The lighter side of ADHD
I’ve heard it put as “climbing a wall”. The mental effort needed to overcome the resistance to switching gears or engaging in a task.
Some walls are low and kinda easy. Some are impassable unless the consequences are close enough to overwhelm the difficulty in climbing the wall.
Doesn’t mean it’s easier. Doesn’t mean the frustration and irritability aren’t gonna happen. And no, people definitely don’t get it.
Trying to do some tasks feels like trying to lift an entire car by yourself. I use the required muscles and push them to the limit but the car isn't even moving.
I hate waiting. For anything. Waiting in line. Waiting for the microwave to ding. Waiting on someone else to show up. Just knowing something is going to happen at a later time gives me anxiety and ruins my whole day until the thing I am waiting on is there/over. I don't like making plans because I'll just have anxiety the whole fucking time until the planned thing happens.
Had plans for tonight and when they told me they had to cancel, it was like finally surfacing out of water after running out of air. Even though I still wanna hang out and was kinda sad they cancelled.
I hate even waiting for the stores to open, then 10 mins before it's worth getting ready to go I'm all antsy and then end up being the first person at the store. To be fair I wake up at 4am most of the time so not really early for me.
i usually explain it like that:
on a good day when i make tea i only see 3 steps 1) boil water 2) take out a mug & tea 3) pour water over tea bag in the mug & enjoy!
on a bad day when i make tea i see 11 steps 1) pour water into kettle 2) turn the kettle on 3) find mug 4) take out mug 5) find tea 6) take out a tea bag 7) put tea bag in mug 8) make sure the water doesn't reach boil [most teas need 90°C to brew well] 9) pour the water into the mug 10) don't forget to take the mug with you 11) don't forget to drink once it cools down
it's the same action, and on all days i can easily do 3 actions, the problem begins when those 3 actions start looking like 11 actions
It's the Coastline paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox
Other people see just A and B. We start from A and get to B.
I see immediately that there are at least 5 more steps in between, and each of those can have multiple steps inside them. And until I've solved the maze of interconnected issues, I'm not going to start moving towards B because I might get stuck in the middle with an incomplete task.
It pisses me off so much when people are like "have you tried breaking up the task into smaller tasks?" Yes Janet, my brain has already broken the task up into infinite smaller tasks. That's the problem.
Yes, Janet, I have tried 42 different task management systems to solve this issue =)
The kettle needs water and I wasn’t mentally prepared for an extra step so I just give up.
I genuinly will buy 2 of lots of things, so if I run out I dont need to add go to the store, or find alternate to the task list
I do the same thing. Get one backup of everything that I normally keep in stock. If I have to go to the grocery store on a day that is not my grocery shopping day... Well, I just don't.
When breaking things down causes more overwhelm than it solves, have you found any strategy that does help?
"no think, do" works, but it's hard to get into that mode. mindfulness sometimes helps but that's a habit and habits are hard
Thanks for sharing.
You forgot 12) Put the tea away 13) put the kettle away 14) clean the mug 15) put the mug away.
unfortunately for the future me those are considered fully optional
Future you will do those happily, it will be easier later
You've articulated this perfectly.
I have been married for 13 years and my wife still doesn’t get certain aspects of it. It’s just hard for them to get outside of their own thought processes.
People are dumb. I don't have ADHD and still can relate, because when a few things in a row don't go as planned and require extra steps to get done, I get a desire to kill and smash
It took me two years to pick up five quarters that I dropped on the driver's side of my car when I got my change back at a coffee place.
For two whole fucking years, the noise, sight, and presence of those dropped coins irritated me and stole my peace of mind.
It took me only a few seconds to pick up those coins when I finally decided to. I don't know why I didn't pick them up before.
ADHD is a horrible disease and it makes life hard for me and for those around me.
Yeah. It is high time all people recognized that just as body can malfunction, mind can also, and this is not going to be wished or waived away as laziness, occasional lack of phocus, bad mood and so on and so forth
Ironically, the more accepting others are of mental health issues, the more power those issues seem to have to disrupt.
It depends on the kind of acceptance. If you accept that certain things will be harder for some people and make reasonable accommodations so they can get on with their lives, then people can get on with their lives. If you accept things will be harder so use that as an excuse for people never doing anything without removing any of the obstacles stopping them doing things, they'll never get anything done. It's really just addressing the problems versus deciding the problems are inevitable and giving up. That said, giving up can be a lot less miserable than refusing to acknowledge problems and yelling at people when they don't keep up.
I can confirm that normies do not, nay, CANnot understand this. It doesn’t compute for them. Because I have tried explaining, in depth, with metaphors (“you know how feel about cleaning the cat’s litter box? That’s how we feel about virtually every necessary life task!”). Nothing works.
It's not that it's unpleasant, there just is no reward in the end.
"Normies" get an actual rush of dopamine from finishing a task. The ADD brain doesn't, it just ticks the task off the list and lists the next 12 tasks to be done. No pleasure received.
cleaning the litterbox is actually less unpleasant:
doesn't have to happen at a specific time
if I fuck it up, it doesn't spill over into other tasks
it's an act of service towards someone else and thus easier to motivate me than something that's for myself
it’s an act of service towards someone else and thus easier to motivate me than something that’s for myself
This is so spot on. I drag my feet so much doing things I need for myself, but if its for someone else its so much easier.
things I need for myself
How much has ADHD to do with the concept of self?
Is it unknown what the self wants or is it conditioned to be suppressed?
It's that I'm only disappointing myself.
Do you disappoint yourself or just your expectations? What if your self doesn't want to do what needs to be done?
^^^^^^^ i've tried explaining to my therapist that having an external source of motivation just makes things intrinsically easier and her only response is basically "well you just need to figure out how to be that external source" and i'm like =| thanks for curing ADHD lady. just gotta THINK about it harder.
I tell the people I work and worked for that I need external motivation and it's worked out pretty well. Home life, my wife can sometimes be enough to motivate me. Not because she asks, but I want the house to be nice for her. If I lived alone it would be a mess.
if I fuck it up, it doesn't spill over into other tasks
Somebody has never accidentally spilled the entire litter box onto the floor.
sweeping afterwards was always part of the job
And that's how I ended with usually waking up 15-20min (+/-10min snooze) before having to leave for work. No time to think, just do.
And then people complain because you're 10 minutes late. Hey, you don't know the effort it has taken me to be here at all. Is that not enough!?
No, it's not. No matter how much effort you put in, it will never be enough. The world is only satisfied when we're dead, preferably of natural causes after wringing us dry of "productivity."
Every time I see that screenshot it hits so hard.
My fiancée asked me to do an easy, mindless task of downloading all the CC for her sims. I tried to explain this to her, and she didnt believe me until she saw that an hour of it reduced me to tears
downloading all the CC for her sims
the creative commons licensing model?
Yeah, I was like, "Your characters in the game "The Sims" have credit card numbers?"
Custom Content.
For me it's cleaning. There's so much of it to do every single day, day out and day in and it never stops. And to add insult to injury the mess and the clutter adds to the baseline stress level that makes everything, including cleaning, harder to do.
Same here , I try to keep up with the dishes
I relate hard. I have dyspraxia which means my manual skills are shit, so I'm no fucking good at cleaning as well
Please don't make me make the bed without listening to something on headphones
Slow elevators make me want to murder.
I like elevators :)
fun little rides on a boring day
Slow anything does that to me. Life is too short to wait around.