adhdbri:

Is anyone else like this? As a kid and even in adulthood in workplaces, I have always needed to doodle in order to maintain focus on and retain important information. My notebook margins are always filled with fun patterns :)

artemispidge:

artemispidge:

Who decided we have to give up pure and wholesome things just to grow up? Sleeping with a little Pikachu plushie does not mean I don’t also make my own doctor appointments.

reblogging because I think there needs to be more notes and more people comfortable with the idea that adulthood is a lie.

krissimae:

tis-i-bat-anon:

redpandaloki:

witch-without-gender:

behind-blue-eyes:

serialreblogger:

UGH there is NOTHING more frustrating than trying to research ADHD, it’s all “do you interrupt people a lot? do you find it hard to sit still?” and “boys are twice as likely to have ADHD than girls” and “here’s how to deal with your ADHD child” and there’s nothing about adults, nothing about underdiagnosis in women, nothing about RSD, dyscalculia, sensory processing, emotional regulation

i am not a little boy pretending to be an airplane in the back of the classroom. I was never allowed to be, because I was a little girl. i was a little girl who couldn’t sit still but i had to because ladies sit still while the boys shout and fidget in the background. i was a little girl who got left behind when recess ended because i was so engrossed in my small rock garden i didn’t hear the bell; i was a little girl who grew up smart enough to take precalculus, but couldn’t for the life of me remember my times tables; i was a little girl who got so angry and didn’t know how to stop it (“you can control your emotions!” my dad told me; “don’t bottle it up,” my mom said; “scream into a pillow, write it down, take deep breaths” everyone told me, and none of it helped); i was a little girl who lay awake every night terrified i’d forgotten to do something due tomorrow; i was a little girl who couldn’t make friends because socializing was hell because if i made one wrong move, received one negative response, i might as well have set myself on fire; i was a little girl who took pride in being the Weird Girl, because i had to; i was a little girl with adhd 

and now i’m an adult woman with adhd, and i know that because of people on tumblr, not because of the DSM-V. The DSM-V and the CDC tell me little boys have ADHD, not little girls. they tell me if i don’t interrupt people (don’t interrupt people, that’s rude, being rude means hurt hurt hurt because of RSD and nice young ladies aren’t rude anyway) and finish assigned tasks (don’t forget don’t forget don’t forget if you forget they’ll hate you) i don’t have the inattentive component; and they tell me if i can sit still (what kind of organs do snails have, anyway? let’s research that for four hours) and avoid butting into people’s space (don’t be rude, don’t be RUDE) i don’t have the hyperactive component; and they only ever mean to talk to parents of little ADHD boys, and there is nothing, nothing, nothing meant for me.

Wow. I relate to this so much and the thought of it possibly being ADHD never even crossed my mind.

Just from my personal experience, I’ve found it much easier to get a diagnosis and be treated for mine. More and more health professionals are recognizing ADHD in AFAB (assigned female assign birth) people and adults. I’d highly recommend seeing a mental health professional to get assessed if you think it’s impacting your daily life in massively negative ways; getting help can be a life saver.

They also don’t talk about how girls with ADHD are much more likely to develop anxiety or how girls tend to fixate on hyper control to prevent “unladylike” behavior.

It took until college for me to get a definitive diagnosis of ADHD, and even then I second guess it. I can focus on video games for 18+ hours, with no breaks, not even for food. That’s not inattentive! Doesn’t matter if I can only focus on a few very specific games or that what’s really happening is hyper fixation. I can focus therefore no ADHD. My classmates comment on how surprised they are that I didn’t make a lot of noise in class from fidgeting? Everyone fidgets, still not ADHD. Literally feel like my brain is being crushed in a voice whenever I try to study or work? I just don’t have the discipline to get my work done, not ADHD. Want to start crying cause you can’t focus and what your learning/working on just does not make sense? Suck it up, still not ADHD.

“Everyone experiences those things”

Actually, no, they don’t. I’m not hyper fixating because I’m obsessed or addicted to something. My brain just decided THAT’S SOMETHING WE CAN FOCUS ON. Normal people don’t fail to get any work done for weeks or months at a time because it physically hurts your brain and things just WONT WORK. Normal people can get comfortable when sitting.

I was tested for ADHD as a little girl but it was decided I didn’t have it, so I learned to sit still. I learned not to talk in school. I didn’t fidget and I didn’t speak unless spoken to. I hyper fixated on reading and expanding my vocabulary in third grade I was reading books at an 8th grade level because of this, but I didn’t have ADHD, I was just smart. I could not, for the life of me, figure out what the weird language of math was. it was a foreign language I couldn’t understand. but that was just me not trying hard enough. when I drove myself to tears trying to figure out one problem and being unable to move on to the next until k got this one right it wasn’t ADHD, it was me being childish and procrastinating my work. me not turning in half done work because it wasn’t finished so I couldn’t because it wasn’t done and it needed to be done to get turned in, was me being irresponsible and not caring about my grades when I cared so much it stressed me out in the fourth grade.

