Shoutout to ADHD folks who don’t have their mental illness taken seriously because it’s considered a “fake” illness that “doctors use to make money off of unsuspecting parents” or “something parents get their kids medicated for so they don’t have to parent their children”.
Shoutout to ADHD folks who have heard/seen the “lol I’m so ADHD!!! SO RANDOM!!! oooh look a butterfly!!” stereotypes commonly used to make fun of them.
Shoutout to ADHD folks who have to hear neurotypicals say, “Don’t use your ADHD as an excuse!” When it’s literally ADHD that is the problem.
Shoutout to ADHD folks whose fellow neurodivergent friends put their needs over yours because your mental illness “isn’t as bad” or treat you like a neurotypical.
Shoutout to ADHD folks who never are able to get professionally diagnosed or treated.
Shoutout to ADHD folks who never learned about Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria and don’t understand why things upset them so much.
Shoutout to ADHD folks with other mental illnesses so they have a hard time getting treated for ADHD or it gets overlooked.
I love you guys and I feel you. ♡ You are great, you are important, and your needs and mental health are important.
Of all the mental disorders out there, none is taken less seriously than ADHD. Lots of people believe that it’s made up. Some people believe that ADHD is nothing more than bad parenting. And plenty of people believe that it’s an excuse to medicate otherwise normal children. But here’s the thing:
ADHD is a very real disorder, and it profoundly affects the lives of those who have it.
Let’s look at some facts about people with ADHD:
– 35% of teens with ADHD will not complete high school – that’s double the dropout rate of average teens.
– 30% of kids with ADHD will fail a year of school, or be required to repeat a grade.
– 45% of kids with ADHD get suspended from school at some point.
– Only 5% of teens with ADHD will earn a college degree, compared to 28% of the general population.
– Only 0.06% of people with ADHD will earn a graduate degree, compared to 5.4% of the general population.
– They have four times as many car accidents as the general population.
– They are 4 to 9 times more likely to go to prison.
– They are 11 times more likely to be unemployed.
– 61% will be fired at some point, compared to 43% of the average population.
– They earn, on average, $2 less per hour than their non-ADHD counterparts.
– They run a significantly higher lifetime risk of depression, anxiety, and antisocial disorders than people without ADHD.
ADHD is not a made-up disorder; it is a very real thing that has a profound effect on the lives of people who have it.
So what other myths about ADHD are floating around?
– Contrary to popular belief, ADHD is under-diagnosed. While there is some evidence to suggest that little boys are being over-diagnosed with it, girls are being grossly under-diagnosed. Teachers and parents’ are quick to recognize the disorder in boys; girls with ADHD, on the other hand, are dismissed as ‘ditsy’ or ‘spacey’, preventing them from getting the help they need. Doctors estimate that ADHD occurs equally in boys and girls, but boys are six times more likely to be diagnosed and treated.
– ADHD is not a childhood disorder. Studies have found that anywhere from 30% to a whopping 80% of childhood cases of ADHD continue on into adulthood, affecting sufferers for the rest of their lives. Even when cases don’t continue, the education gaps created in early years can affect a person long into adulthood.
– ADHD is not caused by diet. The vast majority of cases of ADHD are genetic. Other major causes include prenatal exposure to alcohol, and traumatic brain injuries. No cases are caused by food dyes, or excessive consumption of sugar.
– ADHD is not a “short attention span”. People with ADHD do not lack attention spans, they lack the ability to regulate their attention. When people with ADHD discover an activity that highly interests them, they can focus on it single-mindedly for hours, ignoring all other activities, much like you’d see in autism.
– ADHD medication doesn’t turn kids into “zombies”. At least, not if they’re on the right one. The medications prescribed for ADHD are not addictive or dangerous. In kids with ADHD, the proper dose of of the right medication can ease symptoms and allow children to regulate their attention and control their impulses. Untreated children with ADHD are more likely to grow up to be drug or alcohol addicts; medication significantly reduces that risk.
