Soo-per Geenyus

AHAAAAAAAA first post so scary

Nothing is a habit! It's all deliberate choices and it's EXHAUSTING

It's like the difference between automatic breathing and conscious breathing. Imagine if automatic breathing didn't work for you and if you didn't decide to breath you would just run out of air. So you have to mentally manage your breathing on top of your normal functioning.

Now make that EVERYTHING. So no I'm not going to brush my teeth without thinking about it or do the exercise program automatically or make my bed or whatever. If I'm not thinking I'm not doing anything! I'm staring at a wall! And at the end of the day I'm almost always at this point where I have no mental spoons left and that means task queue is empty. My brain is tired and I'm powering down! I'm not even "going to bed" with all of the sub-steps that this entails like changing into pajamas and brushing my teeth, I'm just done for the day no more tasks the end.

So that stuff you can do as a habit is just another task on my to-do list requiring mental energy. Even resting is a task with its own requirements! And it leads to the constant feeling that I don't have enough time to do all the things I need to do, even when none of those things take very much time. It's just the task queue is so long! That's too many things! I can't add any more things, I don't have time! And managing the Task Queue is it's own task!

ADHD people fall into patterns of behavior all the time! Hell, dumping all thought and staring at the wall in Idle Mode is a pattern. Sometimes these even seem habit-like, in the 'doing them without thought' sense. The key difference I've found, after several decades living in my own ADHD brain, is that these patterns of repeated behavior ALL tend to come down to one thing: what is the easiest way, with the lowest possible cognitive load, to solve this recurring problem right now?

Sometimes, "the same thing we always do please do not make me think harder than that" is easiest, even if there might be other options that would take less physical effort. So we follow patterns of solving the same problem the same way every time, because it's easier to put the keys in our hand as we walk through the door on the kitchen counter nearest said door than to figure out a better place for them. Other times, we forget! Circumstances change very slightly. The usual solution his a road block -- there's a pile of mail on that part of the counter today. Or for some reason it won't work -- we simply cannot face another night of Lean Cuisine or chicken fingers for dinner. Or the problem doesn't present itself in the same way so we end up completely off script -- we had enough extra brain to do a whole fancy skin care routine before bed and therefore completely forgot to take evening meds.

To recover, you literally need to manually learn skills that most people learn as a toddler

You need to learn what makes your body uncomfortable, and what to do to fix it

If you are high-masking, that usually means that you have learned to ignore every distress signal your body sends unless it is a distress signal that a neurotypical person would recognize. People have likely been unintentionally gaslighting you about your lived experience your entire life

If you feel bad or panicked for no reason, stop and try to pay attention to your body. Are you tense? You are likely feeling physical pain somewhere. If you've been gaslit about your pain your entire life, you might not be able to identify it.

Go through a sensory checklist.

SIGHT: Try closing and covering your eyes. If this gives you relief, the lights are probably too bright. You may also need differently-colored lights

SOUND: Cover your ears. Does this give you relief? If so, you may need earplugs or noise canceling headphones. You may also benefit from a neutral or pleasant background noise, like soft music or brown noise.

TOUCH: Are your clothes uncomfortable? Your chair? Your body? Do you feel greasy, like you need a shower? Do you need softer, sensory-friendly clothing?

TASTE: Do you need to brush your teeth or tongue? Would chewing on something help?

SMELL: Is there a strong or unpleasant smell in the room? Do you need to clean or empty a trash can? Would an air purifier help? Would a pleasant smell like a candle help?

INTEROCEPTION: Are you hungry? Thirsty? Tired? How is your posture? Are any of your muscles tight or sore? Scan your body slowly from head to feet, tensing and loosening each group of muscles. Going for a walk or doing a series of quick stretches may help a lot.

Learning how to do this stuff is not intuitive, if you've had an entire lifetime of gaslighting telling you that everything hurting you isn't a big deal and you're being dramatic over nothing.

This takes time, it takes work, it's not intuitive, and it's hard. Most people forget how hard it is, because they learned this as toddlers.