I got diagnosed with ADHD when I was seventeen years old. I was almost done with school by then. but that didn’t matter. we got me on meds, but they made me so sick I couldn’t eat anything and I was almost a zombie, no emotions to even struggle to regulate. (which when I had issues with that I was just “over emotional” and “a crybaby”) so we got me on new meds, and I think they worked. I couldn’t tell. I didn’t feel any different. I still hyper fixated on english and reading only now it’s fantasy and fiction because the world I see is too bleak and rattled with horrible things that my mind of anxiety, depression, and ADHD can barely handle.

now I’m twenty and off all medication and not being out back on because “it’s all in your head”. I’m twenty and just learning that the sinking feeling and tightness in my chest when I even THINK I’ve made someone close to my heart remotely upset is something that comes with ADHD that I wasn’t told about.

nobody tells you how much it actually sucks to deal with ADHD, and how its different for literally every single person with it. because while I may suffer from auditory processing (“huh?” “oh wait, *answers question/continues conversation in the middle of the person repeating*”/ “wait what? my brain said no to that-”), someone else may not, they may be able to process things perfectly but have some other issue with I don’t have.

WOW. I got my diagnosis a few months ago at age 32 and it seriously just boggles my mind. This entire post is so necessary. A diagnosis of ADD/ADHD as a late teen/early adult is just wild. You’ve lived your whole life feeling a certain way and then you get told you have ADD/ADHD. If I hadn’t worked up the courage and actually talked to my Doctor about my eating behavior and how it was making me feel, I wouldn’t have even known.

Doc decided to test me after 6 months when we talked about side effects of the med he had me on (Vyvanse) and there weren’t any negative. The positives prompted the test. 

People don’t realize you don’t need to be hyperactive to to have attention deficit disorder. 

I struggle to maintain focus while watching videos, especially longer ones, but I’ve found a combination of increased playback speed/captions to help me substantially!

[IMAGE ID: tweet from ‘freetofic’ reading:

“ADHD culture is not knowing:

-when to ask for help b/c ‘overwhelmed w/things to do’ is your normal, default state

-how to ask for help b/c you don’t even know how to describe what needs doing, so organizing the help would be more work than just doing it yourself”

Posted 9:49 AM on 1st December 2019]

friend in my DMs: hi

my adhd-induced anxiety: shit. why are they texting me? did I forget to call them? did we have plans? did they ask me for something & I never replied? did I borrow something and never return it? what did I do wrong?????

me: im sorry

• level-ups stop getting further and further apart after like, level 10
• and you always get the same amount of gold for doing a repeating task, forever
• with like. periodic extra rewards for hitting a streak of a certain length
• collectibles
• the entire game is just eggs & animal food
• maybe cross-breeding for cooler eggs? MAYBE?? TRADING??? idk
• unlocking cooler/more complicated eggs/animals by reaching levels
• option to limit how much time you spend in the app so you don’t get stuck doing egg-collectible things
• NO CHEATING BY PAYING EXTRA MONEYS
• i’d pay literal money for this app but don’t let me cheat by paying money

basically I just need an app that rewards tasks for long enough it actually becomes a subconscious habit. which takes like. a year. literally a whole year

& goals that don’t grow so far apart I stop caring about reaching them

thunder-the-wolf:

adhdpie:

thunder-the-wolf:

thunder-the-wolf:

adhdpie:

thunder-the-wolf:

adhdpie:

• a messenger app that puts all the unread, unanswered messages from every single app on one screen and automatically hides the messages after I’ve replied to them

• updating a calendar in an organizational app automatically updates the main phone calendar. updating the main phone calendar automatically updates all the organizational app calendars. updates both ways

• a habit-forming app like habitica except that level-ups stop getting further and further apart after like, level 10
• and you always get the same amount of gold for doing a repeating task, forever
• with like. periodic extra rewards for hitting a streak of a certain length
• collectibles
• the entire game is just eggs & animal food
• maybe cross-breeding for cooler eggs? idk

• an app that after you snooze an item a certain number of times to put it off it stops letting you do that. the notification doesn’t go away until you do it or you explain why you’re putting it off again in text ( 50-word count minimum)

• related: an app where if you don’t put a due date on a task, it tells you how long it’s been since you added the task to the app. the oldest task is always first. and the ‘how long it’s been’ part gets redder and bigger the longer it’s been, so like a 20-day-old task is like “20 DAYS AGO” in 48-pt font next to the task name

• a calendar app that opens itself after I turn off my alarm, shows me my schedule for the day, and walks me through my morning routine, and can’t be closed until all my morning tasks are done
• the app is open for a minimum of 10 minutes OR you can’t move from one task to the next in less than a minute

• an app that does literally any of these tasks and doesn’t charge by subscription
• i see you taking advantage of the fact that i’ll forget to turn off the subscription for like 10 years after i stop using the app
• i see you, organizational app makers. i see you

Hi I’m a computer programmer and you just gave me soany ideas that I’ll definitely need for my own life can I give these a shot pretty please?

