ay can we stop pretending like ADHD isn’t a Real Mental Health Issue and is Easy To Deal With? it’s a hugely detrimental disorder that effects performance in school and at work, and personal relationships on multiple levels. with ADHD it’s difficult to implement the routines necessary for day to day functioning. maybe educate yourself before criticizing a disorder that’s very fucking hard to live with.
for those unaware, I’ve been told by several friends they didn’t know this, adhd can effect basic survival rituals. Adhd makes sleep nearly impossible most of the time, makes cooking a too long task which c a n easily lead to a microwave diet, it makes basic reading and comprehension without interest physically exhausting (FYI that means us adults with adhd are fucked) and can even cause major, drastic mood swings as our energy plummets and skyrockets sometimes even resulting in straight up manic episodes. ADHD & ADD are very serious and real stop acting like they’re not a big deal.
Also: ADD isn’t a diagnosis anymore. They’ve made ADHD into three categories now, which are: innatentive, hyperactive-impulsive, and combination.
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.
And what REALLY sucks is that it seems to go in reverse order for biological girls vs. boys. Biological girl here who had no trouble doing tasks right away and getting them done and over with in elementary school, but as I passed puberty and have gotten older, this entire post is my fuckin’ day, every day, to the point where if I’m not writing AT an audience, it’s hard to write at all because there’s no immediate response for my brain to go “YES THIS WORKS” and keep going. (I *can* do it, but it’s so much harder with every passing year and only one person actually does this in a way that my brain responds to, so when they get sick of it…I’m probably fucked.)
Both of my boys started out with ADD and ADHD. Both of them will/are topping out with the WORST of the symptoms in elementary school, and then they’re going to slowly get better. Eldest has already demonstrated this. Younger one might need more nudging, but I think he’ll get there, too.
*Unless he decides to transition to full girl, in which case, shit, because I think hormones have a lot to do with why this ADD/ADHD crap works fucking “backwards” for females compared to males.
… Fuck. That makes things over the last decade make more sense. *sighs, and thumps head lightly against the wall* *adds new thing to list to take to doctor*
I wonder if removing ovaries that are otherwise useless and enjoy making life hell once a month might help with getting the brain to play nice in more than “no longer want to kill everything one week out of four”.
Please reblog if you are:
– a disabled PoC
– an LGBT disabled person
– a neurodivergent disabled person
– any combo of the above or just disabled! I wanna follow you!
Do I have any followers with ADHD? Or does anyone have some really good information on it? I want to write a character who has ADHD but I don’t know anything about it except the basics so I’m looking to educate myself. Any help beyond a wiki article would appreciated!
Friends, what would you like to see in an ADHD character?
One thing I gleefully identify with is the level of restless frustration experienced by BBC’s Sherlock during boredom (not that Sherlock is necessarily ADHD – let’s not open that diagnostic nightmare of a discussion please!).
I would like to see more of a struggle with internal noise shown in media. Often I see the bouncy, silly outsider view of the disorder and I would greatly appreciate seeing a wider range of symptoms/experiences, including the ones that make us want to pull out our hair. For me, off medication, being in a room where I am required to be silent, still, and focusing is basically my own personal hell.
It doesn’t at all need to be all doom and gloom, just not squirrel-chasing-8-year-old-boy-stereotype so much please!
First of all, philosophium, thanks for asking!
I’m glad ADHD community replied, because they’re a good source of facts about ADHD presented from an ADHD perspective. So, you learn some of what you’d get in a psych textbook, but also what it feels like from the inside.
If you’re really starting from zero, this Buzzfeed article is a nice place to start.
Here’s some miscellaneous information about ADHD that will hopefully help you write more accurate, and less stereotypical, characters.
1) We’re Not All Extraverted, Hyper, Happy Go Lucky Males. We can be male or female, child or adult. I’d love to see an introverted, non-hyperactive ADHD character, ideally a male one. Or an ADHD character who obsessively overthinks, and is prone to anxiety and perfectionism.
2) Look at Both Extremes. In real life, some people with ADHD can only multitask while others can only hyperfocus. Some people with ADHD can focus on the details while ignoring the big picture, others see the big picture brilliantly but miss all the details, while others can bounce back and forth but can’t see both at the same time. Some of us are laid back and prefer to go with the flow, while others react to their disabilities by becoming extremely perfectionistic and trying to plan everything ahead of time (me). Some of us have IQ in the gifted range (see “need for stimulation”), while others have low IQ or severe developmental delays (children who are born prematurely, have lead poisoning, or who have fetal alcohol syndrome often have ADHD). Almost all the people I know with ADHD are artists, scientists, or both.
