Do you believe that empathy is a trait that is learned/taught?
Or do you believe that one develops it naturally as we grow (so long as that process is not disrupted by neurodevelopmental, phycological, or other external factors?)
Similarly, do you think it’s possible to teach yourself to better understand, or maybe even better experience empathy, if said issues were to occur?
people have a tendency to think/act like executive dysfunction is just laziness, and theres a lot of posts on a lot of platforms disputing that idea, but im just gonna share something that happened to me this morning, because i think its worth sharing. i got up, took my meds, went downstairs and made myself breakfast. i sat down at the table to eat, and i stopped. not because id forgotten something, or because anything happened, i just, stopped. i was hungry, i was consciously aware of the fact that i was hungry, and there was food right in front of me. so i sat there, not doing anything, for at least ten minutes, because my brain would not let me eat. thats not laziness, even if laziness were real(which i really dont think it is), thats not it. so no, executive dysfunction is not just being lazy, because if it was it wouldnt have taken me ten minutes to start eating the toast on the plate right in front of me when i was hungry.
Yeah, to me lazy is an act of choice. You don’t care about dishes because the maid cleans them, so you chooseto lounge or nap instead. I’m sure laziness exists, I have no doubts, and it can be enabled. Having someone do everything for you, giving you the free choice to either be active or be lazy, is an enabler.
But the lazy itself is a choice. It’s in the definition of the word. You’re lazy so you buy food pre-made rather than make your own. It’s nothing negative.
To me, it’s no longer lazy when someone wants to do something, but can’t or is stopped by a barrier, psychological or otherwise. I want to get up and shower, I know I will feel better after, not getting up makes me feel physically ill and yet I can’t even stand up from the chair. It makes me feel progressively worse. I really want to, but I can’t get my body to move.
It’s unfair to label me as lazy, it’s not my choice and I find it distressing enough without being labeled as such.
For context, you can have executive dysfunction and be lazy too. For me, executive dysfunction is one of the hardest to cope with symptom of ADHD. It paralyzes me so much that sometimes I can’t even go to the toilet because I can’t get up off the chair. I want to play a game but I can’t get myself to start it. I’m also lazy about plenty of stuff lol. I’m too lazy to cook for example. It’s not something I enjoy, and although I could do it, and I have done it, it’s not my thing, and it’s not a necessity. I can recognize and admit it. It’s my own choice. My boyfriend cooks instead because it’s something he enjoys. Prior to meeting him, I was eating prepackaged foods, not because I couldn’t cook, but because I had no interest in it. I’m lazy about going out after working all day. I can do it, I sometimes do it, but the majority of time, I don’t want to do it, because I prefer relaxing and watching TV. I know it would be healthy for me to go out more, but I don’t, by choice.
So yeah. In essence… It’s the difference between unableandunwilling.
in all seriousness it’s very alienating knowing theres Something Wrong With You. like seeing your mental illness come through in your behaviour and thought processes and knowing it’s irrational and unhealthy, knowing other people are reading you as weird or stupid, and not being able to do anything about it is such a lonely experience
God, what a mood. I’ve felt this throughout my entire childhood/teenagehood, before getting diagnosed. It’s particularly distressing when you haven’t yet been diagnosed and no one seems to think there’s anything wrong with you beyond “weird”, “lazy” and “stupid”. You know there’s something wrong, but you don’t know what, so all you can do is internalize all the negative shit you hear.
Getting a little bit tired of posts that are like “adhd is only a disorder because of capitalism” as if it’s mr monopoly man’s fault that i struggle to stay committed to artistic projects i undertook personally for myself and that I enjoy, have trouble regulating my emotions, and procrastinate on eating and going to the bathroom.
I get what they are trying to say, but even if capitalism didn’t exist I would still want to have things like “the motivation to clean my living space and the ability to actually notice that it’s dirty.” I know this is part of the misperception of adhd, but adhd doesn’t just affect academics and work. It affects EVERYTHING, including your personal goals and your own basic needs
Partial disagree. Mainly because we have no real way of knowing this sort of stuff. But realistically?