HECK YES

(that first one especially would help me manage my social media experience so much better)

I gots the Discord up. It’s not entirely set up but I’m working on it. Anyone want in?

https://discord.gg/h8HPqe

This link should stay up longer https://discord.gg/q8HYUtb

YO IT’S hAPPENING 

if you wanna get in on some beta testing & planning an app for adhd ppl by adhd ppl click the discord link above!!!

Just a reminder that this project is still in the works! I’m thinking about posting some of the pictures I have of the project on Tumblr, so people can see what I’m trying to accomplish and offer their own ideas.

YO THIS IS STILL HAPPENING

Credit to @thunder-the-wolf for sticking this out so long!

maybeitsfriendly:

adhdpie:

adhdpie:

(the majority of this post is pulled from an older reblog I did on my main, @vantasticmess.)

it’s ADHD Awareness Month so here’s a post about it. :D

I’ve gotten sooo many ‘#not adhd but man i feel this’ tags on adhd posts i’ve made, and tbh tags of this type drive me nuts (b/c they make me doubt the validity of my diagnosis.)

but if you, a not-adhd person, see a post about adhd experiences and relate to it, please consider the following: 

• maybe you do have adhd?
  
• maybe it’s because most things that adhd people experience are things that most everyone experiences sometimes, only they experience it all the time.

at its heart, adhd is theinability to pick what your attention is locked onto, sometimes combined with a need to move constantly (hyperactivity).  This manifests as:

• lively internal life + rapid thought & intuitive leaps of cognition - good when being creative, bad when trying to make a logical decision
  
• overthinking things
• impulsive behavior
• short attention span + being easily distracted
• unnaturally long attention span + inability to notice outside stimuli
• short term memory dysfunction
• executive dysfunction
• no sense of priority (everything is equally important)
• no sense of time in relation to self (cannot effectively tell how long an activity will take or develop a sense of urgency based on a deadline until the deadline is perilously close or already passed)
• failure to follow through (leaving work incomplete)
• forgetting to remember/remembering tasks at inappropriate times
• intrusive thoughts

And pretty much everyone experiences one or all of these things at times, and these symptoms can spring from other causes than ADHD (for instance, executive dysfunction accompanies depression and anxiety as well).

But adhd people have this happen so constantlyandso intrusively that we cannot complete basic tasks, even if we want to:

• The only thing consistent about us is inconsistent results: sometimes we’re on time, sometimes we’re not. sometimes we’re reliable, sometimes we’re not. sometimes we’re studious, sometimes we’re not … (and trust me we’re not enjoying it any more than you are)
• We fail classes, we drop out of college, we lose jobs, and no matter how much we try, we cannot fix it.
• We can’t just remove distractions - our brains are a distraction.
• We can’t just ‘try harder’ - our wayward mind might be focusing on our studying today, but tomorrow it might not. The same effort level will have wildly different results on different days because our attention cooperated … or didn’t.
  
• it is literally impossible for us to choose our focus. pretty much ever.

it pisses off our friends, it pisses off our bosses, it pisses off our family, and it even pisses off ourselves. it affects every part of our life.

So adhd shitposts can be pretty relateable, even if you don’t have adhd.  But if this list sounds familiar - if the contents of it happen to you to the point that you’re getting in trouble at school or your job and you’re pissing off your friends? might be worth looking into what’s going on with you.

bringing this back b/c at least 1 of every 15 rbs of the 7 ADHD Moods post is tagged ‘#i don’t have adhd but’.

Can I add that you don’t have to be failing classes or other things in order to have ADHD? I’d rather not conflate those two things. You can succeed and still have ADHD. In fact, people can fail to receive a proper diagnosis for ADHD because they’re doing just fine in school. It’s an unfortunately common side effect, but notarequirement.

(#ok yes#but pls stop equating failing classes to adhd#so many people dont get diagnosed#bc they do well in school#i had to fight for a diagnosis bc my psychiatrist#saw me having ok grades a d being in college#as a sign i must not have adhd#regardless of my constant inattention#constant forgetting#like i am definition of attention defecit#but bc i learned to live with it and do well in classes#oh no you cant have adhd#it prevented me from getting medicated for years bro#so yeah#stop that shit pls (via@thefloralpeach​ ))

hi yes! both these people are very right: 

you can have ADHD (or ADD, aka ADHD-PI) and still get good grades/do well, overall, in school!

If ADHD ppl find school/your subjects interesting, your coursework/homework keeps your brain engaged, and you have sufficient coping skills* &/or a decent support system to bridge the gaps where your brain disengages, you can be a star student despite having ADHD.

(*’sufficient coping skills’ might simply be ‘spend 5 times as many hours studying as everyone else & do every major research paper in the 24 hours before it’s due’. these aren’t GOOD coping methods, but if you get a decent grade nobody will care how you did it.)

this was me, in fact, through all of elementary/middle school. I was top of my class, and earned a seat at a special sci-tech high school because of it! (College was where I utterly fell apart.)

now that said:

the reason I described ADHD/ADD ppl as ‘failing classes & losing jobs’ is because all too often, ADHD does cause people to lose a job or fail a class … even if it’s not a constant, repetitive thing. 

