I had a literal emotional breakdown when I got my diagnosis. It was quite literally life changing for me.
Before diagnosis?
I was plagued with a feeling of brokenness — why does it take me 10x longer to learn concepts than it takes my peers, even when I’m attempting to apply all the same strategies? Why is it so dang hard for me to commit to a single project, and why do I spend weeks obsessing over a project only to suddenly lose interest and never touch it again? Why do I have such a visceral reaction to the smallest, friendliest amount of criticism? Why does that person keep making that tiny paper noise while I’m trying to complete my exam — wait, what was the question asking? Let me re-read itAGAIN.
After diagnosis?
Validation! Holy cow is the validation game changing. I no longer had to blame myself for just not trying hard enough. I was trying plenty hard; however, the tools and strategies that work for neurotypical brains don’t necessarily work for my brain! And that’s perfectly okay. As well, I discovered that my anxiety and depression were symptoms, and as I treated my ADHD and developed coping mechanisms around it, I no longer wanted to die.
Of course, the armchair psychiatrists among my friends and family do sometimes try and chime in to tell me that Adderall is bad(derall), and that’s certainly infuriating; however, f*ck em. I don’t care what they think – they’re clearly not thinking rationally if they see me taking Adderall carefully as prescribed (which they see as me ”basically doing meth” – a deeply misguided and inaccurate view) as worse than quite literally trying to kill myself, and they don’t deserve to have a say – it’s my body and my mind, so I can do what I want.
So… yeah. I’m a big advocate for getting assessed for ADHD if you think you may have it. Does a diagnosis mean you have to medicate? Absolutely not. I prefer not to medicate unless it’s absolutely necessary – my Adderall crash is always draining, so I am nevermotivated to abuse the medication. But when I do take it? All of the internal thought-clutter calms to a hush, the world comes to me more clearly, I am able to find a calm within myself that I never before knew existed, and I can just be. Like, I can just think without interruption. Wow! Clarity of mind is the most incredible feeling. It’s not even a high. It’s just… absence of chaos.
I think that, for me, part of the appeal of data analytics / data science is the aspect of seeking structure in chaos. My executive functioning skills have been especially suffering during work-from-home times, but my graduate studies are helping me build the skills to take the chaos and disorder and translate it into an organized format that can then be analyzed, optimized, and used to better-understand the big picture.
Since I’m still floating around in survive-then-thrive mode, I don’t yet have the time to put together any helpful tips for others to consider; however, doing so is ultimately my major goal for this blog. Some topics I’ve already been learning and hope to address soon via new content are:
Identifying reliable research via 6 key characteristics
Building a strong hypothesis for a research study
Designing effective research methods
Understanding key concepts in beginner database management and design
Skills I haven’t learned yet but eventually want to share:
In my time away, I’ve learned that I’m especially bad at following through with my personal goals without someone to hold me accountable. As such, I’m going to try sharing my major daily and/or weekly goals here as a means of holding myself accountable. As with everything, we’ll see if this sticks.
Today’s goals…
Spend 1 hour learning Python in the context of data science (Due to a major energy crash, I was unable to complete this)
Take a long walk (minimum 1 hour) and stay off social media the entire time (Completed at 11:30 am)
Spend 1 hour reading for pleasure (I’m in the middle of The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt and am really enjoying it so far) (Completed as of 7:15 pm)
Post an announcement for my employees reminding them to submit and revise their spring availability (Completed at 2:00 pm)
Free App Alert- Time Timer Mobile (iOS and android)
The official Time Timer app has temporarily gone free due to the pandemic. Analogous to the physical time timers. It is available for iOS (separate iPhone and iPad versions) and on the google play store.
I had a meeting I needed to attend yesterday, and the location was planned so I could walk. In this example, I had no other Tasks, and had already come to terms that I would complete this Task, so initiation here was not very problematic.
Here’s basically what I have been doing to accomplish this:
✪ set the event description as specific as possible ex: Meeting w/Name, Walking To Place
✪ set the time of the event to the time I need to be walking out the door
yesterday’s meeting was earlier, 11a.m., and I had nothing other than the ordinary-daily-routine to interfere, so I -
✪ began my reminders 1 hour out, then 30 minutes out, then 15 minutes out so by the time the reminder to leave pushed I was ready to leave
That’s an example of an uncomplicated task initiation, but the idea is proving useful for task switching.
One of the Worst Things is to have something planned, and to not be able to do anything else until it’s time for the Planned Thing. Especially when the planned thing is happening much later in the day, and you end up losing an entire day because of it. Let’s assume that I have already set my reminders in place for the planned event as I described above. I have also chosen an activity I would like to perform so I don’t lose an entire day (while hating on myself for endlessly scrolling tumblr); that activity will be a little gardening.
I have nothing else outside of Routine, so I can wander outside when I am so inclined. To prepare for the evening’s event, I must shower, change, etc. I set an additional calendar notification and series of alarms that will put me in the bathroom by a certain time, and another set of alarms to put me on time to leave.
With executive dysfunction, it doesn’t always go down like this, and it feels like my calendar is a snarl of events at times, (especially when I add extra events for time to prep - like making sure I have paperwork/protective items/whatever in my bag) but I am noticing some success as I refine this process. I just fell into this, found usefulness, and thought maybe someone else might be able to find value too. I hope it’s understandable!
Thinking of starting to delve more into independent living skills for teens and adults- would anyone be interested or would you prefer I stick to sensory/executive function-based content?
Tim Beshara, on what it’s like to have inattentive ADHD. Some of my favorite parts.
