7 ms·

Spoken like somebody who doesn’t have ADHD. It sound stupid but it’s the truth. You can’t come close to relating if you don’t have it.

Jarwain 6y ago
It's weird right, because the experience _is_ something everyone goes through but for adhd individuals it is more difficult in a way that's quantifiably describable but difficult to quantitatively convey
- Jarwain 6y ago
  s/quantitatively convey/qualitatively convey
- nerdbaggy 6y ago
  Very well put!
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  It’s called ‘inability to accept that you need to actually put more effort into things, and it’s not going to be fun’. Again, been there, done that. What is one of the classic bullshit things about it again, you can ‘hyperfocus’ on things you like but can’t on things you don’t like. Gosh. Yeah that’s everyone, and everyone sucks it up and finds a way to deal with it.
  - falcolas 6y ago
    Aah, yes, the “you’re just lazy” argument. Never heard that one before. Never had a belt taken to my ass because my parents thought I was just being lazy. Fuck that noise. Seriously. It’s somehow more ignorant than the “just cheer up if you’re depressed” hot take.
  - nerdbaggy 6y ago
    Go in with and open mind and read this article https://gekk.info/articles/adhd.html https://gekk.info/articles/adhd.html
  - lfowles 6y ago
    One of the actual bullshit things about ADHD is that I often can't focus even on things I do like. Absolutely nothing convenient about that.
    - runawaybottle 6y ago
      This happens after alcohol abuse too. If you abuse alcohol enough, you cannot enjoy stuff without alcohol. It fries your dopamine receptors, this is drugs 101. Your are not going to take speed every day for years and function normally, and you will literally need confirmation bias to make sense of that reality. Also, here is another weird tidbit from life. You might not like the stuff you used to like anymore but you won’t even know since you are sure it’s the disease.
      - lfowles 6y ago
        This was a major symptom that led me to seek a diagnosis. I was never diagnosed/medicated for ADHD until I was 25.
        eyelidlessness 6y ago
        This was a major contributor for me too. Also alcohol abuse as self medication which is extraordinarily common in undiagnosed adult ADHD cases.
        scns 6y ago
        Smoking tobacco too
        eyelidlessness 6y ago
        That’s also true. And also a stimulant that has relaxing effects.
      - dragonwriter 6y ago
        Just because you have intense experience with addiction doesn’t mean every other problem people have in life is addiction with a cheap disguise.
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    That reeks of Survivorship bias. The only reason why I am where I am today is because I happened to bump into physics and programming early because I have such a short attention span. I'm not overly familiar with the meaning of hyperfocus but what else is it if you literally don't sleep before the single most important exam I will ever take (due to the ridiculous UK school system) because I was stuck reading a more advanced textbook. I agree that some of this is on the individual - i.e. me - but I have been like this from pretty much day 1, i.e. I actually worked out the other day that I've only ever done something early I think twice in my whole life.
  - eyelidlessness 6y ago
    Hey. You’re being a jerk. It’s making me mad. But let me see if I can help you understand. Hyperfocus in ADHD doesn’t have to be about the focus being rewarding. It can be about the reward of getting the unrewarded thing out of the way. The exact opposite of what you’re describing, and what you might perceive as a “work ethic”, but totally absent any kind of time allotment or sunk cost analysis. We can get hung up on something so displeasing to deal with that we cannot get it out of our heads, no matter how insignificant the resolution, and not let it go. For days, weeks, months. I’ve been through a fairly severe stretch of this recently. I hated every minute I couldn’t break out of it. But I couldn’t walk away and let the thing be unfinished, even knowing the “reward” at the end would be totally meaningless to me and the whole world. I would even tell myself at the beginning of my day I was going to abandon these things. But I couldn’t do anything else! Things I wanted to do that I would enjoy more!
