9 ms·

> None of you ever want to hear it, but everyone goes through this. It’s the human condition. Comments like this make me angry because it shows how much of a d

by thonos 6y ago

> None of you ever want to hear it, but everyone goes through this. It’s the human condition. Comments like this make me angry because it shows how much of a disconnect there is with taking ADHD serious. It's like saying to a depressed person to "just don't be sad and focus on something fun". Sure everyone struggles, but imagine those struggles cranked up by 20x. You overthink EVERYTHING, you're driven by random impulses that make you focus on something new and shiny, that make you yourself believe that this is not an impulsive, but this time something worth committing to, just to lose interest 2 weeks later. Small negative things like someone not replying to your message right away can result in dysphoric episodes without medicine and completely crush your motivation for days. You drop everything to do dumb things like replying to your comment even though I should be working right now, but I can't not do it, my brain just doesn't let go. My brain always works in extremes without a middle-setting. Either I'm 100% into something, or I am so not interested that doing mundane things that don't have an immediate urgency feel like having a tooth pulled out and I'd rather do anything else instead. Try translating that to more boring tasks at work and you can see how this becomes a problem. The list goes on and on and on. Living with ADHD is a nightmare and constant struggle.

runawaybottle 6y ago
It’s all good. Been there done that, it helps pay the bills and get good grades. If you don’t overdo it who is to tell you anything is wrong. There’s absolutely no difference between the stuff you described and the stuff an average person with zero discipline or work ethic deals with. It‘a the slackers in high school who never studied and passed everything that can’t handle they spent 18 years not developing serious work ethic. That’s all it’s ever been. They get rocked in high level college classes and their ego makes them pursue knowledge jobs which they aren’t cut out for (yet). It’s standard recipe for lying to yourself. But anyways, there’s a drug for that.
- nerdbaggy 6y ago
  There is also brain differences between adhd vs non adhd people Summary: https://www.woodburnpediatric.com/blog/adhd-brain-different-heres/ https://www.woodburnpediatric.com/blog/adhd-brain-different-... Paper: https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lanpsy/PIIS2215-0366(17)30049-4.pdf https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lanpsy/PIIS2215-0366...
- thonos 6y ago
  Thanks for the advise, I'll just stop lying to myself about my non-neurotypical brain that I have since being a child [0]. Who knew it would be that easy to overcome by just trying harder. https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S2215036617300494 https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S22150366173004...
- iovrthoughtthis 6y ago
  maybe zero discipline and/or work ethic are disorders? do you believe in the concept if mental health at all?
  - runawaybottle 6y ago
    Absolutely. I generally believe that the way behavioral patterns emerge is not instant, and therefore the way you get out cannot be instant. In other words, the only way out of the darkness is walking back through the exact path you came from. It takes a long time of not focusing on daily practice and discipline to get to the point where you don’t realize you need to put in at least a few hours of studying per day. If you go years and years of studying the week of or the day before the test, you will become a certain way. I’d wager most Americans do all their major class work last minute since they were kids. Along with that, they spend hours and hours playing video games and watching YouTube/Netflix/social media since childhood. By the time you are 25, you probably have a solid 20 years of insane habits. What few people will admit here is what they did for most of their life. Okay, so you realized you can’t read a textbook in college. Can you describe to me how you passed the time over the last 18 years? I’m sure you managed to fill the time. You didn’t stare at the wall for 18 years. If you literally stared at the wall, fine, here is a prescription to whatever drug you want. If you managed to do all of the other bullshit I described above, then please take some responsibility on developing better habits. It’s the intellectual version of becoming obese. You know what you ate for the last several years. The only part of this I have genuine sympathy for is that life does not wait around for you to take the steps and fix this stuff when reality confronts you. If your 20, life will not wait 5-7 years for you to rehabilitate. Life will pass you by. I understand it, but we aren’t going to propagate confirmation bias, especially when we are teaching the new generation of children even earlier that their habits are conducive to being productive. The developer community can help in the workplace. Split up work, don’t make everything end-all-be-all project. Everyone’s dealing with burn out or a lifetime of bad habits, drug dependency, etc, and this will compress the timeline needed to begin fixing this. It’s unfortunate, to say the least.
    - iovrthoughtthis 6y ago
      > I generally believe that the way behavioral patterns emerge is not instant, not everything is a habit, some behaviours are impulsive or context driven. lets say that habits take time to form though. > and therefore the way you get out cannot be instant. this is only true if breaking a habit, is also a habit. i don’t not certain this is always true. lets ask, what is a habit? since this is an async convo i will answer myself. i think a habit is a behaviour that you repeat based on some trigger (time of day, previous activity etc). based on that we could call a “routine” a series of habits (or habitual behaviours). we do them, one after the other, in sequence (generally). yeah i agree, these take time to build! how do you maintain them? because i spent 3 years working on running everyday and then i was ill for a week and immediately stopped. i broke my habit (or routine) that took 3 years to build in 1 week. are you wrong or am i broken? > In other words, the only way out of the