Lord Almighty, I am not lazy.
While yes, it looks like I’m sitting there on my phone, my functional part is screaming at me. Get up. Go do the thing. Do your work. You wanna get fired? Get up. Get the fuck up… As I click on another meme or post or video.
I understand that this may come across as flippant and possibly condescending, so apologies in advance, but I mean it as a genuine question.
What would it take to break the… inertia?
I imagine you’d move if your chair caught fire, so there must be some line. How low can the bar be set?
Depends. Are we also depressed? Is there actual anxiety tied in with that flippant apparent physical lethargy? How hot is this fire?
If you want us to do something with some consistency make us feel obligated or change it enough to keep it interesting.
Meth. Anything less will only result in eventual and catastrophic failure. Source: I have ADHD and have tried everything else, several times over.
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But if you know where to get it pure or mostly pure
Albuquerque?
Winnipeg
You do you, but if getting yelled at worked, things wouldn’t be so fucking shit in my life.
There will be pleanty of people yelling at you. Previously, and in the future. They do not need your help.
Peace.
I had a nervous breakdown in university, where I had gotten a huge, highly selective merit scholarship under strict performance conditions. I had thrived - relatively speaking - in a traditional classroom, because it was so structured. I murdered tests because it was quiet, structured, and distraction free. Homework was hit or more frequently miss, I struggled socially, and although clearly not malicious my teachers gently noted that my classroom behavior could be a challenge “to the other students’ learning”, but I was brilliant enough at tests and classwork and highly motivated by my toxic dysfunctional house to get out that I had successfully gotten my golden ticket.
University, where you had to set and enforce your own structure? I couldn’t cope. I got a lot of flack on “you never learned to study”, “you just don’t know how to do really hard things, now that it isn’t easy for you”. I missed deadlines for administrative work, I forgot assignments, I struggled to remember the instructions to follow them.
I remember a day just before I hit that wall - I was in the study cubicles in the library, trying to work on some critical midterms for a challenging course. I only had the cubicle rental for a set amount of time and needed to meet my long-suffering roommate for a ride home at a given time - they were also very busy and I was not helping their life by being late to everything constantly. I checked the time to see how much longer I had and went back to writing, but realized I hadn’t actually internalized the time so I checked again. Within 10 seconds I couldn’t remember how long I had again, so I checked again - tried really hard to remember! Said it out loud, was shushed by my cube neighbor. Looked up at them - forgot time. Checked again, pen to paper to write it down - I had forgotten already.
Frustrated as hell, I got up to get a drink at the water fountain, hoping the walk and the water would “clear my head”. At this point I had forgotten I even needed to check the time. I sat back down at my cubicle, picked up my pen to start writing for this midterm, began brainstorming – I was at the water fountain again, although I didn’t remember choosing to go or any of the not-short walk there. Puzzled but not surprised, I thought “I must have been thirstier than I knew”, and made sure to get a BIG drink this time. Walked back to the cubicle. Pick up pen. “Focus”. Deep breath. Consider the themes of –
I am back at the water fountain. Hand to heaven I did not choose to be here. I do not NEED to be here. I am not thirsty. I return back to my cube without getting a drink because “I am not rewarding myself for wasting time”.
I walk back to the wrong cubicle because I have forgotten the cubicle number I rented.
I end up back at the water fountain trying to remember my cubicle by retracing my steps - it’s not like I haven’t walked that path half a dozen times today already, how did I just now forget??
I get another drink. I finally make it back to my cubicle. I start working on the midterm again, but in the-reading the prompt sheet realize I have not been working on the prompt I actually signed up for this whole time - not that I have written even a paragraph yet. Frustrated to tears after years of this constantly and feeling like a failure, my phone buzzes angrily - somehow during all of this NOTHING, 4 hours came and went, and I am now late to meet my roommate, who is threatening to leave without me.
When I finally finish the paper, it is submitted by my professor for a “best paper of the semester” award and places second.
2 months later, seeing the campus psychiatrist after my mental breakdown due to “overwhelming anxiety”, he listens to me for 45 minutes. He promises we will talk about the anxiety, which is very real and distressing, but also maybe I should consider this other thing. He takes a paper from his filing cabinet, folds over the top so I can’t see what the title is, and presents me with a questionnaire asking me to rate myself from one to five on every moral failing that has ever disappointed and frustrated me and everyone who claims to love me. I am sobbing within 5 questions – there is a name for this?? This is treatable?? I’m not just a lazy failure?? No, I have no idea what the title of this questionnaire would be.
“Adult ADHD Assessment”.
Most people, it turns out, DON’T have a childhood nickname of “space cadet” or “nutty professor”, can finish a sentence in a linear fashion, can sit relatively still, don’t interrupt their psychiatrist 5 times in 20 minutes, and can remember what they have and have not discussed in a 45 minute time window. It also turns out that being a high achiever in a strict scholarship program as a member of the honors college in a challenging major at a prestigious university with “the WORST case of ADHD I have ever seen” is not super easy, although I can’t imagine why.
