Asklemmy

No I'm not trolling you, I literally do not remember what you asked me to do. I don't care if you asked me 30 seconds ago; I legitimately forgot and I apologize for that.

Yes I know, I should just knock it out now before I forget again, but my low dopamine levels won't let me. No I'm not just being lazy; you might as well ask me to move a mountain. That's just how difficult is for me to complete the most basic of chores. It is completely out of my control, and no amount of Adderall will fix it.

The wife and I have this argument all the time and it drives me crazy.

I will spend ten times as long beating myself up about not doing the thing than it would take to just do the thing, which should make it crystal fucking clear that if I could just do the thing, I would fucking just do the thing.

And then, if I DO do the thing, I will spend twenty times as long as it took to do the thing afterwards replaying in my head exactly how I did the thing and beat myself up over every little imperfection.

Sometimes I have to really hold myself back from editing messages that are perfectly fine because I feel like I'm being too random and thus need to explain myself and add context

And this is while medicated, too.

the problems sound similar to "what everyone has" but they arent the same

Yes everyone struggles motivating themselves to do chores but it's not the same when you have adhd.

Yes everyone has trouble concentrating during a boring lecture/lesson but its not the same when you have adhd.

Yes everyone has the urge to buy stuff they don't need, but its not the same when you have adhd.

How fucking hard it is to remember daily and recurring tasks. Taking meds, brushing teeth, checking email, cleaning up, cooking, laundry, on top of stuff related to work.

Another one is that we are blind. Unless I expect to see it, I cannot see it. I literally dont see clutter. Only when I force myself to think about what I'm staring at do I realize there is a bunch of crap on a table. Its really easy for my room to get messy because of this. Because it hardly exists for me.

That it is not some magic fucking "gift". The hyper focus isn't a super power. It sucks, and gets in the way in all the wrong places, bills, school, career. I would trade places with anyone who doesn't have it becuase it plain fucking sucks.

Executive dysfunction is damn near disabling when I'm not medicated. I struggle with it & decision paralysis even when medicated. It's an unfortunate issue that I'm unsure I'll ever work through.

To stop juging by looking: it's not because i have a neutral expression that i am not enjoying the moment, it's not because i am silent that i am not listening to you and it's not because i don't talk to you that i don't care about you.

Also, people often forget how hard it is for people with ADHD to make a coherent structure when writing a long essay or doing a presentation.

Sometimes, i know i have work to do, i know i have a project i'm doing, but i just can’t. It can look like i'm lazy, but even i am desesperate in moments like theses. I can understand why people don't get that.

Perhaps this is some sort of internalised ableism but I used to have this internal dialogue where I'd reflect on how difficult it was to do "boring" things and a straw man NT person would sarcastically imply that "it must be nice" to have an excuse to get out of "boring" tasks.

Um, fucking no. If you think about it for like two seconds, you realise how much of being a happy, independent and healthy adult relies on being able to complete tasks that aren't immediately captivating. Those tasks still need doing, I don't want someone else to do them for me. You're left with either waiting on when the 'inspiration' strikes you, having to improvise some game or arbitrary reward structure just to clean two dishes or you just rawdog your way through the task and you feel every second of the boredom and come out the other side feeling worse than when you started because no satisfaction from completing the task can pay-back the effort you put into completing it.

That's why ADHD adults burn-out. Without medication, every day you end with a 'motivation deficit' where no satisfaction from completing tasks can cover the costs of the determination and focus one spent to start those tasks. Eventually you just 'default' and you can't do anything any more.

Stimulants to me feel like a small loan on every task. It's a fine balance but they actually let me come out of tasks semi-regularly with more energy/motivation than I started. And when you have a surplus, productivity begets productivity.

It's your brain. Advice like "think of what could you have done differently" or "slow down and consider the consequences," etc. does not help in the least, because the part of your brain that does the thinking and the considering and the slowing down is the part that has the problem.

No, you don't have ADHD just because you get bored sometimes.

The amount of misinformation that's out there about it.

Around 50% of TikToks about ADHD are misleading. I feel like we can expect similar results in other social media.

It's really tiring to just exist inside your own head.

I've described it before as a box filled with a bunch of bouncy balls just bouncing off on every direction, off the walls, ceiling and floor, all the time. Every one of those balls is a thought, it's really hard to hold onto just one, it's hard to keep one once you've caught it.

When I'm resting usually I just put in some youtube video/TV show/audio book and play some mindless game for a while. On the outside it looks like it just played solitaire for 3 hours straight, but on the inside I'm just trying to follow one line of thought while keeping the rest of my brain occupied and quiet for a second.

I'm aware that I am a very messy person and I desperately wish I wasn't. My executive dysfunction makes cleaning and keeping things clean so damn hard

A reverse question is actually quite interesting as well:

People without ADHD, but who know others with ADHD: what are the common misconceptions about "being normal"?

Thriving on chaos.

Feeling the calmest when in a tempest.

That they have it

When there are no more spoons, you need to just go to bed.