One month ago, July 19th, I was diagnosed with ADHD and suddenly my entire life made sense. My psychiatrist called me “the poster child for ADHD.” (Severe ADHD, or having several symptoms present beyond the number necessary for diagnosis, which results in marked impairment in home, social, school or work settings. Um hi, it’s me.)
I had absolutely no idea what ADHD really is, all I had ever heard about was hyper little boys. I had even heard of executive dysfunction once, and completely related to what little information I heard, but didn’t know the correlation.
So here I stand, staring at the dishes.
I don’t mean staring in the way you take in all of the visual information, I mean staring as in my eyes are pointed that direction, although out of focus, while my mind declares at the rest of me, “This needs to be done. Do it. Just start. Just do the thing.”
Spoiler: I don’t do the thing.
Doing boring chores, even if I want it to get done, is like needing to walk up a flight of stairs, but the first step is 10 feet up. Or having all the mental ingredients in the pan but the brain stove is missing the temperature dial. Or like pulling up the memory program for completing the task, but the “run program” command has been disabled.
I want the thing to be completed. I have the intellectual and physical skills necessary to complete the thing. I can’t do the thing.
I thought I was a procrastinating lazy git. I thought I just suck at life, at adulting or being a functioning member of society. That was the unsolicited feedback I got from others, so that is what I’d been convinced about myself.
Besides the struggle to start boring chores, I have learned that just about every single thing I do or say or feel or experience is simply a list of symptoms. I am just a diagnostic list on legs. This threw me into a bit of an existential crisis. Who am I? Do I even have a personality? Is anything unique?
(Okay follow this wandering thought: it feels like when you have a baby and as they start to do things it’s not “oh, my baby does this funny thing…”, it’s more like “my baby has started to do that thing where…” Like the quirks and idiosyncrasies are not individual after all. Just following the known behaviors.)
I’ve got nearly all the issues, almost all the weird little quirks that I learn every day are common or typical ADHD things. Thoroughly surprising me each time.
In some ways it feels reassuring. Like so many of my negative traits are because of brain wiring and how hormones are created, received, accepted, absorbed, what have you.
I didn’t realize how easily I’m distracted until it was brought to my attention. I can think a thought while holding a pencil and begin to write down the thought and almost anything will distract me for a split second and I will forget what I was about to write.
37 years is a LONG time to keep feeling like I know I’m annoying people, but I can’t NOT do the annoying thing.
Like finishing someone’s sentence! I do it ALLLL the time. I’ve done it for so, so many years. I don’t even realize it most of the time, usually until the person acknowledges it or if I’m wrong about what they were going to say, hahaha.
I’ve been reading other ADHDers experiences with this and it’s so prevalent and a few people have explained it as feeling like we already know what is going to be said and getting impatient with the speed of the conversation. One woman wrote, “…and it’s terrible when I’m right because it seems to encourage the behavior.”
One other reason we do it, and interrupting in general, which is a huge problem for us, is because when we have something to say we feel a need to say it immediately, before we forget it completely. It’s incredibly hard to hold on to what I’m going to respond AND pay full attention to the rest of what they have to say. …so if we know how the rest of the conversation will go we will speed it up by saying it for you and responding.
It’s completely impolite. I am well aware of this. But it’s VERY DIFFICULT to curb.
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder is so poorly named. It really only expresses how it’s manifestation can annoy others and barely touches on the reality of having a differently-motivated brain. An interest-based nervous system.
There have been so many times over the past month that I’ve read something in my daily research on this topic and I’ve had such a weird feeling because it’s like someone is describing me to me. They’re saying my brain. They are explaining the thing I can’t explain. It’s unnerving and delightful.
There have been things that I’ve known, somewhere in the back of my mind, that I do or experience, but I’ve never told anyone so it doesn’t feel real. Suddenly having someone describe it is so freeing. Oh, I’m not making that up? That’s a thing? Wow.