darkness is walking backing through the exact path you came from. more generally i would say, the only way out of “the darkness” (which i will use to mean a period of time in my life where i am incredibly unhappy) is to deal with my trauma and accept all parts of myself (probably with the help of a therapist). i’ve not found ruminating over the past to be a successful strategy for creating light in my life. > It takes a long time of not focusing on daily practice and discipline to get to the point where you don’t realize you need to put in at least a few hours of studying per day. i honestly don’t understand this line. is the realisation that small iterative steps are required for study innate? is this your experience? i had to explicitly learn it. is not one of the greatest productivity strategies to break large complex things (passing an exam) into smaller, manageable tasks (a few hours of study a day). i do not buy this line. > If you go years and years of studying the week of or the day before the test, you will become a certain way. what certain way is that? > I’d wager most Americans do all their major class work last minute since they were kids. it would be interesting to see a survey of this! i won’t join this wager as i don’t like gambling. > Along with that, they spend hours and hours playing video games and watching YouTube/Netflix/social media since childhood. what are you claiming video games, youtube and netflix cause here? I’m not saying they each don’t have they negative aspects! especially youtube, just enough dopamine to keep you watching, so easy to waste a bunch of hours. > By the time you are 25, you probably have a solid 20 years of insane habits. i too thought i was late all the time because of the template my mum handed down to me(shes late all the time too). you know what else can be handed down though? heritable traits. i still object to modelling all human behaviour around habits. the scope is much larger and the insanity is often a lack of behaviour (e.g not washing your butt). > What few people will admit here is what they did for most of their life. Okay, so you realized you can’t read a textbook in college. Can you describe to me how you passed the time over the last 18 years? read interesting books? played games? made music? rode bikes? went to parties. i’m not sure what you are attempting to get at here. >I’m sure you managed to fill the time. You didn’t stare at the all for 18 years. see above. > If you literally stared at the wall, fine, here is a prescription to whatever drug you want. so only if i did absolutely nothing in response to not being able to do something else, do i qualify for medication? i guess no one with any executing function disorders should get anything because sitting still is a real pain. sorry we’re not performing disorder well enough for you, i’ll get all the adhd peeps into a workshop perhaps you could join since you know exactly how someone with a disorder would perform. we really need those meds so any help you can offer is welcomed. > If you managed to do all of the other bullshit I described above, then please take some responsibility on developing better habits. man, f*k you. i’ve been taking responsibility for my actions for 30 years. you don’t know me. > It’s the intellectual version of becoming obese. You know what you ate for the last several years. so we have resorted to fat jokes. well, i’m not sure what i had hoped for tbh. tl;dr you don’t believe in this ADD-whatever the fuck and people should grow up and act like ever other adult. idk if you are a boomer but you should get checked out for alzheimers because your ideas are old as fuck. NOTE: i had a nice, emotional description of my experience but i forgot how people here like to argue (stupid me), so i took responsibility for my actions and took apart the argument line by line instead.
falcolas 6y ago
Yeah, this honks me off too, something serious. “Everyone goes through this.” Sure. Once a week. Maaaaybe once a day if they’re treading towards ADHD, but it’s not inhibiting to their lives. But if you have ADHD: it’s closer to once a minute, sometimes even every ten seconds. A conversation that lasts more than 10-15 seconds? A struggle to follow. A minute, ten minutes, an hour? I’ve lost the tangent so many times I couldn’t count if I tried (you need short term memory to count…)
reader_mode 6y ago
>Sure everyone struggles, but imagine those struggles cranked up by 20x. You overthink EVERYTHING, you're driven by random impulses that make you focus on something new and shiny, that make you yourself believe that this is not an impulsive, but this time something worth committed to it, just to lose interest 2 weeks later. I'm still having a hard time seeing this as a debilitating condition, I can relate to all the things you said and undoubtably taking drugs like modafinil or ritalin turn me super productive and focused, but I don't want to be medicating day in day out, tolerance grows too fast. End of the day responsibilities forced me to stick with things after I lose interest, sure I may be 20% as productive as I would be if I was super interested and I spend 80% of the time distracted because I'm bored, but 100% is usually 5x of what people consider the norm anyway.
- falcolas 6y ago
  Think of the relation between being really sad and having crippling depression. Now take “occasional ADHD symptoms” and ramp them up to the same degree. Get an idea of how this could be debilitating now?
  - reader_mode 6y ago
    Yep - but from what I've seen in kids diagnosed as ADHD it's not really close, my nephew got diagnosed but realistically I can see myself being way worse at his age and still coming out functional without medication.
    - falcolas 6y ago
      Would you ever look at a child who can’t complete their classes due to bouts of MS and say “I can see myself being in worse pain at that age, why are you giving them medication?” Why do you feel your opinion is more valid just because you can’t see their pain?
    - astrange 6y ago
      You're older so your cohort was worse performing in general, because everyone in the US had lead poisoning back then and now kids are somewhat healthier. (You probably have adult ADHD.) He can still need help if he performs worse than the rest of his class - there really aren't long term downsides to taking medication or anything here.