In fact, all too often those failures seem to be totally at random. there was no apparent reason for your sudden drop in performance, so what happened?

ADHD happened. (the only thing consistent about us is inconsistency.)

Or to be more specific: the amount of invisible-to-others work that goes into maintaining our usually high level of performance is so great that when we stop that work, our performance utterly crashes. & if the setting is unforgiving enough or the timing bad enough, we suffer severe consequences.

not every ADHD person suffers those consequences at work or at school! and not everyone’s consequences are as severe as failing a whole class, dropping out of college, or losing jobs.but:

all ADHD people are doing a lot of invisible work to keep meeting expectations, and we all fail at that work from time to time.

(part 1 of the answer to an ask i received:

• what does hyperactivity look/feel like? (this post)
• how does it feel to be on effective adhd medication?

the answer to the second question will come soon (I hope).)

disclaimer: I’m NOT an expert - I’m just a layman diagnosed with ADHD who’s read a lot & experienced a lot! also: my experiences are NOT universal! other people may experience/feel hyperactivity differently from me.**

ANYWAY

the symptoms of hyperactivity (& impulsiveness) doctors look for to diagnose ADHD (list based on DSM-V criteria, pulled from here&here) & what, ime, they actually mean/look like:

hyperactivity:

fidgeting/constantly changing position, unable to stay still/seated.for example:

• the Legg Bounce™
• chewing pens
• fussing with necklace
• body-focused repetitive behaviors like pulling hair or picking nose
• getting up to pace often

unable to play ‘quietly’

• I read this as: unable to regulate volume/contain their feelings when happy, so ends up shouting or being loud without noticing
• seriously, I have no idea how loud I’m being. I don’t hear it

constantly ‘on the go’

• once done with one thing, it’s time to do the next thing
• no waiting, no time to relax, no chill
• we’re done eating, right? so we can leave the table and do something else? right now???

talks ‘excessively’ (this is the form of hyperactivity that tends to get afab ppl &/or women diagnosed as hyperactive).

• stories tend to start way earlier than needed & end someplace other than the point
• don’t give other ppl a chance to talk … unless interrupted, which usually doesn’t bother me as long as the addition is interesting

impulsiveness:*

interrupts others in conversation/finishes sentences for them

• I read this as: ‘I’ve anticipated the end of your sentence & want to answer you before my brain bolts in another direction’
• ‘you’re taking too long to get to the point, hURRY UP’

has a hard time waiting their turn/waiting in line

• and by ‘hard time’ I mean ‘being asked to ‘wait a second’ while someone else completes a thing is nigh unbearable’
• seriously there is a 50/50 chance I will need something to do within 10 seconds of being asked to wait
• if there’s something engaging to do in the meantime, it will take my mind off the wait. hence: I bring coloring books everywhere

interrupts/intrudes on others.examples:

• interrupting conversations, even private ones, to ask questions
• ‘borrowing’ stuff without asking b/c it’s there & the hyperactive person finds it more convenient to use than looking for their own stuff
• doing things without being asked to b/c it was interesting at the moment

*In regards to ‘impulsiveness’:
imho: it’s not so much that hyperactive adhd people are ‘impulsive’ as ‘hyperactive adhd ppl have brains that are also hyperactive, which makes them do things that look impulsive to outsiders’.

hyperactive ppl physically fidget and constantly move & jump from activity to activity because their brain’s neurons are doing the same thing, but with thoughts: fussing/chewing on things at random, constantly roaming from place to place, and always thinking about SOMETHING - unable to rest or be still.

for example:

• interrupting ppl I’m conversing with: if I don’t talk right now, I’m going to lose whatever it was I was going to say - the thought going in and out of my head before it’s my turn to speak.
• waiting is hard: if I’m doing nothing, that’s time for my brain to remind me of the 27 things that are SUPER IMPORTANT that I COULD BE DOING RIGHT NOW. so I get anxious & impatient b/c I’m wasting valuable time just WAITING MY TURN.
• intrudes on others: if I think of a thing & get up to tell the relevant person & they’re busy, I know I’ll forget before they’re free - so I interrupt.
• takes things without asking: if I see a thing that belongs to my roomie that reminds me of something I want/need, I just use my roomie’s thing b/c I’ll forget if I look for my own version of the thing.
• takes over tasks inappropriately: If I do a thing without being asked & it turns out I wasn’t supposed to, I probably forgot I wasn’t supposed to or justified it to myself at lightning speed.

tl;dr my brain moves too fast for life. to compensate, sometimes I do things too fast for other people. then they say I’m impulsive for doing it.

