6 ms·

But how would you describe to someone who is not diagnosed ? I have a child and would like to know signs: everything I read seems very normal, including that ar

by xwolfi 5y ago

But how would you describe to someone who is not diagnosed ? I have a child and would like to know signs: everything I read seems very normal, including that article. Like ofc it's better to transfer idiotic phone calls, block noise when focusing, not multitasking (multitasking is not even a thing, it can't be done, I've never seen it done perfectly, there's always a mistake made at some point even by the highest boss), or working from home in a controlled environment. Very honestly, I've always believed ADHD was something they told little kids they had so their parents wouldn't constantly scold them for being distracted by normal things and that would then scar them for life with a sickness... everybody has. The only thing that makes me believe it exists is I know I can focus monstruously for something very important, and I feel ADHD would prevent someone to even focus on something important ... but this article seems to say it's also possible, so...

BirdieNZ 5y ago
> how would you describe to someone who is not diagnosed ? Certain abilities that normal people mature in are stuck at the level of a fifteen-year-old for me and will be perpetually. Some of them are: Ability to "feel" the nearness of the future, and plan and act accordingly Ability to choose to do one task over another, and particularly an uninteresting task over an interesting one Ability to stop an interesting task to change to another important task Ability to stay on a single topic in thoughts and conversations Many people with ADHD also have the emotional regulation of a ~15 year old, perpetually. Most people can approximately remember how difficult those different abilities were when they were fifteen so there can be some level of empathy. When you were fifteen, university most likely "felt" very far away, and preparing for it "felt" not very important compared to your day-to-day. In hindsight, 15 is not far away from 18 and starting university, and there are many things you can do at 15 to make entering a good university easier.
- emadabdulrahim 5y ago
  Everything you've listed (and more) have been major pain points for me for the last 14 years or so, but especially this one: > Ability to "feel" the nearness of the future, and plan and act accordingly I'm almost incapable of preparing and perceiving the nearness of future events until the panic settles in that I'm late, behind, etc. It is especially exacerbated for things that I'm not good at or have anxiety around, like giving a presentation, working on a large refactor/feature, buying gifts for an occasion, preparing for a trip that involves multiple transitions/transportation, interviews, etc etc. I'm getting evaluated for ADHD as I've recently been reading the literature and realizing that almost all the things I've been complaining about and trying to fix in myself for the last 10+ years, fall in the description and the features of ADHD.
  - skinkestek 5y ago
    > Everything you've listed (and more) have been major pain points for me for the last 14 years or so, but especially this one: >> Ability to "feel" the nearness of the future, and plan and act accordingly One way of putting it that I have found useful is that while other people have - now - in a minute - in five minutes - in an hour - tomorrow - next week for most ADHD people there only exist: - now - not now if it doesn't get done right now there is a fair chance it won't get done at all. This can explain jumping from task to task: the fear of not remembering it later. Also explains hyperfocus to aome degree: it is a learned trait to protect what little focus exist.
    - yata69420 5y ago
      I've never heard that explanation before, but that's spot on.
  - 1_player 5y ago
    > I'm almost incapable of preparing and perceiving the nearness of future events until the panic settles in that I'm late, behind, etc. You're spot on. There's this neuropsychiatrist (I forget the name, he's pretty famous) that says that one major characteristic of ADHD is time blindness. Until a deadline stares at you in the face, you can't see it. Medication is like putting the glasses on. He then went on saying that normal people plan their life 2 or 3 months in advance, and that's such a mind blowing, alien concept to me. I barely have an idea what I'm going to do tomorrow. The farther I think, the foggier it is. Also, I've noticed over the years I've developed an effective and unhealthy coping mechanism: anxiety is how I am always on time. The major the event, the earlier my anxiety surges, I can't even sleep the night before, and it dissipates as soon as the time has come. (Getting evaluated in 2 weeks)
    - spiralx 5y ago
      > He then went on saying that normal people plan their life 2 or 3 months in advance, and that's such a mind blowing, alien concept to me. I barely have an idea what I'm going to do tomorrow. The farther I think, the foggier it is. So true. But do you notice emotional blindness as well? My emotions seem to only attract my attention when they reach a certain threshold, which leaves me missing a huge amount of information about how I am, while occasionally being blind-sided by intense feelings seemingly out of the blue.
