ADHD is cool because my inability to choose between two cereals made me almost cry in a grocery store
alright so this is a pretty simple statement, as in there’s not a lot said, it’s not three words, so I’m gonna try and make my reply as short as possible.
So, I have ADHD, and a part of ADHD is emotional dysregulation. It’s really difficult for me to regulate my emotions/my emotional reactions, in other words.
When I can’t choose between two types of cereals, it stresses me out and, unlike neurotypical people, I am unable to stop that stress from snowballing into anxiety, panic, and a general sense of dread. It’s a weird response, for sure, but it’s my response, and it’s how my ADHD manifests.
It’s not the poster-child of ADHD, it’s not a situation people will point to and say, “That is typical ADHD behavior,” but, y’know, that’s okay. It’s my ADHD behavior, and I define it that way because I know my ADHD and I know how it affects me.
Indecisiveness is a common problem for people with ADHD. Obviously each ADHDer has their own unique experience of the disorder, but this struggle isn’t unrelated to the disorder and clearly it resonates with a lot of us. And that makes perfect sense. Let’s think about it.
Impulsiveness: You might think this symptom would make it easy to make an instant decision but when you are confronted with a ton of options it actually it can be much more like realizing you want a bunch of different things and now it’s harder to pick just one. Wow that option looks exciting I really like the sound of that… But this is an old favorite of mine and I’ll miss it if I go with something else… And I’ve always wanted to try that thing will I regret it if I don’t?… I want so many things but I must choose only one and now I’m confused
Hyperfixation: ADHD is largely due to an inability to regulate focus. Which means we can also get really focused on something for a prolonged period of time. Such as the pros and cons of several options. The chicken is good but I had chicken for lunch, pasta could be good if they hold the capers, I haven’t had chili in a long time but I don’t know whether it would be really spicy here or not. On and on and on. Well past when others are done we still are thinking through every little thing.
Difficulty Planning: Without time blindness and with the ability to more readily form a long term plan someone who does not have ADHD may feel confident in deciding one thing in relation to others, reasoning that this falls in line with their long-term goals or for smaller day-to-day choices deciding that next week they’ll get the other option. ADHDers often live more in the moment, but we are aware of the future. It’s What do I want most now?…I want to go with what makes me happy, but what about the most practical option? What is the truly best option for me and how do I even tell? Thinking this through doesn’t come as naturally to me.
Low Self-Esteem & Self-Doubt: ADHDers almost universally have issues with their self-image from years of being judged for being different than everybody else. Naturally we begin to doubt ourselves and thus our choices. And many of us cope by trying to pretend we don’t care or by trying way to hard to please someone else, or both. This leads us to trouble choosing too. I’m so worried I’ll make the wrong choice and ruin everything like I always seem to do. I don’t trust myself so how can I make a decision?...What makes the most sense in order to fit in with the culture? I have trouble figuring this out sometimes. Will I look silly if I do what I love?… I want to make everyone else happy, everyone has their own preferences, but deep down I want something totally different. I’ve got to make sure everyone is pleased with me I hate being a disappointment. I’ve got to make the absolute best choices for everyone on everything. I’m stuck because it’s nearly impossible. And what about that thing I like just this once, but no. Or maybe. Well I guess everyone likes this generic thing. Wait no, Dave said he thought it was gross. Ahh! This choice reflects on me and I must make sure it is excellent.
All of that is plenty stressful without having to deal with emotional dysregulation and low stress tolerance. But ADHDers frequently deal with those symptoms as well.
