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A casual community for people with ADHD
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Does being in the dark help people with ADHD? My daughter has ADHD, but she hates being in the dark. She even sleeps with a ton of LED lights on all over her room. Is that sort of the same thing even though it’s light rather than dark? A neurodivergent way to be more comfortable?
It varies for me, sometimes I get sick of the dark and sometimes I need near complete darkness. It really depends on my mood and what’s going on.
It’s odd that I assumed the post was all metaphor.
“Dark place”
“Shining a light on someone”
Things like that.
I feel much more comfortable in dark rooms, with dark mode screens and quiet.
I am ADHD and ASD though, and it’s ASD that leads to sensory overload conditions that make the dark, quite rooms help me a ton.
My pediatrician has told me that boys with ASD have a 90% chance of having ADHD, and its fairly common for girls as well, though not near 90%.
I suppose, since ASD diagnosis is difficult in more subtle cases and it costs a fair amount of time and money that there are a ton of folks diagnosed with ADHD that are also ASD and don’t realize it.
I would say it depends on the person. I prefer dark rooms over bright ones, but not everyone does.
In the morning I prefer a dark room because im still a zombie husk from waking up. Or if I have a headache. Late at night Id rather have a bright/well lit room. So it depends.
For me it’s usually that the light level was acceptable when I entered the room and those conditions may have changed since then, but not enough to make it worth walking over to the light switch.
I guess that’s if what I was wondering, if consistent light level in terms of daily comfort is the issue here.
Maybe personal preferences are a factor.
I’m not ADHD but I quite like dark rooms. Just enough light to do whatever thing. Often that’s no light.
I was thinking more about the consistency of light levels being something more important to people with ADHD.
I just like darkness and maybe a hint of light from accent lights or my desk lamp. Perfect working/gaming atmosphere.
Edit: Also some good music. Spotify is (with Youtube) my most run application on every device.
I have ADHD and also keep all of my lights on. My partner hates it. 😔
It can. For me the darkness gives me less stimulation and that can be calming or help me focus when I can’t regulate visual stimuli.
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Fuck people who turn on the light, they give me a headache and burning eyes
Fuck the Big Light™
For real. I get migraines and one or my big triggers is lights being too bright. With good old Sol being the worst offender. Luckily everyone else in my house is some flavor of autistic/ADHD so pretty much everyone agrees.
Fuck the Big Light™
For me it’s the damn LED lights. I heard how they work is basically by constantly turning on and off and on and off at a speed imperceptible to us, but the end effect is that they are basically strobe lights. So those of us susceptible to strobe lights can get migraines if exposed to them for too long in one sitting.
It’s a quality issue too, the cheaper the LEDs, the worse they seem to affect me. The street lights in new housing estates seem to be some of the worst offenders.
That’s what I’ve heard, yeah. I bought this lightpad thing on Amazon for tracing, and after using it maybe 30 mins or so I felt SUPER off the rest of the day, it was awful. Pretty sure that thing has the shittiest quality LED nodes available.
I believe that’s fluorescent, not LED. I consider fluorescent lights to essentially be the devil.
I’ve heard it’s actually both! Which sucks, like I love the efficiency aspect of LEDs, but some of them really are not built well…
Only poorly made leds.
Indirect lighting or bust
Showers in the dark are underrated.
I can’t see without my glasses anyway, why bother with lights?
My eyesight is so bad I have to shower with my glasses on. I’ve astigmatism in one eye and I’m really short sighted. My mother who was blind in one eye and had short sightedness was actually able to see better than me.
This has the same energy as:
But I must know!
(Edit: yes, I’m mixing quotes from different movies, it just seemed like it fit)
It’s been too long since I saw V for Vendetta apparently. It definitely sounded like V but I had no memory of that line until I looked it up.
V was absolutely on the spectrum…
The hyperfixations were real. Verily, his vichyssoise of verbiage would’ve taken about as much prep work as any of his actual plots.
I’ve never actually watched it, but it’s been on my list for years and years.
It’s a good watch. Watch it in the dark.
Not related to ADHD but similar none the less. I’m eating some leftovers (literally fork in mouth) and my mom asks me if I want to heat it up. I said if I wanted it heated up I’d have put it in the microwave. I’m 37.
Also when I go to move the vent, “you can turn the fan down if you’d like” - said while turning the fan down. And now I’m too hot…
Ok, but don’t forget to brush your teeth.
And floss
I hate eating cold leftovers. I hate the texture and I hate the temperature of the food. I haven’t been diagnosed with autism though tests were inconclusive when I tested for Asperger’s as a kid but I have traits of autism and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a sensory issue.
Have to never had cold pizza leftovers for breakfast after a night of drinking?
Eww. Lol
I’ve never liked cold pizza. Just eww.
But I understand why one would eat it after a night out. Sometimes you just can’t be bothered, and it’s edible.
I used to love them. These days I pop that shit in the toaster
I used to get that question a lot when I was a kid. I always politely said “no thanks”.
It turns out my face always said “Are you fucking stupid? I understand how to heat things” while I was trying to be a little polite. I found this out when I visited my parents recently and found out that, while I’m still trying to be polite, my face still tells my mom that I’m capable of deciding on the temperature of my food.
My face says things that I don’t mean to say even when I’m trying not to be an ass.
So they went to the trouble to point out what your reaction looks like, but they have not once in x decades reconsidered the strategy of asking you annoying questions.