artdigital 5y ago
Inattentiveness is only a very small part of ADHD (and the name ADHD itself is very outdated and doesn't capture at all what this is about). It's more common in children to be inattentiveness (ADHD-PI) but goes away with adulthood. But ADHD is also a spectrum, so some people have it worse in X but very mild (or not at all) in Y. For me it's more emotional restless-ness, overthinking (esp. what people think about me and self-criticism), oversharing of whatever I am currently focused on (like writing this comment), being late because I constantly forget to account for something obvious like walking time, and a strong "mental barrier" of doing things that I don't want to do, or don't have consequences for not doing. Kind of like a self-drive that only exists when a) I really really want to do it, but then I have to do it right now because I can't focus on anything else. I want to drop everything I'm doing and only do that instead. b) there is some external consequence like a deadline driving me to do it. For example: My apartment has a stack of unopened amazon boxes that I only open when I need the item inside (no consequence of not doing it). But when a task has a deadline, or when I feel that my not-doing something would start to get people angry at me, I'll hyperfocus and rush it out in no time. Or dishes starting to get smelly (consequence), but a pile of washed clothes stays untouched (no consequence) until I need a shirt from that pile. When I was a child (untreated) I barely ever did my homework or studied, copied all the time from classmates, "daydreamed" and was in my head most of the time instead of listening to the teacher, or talking to my classmates. ADHD people (from my experience) are also very chatty, jump seemingly random from topic to topic and have a high energy way of writing text messages back and forth, like chopping a longer topic up into many small messages instead of writing longer sentences. We just want to share what we have in our head with someone right now I'd recommend watching this playlist by Dr. Berkley, even if just the first 1-2 videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg6cfsnmqyg&list=PLzBixSjmbc8eFl6UX5_wWGP8i0mAs-cvY&index=2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg6cfsnmqyg&list=PLzBixSjmbc...
- wombatmobile 5y ago
  Could you kindly comment, if this resonates, or else set me straight if you can? Apologies in advance if I’m off beam. I’m really struggling to navigate this. When my ADHD colleague’s tasks were overdue and dragging the critical path, her response was not what I expected, which would have been to slash the scope just to get completion of core functions in the deliverable. Instead, she’d start new extraneous tasks, and insist on getting my feedback, which I think required praise. I declined to comment, fearing making things worse by unveiling criticism instead of the desired praise. I just said sorry, I can’t put my attention to that at this point; I must focus on the one thing I’m doing myself now so I can make my own deadline. She was furious, and withdrew, then abandoned the project. Another friend who has an ADHD diagnosis and an education about useful clinical responses, told me that what I saw was common. She said it’s “the cycle of shame”, which she herself had repeated in the past ad nauseum before she’d obtained assistance from new clinical approaches. What is the cycle of shame? I took it to mean that the ADHD colleague knew the task overrun was deliterious to the project, but was powerless to respond other than to start a fresh (extraneous) task, which only made matters worse for the team, but apparently more tolerable for herself in the short term, but ultimately she had to live with the shame? ???
gsharma 5y ago
I’ll recommend watching this video to understand more about it. https://youtu.be/jhcn1_qsYmg https://youtu.be/jhcn1_qsYmg
uberduper 5y ago
When I was in school in the 80s and 90s, there was a lot of stigma around ADD/ADHD. Kids taking ritalin were ostracized for it. It was common for parents to refuse the possibility and instead punish their children. A lot of kids grew up and went on to adulthood on hard mode thinking they were just bad at life, never realizing there was a diagnosis and _treatment_ they'd been denied.
- sph 5y ago
  Even people with ADHD like myself thought it was bullshit. One day I got an Adderall pill from a friend, found myself in a deep state of calm and concentration (a bit too much) for hours and thought to myself "heh, that's why they give it to kids to study, it's so unnatural". Fast forward 15 years, and I learn that the inability to sit down and complete a task or having to force myself to do pretty much anything isn't normal, and I've been living my life in hard more all this years, berating myself for my laziness when I know I can be pretty fucking smart sometimes.

