It’s surprising and disappointing to me that this—titled “ADHD Accommodations Guide”—buries accommodation recommendations under sub-links and all of the remaining content is advice for, presumably, those of us with ADHD who are trying to work around lack of accommodations.
That said, there’s plenty of good advice even if it’s a little inconsistent. It’s also fascinating how much the social part overlaps with challenges faced by Autistic people[1].
For ADHD folks who find some of the advice on multitasking/focus in meetings wanting: it’s absolutely okay to stim (perform some stimulating, often repetitive action) when you find your ability to stay focused isn’t what you need or what’s expected. I have a reputation for spending most of my time in meetings playing minesweeper. It’s not because I’m not engaged, it’s because it helps me stay engaged. I happily stop or mute my mic if the clicking sound is disruptive, but otherwise I’ve continually established with teammates and even clients that having that part of my focus on something mostly mechanical helps me stay in the conversation and productive.
1: Which I increasingly feel confident in the idea that there’s no meaningful distinction and ADHD should/likely eventually will be considered part of the spectrum, but that’s not why I’m commenting.
ADHD and ASD share some overlap, but they are definitely not the same disorder.
ADHD is an executive function disorder and you could usefully label it as being deficits in these skills:
* Delay your responses to situations long enough to come up with a good and controlled long-term plan
* Pattern-match past situations onto the present situation to guide your current response
* Mentally tell yourself what to do and have it stick
* Manage your emotions towards your long-term interests
* Imagine and evaluate multiple possible future outcomes
There are other ways to describe it - e.g. I didn't mention short-term memory - but this is the flavor.
ASD is completely different. ASD is (I believe) a predictive processing disorder. Normal brain processing involves each layer of the brain predicting what the lower layers will report, and "blending in" all of the minor mistakes in the predictions. Large mistakes are literally surprising and uncomfortable, and push the brain to learn (i.e. change its predictions). Normal brains are constantly ignoring small prediction errors and are very tolerant of ambiguous, uncertain, or new situations. An ASD brain cannot blend in the minor mistakes as well, so it spends a lifetime perpetually surprised and overstimulated by every event that is even slightly unpredictable, and is fairly intolerant of ambiguous, uncertain, or new situations.
> Mentally tell yourself what to do and have it stick
(EDIT) This fragment reminds me of the "get over yourself" advice given to depressed people. Something sounding easy but being absolutely out of your control.
There are different types of ADHD. If you have a constant compulsive need for being elsewhere and doing something else, there is no mental exercise that would make you stick to things and stop finding yourself doing something else than supposed.
When required to do activity A, you'll find yourself exercising activity B or activity C only a short time, and every time, after forcing yourself back to A. When you decide to do B, since you can't focus on A, you'll quickly find yourself back at A because you're supposed to be doing B. Oh, and now it's C. And back to A. What fun. ABCAABCCABCCAABC. Forced, barely controlled multi-tasking.
> While the rest of your comment sounds reasonable, this fragment somewhat reminds me of the "get over yourself" advice given to depressed people [...] there is no mental exercise that would make you stick to things
Forgive me if I misread, but I believe you and the parent comment are in agreement here. “Mentally tell yourself what to do and have it stick” is not given as a point of advice, but as an example of something people with ADHD struggle with.
Thank you! I edited my comment to not disturb the discussion but you've got a real-life example of reacting too quickly. In a discussion about, among others, reacting too fast.
I don't think that's what ADHD feels like at all. The best way I can describe ADHD is : 1. Poor Short Term Memory , 2. Inability to make oneself do certain things while being much more able than others to do certain other things and 3. Needing a big picture view before getting deep because 1 causes one to get lost in details.
There's not really just one experience of ADHD, so you're right in disagreeing with the parent, but wrong to claim it's not like that and instead matches your own list.
> Normal brains are constantly ignoring small prediction errors and are very tolerant of ambiguous, uncertain, or new situations. An ASD brain cannot blend in the minor mistakes as well, so it spends a lifetime perpetually surprised and overstimulated by every event that is even slightly unpredictable, and is fairly intolerant of ambiguous, uncertain, or new situations.
Has a mechanism for any of this been discovered, or theorized?
I’ll probably regret replying tired, because this isn’t me at my best but… this is what I experience, what people I know with ADHD experience, and what a lot of literature describes. I have a hard time even reading it as a potentially different experience.
I'm active on some support groups, so I do see plenty of different experiences. Maybe you would see it as different amounts of each thing or interplay with things like depression and ASD, but that does amount to significant differences in day to day life. Also, different things are noticed or believed less or more based on how much life is pushing against those things.
"An ASD brain cannot blend in the minor mistakes as well, so it spends a lifetime perpetually surprised and overstimulated by every event that is even slightly unpredictable, and is fairly intolerant of ambiguous, uncertain, or new situations."
Wow, it's like you know me. It also makes sense that I found many of the structure oriented things in the accommodations useful/necessary (templates, checklists, email folders,, etc).
Unrelated: consider viewing ADHD/ASD people not in terms of deficits/disorder but as having a different cluster of characteristics instead (that can be both an advantage and disadvantage)
> Delay your responses to situations long enough to come up with a good and controlled long-term plan * Pattern-match past situations onto the present situation to guide your current response * Mentally tell yourself what to do and have it stick * Manage your emotions towards your long-term interests * Imagine and evaluate multiple possible future outcomes
God fucking damn, every time I think about it I want to die. In fact, I want to die any time.
You know how much this shit ruined my life? No, you don't.
> And no one will help. "Doctors". Useless garbage.
I don't know why you put "doctors" in quotes, but I feel the need to correct you here: medications is generally speaking very effective for people with ADHD, and psychiatrists are becoming more and more aware of treatments.
Once you get an official diagnostic you can generally get access to treatments based on stimulants (very effective to be able to behave more-or-less normally, but takes quite some time to find correct medication + dosage, has side-effects, and can be difficult to legally obtain depending on your country law due to their Schedule II status), antidepressants (can help with both ADHD symptoms and comorbidities such as anxiety disorder and depressive personality disorders, also often easier to get access to), or therapy (Cognitive Behaviour Therapy for example).
The understanding of adult ADHD is still very recent, quite limited, and not well spread out. But you do have solutions. I would recommend checking out "Taking charge of adult ADHD" by Russell Barkley, the book is written in a way that can be parsed relatively quickly and gives a good overview of the diagnostic process, treatments, coping mechanisms, etc.
> medications is generally speaking very effective for people with ADHD
It sometimes helps with some symptoms, and not permanently. Mainly, the stimulants increase your activation energy and 'concentration'.
> But you do have solutions
No, there isn't a "solution". ADHD is adaptive and wide-ranging. With ADHD, you will always needs to be aware of your deficits and how to work around them. However, therapy can indeed help with that and reducing some of them.
A significant subset of people do find their doctors unsympathetic and find it hard, especially given the ADHD, to access potential treatment, so it's understandable that your parent post is venting frustration. Not everyone has the option to change doctor or push against an unsympathetic system.
At no point does a "solution for ADHD" implies that the whole thing would disappear, that's not how behavioral/development disorders work. You do have ways to deal with the symptoms, as you said, by using stimulants and/or via therapy (also helps with other mental issues, ADHD has a lot of comorbidities). As I said in my other comments, you also have some form of antidepressant that can help, but that varies a lot between individuals (same for stimulants by the way). I don't know why you use quotes around "concentration", for an ADHD brain stimulants make it possible to behave more or less normally, without hyperfocus phases and a terrible work-memory.
I have learned I have ADHD 3 weeks ago reading a similar list of symptoms and I've been in a total haze since because I've found a name for my life long struggles. I've paid a psych a great sum of money to be tested now, I want an answer immediately and hopefully I can start leading a normal life as soon as possible. I'm done fighting my unmotivated brain every single day.