Within days I am on my first day of Adderall, although I am told not to expect much at this dose. I almost forget to take it, but my roommate forcefully reminds me as we drive, and I never remembered to take the prescription out of my bag so I still have it. I walk the 15 minutes from the lot to the library.
As I pass the student union building next to the library, I realize something absolutely insane - I know where I am right now, and I remember getting here. Not that I remember every leaf or face I passed, but it isn’t like the water fountain where I only know that I went somewhere because I am now there. Despite having the same routine every day of walking to the library to rent my cubicle first thing, I often “overshoot” and accidentally walk past it and head to the buildings for my major without getting my rental and storing my bag, usually only remembering where I am and what I’m doing once I go to open the door of my first class and see that it isn’t my class in there yet - I’m supposed to be studying in the library for a few hours more.
But not on Adderall - on 10 whole mg of Adderall I successfully went right where I was supposed to be on purpose at the right time and I remembered doing it, and it was so unfamiliar an experience that I cried on a bench in the quad about it.
It isn’t fun.
Yeah, all the stereotypes of the wacky ADHD guy squirrel lol, but it’s not like that on the inside.
We are lost in the goddamn fog, chasing phantoms and mirages that disappear when you look at them too long. We are constantly running to catch up and flailing for context. What looks capricious and funny is mostly just desperation. We aren’t bursting with unlimited energy, it’s as exhausting as it looks. Taking five attempts to actually get a task done because you just forget halfway through. Forgetting where you put the thing, every time. Feeling your working memory slip away like waking from a dream. Fucking up all the time, then having to work twice as hard to fix it, and feeling like shit because you can’t get anything right.
It gets old, man.
It’s comments like this that make me think I don’t have ADHD and I’m just a bit slow.
My therapist says I’m likely ADHD and I align with a lot in this thread, but this description is about 1000% more dramatic than my day to day life. I guess it’s all a spectrum, but I’ve never felt like I’m living in a fog, I’m very very aware of all of the things I’m fucking up, but my mind doesn’t tell my body it’s worth fixing yet.
I never “forget” to finish a task, I remember that task needs to get done every 5 mins after I leave it not finished and it pains me to look at it every time I walk by it. But there are more important things to do. Like scrolling Lemmy or IG.
Seriously, neither you nor your therapist knows unless you get assessed by a qualified psychologist with experience doing this. Everyone has some characteristics of ADHD (to put it like that) because ADHD is just exaggeration/minimization/mistargeting of functions everyone has. Whether your pattern fits the disorder can be difficult to know without a good assessment.
Damn dude 100% very well put
So look, I am not trying to talk down to you or make you feel inferior. The reason I use words with WAY too many syllables tucked into precisely worded sentence structures is because my fucking brain decided it didn’t want to remember the normal damn way of saying it.
Also, our brains glitch. As in it literally feels like some wires crossed. Due to this some situations/days/hours can be torture. Please be kind.
Have you ever considered not paying attention to what people say back?
If it makes you feel better, you can pretend they said good things about what you said.
Have you ever considered not paying attention to what people say back?
I have never considered doing that at all. It happens naturally in the middle of conversations.
Yeah. I don’t actually remember anything they might have said though that reminds me: Do you have a good spaghetti recipe? Cause I’m somehow seeing a correlation between people being jerks and spaghetti right now.
Don’t worry, everyone else. We will actually return to the original topic in about 15 minutes.
Lasagna dreams, spaghetti reality.
It isn’t just “struggling to focus.” The same way that depression isn’t just “being sad” and anxiety disorder isn’t just “getting nervous.”
When my ADHD is at its worst, I literally become almost illiterate. As in, I read a single sentence, and by the time I finish the last few words, I have completely forgotten the rest of the sentence.
I have to read that sentence 4-6 times over and over before I actually comprehend what the meaning is. The words are being sounded out in my head, but my brain doesn’t store them in short term memory, and certainly not into long term memory.
My brain is too busy processing random other things to dedicate enough attention to the thing I am trying to read. And I’m not taking about Shakespeare or Tolstoy, I’m talking about trying to read a basic email from my manager.
Imagine the feeling you had when you were in school struggling with your toughest subject. Maybe it was math, maybe chemistry, whatever. Remember what it was like when you were focusing as hard as you could to solve a problem on an exam or a homework assignment. Remember that feeling of mental exhaustion? Where it felt like your head actually hurt, you were physically tired from how hard you were focusing? Maybe for the next hour, perhaps even the rest of the day, you couldn’t think hard about anything else?
Well that’s how I feel doing the majority of trivial tasks I have to do all the time. Getting dressed, brushing my teeth, making breakfast, getting my work bag together, remembering to cash a check or pick up a few groceries. Working out, texting back a friend, responding to emails, scheduling a doctor’s appointment, etc.
I start the day mentally exhausted and foggy, and I end the day even more so. And most of the things that nuro-typical folks do without hardly a thought, I have to expend final calculus 3 exam effort to do.
The most frustrating part? Sometimes, seemingly at random, my brain will just kick into gear and I will be able to focus on something for hours without any effort at all. I can’t seem to cause it to happen, I don’t know where it comes from. But on those rare days, I am a god. It actually makes me depressed, because I always think, “if I could be like this just 25% of the time, I would be unstoppable.”