by xwolfi 5y ago

BirdieNZ 5y ago

> how would you describe to someone who is not diagnosed ? Certain abilities that normal people mature in are stuck at the level of a fifteen-year-old for me and will be perpetually. Some of them are: Ability to "feel" the nearness of the future, and plan and act accordingly Ability to choose to do one task over another, and particularly an uninteresting task over an interesting one Ability to stop an interesting task to change to another important task Ability to stay on a single topic in thoughts and conversations Many people with ADHD also have the emotional regulation of a ~15 year old, perpetually. Most people can approximately remember how difficult those different abilities were when they were fifteen so there can be some level of empathy. When you were fifteen, university most likely "felt" very far away, and preparing for it "felt" not very important compared to your day-to-day. In hindsight, 15 is not far away from 18 and starting university, and there are many things you can do at 15 to make entering a good university easier.

emadabdulrahim 5y ago
Everything you've listed (and more) have been major pain points for me for the last 14 years or so, but especially this one: > Ability to "feel" the nearness of the future, and plan and act accordingly I'm almost incapable of preparing and perceiving the nearness of future events until the panic settles in that I'm late, behind, etc. It is especially exacerbated for things that I'm not good at or have anxiety around, like giving a presentation, working on a large refactor/feature, buying gifts for an occasion, preparing for a trip that involves multiple transitions/transportation, interviews, etc etc. I'm getting evaluated for ADHD as I've recently been reading the literature and realizing that almost all the things I've been complaining about and trying to fix in myself for the last 10+ years, fall in the description and the features of ADHD.
- skinkestek 5y ago
  > Everything you've listed (and more) have been major pain points for me for the last 14 years or so, but especially this one: >> Ability to "feel" the nearness of the future, and plan and act accordingly One way of putting it that I have found useful is that while other people have - now - in a minute - in five minutes - in an hour - tomorrow - next week for most ADHD people there only exist: - now - not now if it doesn't get done right now there is a fair chance it won't get done at all. This can explain jumping from task to task: the fear of not remembering it later. Also explains hyperfocus to aome degree: it is a learned trait to protect what little focus exist.
  - yata69420 5y ago
    I've never heard that explanation before, but that's spot on.
- 1_player 5y ago
  > I'm almost incapable of preparing and perceiving the nearness of future events until the panic settles in that I'm late, behind, etc. You're spot on. There's this neuropsychiatrist (I forget the name, he's pretty famous) that says that one major characteristic of ADHD is time blindness. Until a deadline stares at you in the face, you can't see it. Medication is like putting the glasses on. He then went on saying that normal people plan their life 2 or 3 months in advance, and that's such a mind blowing, alien concept to me. I barely have an idea what I'm going to do tomorrow. The farther I think, the foggier it is. Also, I've noticed over the years I've developed an effective and unhealthy coping mechanism: anxiety is how I am always on time. The major the event, the earlier my anxiety surges, I can't even sleep the night before, and it dissipates as soon as the time has come. (Getting evaluated in 2 weeks)
  - spiralx 5y ago
    > He then went on saying that normal people plan their life 2 or 3 months in advance, and that's such a mind blowing, alien concept to me. I barely have an idea what I'm going to do tomorrow. The farther I think, the foggier it is. So true. But do you notice emotional blindness as well? My emotions seem to only attract my attention when they reach a certain threshold, which leaves me missing a huge amount of information about how I am, while occasionally being blind-sided by intense feelings seemingly out of the blue.

