such as a very quiet house or freedom to set your own working hours, but companies in the contemporary market economy hisses at people who don’t fit like cogs in a machine, and having a house with very specific conditions is outside the reach of a lot of people. Perhaps you do even manage to find the means to become a very productive member of society despite the odds being stacked against you, but because the specificity of your situation means you barely have any negotiation power in the labor market, most of what you produce gets appropriated by someone who isn’t very smart, but has some capital and better “people skills”.
For sure. I am overeducated and chronically unemployed due to basically unsustainable levels of stress trying to not fuck up office work leading to cycles of self destruction and the erosion of my self confidence.
But I am not unproductive or lazy, I am just not suited to modern life very well. I have a level of reasonable competency at blacksmithing, gardening, first aid, brewing, cheese making, cooking, sewing, foraging, tool maintenance, educating young children, and animal care (also modern useless skills). I can’t sit still much so I’m also pretty fit and enjoy running through forests and keeping track of changes.
In a different period I’m not saying I’d be the best member of society but I could contribute much more. In earlier times people who were ok at lots of practical things with great memories for strange specifics served very useful roles contributing supplimental food, medicine, and upkeep. I would also probably be much less overwhelmed with distraction without all the modern blinkenlights and ads and such.
We are all the same apes that walked out of Africa 200,000 years ago. Our brains haven’t changed and it’s inevitable that the more we change our environment from the one we evolved in the more we will induce pathology in otherwise normal, and perhaps helpful, human variation.
Absolutely, most parts of neurodivergence is evolved to be useful for “wild” humans, hunter-gatherers. Like gee i sure wonder how it might be useful for people living in tents in the wildnerness to have a dude who just cannot go to sleep before 2 in the morning…
Apprently court jesters were historically generally autistic people, whom the rulers kept around because they wouldn’t sugarcoat stuff and acted like a bullshit detector. Might be pretty handy for a tribe to have some people who’ll speak up when they think the leader is being dumb.
That’s not how evolution works. Traits don’t evolve “to be useful”. Anyone who claims a goal to evolution has failed to grasp evolution.
Evolution converges on local maxima by selecting for traits that are good enough to continuously propagate through the filter of individuals death. For sexual reproduction, if a trait is not bad enough to continuously reduce carriers’ presence in a mating pool, it can and will remain.
It’s survival of not inadequate enough.
To an extent, it is also beneficial in today’s society. Hyperfocus and fast context switching can be assets in some jobs, if the downsides are not too great and that can depend on the job and colleagues a lot.
But yea, I can imagine it has been more of an asset in a different time.
I used to work in a particular trade, and i noticed unlike most i worked with, i worked faster and more efficiently as the day went on, by 11 am I’d be right in that hyperfocus groove and my helpers just had so much trouble keeping up. They took advantage of that on occasion, like they could tell me it was quitting time and I’d believe them, an hour early. That only worked twice.
Could you share what that trade is, even vaguely? I’m curious what kind of job might be suited for someone with ADHD symptoms. I feel it might help me choose a career. No worries if not, and have a good one!
If you need/want a high degree of learning: Anything IT related.
The tempo is so fast paced amd you needing to keep up it can get overwhelming at times if you don’t like it.Also closing tire- and cumbersome tickets are a great source of small dopamine shots.
Thanks for the advice. If I change directions I’m leaning towards something in the realm of IT or electronics technician work. I’d like something with some sort of physical or at least hands on component, or something gameified like you deacribe with closing tickets.
In Germany there are job positions called “Fachinformatiker Systemintegration”.
Basically a trained technician integrating a new component into an existing environmemt.
This can range from a monitor and a pc to a new server, networking, etc.
Maybe something like a datacenter technician or something like that might suit you.My job atm consists of going to customers onsite to troubleshoot systems or installing/replacing a (new) server but also helpdesk stuff (small company so even lv2 support might have to call) and responding to tickets about stuff not working as intended.
My mainreason for choosing that role was the field work (or at the company) and not being glued to my desk or other office desk job like a programmer.That’s interesting, thanks for that explanantion. I definitely feel like being glued to my desk is something I’d like to avoid.
Maybe I’ll consider moving to Germany now, that could be a whole other adventure.
You’re not alone in thinking that, and there are some studies which seem to agree.
I was reading your study, and got to the part where they said it is hard to empirically test this theory because of limited genome whatever, and it crossed my mind Africans don’t carry the neanderthal DNA Europeans do, so i looked up if ADHD was more common in either race and it apparently is much more prevalent in white people. Yeah correlation isn’t causation but it is interesting.
I haven’t done too much research into ADHD (which I don’t have) but if it’s anything like autism (which I do have) then it may well be that it’s just massively under diagnosed in people who aren’t rich, white, boys. I know they aren’t the same but that’s certainly the case for autism, and there is a high rate of co-occurrence between the two.
Some articles mentioned something along those lines, but they seemed more written with an axe to grind, and more from the states. The rich part I can’t speak to, but autism is just plain more common in whites than blacks, not underdiagnosed, to my understanding. Ed girlfriend used to work with the autistic, and in a heavily multicutural city where white people are not a clear majority, nearly all the severely autistic she worked with were white/iranian/middle eastern/ other whitish varieties it seemed, hardly any black or asian.
Err…I guess I read a paragraph and went to do something more interesting.
As someone diagnosed with ADHD, I find many of these posts overly dramatic. I understand that dealing with it is challenging, but when I see others discussing it, I sometimes feel that some might not genuinely have ADHD and are merely exaggerating for attention.
Whether you “officially” have ADHD or just the symptoms, it’s not your fault. It’s your responsibility.
I thought this a couple of years ago, even though i was diagnosed at 5 (29 now). It’s funny how i went my whole life thinking it was just the stereotypical adhd is just hyperactivity and laziness because the doctors never really tried to explain how this disorder could affect me. I decided to look it up studf about adhd and am deeply conflicted by how it literally explains my entire life and behaviors even though i thought i had it under control. On one hand im glad there is something that explains a lot of my struggles and medical issues but on the other i feel like my entire personality is just dictated by adhd and that i never really had as much freedom of choice as i thought i did.
I feel like the more you understand how your brain works, the more you learn how to work around it.
Full disclosure: I’m not diagnosed, but on a waitlist for ADD - for over a year now and it’s not moving, but I digress. I am diagnosed with autism though.
To me it feels like my brain is a wildwater. You can’t control it, but if you change the environment around it, you can guide it into useful directions. I’m lucky that by now the people around me have accepted it and are able to laugh with me when I fuck up. We have a lot of systems in place to reign in the worst effects, and the more we get used to it the easier it gets not to fall into traps and not to be unreliable.
I guess I’m working on my skills as a mindbender who tricks my brain into being useful while still allowing it to get that dopamine?
It’s weird, isn’t it? I was diagnosed as an adult, just a couple of years ago, and it was surreal how much sense it made of my entire life. I’m now on guanfacine which makes me feel like I have a superpower, but it’s really just being able to remember things, notice more things, and concentrate for more than two seconds.
You could get a real diagnose maybe?
getting a real diagnose in my country means ill be stuck with a mental disability in an extremely psychophobic society with no way to treat it because all adhd meds are banned here
so my only way to cope is to talk to other people who probably have adhd as well and learn how they manage their lives
I’ve known for a long time I should try to get a diagnosis but I’m afraid of changing now that I’ve spent 40+ years figuring out how to live.
Imposter syndrome?
ඞ
