6 ms·

I was diagnosed with ADD as a kid (before it was ADHD). People always describe the disorder as "lack of focus" but that's a really poor description for what I h

• ddtaylor 11mo ago
  This used to upset me, but as time goes on I'm more excited about it. Sometimes I run into someone else that only does that one or two things. They are happy they finished them, etc., but they seem envious of being able to do lots of things even if they don't end up mattering.
  • cjonas 11mo ago
    Ya sometimes it feels like a missed opportunity, but I think it's mostly just ego and not anything of real value. On the flip side, I feel like I've gained an incredible amount of diverse experience.
    • R_D_Olivaw 11mo ago
      This right here. The shear breadth of experience is sometimes staggering. The difficulty for me is translating that into sustainable income. Job and experience hopping is great when your young, but then you get older and your resume portrays you as a total flake. (And admittedly, of the project is slow and boring, I might just dip. Life is short, I have things to do. And sitting still in an office for 8+hrs a day isn't one of them)
• CoastalCoder 11mo ago
  Same for me. I think this experience is pretty common amongst people diagnosed with AD[H]D.
• drzaiusx11 11mo ago
  I read this comment and it matched my experience so closely I had to double check it wasn't a copy of one of my own posts. We really do need an update to the diagnostic criteria and descriptions for ADHD, Autism and their combinations (DSM6?). I think monotropism is a good overarching description that aligns better with what we with these diagnosis experience.
• reactordev 11mo ago
  Obsessive compulsive disorder. Only directed towards work and projects. I have it too.
  • cjonas 11mo ago
    Maybe co-occurence? OCD seems to be characterized as having anxiety of fear about the obsession, which isn't something I experienced at all. I don't know much about the disorder though so would be worth doing some more research and introspection
    • reactordev 11mo ago
      There’s definitely a root anxiety at play, talk to your therapist.
      • cjonas 11mo ago
        For me personally, I feels more like an addiction to the dopamine I get from solving problems / deep thinking / being in a flow state.
        • reactordev 11mo ago
          And so your anxiety is NOT having that rush so you compulsively fixate on gaining it. Do you see? Still, talk to your therapist.
• thoughtFrame 11mo ago
  Well, it's well known that ADD/ADHD aren't about lack of focus, but about an inability to direct one's focus to where it's needed. Normal people can think "I need X, let's work on X" but ADHD people are at the mercy of what's "chosen for them" by their brain. This was probably fine 4000 years ago, when the world was looser, and people could find their place in life regardless of their particular quirks, but not so much nowadays. This difficulty or inability to direct focus can be "trained away" with enough effort, but it isn't easy at all.
  • thunfischbrot 11mo ago
    > This was probably fine 4000 years ago, when the world was looser, and people could find their place in life regardless of their particular quirks, but not so much nowadays. Is this likely? My overgeneralizing gut feel would be that more people who would have traits which might be perceived as unusual and impede survivability 4000 years ago would be more likely to receive a chance to live a regular lifespan in most today‘s societies.
    • teamonkey 11mo ago
      Increased thrill seeking activity includes sex. The evolutional advantage could simply be more chance of passing on genes; from that point on it doesn’t matter if you fail at life, get outcast from society and/or die young.
    • coldtea 11mo ago
      Today we're much much more about conformity, rigid structrures, time management, and so on, than 4000 years ago, or even 50 and 100 years ago. And today we're much less about having extended families and communities that take care of their members and lend a hand. At best we have some half-arsed provisions by an indifferent state, and we're left on our own. A slip and you're broke, or homeless, or depressed on your own.
  • __MatrixMan__ 11mo ago
    I think it's the opposite. 4000 years ago we would fail to prepare and not survive the winter. Nowadays we get by by occasionally solving a problem that nobody asked to have solved but golly the solution is kinda neat.
• brumar 11mo ago
  Yes. Rather a lack of control of the subject and intensity of focus. Which piss everyone off because they can't steer it from the outside, hence the "lack of focus" perspective.
• razighter777 11mo ago
  I was diagnosed ADD as well. This is my exact experience. Usually my focus being too strong on things I like, and an inability to direct it elsewhere towards uninteresting tasks. (picking up, making bed, dishes)
  • rwyinuse 11mo ago
    Same here. For me the worst are tasks that are uninteresting, yet require some amount of effort and thinking - things like organizing my wardrobe, or boring bureaucratic tasks at work.
• elemdos 11mo ago
  I feel like that’s a different type of ADD or something. My wife has that type, so if she’s on her phone or focused on something I almost have to shake her to get her attention, whereas I’m very much the opposite (hard to focus on anything). Makes it hard to watch a series together bc she always wants to binge the whole thing in one sitting and I can never watch more than two episodes at a time.
• yapyap 11mo ago
  Did ADD turn into ADHD? I thought there was ADHD and ADD
  • thewebguyd 11mo ago
    Yes, ADD is no longer its own diagnostic, it's all ADHD, with three types (Hyperactive, Inattentive, and Combined).
• bilsbie 11mo ago
  > I would say I have "hyper focus", to the point where if I'm working on something interesting, I will lose track of time and am unable to redirect my attention to anything else. I feel like knowing this tendency has made me extremely protective and avoidant of taking on tasks. I appear “lazy” to the outside observer. It’s something I’m still trying to solve.
• __MatrixMan__ 11mo ago
  Same here. People sometimes say my stuff is over engineered. What they're seeing is that I have additional requirements relate to keeping the project in a shape where I stay interested in it long enough to make progress. Its not exactly a recipe for reliable technology but neither is what the managers are suggesting (or rather, suggesting differently today than they did yesterday) so I manage to make it work out OK most of the time.