Random lesser known facts in no particular order:
- You really have to say my name out loud before you start talking out of the blue otherwhise I won’t hear the whole sentence.
- Don’t break my hyperfocus unless dinner’s ready or the house is burning down. Everything else can wait.
- Dating is either the greatest thing in life or your worst nightmare. More often the second one. No way to know beforehand.
- You learn to condition yourself like a dog trainer, with treats and diversion.
- I wasn’t finished talking, I was pausing.
- No I won’t sing the whole song, just a part of the chorus or the intrumental riff. Yes, over and over for hours maybe. I know, I’m sorry.
Edit: Also, for the parents of children with ADHD get an adult with ADHD and make them interact with your child. You’ll learn more from 10 minutes of that than years of literally anything else.
I wasn’t finished talking. I was pausing
This. My boyfriend also has ADHD so our conversations are a nightmare for this exact reason.
Please don’t “trap” me and force my attention on to you.
I literally cannot subvert my attention from what I am focused on. Please just say my name and wait a moment for me to context switch myself.
Forcing the attention takes away from what I want to focus on and what you want me to focus on (usually you).
I also don’t like that I’m not doing the things I should be doing. Yes, I absolutely do see that those things need to be done, no I don’t think someone else is going to do them. Yes, I wish I would just get up and get it done too.
I will spend ten times as long beating myself up about not doing the thing than it would take to just do the thing, which should make it crystal fucking clear that if I could just do the thing, I would fucking just do the thing.
And then, if I DO do the thing, I will spend twenty times as long as it took to do the thing afterwards replaying in my head exactly how I did the thing and beat myself up over every little imperfection.
Sometimes I have to really hold myself back from editing messages that are perfectly fine because I feel like I’m being too random and thus need to explain myself and add context
And this is while medicated, too.
wow, this sounds like my regular day. Maybe I have that same thing ?
10 times as long beating yourself up? How about at least 35 times at a minimum? Had to fix a little bit of text in some presentation slides for a class, I had from December 24 until January 6th to do it, and I kept beating myself up for not doing it until the night between January 5 to January 6, where I did it all in one sitting, taking me about 6 hours to do it all, and I could have done it even sooner than December 24, all the way back to the beginning of December, but I procrastinated it as well… Fucking hate how I cannot get myself to work on shit until the last fucking minute
No I’m not trolling you, I literally do not remember what you asked me to do. I don’t care if you asked me 30 seconds ago; I legitimately forgot and I apologize for that.
Yes I know, I should just knock it out now before I forget again, but my low dopamine levels won’t let me. No I’m not just being lazy; you might as well ask me to move a mountain. That’s just how difficult is for me to complete the most basic of chores. It is completely out of my control, and no amount of Adderall will fix it.
The wife and I have this argument all the time and it drives me crazy.
**It’s more like things about neurotypicals: **
- They don’t have an iron will; actually, their willpower is often much weaker. But their frontal lobe rewards even little things such as clearing the dishwasher right when it is done with little dopamine shots, which they crave and and seek out, almost involuntarily.
- When they face a task, they don’t break it down into little steps with superior conscious intellect. They see the goal, e. g. a tidy kitchen, and their frontal lobe breaks it down and tells them what the next tiny step is to get a dopamine fix. They are not overwhelmed with all the little things that need to be done and what could go wrong, e. g. that wiping a surface could fail when it turns out that the cleaner is in the bathroom or there is still dishes on it.
That it is not some magic fucking “gift”. The hyper focus isn’t a super power. It sucks, and gets in the way in all the wrong places, bills, school, career. I would trade places with anyone who doesn’t have it becuase it plain fucking sucks.
Hyper focus is a real problem for me. I don’t even realize I’m hungry or that my bladder is full until I’m feeling nauseous or light headed. What feels like 15 minutes is actually hours.
At the same time, if I don’t complete a project from start to finish in one sitting, it’s nearly impossible to restart.
I don’t get basic things done like laundry or remembering to make appointments because I’m stuck on one task. Sometimes I’m afraid to do things I love because I can’t just do it for 20 minutes. Especially video games. I want to relax after work and play but I know I can’t let myself or I might not eat that evening.
To stop juging by looking: it’s not because i have a neutral expression that i am not enjoying the moment, it’s not because i am silent that i am not listening to you and it’s not because i don’t talk to you that i don’t care about you.
Also, people often forget how hard it is for people with ADHD to make a coherent structure when writing a long essay or doing a presentation.
Sometimes, i know i have work to do, i know i have a project i’m doing, but i just can’t. It can look like i’m lazy, but even i am desesperate in moments like theses. I can understand why people don’t get that.
That we aren’t content with our “laziness”. I hate being “lazy,” but people seem to think being lazy is a conscious choice. Another big one related to “laziness” is the fact that laziness is just the tip of the iceberg, it changes how you think, act, perceive things etc. in a way neurotypicals just can’t comprehend.
I’m aware that I am a very messy person and I desperately wish I wasn’t. My executive dysfunction makes cleaning and keeping things clean so damn hard