Your comment makes me scared I'm gonna be told I'm just fucking lazy instead, but don't give up brother. To an ADHD brain, death sounds fucking boring.
Ignore them. Medication can and does help with ADHD, as someone who was diagnosed at 31 the biggest problem was addressing various coping mechanisms I'd developed that were no longer useful thanks to medication. And I was amazed to wake up in the morning and remember something I thought before I went to bed and had thought "I should remember that." after a couple of weeks on medication.
> And I was amazed to wake up in the morning and remember something I thought before I went to bed and had thought "I should remember that." after a couple of weeks on medication.
I'm aware of my ADHD for some time now and I'm trying to get myself to have a proper diagnosis done. I thought I was pretty well aware of how it influences my life by now, but I would have never thought that remembering such things from before going to bed is actually possible at all!
meds don't really affect my memory too greatly... it's more like I take my Vyvanse at 7am, roll over and sleep a bit more or read the news on Reddit or something and after an hour...I start thinking about work and what I want to get done today... then I'm hyper focused until I'm forced to stop because of my wife or until I'm exhausted or until something or someone pisses me off... I'm pretty sure I'm asd too cause I can sometimes just lose it and have a two year old style meltdown... where I know it's not right to feel that way but can't snap out of it...
basically if I've planned my next 5 actions if something interrupts the plan I get to feeling like my entire world is set on fire or crashing down...
I also have entire conversations in my head and I talk way too long on subjects that really interest me.... to the point of boring other participants in the conversation...
but damn if I find someone as interested as me... we're besties and can discuss the thing for 6 hours or longer lol.
I'm 42 now, I think I just learned to cope in society because I'm usually more prone to outbursts when my guard is down... like I'm expecting a relaxing dinner at a holiday and the in-laws say something to trigger me.... I'm really good at chewing on things... everyone here is republican and love country music...
I can't send ether but I bite my tongue because I know I'll trigger them then one of us is gonna have a meltdown, usually me... and I lose favorability points...I guess in a way my silence is my preplanning to avoid a bad outcome... plus my precog conversation I have before opening my mouth usually helps me predict if it's worth it or not..... sometimes my mental conversation is pleasing enough or if it's like asking my wife something I'll assume we've already had the conversation because the mental model version went really well so I can skip the real version right?
For me the ban on indoor smoking was a godsend in that it gave me an open excuse to duck out of a situation and spend some time on my own recombobulating without it being considered a massive breach of etiquette. If things start getting triggering I go and smoke and read my book on my phone, usually resets me nicely.
> It’s also fascinating how much the social part overlaps with challenges faced by Autistic people
Autistic people are bad at reading people, ADHD are bad at focusing on people so don't read them in most cases but have no problems at all in social situations when they are focused on them. They are different things. Though I am sure many bad psychologists diagnose inattentive people with autism even though they really have ADHD.
My understanding is that it's an ongoing discussion, similar to how "Asperger syndrome" was considered distinct, but is now considered part of the autism spectrum. (n.b. I know less about this than ADHD, so I could be wrong here)
Similarly, it used to be "ADD" and then now is more generally known as ADHD, and even more recently than that, specifically is now considered something with three major "presentations", ADHD-I (inattentive), ADHD-HI (hyperactive-impulsive), and ADHD-C (combined).
We're still learning about the brain, and what these sorts of things are, and how they interact. My understanding is that many folks feel there's some sort of relationship here, but the exact details are murky and unknown. It may just be a comorbidity.
I don't have numbers handy, but the last time I looked the overlap of people with ASD that also have ADHD is...pretty substantial (The inverse is not -- it's still a common comorbidity, but not nearly skewed as much)
So if you have an autistic person that's inattentive, I believe the chances are they'll get both diagnosis.
It's also the case that not being able to focus in social situations leads to an aura of aloofness and disconnectedness. I've met plenty of people with an ADHD/autism diagnosis who have no problem reading people. They just don't have friends for whatever reason, which gets them put in the autism box.
> I've met plenty of people with an ADHD/autism diagnosis who have no problem reading people. They just don't have friends for whatever reason.
I fall into this category. Building and maintaining friendships is hard, because you need to be able to give time to your friends on a reliable basis -- which is very hard. If I'm having a day where I'm sucked into something, I wont want to stop doing whatever that is. Another big contributing reason is that with being very unreliable with communication because it's trivial to forget to respond, and the NT folk tend take that personally. It's also hard to maintain focus when being involved in a conversation that isn't that engaging...And having poor impulse control and emotional regulation means that it's easy to go from perfectly calm to overwhelming frustration and back in a blink of an eye...which tends to freak people out quite a bit.
There's a lot of ways that the disorders impact personal relationships between people.
Same here. I can read people but the lack of atention and the fast switching between discussions is putting people of. Also big problems connecting with people. I just dont answer or engage socially to the point that people find me antisocial.
Another problem is the energy I have and reflect upon others. They just think I am agitated or nervous. But inside i am super cool….thats just me ….. btw adderal helps a lot but still ….do i want to be someone who is only workable with medicine?
Regarding your last paragraph… it’s a struggle for sure. Here’s where i personally am at, dunno if it will help you or not.
I have needed glasses to see since I was a young child. While I could get Lasik or whatever and not need them anymore, I would never think to myself, “do I want to be someone who is only workable with glasses?” There are multiple options and all of them are okay.
You’re welcome. I did/was/still struggle with it myself too. We are constantly bombarded with shitty attitudes towards this stuff, and it is very hard to unlearn IME.
Would you judge a diabetic person for taking insulin? That's a somewhat similar situation, but it doesn't have the stigma of mental health attached to it, and there most definitely is such a thing. Your brain is part of your body and bodies can be born with all kinds of issues which we try to fix through science and medicine, whether it be an issue with your dopamine or with your insulin.
I wonder how much of that might be due to under-diagnosing. Perhaps people presenting with ASD traits are more likely to be seen by a psychologist, and therefore more likely to get diagnosed with ADHD at the same time? (of course, it could also be the reverse of this)
I wasn't diagnosed with ADHD until I was a junior in college. I kinda knew I had it for some time before that (my ACT score vs my GPA was a good starting point...), but managed to survive without feeling the need to get treatment. Interestingly, I do have a sister and two nephews on the autism spectrum, so perhaps there are common genetics at play.
I think it's much more likely that ADHD is N different things and Autism is M different things, where there is some overlap between N and M. I get what you're saying, I just think in order to really progress how we understand/treat these issues it will be important to figure out how to more accurately split them apart rather than grouping more things together.
You might find the "rdoc" an interesting approach from the National Institute of Mental Health. In contrast to the DSM, the rdoc isnt a way of splitting and labeling disorders as distinct entities (diagnoses). Rather, it looks at different dimensions of disorders to identify the best approaches to treatment.
Seems to me most psychiatry diagnoses symptoms not causes at present.
Imagine if you went to hospital with chest pains. They ask some questions then say "yeah, sounds like you have chest pains. Try this medicine it sometimes helps people with chest pains"
But was it a broken rib or heart attack? Who knows.
in a way these disorders are fake ... I'm ADHD diagnosed and I think also asd. not saying they aren't real...
I'm saying they're as real as an apple is really an apple as in would it be an apple if somebody didn't label it as one?
diseases of the body have very specific symptoms but also an underlying cause injury, cell damage, virus, bacteria...
mental health isn't just the brain...
we can't tie consciousness just to the brain...I mean it could be something in our entire central nervous system...
all these things are... are buckets...
imagine you're fishing and you throw in a bunch of similar fish into a bucket and separate them into two big buckets as similar as possible... you might still have 4 different species of fish per bucket...
that's all mental health diagnoses feel like ..a big bucket because everyone behaves differently in different circumstances under different stimulus...
were you exposed to lead recently and are more aggressive? are your hormones elevated or lowered than norms?
all these little chemical signals going through the brain shape the consciousness to a star or a square but it's not really a star or square... it just closer to a star and square and it's soft around the edges so you can push it into the star shape diagnoses hole even though it's different ...
my point is it's all a spectrum and you can't be on the spectrum with aids, cancer, COVID. you have it or you don't... you can have more serious cases or not but there's a definite... solidity to what is infecting you...
so personally I think it'd be better if we made smaller buckets that were more about labeling what our symptoms are... then treat those specifically better and maybe have a few broader treatments that treat maybe a trifecta of symptoms...