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > It’s called ‘inability to accept that you need to actually put more effort into things, and it’s not going to be fun’. It’s not, though. With ADHD, people are as likely to get stuck in hyperfocus in things that are not fun and that they actively dislike, and be unable to maintain focus on things that are fun and that they like. People that have bought into the that behavior reveals preference have trouble understanding this as it directly conflicts with that wordlview, and tend to view ADHD as a failure of willpower in which people refuse to “properly” deprioritize their own desires for what is socially appropriate, but that is very much not what it is about.
  - Jarwain 6y ago
    I have no problem with wanting to put effort into things despite drudgery or difficulty. My main problem tends to be that I sit down to do something, or think about how to do something, and a thought pops into my head that's tangentially related. I follow that thought, usually involving a Google search, and it leads to a third thought, then a fourth, and the next thing I know I've spent an hour Not doing what I'm trying to do. So I refocus, try thinking about what I'm trying to do and how to solve it, maybe make a bit of progress, another thought pops in, etc. I like to call this my Internal Distraction Loop. This feels especially jarring when it's so easy to enter a hyperfocus/flow state and tackle a task for 4 hours straight on some tasks but on others I'm _constantly_ trying to pull myself back on track every 30m or so. It's doubly frustrating when it's the Same Task, where I've made a ton of progress one day, and the next day I get caught in a distraction loop. It's triply frustrating when it's something that I know should only take 30m tops if I could Just Focus but ends up taking me hours and hours. Quadruply frustrating when that expectation of "oh it'll take me forever" turns out to only actually take like 15m (and for some reason my expectations rarely adjust) but I'm digressing a bit. Sure they're problems everyone deals with, and everyone finds a way to deal with it. But some people find it More Difficult to deal with. I find medication to help when it comes to controlling my attention. Or copious amounts of coffee. Sometimes it helps cut down on how frequently I enter my core distraction loop, or it helps me notice the loop earlier so I can abort. Anyways, yes executive function is a skill everyone has to learn at some point in their life; these are problems Everybody encounters. But it's Harder for some people, the same way learning to read is harder for someone who's dyslexic or public speaking is harder for someone with a stutter. And executive functioning disorders are frustratingly self-perpetuating; how do you put more effort into focusing/putting more effort into things if you have trouble Choosing to put more effort into things in the first place? It's recursive. Medication helps break the loop (but is often over prescribed or misdiagnosed, and imo should be a scarce or temporary measure; a crutch to help develop the right skills to fill one's executive functioning gaps, but that's a different discussion).
lurquer 6y ago
> You can’t come close to relating if you don’t have it. Really? How do you know that? I don’t think you can come close to relating to what a non-ADHD person knows or feels as you have ADHD.
- lfowles 6y ago
  I've heard there are some drugs that impair executive function enough to simulate bad ADHD, it's too bad they're probably not legal to for people to take to gain a sense of empathy :)
- mhh__ 6y ago
  You do grow up with them though. I'm pretty convinced that I have ADHD, will be seeing what I can do about it when the doctors are less stressed, one of the things that struck me recently is that almost everybody I meet causes me to think "wow, they're organised" - even to the point where someone who I know very well even has the piece of paper to prove he has ADHD is like a scheduling algorithm compared to me.
  - eyelidlessness 6y ago
    When you’re ready to go, if you’d welcome the advice: go read through the DSM criteria and think honestly about how it could describe your childhood self, and how it might reflect on your adult experience. The thing is written to diagnose kids. Being prepared to translate it was critical in getting my diagnosis.
  - spiralx 6y ago
    What the other person said and try and have adults who can back up that you had the symptoms of ADHD as a young child. My parents were not super-engaged with the process and it made my diagnosis a lot harder, my friend's parents were and he sailed through it.
- nerdbaggy 6y ago
  Touché. I guess nobody will know what it’s like to be somebody else
- 6y ago

