ADHD?

So currently I'm doing the thing where I go and talk to someone and then I play with shapes and words and stacking things and then hopefully they'll tell me if I'm ADHD or not (i think i was seebs-diagnosed or seeb-strongly recommended but anyway)

So I don't know shit about this.

But since ADHD has been brought up in the how to do a clean thread, I figured I might as well toss this up.

And potentially, diagnosed ADHDers could be like "my brain is full of squirrels!" and other people would be like, "no, my brain is full of quiet happy beavers" and some other people will be like "wow! my brain is full of squirrels too! how do you keep them from taking the birdseed???" and then the afore-mentioned ADHDers would be like "oh dude there's this special way to build birdhouses and then the squirrels are like wtf mate"- okay, that one got away from me.

But yeah!
Thing.

 

Seebs has also suggested that I have ADHD. I have no idea if Seebs is right, but it sure sounds like a thing! I too would like to know how to keep my brain squirrels from eating all the birdseed when I am trying to get them to focus on collecting nuts for the coming winter, that would be really swell! This is sure a metaphor.

 

My diagnostic ran more along the lines of talking to the psychiatrist about my personal history and filling out a thing about how frequently I had various problems and then her going "yeah, you have ADHD, let's start with this" and then going from there. So I really don't know that it should be that involved, but am slightly worried about how easy it was, now.

Brain-Squirrel metaphor is actually perfect.

Gonna repost the two bits of advice/techniques that I've learned about here, where it's more appropriate.

*ahem*

Useful for the room cleaning, but I've found it also useful for studying, cooking, all kinds of things.

 

These metaphors. They will haunt me.

@Helen of Boy Holy fuck that is some good sounding advice. Right now I'm at the point where I make a list of things I have to do every week (when I get more time stressed, it'll be every day), and I just carry it everywhere. Writing stuff down also kind of boosts my "oh, this is a thing that happened and also I should do this" memory. If I have anything more short-term than that, sometimes I'll mutter it to myself on repeat, which I'm sure my roommate enjoys. I'll have to take a day at some point in the future and actually do this.

I've found that the Pomodoro Timer things (or really, most things requiring a timer) are ridiculously unhelpful for me, which is sad, because if they actually helped me function, I could get so much work done. I end up just staring at the timer watching the numbers change, because my general awareness just sidelines itself into TIMER TIMER TIMER TIMER you should really get some work done, okay what's the first thing on here....ooh there's 10 minutes left on the TIMER TIMER TIMER.

And also - on the ADHD assessment thing - my experience has been that I walked in, went "hey I'd like to get tested for ADHD", and then they gave me an appointment and a questionnaire to make sure there wasn't anything else glaringly wrong with my brain. It's not a very talky atmo, and I think they're getting all of their data from the test.

So now I'm jealous of your slightly easier sounding test.

 

Yeah, not all advice works as well for everyone, unfortunately, but the fingers thing seems like the most generally useful.

Spoiler: silly fretting

Look on the brightside re: testing, even though I'm about as sure as I can be that I've got it, it still seems so easy that my brain tries to talk me into thinking I don't and am abusing the system and a bad person that will wind up addicted and become even more useless, because clearly I'm just lazy and have bad habits and can't focus or work up the energy to start things for OTHER reasons. Depression + Anxiety + Probable/Diagnosed ADHD when all three bleed together and look similar has been an experience, but I'm ready to get off Mr. Brain's Wild Ride any time now.

 

Mr Brain's Wild Ride is literally the worst ride at Mr Brain's amusement park. Clearly you should complain to someone. Who is the administrator of this joint.

(Does your brain do that thing where first thoughts are freaking out about something, second thoughts are going "no, dude, this is not a thing. calm down holy fuck", and first thoughts continue to do the thing?)

 

Yes, it does. Though it's even more fond of letting my first thoughts be happy, and then overlaying that with second thoughts going "no, this is a trap, you'll ruin your life, everything is wrong" and trying to drown out the first thoughts.

 

I suspect that the two of you have stolen my brain. I would say that I want it back, but I'm not sure it's particularly good. On the other hand, I don't think you guys want it.

I've been developing a process of dealing with my ADHD lately involving plans with very tiny, very concrete steps so I can be absolutely sure I did each one. I don't have good labels for this, so here's an example.

Right now I am working on doing the dishes a couple times a week without getting distracted and wandering off, or crying because THERE IS SO MUCH STUFF IN THIS KITCHEN WHAT DO I DO I CANNOT DO THIS THING IT IS SO BIG. It's a good place to practice this skill set because it's a complex process and it does need to get done, but no one is going to get really angry if I do it wrong.

I have no idea when someone is done doing the dishes. No, really. I don't. There's the part where all of the stuff that needs to be handwashed has been rinsed off, but do I need to dry them all by hand and put them away? Do I need to actually start the dishwasher or is it okay to just load it? What happens if I load and start the dishwasher and there are forks left over? Do I have to handwash them too, or can they wait somewhere for the next dishwasher load?

As I understand it, somehow people without ADHD magically make these decisions on the fly. I have no idea how they do that, but they do. If I just walk in the kitchen and see a bunch of pots and pans and plates and cups, I panic because I cannot even fathom what doing the thing will be like or figure out what I am even supposed to do. So I made a generic doing-dishes plan.

• Have cell phone alarm go off when it is the day and time for dishes to be done. Alarm will go off every thirty seconds until dismissed.
  
• Loudly announce that you are about to do dishes and that other people should bring any lost plates or cups into the room. (Doing this personally means you never get back to the kitchen.) Allow a few moments for others to bring these items into the kitchen. Attempt to rope spouse into putting any clean items in the dishwasher or on the drying rack away when he shows up carrying probably four cups off your desk. (Yes, this is a real step in my dishes-cleaning process. Don't tell him. Look not only is it extra work that is technically not related to getting things clean but also I am 5'1 and I have to drag a stool around the kitchen to reach many of the places where items are supposed to live and it is very annoying.) If spouse cannot be roped into doing task, all clean items from the drying rack or dishwasher must be put away.
  
• Find all the dirty cooking pots, pans, baking sheets, etc. If any of them still have food in them, either put it away or throw it in the trash. If there is a lot of residue in a pot or pan, squirt some dish soap into it and put some water in it. Put them together on the counter next to the sink. Throw away any trash on the plates, like leftover food or used wooden skewers. Turn on the hot water tap on the sink because it takes forever to heat up.
  
• Gather up all cutlery and put it in the cutlery section of the dishwasher. Put all the cups and all of the plastic things in the top of the dishwasher. Put all of the plates and bowls in the bottom half of the dishwasher (unless a plate or bowl is made of plastic). If the dishwasher is full, put soap in it and run it. If there are things that do not fit in the dishwasher, put them on the counter, but leave a space between those things and the cooking things because spouse-creature said that it was a better idea to wait for another dishwasher load than to clean them by hand. If the dishwasher is not full, you're done loading the dishwasher when there are no more dishwasher-safe items on the counters.
• Wash the cooking items in the sink. Try to do the smallest things first, but don't stress out if you don't get the order perfect, no, really, don't. Do this one at a time and rinse each item as you finish washing it, even though that's less water efficient, because otherwise it is too damn confusing to figure out where in the process each dish is. After an item is rinsed, place it in the drying rack. Big items can go over small items so both can drip dry. If there is a pot or pan that will not come clean, pour a little dish soap into it and add some hot water. Place this in the sink basin. Continue until all non-dishwasher-safe items are off the counter.
  
• Do a final sweep of the kitchen for missed items. Process them as above.
• Report to spouse if dishes are still soaking for grease/food removal.
• Pour yourself a glass of water and pat yourself on the head because you have done the dishes! It was terrifying but you did it anyway! Try really hard not to let the mean part of your head tell you about how this is easy for other people and why isn't it easy for you because fuck that, you actually did the thing, you will absolutely not punish yourself for doing the thing you were supposed to do.

Notice that the plan makes sure to detail not just what things to do, but also what things will look like when that thing is done. This is important because it means I am able to visualize what things should look like when I am done with each step and when I am done with the entire process. This gives me a visual cue for when to move to the next task. It also means that I can imagine what the process will be like and I do not have a complete breakdown, preventing me from accomplishing anything at all, because my brain believes that the task is genuinely impossible.

ALSO note that it took me ten minutes to type this up. It took me an hour to come up with this plan when I originally did so and decide what parts needed to be there and what didn't, including asking my spouse and housemates things a couple times. Note that my spouse and housemates really can just decide on the fly how to do this stuff somehow and it's not even really hard for them, what the fuck! What I have to tell myself every time is that my executive function doesn't work the way that theirs does, that just because I am doing the same thing on a functional level doesn't mean I'm doing the same task that they are cognitively, and that it's okay if this is harder for me than it is for them. It's really easy for me to fall into the trap of declaring that things my brain doesn't do well are actually moral failings on my part and that I am a terrible person. But I have learned to try not to think that way because I actually get fewer things done when I believe I am a terrible person than when I believe that some things are just harder for me and they're going to exhaust me if I do them and that's okay.

 

@Aya holy crap, I feel that so hard. I've always felt like other people have some sort of a "focus on/off" switch and they know what to do automatically... and I still can't find mine (if it even exists at all). So I try to work around this, just like you with the dishes.

 

I got diagnosed with ADHD ten years ago, and even before that I had spent so much time learning to work around my own brain I don't even recognize when I do it anymore. I know I tend to work better with music going (so part of my brain is processing that so I can focus the rest of it, like sitting a toddler down with a movie), and when I was in school I wrote stories in between having to do actual assignments. I am, however, awful at making plans like the one @Aya did above, because (according to my brain) I am awful at everything and will definitely leave out a step and burn the house down somehow.

 

Another ADHD here, and its actually been getting worse over the past couple years. I don't go to a lot of classes because I can't follow what's going on and I hate being called on. I try to study the material outside of class, but I can't focus well enough to do that either! And I completely missed a test in one class because I couldn't remember to check when the test date was until after it passed. I'm completely baffled as to how people get more than like 3 things done in a day and I feel constantly surrounded by people who can just do more of everything than me

 

I have tried the Pomodoro method, as well as several time management methods like it. I have also tried habitRPG, the Seinfeld method, and other anti-proctrastination tools. Everything works for a couple hours to a couple weeks and then stops. The two most common failure modes seem to be
A) I procrastinate on starting the anti-procrastination method
B) The method doesn't stop me from procrastinating in the first place and it seemed to work for a short time only because of the placebo effect

Which is why I am trying different sets of pills from psychiatrists. Hopefully they can take out the problem at its source.

Has anybody else noticed that the first three weeks or so of a semester of high school or college run smoothly and you are able to stay productive (and maybe even get ahead in the very beginning), but somewhere around three to four weeks, you start falling behind, and it just gets worse from there?

 

God yes. And during your weeks of productivity, you're like, hey, I finally got this. the year is going to go so well...

 

See, that's why I had every other human living in the house review my plan with me to make sure it was okay......

A lot of people with ADHD end up with anxiety disorders either caused by or being fed by the ADHD. You have a bad brain day, you screw something up that everyone else thinks is obvious (because of course for them it is), someone says something to you along the lines of "what the fuck!" (exact words depending on your age and the formality of the setting), this happens over and over and over... Even if people don't say mean things about it, you're sitting there thinking "that is the most stupid thing that anyone has ever fucked up how did I do this" and you beat yourself down... And then you're too scared to do anything anymore because it's been beaten into you that you will fuck something up, and it won't even be the part that's supposed to be hard that you fuck up, and it will blow up so catastrophically that nothing will ever be okay again. I think this is more common with primarily-inattentive-type ADHD, but it can happen either way.

I feel you guys on the homework/schoolwork thing. I used to do homework assignments and then leave them sitting on my desk at home. Once when I was in middle school I had my report card sent home, my parents signed it, I left it in my room, I got silent lunch (because middle school couldn't do detention because reasons), I didn't pick it up the next night, I got silent lunch again... and this went on for four days and then the school called my parents and they were like "WTF?????" because they had signed it and looked at it and talked with me about it days ago and thought the matter was settled. It wasn't even lost. It just never made it into my bookbag.

Also I got really, really good at writing really long papers in a single night because I would never remember they were going to be due until the day before, when most of my teachers would make a huge deal about how we should be "checking over" the papers to turn them in the next day. I researched and wrote a ten-page paper in twelve hours once. It got a low A. I'm sure it was a total coincidence that I was too nauseous to eat the rest of that week.

The one trick I learned in college about that two-week productivity thing is that you can use it for stuff that will help you the whole semester. The thing that helped the most was that for each class, I would take out the syllabus and plug the due date for everything into the calendar app on my phone and then set alarms for the appropriate amounts of time before the assignment is due (ie, one day if it's a brief recurring assignment, every day for a week if it's a short paper, etc). In my experience, professors are extremely unlikely to move due dates earlier, only later, so even a changed deadline usually won't hurt you. Though one time a professor of mine changed the order we were reading three chapters of the book halfway through the semester and when I got home I (no joke) cried for an hour straight, even though we hadn't started reading them yet, because it was too overwhelming to think through changing the alarms by that point.

One of the worst parts for me, maybe the worst, is getting out the door on time. We can't afford a car, so I have to take the bus everywhere, and it only shows up once every half hour. So if I miss the bus, I've missed whatever it was I was going to go do. Starting to get ready earlier can make it worse because I'll have most of the getting ready process done, and I'll think I have plenty of time, and I'll sit down and play Chuzzle or something, and then very suddenly I need to be out the door thirty seconds ago and I forgot to put on socks and where is my jacket and oh no everything is terrible.

And once in awhile, I get on the wrong transfer bus for going places sometimes even though I've taken the bus to get to some locations literally hundreds of times. And often it's not because I'm distracted or I don't remember where I'm going, it's that I start to second-guess myself because I know I forget things and second-guess myself into being wrong.

 

Hahahaha, that's my entire education in a nutshell. First week: Oh man I got this. I GOT THIS. I'M GOING TO DO SO WELL MAN I'M SO EXCITED LET'S PUNCH A HOLE IN A WALL AND DO THIS. Third week: I was wrong, this is terrible and boring and I can't focus for shit, I'm going to write that paper in the dead of the night the day before it's due, Jesus take the wheel.

Oh my god. Thank you for putting this into words. I ended up going to a therapist because I felt like a complete failure about being stupid and clumsy and unable to do things that other people do effortlessly.
Turns out, ADHD-induced depression is a thing.

 

Quoted for +1 forever. "I know I know how to do this. But I am prone to fucking things up. So what if I fucked up knowing how to do this? I better do it this other way just in ca oh god everything's on fire."

 

See also why I sometimes get lost going home, mispronounce words, and/or misgender friends. "Okay, I know that I sometimes get this wrong, the answer is the one that isn't the intuitive one. Wait, shit, no, I finally learned it right, now I'm doing it wrong, fuck, oh no, oh god, oh shit."

And this is why I sometimes ask people for confirmation about how I should do everything every step of the way no matter how certain I feel that I'm right.

 

I would just like to note that thank-you cards are a vicious trap used on people with ADHD to make everyone else hate them for being ungrateful.

 

We bought thank you cards in advance for our wedding, took notes on who bought what... and still lost the ones for half the family, as well as forgetting whose money went to what (because that's a thing, you have to buy something nice with the money someone gives you and not, like, pay rent with it, I guess?).

So, yeah, I completely agree.