I'm not sure if my point is coming across... basically mental disorders are real but at the same time they're not... because it's an illness if the consciousness.. of thought... and emotions... and the smallest imbalance in even our gut which has brain cells can cause certain reactions...
> Which I increasingly feel confident in the idea that there’s no meaningful distinction and ADHD should/likely eventually will be considered part of the spectrum
I’ve recently been pondering this point myself as I come across more acquaintances, friends, or colleagues who have been clinically diagnosed with ADHD after my own diagnosis. It’s certainly nice to be able to commiserate on some of the more common symptoms, but each of us has had to compensate (or not compensate) in a unique way throughout our lives. I’m always interested in how this manifests differently and affects one’s career or other major components of modern life.
I agree that a lot of what’s suggested by this article are very ubiquitous, (sometimes) easier-said-than-done tools and strategies for those that struggle with ADHD. I wasn’t personally surprised by anything here. I am equally frustrated by the lack of availability of an app or planner that lets me “manage my meetings and tasks” that truly meets my needs as someone struggling with executive function disorder and depression caused by the lack of this executive function. I’d love to hear any examples. I have been playing around with pomodoro/task apps (Focus and Focus Keeper) but they have some very odd shortcomings, and Focus wants $40 USD/year to continue use past the free trial.
Yeah, I guess it's like free throws or dribbling for basketball players. Not too easy, not too hard, keeps you "in rhythm" for when you want to ramp your attention back.
Can you explain your footnote? I do not agree. Someone I love is autistic, and it actually sounds exactly backward to me: the ability to command sustained attention is something she enjoys in remarkable surplus, for example.
That’s a hallmark of ADHD too. It’s called hyperfocus, often in both contexts. This isn’t just an idea I have though. Comorbidity of ADHD/Autism is very high regardless of diagnostic criteria. There are some academic efforts to study and unify them, and while they’re not mainstream they bear at least some consideration. Diagnostics for both are generally external (observations from affected parents, friends, teachers, colleagues) rather than symptomatic. People who are diagnosed with either report remarkably similar experiences, challenges, and emotional/psychological reactions.
Not OP, but on the spectrum and also diagnosed with ADHD and sometimes I'm not certain where one ends and one begins.
I have hyperfocus for my "special interests" (spectrum) and very little focus for anything that does not intrigue me (adhd) but to my eyes these are the same thing: I just don't have much deliberate control of my focus.
There's some other areas where it doesn't map so cleanly to thinks I am interested or disinterested in. Jigsaw puzzles don't interest me, it's incredibly mentally painful for me to focus on one, but I also can't walk away from one. I have the hyperfocus that I get with my special interest combined with the pain of ADHD where you wish you could control your focus (in this case, focus on literally anything else.)
Another area of overlap: I associate my extreme social anxiety with autism, but if I take ADHD meds it goes away almost entirely, and my social skills also improve. I think this is again a matter of focus: I stop focusing on social hypotheticals which reduces anxiety, and I also go with the flow rather than work consciously on social interactions, which makes them smoother and less awkward for the counterparty.
I had hourly episode of smacking forehead into the desk when listening to any kind of lecture 10 minutes into it, and blamed for being sloppy, as far back as I can remember. I was very focused, but was in a constant cycle of burst and brownout. So, just maybe, I think, "attention deficit" issue could rather be called "focus rationing" issue.
Spare me the snotty tone. I was asking a question in good faith and still am. Read what I wrote: I know what hyperfocus is and I chose the verb I chose deliberately.
> Which I increasingly feel confident in the idea that there’s no meaningful distinction and ADHD should/likely eventually will be considered part of the spectrum
I'd disagree with this for one single but very important factor - Symptoms of ADHD can often be totally and completely mitigated with medication.
Just get th mix of chemicals right. I know the upper limit for an adult is 4x 20mg dexamphetamine retard (20x tintin) + 4 x 80mg of Elvanse. To relax my doctor prescribes 2x 20mg of Xanax. That’s per day. For me it works to smoke some kush in the evening. With this combo I’m in hyperfocus all day which means I can read a book a day. I do not recommend this mixture to everybody. But my impulsiveness is gone which included the need to take mdma and party in the weekend. If a specialist is referring to current academic research that is solely based on children. You can remove the glass sealing by saying you didn’t expect communistic politics in balancing your productivity multiplier from a professional is highly effective. This is also called the Deutsche Bank recipe.
>You can remove the glass sealing by saying you didn’t expect communistic politics in balancing your productivity multiplier from a professional is highly effective. This is also called the Deutsche Bank recipe.
Can you explain this in a different way because I don't understand your point and want to
I have only recently become aware of what it means to try to work with someone who has ADHD. I’d heard of ADHD but I didn’t know what it was or what the implications were.
Then, a project went terribly terribly wrong. I tried to make sense of it through empathic modelling of my colleagues circumstances, but this only made it worse. I was baffled by that, which is when I realised I needed more information about ADHD, because just placing myself in my colleagues shoes didn’t help when we were using very different thought processes.
Without a model of ADHD thought processes my attempts at empathy were counter-productive.
I’d try to put myself in my colleagues position in order to understand my colleagues feelings but because we have different thought processes this didn’t work at all.
I think I’m seeing the limitations of empathy for the first time. Until I have a better working understanding of ADHD, articles like this with practical tips are my best guide.
> Without a model of ADHD thought processes my attempts at empathy were counter-productive.
This is why I often wonder it empathy isn't overemphasized as a tool in our collective toolbox. When teaching it, we often fail to highlight how essential a coherent model the subject's inner world is to the empath's success. Otherwise, the empath is merely fantasizing about their reactions to similar circumstances - a recipe that can lead to festering resentment.
My professional experience has taught me that proactive empathy can be more harmful to a work environment than a simple combination of humility and compassion.
A piece of that can mean realizing that a team member isn't fit for purpose and either removing or working around them.
It can also mean taking the arduous path of developing an understanding of your coworker's inner-world, as you ended up doing. Even then, I recommend modelling around capacities and thought patterns rather than emotional responses.
There's nothing more obnoxious than a coworker without a clue, or to-which you're indifferent trying to 'understand you'. Especially if they're tremendously off-base.
> My professional experience has taught me that proactive empathy can be more harmful to a work environment than a simple combination of humility and compassion.
This is beautifully put.
> There's nothing more obnoxious than a coworker without a clue, or to-which you're indifferent trying to 'understand you'. Especially if they're tremendously off-base.
I had a colleague try to do this with me, and it led to a couple of the shittiest weeks ever of my career (so far). My self esteem and perception of my own morals were absolutely shattered until I got a better handle on what was really going on.
Thanks for your post, I think you put this really well.
Many friends/parents/co-workers in my life have tried empathy alone, and the gap between their empathy and my actions turned into conflict. The most frustrating is well meaning advice like “try using a planner” or “don’t procrastinate” (I’m struggling to come up with good examples here) which to me sounds almost tautological, like someone telling you “just remember not to forget”.
The thing that constantly amazes me is that for many people, keeping a planner or staying organized aren’t that difficult. I am very effective and have good follow through, and I thought the hard work I had been putting in was what everyone did. Turns out I had ADHD and I was working over-time to keep up with what most people have as a base skill in my industry.
Advice like that is genuinely useful: it allows you to flip a mental switch to throw all future advice from such a person straight to the trash.