**also: the psychiatrist evaluation I underwent found that I was ADHD-PI (primarily inattentive): that is, my ‘H’ is also (supposedly) relatively low. but now that I better understand what PI people experience - things like ‘brain fog’ - I think I’m more likely ADHD-C (combined).

for anyone who needs to hear it:

if something you can’t seem to control is chewing on your mental space and negatively impacting your life - making it hard to think positive, get out of bed, get work done, remember what you need to do, clean your spaces, etc - you are NOT:

• making things up
• being a lazy bum
• making excuses
• deliberately ruining your life
• a bad person

you ARE:

• noticing something is wrong with your health
• in need of assessment and treatment to get better!

ace-of-the-cards:

adhdpie:

adhdpie:

–the Only Mood everyone else knows about: i  wanna do THIS and THIS and THIS and THIS and THIS and–SQUIRREL

–galaxy brain: i was listening to the lecture but the prof said something that reminded me of something else and now i’m not sure how much time i was lost in thought

–the tutorial only comes in video format: i’m sorry, but you’ve thrown off the emperor’s groove *hurls product & its tutorial video into the sun*

–damn you hyperfocus: i went to bed intending to wake up and write but this morning i was possessed by a cleanliness spirit and spent the next 14 hours organizing the apartment

–i dont think u tried at all.jpg: did i seriously spend an entire free day refreshing twitter b/c i didn’t want to spend 10 minutes finishing my hw but wouldn’t let myself do anything else until i finished it???? (yes)

–patrick star: *unlocks phone* time to check the weather. *opens twitter* the weather. *opens messenger* the weather. *opens mobage game* theweather.*opens facebook* the weather. *opens twitter again* THE WEA–

–smells like depression: literally everything is too boring. i’m going back to sleep

#this is the post that made someone message me saying i was stereotyping adhders#when i have adhd and identity with all of this

cowards can come @ me, the OP, if they got a problem with this post b/c all of these are literally about me

*more proof i have adhd. i do all of these*

#i’d be more interested to see if there’s anyone who doesn’t identify with literally all of these#isn’t this just the normal human experience (via nomette)

it kind of is! but it also kind of isn’t. 

let me point you to a post I hope everybody who doesn’t have ADHD (but finds this post relateable) will read:

✨ why adhd shitposts can be pretty relatable even if you don’t have adhd ✨

tl;dr version: 

• almost everyone suffers from attention deficiency from time to time. neurotypical people daydream through class, forget why they unlocked their phone, make impulsive purchases, procrastinate on things they don’t want to do, etc.
• these lapses in self-control, attentiveness, & executive function become diagnosable as ADHD when they happen so much & so severely that it disrupts a person’s quality of life.

and PS: these ‘adhd moods’ are not the only moods adhd people have (somebody tagged this post #this is time blindness erasure and I laughed)!

also, these moods can be super relateable to people with other kinds of executive dysfunction!

also to people on the autism spectrum! (Asperger’s and ADHD in particular have very similar symptom profiles!)

neurodivergence & neurodiversity is WILD y’all, our brains go H A R D in some awesome(ly weird???) ways

dropping plurals off word or forgetting to type entire words bc can never type as fast as ur brain churns out new ideas

> writes down task

> thinks task will be remembered because of writing it down

> forgets task & loses paper task was written on

aka why tf am i procrastinating on The Thing (more like a flowchart, actually)

lots of people who have executive function difficulties worry about whether they’re procrastinating on a task out of laziness/simply wanting to be a jerk or mental struggles. this checklist might help you figure out which it is at any given time! (hint: it’s almost never laziness or being a jerk.) (obligatory disclaimer: this is just what works for me! something different might work better for you.)

1) do I honestly intendto start the task despite my lack of success?

• yes: it’s a Brain Problem. next question
  
• no: it’s shitty to say one thing & do another. better be honest with myself & anyone expecting me to do the task.
  

2) am I fed, watered, well-rested, medicated properly, etc?

• yes:next question
  
• no:guess what? this is the real next task

3) does the idea of starting the task make me feel scared or anxious?

• yes: Anxiety Brain. identify what’s scaring me first.
• no:next question

4) do I know how to start the task?

• yes:next question
  
• no:ADHD Brain. time to make an order of operations list.

5) do I have everything I need to start the task?

• yes:next question
  
• no:ADHD Brain lying to me about the steps again, dangit. first task is ‘gather the materials’.

6) why am i having a hard time switching from my current task to this new task?

• i’m having fun doing what i’m doing: it’s okay to have fun doing a thing! if task is time-sensitive, go to next question.
• i have to finish doing what i’m doing: might be ADHD brain. can I actually finish the current task or will I get trapped in a cycle? does this task really need to be finished?
• the next task will be boring/boring-er than the current task: ADHD brain. re-think the next task. what would make it exciting? what am I looking forward to?
• I might not have enough time to complete the task: ADHD brain wants to finish everything it starts. (if task is time-sensitive, go to next question)
• i just want to make the person who asked me to do it angry: sounds like anxiety brain trying to punish itself, because I know I’ll be miserable if someone is angry at me. why do i think I deserve punishment?
• no, I seriously want to piss them off: okay, i’m being a shithead

7) have I already procrastinated so badly that I now cannot finish the task in time?

• yes: ADHD brain is probably caught in a guilt-perfection cycle. since I can’t have the task done on time, i don’t even want to start.
  

reality check: having part of a thing done is almost always better than none of a thing done. if I can get an extension, having part of it done will help me keep from stalling out until the extension deadline. i’ll feel better if I at least try to finish it.