by thonos 6y ago

runawaybottle 6y ago

It’s all good. Been there done that, it helps pay the bills and get good grades. If you don’t overdo it who is to tell you anything is wrong. There’s absolutely no difference between the stuff you described and the stuff an average person with zero discipline or work ethic deals with. It‘a the slackers in high school who never studied and passed everything that can’t handle they spent 18 years not developing serious work ethic. That’s all it’s ever been. They get rocked in high level college classes and their ego makes them pursue knowledge jobs which they aren’t cut out for (yet). It’s standard recipe for lying to yourself. But anyways, there’s a drug for that.

nerdbaggy 6y ago
There is also brain differences between adhd vs non adhd people Summary: https://www.woodburnpediatric.com/blog/adhd-brain-different-heres/ https://www.woodburnpediatric.com/blog/adhd-brain-different-... Paper: https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lanpsy/PIIS2215-0366(17)30049-4.pdf https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lanpsy/PIIS2215-0366...
thonos 6y ago
Thanks for the advise, I'll just stop lying to myself about my non-neurotypical brain that I have since being a child [0]. Who knew it would be that easy to overcome by just trying harder. https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S2215036617300494 https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S22150366173004...
iovrthoughtthis 6y ago
maybe zero discipline and/or work ethic are disorders? do you believe in the concept if mental health at all?
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  Absolutely. I generally believe that the way behavioral patterns emerge is not instant, and therefore the way you get out cannot be instant. In other words, the only way out of the darkness is walking back through the exact path you came from. It takes a long time of not focusing on daily practice and discipline to get to the point where you don’t realize you need to put in at least a few hours of studying per day. If you go years and years of studying the week of or the day before the test, you will become a certain way. I’d wager most Americans do all their major class work last minute since they were kids. Along with that, they spend hours and hours playing video games and watching YouTube/Netflix/social media since childhood. By the time you are 25, you probably have a solid 20 years of insane habits. What few people will admit here is what they did for most of their life. Okay, so you realized you can’t read a textbook in college. Can you describe to me how you passed the time over the last 18 years? I’m sure you managed to fill the time. You didn’t stare at the wall for 18 years. If you literally stared at the wall, fine, here is a prescription to whatever drug you want. If you managed to do all of the other bullshit I described above, then please take some responsibility on developing better habits. It’s the intellectual version of becoming obese. You know what you ate for the last several years. The only part of this I have genuine sympathy for is that life does not wait around for you to take the steps and fix this stuff when reality confronts you. If your 20, life will not wait 5-7 years for you to rehabilitate. Life will pass you by. I understand it, but we aren’t going to propagate confirmation bias, especially when we are teaching the new generation of children even earlier that their habits are conducive to being productive. The developer community can help in the workplace. Split up work, don’t make everything end-all-be-all project. Everyone’s dealing with burn out or a lifetime of bad habits, drug dependency, etc, and this will compress the timeline needed to begin fixing this. It’s unfortunate, to say the least.
  - iovrthoughtthis 6y ago
    > I generally believe that the way behavioral patterns emerge is not instant, not everything is a habit, some behaviours are impulsive or context driven. lets say that habits take time to form though. > and therefore the way you get out cannot be instant. this is only true if breaking a habit, is also a habit. i don’t not certain this is always true. lets ask, what is a habit? since this is an async convo i will answer myself. i think a habit is a behaviour that you repeat based on some trigger (time of day, previous activity etc). based on that we could call a “routine” a series of habits (or habitual behaviours). we do them, one after the other, in sequence (generally). yeah i agree, these take time to build! how do you maintain them? because i spent 3 years working on running everyday and then i was ill for a week and immediately stopped. i broke my habit (or routine) that took 3 years to build in 1 week. are you wrong or am i broken? > In other words, the only way out of the darkness is walking backing through the exact path you came from. more generally i would say, the only way out of “the darkness” (which i will use to mean a period of time in my life where i am incredibly unhappy) is to deal with my trauma and accept all parts of myself (probably with the help of a therapist). i’ve not found ruminating over the past to be a successful strategy for creating light in my life. > It takes a long time of not focusing on daily practice and discipline to get to the point where you don’t realize you need to put in at least a few hours of studying per day. i honestly don’t understand this line. is the realisation that small iterative steps are required for study innate? is this your experience? i had to explicitly learn it. is not one of the greatest productivity strategies to break large complex things (passing an exam) into smaller, manageable tasks (a few hours of study a day). i do not buy this line. > If you go years and years of studying the week of or the day before the test, you will become a certain way. what certain way is that? > I’d wager most Americans do all their major class work last minute since they were kids. it would be interesting to see a survey of this! i won’t join this wager as i don’t like gambling. > Along with that, they spend hours and hours playing video games and watching YouTube/Netflix/social media since childhood. what are you claiming video games, youtube and netflix cause here? I’m not saying they each don’t have they negative aspects! especially youtube, just enough dopamine to keep you watching, so easy to waste a bunch of hours. > By the time you are 25, you probably have a solid 20 years of insane habits. i too thought i was late all the time because of the template my mum handed down to me(shes late all the time too). you know what else can be handed down though? heritable traits. i still object to modelling all human behaviour around habits. the scope is much larger and the insanity is often a lack of behaviour (e.g not washing your butt). > What few people will admit here is what they did for most of their life. Okay, so you realized you can’t read a textbook in college. Can you describe to me how you passed the time over the last 18 years? read interesting books? played games? made music? rode bikes? went to parties. i’m not sure what you are attempting to get at here. >I’m sure you managed to fill the time. You didn’t stare at the all for 18 years. see above. > If you literally stared at the wall, fine, here is a prescription to whatever drug you want. so only if i did absolutely nothing in response to not being able to do something else, do i qualify for medication? i guess no one with any executing function disorders should get anything because sitting still is a real pain. sorry we’re not performing disorder well enough for you, i’ll get all the adhd peeps into a workshop perhaps you could join since you know exactly how someone with a disorder would perform. we really need those meds so any help you can offer is welcomed. > If you managed to do all of the other bullshit I described above, then please take some responsibility on developing better habits. man, f*k you. i’ve been taking responsibility for my actions for 30 years. you don’t know me. > It’s the intellectual version of becoming obese. You know what you ate for the last several years. so we have resorted to fat jokes. well, i’m not sure what i had hoped for tbh. tl;dr you don’t believe in this ADD-whatever the fuck and people should grow up and act like ever other adult. idk if you are a boomer but you should get checked out for alzheimers because your ideas are old as fuck. NOTE: i had a nice, emotional description of my experience but i forgot how people here like to argue (stupid me), so i took responsibility for my actions and took apart the argument line by line instead.