Here are some symptoms or things ADHDers struggle with …notice how completely different (and much more debilitating) this list is than just the “attention deficit and hyperactivity” things…
* Executive dysfunction - This really encompasses most of it, a struggle with the executive functions
* Lack of focus / focusing on multiple things at once
* Lack of object permanence. Out of sight, out of mind. This leads to the fun of losing your cell phone, keys, wallet, remote, etc even though you just used it. (I can not count the number of times I’ve left the TV volume up louder than I’d prefer because I couldn’t find the dang remote, despite never moving from the spot I was in when last using it.)
* Lack of object permanence: people edition. Unfortunately, I can completely forget that people exist. It sounds cruel, but there is no malice behind it. If you’re not around, it’s possible I just forget to think about you. However, this can be a positive for me because friendships always feel like they are just being picked up where they left off. (But it can ruin friendships from the other side, because we go MIA and don’t reach out and all that.)
* Object blindness. We can set something down on the floor and walk past it for weeks and not “see” it. It’s more of not focusing on it, not paying attention to it. This is part of how our spaces can get so cluttered. Those who are wired normally, or the neurotypical, when trying to give helpful suggestions, advise a forgetful ADHDer to write ourselves a Post-It and put it eye-level on the door, where we “can’t miss it”…um, yes we can. That stuff has to be in our way, steal our attention. So it’s more like we should put reminder Post-Its on the door handle or light switch, where it will hinder something if it’s not paid some attention.
* Struggle with starting tasks / overwhelm with day to day boring tasks
* Procrastination and doing our best work in the 11th hour. The last-minute rush is often the only motivator.
* Working memory problems. Like immediately. People can tell me their name and I will not be able to repeat it to them three minutes later. No idea. People say dumb things like “if you’ve forgotten something it wasn’t very important to you in the first place.” This is not the case with an ADHD brain. It can be the most important thing ever and we will possibly forget it.
* Addiction / obsession - with things OR with people. I feel called out.
* Slow to find words / retrieve information
* Starting projects and hobbies with a lot of excitement and then abandoning them completely.
* Being indecisive / Decision paralysis. Even down to choosing lunch from a restaurant menu.
* Lack of patience / short fuse / emotional dysregulation
* Feel all the feelings intensely. Heightened emotions are fun when they’re happiness and excitement, but most of the other emotions aren’t as fun to feel so strong.
* Thinking only in “now” and “not now”
* Thinking in terms of all or nothing
* Poor time management / not fully understanding time. Being convinced you can do more things in a short amount of time than is actually possible.
* Prioritization issues - what do you do first when everything is the highest priority? Or when you’re mid-task and suddenly a different task feels like it takes higher priority? Get overwhelmed and get nothing done, usually.
* Disorganization - bedroom, car, locker, office, desk, all of it
* Irritability & mood swings
* Hyper-focusing on a project to the point of neglecting needs.
* Getting a project 80% finished and struggling with the last 20% of nitty gritty detail work. *cough*the current state of my studio*cough*
* Never mentally just in the moment, fully present - I hated this on my wedding day, I just wanted to exist in the moment and take it all in but struggled and my brain fought against it. Blah.
* Struggle with self-care acts - I really hate how many steps are involved in showering and how boring it is. And then there’s the whole having to choose more clothes to wear and now there’s dry clothing on a damp body and all that ickyness. And then there’s the need to do something with my wet hair. Telling me to go take a shower is essentially giving me a To Do list with like twelve things on it. Ugh.
* Binge eating / forgetting to eat. Eating brings with it that sweet hit of dopamine the ADHD brain desires. But it’s also another task, or list of tasks.
* Oversharing in conversation, the struggle with controlling excitement and volume of voice and laughter.