• no, there’s still a chance to finish on time: ADHD brain thinks that I have all the time in the world, but the truth is I don’t. 

reality check: if i’m having fun doing what I’m doing, I can keep doing it, but I should probably set a timer & ask someone to check on me to make sure I start doing the task later today.

8) I’ve completed the checklist and still don’t know what’s wrong!

• probably wasn’t honest enough with myself. take one more look.
• if I’m still mystified, ask a friend to help me talk it out.
  

hope this helps some of you! YOU’RE DOING GREAT SWEETIE DON’T GIVE UP ON YOU

shoutout to all the #actuallyautistic ppl who feel the adhd moods, we all in this heckin boat together

Brain fog

Foggy fogginess

want to do things but thoughts are

mush.

Completing sentences is hard

Because the words are out

Of

Reach

Floating in the fog

mush.

does anyone else find themselves assimilating someone else’s opinion if your own opinion isn’t strong enough and you like, trust the person or enough ppl have expressed similar opinions?

trying to figure out- is this an ADHD thing, an anxiety thing, a ‘growing up under the gaslight’ thing, or just some combination of my own personal weirdnesses 

vantasticmess:

shoutout to the adhd people who did well in school for years but suddenly crashed and burned when the responsibilities outweighed their coping skills

shoutout to the adhd people who couldn’t finish college

shoutout to the adhd people who do great work but lose their jobs because of poor time managment

shoutout to the adhd people who don’t lose their jobs but can never advance because of their inconsistent performance

shoutout to the adhd people who want more work responsibilities but are afraid of what will happen when they inevitably make a careless mistake or their inattention leads something important to be forgotten

shoutout to the adhd people who have damaged their credit rating by forgetting to pay bills or return library books

shoutout to the adhd people who work their ass off every day but never know if the results will be stellar, average, or terrible

shoutout to the adhd people who have done just well enough to go most of their lives knowing something was wrong, but figuring they just needed to work harder to fix it.

the saddest tags:

#mmm #ive been wondering for a while but #was dismissed so i guess not

so was I. Growing up it never occurred to anyone, including me, that I could have ADHD because it was thought of as an overdiagnosed ‘disorder’ for hyperactive boys who couldn’t stay still in class, who probably needed extra recess more than Ritalin.  I was a good student - until I wasn’t (in high school, where the workload was too much). And I’m great at my job - until I’m not (inconsistency is the most consistent thing about ADHD people).

The first thing that tipped me off that maybe I have it was a post about Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, which described my anxiety spirals better than anxiety did. complete depression triggered by a negative perception and clearing up the second the negative perception is gone? that was me!  And it’s primarily - if not only - found in ADHD people. But when I told my therapist (who I was seeing for anxiety) about it, she was discouraging and doubtful.

I’m looking for a way to get a full evaluation. I’ve gone through an interview and testing, and the prognosis was ‘likely has ADHD-PI’, and the meds are immensely helpful. But I had to skip directly to going to a psychiatry office that specializes in ADHD treatment to even get this far.

ADHD is frequently misdiagnosed as anxiety, depression, and other disorders - which can themselves accompany ADHD. when the hyperactivity is absent, it masks effectively. And you can fit ALL the symptoms of it and still not be diagnosed with ADHD because your symptoms aren’t considered to be causing you enough distress, or frequent enough to rise to the level of a disorder.  But if you think you have it, do research, and if you still think you have it, it’s worth pushing for a full evaluation.

You will be dismissed by even mental health professionals. People outside your head will doubt you a lot, because you probably have coping mechanisms that prevent you from being the mess that outsiders imaging ADHD people to be. But if you think that being treated for struggling to focus your attention where you want to focus it will help you, keep pushing. get that full evaluation. Find out for sure. and then you can be certain you’re getting treated for the right thing!

shoutout to the adhd people who did well in school for years but suddenly crashed and burned when the responsibilities outweighed their coping skills

shoutout to the adhd people who couldn’t finish college

shoutout to the adhd people who do great work but lose their jobs because of poor time managment

shoutout to the adhd people who don’t lose their jobs but can never advance because of their inconsistent performance

shoutout to the adhd people who want more work responsibilities but are afraid of what will happen when they inevitably make a careless mistake or their inattention leads something important to be forgotten

shoutout to the adhd people who have damaged their credit rating by forgetting to pay bills or return library books

shoutout to the adhd people who work their ass off every day but never know if the results will be stellar, average, or terrible

shoutout to the adhd people who have done just well enough to go most of their lives knowing something was wrong, but figuring they just needed to work harder to fix it.

this one is a little more serious I guess

• i am at my job and I want to work. there’s plenty to do, and I want to do it. some things bore me but others are fun once I get started. so why am i refreshing twitter for the 50th time instead
  
• i’m not even enjoying twitter but I can’t s t o p
• *getting distracted from a conversation in the middle of my own sentence because my brain took a few quantum leaps and now I’m thinking about space*
• ‘… I don’t remember where I was going with this’ I admit after 3 tangential stories and a complete topic change
  