My mom is super loving and well meaning. She just has a “not the way I want it” problem.
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Ahh the ol’ parental, “I’m cold, so you need to put in a jumper!”
People that ask annoying questions never do.
My face is the same. I remember someone trying to start an argument with me because my face apparently didn’t match what I had said. I was incredibly confused because no one had ever pointed it out to me before so he was telling me about my facial expression and I was disagreeing because I had no idea.
You mean she’s still asking? It might not be you who needs to try not to be an ass.
She’s a mother. That’s what mothers do. They don’t see their babies as fully grown men / women, they remember the tiny kid that she could hold with one hand when stirring soup with the other. If you weren’t a 100kg, 185cm chunk of flesh she would still be doing it if she could. Asking about the food temperature, if it’s good, is part of it, even if you’ve eaten the same favourite meal for 20 years straight and it is perfect every time. Asking if you want a sandwich, or if she should make a simple meal is too. It’s not that you can’t, or you are too grown up to need someone to make you a sandwich. It simply is their way of showing that they care about you.
And I am saying this as a guy who still gets told that colder food upsets the stomach, being asked if I need any food in a house literally stocked to the ceilling in the kitchen. Being upset about such a tiny thing is really narcisistic.
Thank you for putting it in perspective! I have a very similar mother, and it tends to drive me absolutely mental whenever I visit - but next time I’m home I’m going to remember what you wrote.
Moms never stop. I loved living with my mom, but it does mean that I have certain mom-related annoyances in my life. She is constantly trying to get me to eat more and leaves all the lights on everywhere. But, there’s advantages too. For example: I love my mom.
I identify with this because of my ADHD.
But also, because ADHD, I spent about 15 minutes in a “does not compute” loop because bats can see perfectly well in the dark, so using them as an analogy involving something being lost and helping them by turning the lights on is just not making sense to me.
I’ve broken out of the loop, but I still am not sure why “bats”
A lost bat might get trapped in a dark room. While they wouldn’t be bothered too much by the dark ( like everyone else, they need at least a bit of light to see using their eyes ), they could use echo sounding to figure out the room fairly well. But they still would be unable to open the door or window to escape, so still trapped or “lost”.
My attempt at an interpretation. 😅
My interpretation was “we’re not idiots, we know how a light switch works”, idiots being lost bats (for some reason)
Bats don’t need light therefore a light switch have no meaning for them. Lost referres more to the human than the bat side.
They’re bats, because they are perfectly comfortable in the dark. It’s the ‘lost’ bit that’s a mystery
Thanks to this post I now identify as a lost bat. I consider it a marked improvement.
I actually just didn’t notice it get dark tbh
The dark means I don’t have things to do
Every time I get to work first and I’m working in the dark this happens.
Like it’s not really that dark we have massive windows letting in sunlight. I don’t need the light on.
“We are not bats” lol. But yeah this is so true it hurts.
Oh! You don’t mean that kind of dark room!
Instant destruction of photos
Am I the only one would prefers the place to be very very bright (not white light, but lots of warm lights)? At least when I want to be awake… night time needs to be super dark for sleeping and being restful, the morning needs brightness to get me up or I feel in a funk. It may also be exacerbated from the ‘comedown’ of my meds, but if I had electric blinds again or if I could have someone open my curtains for me in the morning to get me up, I would definitely do it.
Sometimes I like it to be light and sometimes I like it to be dark.
Yeah. I’m the neurodivergent person who usually turns on the light when they come into work. All my coworkers seem to enjoy dwelling in darkness (and cONsErVe eNErGy) but I apologize in case I’m waking anyone up and flip that switch anyway. We get a lot of visitors and the place shouldn’t look like a frigging bat cave. Plus, I need the energy that the light gives me, like you said.
A genuine laugh here, that’s me, too. The energy saved is minimal.
We (aspies) tend towards binaries. We like it either very dark, or fully lit up. We either need silence, or lots of loud noise.
I know I have mental issues with “shades of grey” thinking, and it seems to be common. My personal work around is closer to newspaper print, a mix of completely black and completely white that approximates grey. It tends to annoy a lot of people, I dissect things a lot more than (apparently) necessary.
I’m the same. I hate dark rooms, they make me sleepy and downbeat. I prefer natural light, but any light is better than sitting in a dark room. I also prefer to sleep in a room that’s not totally dark and have no issues with sleeping in a moderately light room. I don’t like pitch black darkness, makes me feel uneasy.
I like sunlight but I work on a computer. The light from the window hurts my eyes while looking at the screen. So my blinds are only open when I’m not working or entertaining myself at my computer, and if that’s the case I usually am in another room, outside, etc.
Full of sunlight, yes. Light bulbs…nah
this, a lot of places have TERRIBLE lighting, if they had proper modern LED bulbs with good CRI that replicate sunlight i would actually enjoy them.
Even better if they have giant panels that literally look like sunlight shining through a window, like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bqBsHSwPgw
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=6bqBsHSwPgw
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Tell some of my coworkers that.
I’ve made peace with it but I always internally laugh at people finding someone in a dark room and deciding they couldn’t have turned the light on themselves or something.
Not neuro divergent. If you turn the lights on when I am sitting in the dark you will officially be on my shit list. It is entitled behavior and you should be punished.
gravely castigated i say
persona non grata