Life with ADHD

I’ll leave the article below if you want to read it:

–the Only Mood everyone else knows about: i  wanna do THIS and THIS and THIS and THIS and THIS and–SQUIRREL

–galaxy brain: i was listening to the lecture but the prof said something that reminded me of something else and now i’m not sure how much time i was lost in thought

–the tutorial only comes in video format: i’m sorry, but you’ve thrown off the emperor’s groove *hurls product & its tutorial video into the sun*

–damn you hyperfocus: i went to bed intending to wake up and write but this morning i was possessed by a cleanliness spirit and spent the next 14 hours organizing the apartment

–i dont think u tried at all.jpg: did i seriously spend an entire free day refreshing twitter b/c i didn’t want to spend 10 minutes finishing my hw but wouldn’t let myself do anything else until i finished it???? (yes)

–patrick star: *unlocks phone* time to check the weather. *opens twitter* the weather. *opens messenger* the weather. *opens mobage game* the weather. *opens facebook* the weather. *opens twitter again* THE WEA–

It’s difficult to tell because *gestures* Tumblr, but this is the post that actually got me to get tested for ADHD. I reblogged it back in late 2018 like “Wait, the video tutorial issue is a symptom of ADHD? Do I have ADHD? Surely not,” and a bunch of readers responded “Did…did you not know? Because you very clearly do, we all thought you were just being discreet about it.”

And then it took me three and a half years to get a diagnosis.

Although being fair to me, if you’ve ever tried to get tested for ADHD as an adult, just getting a motherfucker to call you back about setting up the test is a task. And after spending all of 2019 trying to accomplish that and failing, I then couldn’t get to a testing facility because of a global pandemic.

I used to think I can't have ADHD because I wasn't hyperactive.

Not everyone can allow themselves to act on their hyperactivity, so we find ways to redirect or hide the understimulation.

(Sneak introduction to the new inattentive Alien! A hommage to a collab I did with René ♥️)

Like normal people, they repeat something daily for a couple weeks and it sticks. They might miss a day here or there, but the overall habit is formed.

I’m “bad at” working on long-term projects without an imminent deadline or someone breathing down my neck? Okay, let’s change that: I can’t work on long-term projects without an imminent deadline and someone breathing down my neck. So let’s create an imminent deadline and recruit neck-breathers. Find a sympathetic prof who will agree that 3 weeks before the due date they expect me to show them my preliminary notes and bibliography. Get a friend I trust to block off an hour to sit with me and keep asking, “Are you working on your project?” Write a blog post about my progress. Arrange to trade papers and proofread them with another student.

sudden idea! i'll just take a quiiick little detour and be riiight back...(spoiler: you never return)

i know i am distracted. i wish i wasn't doing what i'm doing either, but i can't stop. i'm trapped and i can see the clock ticking down, but i just. can't. move.

Here’s a list of hobbies with a tactile element

-flower arranging

-gardening and bonsai

-cooking and baking

-origami, card making, collage, paper mache, and other paper crafts

-knitting, crochet, embroidery, sewing, and other fiber/textile crafts.

-calligraphy, painting, and other visual arts

-wood and metalworking

-playing an instrument!

-photography: both taking and developing photos if you can get access to a darkroom!

-walking/hiking, sports, or attending a gym. Remember to engage all those muscles!

Like, you want me to pay attention to something? Sure, I can do that. For limited amounts of time. You want my sustained attention for hours? Not gonna happen. Unless I’m hyperfixating, nothing is going to hold my attention span for hours on end. And generally speaking, people enjoy the initial upswing of my fixations, but they don’t enjoy the prolonged outcome of me neglecting to self care for eight hours straight because my brain decided this is the only thing I’m going to focus on to the point where I forget to eat, drink, sleep, or even go to the bathroom. So when people tell me they want my undivided attention, I like to tell them they really don’t.

What I can give you however, is a rational amount of attention with the aid of things like stim and fidget toys to keep my brain from wandering for the duration of whatever we’re doing. Sometimes that can even look like scrolling mindlessly on my phone. Speaking personally, most of my attention will be on what you’re saying. I’m just giving my brain background noise to focus on while I actually process what you’re saying/doing.

And you know what? Learning to both do this and accept that I need to do this and I’m not a horrible person for not being able to 100% focus unaided, has been actively helpful and healthful for my mental health. I get fewer ADHD meltdowns, which yeah, can occur with both over stimulation and under stimulation as well. 

My brain needs some of that instant gratification because it’s dopamine starved. And what might be a problem for some people, and I genuinely believe it is… Making these sweeping statements about addiction, which is a very serious mental health issue, and making it part of your “I shun technology” spiel you’re on while running a business through YouTube is… not as sincere as you perhaps hope it is. But of course, it’s the shunning of technology as evil, so the comments are just filled with “god, you’re so right, we should all go back to before we had smart technology”, inevitably posted from an iphone with absolutely zero self awareness or sense of irony.

And then when I brought up ADHD and neurodivergency in the discord it was liked I’d just asked “who wants to kick puppies?!” and ended up muting the thread because it was easier to peace out than listen to the whole “you don’t have ADHD, sweety, you’re just highly sensitive” bullshit that is becoming more and more common in these types of groups.

Idk, the whole thing just… rubbed me the wrong way. Especially because the things she were labeling as “signs of addiction”, said in such a scandalized manner, were actually hallmarks of what I now recognize as neurodivergency. And while addiction is a major problem with ADHD—specifically with unmedicated and undiagnosed individuals who have been forced to try and rectify their lack of dopamine on their own—shunning what are honestly harmless coping mechanisms is not going to help those people. 

So you check twitter while watching TV. So what? Oh, you checked your phone ten times a day? So what? Is it actively harming you? Is it harming your mental health? Are you doom scrolling? Is it harming those around you? Are you idealizing Instagram too much and putting yourself down? Then yeah, those are bad. Maybe work on that. 

But also maybe consider you might just blaming the phone for other problems in your life you’re not addressing cause it’s easier to blame technology than it is to even consider for one second you might have ADHD.