Jarwain 6y ago

It's weird right, because the experience _is_ something everyone goes through but for adhd individuals it is more difficult in a way that's quantifiably describable but difficult to quantitatively convey

Jarwain 6y ago
s/quantitatively convey/qualitatively convey
nerdbaggy 6y ago
Very well put!
runawaybottle 6y ago
It’s called ‘inability to accept that you need to actually put more effort into things, and it’s not going to be fun’. Again, been there, done that. What is one of the classic bullshit things about it again, you can ‘hyperfocus’ on things you like but can’t on things you don’t like. Gosh. Yeah that’s everyone, and everyone sucks it up and finds a way to deal with it.
- falcolas 6y ago
  Aah, yes, the “you’re just lazy” argument. Never heard that one before. Never had a belt taken to my ass because my parents thought I was just being lazy. Fuck that noise. Seriously. It’s somehow more ignorant than the “just cheer up if you’re depressed” hot take.
- nerdbaggy 6y ago
  Go in with and open mind and read this article https://gekk.info/articles/adhd.html https://gekk.info/articles/adhd.html
- lfowles 6y ago
  One of the actual bullshit things about ADHD is that I often can't focus even on things I do like. Absolutely nothing convenient about that.
  - runawaybottle 6y ago
    This happens after alcohol abuse too. If you abuse alcohol enough, you cannot enjoy stuff without alcohol. It fries your dopamine receptors, this is drugs 101. Your are not going to take speed every day for years and function normally, and you will literally need confirmation bias to make sense of that reality. Also, here is another weird tidbit from life. You might not like the stuff you used to like anymore but you won’t even know since you are sure it’s the disease.
    - lfowles 6y ago
      This was a major symptom that led me to seek a diagnosis. I was never diagnosed/medicated for ADHD until I was 25.
      - eyelidlessness 6y ago
        This was a major contributor for me too. Also alcohol abuse as self medication which is extraordinarily common in undiagnosed adult ADHD cases.
        scns 6y ago
        Smoking tobacco too
        eyelidlessness 6y ago
        That’s also true. And also a stimulant that has relaxing effects.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      Just because you have intense experience with addiction doesn’t mean every other problem people have in life is addiction with a cheap disguise.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  That reeks of Survivorship bias. The only reason why I am where I am today is because I happened to bump into physics and programming early because I have such a short attention span. I'm not overly familiar with the meaning of hyperfocus but what else is it if you literally don't sleep before the single most important exam I will ever take (due to the ridiculous UK school system) because I was stuck reading a more advanced textbook. I agree that some of this is on the individual - i.e. me - but I have been like this from pretty much day 1, i.e. I actually worked out the other day that I've only ever done something early I think twice in my whole life.
- eyelidlessness 6y ago
  Hey. You’re being a jerk. It’s making me mad. But let me see if I can help you understand. Hyperfocus in ADHD doesn’t have to be about the focus being rewarding. It can be about the reward of getting the unrewarded thing out of the way. The exact opposite of what you’re describing, and what you might perceive as a “work ethic”, but totally absent any kind of time allotment or sunk cost analysis. We can get hung up on something so displeasing to deal with that we cannot get it out of our heads, no matter how insignificant the resolution, and not let it go. For days, weeks, months. I’ve been through a fairly severe stretch of this recently. I hated every minute I couldn’t break out of it. But I couldn’t walk away and let the thing be unfinished, even knowing the “reward” at the end would be totally meaningless to me and the whole world. I would even tell myself at the beginning of my day I was going to abandon these things. But I couldn’t do anything else! Things I wanted to do that I would enjoy more!
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > It’s called ‘inability to accept that you need to actually put more effort into things, and it’s not going to be fun’. It’s not, though. With ADHD, people are as likely to get stuck in hyperfocus in things that are not fun and that they actively dislike, and be unable to maintain focus on things that are fun and that they like. People that have bought into the that behavior reveals preference have trouble understanding this as it directly conflicts with that wordlview, and tend to view ADHD as a failure of willpower in which people refuse to “properly” deprioritize their own desires for what is socially appropriate, but that is very much not what it is about.
- Jarwain 6y ago
  I have no problem with wanting to put effort into things despite drudgery or difficulty. My main problem tends to be that I sit down to do something, or think about how to do something, and a thought pops into my head that's tangentially related. I follow that thought, usually involving a Google search, and it leads to a third thought, then a fourth, and the next thing I know I've spent an hour Not doing what I'm trying to do. So I refocus, try thinking about what I'm trying to do and how to solve it, maybe make a bit of progress, another thought pops in, etc. I like to call this my Internal Distraction Loop. This feels especially jarring when it's so easy to enter a hyperfocus/flow state and tackle a task for 4 hours straight on some tasks but on others I'm _constantly_ trying to pull myself back on track every 30m or so. It's doubly frustrating when it's the Same Task, where I've made a ton of progress one day, and the next day I get caught in a distraction loop. It's triply frustrating when it's something that I know should only take 30m tops if I could Just Focus but ends up taking me hours and hours. Quadruply frustrating when that expectation of "oh it'll take me forever" turns out to only actually take like 15m (and for some reason my expectations rarely adjust) but I'm digressing a bit. Sure they're problems everyone deals with, and everyone finds a way to deal with it. But some people find it More Difficult to deal with. I find medication to help when it comes to controlling my attention. Or copious amounts of coffee. Sometimes it helps cut down on how frequently I enter my core distraction loop, or it helps me notice the loop earlier so I can abort. Anyways, yes executive function is a skill everyone has to learn at some point in their life; these are problems Everybody encounters. But it's Harder for some people, the same way learning to read is harder for someone who's dyslexic or public speaking is harder for someone with a stutter. And executive functioning disorders are frustratingly self-perpetuating; how do you put more effort into focusing/putting more effort into things if you have trouble Choosing to put more effort into things in the first place? It's recursive. Medication helps break the loop (but is often over prescribed or misdiagnosed, and imo should be a scarce or temporary measure; a crutch to help develop the right skills to fill one's executive functioning gaps, but that's a different discussion).

lurquer 6y ago

> You can’t come close to relating if you don’t have it. Really? How do you know that? I don’t think you can come close to relating to what a non-ADHD person knows or feels as you have ADHD.

lfowles 6y ago
I've heard there are some drugs that impair executive function enough to simulate bad ADHD, it's too bad they're probably not legal to for people to take to gain a sense of empathy :)
mhh__ 6y ago
You do grow up with them though. I'm pretty convinced that I have ADHD, will be seeing what I can do about it when the doctors are less stressed, one of the things that struck me recently is that almost everybody I meet causes me to think "wow, they're organised" - even to the point where someone who I know very well even has the piece of paper to prove he has ADHD is like a scheduling algorithm compared to me.
- eyelidlessness 6y ago
  When you’re ready to go, if you’d welcome the advice: go read through the DSM criteria and think honestly about how it could describe your childhood self, and how it might reflect on your adult experience. The thing is written to diagnose kids. Being prepared to translate it was critical in getting my diagnosis.
- spiralx 6y ago
  What the other person said and try and have adults who can back up that you had the symptoms of ADHD as a young child. My parents were not super-engaged with the process and it made my diagnosis a lot harder, my friend's parents were and he sailed through it.
nerdbaggy 6y ago
Touché. I guess nobody will know what it’s like to be somebody else
6y ago