ADHD is one of the most common mental illnesses that any of us will encounter, but despite that, it remains poorly-understood, and is not treated as a serious disorder. People have grown skeptical of the disorder entirely, and look down on cases of ADHD as poor parenting or simple ‘drug-pushing’. The reality is that ADHD can make it extremely difficult to lead a normal life or achieve goals, and no one should look down on the treatments that make it possible for so many people to function.
so much of professional artwork can be boiled down to ‘Draw it again’
animation, storyboarding, illustration, comics, ALL Of it requires you to draw the same shit over and over and over again
and I don’t just mean ‘draw this character a bunch of times in order to tell their story’. I mean thumbnails, layout, pencils, inks–the incremental step-by-step to create the best version of your product possible. You draw your characters as stick figures, then you draw them again with more detail, then you draw them again and add crosshatching or shadows or whatever, and then you draw them AGAIN and focus on line weight and texture and fucking fuck fuck
you know what doesn’t play well with all this fucking work required to do your shit?
ADD and depression and anxiety
those mmmotherfuckers take one look at the fucking truckload of effort needed to complete a professional project and they just start spinning out of fucking control
its fucking frustrating as all hell because I love to draw, I love to tell stories and I want, more than anything in this world, to draw for a living. But man, most days? I can’t with all this. I can’t draw the thing a billion times. It’s amazing when I manage to draw it ONCE. It’s one and done with me, it always has been, and that’s NOT HELPFUL. That’s not good enough.
and maybe with the right medication that’ll change. Maybe if my depression stops stealing my energy and my attention span lengthens and my anxiety gets manageable I’ll start building up the mental muscles needed to knuckle down and draw again and again and again, consistently, so I can be someone worth employing to draw cool shit
but I’ll be honest with you, most days, like today, I worry its not something that can be chemically balanced and I’m just too fucking lazy to make it as anything more than a decent fanartist living in their parent’s basement
So, until you can get the right balance of store-bought brain chemistry to supplement the natural brain chemistry to increase days when you’re functional in the way you want to be, you keep practicing with one-offs. You’ll keep those skills later, and be able to take them into the redrawing stage of things.
It’s a pain in the ass, the brain keeps telling you lies about it, and some days it’s all you can do to bother with trying to do anything. And sometimes you have to stop for a little while, recharge, and come at things again another day.
And all of that is okay.
And that? Goes for all the rest of the artists and writers who are struggling with a brain that does not play nice, and you feel like it will never get anywhere. You’ll make it, for whatever value of make it. You’re awesome, just for trying and for making things, because that is an excellent thing to do.
tadhdfw you’re hyperfocusing and you get hungry so you realize your two options are either eating and losing any chance at focusing on the task at hand or just. not eating and nearly passing out later but HEY, at least you didn’t lose that hyperfocus!!!!! :^) and then you realize how much you hate your shitty brain for being such a useless dysfunctional organ
Obi-Wan as a initiate who will go through the stereotypical moments of tons of excess energy, bouncing in his seat, fidgeting, struggling with meditation and then being chided by masters about it.
Obi-Wan as padawan, alternative struggling to quiet his mind and slow down his thoughts long enough for meditation or to focus and observe the details of the situation around him; or hyper-focusing on one thing and missing other facts because of it. At first, Qui-Gon gets increasingly irritated by this, because it ‘shouldn’t be that hard’. And then, after they figure out the issue, Qui-Gon helping Obi-Wan find ways to keep his focus for longer, make meditation easier, etc.
Padawan Obi-Wan who’s thoughts run faster than his tongue, resulting in words being forgotten or jumbled. He hates it. /Breath, padawan/ becomes a common phrase, but never a rebuke. Qui-Gon learns to be patient and to give his padawan extra time to work out what he is trying to say, and doesn’t mind one bit.
Obi-Wan chewing on the end of his padawan braid, or just brushing it over his lips, while he is focusing on something, or twisting the beads on it around absently.
Senior Padawan Obi-Wan who starts carrying around little pieces of wire he can bend and play with under negotiation tables, without looking distracted.
Obi-Wan who keeps his hands folded behind his back so he can fidget with his fingers and not be noticed.
Obi-Wan who, even as a knight, will fidget absently, especially if he is distracted or tired.
Obi-Wan going through days where he has the energy to take on Grievous and Dooku together, and then the next day hiding behind strained smiles and a ramrod straight back, hands curled behind his back and nails biting into his palms because he simply has no emotional energy that day.
The 212th eventually noticing the signs for the different states and subtly running interference on the bad days, so Obi-Wan doesn’t have quite as much to force himself to focus on.
Obi-Wan hyper-focusing on a mission, to the point where he forgets to eat or sleep properly until it’s over or his body protests loudly enough.