ADHD symptomatology is directly affected by the environment. I can vouch for this. Growing up between 4 walls, often with a lack of direct care and shared-experiences (most parents nowadays are absent due to working schedules, or too tired to bother during their free time) will intensify them and so will unrestricted access to ‘pointless’ entertainment like scrolling on social media. The more “freedom” someone has, the harder it is and the more apparent the ADHD will become. The lack of guidance and care means most people will build poor coping mechanisms, to add to it.
There’s a reason why you can be medicated and still struggle. Even with the physical aspect treated, poor coping mechanisms still hinder progress.
If you consider a different, less artificial environment, such as… say, a tribe, where a child is usually surrounded by multiple adults at a time, is directly included in most activities (since it’s not a situation where adults would “go to work” where they’re “not allowed” to bring children), and has ample opportunities to do actually stimulating activities like running around barefoot, dancing, exploring and just getting dirty (as opposed to loafing on a chair or in a bed, eyes glued to a screen)… Well, you get a different scenario.
Also consider how most modern children are expected to spend their most sensitive years in the schooling system. It’s very unnatural to be expected to wake up before sunrise in order to spend the majority of your day locked up in a horribly understimulating (or overstimulating) room with 10-30 other unrelated children, essentially forced to sit in a chair the entire time. Compare it with the tribal type of raising children, where learning is mostly physical, through following example set by the family, not by a clinical stranger, and finalized with actual results, not in the form of “marks”, but in the form of, for example, a successful hunt. “Marks” have no purpose outside of the schooling system, so for the majority of a person’s early years, there’s no real feelings of purpose and accomplishments. You don’t learn how to be an adult until you’re wildly thrown into it.
Add to this the expectations that most modern families have, the pressure that comes with it, the detachment and the lack of involvement and patience on their part due to a lack of time and you’ve got the magical mix that contributes to the modern ADHD and the reason why it has become so problematic.
Ok so I’ve found a way to describe what Neurodivergent Can’t Do Task Mode™ feels like to neurotypicals
So you know how you can’t make yourselfputyour hand down on a hot stovetop? There’s a part of your brainthatstops you from doing that? That’s what Neurodivergent Can’t Do Task Mode™ feels like
Even if we want to do it, there’s a barrier stopping us from doing it, and it’s really hard to override
Andwhydoesour brain see the task as a hot stovetop? Because when neurotypicals finish a task, they get serotonin, but we don’t get that satisfactionaftercompleting a task. A neurotypical wouldn’t get serotoninfromputting their hand on a hot stovetop, it would just hurt. When we can’t do a task, it’s because our brain knows that the taskwillhurt (metaphorically) and wants to avoid that.
It’snot that we’re choosing not to do the task, it’s that our brain is physically preventing us from doing it.
Neurotypicals can and should reblog but please don’t add anything
(Sorry/not sorry about the random bolding, it makes it easier for us to read)
> Neurotypicals can and should reblog but please don’t add anything
Implying you can stop me.
Honestly, if I wanted to know actual, helpful information on the matter, Tumblr is in hot competition for dead last on the list of places to get the information from; the majority of people here are running the self-diagnosed “uwu I’m neurodivergent” gambit.
You’re not gonna find it in many other places ;). I’m actually legitimately curious which are the alive first on the list of places for you.
Tumblr shouldn’t be glorified or anything, but any community where people can discuss something freely from their POV is a great informational source if you have the smarts to weed through it. It also happens to have a format that promotes an easy way to do so as well, in the form of reblogs and likes and tags. If you find a post with a large amount of notes, where people with an actual diagnosis confirm that information, it’s fairly easy to assume that it has a certain credibility.
I don’t usually respond to schnazz like this, but ADHD-wise, Tumblr and similar communities are great, and actually much better than many other sources. Why? Because “officially”, ADHD has mostly been associated and studied @ young boys. Adult ADHD is still not acknowledged in many parts of the world. Girls with ADHD go undiagnosed really often.