3) ADHD Is a Disability of Executive Function. Executive function is a confusing mess of tasks performed by the frontal lobe that allow us to control our behavior and respond flexibly and optimally to a changing environment. Some executive functions include working memory, inhibition (i.e., stopping oneself from doing or thinking something), task switching, sustained attention, planning,decision making,prioritizing, prospective memory.
4) We Can Pay Attention, We Just Can’t Regulate It. We can focus for hours on something that interests us, or on procrastinating. We’re not good at focusing on things that we find boring or that don’t matter to us. We also aren’t good at controlling the amount of attention we pay. This is how our attention works:
5) ADHD is a Production Problem, Not a Learning Problem. A lot of us excel at getting information into our brains, especially when it interests us. The difficulty is producing something that shows what we’ve learned by a deadline–be it a paper, a presentation, or a project. For some of us, the hardest part of any assignment is finishing it and turning it in on time in the correct format. If we can do these things, we’ll probably get an A; if we can’t, we’ll probably fail. As a result, the idea of “gradating your effort” doesn’t apply well to us (telling us to “stop being so perfectionistic and do the minimum” makes no sense to us), and our achievement can be all-or-nothing.
6) We Don’t All Get Bad Grades, Or Misbehave in School. Those of us who are smart, learn easily, and are interested in school can get good grades until the demands for organized, well-formatted, and on-time work overwhelm our abilities to produce (see #5). Those with inattentive ADHD, when bored, tend to daydream, look out the window, or draw rather than misbehave. Teachers might not notice these students at all–or might even see them as well-behaved and a joy to teach.
7) Need for Stimulation. As ADHD community said, an ADHD character who is wildly intelligent, and when bored, feels as if they’re in a sensory deprivation tank. Boredom is Chinese water torture. Each second is a drop of water. How we react to this varies. Some are constantly bored and highly aware of their search for stimulation. Others, like me, think they’re never bored because they’ve become very good at keeping themselves occupied. I always carried a book to read and a sketchbook to draw in with me, and I would read even while crossing the street. Only when I needed to learn to cook did I realize I can get bored within literally 10 seconds.
9) Memory Problems. I’d like to see an ADHD character who has a terrible memory, and struggles with the psychological/identity consequences of that and not just the academic ones. They’re constantly writing things down, and constantly worrying about how to organize the record of their life, or about what would happen if it were destroyed in a fire/flood/other accident. The most impaired form of memory, though, is prospective memory, the ability to remember what you are going to do. Memory problems are some of my worst ADHD traits, yet I rarely see them discussed.
10) Paradoxes of Reminders and Clutters. Because of our memory problems, you might think the answer is simple: just put post-it notes everywhere. And indeed, even other ADHD-ers often advise us to use colorful post-it notes and put them everywhere. However, visual clutter shuts our brains off, so we stop looking at these post it notes and reminders–or even look right at them and don’t register their existence. Another version: if items aren’t visible, I forget that they exist. (For example, I forget about food in the back of the refrigerator until it goes bad; I forget about clothes in the corner of the closet). But if too many things are visible, I stop being able to see them. They just look like clutter, an undifferentiated “bunch of stuff” to me. It would seem like the answer is to get rid of as much stuff as possible, but the decisions involved take hours and leave me exhausted.
11) The Paradox of Routines/Habits: Habits help us function despite our inability to remember what we’re supposed to be doing and our tendency to get sidetracked in the middle. That’s because habits require no thought, attention, or memory–we do them automatically.
The problem is, it’s almost impossible for us to make the habit in the first place because we can’t consistently remember to do it. So, you get people with ADHD who forget to take their medication for the very reasons they need it in the first place.
12) Inconsistency. An ADHD character whose functioning is inconsistent from day to day and so feels he/she can’t rely on him/herself. There’s a lot of research on this “intra-individual variability” and indeed, it ranks among the most consistently-found traits found in both children and adults.
13) When we’re exhausted or overwhelmed, or a life crisis happens, we can stop being able to do basic things we used to be able to do. Maybe we used to be able to get to work/school on time, remember when assignments were due, or have a consistent morning routine. Now we’re no longer able to get out of the house on time, remember our assignments, or remember to take our medicine or brush our teeth in the morning. When this happens to me, I realize how much energy and attention I’m putting into doing “basic” things and wonder when I’ll ever “get them under control” so I can focus on learning new things.