Obi-Wan being dammed lucky that he can multitask well, because sitting in on Council meetings means at least 20% of his focus is on not fidgeting and maintaining the Proper Jedi High Council Member personna.
Obi-Wan picking at the hems of the sleeves of his robes and not realizing he’s doing it.
if you give me a task with no deadline i will literally never do it but if you give me a deadline i will get it done exactly 1 hour before the deadline even if the deadline is in six years
god dammit my tags got cut off AGAIN I’m hitting the tag limit on like every post lately, I really need to work on that
Anyway I went on to say that there are 5 major executive functions of the human brain. These are the ‘higher functions’ that really distinguish between a human brain and that of any other animal. We have added intelligence on top of that, but these are the functional abilities our brains have that the rest of the animal kingdom does not have on a a structural level. There are 5 of them. ADHD affects all 5. And none of them are actually ‘attention’ (the closest function to anything that can reasonably be called ‘attention’ is what’s called Working Memory, which is your brain’s ability to hold a specific task in mind to come back to it; distractions are inevitable, but a healthy brain will hear a phone ring, look up, and remember to go back to what it was doing before. An ADHD brain will hear the phone riBANG ALL MEMORY OF THE CURRENT TASK IS GONE. ADHD brain looks up, sees the name on the caller id, oh it’s an unknown number, oh it’s probably some political pollster, oh man this year’s election is just awful I can’t believe people are supporting that angry cheeto. Oh cheetos I’m hungry I should go make a snack. What kind of snacks do we have? Did I remember to buy cereal at the store the other day? What about dog food? Oh my god I forgot to let the dog back in the house this is why I should have gotten a cat. Oh my friend sent me a great cat video earlier I should watch that. AND GUESS WHAT YOU NEVER GO BACK TO WHAT YOU WERE DOING BECAUSE THE STRUCTURE IN YOUR BRAIN THAT SUPPORTS RETURNING TO A PARTIALLY COMPETED TASK DOES NOT EXIST THE WAY IT DOES FOR A NORMAL HEALTHY BRAIN. This is why even if you start a task well before a deadline you can’t keep to it until it’s been completed; the consequences of it being done MUST be more compelling than everything else in the immediate environment for the brain to see it.
No matter how much time you give yourself to complete the task, if you have ADHD it will take you 100% of that time, every time, which is why having ADHD actually TEACHES YOU to put things off, because it’s the only way to shorten the total time actually spent completing the task – the disorder rewards you for self-destructive behavior because it’s the only way you can get things done at all, and you end up living in a permanent state of extreme stress, hopping from one emergency deadline to the next even though you hate yourself for it every single time). The disorder has been horribly named in a way that trivializes just how serious and life-ruining it actually is.
ADHD is a very, very serious disorder and the pop psych/common understanding of it makes it seem HORRIBLY trivial compared to the real damage it actually does to people’s lives.
i want to print this out and mail it to all the teachers who ever made me feel stupid before i dropped out
i want to mail it to my younger self, with tips like “ritalin is actually your friend, don’t believe the people who say it will make you a medication zombie, it will make you capable of basic functionality” and “breaking down tasks into chunks and organizing them for maximum efficiency is engaging enough that you can often stick with it despite distractions” and “when your parants characterize your distraction-avoidance behavior as ‘hiding’ and ‘disappearing’ they’re simply wrong, and you need to fight for your alone time, not keep trying to please them by doing homework in the same room where dad’s watching tv.”
kids with ADHD and other executive disorders (such as SPD and autism) are still growing up thinking they’re failures who didn’t try harder. it’s a huge slow low-key tragedy and it needs to stop.
You have instructions written down. You don’t need them, but you check them anyway. Somehow they’re different from what you remember. Have they changed since you tucked the paper in your pocket?
You realize that you’ve lost your train of thought. You can’t remember what you were thinking before. There is only your present thought, now a loop of panic at your lost memory.
You stop in the middle of a room. Why are you here? Which room did you come from? You leave the room and remember what you were going to do. You walk back into the room. Why are you here?
You bring up an inside joke with a friend. They look at you blankly. They do not remember this joke. But you were there when I made it, you argue. They were not. They are not the friend you are thinking of. You realize it was your other friend, from work instead of high school, with blond hair instead of brown, tall instead of short. You do not know how these two friends are so similar in your mind.