Emotional Dysregulation & Low Stress Tolerance: The pressure of a situation where you know a choice must be made can be a lot. And after a long day, or in a stressful environment like a bright store or crowded restaurant, or in front of people that you like and want to think highly of you, or for a whole host of other reasons you can end up feeling all !!!!
if you give me a task with no deadline i will literally never do it but if you give me a deadline i will get it done exactly 1 hour before the deadline even if the deadline is in six years
god dammit my tags got cut off AGAIN I’m hitting the tag limit on like every post lately, I really need to work on that
Anyway I went on to say that there are 5 major executive functions of the human brain. These are the ‘higher functions’ that really distinguish between a human brain and that of any other animal. We have added intelligence on top of that, but these are the functional abilities our brains have that the rest of the animal kingdom does not have on a a structural level. There are 5 of them. ADHD affects all 5. And none of them are actually ‘attention’ (the closest function to anything that can reasonably be called ‘attention’ is what’s called Working Memory, which is your brain’s ability to hold a specific task in mind to come back to it; distractions are inevitable, but a healthy brain will hear a phone ring, look up, and remember to go back to what it was doing before. An ADHD brain will hear the phone riBANG ALL MEMORY OF THE CURRENT TASK IS GONE. ADHD brain looks up, sees the name on the caller id, oh it’s an unknown number, oh it’s probably some political pollster, oh man this year’s election is just awful I can’t believe people are supporting that angry cheeto. Oh cheetos I’m hungry I should go make a snack. What kind of snacks do we have? Did I remember to buy cereal at the store the other day? What about dog food? Oh my god I forgot to let the dog back in the house this is why I should have gotten a cat. Oh my friend sent me a great cat video earlier I should watch that. AND GUESS WHAT YOU NEVER GO BACK TO WHAT YOU WERE DOING BECAUSE THE STRUCTURE IN YOUR BRAIN THAT SUPPORTS RETURNING TO A PARTIALLY COMPETED TASK DOES NOT EXIST THE WAY IT DOES FOR A NORMAL HEALTHY BRAIN. This is why even if you start a task well before a deadline you can’t keep to it until it’s been completed; the consequences of it being done MUST be more compelling than everything else in the immediate environment for the brain to see it. No matter how much time you give yourself to complete the task, if you have ADHD it will take you 100% of that time, every time, which is why having ADHD actually TEACHES YOU to put things off, because it’s the only way to shorten the total time actually spent completing the task – the disorder rewards you for self-destructive behavior because it’s the only way you can get things done at all, and you end up living in a permanent state of extreme stress, hopping from one emergency deadline to the next even though you hate yourself for it every single time). The disorder has been horribly named in a way that trivializes just how serious and life-ruining it actually is.
ADHD is a very, very serious disorder and the pop psych/common understanding of it makes it seem HORRIBLY trivial compared to the real damage it actually does to people’s lives.
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…ohhh…
This is both fascinating and… possibly slightly alarming.
Make sure you pick up the latest editions since our understanding of ADHD/ADD has changed a lot since those were first published.
If anyone needs further books recs or help finding specific resources, feel free to IM me or send me an ask. I’m not totally up to date on current stuff, but I’ve had my diagnoses for almost 30 years and totally count as experienced old fart now. XD
Thing #1 that frustrates me about ADHD/Executive Dysfunction advice:
“Oh, you have a mental/neurological issue that makes it difficult for you to be organized, follow routines, stick with systems, maintain a schedule, do your work, etc.? Well, what you need to do is GET ORGANIZED! Schedule everything! Find a system and stick with it! Maintain a schedule! Do your work as it comes in!”
It’s like that Allie Brosh comic where her fish are dead, and everyone’s offering to help find them, or advice like “feed them!” Or “make puppets out of them!” And she says, “No, see, that solution is for a different problem than the one I have.”
Yes, I would love to do those things! I have tried to do those things! I am still trying to do those things! But it’s like that post about how you’re going through an invisible obstacle course, and what looks like a block to everyone else seems like a wall to you. Instead of saying, “it’s a block! Go around!” It would be much more useful to hand me a bag of flour so I can see the obstacles for myself and how to get around them.