falcolas 6y ago

Yeah, this honks me off too, something serious. “Everyone goes through this.” Sure. Once a week. Maaaaybe once a day if they’re treading towards ADHD, but it’s not inhibiting to their lives. But if you have ADHD: it’s closer to once a minute, sometimes even every ten seconds. A conversation that lasts more than 10-15 seconds? A struggle to follow. A minute, ten minutes, an hour? I’ve lost the tangent so many times I couldn’t count if I tried (you need short term memory to count…)

reader_mode 6y ago

>Sure everyone struggles, but imagine those struggles cranked up by 20x. You overthink EVERYTHING, you're driven by random impulses that make you focus on something new and shiny, that make you yourself believe that this is not an impulsive, but this time something worth committed to it, just to lose interest 2 weeks later. I'm still having a hard time seeing this as a debilitating condition, I can relate to all the things you said and undoubtably taking drugs like modafinil or ritalin turn me super productive and focused, but I don't want to be medicating day in day out, tolerance grows too fast. End of the day responsibilities forced me to stick with things after I lose interest, sure I may be 20% as productive as I would be if I was super interested and I spend 80% of the time distracted because I'm bored, but 100% is usually 5x of what people consider the norm anyway.

falcolas 6y ago
Think of the relation between being really sad and having crippling depression. Now take “occasional ADHD symptoms” and ramp them up to the same degree. Get an idea of how this could be debilitating now?
- reader_mode 6y ago
  Yep - but from what I've seen in kids diagnosed as ADHD it's not really close, my nephew got diagnosed but realistically I can see myself being way worse at his age and still coming out functional without medication.
  - falcolas 6y ago
    Would you ever look at a child who can’t complete their classes due to bouts of MS and say “I can see myself being in worse pain at that age, why are you giving them medication?” Why do you feel your opinion is more valid just because you can’t see their pain?
  - astrange 6y ago
    You're older so your cohort was worse performing in general, because everyone in the US had lead poisoning back then and now kids are somewhat healthier. (You probably have adult ADHD.) He can still need help if he performs worse than the rest of his class - there really aren't long term downsides to taking medication or anything here.