I’m female and I was diagnosed at 23. No one ever suspected ADHD (not even myself, even though I looked into it multiple times). You know why? Because it’s hardly ever documented. It looks different from “official sources”. I got diagnosed precisely thanks to Tumblr and similar communities, for sharing actual life experiences. Because I stumbled across posts similar to this, dug deeper, and realized that wow, it’s all accurate. All of it.
So I went, made a suggestion to my psychiatrist, who scheduled a meeting with me (and my mom, for confirmation of existing symptomatology during childhood years) and would you look at that. I got officially diagnosed and subsequently medicated. And I live a much better life thanks to it :).
I don’t know if any of you had the same experience as me, but I tried therapy when I was a teenager living in an abusive household and thought it was a waste of time. Ultimately my biggest problems (dad) were beyond my control and no amount of coping would make them better. Now that I’m an adult with actual control over my life and don’t live with my dad anymore therapy is MUCH more helpful.
If any of you had bad experiences with therapy when you were younger it may be worth it to try again now.
THE SAME GOES FOR MEDICATION!! I tried meds as a teenager and they were powerless to help much due to my living situation being horrible. I thought that meant medication didn’t work for me. Now that I’m out of that situation and trying agajn I can really see a difference.
I can vouch for this.
Also important to know that the child/teenager body and brain are simply different. There’s a lot of things going on in there. Both medication and therapy is likely to be way different into adulthood, so if something failed during that time, consider giving it a try later on. This is especially because most children and teenagers have no control in their lives. Being asked to follow guidelines only further infringes on that. It’s hard.
Living in a crappy environment will also easily thwart therapy coping skills simply because you only go to therapy so often… but you livein the crappy environment 24/7. Therapy is typically also isolated in a sense. Going to a very calm office and learning coping skills there, those skills will be much harder to access when the inherent instability of home hits again.
been thinking about how people say adhd manifests itself differently in women and id just like to throw out there that maybe, perhaps adhd does not affect women any differently than it affects men, however the differing societal expectations of men and women mean that often men can express their adhd symptoms more openly without having that pressure of the god awful word Ladylike at their throats like a knife ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
but that’s just. a thought
Extremely likely. Not even just “ladylike”, but generally speaking, “boys are boys” as an excuse to allow boys to be hyperactive and active. They’re also generally less likely to be held accountable, or asked to be responsible.
But I’m expecting that boys also have problems getting diagnosed with the inattentive variant, and have the downside of getting forced to suppress their emotions. I’m assuming there’s a reason RSD isn’t widely recognized outside of social media. If boys are taught to suppress all of their emotions to the point where they can’t even cry anymore, much less express emotions outwardly (anger exception, usually), then of course RSD isn’t recognized.
Depression can mask ADHD symptoms (especially hyperactive ones). It’s why my ADHD symptoms ‘got worse’ as my depression got better.
Both anxiety and depression can cause executive dysfunction too.
ADHD with depression and anxiety can look like ‘JUST’ anxiety and depression. It’s a common misdiagnosis.
ADHD can also directly cause anxiety and depression, and these become most prominent because most doctors will look for these first before anything else (they’re singlehandedly the most common diagnoses). You live your life with executive dysfunction and emotional dysregulation, and a penchant to being judged and turned down and dismissed by everyone around and of course you’re going to end up an anxious depressed mess.
ADHD became more obvious for me because having a working treatment for the anxiety-depression combo (which were, ha, just symptoms) reverted me back to realizing that even when I want to be proactive and improve my life, there’s a literal mental wall that stops me in my tracks. It’s an incredibly distressing state to be in, hence why the brain resorts to just… learned helplessness. And voila, depression. No longer trying to do anything because you know that even when you do want to do them, you just can’t. It’s less taxing to just not want to do things anymore.
Getting the depression treated left me extremely neurotic because I desperately wanted to do things and I just couldn’t, and that in itself was incredibly painful. Without the comfortable, content depression feeling of “I don’t care, I won’t even try”, the feeling of helplessness was amplified tenfold.