* Inability to do small talk when not interested
* Terrible with finances / impulsive spending
* Piles of unopened mail / dealing with bills is overwhelming
* Difficulty with math
* Poor sleep quality - I have said for years and years that I can’t sleep easily because I can’t turn my thoughts down. In my teens I would listen to music quietly and in my twenties I would always fall asleep with the TV on. Nowadays I fall asleep listening to a podcast almost every night.
* Bladder issues - did you know dopamine plays a role in the function of muscles in the bladder? That’s something I learned recently. Studies have shown several correlations between ADHD in children and bladder issues.
* Reduced life expectancy by up to 13 years - impulsivity and distraction don’t always create the safest of situations.
Then there are the things which are not actually ADHD, but super common comorbidities:
* Social Anxiety Disorder - Um, yeah. “Hello Darkness, my old friend…”
* Rejection sensitivity / difficulty getting constructive criticism
* Sensory issues
* Auditory processing issues. Several years ago I started questioning if I was losing some sanity. It felt like I wasn’t understanding my own language. Are they speaking English and I’m not actually paying as close attention as I think I am? Is everyone mumbling? So rough. I started trying to read lips, which helps, but I need closed captions in real life. The conversations wherein I’m struggling to figure out what my husband is saying (while staring right at him) are the ones that spiral quickly into frustration for both of us. “What did you say?” “[Garbled words]” “One more time?” “Never mind.” “No, really, I want to know. What did you say?” “It doesn’t matter!” “Ugh, just tell me again!”
ADHD is a recognized disability, and as such can be accommodated for by employers. I wish I had known.
There are so many who do not agree with using the term disability, and prefer to think of ADHD as “thinking differently” and “a superpower”
…well this superpower of mine just lost my kids their health insurance. (I forgot to turn in some paperwork to the company, I think? I don’t remember and probably didn’t open the letter and have now lost it.) Gee whiz, I love this superpower of mine!!!
Maybe it’s the geek in me, but I think of the term disability in the way something is disabled in tech, such as disabling autocorrect on your phone.
Parts of my brain have very much been disabled. I can not use them in their proper function.
Watching others maintaining this (has-got-to-be-forced,-right?) cheer cheer everything-is-awesome outlook on ADHD feels like a gut punch when THIS SUUUUUUUUUUCKS.
There are perks, sure. The creativity and problem-solving and ability to learn and resourcefulness and entrepreneurial drive and all that.
But being too much, too loud, too lazy, too impolite, too messy, too forgetful, blah blah blah gets old. Always feeling misunderstood and weird isn’t fun. Always having the line of a song repeating in your head while you jump from thought to thought at a ridiculously fast rate is mentally exhausting.
Masking your quirks while trying to act “normal” leads to burn out really quickly.
But no, don’t be negative, don’t use it as an excuse! You have SUPERPOWERS!
Mlechhhhhhh, I’m exhausted.
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“Everyone is a little ADHD.”
No. You’re wrong. Just shut up. Everyone has moments where they are distracted or forgetful or whatever, but that isn’t the same as when it is all constant and rules your life and your brain isn’t getting the dopamine it needs. And there have been studies finding physical differences in brains with ADHD wiring. (Smaller brains, fewer dopamine receptors, etc)
“If you can focus on fun things you can focus on work!”
No, I can’t. That’s literally the problem.
“That’s no excuse for…”
But yes, it is. It’s at least an explanation. This is how my brain works. I can be aware and fight it, use work-arounds, take medication, eat the right nutrients, get the right amount of sunlight and exercise, etc. But that doesn’t actually make me think and act “normal”, it just, you know, helps.
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So this will be a journey as I figure out what work-arounds are successful for me. My psychiatrist recommends I not *fight against* my brain, but lean in to my weaknesses instead. Understand my need for the frantic last-minute feeling and trick myself with false deadlines (or throw a party and invite some people over, that’ll get me cleaning!)
I have to be fully self-aware all the time if I am to use my weaknesses to my advantage or if I am to avoid being what the neurotypical person considers inconsiderate or rude.
I’m tired just thinking about it.
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