The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves)

[surreality]

@Rinel ...yes, it's a thing.

Also:

Me: <stares into fridge>
My brain: You want literally none of these things.
Me: What do I want, then?
My brain: You want cherry pie.
Me: I don't have cherry pie.
My brain: Refuse to eat anything until you get cherry pie.
Me: I will literally die.
My brain: FINE then, have a string cheese.
Me: This is not cherry pie. <still staring into fridge as if cherry pie will magically materialize>
My brain: Well, die, then?
Me: <grabs random pudding/yogurt/flan/something that is neither cherry pie nor string cheese and stomps back upstairs>
My brain: You now have a food.
Me: <gets distracted by something on the screen, forgets the food is there until fading into drowsy>
My brain: <observes the sad, lonely, uneaten food> This is what you get for not being cherry pie.
Me: Fuck this, I'm going to bed.

[Rinel]

@surreality

...this is actually a bit much to process. Like, the fact that other people will open a refrigerator and just feel their minds whirring without actually landing on anything.

Oof.

[SuperiorHuron]

@Rinel That's when I eat the cereal or the toast ‍️

[faraday]

@Rinel

Getting so hyperfocused that I forget to eat for ages, then (to steal @Auspice's description) "needing food and being too tired to food", then staring at the fridge all, "but I don't want any of THIS food! Bah!" ...

Yeah. That's totally my life.

[Rinel]

Can someone explain hyperfocus to me because I'm not sure I have this, unless it happens super rarely. Like, I read Gideon the Ninth in a single night instead of sleeping because it was one of the best books I'd read in a long time, but that is the sort of thing that happens, like, every few years. I can't think of anything I do where I don't notice the time passing, outside of stuff like games that are literally designed to put you into that state of flow (or, again, books that grab me every few years).

[Wretched]

@Rinel We have an interest based nervous system. If we arent 'into' something it takes mental en ergy and time moves slow and its so efffortful and ugh

[Macha]

I just ate for the first time today (it's 5pm my time). Chicken nuggets. Again.

[Wretched]

[SuperiorHuron]

@Macha toast with nutella and strawberries..I learned that at least you get fruit. I have yet to get a nutritional value of nutella, but I talked myself into a health benefit >_>

[faraday]

@Rinel said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

Can someone explain hyperfocus to me

My brain at 5pm: "I should really cook dinner."
Also my brain: "OK, just one more minute. I'm almost done with Thing."
75 bajillion minutes later, having never stopped to cook dinner because Thing was so engrossing.
"OMG why am I so hungry!? How is it night already?!"

The best way I've heard it described is that ADHD is a very badly-named condition. It's not a deficit of attention, it's trouble regulating your attention. Commonly the attention dial is either at 0 (OMG...Thing is so boring it literally hurts) or 1000 (I could do Thing all day without even realizing I've missed lunch or dinner...aka hyperfocus) with little middle ground.

Of course there are different subtypes of ADHD and even people with the same subtype can have different symptoms, so NOT experiencing hyperfocus it is not necessarily an indication of anything.

For more educated explanations than mine, I suggest:

How to explain ADHD (from HowToADHD)
What is Hyperfocus (from ADDitude magazine)

[Macha]

@SuperiorHuron Nutella would jack my sugars. Chicken nuggets are bad enough.

[Auspice]

The other night I wanted to 'finish just this section' on something I'm cross-stitching. That was around midnight.

6am I look up and- oh.

That's hyperfocus.

[SuperiorHuron]

@Macha ah, I'm sorry on that

[Wretched]

ALso @Macha I feel that pain so much, Diabetic + ADHD is ugh

[Auspice]

@Wretched

I lose count of how many books I'm in the middle of

[Rinel]

@faraday said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

75 bajillion minutes later, having never stopped to cook dinner because Thing was so engrossing.

I've always assumed this was just, you know, the way everyone was with videogames. cos they're rigged to get you hooked, right?

RIGHT

[faraday]

@Rinel said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

I've always assumed this was just, you know, the way everyone was with videogames. cos they're rigged to get you hooked, right?

Sure, but that's the thing with ADHD -- taken individually, each of the symptoms are things that everyone experiences sometimes.

Anybody can lose themselves in an engrossing activity (particularly one that's designed to be addictive), get distracted, procrastinate, interrupt, lose track of time, forget their keys, etc. etc. What makes ADHD a "disorder" (I dislike that word) is that folks who have it experience a lot of these things constantly and/or severely, causing significant negative impacts on their life.

It's like being sad versus having depression. One is more severe and chronic than the other.

[Auspice]

@faraday said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

It's like being sad versus having depression. One is more severe and chronic than the other.

Or even chemical depression vs situational depression. One will improve and pass with time or improvement of the situation. Example there is: I have no job rn, it makes me depressed despite my anti-depressants, because it's a different kind of depression than the chemical depression the meds are for.

With the ADHD vs someone who.... 'gets distracted easily sometimes' is they can, say, focus when they need to. Think of that person at work who does spend a lot of time chatting with people who walk by or often goes over and chats with others but when they've got to knuckle down and get stuff done: they do it!

And then there's people like us. We just... can't. We basically have to ride the wave and hope maybe that hyperfocus will hit. The rest of the time is like this unending frustration of 'why can't I just fucking do what I need to do when I need to do it?!' as you watch deadlines come and go. It's not that you're lazy. It's not that you put it off. It's that you literally couldn't handle all that shit. You tried and you tried and you tried and you maybe broke down in tears in the bathroom twenty times and you hate telling your boss for the Nth time that it's just a bad ADHD day-

I mean I'm getting anxious just trying to explain it. But yes.

Yes. The difference between 'easily distracted but can get to it when need be' and 'my brain is a bag of marbles that just puked all over the floor and I just want to lie down and die'

[Rinel]

Thanks @faraday and @Auspice . That is a helpful explanation.

But now I'm more confused, lol. I rarely miss deadlines, but that's because I tend to cram at the very last minute. Maybe I have mild ADHD? Talking about this is really weird because, like... some of the stuff is me to a T. All the time. Messy (more like absolute disaster) of a room, papers always everywhere, scattered, disorganized, make fancy plans and never go through with them, always forget to send thank you cards, bills pile up, etc...

But, like, at work? I'm fine at work. I mean, I get distracted constantly, but I get shit done on time, even though deadlines are really stressful. I don't know if this means I just have a mild form of the disorder or if being undiagnosed for 30 years means I developed coping strategies that let me function albeit miserably.

It is also 5 in the morning and I have spent the past hour and a half to two hours looking at ancient churches in England. So... there's definitely some executive function issues going on.

BUT LOOK AT THIS CHURCH

[Auspice]

Some people have more some have less. And for some the coping mechanisms you learn absolutely do work. Mine did for a long time until they...didn't. The past few years have been a mess of not keeping and barely keeping jobs.

I have (a mild case of) OCD. So I keep things clean. In my mind I keep only moderately barely clean and I often love in a state of 'Oh god I'm failing this isn't clean enough' but I've had a few friends over the years tell me that I can be a bit obsessive over it at times.

I clean out my car every time I get gas.
I clean the kitchen as I cook.

....I have been late to work on multiple occasions because the cabinet doors must be scrubbed clean and I cannot do anything else until they are or I've stayed up all night because this room must be cleaned top to bottom and completely rearranged