On today’s episode of “Is it ADHD or am I just losing my marbles?”:
I have somehowmanaged to lose mass amounts of medication. I know what you’re thinking, “Logan, how can you possibly lose your medication? Where tf did it go?” The answer is, I don’t know!
IknowIhad the medication a few days ago. There was enough boxes stored in my medication box where all of it goes, so it’s in one place! But it’s all gone! I have none! I’m sure there’s some evil medication stealing little mythological fella taking my meds. That’s the only explanation. It’s the onlythingkeepingme from going on a rampage, thinking that I have some sort of evil, medication stealing little goober around my house.
I was to at least 20 different doctors, my medical exam history is the size of War and Peace and SOMEHOW I was diagnosed with “just lazy and maybe depressed idk”
so several mental hospitals later I’m chillin’ with a friend doing dumb tests like “what name would you have if u were a boy” and there’s this test about ADHD and I’m like
✨tf is ADHD✨
So he does that test and is like ah haha idunno what this thing is talking about :) and im sitting near him with trembling voice
D-do youmindifItry
And he’s like sure :) and by the end of this test I’m CRYINGbecauseSO THIS IS WHAT WAS WRONG WITH ME THIS WHOLE TIME and I was sad but then I was notbecause I was ANGRY that all these people with medical degrees or whatever they had and they sat in their chair of lies looking very important in their white coat and looked at this girl who is clearly struggling and were like
Nah she just lazy
AND THEN DISMISSED ME LIKE
DUDE MAYBE GIVE ME HEALTHY COPING MECHANISMS TO SURVIVE
And they were like Nahyou just gottatry harder™✨
And because of them I had the worst depression for several years and became a shut in Oh and BTW
Apparently in my country most of the meds like Adderall and banned so i don’t know what to DO because being diagnosed would not solve SHITapparently
But I gotta try.
upd: this woman with a degree who I paid 40 dollars to visit said “oh no you couldn’t possibly take this long test on ADHD you would’ve left to do something else” and kicked me out of office after like 30 minutes because reasons???
I’m kinda sad and mad at the same time, like sad-mad. She totally thought ADHD is only hyper and said I wasn’t it. When even asked “are you one of these millennials huh” which ficking sucked.
I was to at least 20 different doctors, my medical exam history is the size of War and Peace and SOMEHOW I was diagnosed with “just lazy and maybe depressed idk”
so several mental hospitals later I’m chillin’ with a friend doing dumb tests like “what name would you have if u were a boy” and there’s this test about ADHD and I’m like
✨tf is ADHD✨
So he does that test and is like ah haha idunno what this thing is talking about :) and im sitting near him with trembling voice
D-do youmindifItry
And he’s like sure :) and by the end of this test I’m CRYINGbecauseSO THIS IS WHAT WAS WRONG WITH ME THIS WHOLE TIME and I was sad but then I was notbecause I was ANGRY that all these people with medical degrees or whatever they had and they sat in their chair of lies looking very important in their white coat and looked at this girl who is clearly struggling and were like
Nah she just lazy
AND THEN DISMISSED ME LIKE
DUDE MAYBE GIVE ME HEALTHY COPING MECHANISMS TO SURVIVE
And they were like Nahyou just gottatry harder™✨
And because of them I had the worst depression for several years and became a shut in Oh and BTW
Apparently in my country most of the meds like Adderall and banned so i don’t know what to DO because being diagnosed would not solve SHITapparently
[ID: 3 circular icons of Amity Blight from The Owl House. Amity is a 14 year old girl with pale skin, golden eyes, and straight jaw-length purple hair with brown roots. She wears black triangle stud earrings, a golden moon necklace, and a black dress. Behind her in all 3 icons is aroaesflags’ ADHD lesbian pride flag.
The first icon shows Amity laughing, her eyes squeezed shut. She’s wearing pink earmuffs, a purple coat with a fur-lined hood, and grey gloves. She’s clenching her left fist against her chest.
The second icon shows Amity facing the camera, smirking. Her arms are raised slightly at her sides, and she has a determined look on her face.
The third icon shows Amity blushing and smiling shyly. She’s looking over her shoulder at someone off-screen. /End ID]
