#ADHD - a thread.

The floor of my home office this morning. Learning to use coloured paper was a huge #ADD #lifehack which significantly reduced the overwhelm caused by paper.

While living with bipolarity is challenging, > 80% of the time, attention is a greater challenge.

While mood was a significant problem before my mid-twenties, as I got older things became manageable if never consistent. By the time I was diagnosed with #ADHD in my late thirties, I had had no serious mood relapses for so long, the psychiatrist doubted I was bipolar.

I, remembering being manic and psychotic in my late teens, did not accept his dismissal of a big part of my young life. However, I do seem to have an easier time with bipolarity than some.

Anyway, the point of this thread is about the potential significance of a #diagnosis.

I have an understanding of how problematic a great deal of the pathologization of psychiatry is, particularly language and constructs that bind the idea of disease tightly to the self. http://davidmordecai.com/2019/12/21/fixing-psychiatry/

However receiving an #ADHD diagnosis taught me a lot about how powerful and important it is for groups of individuals to recognize, name and share an understanding of our common experiences. Once I learned about ADHD the degree to which it captured my experiences was uncanny.

From my early twenties, I realized I had problems with attention, but I always just accepted them as part-and-parcel of the package that comes with being bipolar. I managed well enough, most of the time. School and university were hit and miss --

I have an excellent memory, especially for concepts but also for names. However, I've never been able to study with diligence. I oddly seem to learn better when I don't exert effort in trying to do so. When I formed my own business I suddenly had to function alone.

The mess on the floor in the first picture of this thread was rarely something that had manifested in my life before I struck out alone. Many adults with ADHD find that the presence of others facilitates focus. I initially learned the consequence of their absence.

It was only a lucky conversation with a friend about the challenges I was having dealing with the many mundane tasks of running a business -- all things I knew how to do and had done (but with help) before when I was a non-profit CEO -- that led to my #diagnosis.

She had just been diagnosed and we compared notes. Relating to the diagnosis changed my life. Unfortunately, medication provides minimal help (and in one instance made me manic) but just having a new lens to look at experiences I had been having my whole life was transformative.

So my thoughts on diagnosis are complicated. The problems with pathologization and medical hegemony are real and can be deeply harmful. On the other hand, #ADHD introduced me to #neurodiversity: humans are intrinsically different, and some of those differences are shared.

Moreover, the lens of the diagnosis enabled me to see my challenges in a whole new way, feel supported and part of a community in facing them, and develop many tools and strategies for both coping with and accepting them.

Anyway, now gotta cut this distraction and go to work!

This thread is getting renewed attention and so I am looping in this branch on coping strategies in case it is otherwise missed. One tip that I missed (because I don't do it enough) is that exercise is known to help with attention. https://twitter.com/liminal67/status/1306271842458636289?s=20