The one time I’ve had such advice turn out to be useful was when keeping a diary for track forgetfulness. The instructions were that if you forgot to log your memory for a week, then write that in once you remembered to journal again. That being given as an explicit instruction gave a signal that there was thought put behind the advice rather than spreading generic self-help advice.
Tracking my distraction was a big gamechanger for me. On my desk there is a little block with lines marking everytime i got distracted. After a while all those marks annoyed me very much because for every hour of task there were 20 or so lignes. Its visualizing my inatentiony. After a while it was like a game and those ligns negative points…. Now i have only 5 lignes per hour or so.
Yes, scattered around my apartment are many many once-used attempts at organizational systems. The trouble is I start trying to use one to remember things and then forget about it!
Notes.org file in emacs (or notes.txt in vim, or whatever similar thing) with different sections for different topics. Put everything in there. Sync it to other devices with syncthing. It's searchable, it's everywhere. I think that's a lot safer than dealing with a physical notebook or planner.
Trying to edit and sync a plain text file across iOS, Linux and Windows is such an effort every dozen times I've tried doing so I've lost motivation halfway.
I don't have any iOS devices, but in my comment I recommended a specific piece of software ("Syncthing" is the actual name), and I can assure you it works well on the other operating systems you listed, as well as Android.
If you want to edit the file in multiple places, I think Syncthing is pretty much the best option there is. If you plan to do all edits at the same device but just want to view it elsewhere, something like regularly copying the file to the others with rsync or sftp or whatever your preference is may be enough. I manage some files in syncthing while others are just backed up to a server regularly with rsync. The downside of the one-way copying approach is that you may end up with an old version on some machines at some point, or if you suddenly do want/need to edit on a different device, you then have two versions of the file to deal with. Syncthing is kinda like Dropbox, but it's free software and decentralized. I think it uses bittorrent to copy things between your devices. If you consider yourself forgetful, a more automated/background solution like Syncthing also has benefits over manually copying stuff. You can just read/edit your file as normal and it'll sync so long as the daemon is running.
Fun trivia fact: bullet journaling was created to manage the inventor’s ADHD. I personally go back and forth on how helpful it is for me personally, but it’s been more so than many other strategies.
I've found that having emotional empathy (rather than logical empathy) isn't productive, or efficient.
I have ADHD, and I've worked with people with ADHD. Having emotional empathy for their situations and what they're going through just led me to burnout. Having logical empathy spared me from myself, and cut through most of the bullshit (e.g. drawing the line between what is caused by the illness vs. what is just personality/personal choices).
I think the two most effective lines of thought in this area have been:
1). Are they genuinely interested and motivated (ha! More accurately: "open to") succeeding?
Many times, when you have an illness you can get into self-defeating and self-sabotaging mindsets and habits. There's nothing you can do in this area if they're not "open to" success. If they're not, then that's something they'll have to figure out on their own (and perhaps with a psychologist).
2). If they are genuinely "open to" succeeding: what do they need to succeed?
The major facet of my ADHD is very dogshit executive function. I cannot make complex and linear plans in my head. I cannot hold a rough "map" of what I need to do, order it in importance and what logical steps I need to take, and execute on it. I cannot mentally "keep it together." It's just impossible. I don't have the mental facility -- the same way blind people can't see.
But, that means I've had to figure out how to get around it. Primarily, I've had to structure my environment so that I'm always "on rails." I have everything jotted down, and within my eyesight (if it's in a digital planner/calendar, in some file or app I have to open, I will never open it). I have a routine that lets me do everything I need to do, without ever having to think about it. I have a job that doesn't force me into a "one size fits all" structure. I have flexibility and autonomy on how I approach a task. As long as I get the work done that's needed to be done, I'm allowed to do it however I want.
I think that's a massive hurdle in "accommodating" ADHD: everyone's ADHD manifests differently, and there's no "guide book" on how to accommodate ADHD. The only thing there is is people with ADHD figuring out what they need in order to be successful, communicating that to the people they work with, and then those people listening, and making a good faith effort in doing what's needed.
Otherwise, there's really nothing to be done. It's up to each individual with ADHD to figure out what environment works best for them (as daunting and improbable a task it may seem) -- and getting the people they interact with to, reasonably, not impede on that environment.
Your advice resembles one of the “tips” from the article:
> Finding a job where most of your work is stimulating to you.
In my experience this is 95% of the “accommodation”. I suspect many adults with ADHD are misdiagnosed with depression precisely because working a job that is insufficiently interesting will cause so many constant performance issues that anyone would assume they are doomed to failure in life.
> I suspect many adults with ADHD are misdiagnosed with depression precisely because working a job that is insufficiently interesting
This is the part of adhd I never understand. Being bored of a boring job isn’t a pathology or a disorder, it’s normal. Why do we expect everyone to always be excited by and super into every little part of their job? And if they’re not, they must have adhd? Seems weird
To one with ADHD, boredom is not a minor annoyance—it is pure existential torture. People with ADHD are precisely those for whom a boring job is a sufficient condition for clinical depression. It’s a matter of degree.
But “can’t focus on boring/uninteresting tasks” is often presented as the main symptom. Like … yeah no shit it’s hard to focus on uninteresting things?
Yes. Often in conversation people don't speak in absolutely precise terms, and especially about stuff like this. You are 100% right that that feels tautological when spoken about in that way, and I think it's a real issue with the way that ADHD is understood both amongst people who have it and people who don't.
The difference is, it may be tough for someone without it to focus on boring things. But they still can. But for folks with ADHD, it works a bit differently: first of all, sometimes your brain just kinda decides something isn't interesting, even if you consciously feel interested in it. And so you feel this paralysis, where you both really want to do something, and also just can't do something. Neurotypical adults can go "this sucks but I am gonna do it even if it's uncomfortable" and still get it done, but ADHD folks can be absolutely debilitated by being unable to accomplish tasks, even if they're important.
I have ASD and ADHD and for me the problem isn't an inability to focus on boring tasks. It is a compulsion to be doing something other than whatever it is I'm currently doing. It isn't just work related tasks either. It doesn't matter what I'm doing, I always feel compelled to be somewhere else doing something else.
For example, in work situations, I'll do things like take a programming job writing C++ code and then slack off all the time to study Python. It gets particularly bad if I'm distracted. Open office environments are the worst for me. I'm absolutely crippled by them.
Outside of work, if I go on a dinner date, I'll not talk to the woman and rush through the meal because I feel compelled to leave. I hate sitting through movies because I feel trapped, so I'll watch movies on streaming services instead and watch them in 10 to 20 minute increments.
The compulsion to be elsewhere has gotten a lot worse as I've gotten older. The only three things I've found that kind of help are Adderall, Cannabis, and listening to Isochronic Tones while I'm working. None of them work all the time though.
Have you tried a "dopamine" (see: habit/reward) fast?
I've found I can temporarily hard-reset my "go go go" inclinations, by starving my behavior-reward system of hyper-stimulus (i.e. anything modern; e.g. internet at all, media/music/video, books, rich food, comfortable things, things that I'm "moved" to do). It's basically a "monk" mode where you only surround yourself with relatively low-stimulus stimulus (for example, rich, complex, and tasteful meals would be replaced with bland, tasteless, only-whats-necessary-for-nutrition meals). And this would extend to every single thing in your life (by force), until your reward pathways have downregulated back to a more productive state.
I've found it helpful to do on days without medication (weekends), so at the very least I don't become a soulless robot over the years, and still retain some semblance of a personality (and individual choice).
> Isochronic Tones
I've been inadvertently doing this with Voicemeeter. You can activate "cross channel," and mess with the equalizer, so any sort of music you listen to has that same stimulating "wave" that keeps you in the loop.
On medication, it definitely stops me from hopping around, and going down dead-end alleyways.