• everything is equally important but it’s physically impossible for me to do everything so my brain decides on its own what stuff to dump from the memory as unimportant. things my brain has decided is not important:
• paying my student loans off. for seven years
• going to a court date. now i’m not legal to drive for the foreseeable future
• invalidation hell: ‘all millennials have adult adhd’ ‘it’s a quarter-life crisis thing to get diagnosed with adhd’ *all google results about adhd meds are primarily about drug abuse* ‘sell me your extras? lol’ ‘you’re way too organized to be adhd’ ‘isn’t that only a boy thing?’ ‘isn’t that only a kid thing?’ ‘whatever it’s just overdiagnosed’
  
• an unusual story: I was an excellent student. I loved school.  I loved learning. I did all my homework; I thought it was fun. I had a hard time doing long-term projects but I hardly had any of those in elementary and middle school. if I had attention problems i was more than smart enough to cover up for those.
• in 8th grade I got A’s in every class in every quarter. A B+ in Civics threatened that my second quarter. It was because I had forgotten to turn in my community service form and subsequently lost it. my teacher relented when I cried, trusting I had done it because I was such a good student.
• i got into a competitive magnet high school. we were the best of the best. the school, afraid of how we would handle competition, didn’t offer any special recognition for excellence. at the same time, my parents divorced. Worst of all, I found fandom.
• adhd experts call it a ‘breaking point’ or ‘tipping point’ - the point at which an adhd-er can’t cope anymore and it all falls apart all at once. for me, the first breaking point was high school, with the competing interests of fandom and classwork.
• college: a largely unstructured learning environment that requires self-discipline and time management skills
• my adhd brain: *nervous laughter* haha what the fuck
• me: *withdraws after 4 years with 45 completed credit-hours*
• *gets a text* I better leave that unread so I remember to reply when I have time for a text conversation, or the conversation will distract me from what I’m doing now *never actually responds to the text, stops noticing the ‘unread’ icon after 48 hours
• don’t do that *immediately does it anyway* 
• why did I do that
• the idea that I should 
• (I forgot what I was writing in the above bullet point)
• that low-key feeling of dread I get when somebody wants me to watch a video or listen to a song b/c the thought of giving something I may not enjoy my undivided attention for longer than 15 seconds is awful
• something gotta bounce. a leg, a toe, a finger, something g o t t a  b o u n c e 
• anxiety before meetings b/c what if I forgot something I was supposed to do. anxiety before phone conversations b/c what if I say something and don’t pick up on the social cues that tell me not to. anxiety w/friends b/c if I do something shitty they’ll be too nice to tell me and then eventually they’ll just leave b/c I always do something dumb and awkward b/c evidently I just don’t even notice when I’m being an ass. anxiety because it’s happened so many times before and it’s not even like I can blame them because I’m the one who’s an oblivious jerk
• someone is mad at me and I wanna die. no really, here’s some ways I could do it, I think it would be better if I just– *gets a text from said friend forgiving me* the world is sunshine and rainbows!!
• ‘okay I wanna reach this goal’ does nothing but work on the goal for the next two weeks* *the second the goal is reached the project/game/etc is abandoned and never thought about again
• the idea of having no distractions is amazing but what do you do when the distraction is your own brain

vantasticmess:

• I don’t even remember putting that thing down but now it’s not in my hand and I don’t know where it went
  
• ‘what do you mean you can just think about nothing? what’s that like? I don’t understand’
  
• *tuning out of a conversation halfway through somebody else’s sentence because I just thought of something interesting*
• carrying my psychiatrist’s business card with me at all times because I see her once a month and every time I go I forget what floor her office is on. I’ve been there 8 times
  
• ‘Between A & B, A would be the right thing to do’ *a cascading thought process that takes a few seconds tops, justifying option B* ‘actually B would be the right thing to do’
• somebody else, later: why did you think B was the right thing to do??
• me: …. it’s not important, I’ll know better next time
• (spoiler: I won’t know better next time)
• I know you already told me this thing like 12 times but can you tell me again just one more time because I forgot
• it’s not that I forgot that I wasn’t supposed to do this thing. it’s just that in that particular moment i thought it was okay to do it anyway for reasons that would take 48 minutes to explain even though it only took me 3 seconds to justify it in my thoughts, so it’s easier for me to just say ‘I forgot’
• ‘I already told you that’ ‘really? I must have forgotten, i’m sorry’ ‘it was FIVE MINUTES AGO. in this SAME CONVERSATION’
  
