If you haven’t heard this cliche while discussing your neurodivergency with someone, then I envy your luck. Yesterday I fucked up, I feel shitty, but also I am pissed.
Our brains are impulsive af and tend to forget the most important information. We mess up, our RSD (and empathy) kicks in, we feel terrible, we vow to be more careful, but guess what? Thats fucking exhausting.
As a result, we start overthinking our every waking moment, stressing over every little thing. Because, we are trying to be aware of the things we cannot perceive.
At some point, hopefully we realize that we cannot live like that, and we start to arbitrarily ignore our compulsion to overthink. Most often that works out great because most often the threat is not real, but sometimes we make the wrong call.
The times we overthink are still more than the times we do not, and we still mess up. Let us have our fucking peace.
A casual community for people with ADHD
Values:
Acceptance, Openness, Understanding, Equality, Reciprocity.
Rules:
- No abusive, derogatory, or offensive post/comments.
- No porn, gore, spam, or advertisements allowed.
- Do not request for donations.
- Do not link to other social media or paywalled content.
- Do not gatekeep or diagnose.
- Mark NSFW content accordingly.
- No racism, homophobia, sexism, ableism, or ageism.
- Respectful venting, including dealing with oppressive neurotypical culture, is okay.
- Discussing other neurological problems like autism, anxiety, ptsd, and brain injury are allowed.
- Discussions regarding medication are allowed as long as you are describing your own situation and not telling others what to do (only qualified medical practitioners can prescribe medication).
Encouraged:
- Funny memes.
- Welcoming and accepting attitudes.
- Questions on confusing situations.
- Seeking and sharing support.
- Engagement in our values.
Relevant Lemmy communities:
lemmy.world/c/adhd will happily promote other ND communities as long as said communities demonstrate that they share our values.
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Absolutely, I mean, we should still do our personal best when it comes to important tasks, but some days, our best feels like very little to nothing.
I already try to work with lists and break down tasks into smaller tasks, but that can lead to 30 items per week. If it’s going really great, I do 25. But among the 5 failed tasks could be something really important, like a last deadline for a bill before it goes to court, tax filing before thousands are lost, even watering a flower etc. To others, it may appear like I achieved nothing, but honestly I’m already happy it went that way and some stuff got done.
I came here to say something but then I saw a shiny. The shiny has my attention now. The words above no longer have my interest.
The thing I learnt is only assholes expect you to remember 100% of thing 100% of the time.
If you get asked something you can always delay them by saying “I added that to our documentation, let me pull it up”
Now suddenly you go from someone others think as doesn’t know anything, to the person who actually updates documentation with evolving changes.
Honestly, I can’t bear to imagine the rest of my life dealing with this. Truly, I’ll never amount to more than scraping by in life, and it’s such a shitty bleak picture. But whatever, I’ve already mourned for the normal life I’ll never lead, and I’ll keep doing my best which isn’t good enough until everything falls apart completely, then I’ll kill myself. Happy Friday!
First and foremost, I don’t know your circumstances but I can relate and I’m sorry. Your worth isn’t measured by “productivity” or “what you amount to”, you matter. Work Culture and general North American society isn’t great for us with ADHD, all we can do is try our best. I swear to you that even when things look dark and there’s no way out, it does end. I’m going to put a ramble of my experience in a spoiler.
Long ramble of my experience
My ADHD got me into a pit of credit card debt, small compared to others at just under $19k CAD but I still had $20k+ in my student loan and I couldn’t see a way out, struggled hard, kept deferring payments and hitting overdraft, legit at my worst point I was $20 from bankruptcy, I probably could have got support from family and my at the time girlfriend (now partner) but I was too ashamed of it, I didn’t want to admit it to my partner (and she knew it, I don’t lie well, not that that’s a skill I really want to have). It put a lot of strain on my relationship, made me the most anxious I’ve ever been and very nearly ended my relationship, my life was on the verge of falling apart completely, I’d be lying if I didn’t have the exact same thoughts.
I was diagnosed 3 years ago at 31, I did what my dad (who’s likely got ADHD if not AuDHD, but won’t get evaluated) did and expended all my energy on work to the detriment of other parts of my life, I also struggled with binging (spending is obvious, but also alcohol and food) and emotional regulation.
My partner is the reason I got evaluated, she convinced me to get into therapy (I have a good therapist who has ADHD, didn’t know that when I found them). After diagnosis, it took me at least a year to begin accepting that I have ADHD (funny that putting a name to it changes things right), that it effects everything I do and that I have, and will always have it. Hardest thing was realising just his much of my personality is influenced by it. Medication is helpful but it’s not perfect, but with therapy, it’s helped address some of the maladaptive coping mechanisms I developed.
If you have access to therapy and aren’t already, it helped me immensely. Depending where you live there may be resources you can access through your health authority. We’re here if you want, even just venting can be helpful.
Go get professional help. This is incredibly disordered thinking.
Not a healthy outlook.
