Tag: adult adhd

alisso:

notemily:

rowanthesloth:

Adult ADHD: Grown-Up Problems – Jacquie Fuller – Medium

If you only read one article on adult ADHD, read this one. It does an excellent job of explaining how ADHD brains operate (or don’t) and the kinds of problems undiagnosed adults can run into.

I never thought I could have ADHD until my late 30s, because I thought I knew what ADHD was, and I wasn’t “like that”. It turns out I actually have most of the classic symptoms; I just didn’t know what they were, and there’s a good chance that, if you haven’t been diagnosed with ADHD, then neither do you.

This article is great, and funny. I love that it mentions Wellbutrin because stimulants for me were like a roller coaster of feeling good and then crashing hard, but when I got on Wellbutrin, it was like, clouds part, choir sings, sun beams down. It’s not perfect, it destroys my appetite and makes me slightly more likely to react to things with anger or violence (the first week I was taking it I was like I WANT TO PUNCH EVERYTHING). But it WORKS. I’m pretty much only able to work a solid 8 hour day because of this drug. Without it, I would be CONSTANTLY bored and distracted and inevitably get in trouble for doing things that are more interesting than work. (As it is I only feel that way some of the time.)

And the thing about long-term effects is SO important. My anxiety and depression are all tangled up with my ADHD. Everyone yelling at me to pay attention as a kid caused me to grow up with anxiety problems, because oh no, what important thing am I missing now? CONSTANT VIGILANCE!!

And thinking you’re a failure because you have executive functioning problems, well, that pretty logically leads to depression.

I also love this description: “We organize the way most people diet: a lifelong cycle of attempt and failure. For us, having our shit together is never a state of being, as much as an eternal state of becoming.”

I got partway through this article, to the bit about wellbutrin being the “amphetamine of antidepressants” and now I’m remembering how, every time I take psuedoephadrine based cold and flu medication, I’m super organised and focused and get things done and really, I’m yet to hear anything about adult ADHD that doesn’t make me think I should look into getting checked.

Except I don’t have the foggiest idea of where to start. (there’s a link at the end of the article, but it goes to a page not found, and when I found the actual page it was meant to link to, there were zero international listings, so…)

Ihave no idea how to get diagnosed, either, even though I’ve been certain I have ADHD too since about 2004.

storyinmypocket:

asexualconnor:

adhd-deluxe:

As a person with ADHD I can’t understand how people are able to listen to an audio book while doing something else simultaneously. When I listen to an audio book I need to be in a dark room with no other living creature nearby to distract me, and even then do I find it difficult to listen to an audio book.

As a person with ADHD I can’t understand how people are able to not listen to audio books/podcasts/TV/music while doing something else simultaneously.

Provided, of course, the other thing I’m doing does not require a lot of word/number processing.  Often when I do nothing at the same time as I’m listening, I’ll zone out and think about other things instead, because my mind isn’t being effectively engaged. 

Having interesting audio while drawing, gif-making, cleaning, walking, showering, playing certain video games etc is how I consume most of my media. It will also keep me from being distracted by outside noises, assuming these noises aren’t loud enough to mess with my auditory processing.

It COULD be however that you simply are not an auditory learner, or that you have particularly bad auditory processing. 

I listen to podcasts and music and things when I’m either riding the bus or doing tasks that don’t require my brain to make words: knitting, washing dishes, upgrading my computer, that kind of thing. It keeps my hands busy enough so I can focus on the words I’m hearing.

This doesn’t work when I’m trying to write (even with music – if it has words, I’m not going to be able to focus, and if it doesn’t, I’ll still get lost in the melody from time to time) or otherwise do something that requires the verbal part of my brain to do its thing. Everything turns into noise.

I have to be doing multiple things at once. If there’s a tv on, I’m knitting, cruising Tumblr, or reading, sometimes all at once. If I’m trying to really focus on the tv, I still have to be knitting or I chew my nails to the quick. If I’m walking for exercise, I have to be listening to music or a podcast.

I didn’t really identify the ‘cannot stand boredom because it’s painful’ or the ‘can’t ever be doing nothing’ symptoms of ADHD with myself until I realised that that doesn’t automatically equal frenetic physical activity. It also equals ‘I have seventy tabs open because I want to watch/read ALL of these things, but don’t have the focus now and have to keep scrolling through my dash’. It equals ‘I love this show with every fibre of my being, but I’ll go nuts if my hands aren’t active’. It equals ‘I’m working out and on a beautiful bushwalking track, but if I don’t have a soundtrack I can’t enjoy it’.

adhighdefinition:

BBC Horizon 2017: ADHD and Me with Rory Bremner

“For as long as I can remember, I had a really active brain. The problem is, when it gets too active… it jumps around all over the place, gets distracted by a million and one things when it’s supposed to be concentrating. I used to think that was just what it was like to be me. But recently, I’ve come to suspect that it’s what it’s like to have ADHD.”