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 :)
having adhd and not knowing it from a young age is being yelled at by your parents because you remembered to do your homework that’s due tomorrow on the night before. it is often getting into trouble because you zoned out during a conversation or a teacher’s explanation but you don’t even know how you did it, you don’t control it. it is knowing deep down that you’re different from other kids but not knowing why. and then, being treated different by your peers and by the adults around you and again not knowing why. it is suffering in silence because everybody, in a way or another, punishes you for being the way you are even if you don’t even know what that means.
but then… you finally understand it. you finally put all the pieces together and for the first time in your life, everything you’ve lived until that moment finally makes sense. the reasons behind the things you did and still do are finally explained to you and you don’t feel like an outsider anymore. and tbh? it’s one of the greatest feelings in the world.
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 hate that no one talks about just how distressing memory loss from adhd actually is. I always see memes that are like “haha I forgot my phone, I don’t remember where my laptop is, etc”, but no one seems to talk about how it can really fuck you up long term to just, not remember things that are completely mundane to non-adhd’ers. The memory loss is, however, so frustrating to us. I cannot physically count how many meltdowns I have had over the sheer mental frustrationandtorture of not being able to remember seemingly simple things
in addition to the frustration and shame of the actual forgetting, there’s this constant background dread, because you know for a damn FACT you are forgetting something important at any given moment. racking your brain may or may not bring it to mind, but you can’t be dwelling on that 24/7 or you’d never do anything else, plus it quite often doesn’t even work. so you just. live with it. every second of every day.
you have forgotten something that is going to bite you on the ass at some random future moment. water is wet. this is your life.
i think the reason so many people with ADHD develop such an absurdist sense of humor is that you have to deal with constant uncertainty and absurdity while being low-key scared and high-key BORED AS FUCK. like if you don’t learn to laugh this shit off you just die.
That and there’s the aspect where it eventually affects your long-term memory as well.
My memories of my childhood are populated by precise layouts of rooms and buildings, the names and faces of people I know, a list of favorite things. The sounds of a church congregation singing. A map of the neighborhood where I grew up. The smell of my elementary school library. Facts. Sensations. Things carved into my recollection through repetition.
But events are largely a blank. I know that things happened. I know that my brother and I went swimming and caught grasshoppers in the summer. I know that we went to Disney World at one point. I know that we had Midnight Madness at Grandma’s every Christmas Eve until I was a teenager. I know that school was rough and that I used to hide in my closet when my parents fought.
I know these things because people have told me about them. There are pictures. There are stories. I was there. I participated. So they tell me. Once in a while, there’s a corresponding ping somewhere in my brain that pulls up an image or a sound or some physical sensation that seems to confirm what I’m hearing.
But so much of my life, especially my early years, is just…File Not Found. And that honestly terrifies me. Because I worry that it makes me way too easy to gaslight. How am I to know if what I’m being told is true? After all, nine times out of ten, I can’t remember.
Phone addiction has been a bit of a struggle for me, but I’ve been consciously working on it. It’s tough when your whole social life, hobbies and method of getting things done involves your phone.
This is one part of ADHD that I actually find really fun. Whenever I get a new hobby, which happens often, I leap into learning all about it and then I get really excited to share it with other people. Though, sometimes I get a bit too enthusiastic admittedly.
I’m really bad about getting off topic when discussing something or after being asked a question. It’s not as though I change the topic completely at a whim, but rather whatever is being talked about relates to something else and my ADHD sends me down a rabbit hole. I’m really bad about getting off topic when discussing something or after being asked a question. It’s not as though I change the topic completely at a whim, but rather whatever is being talked about relates to something else and my ADHD sends me down a rabbit hole
Happy New Years! 2020 may have been a hard year, but it was a big year for me in terms of being diagnosed and finding the wonderful ADHD community. I felt so lost after my initial diagnosis, but I was so lucky to find people who understand and have been such great supports.
Thank you all for being a part of this and for sharing your experiences, cheering me on, and being a part of this community.
This is a very personal comic, even though it’s not very long and doesn’t have many details. There were many opportunities in my life where my ADHD should have been caught, but I felt like I had been failed several times by the same professionals I had sought help from. It all boiled down to the fact they thought they knew me better than I knew me and therefore what I had to say was not deemed important enough to listen to.
It wasn’t until I started seeing my current therapist that I was actually allowed to speak for myself. At first it seemed to only confirm my Generalized Anxiety Disorder, but the more I talked, the more she began to realize that there was something else going on. One day she politely asked me to stop for a moment and point blank asked me “Bri, have you ever heard of Inattentive ADHD?” I had not.
Here is another informational! This time about Dysgraphia. This is another specific learning disorder that often co-occurs with other disorders like adhd and autism.
I’ve been searching for quite some time now for a book on how to Do Social Skills for adults with ADHD. For example, how to teach yourself to read facial expressions/microexpressions, how not to wander off topic in conversation, how to listen effectively, etc.
The only problem is that all of the ones I’ve found so far are written for kids and teens in mind.
It’s not that I have a problem with reading and using books geared toward kids and teens. It’s that the ones I’ve looked at pretty much cover basic things that even I know how to do (like how to not respond entirely off topic to something someone says).
All the books I’ve found for adults with ADHD are all about organization, work-life balance, time management, etc. And that’s good, and necessary! But I feel like learning those things without learning social skills, for me, would be like taking calcium without taking vitamin D.
I’d love any suggestions. Even for books for teens that cover things like succeeding in the workplace, not sounding like you’re making excuses when you’re not trying to, communicating that you’re taking responsibility for your behavior, etc. Again, it’s not the reading level that’s the problem–it’s the fact that I know the content already.
the book You Mean I’m Not Lazy, Stupid, or Crazy? is written by ADHD adults for ADHD adults and contains social & relationship advice in addition to all the organizational stuff.
but issues with reading the mood/understanding others’ facial expressions/etc are also common among ppl with ASD, so looking up resources for autistic people might be helpful as well.
–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
cowards can come @ me, the OP, if they got a problem with this post b/c all of these are literally about me
;_; like, I relate to the vast majority of these but I don’t know if it’s worth it getting diagnosed at 26 :/
Hi!
I (OP) was diagnosed at the age of 32!
and to be honest: it’s not even that uncommon for ADHD adults (particularly women (afab or no) & afab ppl who aren’t women but are perceived as women) to not find out they’re ADHD until they’re in their 20′s or 30′s*.
it is never too late to look into diagnosis. :)
(*apparently it’s common for ADHD parents to get diagnosed for the first time b/c someone recommended their kid be evaluated for ADHD & they read the info & went ‘omg this is me’!)
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
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?
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.