Ketamine really cuts through that compulsion, to the point where I find I get stuff done when I take it. It's very much a trade-off between capability and contentment, and it's nice to be enjoy the moment once in a while. I wouldn't be commenting in this post if it weren't for that fact lol.
Same here. The impuls to do other things is controlling me and cannabis and adderal are the only help. Its frustrating because people feel i want to do something else.
Everyone forgets things, but amnesia is still a distinct condition. Everyone has times when they're less motivated, but it isn't depression. Everyone bleeds when cut, but that's not the same as hemophilia. Everyone has headaches, but that's not the same as being prone to migraines.
In all of these cases, the key practical difference is in the extent and impact of the issue. Is the trouble focusing on boring tasks something that's annoying but manageable, or does it get in the way of finishing school or holding down a job?
Physical issues often have a known mechanism that exacerbates the problem. We don't have a great understanding of mechanisms behind most mental health issues at the moment, so both diagnosis and treatment are based on symptoms. I understand there's research showing that ADHD is highly heritable and related to specific structural differences in the brain; I'm not sure how strong the evidence is, but it definitely points to some mechanism behind the condition.
It's not hard. It's often impossible. Even when it's boring but super, super important. And even worse, they KNOW it's super, super important but their brain CAN'T DO IT. Even when it sometimes causes severe problems or issues for them - until it hits panic mode, then the adrenaline can make it possible. But often that is too late.
So true for me. Sometimes i delay things to the point that the crush me. For example taxes… my big luck i am not in prison for paying them that late. Bigger luck i can compensate my adhd with money. …. Thing that suck is the zero tolerance i get when telling people i got adhd and thats why i pay that late. They lough in my face. But a friend of mine with depression is taking super seriously… bur he also arguments like „ give me time to pay this or i kill myself“ ….
The people around you can keep on increasing the social pressure / punishment incentive and make the adrenaline levels high more or less permanently. It ends when you burn out and/or do a mass shooting.
For a neurotypical person, focussing on a boring task is like holding an ice cube - it’s uncomfortable, but not too hard to do it.
For an ADHD person, focussing on a boring task is like holding your hand on a hot stove - your brain won’t even allow you to _attempt_ it because it’s so obviously a bad idea.
Your quote is more literal than you think. It's not "finds it hard to focus on", it's "can't focus on". With ADHD, in many cases, part of your brain will decide without you whether or not you can concentrate on a thing, and you cannot push past it.
Can you clarify the difference between logical & emotional empathy? I haven't heard that distinction before and it's always interesting to parse out the nuances of human thought & feelings.
Not the OP, and I’m not sure if there really is such a distinction, but what I think they were getting at is that “practicing empathy” is often (mis)interpreted as simulating the emotional response that the other is having, and then allowing that emotion to affect your decision-making. The real purpose of empathy is not to inject emotions into every decision and action, but rather to just ensure one doesn’t carelessly trample on others’ emotions.
There is no such thing as logical empathy. Empathy is the ability to perceive someone else's emotional state. i.e. putting yourself in someone's shoes.
Empathy isn't just perceiving emotional states but actually mirroring the emotions of the other person. Feeling emotions "for" the other person. (E.g., feeling "sad for" someone.)
What's being called "logical empathy" here is the perception/understanding that you're calling empathy.
> I’d try to put myself in my colleagues position in order to understand my colleagues feelings but because we have different thought processes this didn’t work at all.
I commend you on acknowledging this. Neurodivergence changes how one experiences situations, skills, and motivations, and many well-meaning people tell neurodivergent folks that they'll magically experience things the way they're "supposed to" if they just build enough character (try harder, see things differently, adjust their attitude, etc.).
You're helping your colleague simply by reacting to them with curiosity, rather than just getting frustrated that they don't fit into the incomplete worldview you had going into the situation.
Your initial attempts were to "put yourself in their shoes" which is a bit impossible if you don't know about what ADHD is like.
The disconnect you experienced was an artifact of the "false consensus effect." You imagined how you would feel in their shoes, and what you would find helpful.
So it wasn't the limits of empathy, but rather the limits of your own understanding and awareness.
Once you learn about their experiences, then you can use empathy to learn from them and reason about them.
> Could you elaborate on what went wrong? Was that type of failure a new occurrence with the person?
Thanks, good question.
Yes it was a totally new circumstance with a friend I'd known for a year who has been minding my dog.
To thank her, I invited her to spend a week at my beach house. The electricians couldn't schedule an appointment for 10 days, so I told her it would be vacant until then, and invited her to go relax with her dog.
She's a fashion designer with a great visual aesthetic.
Immediately upon arrival she was full of ideas to improve the place. Those vertical blinds are lame - you need new curtains in the lounge. The bedroom curtains are tired - replace them. That carpet in the stairs is so old - rip it up and just have bare concrete.
But I only had 10 days before peak season. I told her I liked her ideas, but I'd like to keep the scope small so I can rent the place out after the electricians finish in 10 days. We can revisit the other ideas in March or April, I suggested.
3 weeks later, she'd taken over the place, which was unrentable. She'd ripped up the carpet without my permission, and left hundreds of nails sticking out of the concrete. When I told her how surprised I was, she said we'd talked about that, get over it.
The new Italian leather lounge was thus stuck in the downstairs garage, because it wasn't safe to move it up the stairs. That wasn't a problem for her.
She ripped out the vertical blinds in the living room and dining room, but only half completed the curtains, then stopped and started a dozen other tasks e.g. fairy lights for the deck.
The bedroom curtains didn't work. They hadn't been gathered correctly, and were tied off too short so they didn't close the gap.
She threw out the kitchen curtains, but the blind she replaced them with didn't fit the space, so she cut the ends off. Or, one of the ends. The other one she left sticking out. The hanging hooks weren't in the right place for the three chord pulleys, so she cut one pulley off and now the blind bends in the middle.
For every one of these issues, my friend's response was to start a new initiative!
It took me 2 weeks non-stop to remake the curtains after she left. This is a task I know she could have completed in a day, because I've seen her with a sewing machine and she is brilliant. But she didn't get to this in the context of the renovation in the 3 weeks she was there.
When she left she blamed me for everything and said our relationship was now irreversibly damaged.
The thing that most (if not all) people who have ADHD want is to be normal. This works against them, similar to other people with disabilities, in that asking for accomodations feels like admitting defeat. Like you will never make progress in your lifelong struggle. Like you have an incurable disease.
While it's cool that workplaces can make such accomodations if requested, it would just be better for fucking everyone if these were available to everyone. That's the real problem with being disabled: you're treated abnormally.
Sure, there will always be exceptions, but just recognize humans are not fungible, and be kind. Don't make folks lives harder than they already are.
Yes. I have ADHD and would never ever tell anyone in my workplace, especially my superiors. I don't want special treatment and I fully know that it would affect my chances of advancing into more leadership roles, because who would trust someone with a job who has a tendency to miss small things, be unorganized and other stigma. (If I were the decision-maker I sure as hell wouldn't)
Yes it's hard for me and I often struggle, but I still feel great for bettering myself and powering through. Medicine is helping a lot for leveling the field, and ADHD hyperfocus can be surprisingly powerful for coding-related tasks.
I don't mind telling anyone if they're curious or if I do something very ADHD-typical that needs context. But the spin needs to be this makes me a more organized and diligent employee, which is probably true.
I no longer have an interest in advancing toward leadership roles, so I get to be a bit more relaxed about it, but your point is well taken.
> Medicine is helping a lot for leveling the field, and ADHD hyperfocus can be surprisingly powerful for coding-related tasks.
This is true and I do it too. In a lot of ways I think I do a way better job than my co-workers at solving the hard problems. But the whole work dynamic has a very "take your amphetamines and get back to work" vibe which I'm not super happy about.
I feel like I'm clearly abusing myself for money. But I have normie coworkers that seem happy to be doing the exact same job. And a lot of them have kids!