In therapy and on meds, which is why I’m still limping along instead of giving up 👍
Intellectually I don’t think there’s much point to continuing existence, but working on that in therapy and thanks to medication I’m emotionally disconnected from the depressive Bad Thoughts ™️, so I’m still just going until I can’t. The depression can get better but the ADHD can’t really.
So, I might not really want to exist, but I feel apathetic about it generally! 🎉
The good thing is that what is considered “being successful” is completely arbitrary and in the grand scheme of things completely irrelevant. You don’t need to “be successful” to lead a happy life. This “scraping by” you say is a pretty bleak picture is just so because you think it is, you can be absolutely happy living like that. I hope you’ll be able to be happy eventually <3
From a critter in a similar spot (as opposed to some arrogant, condescending prick, which is apparently the norm in this thread), good luck having life! If you figure out a neat secret trick that makes it good, lemme know :P
Won’t blame you if you don’t, though. Some of us just can’t, and no amount of “just get over it” is ever gonna “fix” us so we act like others want us to regardless of what that does to us.
I got diagnosed with ADHD and you will never hear me reference it for any excuse for anything ever. It’s the worst crutch to excuse lack of self improvement.
All a person can do is deal with themselves and grow.
I regret society ever learning about it, it is so abused as an excuse to forgive a lack of personal awareness and growth.
I just roll my eyes at the shit people say claiming they have ADHD. Pathetic really.
Then why are you projecting your own view of ADHD onto it? Not really dealing with yourself if you’re judging everyone else with ADHD based off your own difficulties.
Only thing I’m rolling my eyes at here is blatant hypocrisy. Pathetic really.
Pathetic huh? Maybe dont be so desperate to paint other as the villain.
Good luck in life.
Dude, you started whining and complaining about people who you’ve invented in your head after basing all of the troubles of people you’ve never met off of what you’ve personally gone through. You literally started this. You don’t get to whine when someone points out your behavior is no different than what you’re complaining about. You created a strawman and lit it on fire.
You’re a narcissist. I’m going to block you now because I can see absolutely zero value from anything that you’re contributing. It’s just malice, hatred, small mindedness, and self absorption. Especially when looking at your other comments in this thread like “I don’t care about peoples birthdays, it’s selfish bullshit and everyone loves me for it once I point that out.” Jesus christ.
I agree, [email protected] sounds like an angry turd projecting their self hatred outwards.
Yeah… their other comments don’t really do anything else to dissuade someone from that conclusion either. Their other comments are all me me me. Calling everyone else selfish because they dare do something that systemglitch doesn’t do. The narcissistic self attention here is on full display. They are taking everything about themselves, painting it on everyone else and then judging them for it because they can’t bear to look inwards.
i am feeling attacked
Unless you’re an alt of theirs then you’re fine <3
Unrelated question: why is my Star Trek lemmy feed no longer constantly filled with your hilarious memes?
A combination of working stupid early hours and depression
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I think it should be relative to the person’s abilities. 8 hours of work, laundry, 50 minutes focussed studying, healthy dinner, remembering aunt’s birthday and bedtime at 10 might seem reasonable to most. Some with ADHD might also pull it off. For others, their best is to do one of those things after work.
Different people, good and bad days. Absolute measure & judgement for everybody is the problem.
Lol, I never try to remember birthdays. I think days that are meant to make people feel special (aside from children) are inherently unhealthy. Valentine’s , birthdays, mother’s Day, father’s day… all days with false expectations that can wreck havoc on a person’s moral when it doesn’t unfold as they selfishly desire.
I found this stance works particularly well once I let this view be known to those around me, and everyone is happier for it.
When I do special things for people it’s because I want to, and they know it, making it infinitely more special and intimate.
You sound like a real asshole.
The way i think about this is that it is an excuse, but it’s not an excuse to not try to work around it.
We all do our best, and for some that really isn’t a lot and that’s FINE! But there are also probably ways you and others can find that enable you to do a whole lot more, which benefits everyone.
As a really really concrete example: I simply do not have the mental energy to constantly take proper care of my teeth, so i don’t try to hold myself to that standard since it would eat away at me and make me fucking miserable.
However i also don’t just give up, instead i do my best to brush when i have the energy for it, i take flouride pills to strengthen the teeth, i try to avoid sweets and stuff that harms dental health, and i literally just swish some water around my mouth every time i drink (this dislodges the food scraps and adds a little bit more flouride to the teeth).
Yeah it’s not as good as properly brushing my teeth regularly with toothpaste, but it’s the best way i’ve found to take care of my teeth while still being mentally sustainable, and that’s all you can ask.
