Body: I’m tired, let’s go to bed
Brain: Nah, I think I’ll stay up super late instead and be tired tomorrow for no reason.
There’s also:
Brain: Okay, time to do things!
Body: Ehh… Later, let’s just lay here and have anxiety about not doing the things
You forgot my favorite of sleep-hating-brain internal dialogue!
"Why would you need to sleep until your alarm goes off when I can wake you early and you can be anxious about not sleeping! Or all the stuff you feel you should now start but are too tired to do even though you know I won’t let you sleep!
Wouldn’t want to sleep through that! Why do you think I kept you up so late??"
Even ADHD-oriented media is often being dishonest with people who suspect themselves to have this condition, being toxicly positive and showing ADHD as a “superpower” as if you can hyperfocus your way to success. It is neither a gift nor even an equal exchange between advantages and drawbacks like “you’ll be always late but also always creative!” It’s a crippling thing that may ruin career or end a relationship. There is nothing good with ADHD.
Absolutely. People want there to be a fair trade-off, but life just doesn’t work that way. I’ve seen similar romanticization of autism too, especially with the “savants”.
I’m beginning to suspect “superfocus” is just what normal people do when they focus.
Nah, super focus is totally a thing, just not everyone does it.
My wife can’t sit in a computer chair for 8 hours straight playing a game/editing a video/writing something/reading Wikipedia really hard, but I can.
And no, I can’t control it so it’s not a superpower, it’s random enforced focus and it’s only sometimes a helpful thing. Usually the work I do when doing it gets worse much faster and it does major damage to your body to sit in 1 position for that long not peeing.
My brother in law has ADHD. He lives next door to me.
He has a car he parks on the street. In my city you’re required to get a registration sticker for your car, it’s like $100 or something, good for a year. Every day you don’t have a valid sticker you can get a new ticket on your car. It takes two minutes to go online and order a new one.
For the last three years, hes been racking up tickets on his car for an expired sticker. One a week roughly, $60 per ticket I think. He usually lets them pile up until he gets final notices then pays them all online at double the cost.
Twice now he’s has his car booted, then impounded, due to unpaid tickets. He even includes tickets on his car as part of budgeting. I’ve offered a couple times if he’d hand me his license to go online and order the sticker for him. I’ve stopped offering since that offer is met with intense anger.
It takes TWO MINUTES to go online and order a new one. Poor guy
I sometimes can’t order food for my cat online for months and feed him with some local shop one when it runs out at the last minute
Or litter same story.
It would be cheaper, more choice, maybe healthier but I can’t force myself to sit click on site, choose one, find credit card, type it etc.
So I always wait till last drop of cat food runs out and then full of guilt hurry outside to search for open shop. At least there is less choice in local shops.
Choices paralyse me. I will spent hours thinking which one to choose even if it’s completely minor and especially online as IRL I simply can’t stand too long I have to grab something.
Also one shopkeeper I think thought I was into her I think but now after a while she just looks sad and annoyed when I come instead of joyous and kind of eee weird but I have no idea to be honest it all may be just overthinking which is also a problem. I am fucking clueless and I don’t even know if I was/am interested. Probably not right I would know if I was I hope it would be obvious like idk heart pounding or whatever. Right? Right?
I feel this applies to more than just adhd, for example things like burn-out and depression.
If you make a venn diagram of the symptoms of ADHD, PTSD, burnout, anxiety, bipolar, and autism you get pretty close to a circle
Yah this feels so similar to autism. Interesting how there’s so much overlap. Has anyone tried to make a venn diagram like that or would it be too complex? /gen
ADHD often comes with some degree of low-grade anxiety/depression tbh
I remember talking to my therapist about how I’m not worried about forgetting something, I’m always worried about what I haven’t realized I have forgotten and is already causing a problem. I just live in a constant state of “something is on fire I just haven’t smelled the smoke yet.” it’s not quite PTSD, but it is certainly something analogous and it’s always this low level hum of stress. At least that’s what I took from my conversation with her.
Fucking hell. I have days or weeks where this happens for me but eventually passes. Usually it’s time related for me. Like I’ve missed an appointment. But there isn’t one?? 🤷♂️
I haven’t been to the eye doctor in over 5 years so that’s a fun one to randomly remember.
Is this really ADHD. I might have to get tested. Everything people are posting here sounds like me.
I often wonder as well. Then I think: is this not just the human condition. In any case I seem to score pretty high on those online questionnaires.
It’s a matter of scale, not a binary.
Having a thing that you need to do but just “don’t” is perfectly common.
Having it happen so regularly that you reliably spend a measurable part of your day wondering why you can’t just “do the thing”, or it starts to have measurable negative impacts on your job, life and relationships isn’t normal.
Everyone feels down sometimes, but not everyone has a serotonin balance problem.
Everyone feels difficulty focusing sometimes, but not everyone has a dopamine balance problem.
What of many of the things you’re “supposed to do” are things you don’t actually want to do and therefore you don’t do? What if it’s external circumstances define what’s called a mental disorder?
Would you feel like you have a mental disorder if you lived in some completely different context?
I’m just wondering if we can call things a disorder that might mostly arise because society is built around working better for more neurotypical people (it at all).
Would you call it a disorder being tall if for some reason most people were short and all our infrastrucure were built for short people?
I’m not questioning the difficulties many people have with their lives. I’m wondering what to do about it and where the threshold is.
Not all cases of depression are a serotonin issue though. A lot of it is situational.
ADHD is symptoms a lot of people have, but dialed up to the point that it is disruptive enough to be a disorder.
Trouble falling asleep because your mind is racing a couple times a year, or occasionally misplace something? Probably not. If it happens a few times a week then probably…
