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Ooh, another post on ADHD that I could have written!

itszombles:

neurodiversitysci:

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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Help Wanted: We Can’t Ignore the ADHD Girls in the Corner Any Longer

Help Wanted: We Can’t Ignore the ADHD Girls in the Corner Any Longer

Every class had those boys—the ones who didn’t do their work and always climbed out of their seats. They never finished a worksheet, threw pencils, and talked too loud. They never raised their hand. Mostly, we didn’t like those boys, the ones who were always sent to the office, the ones always fighting. We didn’t have a name for those boys. Today, teachers and administrators call them ADHD. Today, they have IEPs, fidget toys, Ritalin. This generation of “those boys” has it much, much better.

But another group lurked in the classroom. We were mostly smart, but turned in worksheets littered with careless mistakes. A teacher might talk to us about it, or show her annoyance through some red pen. Nothing else. We sometimes shouted out answers without raising our hands, or spaced out and didn’t bother to raise our hands at all. At times we talked loudly. But most of all, we forgot things. We forgot dates, names, permission slips, homework assignments, and books. We didn’t remember. We were quieter than “those boys.” But in the eyes of the school, we suffered from no less of a moral failing: How could we be so smart and so damn stupid?

A moral failure—this is what inattentive ADHD meant to me as a child.