I have no idea how people function.
As far as I can tell, being employed in software is an exhausting and unfulfilling lifestyle (well, besides the money, that's great) and I'm literally counting the days until retirement.
It's ironic that a common trait of ADHD is oversharing, so usually it's us having this urge to tell people first that we have it, rather than them asking
But how would you describe to someone who is not diagnosed ? I have a child and would like to know signs: everything I read seems very normal, including that article. Like ofc it's better to transfer idiotic phone calls, block noise when focusing, not multitasking (multitasking is not even a thing, it can't be done, I've never seen it done perfectly, there's always a mistake made at some point even by the highest boss), or working from home in a controlled environment.
Very honestly, I've always believed ADHD was something they told little kids they had so their parents wouldn't constantly scold them for being distracted by normal things and that would then scar them for life with a sickness... everybody has. The only thing that makes me believe it exists is I know I can focus monstruously for something very important, and I feel ADHD would prevent someone to even focus on something important ... but this article seems to say it's also possible, so...
> how would you describe to someone who is not diagnosed ?
Certain abilities that normal people mature in are stuck at the level of a fifteen-year-old for me and will be perpetually. Some of them are:
Ability to "feel" the nearness of the future, and plan and act accordingly
Ability to choose to do one task over another, and particularly an uninteresting task over an interesting one
Ability to stop an interesting task to change to another important task
Ability to stay on a single topic in thoughts and conversations
Many people with ADHD also have the emotional regulation of a ~15 year old, perpetually.
Most people can approximately remember how difficult those different abilities were when they were fifteen so there can be some level of empathy. When you were fifteen, university most likely "felt" very far away, and preparing for it "felt" not very important compared to your day-to-day. In hindsight, 15 is not far away from 18 and starting university, and there are many things you can do at 15 to make entering a good university easier.
Everything you've listed (and more) have been major pain points for me for the last 14 years or so, but especially this one:
> Ability to "feel" the nearness of the future, and plan and act accordingly
I'm almost incapable of preparing and perceiving the nearness of future events until the panic settles in that I'm late, behind, etc. It is especially exacerbated for things that I'm not good at or have anxiety around, like giving a presentation, working on a large refactor/feature, buying gifts for an occasion, preparing for a trip that involves multiple transitions/transportation, interviews, etc etc.
I'm getting evaluated for ADHD as I've recently been reading the literature and realizing that almost all the things I've been complaining about and trying to fix in myself for the last 10+ years, fall in the description and the features of ADHD.
> I'm almost incapable of preparing and perceiving the nearness of future events until the panic settles in that I'm late, behind, etc.
You're spot on. There's this neuropsychiatrist (I forget the name, he's pretty famous) that says that one major characteristic of ADHD is time blindness. Until a deadline stares at you in the face, you can't see it. Medication is like putting the glasses on.
He then went on saying that normal people plan their life 2 or 3 months in advance, and that's such a mind blowing, alien concept to me. I barely have an idea what I'm going to do tomorrow. The farther I think, the foggier it is.
Also, I've noticed over the years I've developed an effective and unhealthy coping mechanism: anxiety is how I am always on time. The major the event, the earlier my anxiety surges, I can't even sleep the night before, and it dissipates as soon as the time has come.
> He then went on saying that normal people plan their life 2 or 3 months in advance, and that's such a mind blowing, alien concept to me. I barely have an idea what I'm going to do tomorrow. The farther I think, the foggier it is.
So true. But do you notice emotional blindness as well? My emotions seem to only attract my attention when they reach a certain threshold, which leaves me missing a huge amount of information about how I am, while occasionally being blind-sided by intense feelings seemingly out of the blue.
Inattentiveness is only a very small part of ADHD (and the name ADHD itself is very outdated and doesn't capture at all what this is about). It's more common in children to be inattentiveness (ADHD-PI) but goes away with adulthood. But ADHD is also a spectrum, so some people have it worse in X but very mild (or not at all) in Y.
For me it's more emotional restless-ness, overthinking (esp. what people think about me and self-criticism), oversharing of whatever I am currently focused on (like writing this comment), being late because I constantly forget to account for something obvious like walking time, and a strong "mental barrier" of doing things that I don't want to do, or don't have consequences for not doing. Kind of like a self-drive that only exists when
a) I really really want to do it, but then I have to do it right now because I can't focus on anything else. I want to drop everything I'm doing and only do that instead.
b) there is some external consequence like a deadline driving me to do it.
For example: My apartment has a stack of unopened amazon boxes that I only open when I need the item inside (no consequence of not doing it). But when a task has a deadline, or when I feel that my not-doing something would start to get people angry at me, I'll hyperfocus and rush it out in no time. Or dishes starting to get smelly (consequence), but a pile of washed clothes stays untouched (no consequence) until I need a shirt from that pile.
When I was a child (untreated) I barely ever did my homework or studied, copied all the time from classmates, "daydreamed" and was in my head most of the time instead of listening to the teacher, or talking to my classmates.
ADHD people (from my experience) are also very chatty, jump seemingly random from topic to topic and have a high energy way of writing text messages back and forth, like chopping a longer topic up into many small messages instead of writing longer sentences. We just want to share what we have in our head with someone right now
Could you kindly comment, if this resonates, or else set me straight if you can?
Apologies in advance if I’m off beam. I’m really struggling to navigate this.
When my ADHD colleague’s tasks were overdue and dragging the critical path, her response was not what I expected, which would have been to slash the scope just to get completion of core functions in the deliverable. Instead, she’d start new extraneous tasks, and insist on getting my feedback, which I think required praise.
I declined to comment, fearing making things worse by unveiling criticism instead of the desired praise. I just said sorry, I can’t put my attention to that at this point; I must focus on the one thing I’m doing myself now so I can make my own deadline.
She was furious, and withdrew, then abandoned the project.
Another friend who has an ADHD diagnosis and an education about useful clinical responses, told me that what I saw was common. She said it’s “the cycle of shame”, which she herself had repeated in the past ad nauseum before she’d obtained assistance from new clinical approaches.
What is the cycle of shame? I took it to mean that the ADHD colleague knew the task overrun was deliterious to the project, but was powerless to respond other than to start a fresh (extraneous) task, which only made matters worse for the team, but apparently more tolerable for herself in the short term, but ultimately she had to live with the shame?
> When my ADHD colleague’s tasks were overdue and dragging the critical path, her response was not what I expected, which would have been to slash the scope just to get completion of core functions in the deliverable. Instead, she’d start new extraneous tasks, and insist on getting my feedback, which I think required praise.
The ADHD brain can't break down tasks into bite sized chunks in some situations. You should have given the praise. Possibly also of taken over and assisted in, one-on-one, breaking those tasks down. my reasoning for this is that the ADHD brain needs reassurance and dopamine hits. She wasn't getting ANY from herself and the only way she saw to get something, even if it was negative, was to make the scope larger and make it more novel or interesting. dont even ask if she wants help in breaking down a project. just do it. do it before hand. if you're all on a team at work or whatever then help eachother out actively.
EDIT: do you know what is the most fun for people on the ADHD spectrum (and i think just engineers in general but there is a critical difference)? planning out a thing. making that list. coming up with ideas. sketching it out. everything up until DOING THE ACTUAL THING. there is no reward in that. nothing. no one is going to see us struggling and working and doing the repetitive task or coding or whatever the thing is. but hell, our brain lit up like a christmas tree when we were together with everyone talking about ideas for the thing. that was awesome!
> I declined to comment, fearing making things worse by unveiling criticism instead of the desired praise. I just said sorry, I can’t put my attention to that at this point; I must focus on the one thing I’m doing myself now so I can make my own deadline.