artdigital 5y ago

Inattentiveness is only a very small part of ADHD (and the name ADHD itself is very outdated and doesn't capture at all what this is about). It's more common in children to be inattentiveness (ADHD-PI) but goes away with adulthood. But ADHD is also a spectrum, so some people have it worse in X but very mild (or not at all) in Y. For me it's more emotional restless-ness, overthinking (esp. what people think about me and self-criticism), oversharing of whatever I am currently focused on (like writing this comment), being late because I constantly forget to account for something obvious like walking time, and a strong "mental barrier" of doing things that I don't want to do, or don't have consequences for not doing. Kind of like a self-drive that only exists when a) I really really want to do it, but then I have to do it right now because I can't focus on anything else. I want to drop everything I'm doing and only do that instead. b) there is some external consequence like a deadline driving me to do it. For example: My apartment has a stack of unopened amazon boxes that I only open when I need the item inside (no consequence of not doing it). But when a task has a deadline, or when I feel that my not-doing something would start to get people angry at me, I'll hyperfocus and rush it out in no time. Or dishes starting to get smelly (consequence), but a pile of washed clothes stays untouched (no consequence) until I need a shirt from that pile. When I was a child (untreated) I barely ever did my homework or studied, copied all the time from classmates, "daydreamed" and was in my head most of the time instead of listening to the teacher, or talking to my classmates. ADHD people (from my experience) are also very chatty, jump seemingly random from topic to topic and have a high energy way of writing text messages back and forth, like chopping a longer topic up into many small messages instead of writing longer sentences. We just want to share what we have in our head with someone right now I'd recommend watching this playlist by Dr. Berkley, even if just the first 1-2 videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg6cfsnmqyg&list=PLzBixSjmbc8eFl6UX5_wWGP8i0mAs-cvY&index=2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg6cfsnmqyg&list=PLzBixSjmbc...

wombatmobile 5y ago
Could you kindly comment, if this resonates, or else set me straight if you can? Apologies in advance if I’m off beam. I’m really struggling to navigate this. When my ADHD colleague’s tasks were overdue and dragging the critical path, her response was not what I expected, which would have been to slash the scope just to get completion of core functions in the deliverable. Instead, she’d start new extraneous tasks, and insist on getting my feedback, which I think required praise. I declined to comment, fearing making things worse by unveiling criticism instead of the desired praise. I just said sorry, I can’t put my attention to that at this point; I must focus on the one thing I’m doing myself now so I can make my own deadline. She was furious, and withdrew, then abandoned the project. Another friend who has an ADHD diagnosis and an education about useful clinical responses, told me that what I saw was common. She said it’s “the cycle of shame”, which she herself had repeated in the past ad nauseum before she’d obtained assistance from new clinical approaches. What is the cycle of shame? I took it to mean that the ADHD colleague knew the task overrun was deliterious to the project, but was powerless to respond other than to start a fresh (extraneous) task, which only made matters worse for the team, but apparently more tolerable for herself in the short term, but ultimately she had to live with the shame? ???

gsharma 5y ago

I’ll recommend watching this video to understand more about it. https://youtu.be/jhcn1_qsYmg https://youtu.be/jhcn1_qsYmg

uberduper 5y ago

When I was in school in the 80s and 90s, there was a lot of stigma around ADD/ADHD. Kids taking ritalin were ostracized for it. It was common for parents to refuse the possibility and instead punish their children. A lot of kids grew up and went on to adulthood on hard mode thinking they were just bad at life, never realizing there was a diagnosis and _treatment_ they'd been denied.

sph 5y ago
Even people with ADHD like myself thought it was bullshit. One day I got an Adderall pill from a friend, found myself in a deep state of calm and concentration (a bit too much) for hours and thought to myself "heh, that's why they give it to kids to study, it's so unnatural". Fast forward 15 years, and I learn that the inability to sit down and complete a task or having to force myself to do pretty much anything isn't normal, and I've been living my life in hard more all this years, berating myself for my laziness when I know I can be pretty fucking smart sometimes.