I keep looking for something I can do. I can’t maintain an agenda- closest I can do is lot appointments into Google Calendar. I can’t use to-do lists- they overwhelm and freak me out and I end up doing less than before. Breaking down a task into a bunch of tiny pieces should work in theory, but again, freaks me out, and I usually end up spending an hour planning and then I never actually do. I can’t set deadlines for myself. Whatever part of the brain allows other people to say, “yes, it’s due on the 29th, but I want to be done on the 25th” just doesn’t work. I can’t make my brain think something needs to be done until the last minute. This is especially bad in classes where everything is due at the end of the semester. I end up doing what I just did, and having to do two whole classes worth of work in two days. Oddly, once that level of desperation kicks in, I’m capable of sitting down and pounding through the material- but for some reason, I can’t tap into that level of focus without a short, urgent, important deadline. Maybe one day I’ll figure it out.
Thing #2 that bugs me about all self help: Don’t wait for motivation! Just do it!
I think my definition of “motivation” is different from the usual. Most people see “motivation” as meaning something like “wanting to do something, looking forward to doing something, doing the thing with energy and happiness because it is the thing you want to do.”
My definition is closer to “having enough willpower to make myself do the thing despite everything in my brain begging me to go watch Netflix instead.” So when people say, “you don’t need motivation!” What I hear is “everyone else seems to have this source of willpower they can eventually learn to tap into that just doesn’t exist for me.” My best technique for doing stuff is having other people make me do it. Which freaks out my social anxiety because then I feel like I’m intruding on their time to make them help me with mine.
The thing is, I’m not lazy. If I were just lazy this would all be easier to cope with. I WANT to be doing things, I WANT to be successful, I WANT to be productive. I even try, really hard, and the effort that exhausts me seems to be so much lower than the typical threshold. But every time I try to be as productive as I want to be, I burn out in a couple days.
I am on the verge of tears because this is everything that frustrates me about my own ADHD. Every word of this reflects my experience.
i’m so bad today i can only read every fifth sentence and it STILL hits me in the gut. well expressed.
my executive dysfunction lately has been so bad i can’t even work on my hobbies. i can’t even stim right. one of my favorite stims is to lay out a textile work in progress and play with the pieces, rearranging them and finishing their edges and doing all the fiddlybits. lately, even though i have a nice clean worktable and my quilt pieces all laid out by color, i have managed to iron a grand total of like… 6 of them. in three days. i like ironing quilt pieces. it’s satisfying to me. but it just… doesn’t seem to be happening.
people who’ve never experienced executive dysfunction seem to think our disability only applies to things that are hard or unfun, and therefore suspect we’re just making excuses not to do stuff we don’t want to do. but it’s not like that. i have trouble doing stuff i enjoy doing. i have trouble doing stuff i have to do to live, like eating. sometimes the stuff i get distracted into doing is less fun than the thing i was trying to do – plenty of times i go to get food and get distracted and fold laundry instead. because folding laundry is a routine, it’s an organizing task, which takes less executive function than making food, which requires making a lot of little decisions and judgement calls based on what’s in the fridge, what dishes are clean, etc.
if you had something wrong with your brain that forced you to fold laundry when you wanted a sandwich, wouldn’t you call that a real disability?
Had to read this three times in order to read all of it because my brain is in skim mode, but yeah. THIS.
I wrote the second part of my comment while functioning. Wanted to add how much I agree and similar experiences I’ve had, but brain stopped working. Anyways, this is what I wrote 5 minutes ago, when I had hope.
Read recently that us ADD folks are interest-motivated. Traditional motivators just DON’T WORK. We have to be excited, scared, intrigued, etc.
I’ve been trying to take advantage of this, with mixed success.
Current tests:
Using bullet journaling to keep an agenda – motivator is that designing each page is fun, and I also organize fun research projects in it so it must be a GOOD book
Getting myself to do something I like/find easy close to the thing I can’t motivate myself to do – start making tea and then put some dishes away while the water boils; or go pee and then tell myself that while I’m in the bathroom the bath is right there and being clean feels nice
Neither method has been a major success, but both are working better than previous motivation methods! And they leave me less self-hating.
PiraticOctopus 