Asklemmy

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 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.

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"?

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.

That they have it

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.

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

Thriving on chaos.

Feeling the calmest when in a tempest.

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.

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.

Sometimes I do, if it falls squarely in the realm of one of my obsessions

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

**It's more like things about neurotypicals: **

• They don't have an iron will; actually, their willpower is often much weaker. But their frontal lobe rewards even little things such as clearing the dishwasher right when it is done with little dopamine shots, which they crave and and seek out, almost involuntarily.
• When they face a task, they don't break it down into little steps with superior conscious intellect. They see the goal, e. g. a tidy kitchen, and their frontal lobe breaks it down and tells them what the next tiny step is to get a dopamine fix. They are not overwhelmed with all the little things that need to be done and what could go wrong, e. g. that wiping a surface could fail when it turns out that the cleaner is in the bathroom or there is still dishes on it.

I can't not think

I can't rest

That we aren't content with our "laziness". I hate being "lazy," but people seem to think being lazy is a conscious choice. Another big one related to "laziness" is the fact that laziness is just the tip of the iceberg, it changes how you think, act, perceive things etc. in a way neurotypicals just can't comprehend.

It isn't fun.

Yeah, all the stereotypes of the wacky ADHD guy squirrel lol, but it's not like that on the inside.

We are lost in the goddamn fog, chasing phantoms and mirages that disappear when you look at them too long. We are constantly running to catch up and flailing for context. What looks capricious and funny is mostly just desperation. We aren't bursting with unlimited energy, it's as exhausting as it looks. Taking five attempts to actually get a task done because you just forget halfway through. Forgetting where you put the thing, every time. Feeling your working memory slip away like waking from a dream. Fucking up all the time, then having to work twice as hard to fix it, and feeling like shit because you can't get anything right.

It gets old, man.

Random lesser known facts in no particular order:

• You really have to say my name out loud before you start talking out of the blue otherwhise I won't hear the whole sentence.
• Don't break my hyperfocus unless dinner's ready or the house is burning down. Everything else can wait.
• Dating is either the greatest thing in life or your worst nightmare. More often the second one. No way to know beforehand.
• You learn to condition yourself like a dog trainer, with treats and diversion.
• I wasn't finished talking, I was pausing.
• No I won't sing the whole song, just a part of the chorus or the intrumental riff. Yes, over and over for hours maybe. I know, I'm sorry.

Edit: Also, for the parents of children with ADHD get an adult with ADHD and make them interact with your child. You'll learn more from 10 minutes of that than years of literally anything else.

This is somewhat related, but i have literally never met a single ADHD adult who wasn't the chillest person ever. I suspect that a lifetime of learning to go easy on ourselves and set reasonable expectations for ourselves transfers pretty well to being patient and kind with others.