The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves)
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@Wretched I will just note for the record that sorting-focused OCD and ADD?
Yes, it's a super special breed of hell.
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So y'all know how I kept posting in here like "wow all this is familiar?"
...yeah.
Got my diagnosis today.
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@Rinel Welcome!
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One of us, one of us...
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@Wretched Duh. That's when you get three or four things you give at least a marginal fuck about on the desk in front of you and flailingly flip amongst them until something sticks or you throw all of them on the 'fuck it' pile.
(aka 'give it a few extra rounds of twenty minutes'.)
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This is bullshit
I thought having super strong urges to go do something interesting every few minutes was normal
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Double posting because I need to vent
@Kanye-Qwest said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):
It has helped me immensely to have a Neuroscience doctor tell me : You are not just lazy. Your brain is atypical.
I spent most of the afternoon of my diagnosis crying for this reason. It was just too much to process emotionally, especially given how many times I'd been told I was lazy by parents, teachers, and professors. I distinctly remember my Ancient Greek professor telling me "you aren't bad at learning vocabulary; that's just a narrative you've constructed for yourself."
That little joy was prompted by me coming to him and asking for advice on how to learn vocab because I was struggling with it (and always have, in every language I've studied. I have studied five languages).
Fuck you, Esposito.
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@Rinel Finding out much later in life is so, so hard for exactly these reasons. Going back and looking in shock on the struggles that needn't have been so damned hard... yeah. It's explode with tears crushing and infuriating all at once. Consider all the virtual hugs ever offered.
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@Rinel Speaking as someone who got a diagnosis for a different-but-related condition? I was fine that afternoon, but then it usually takes time for me to have these things sink on. It was the next day that it hit me, and it hit like a ton of bricks. Had to take a day off work, and everything.
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@Rinel said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):
Double posting because I need to vent
@Kanye-Qwest said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):
It has helped me immensely to have a Neuroscience doctor tell me : You are not just lazy. Your brain is atypical.
I spent most of the afternoon of my diagnosis crying for this reason. It was just too much to process emotionally, especially given how many times I'd been told I was lazy by parents, teachers, and professors. I distinctly remember my Ancient Greek professor telling me "you aren't bad at learning vocabulary; that's just a narrative you've constructed for yourself."
That little joy was prompted by me coming to him and asking for advice on how to learn vocab because I was struggling with it (and always have, in every language I've studied. I have studied five languages).
Fuck you, Esposito.
I did the same thing. I just sat in my car and cried and I wasn't even sure why I started. All my life, it was "you're lazy" "you aren't living up to your potential" "why can't you just take care of it" and my favorite from my dad, "you're worthless". I think it's impossible not to internalize that stuff, and have it color all your feelings about YOURSELF. So I've been stuck in this decades long loop of :
- I'm finally going to do it. I'm going to get my life together. I'm going to make a list, and I'm going to check things off it every day, and I'm NOT GOING TO PROCRASTINATE ANYMORE. Starting tomorrow, everything changes!
- try to change everything tomorrow, fail, become overwhelmed
- hate myself for being unable to just life my life like a normal person until I circle back to 1.
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I'm so sorry. You're worth a ton.
My parents never said anything half so cruel to me, but lazy was so frequently said that I've just known it was true for over half my life.
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@Kanye-Qwest said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):
All my life, it was "you're lazy" "you aren't living up to your potential" "why can't you just take care of it" and my favorite from my dad, "you're worthless". I think it's impossible not to internalize that stuff, and have it color all your feelings about YOURSELF.
I lived through this as well. After a while, I just didn't care.
Parents: You're lazy.
Me: And?
Parents: You aren't living up to your potential.
Me: But it's my potential, right?
Parents: Why can't you just take care of it?
Me: I did, just not the way you wanted me to.
Parents: You're worthless.
Me: If you say so.Granted, I was a very difficult child to deal with, being one part smart aleck and one part rebellious asshole.
But looking back on how I was raised, I understand why.
It's a cultural thing.
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@Wretched Proof we need a flail emoji.
Oh fucking well.
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@surreality Someone should get on that.
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Well, I've been given some options going forward.
Good news: my psychiatrist is really smart and up to date on all the latest neuropsychiatry and pharmaceutical studies.
Bad news: anxiety and ADHD medicines do not play well together.
By "do not play well together," I mean that benzodiazapenes make ADHD worse by depressing all neural function, including the mesocorticolimbic projection, which is what makes dopamine, well, work as a positive motivator. And ADHD medicines hyperactivate the HPA axis, which regulates stress.
So I get to choose between extreme lack of productivity, which is starting to affect my job performance even if I've managed to keep it hidden from others, and extreme, unrelenting terror that makes life literally unmanageable.
Meanwhile my bosses have literally no idea of what's required for the imminently due deadline, keep telling me to take time off because they're worried about my mental health, and don't have the ability to help me do what needs to be done because they never reviewed any of the materials I sent them weeks ago in order to learn it.
I want to quit everything and cry for a week. The only good news is that I'm so terrified of driving that if I ever actually become suicidal I can just get in the car and go to New Orleans because I'm convinced the constant panic attacks will kill me. Boom. Instant exposure therapy.
Or, you know, death.
It's fine. This is fine. Everything is fine. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.
This is not my beautiful house!
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@Selira said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):
I'm realizing I'm an extremely project oriented person. Whether that's a tangible goal in RP, telling a specific story, or getting a platinum trophy in a game, once I've decided I'm going to do something I go all out until it's done. It's my ADHD superpower, my hyperfocus going insane until I literally do 16 hour binges and tap myself to exhaustion (hi, final fantasy 7 remake).
How do I apply this to goals that will actually help my life? I want that $$$.
Necro reply!
I am like this as well. Reading some of this stuff has made me wonder if maybe I might be ADHD and just was never diagnosed. Anyways, my favorite job and the one that benefited from this orientation was when I was a newspaper journalist. Every week I would have four or five different things to deep dive into and write up an article on those things. I loved it, but it only paid $10/hr.