> She was furious, and withdrew, then abandoned the project.
i would have been PISSED off if you did that to me. oh, so you're so fucking good at things that you just DECIDED that you can't pay attention to the thing i'm struggling with. mister/miss no struggles? oh you gotta fuckin' focus? great cool, guess you only care about yourself and your deadline even though we're fucking collegues and not rivals! I QUIT!
that's... what i'd say...
> Another friend who has an ADHD diagnosis and an education about useful clinical responses, told me that what I saw was common. She said it’s “the cycle of shame”, which she herself had repeated in the past ad nauseum before she’d obtained assistance from new clinical approaches.
> What is the cycle of shame? I took it to mean that the ADHD colleague knew the task overrun was deliterious to the project, but was powerless to respond other than to start a fresh (extraneous) task, which only made matters worse for the team, but apparently more tolerable for herself in the short term, but ultimately she had to live with the shame?
cycle of shame is REALLY hard to describe because its per individual. but everyone pretty much with ADHD is a failure in their head. no matter how successful we are. no matter how many little wins we structure for ourselves. at the end of the day we are broken, physiologically, our brains aren't giving us what we need from the tasks we do. even in a perfect situation where we dont need to work and only find our own joy in life there just is a general "ugh i know i have all these fun hobbies and projects that i myself have set up for myself to do but i cant do anything. no i'm not depressed. i have absolutely zero in the tank for even enjoyable things. i have no volition left." every hit of dopamine that matters is exogenous or from extremes but not from the everyday monotony.
> but everyone pretty much with ADHD is a failure in their head.
> planning out a thing. making that list. coming up with ideas. sketching it out. everything up until DOING THE ACTUAL THING.
This post hit me right on the head. I have infuriated colleagues with this type of behaviour. At an old job I got bored with a mildly interesting task that I just could not focus on and the progress fell behind. My boss moved me on to the most boring job on the project thinking I could better handle it and boy did I pull out a 6 hour focused task into 6 weeks of depression and anxiety. I would stare at the same 2 windows for an entire day sinking deeper into unproductive spirals.
Ironically HNews might have kept me sane in providing interesting things to read. It’s probably why there are so many ADHD types here.
I have discovered now that a “normal” job just doesn’t work for me. I’m going to get weird with it.
Thank you. None of what you say is intuitive or obvious to me. I have no way of working out what goes on without these candid insights you shared. Thank you so much. What you say seems to fit with what I witnessed in my colleague so at last I have something to go on.
> the ADHD brain needs reassurance and dopamine hits. She wasn't getting ANY from herself
That sounds like the core deficit.
> but everyone pretty much with ADHD is a failure in their head. no matter how successful we are. no matter how many little wins we structure for ourselves. at the end of the day we are broken, physiologically, our brains aren't giving us what we need from the tasks we do.
I see. OK. I would not have dared assume that. At last I have a model to work with, of the voice in my colleague's head.
> "ugh i know i have all these fun hobbies and projects that i myself have set up for myself to do but i cant do anything. no i'm not depressed. i have absolutely zero in the tank for even enjoyable things. i have no volition left."
Zero in the tank, OK. So, if that's the case, I can't expect her to bootstrap or therapy herself. I need something else. At the time, I couldn't do as much for her as you suggest - giving her praise, stepping in to organise and structure her tasks. I wasn't available for that. But what you're saying, is that without the external assistance, the result will be failure.
> do you know what is the most fun for people on the ADHD spectrum (and i think just engineers in general but there is a critical difference)? planning out a thing. making that list. coming up with ideas. sketching it out.
Yeah, she loves that. So do a lot of people.
> everything up until DOING THE ACTUAL THING.
This seems to be where we fork. Other people learn how to get rewards from the doing and the completion of tasks. The rewards take time to manifest, so nobody learns straight away. It takes time and repetition and faith. Before we can learn, we have to learn how to learn. But most people learn eventually, because the rewards for KPI manifestation are the biggest of all. But it sounds like you are saying ADHD people can't go through this process.
> […] most people learn eventually, because the rewards for KPI manifestation are the biggest of all.
I don’t feel that way at all.
My greatest reward, by far, is the moment when the all the pieces “click into place” - the moment of understanding a process or system. I feel absolutely no positive reward at all for getting things done. At best, I feel a bit of relief from the rapidly increasing pressure of a looming deadline.
I was thinking of the concept of getting paid for completing a job! For example, mowing a lawn and getting paid. Serving a table and earning a tip.
Have you ever had a job that works like that?
A design or engineering job doesn't have such an immediate connection with the completion/reward nexus. I wonder if experience with the earlier mentioned type of work could help to build an expectation circuit that reinforces completion.
What you're missing is the basic fact that the ADD is a disorder of the reward system. That's why you can use a drug that increases dopamine activity (amphetamines) and thereby fix the ADD.
Without the exogenous dopamine source, the dopamine synapses in the brain do not fire. Without those synapses firing, the causal emotional chain is broken. The feeling is absent. The very same feeling that would be there in other people JUST IS NOT THERE.
Nobody "learns" how to fire their dopamine synapses. They either fire or do not fire. You either have a feeling or not.
The reward system is functioning in ADHD subjects in some circumstances, just not in others. If that were not the case, ADHD subjects could never learn anything, and that clearly isn't the case.
My friend gets excited about conceiving projects and beginning tasks. She has problems with completing them.
My friend is perfectly able to learn new procedures, including complex procedures. On occasion, she performs them with hurricane enthusiasm, such as the time she whipped up a dog carrier backpack for my small dog with her sewing machine in 15 minutes flat. She was amazing on that occasion. And then, for 3 weeks, she couldn't bring herself to hem a curtain - the simplest and most mundane application of a sewing machine. From what other people are saying in this discussion, those are the clues: too simple, too mundane, and the problem is the lack of drive in particular circumstances, not learning the task.
I'm just wondering what the limits are to learning and then what those limits might tell us about the disease mechanism. Since ADHD people are capable of learning, might there be processes they could learn which could alter the application of their disregulated reward system so as to facilitate self-drive in more circumstances?
If not, why not? Or how not? What is the dysfunctional component of neuroanatomy responsible for the condition?
> The reward system is functioning in ADHD subjects in some circumstances, just not in others.
It's functioning differently, regardless of circumstances. It's not "In some circumstances."
> If that were not the case, ADHD subjects could never learn anything, and that clearly isn't the case.
Your reasoning is bad here.
> I'm just wondering what the limits are to learning
You keep using phrases like "limits to learning" that are question-begging and wrong.
> might there be processes they could learn which could alter the application of their disregulated reward system so as to facilitate self-drive in more circumstances?
I don't know what you're talking about.
What you suggested earlier is that ordinary people "learn" to have the emotional reactions to task accomplishments while ADD people do not "learn" to have these same emotional reactions.
That is incorrect: you did not learn to have any such emotional reactions. You are falsely attributing agency to yourself. This is something called Fundamental Attribution Error.
A friend of mine has ADHD and is a street performer in Covent Garden in London, and it fits him to a tee - 15 minutes of hyper-focus on doing the show and interacting with the audience then an immediate reward of gratification and money, which he has to do two or three times a day. It wouldn't fit my ADHD but it fits his perfectly.
Yes, for many years. I do drone work on the side even today.
> help to build an expectation circuit that reinforces completion
It’s not a function of what I “expect” of myself - if anything, if I expect to complete something and fail to do so, I could enter a rapid self-reinforcing failure cycle that is extremely emotionally taxing and difficult to break out of.
When I was in school in the 80s and 90s, there was a lot of stigma around ADD/ADHD. Kids taking ritalin were ostracized for it. It was common for parents to refuse the possibility and instead punish their children. A lot of kids grew up and went on to adulthood on hard mode thinking they were just bad at life, never realizing there was a diagnosis and _treatment_ they'd been denied.
Even people with ADHD like myself thought it was bullshit. One day I got an Adderall pill from a friend, found myself in a deep state of calm and concentration (a bit too much) for hours and thought to myself "heh, that's why they give it to kids to study, it's so unnatural".