14) Slow or Inconsistent Processing Speed. We don’t always talk fast and display high energy (I wish!). Some of us struggle with fatigue and slow processing speed (see: Sluggish Cognitive Tempo, a proposed subtype of Inattentive ADHD). For example, I usually feel mentally and emotionally tired–I feel after a full night’s sleep the way most people do after three or four hours of sleep. The more tired I feel, the more difficulty I have concentrating, multitasking, remembering to do things, and making decisions. This is one reason why stimulants and even wakefulness medications can help. Some people, like me, have inconsistent processing speed. Sometimes I think and talk so fast it irritates others, I find what’s happening around us boring (think of the world’s longest meeting), and I interrupt others. Other times, I am just about to answer someone’s question when they irritably repeat themselves or ask why I’m taking so long to answer. It feels like I’m thinking and talking at the normal speed, but others’ reactions make clear that we’re going much faster or slower than they are. Our relative strengths and weaknesses can affect when we think faster vs. slower than normal. For example, I finished the verbal portion of the SAT and checked my answers multiple times halfway through the time limit. I then had to sit there, bored, until the time was up. On the other hand, I ran out of time on the math section before I could check my work.
15) Some of us are socially awkward penguins, not graceful adrenaline junkies. There’s a stereotype that we’re adrenaline junkies who perform surgeries and jump out of planes. Or, we’re social butterflies who compensate for our school difficulties by playing class clown or making friends with everyone. But some of us are physically or socially awkward. Socially, lapses in attention can make us say things that come off as awkward or rude. Our poor sense of timing and inconsistent processing speed can throw off our conversational rhythm, making us interrupt–or just appear odd. Many of us also have motor coordination delays and difficulties (and research bears this out). As kids, we might have had difficulty using scissors, writing, tying our shoes, throwing or catching a ball, or riding a bike. We can have social and/or motor difficulties without meeting criteria for autism spectrum disorder. (Although a lot of people with ADHD have autism, too–see below).
16) Anxiety. Most of us develop anxiety, for all sorts of reasons. We’re prone to overthinking, to begin with. We have to worry about others misunderstanding us and calling us lazy, stupid, flaky, or rude. Some of us develop an exhausting habit of “constant vigilance” because we know of no other way to avoid making ADHD mistakes (losing things, forgetting things, math/writing errors, running late, etc.).
17) Co-occurring conditions. ADHD rarely rides alone. People with ADHD often have dyslexia, math disability, sensory processing disorder, dyspraxia, autism spectrum disorder, depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, or allergies. Immune system or digestive problems might make us even more inconsistent.
18) Our family members are likely to have ADHD or autism–diagnosed or otherwise. Many people report being diagnosed with ADHD after their own children were diagnosed. Like autism, dyslexia, and other disabilities, ADHD is highly heritable, meaning that it’s highly likely that someone with ADHD traits will have children with the same traits (and their parents probably have them, too). I have a younger brother on the spectrum, and have met a number of other older ADHD sisters with younger autistic brothers. While the gender thing may be a fluke, I have read that ADHD and autism share genetic causes and can run together in families.
19) We have a variety of attitudes towards our ADHD. Some of us see ADHD as uniformly disabling, preventing us from using our talents and passions Other people see ADHD as a gift. People with each of these viewpoints sometimes see the opposite as harmful to people with ADHD. Still others view ADHD as a trait like any other, which can have positive or negative effects depending on how one chooses to use it and what environment one is in. (Personally, I see ADHD, in general, as a set of traits. However, I see mine as mostly negative because they have been impairing me recently and preventing me from pursuing a longstanding dream. I view my ADHD traits as preventing me from using many of my talents and passions. However, there are environments where they’d be less disabling, and I’m currently trying to find them).
20) Being diagnosed and labeled can have good effects, too. There’s a sense of relief, of understanding, of not being broken, of having words for one’s experience. The book title “You mean I’m not lazy, stupid, or crazy?” captures the feeling pretty well, I think. I’ve also written about the benefits of diagnosis and the crappiness of growing up without diagnosis a LOT–see this, this, most of all, this:
“…that sense that there was some mysterious thing wrong with me. (Do you know what it feels like, to carry around a sense that something is wrong with you, always ready to erupt, and not know what’s wrong or why? To have people constantly pointing out when you do something wrong but never acknowledging that mysterious brokenness–pointing out the elephant dung and squished sofa in your living room but never mentioning the elephant or offering to help get it out of your living room? And since no one will talk about the elephant, you have no idea how to get it out of your living room, so you’re just stuck with it there. No one can tell you how to fix what’s broken).”
