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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