You refer to every experience as happening “the other day.” Was it three years ago or yesterday? You try to remember context clues. Time is not real.
Someone asks you for an important piece of information. You have not thought about it since you saved it on your computer, labelled very clearly. You search through your files. It is not there. You find it days later by accident, labelled with a cryptic set of codes. You don’t know why you would label it this way. No one else uses this computer but you.
You are running late. You are always running late.
You have lost something. You check everywhere. You check everywhere again. Someone tells you to think of when you last had it. You don’t tell them that is the problem.
You reach the end of the page. You can’t remember what you just read.
who wants to buy this book I will never get around to writing
Chapter 1: Haha Just Kidding, ADD Was Made Up By Pfizer. Anyway Unrelated I Am Uniquely Bad At Being Alive and No One Can Figure Out Why
Chapter 2: Where Did I Put That? Nope, It’s Gone
Chapter 3: Why Being Bored Is Literally The Same As Dying
Chapter 4: ADD And Your Love Life: Why Bother?
Chapter 5: A Short Story I Drew About A Little Rabbit Named Herbert Who Goes On Adventures
Chapter 6: I Don’t Have Time To Not Be Photoshopping
Chapter 7: You Interrupted Me in the Middle of Tetris And Other Reasons I’ll Be Making Your Life A Sulky Hell All Day
Chapter 8: Where Can A Grown-Up Go to Scream? (Nowhere.)
Chapter 9: You Just Told Me Huge News About Your Life, but I Don’t Know What It Was Because There’s a TV in the Corner of This Bar
Chapter 10: I Would Love to Tell You Why I Am Crying, but I Already Forgot. It’s Just Happening Now
Chapter 11: Bankruptcy
Chapter 12: I Have Walked into This Room Five Times and Neglected to Address The Reason I Originally Did So Each Time
Chapter 13: Public Embarrassment: Is it Real?
Chapter 14: All the Facts I Learned When I Read Wikipedia for Five Hours Yesterday
Chapter 15: You’re Right, This Is Exactly The Same As When You Feel Sort of Unfocused Half An Hour Before You Leave Work
Chapter 16: Will My Employer Believe Me When I Let Them Know I Have a Learning Disability and Mental Illness or Will They Keep Assuming That I Don’t Care Enough About My Job To Listen to Instructions the First Time
Chapter 17: Thank God You’re Here to Argue With Me that I Don’t Have This Diagnosis Invented to Explain Why Small Children are Fidgety. Oh Good, You Have Examples of Times I was Productive and Calm
Chapter 18: That Was Hilarious, Please Tell Me More Stories of Times I Couldn’t Figure Out Something That Was Common Sense
Chapter 19: Goodnight Sweet Book I’ll Never Finish
Chapter 20: I Couldn’t Do It Right The First Time I Tried, Burn the Evidence
Chapter 21: I Could Say Something, or I Could Say it in My Head Where No One Will Hear it if the Words or Syllables are in the Wrong Order, Assuming I’m Using The Correct Words At All Instead of Mismatching Them
Chapter 22: 5pm, Time For Breakfast
Chapter 23: Following Directions on a Piece of Paper. Just Kidding it’s Still Under The Pile on My Desk.
Chapter 24: “Just Do It” Well Fuck Why Didn’t I Think of That. Goddamn Genius Doctor Superman Over Here.
Chapter 25: People that Walk Around Without Gesturing to a Conversation Only They Are Having. How Do They Do It?
Chapter 26: This Book Is Too Long, Do You Actually Expect Me To Read All Of This
Chapter 27: Guess What I Did With My Free Day
Chapter 28: My Academic Career Is Falling Apart
Chapter 29: Why You Never Turn In Homework
Chapter 30: I Would Write Study Tips But I Literally Once Procrastinating Studying For Finals By Putting Sticky Tabs In My Math Book Instead Of Actually Studying
Chapter 31: Maintaining Relationships
Is Difficult
Chapter 32: Doesn’t Everybody Struggle With Basic Self Care?
Chapter 33: I feel thirsty; I think I’ll make a cup of tea.
Chapter 34: Why is there a cold cup of tea on the cupboard?
Every time…
Chapter 35: I Forgot What This Chapter Was Supposed To Be
Chapter 36: I Remembered Chapter 35′s Content but It’s Here Because I Don’t Have the Patience to Go Back And Change It
There's a Mirror on the Wall 