21) Stimulants don’t necessarily turn you into a zombie. They aren’t necessarily a cure-all, either, and some of us choose not to take them. I have yet to find a medication at a dose I can take daily, because it makes me completely lose my appetite. I only take it during emergencies–high-stakes days where I’m not able to function, and/or due to other health problems acting up, I can’t drink coffee. This isn’t the only side effect. Some people get migraines from stimulants. These medications can also slightly stunt children’s growth.
22) ADHD can be seriously disabling. ADHD looks on the surface like something “everyone deals with,” but as the experiences I’ve described above suggest, it can cause serious problems in school, work, and relationships. The large-scale MTA study, which followed hundreds of girls and boys with ADHD into adulthood, found some poor outcomes, including higher rates of self-injury and mental illness; adolescent substance use; eating disorders; and poorer relationships with peers in adolescence and parents and partners in adulthood. ADHD has also been linked to lower test performance, poorer education and work performance, greater risk of accidents, and obesity. Researchers and the media tend to describe these problems as a result of the ADHD traits themselves, especially impulsivity. But the way we treat people with ADHD probably has a lot to do with the bad outcomes. One contributing factor: many, especially those diagnosed late in life, develop crippling shame and self-hatred.
23) We’re also awesome! People with ADHD can be creative, energetic, passionate, thoughtful, academically skilled, empathetic, entrepreneurial, and more. Famous people in every walk of life have diagnosed ADHD, and many past geniuses have traits. Like other disabilities, ADHD colors how we experience and act in the world, but it does not diminish us or make us less human.
24) Bonus point that doesn’t fit anywhere: I’ve noticed that smart women with ADHD have a very distinctive style of talking. We talk fast, crowding as many ideas into a sentence as possible before we forget what we’re saying. We are trying to pack a lot complicated thoughts into a short amount of time. We veer off on tangents whenever someone says something interesting. If two of us start talking, we can go on for hours and never run out of things to say–and also never return to the topic we started with. To those who do not have ADHD, we sound rambling or incoherent. To other women with ADHD, we make perfect sense and the conversation feels exhilarating, with the energy building increasingly as we talk. We sound incoherent to others but not each other because our thoughts are arranged in a very dense and logical web, but we move through the web in a zig-zagging pattern based on associations instead of a straight line. The zig-zag pattern happens in part because with our short working memory, our span of awareness is extremely short. So we operate on associations; everything reminds us of something else. Other people’s words, objects in the room, and music we hear reminds us of something, but then then we forget what we were talking about before. We’re constantly forgetting what we were talking about or what we were doing in the middle. As a result, some of us have a bad habit of interrupting others in order to get our message out before we forget it.
If you have any more questions, feel free to ask! Sorry this was so long…
This list is GOLD
Pure gold
Well……shit.
This is one of the best explanatory lists I have EVER seeen.
why do non-ADHD people find my conversations weird?
like, we’ll be talking about how both my iPod and my sister’s have cracked, and someone’ll mention computers, and then my thought-process will go something like this:
computer
laptop
most people get laptops in high school / college
i thought i’d have to buy my own
which usually happens in less than 30 seconds and then i’ll just say the last thought and the usual responses’ll come out:
“why did u just change the subject” (semi-rude)
“we weren’t talking about that” (rude)
“how did you get to that subject” (polite, as it was my mom)
which are all actual responses i have got from people who clearly aren’t ADHD.
whereas once i was arguing with my ADHD friend who plays euphonium about whether flute (my instrument) or euphonium is better and my thoughts went like this:
flute is better than euphonium
instruments
tumblr post about instruments
my viewpoint on the other instruments
which i began saying out loud while she was still talking. of course she saw no problem with either what is apparently viewed as “changing the subject” or me talking over her. because she’s ADHD and does the same things, even though, unlike me, she isn’t both hyperactive and inattentive and is just hyperactive.
tl;dr if you’re talking with an ADHD kid and they “change the subject,” instead of being rude, ask them how they got there politely, because that’s probably going to be interesting.
The most valuable thing I learned doing a Masters degree with depression, anxiety and ADHD was to change my “things I’m bad at” list to “things I can’t do on my own.” Stop thinking of them as things I could do if I tried hard enough, and accept that I can’t accomplish them by effort and willpower alone; they’re genuine neurocognitive deficits, and if I need to do the thing, then just like a blind person reading or a mobility impaired person going up a storey in a building, I need to find a different method.
