10 ms·
Not to discount your experiences, but that's not at all how I've felt as a sufferer of ADHD (nor my parents or my son). I would describe the feeling of ADHD no
by ap22213 11y ago
Not to discount your experiences, but that's not at all how I've felt as a sufferer of ADHD (nor my parents or my son). I would describe the feeling of ADHD not as lack of motivation but severe, almost physical, discomfort at attempts to concentrate. If you've ever suffered from nerve pain, you may know what I'm talking about. It's not quite analogous, since the ADHD discomfort is more of a strong, distracting 'itch', but it's similar in its phantom nature.
If one lives with that feeling since birth, it is really hard to understand that others just don't feel that way. We may try to push ourselves forward, through constant force of will, or because others tell us to 'tough-it-out', but it's exhausting. Whereas we see others reading a book a week or month even, we struggle to even read a paragraph - constantly starting over, re-reading, so distracted that we can barely even take in the information.
It's not until we gets treatment that we suddenly and clearly feel the difference, and then we understand the suffering that we've been going through all that time. Feeling 'normal' is amazing! It's like being able to read several pages at a time or sit through an entire lecture without feeling like you're constantly wiping away some sticky, opaque film between you and the information.
- derefr 11y agoYour and my descriptions feel so qualitatively different that I've got to wonder if fundamentally different things are going on between the two. A previous HN thread had a lot of people comparing ADHD to the effect of chronic sleep debt, with the suggestion that ADHD could be an effect of the inability to enter deep sleep. "Like never having slept enough" isn't an analogy I would make for my symptoms, but it would seem to fit yours much more closely. As a probing guess, are your symptoms helped more by NRI-class drugs? From what I know about norepinephrine, it governs whether moment-to-moment attention will tend to fixate or drift. The symptoms of both that, and the disorder of motivation, seem to get conflated as "ADHD" for some reason.
- invalidOrTaken 11y agoI have what you have, and not what app22213 has, and I wonder the same.
- ap22213 11y agoI don't know, maybe. The members of my family have the hyperactivity part of it, too. But, the hyperactivity is like constantly staying moving (while learning) to avoid that discomfort. And, I totally understand the distraction part and the need to feel overstimulated. Now that I'm thinking about it more - it's like I have to work extremely hard to remove my attention from the rest of the environment. Almost like I'm taking in too much information, and it's hard to shut out the other stuff. Does that make sense? But, that's an interesting perspective, because all of the members of my family have some sort of bipolar, as well. And, bipolar has co-morbidity with ADHD. So, maybe that type of ADHD is different? As far as NRIs, yeah I once had a panic attack (also co-morbid with bipolar and ADHD) and had to go to the ER. The neurologist gave me an NRI, and it made me so absolutely sick - it was a feeling like someone twisting my brain inside out. Also, I've had sleep studies done, and I've had no underlying sleep issues.
- papapra 11y agoIn the book "ADHD Does not Exist" Richard Saul describes Neurochemical Diststractibility/Impulsivity(what we call adhd) of two types : low serotoning group and high level epinephrine/norepinephrine group. "The two types described show subtly different symptom patterns.The low-serotonin group tends to look like what people think of when they think of the disorder called ADHD. The high epinephrine/norepinephrine group is "consistent in its inconsistency". Sometimes these patiens can concentrate well, and sometimes they can't." Maybe this is related to what you say, I see it myself, somedays my brain just works better, I never understood why.