As someone who was long term emotionally abused by someone “because of their adhd” and then later diagnosed with adhd myself, I think a lot of the confusion and messiness around this topic comes from genuinely bad-intentioned (or very young/ immature) people misusing medical language to stymie fair communication in relationships. Many people need accomodations, different communication styles, certain boundaries or conditions to function but they know how to meet their own needs without hurting people and apologize when they need to apologize. But, assholes who want to blame or harm or use others have adopted the exact same terminology as the nice people who just are trying to get their needs met in good faith. I think this is where a lot of the frustration about neurodivergence as an “excuse” comes from. It can be hard to tell which sort of person you’re talking to and unfortunately citing adhd or another condition is sometimes used to shut down someone else’s legitimate hurt feelings about something disappointing or genuinely fucked up that occurred.
it also takes time and maturity and healthcare to figure out what you need for accommodations, how to manage one’s emotions, how to have healthy conflict, etc. No one is perfect or born knowing these things, and not everyone communicating badly or unfairly is doing it on purpose or old enough to know better. People DO need to get the help they need in order to stop, though. If you do have adhd, it can also be messy and hard to discern honest important feedback vs bad faith or unrealistic expectations from others. Recommend therapy for sorting through that.
Edit: just wanna be extra clear that i am NOT saying the above is what you were doing!! Just offering a possible explanation for why OTHER people may be acting and feeling the way they do, and what I think some people actually mean when they say this. Tldr it may not have to do with you at all, lots of jerks are muddying the waters.
There are several studies that show neurotypicals react 30% more negatively to neurodivergent speech EVEN IF THEY ONLY GET A TRANSCRIPT!
They are programmed by evolution to ostracize us. And no one takes it seriously.
Imagine starting every interview, every job, every class, and having a 30% disadvantage in social interactions with EVERYONE, AND the inevitable meltdowns when that disadvantage becomes to difficult to bear.
They really don’t give a fuck.
That’s exhausting? All I hear is fucking excuses. /s
This thread has successfully convinced me that this community is not of people who have ADHD or for supporting same, but of people who hate anyone who does whether that’s self-hate from internalized abusive BS or just plain ableism.
Am interested in finding one that’s isn’t awful, if there’s one hidden away somewhere. Will be blocking this pit.
or it is about people learning who they are, accepting themselves, and figuring out how to stand up for their own well being.
What’s RSD?
rejection sensivity disorder, fear of being rejectected
fear is a light word to describe it tbh, i’d opt more for “irrational mental anguish over the slightest implication someone might think even slightly less of you, which is strong enough some can feel physical discomfort when it triggers, and leads directly to an impossible to fulfil instinct of constant people pleasing and having difficulty saying no to anything”
should have told me that when i was 25 :-) in my case, i realized that the queasy feeling and the unrelentless pressure i felt around people, was., in fact, fear. it began when people in my school started to form peer groups that hung around after school. yes, i had my cirlce of friends, but parties, social gatherings and stuff filled my with worry and anxiousness. i knew i didnt want to go, buit i didnt know why. at the same time, i wanted to go, because i had social needs, regardless. so i would drink. that helped a great deal. i was very social when being drunk.
well. when you have autism, you have problems identifying feelings.
the clown part about the whole thing is, i always thought that idea to be utterly ridicoulus. i perfectly knew what i was feeling at all times. i was angry or totally depressed or enthusiastic. thats about it. i had no middle feelings.
today i recognised that i have all sorts of feelings, but they are like behind a pane of milky glass, and i kinda have to guess what they are.
That’s why at some point you lose the ability to feel terrible. Name more iconic duo
I needed 3 years of ritalin therapy before realizing that all these self managment tips from people that dont have adhd CAN’T work. I saw that because 3 years of ritalin changed me like I never did before.
the problem is: people think I am diddling around because I do nothing. before, I would do a lot of things and always have breakdowns and stop doing them. I was depressed and worse all my life, well maybe not till age fourteen.
Now, I do nothing, i am am kinda happy and pleased with my self like I never was before.
people just dont get it.
i dig being happy. But they want me to be a busybody.
But I really dont know WHY I should be. I just wanna have peace.
One of the worst things in my life is not knowing where my brain disorders end and where my personality begins. It feels like no matter what I do, I’m never good enough for myself.
Perhaps you can take solace in knowing that when you hear the phrase “good in a crisis” you can bet your ass that they only got that way by constantly fucking things up and making it work at the last second.
Those “planners” and people who can “remember things that aren’t directly in front of their face” just freeze up like a deer in headlights when things go sideways.
There’s also a subset of us that were exposed to random, horrific child abuse and developed crisis management skills early out of necessity.
When one of my sites had 2 feet of flooding in the server room and everyone was freaking out, I stepped in, downed the racks, cut the power, and began moving the equipment before my phone even rang.
They praised me for this but in my heart I knew it was nothing compared to having your bedroom door kicked off the hinges by a drunk, angry man four times your size at 3am because you dared to go to bed without emptying the dishwasher.
If I can survive that, no other crisis compares.
Where do I learn the skill of remembering/noticing things that are directly in front of my face
If you can handle the things that aren’t, we should team up.
Most of my brains bandwidth is used up by remembering things like that my passport is in that canvas bag half under my bed and that my birth certificate is in a specific stack of paper at my mums house in my former room. So yes, let’s!
Perfect! I don’t know where ANY of that shit is! You’re hired!