I’m “bad at” working on long-term projects without an imminent deadline or someone breathing down my neck? Okay, let’s change that: I can’t work on long-term projects without an imminent deadline and someone breathing down my neck. So let’s create an imminent deadline and recruit neck-breathers. Find a sympathetic prof who will agree that 3 weeks before the due date they expect me to show them my preliminary notes and bibliography. Get a friend I trust to block off an hour to sit with me and keep asking, “Are you working on your project?” Write a blog post about my progress. Arrange to trade papers and proofread them with another student.
Accept your limitations and learn to leverage them, instead of buying the neurotypical fairytale that they’ll go away if you just try hard enough.
One near panic-attack, more laundry done, some work done on getting all my fic uploaded to off-site back up (and updating the massive story chart of doom to go with it so I can find everything and have the important information where I can find it), food eaten.
Am going to trap that fucking ground hog and have it removed by animal control to somewhere far, far away from here. No more parsley for you, you little bastard. Or strawberries, for that matter.
Actually, I’ve given up on fresh strawberries from the garden this year – I’ll put up mesh for next year, enough to keep the critters out and let insects in to do the pollination thing.
And my plans to go to Seattle in September have been moved to the spring, because this is not the first bout of brain weasels that’s been more than I’ve expected this summer, and I need to not exacerbate things by drastically cutting my sunlight over the winter.
*makes a face*
But. I need to be mindful of myself, and I need to take care of myself, and not do more than I can handle doing. Which means waiting on Seattle. And it means that this fall I get to take dad with me to go argue with bureaucrats about health things, and then I get to make sure any doctor’s appointments are such that I can take someone with to be the backup against doctors being assholes.
*takes a deep breath* I can do this. I can.
And part of doing this tracking of things on the last post of the night is because then I have a record, and I can use that along with other bits of record keeping I’ve managed to go “here, I have a pattern, I have records”. They might not go back as far as I’d like, because of brain things that never have had a proper diagnosis or anything, but. I have them, and I can point at other things, and I can use all of that to push back at any doctor who tries to tell me that no, it’s just I’m not trying hard enough, it’s I’m fat, it’s I’m “merely” depressed.
Because while I’m not entirely certain what’s causing the problems, I have some clear ideas and potential culprits, and at this point I need information I can’t get without access to professionals in order to pin down what actually are the issues.
And there are some which I’m firmly certain of. ADHD. Arthritis – probably rheumatoid. Allergies. Migraines.
On top of those, probably fibromyalgia, depression, anxiety. Something fucked up with my ovaries (PMDD is likely, PCOS is possible).
And adding before an earlier-than-this-is-queued bedtime:
That was also more exhausting an emotional ride than I expected. Imma go pass out early.
I’m quite obsessive about cleaning my teeth and showering as I feel horrible if I don’t, so I can’t advise from experience.
However, a quick look online suggested that alternatives might include using a cloth or paper-towel wrapped around your finger (with toothpaste) or even just using your finger (with toothpaste) will suffice, although that seemed to be suggested as a temporary alternative (if you’ve forgotten your toothbrush). Perhaps you could try it and see whether that will be enough long-term?
You can also buy tooth/dental wipes. Again, I’m not sure whether these are intended for long-term use in replacement of using a toothbrush, but you could try them.
If you still feel that you need to brush your teeth for your mouth to feel suitably clean, you could always try alternating to reduce the amount of times you brush your teeth, or brush your teeth for shorter periods of time but then also use wipes.
You could also try to ensure that you floss to remove any trapped food that might be missed with a wipe.
You could also use a tongue scraper to help clean your tongue.
Also, have you tried different textured brushes? Perhaps a softer brush (for children) would help, or a silicon brush.
Drinking lots of water and chewing sugar free gum are also things that might make your mouth feel fresher.
Perhaps our followers will have some advice?
You don’t need toothpaste, you just need to get the gunk off! I was given this advice by a dental hygienist because my sensory problems involve the pastr rather than the brush. I brush my teeth twice a day and have no teeth problems.
I use a cloth wrapped around my finger or sometimes just my nails, if I don’t have a brush.
If it helps, tooth powder instead of paste – salt, powdered herb/spice of choice (rosemary and thyme are both good options, so are clove or cinnamon, though they’re a little more astringent), and baking soda. I make mine from an approximately 1:4:4 herb/salt/baking soda ratio, and grind it all together with a mortar and pestle (I cannot deal with the sound of a coffee grinder or any motorized anything very well because of sound sensitivity, so I have stuff to do this by hand).
I then have a piece of linen (cotton would do to, even a paper towel, or a finger), which I use to make sure the gunk off my teeth, and the salt mix helps with keeping bacteria under control – and if you swish it about your mouth before spitting it out, it can help all around.
There's a Mirror on the Wall 