• this internal conversation:
• me: I feel motivated to do this responsible thing
• me: if I don’t do this responsible thing right now I will get distracted and forget to do it for another 5 hours
• me: so I should do this thing right this second, there is nothing stopping me
• me: after I finish this one cell phone game
• me, 5 hours later: I KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN
• almost flunking a class because I straight up didn’t know any homework had been assigned despite loving the class and always attending
• trusting the memory of literally anyone else over my own memory
• intending to do something for days. sometimes months. never doing it
• *cuddling somebody* mm this is nice … *2 seconds later* bored now
• somebody is mad at me. I might as well fucking d i e
• the options in company are: overshare about the one thing I care about or not talk at all
• insensitive or inattentive? YOU decide (and when you tell me that i hurt your feelings and I didn’t notice I’ll rejection sensitive dysphoria into fantasies of disappearing forever)
• being excellent at my job for months on end, doing everything right and everything well, and then suddenly & without explanation being t h e  w o r s t at it for several weeks, making dumb mistakes everywhere for no discernible reason
• when asked to explain something: well it all started when I was a baby
• ‘they don’t need that much explanation’ well YOU tell ME where to start b/c I have no fucking clue tbh
• i can’t throw away anything b/c when I look at it I remember all the sentimental reasons I keep it around and they seem just as important as actually needing it and when I close the storage box back up I forget I had it in the first place until the next time I try to get rid of my clutter and repeat this process
• i wasnt’ idle for a second all day and yet I didn’t accomplish a n y t h i n g
• am i a speed-reader or was I so impatient for what came next that I read only half a page and then skipped to the next one?
• getting excited about a project, starting it, then racing to finish it as fast as I can because when I get bored I’ll abandon it and never go back. must beat the boredom
• edit my fics? working twice on the same idea? /uproarious laughter
• well I fucked that up. too bad I can never rework it because I no longer have passionate energy for it
• me, opening a bottle of adhd meds: I don’t have adhd. I’m just a lazy bum who doesn’t try hard enough

• less than an hour after posting this I forgot my keys in the mailbox because I was distracted by looking at the mail I had just gotten and trying to figure out how to haul those and my groceries upstairs and if that doesn’t sum it up i don’t know what does
  
• THIS HAPPENED WHILE ON A DOSE OF ADHD MEDS 

• I don’t even remember putting that thing down but now it’s not in my hand and I don’t know where it went
  
• ‘what do you mean you can just think about nothing? what’s that like? I don’t understand’
  
• *tuning out of a conversation halfway through somebody else’s sentence because I just thought of something interesting*
• carrying my psychiatrist’s business card with me at all times because I see her once a month and every time I go I forget what floor her office is on. I’ve been there 8 times
  
• ‘Between A & B, A would be the right thing to do’ *a cascading thought process that takes a few seconds tops, justifying option B* ‘actually B would be the right thing to do’
• somebody else, later: why did you think B was the right thing to do??
• me: …. it’s not important, I’ll know better next time
• (spoiler: I won’t know better next time)
• I know you already told me this thing like 12 times but can you tell me again just one more time because I forgot
• it’s not that I forgot that I wasn’t supposed to do this thing. it’s just that in that particular moment i thought it was okay to do it anyway for reasons that would take 48 minutes to explain even though it only took me 3 seconds to justify it in my thoughts, so it’s easier for me to just say ‘I forgot’
• ‘I already told you that’ ‘really? I must have forgotten, i’m sorry’ ‘it was FIVE MINUTES AGO. in this SAME CONVERSATION’
  
• this internal conversation:
• me: I feel motivated to do this responsible thing
• me: if I don’t do this responsible thing right now I will get distracted and forget to do it for another 5 hours
• me: so I should do this thing right this second, there is nothing stopping me
• me: after I finish this one cell phone game
• me, 5 hours later: I KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN
• almost flunking a class because I straight up didn’t know any homework had been assigned despite loving the class and always attending
• trusting the memory of literally anyone else over my own memory
• intending to do something for days. sometimes months. never doing it
• *cuddling somebody* mm this is nice … *2 seconds later* bored now
• somebody is mad at me. I might as well fucking d i e
• the options in company are: overshare about the one thing I care about or not talk at all
• insensitive or inattentive? YOU decide (and when you tell me that i hurt your feelings and I didn’t notice I’ll rejection sensitive dysphoria into fantasies of disappearing forever)
• being excellent at my job for months on end, doing everything right and everything well, and then suddenly & without explanation being t h e  w o r s t at it for several weeks, making dumb mistakes everywhere for no discernible reason
• when asked to explain something: well it all started when I was a baby
• ‘they don’t need that much explanation’ well YOU tell ME where to start b/c I have no fucking clue tbh
• i can’t throw away anything b/c when I look at it I remember all the sentimental reasons I keep it around and they seem just as important as actually needing it and when I close the storage box back up I forget I had it in the first place until the next time I try to get rid of my clutter and repeat this process
• i wasnt’ idle for a second all day and yet I didn’t accomplish a n y t h i n g
• am i a speed-reader or was I so impatient for what came next that I read only half a page and then skipped to the next one?
• getting excited about a project, starting it, then racing to finish it as fast as I can because when I get bored I’ll abandon it and never go back. must beat the boredom
• edit my fics? working twice on the same idea? /uproarious laughter
• well I fucked that up. too bad I can never rework it because I no longer have passionate energy for it
• me, opening a bottle of adhd meds: I don’t have adhd. I’m just a lazy bum who doesn’t try hard enough

zebra-vixen: