Tim Beshara, on what it’s like to have inattentive ADHD. Some of my favorite parts.
This description of inattentive ADHD symptoms is accurate:
Inattentive ADHD put simply, means your brain is rubbish at choosing what you focus on. It’s the daydreaming type of ADHD, not the can’t-sit-still type.It’s not that you can’t focus at all. You can focus alright, just not always on what you need to focus on. Sometimes the problem is when you get stuck focusing on the wrong things.
For people with inattentive ADHD, repetitive tasks become hyper-boring and mentally exhausting to stick with. Yet with the tasks you are interested in, you can barely notice the outside world for eight hours straight.
You also have a rubbish working memory. Your long-term memory can be excellent, but your ability to temporarily hold two or three pieces of information in your mind at any one time is limited.
Aligned with this is a deficiency in your prospective memory. Prospective memory is all about being good at remembering to remember.
you often can have a crappy executive function, i.e. your brain is really bad at directing you through a series of sub-tasks to get the main task complete. It can do each sub-task fine, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone in charge in there to lead you through the steps.
But it’s the part about the psychological impact of having late-diagnosed ADHD that hit home the hardest:
The ADHD wears you down but it’s the secondary psychological impact that hits you the hardest.
You get judged by your friends, colleagues, teachers, partners and relatives as being weak in character or lazy. …
The only honest answer you ever have for giving someone about why you stuffed up is “I don’t know”.
And what makes it worse is than when you find a topic or task engaging you really can perform. Like exceptionally so. Everyone sees this and uses that as your benchmark and then assumes that when you fail at a boring task it is because you are weak-willed.
People diagnosed with ADHD later on in life, like I was, wear the scars of a lifetime of judgement from failures you can never explain. It’s genuinely traumatic.
It is big things like struggling through university and failing to have a career that matches your potential. And it is little things like forgetting birthdays and people’s names and all seven items on the grocery list to bring back from the shops.
(Finally, someone who understands getting traumatized for an hour over a minor faux pas!).
I’m also glad he mentioned the gap between what you can accomplish when engaged versus when your brain is turned off, and its psychological effects. I believe being twice exceptional (gifted + ADHD) magnifies this gap.
I have a habit of starting strong and fizzling out, in every lab job I’ve had, and many friendships. I’m TERRIFIED of not living up to the expectations I’ve inadvertently set for myself. But I also can’t stop overperforming, because if everyone thinks I’m brilliant and perfectionistic about my work, they’ll forgive me annoying eccentricities like showing up late or occasionally forgetting to turn something in. (That “eccentric genius” stereotype doesn’t just benefit men). So, constant paranoia ensues. And then people tell me I’m too anxious and need to relax. You can’t win with ADHD.
All of this
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It’s unlikely that anyone would tell a child in a wheelchair that he could get up and walk if he tried harder. His handicap is obvious and everyone understands his limitations. Unfortunately not many people understand the hidden handicap of an ADD child
“You Mean I’m Not Lazy, Stupid of Crazy: The classic self-help book for adults with attention deficit disorder” by Kate Kelly and Peggy Ramundo
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Having ADD [or ADHD] makes life paradoxical. You can superfocus sometimes, but also space out when you least mean to. You can radiate confidence and also feel as insecure as a cat in a kennel. You can perform at the highest level, feeling incompetent as you do so. You can be loved by so many, but feel as if no one really likes you. You can absolutely, totally intend to do something, then forget to do it. You can have the greatest ideas in the world, but feel as if you can’t accomplish a thing.
Sometimes the hardest thing about having a mental illness is the time you can never get back. The time before you got help, the time before you realized that you had a problem. The choices you made out of fear or expectations that may or may not have come to pass.
I never applied for college when I was in high school. I was a solid C student (though everybody said I was smart. I now know it was inattentive adhd). But I barely coasted my way through high school, i was certain I’d never make it in college. And besides, this was before the Internet, I had no idea how financial aid worked. But I was certain I wouldn’t get any scholarships with my grades and my parents had explained for quite some time that when we were 18 it was military, college or paying rent, and they weren’t helping with college. So I went military. (I did finally go school, getting my associates at about 30, and now, at 37, finishing up my bachelors)
There’s been other things through the years, that looking back at it now, I realize it was my depression telling me lies. Or my inattentive adhd making me scatterbrained. My house has never been neat or clean.
What I’m mourning today is that, two years ago, pretty much when I hit rock bottom, I lost a semester and a half of college to depression Because of that lost time, those failed classes, I need to go for one more semester, so I can graduate in December this year. (That failed semester also forced me to wait a full year to get the job I have now while I got my GPA up.)
A couple days ago I got an email from financial aid that I’ve hit the max for student loans and so I’ll get no financial aid for fall.
Today that was coupled with learning I got a D in a class, which means it doesn’t count towards graduation, and instead of needing two more classes I need three.
I know I missed a couple assignments in that class and I’ve resisted looking to see that if I’d done them if that would make a difference. Of course it would have, but I can’t change it so no point putting myself through that.
So I have no idea what I’m going to do. My credit is too awful for private loans (another side effect of adhd is being bad with finances). I’m a world better off now then I was last year (for those of you who know what a bitch of a struggle last year was for me). We make enough right now to pay the bills, but not enough to save.
I’ll do what I’ve always done and figure it out. I need to knuckle down and start writing again. I may have depression, but, oddly enough, I tend to be naturally optimistic. I’m upset and worried, but I just have to have faith that, somehow, it’ll all work out. Though as of right now I’ve given up on the idea of being able to travel to Arizona to walk in my graduation. The important thing is to finish, and I only have a little farther to go, depression and lost time be damned.
Part of what separates ADHD-havers from the merely forgetful is that for us, to use DSM parlance, the symptoms “have a significant impact on daily life and functioning.” When I was a kid “significant impact” meant being in perpetual trouble: always being late, never hearing the assignment, enduring depressingly frequent teen-magazine “It Happened to Me”–type moments (I was often surprised by my period’s arrival). Teacher’s pet I wasn’t: “Clearly Rae has not been,” snapped my sixth-grade math teacher, flinging an eraser at my desk, “PAYING ATTENTION, so the whole class will have to wait while I go over this again.”
By high school, I had fully internalized the fact that I was a screwup and began acting the part with teenage gusto. “Fuck you, fail me,” I spat at a particularly hateful teacher, middle fingers aloft. “It’s not my first time.”
Then I’d go home and cry. Repeated failure is destructive. It chips away at your self-confidence and eats at your resolve. It makes you hate yourself.
The thing is, ADHD doesn’t care about your gender. A huge part of the different treatments of people with ADHD is rooted in gender role expectations. Your behaviors as a child are interpreted a certain way depending on the gender you’re assigned.
When I talk to my ADHD friends, we have the same problems, the same difficulties, unrelated to gender.
Girls are less often diagnosed because they are not seen, because girls learn early on to be quiet and hide their faults. While boys get the excuse of ‘being just a wild boy’.
And while the experience of a person who identifies and is read as female with ADHD is valid and exhausting, it is not just because of ADHD, it is because we fail to fill in the role of the perfect women. It is because society is somewhat okay with the forgetful, chaotic man (to a point) but much less forgiving when it comes to what they think a woman should be.
This is probably something that’s already been said but just in case,
One of the most amazing study tips I have discovered recently is keeping a notebook and pencil RIGHT next to you while you are studying or reading a book for a class (or doing any sort of reading that isn’t just for fun). Every time a stray thought comes to you, write that shit down. Then it isn’t bugging your brain to try and remember for later, it’s there for you to visit when you aren’t studying and you can move past it and go back to study.
Also, make sure it’s a notebook separate to where you keep your notes for studying/classes, so you can keep the two mindsets apart: study / free time. I really like the little ones from Typo for outside thoughts and use big A4 notebooks for my uni notes.
Trust me, as a writer who gets random story/concept tidbits ALL the time, this is amazingly helpful because it ensures I get to keep all the ideas without them clogging up my brainspace, and it also gives me a sort of “reward” for studying, because I have these little brain bits that I get to explore in detail more once I’ve done my allotted school stuff, without feeling guilty for getting off track by delving into them as soon as they come to mind and getting distracted from my studies because I can’t stop thinking about this rad idea.
TL;DR: Keep a spare notebook to write down all of the distracting thoughts that pop up while you’re studying. Write them down, get them out of your brain, go back to studying with the knowledge that they are right there to dedicate brainspace on when you are finished focusing on study.
This is also super useful to lessen anxiety because you are no longer thinking “oh gosh I need to remember these 2 thousand things!!!!”
what people think adhd is like: im a little distractable but it’s okay because im creative and spontaneous(:
what it’s actually like: me, making a microwave burrito: how long do i need to microwave it? *checks wrapper* okay *sets wrapper down and puts burrito in the microwave* wait how long do i need to microwave it? this time I’ll focus on remembering *looks at wrapper, stares at the thing that says “1 minute” for a second* okay i got this *goes to put time on the microwave* how long do i need to microwave it? this time i’ll
Instead of telling yourself, “I should get up,” or “I should do this,”
Ask yourself, “When will I get up?” or “When will I be ready to do this?”
Instead of trying to order yourself to feel the signal to do something, which your brain is manifestly bad at, listen to yourself with compassionate curiosity and be ready to receive the signal to move when it comes.
Things I did not actually realize was an option
What’s amazing is what happens when you do this with children. I hit on it when working at the foster home, where nearly all our kids were on the autism spectrum, and they weren’t “defiant” around me because I said things like, “How long do you need to stand here before we can move?” and “Come into the kitchen when you’re ready” instead of saying, “Stop staring out the window, let’s go,” or “Come eat dinner,” and interpreting hesitation as refusal to obey.
I have also definitely found that doing the “okay when I finish counting down from twenty is getting up time” has been useful.
Yup, that’s way better for toddlers and younger kids. It helps when they don’t have the self-awareness, attention span, or concept of the passage of time to estimate when they’ll be ready by themselves.
Oh I meant for me. XD Saying it to myself.
WELL OKAY WHOOPS XD I should not have been overspecific, I was just thinking about teaching this stuff to the parents at my job and your reblog made me immediately think of you with Banana and the kidlets.
Another hack: when you want to get up but are stalled by your brain and frustrated – stop. Breathe. Think about what you want to do once you’re up, without thinking about getting up. Treat it like a fantasy, no pressure, just thinking about something you’d like to do in the future. Instead of thinking “I should get up” over and over, think about having a bagel for breakfast, or getting dressed in your soft green sweater. Imagine yourself doing the thing.
I find that exercise often side-steps the block and the next thing I know I’m out of bed and on my way to doing the other thing I thought about.
Works for other things too, if you’re stuck on one step and having a hard time doing it, think about the step after that. Need to do laundry and you can’t get yourself to gather up your dirty clothes in the hamper? Think instead about carrying the hamper full of dirty clothes to the laundry room. And when you get to that next step, if you get stuck again, think about the step after it – you have a hamper of dirty clothes that needs to be put in the wash, let your subconscious handle the “carry hamper to laundry room” step while you’re thinking about the “putting them in the wash” part.
YMMV of course, and this doesn’t even always work for me (particularly not when I need to do a collection of tasks in no particular order, like packing for a trip… “pack socks, pack underwear, pack toothbrush, pack pants, pack shirts” is the kind of non-linear task list where this trick doesn’t help at all), but it’s something I’ve found helpful often enough.
This is one of the most beautiful threads I’ve seen on Tumblr simply because it deals so compassionately with an issue so many of us have and can barely even articulate to ourselves, let alone to anyone else. <3
I think I get overwhelmed from the thought of all of the consequent steps, so maybe I’ll do the reverse of the advice above and try to focus on the first one.
@the-rain-monster i was just about to say something similar. that can work too sometimes. instead of going “ugh i need to eat something” for four hours, i try to focus on each step in turn.
and i mean each TINY step. just getting out of my chair has this many steps:
pause music
remove headphones
hang headphones on laptop screen
pick up laptop
leg-bend recliner footrest shut
set laptop aside
stand
and i reckon that’s why i get stuck on it; because i’m trying to treat it as one thing, while executive dysfunction is treating it as seven things, and choking on trying to skip to step seven.
concurrent with this is a method i call ‘junebugging’. which is where i go to the location of the thing i want to do, and just sort of bump around the region like a big stupid beetle until the thing somehow accidentally magically gets done. this is an attempt to leverage ADHD into an advantage; i may not have the executive function to make myself a sandwich on purpose, but if i fidget in the kitchen long enough, some kind of food is going to end up in my mouth eventually. and hell, even if i fail on that front, i will probably have achieved something, even if it’s only pouring all my loose leaf tea into decorative jars.*
@star-anise please may i give you an internet hug *hug!* because god how i wish anyone had known to do that for me when i was a kid. my childhood was one big overload, and like 99% of the huge dramatic meltdowns that made me the scapegoat/laughingstock/target of my entire elementary school were simply due to people not giving me time to process the next step, and interpreting a bluescreen as defiance/insult.
*this happened when i was trying to do dishes actually but the principle is sound
yeah i absolutely echo what j’s saying about the steps, it’s a lot like that for me too. i get overwhelmed at the prospect of something that should be simple, and have to slow down and sort out how many steps it’s actually going to take, and what a complicated endeavor it actually is, even if no one else thinks so.
also, i thought i should put in: try to honestly figure out what you’re averse to, that makes things so tough. making a whole bunch of decisions really fast? the potential of things to make a horrible noise? the shame of failure? having to put down what you’re doing now? having to clean up whatever it is you might go do when you’re done?
for instance, for me, the difficulty rating on anything goes waaaay up when a step of a task is ‘go somewhere people will look at you,’ which is for me about the unpleasantness equivalent of ‘jump into a very cold swimming pool right now’. you know you’ll be fine and even have fun once you’ve settled into it, but it still takes a lot of shuffling around and bracing yourself first to go for it. and some days you just don’t fucking want to go swimming.
i discounted this factor for years because i wouldn’t admit that i was so daunted by something so silly as as people looking at me. but, now i know what i’m so aversive about, i can factor it in to plans, and work around it, and be kind to myself. for instance, i was never able to get fit since highschool PE, because i couldn’t make myself go to a gym, or even out jogging. once i figured out the big problem wasn’t avoidance pain or difficulty, it was avoidance of doing a New Thing that i was Bad At in front of Unknown Quantities Of Strangers, which is like a triple threat of stressors, i started working out quietly and safely in my room at night, and i’ve been doing really good on it!
This is also why I find nowdothis to be helpful, because i can put each and every item into it and then I only see one at a time, so I’m not overwhelmed by having 10 things to do, I only see what needs to be done now. ˆBut I am definitely going to try this with myself