This description of inattentive ADHD symptoms is accurate:
Inattentive ADHD put simply, means your brain is rubbish at choosing what you focus on. It’s the daydreaming type of ADHD, not the can’t-sit-still type.It’s not that you can’t focus at all. You can focus alright, just not always on what you need to focus on. Sometimes the problem is when you get stuck focusing on the wrong things.
For people with inattentive ADHD, repetitive tasks become hyper-boring and mentally exhausting to stick with. Yet with the tasks you are interested in, you can barely notice the outside world for eight hours straight.
You also have a rubbish working memory. Your long-term memory can be excellent, but your ability to temporarily hold two or three pieces of information in your mind at any one time is limited.
Aligned with this is a deficiency in your prospective memory. Prospective memory is all about being good at remembering to remember.
you often can have a crappy executive function, i.e. your brain is really bad at directing you through a series of sub-tasks to get the main task complete. It can do each sub-task fine, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone in charge in there to lead you through the steps.
But it’s the part about the psychological impact of having late-diagnosed ADHD that hit home the hardest:
The ADHD wears you down but it’s the secondary psychological impact that hits you the hardest. You get judged by your friends, colleagues, teachers, partners and relatives as being weak in character or lazy. … The only honest answer you ever have for giving someone about why you stuffed up is “I don’t know”.
Andwhat makes it worse is than when you find a topic or task engaging you really can perform. Like exceptionally so. Everyone sees this and uses that as your benchmark and then assumes that when you fail at a boring task it is because you are weak-willed.
People diagnosed with ADHD later on in life, like I was, wear the scars of a lifetime of judgement from failures you can never explain. It’s genuinely traumatic.
It is big things like struggling through university and failing to have a career that matches your potential. And it is little things like forgetting birthdays and people’s names and all seven items on the grocery list to bring back from the shops.
(Finally, someone who understands getting traumatized for an hour over a minor faux pas!).
I’m also glad he mentioned the gap between what you can accomplish when engaged versus when your brain is turned off, and its psychological effects. I believe being twice exceptional (gifted + ADHD) magnifies this gap.
I have a habit of starting strong and fizzling out, in every lab job I’ve had, and many friendships. I’m TERRIFIED of not living up to the expectations I’ve inadvertently set for myself. But I also can’t stop overperforming, because if everyone thinks I’m brilliant and perfectionistic about my work, they’ll forgive me annoying eccentricities like showing up late or occasionally forgetting to turn something in. (That “eccentric genius” stereotype doesn’t just benefit men). So, constant paranoia ensues. And then people tell me I’m too anxious and need to relax. You can’t win with ADHD.
Wow! Thank you for adding the link–which I hit “post” before including in true inattentive ADHD fashion.
I love this post! I just wanted to add a little something to this line:
People diagnosed with ADHD later on in life, like I was, wear the scars of a lifetime of judgement from failures you can never explain. It’s genuinely traumatic.
I was actually diagnosed fairly early, but that wasn’t enough to prevent the unexplainable failures and ensuing trauma as that adds up.
I can’t even count how many adults thought that just being diagnosed should have solved the problem- they seemed to believe that the fact that stimulants exist means that ADHD can be cured with a pill like a disease. Other times adults believed in some of the symptoms (prospective memory they would believe, “I forgot” became an hourly mantra in school), but they weren’t willing to understand/believe the others. No one believed how hard planning was (“Why are you taking so long with that? You know how to do this!”) or the literal and painful exhaustion of repetitive tasks (“well NO ONE likes homework! you just have to do it anyway!”).
So I played up the symptoms that were easy for the adults around me to understand, and lied about the ones they didn’t. It made it feel like I was faking the whole thing. To me my failures were perfectly explainable- I was just “lazy,” but had figured out how to trick adults into thinking I had a realproblem.
(This is all, of course, not counting the caretakers and professional educators that would imply to my face that ADHD isn’t real, or that my problem was actually one of willpower or character. Christ. There’s a head trip.)
Not able to comment much now. But, I ended up in a similar situation, with actually getting that MBD/“hyperactivity” dx before I was old enough to start school (which didn’t actually match exactly to current ideas about ADHD).
But, also ending up with closer to the experiences of later diagnosed people, because it was treated as weirdly irrelevant to anything. After my mother wouldn’t let the school system stick me into segregated special ed and offered to sue their pants off if they kept insisting I couldn’t attend unmedicated, I just got treated as gifted and lazy/crazy/stubbornly underachieving.
I didn’t know accommodations were even a thing until I finally got a pretty comprehensive independent LD assessment in high school. They denied that I could possibly have anything needing any accommodations going on, refused to provide any, and my family…just didn’t push at all. With the ADA in effect by then. I don’t think they wanted to accept that I had some legitimate problems going either, or at least none that couldn’t be “fixed” by focusing on the depression.
I finally got a few accommodations in college, but ended up crashing out anyway for a variety of reasons. I never even ran across the term “executive function” until I started looking into ADHD more on my own once I was trying hard not to crash and burn in college. (Not even kidding.)
The executive function stuff kept getting interpreted as symptoms of depression, through my teens and early 20s–when that was just my baseline, and it was never going to magically go away with the “right” depression treatment. Glad I finally found out a little better what was even going on there, and some workarounds which do help some. Nobody was mentioning any before I knew what to call it and started specifically looking, that’s for sure.
All kinds of different experiences, yeah. And plenty of different kinds of negative messages going around, for people to internalize. :/
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)
ALT