• pdpi 11mo ago
  > People always describe the disorder as "lack of focus" but that's a really poor description for what I have. The diagnosis, for me, became obvious when I reframed it from "lack of focus" to "poor control over what I focus on".
  • TexanFeller 11mo ago
    From decades of experience and lots of reading it's exactly this, and this is the important detail that most neurotypicals including many doctors are missing that would allow them to understand instead of being dismissive. I find monotropism an apt way of understanding it. A normal person's attention is like a flashlight they control that illuminates much of a room at once. Autistic brains are a tight beam flashlight, almost a laser for some, with its aim difficult to change. ADHD brains are more like a tight beam flashlight on a motorized mount that swivels in all directions, but you're not always in control of where it swivels to...it's like an AI constantly overrides your direction inputs and points the light at what it deems most exciting or urgent at the moment.
    • pdpi 11mo ago
      > but you're not always in control of where it swivels to. If we're going with that metaphor, I'd phrase it more in terms of that mount being prone to jamming. My attention doesn't go to completely random places, it only goes to places I want it to, but then gets stuck on things that wouldn't hold the attention of a neurotypical person.
      • TexanFeller 11mo ago
        > If we're going with that metaphor, I'd phrase it more in terms of that mount being prone to jamming > but then gets stuck on things that wouldn't hold the attention of a neurotypical person. Indeed, attention is frequently held for many hours or even days on the current subject of hyperfocus. I too have great difficulty deliberately directing my attention toward a subject I don't find exciting, but find it easy to get locked in on my natural interests. Hyperfocusing on one of my passions is delightful, even if it detracts from other important things. > it only goes to places I want it to That's true for me in a sense, but I've had so much trouble from hyperfocus states that I don't think about it quite that positively. I hyperfocus on a new hobby every week and buy tons of stuff for it that I abandon for the next week's hyperfocus. I get locked into politics and flame wars that make me stressed and sad the whole time, but waste hours on them. I would like to get locked into one of my passions that I always enjoy and that also enrich me in some way, but I end up spending hours hyperfocused on researching some esoteric topic of the day instead. Or worst case I hyperfocus on potential sources of doom and how to prevent them, but maybe that's not due to ADHD alone. All of those are things I "want" to focus on in some sense, but in many senses I very much don't want to. That's why lack of control of the focus' subject seems one of the most important aspects to me. In my metaphor I guess I'd say something like the focus of the AI that's overriding my direction inputs is what's getting stuck on a subject.
• jbrooks84 11mo ago
  Same here
• chipcomp 11mo ago
  There are different types and combinations of ADD/ADHD/Autism/Parkinson’s/etc. The closest to reality anyone tried to describe are Dr. Amen’s ADHD “types” and regions of the brain related to attention-deficit symptoms. But it’s much more complex. E.g. when you don’t process Folic Acid due to MTHFR mutations, chemicals can be generated that cause other genetic mutations in the brain over time, causing psychosis. And some stimulants with likely undiagnosed predisposition of paranoia can cause schizophrenic-like symptoms for years. If you just take what a psychiatrist or even the supplements that Dr. Amen would suggest, it may be a miracle for some people, but for others that miracle may turn into a nightmare. I didn’t recognize that I was having hallucinations and paranoia until years later. I’ve found a set of things that I eat and natural supplements that work for me, and it took years of struggle. I miss the meds, but they didn’t make me better, they almost ruined my life.
  • LEDThereBeLight 11mo ago
    I’ve also found Dr Amen’s “types” of ADHD the most helpful way of understanding how ADHD affects people differently. When I had my brain scanned, it was explained to me that ADHD isn’t a matter of lack of willpower or distraction - when you intentionally try to concentrate or focus (rather than when focus just “appears” naturally like it does for some tasks you’re interested in), blood actually flows away from your prefrontal cortex so you really do become worse at regulating decision making and have worse performance at whatever task you’re trying to accomplish. Whereas for people who don’t have this problem, intentionally concentrating forces blood into the prefrontal cortex, improving your performance. It was also explained that even though we usually think of ADHD as a “hardware” issue with our brains, that’s rare. It’s normally a conditioned response related to how we learned to process stress and anxiety. The idea is that if you can improve your ability to handle your underlying stress and anxiety (through trauma therapy, healthier lifestyle and habits), your mind becomes much better at handling choice and focus. Although I haven’t been able to therapy my way out of it yet.
• coldtea 11mo ago
  >often a new idea will strike me like an epiphany that immediately takes the top spot of my attention. So, lack of focus, then? Lack of focus after all is not the same as inability to focus in general. It's more the inability to focus on what matters, without getting distracted and focusing on another thing.
  • ohboyhereitgoes 11mo ago
    [dead]
• stranded22 11mo ago
  It’s disregulation. Not being able to focus on the things you need to focus on (or doing the boring routine stuff). I’m audhd which adds a bit of extra fun - diagnosed adhd in August. Meds have been amazing
• theragra 11mo ago
  I think this perfectly describes huge percentage of ADHD people. I always laugh when I am told: "But you don't sound so bad". Yeah, not sound so bad when I can be so deeply focused into something trivial like reading a blog, that I can miss a flight. And I KNOW I am that close of missing a flight, and still engage with something interesting right now, not something hugely critical to my life.
• BeFlatXIII 11mo ago
  If an alarm goes off to tell me to switch tasks, I tell it "fuck you" unless I know another person is counting on me to be timely in meeting them. I no longer respect people who suggest "keep a calendar" as a solution to my problems.