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October is ADHD awareness month and this is also going to be my first whole month with a diagnosis, so this will be an ongoing October thread where I& #39;ll talk about struggles, realizations, and probably say something scientifically iffy about brain chemistry
For most of my life I& #39;ve had trouble focusing on what I& #39;m supposed to, and sometimes what I wanted to. While a student, these things rarely overlapped. Usually I wanted to focus on games or skating or jamming, but needed to focus on studies, and that was hard.
I was told most of my life that I just needed to dedicate myself to getting it done. Focus more. Just decide to do the thing. And I assumed that my experience was pretty universal.
It wasnt until very recently that I realized lazy for most people means "able to do the thing if they want to, but doesn& #39;t feel like it" and not "desperately needs to do the thing and has been trying to make yourself do it for hours and is ready to break down crying"
By the way, getting medical/psychological/mental help for adhd is a process that is directly opposed to the condition. Making phone calls to schedule appointments? I hate doing that so much. I will literally just not do it for months. And then remembering when the thing is? Nah.
I haven& #39;t yet found a single doctor that does diagnosing, counseling/coaching, as well as medication prescriptions, which means I& #39;ll end up juggling 2-3 doctors trying to manage this brain disorder that makes it hard to keep track of multiple things at once
I& #39;m still working on getting a prescription to try and finding a counselor/ADHDcoach. It& #39;s rough. Megan have a friend from college with ADHD who is studying psychiatrics, and she& #39;s honestly been one of the most helpful people through all this
Through most of high school and college, I attributed my difficulty motivating myself, what I correctly identified as executive dysfunction, to various seasons of depression that I was going through.
I think the first indicator that something else was up was when I stopped being depressed and started doing a job I love and still couldn& #39;t motivate myself. It became a more serious problem after work from home started, and that struggle became more visible to my wife
For anyone unaware, ADHD is caused by dopamine deficiency in your brain. This means you don& #39;t always feel as satisfied with completed work, and you are generally disinclined from any task that won& #39;t actively grant you dopamine (caution, my brain chemistry knowledge is iffy)
This means you also are more inclined to depression and are also able to hyperfixate on something if focusing on it gives you the dopamine your brain craves.
I like to say neurotypical people calling the illness "attention deficit disorder" because we can& #39;t focus the way they want us to is like walking people calling a broken femur "locomotive deficit disorder". It& #39;s kindof a sorta symptom? but not the actual problem.
This isn& #39;t the worlds most accurate analogy, but I think it& #39;s fun to say and it gets the idea across that the issue isn& #39;t that we have a deficit of attention, but rather a much more pervasive struggle with our own brain chemistry and managing our thoughts/focus/working memory
Man having a lot on your plate for the day is wild. One thing about ADHD- I am totally time blind. If it& #39;s 10:00 and I have to do a task I think will take about 45 minutes, even if I hyper focus on that task, my time estimate is usually about 4 hours off.