Fast forward 15 years, and I learn that the inability to sit down and complete a task or having to force myself to do pretty much anything isn't normal, and I've been living my life in hard more all this years, berating myself for my laziness when I know I can be pretty fucking smart sometimes.
As someone that is disabled, I feel like you’re hitting the most important points, but maybe generalizing a little about wanting to be treated normal.
More often than not, people have to accept the realities of their disabilities and not being treated normal is absolutely necessary for them to succeed. As for how to go about it, your last words are right on the mark.
> … be kind. Don’t make folks lives harder than they already are.
I’d add that if they don’t approach their manager/employer about accommodations, their superior should be very careful about how they offer assistance. It really shouldn’t be more than “Hey are you comfortable with your work environment? Is there anything I can do to help you be efficient?” And if they say no, that’s it. Say they can reach out anytime and you’re done.
I’m frequently the odd one out in these conversations but: I don’t want ADHD to be treated as normal. I don’t want it to be treated as not-a-disability. I want it to have intentional accommodations. I want to be recognized and acknowledged as someone with distinct challenges.
I have distinct challenges that I have to address, every day. Normalizing many of them can create more confusion than understanding.
For example, I’m intensely sensitive to sound. A non-ADHD person sensitive to sound in say a shared office would surely benefit from noise canceling headphones. But I’m also very touch sensitive particularly on and around my ears, and that often gives me headaches. A general accommodation for this not only could but has basically left me unaccommadated.
Be kind and don’t make folks lives harder is a good principle. But sometimes acknowledging people have different needs and experiences is part of that.
This isn’t meant as a rebuttal of anything you’ve said, it’s a “yes and” more than anything. But I want it to be part of this conversation too.
I'd bet that there are plenty of politicians with ADHD who don't talk about it. Just as there are certainly plenty of politicians with personality disorders who don't talk about it.
Please don’t do oppression Olympics. It’s just a wedge that benefits no one. We’re better off building bonds and acting in solidarity.
By the way, there’s a very high overlap between LGBTQIA+ and ADHD and autism (hi including me, I’m queer, I’m nonbinary, I’m grey-asexual, I’m ADHD and I’m autistic). And there’s a multiple generations of similar struggles among us.
The thing is that being ADHD is normal. Many people are just maladapted to the work and life style prevalent in city/office living. Instead of the person being broken, it can well be the environment that is.
No. It is not normal. Forget about work for a second.
I have people who depend on me. I am responsible for their livelihoods. I have to get rest, wake in the morning, do chores, shower and groom myself -- you get the idea. What's the alternative? That's not a world I want to live in.
A thought experiment I use often is: imagine I hired a personal assistant to help me with mundane tasks I struggle with. They start and take that burden off of me.
Is this a good thing? Am I going to be able to improve or overcome my disability now that someone is doing that for me?
Imagine that the personal assistant is a volume knob. Why would I never have that knob turned all the way up? Could I even bring myself to do it? If I could, where would I set it? Other than the extremes, what is the healthiest volume?
I know what would help, and I know what I need to improve, but finding a balance is next to impossible.
There's the theory (I have no links and don't know how prevalent it is) that people with what we now call ADHD used to be the hunters in their tribes. For that it may have been a great trait to be able to both quickly notice many small details and also be able to zero in on something specifically interesting for a long time.
It is not normal. I still have not bought christmas gifts for my family, who I love dearly and who I do not want to disappoint, even though I have their wish lists in a different tab and it will only take a few clicks to be done. Instead I have fought my ADHD brain for weeks trying to get myself to do it and failing.
That is different from a neurotypical person who feels gift giving is difficult. Happy christmas.
Update: I got it done. Printer ran out of ink at the last minute but I found a spare. When there's no margin for error, little things like that can bring the whole thing down.
I've bought all of my stuff in the past two and a half days, and was only able to do it because I had family around to help me out. You're not alone brother/sister.
Any kind of creative pursuit (where creating is in the eye of the creator) where they’re free to hyperfocus and given relief when that’s exhausting. We (with ADHD) are notoriously productive to the point of severe exhaustion or burnout when we’re working on what we care about or can get motivated to care about.
> That's the real problem with being disabled: you're treated abnormally.
That's not been my experience: I've been treated normally.
I have not one but two disabilities: I'm an alcoholic/drug addict, and I'm a diabetic. I'm upfront about them, and people don't seem to care--they treat me the same as everyone else.
My take is that most people are so self-absorbed that they don't spend many cycles worrying about everyone else.
Well they would if it would impact either them or the work. Being diabetic is frankly uninteresting, it's not clear how your work output would be ever damaged by it (until you reach a crisis and need to be out for weeks, then you'd see people care A LOT).
For the alcoholic, drug addiction, I suppose you're recovering and not currently injecting heroin at work, so I suppose it's the same: as long as you just say it and show no particular behavioral impact, what do you expect people to do ? It's not like they'll spit at you for having paid drug cartels or overly help you and bring you coffee more often as a sign of pity.
Again, bring a needle at work and start injecting and see how they are so self-absorbed they don't care :)
This is an exceedingly uncaring response to someone who expressed being disabled by their addiction and by their diabetes. In particular I hope in the future you will not encourage people to bring their acknowledged addiction to work for attention.
What I have realized overtime is that desire to be normal just causes stress. One needs to admit that they are different from others and they will have to play the game [life] with the cards they are dealt with. ADHD is no disability IMO, but different enough from normal people to become very incompatible.
Just this acceptance to oneself relieves a lot of stress. But it comes with some experience and I guess most ADHD people would just feel inadequate during teenage and in university. Its horrible when you feel there is so much to do and you cannot accomplish most of it. Its only when you find/realize that there are people who would treat over-accomplishment in some aspects as a fair trade to be not able to be good at everything.
Workspaces/Life Partners/Friends -- not everyone will work with ADHD people. They need to understand that they will have to spend parts of their life experimenting and finding a environment where they are valued. I guess that is the cost of being different in anyway.
A lot of people seem to be disagreeing with you but I definitely agree with what you said.
I too have ADHD and I hate it when I see it being treated as a crippling disability. It's really not. ADHD is much more common than people would think. As for everyone, people with ADHD learn to cope with their weaknesses and play into their strengths. For a person with ADHD it's about finding what works and doesn't work for them, not about shaping the entire world around them to make them fit. It will only make them feel worse.
I learned to do it and I'm seen as a respected member of my team today. I am seen as somewhat of a quirky oddball too though with how I always do things, but nothing that can't be solved by just being positive and laughing with your colleagues. They'll treat you with respect.
Yeah, ADHD is a difference to non-ADHD, but that doesn't make it a disability. It's just a different mode of thought, in the same way that introversion and extroversion are different modes of thought. Most people in fact have periods of introversion and extroversion, and surely modes of attention are not fixed or static in people either.
Which mode is an "ability" and which is a "disability"? The question is ill conceived.
A friend noted that ADHD is probably over-represented in the arts. That's because in the arts (but not exclusively), you need different modes of thought and action to get things done. A classic example is the arts festival, which is a collection of artistic performances over a period of time, organised around a theme, embracing different modalities of production such as dance, theatre, music, visual arts, poetry and more.
Arts festivals typically have two executives in charge -
Artistic Director - Responsible for finding the creative acts for the festival that will convey the theme.
e.g. Burning Man has confirmed the theme for its 2022 edition, Waking Dreams. Organisers have said the theme will "explore the transformative power of dreams, both literal and figurative, and celebrate the dreamers who channel this potent energy in eye-opening, often surrealistic, sometimes life-changing ways".
That's not something you can get a tech CEO or accountant or board of directors to pull off. You need some crazy, connected creative genius to frequent 1,000 bars, alleys, galleries and theatres over 12 months to find the talent and curate it into a festival.
The other executive who makes the arts festival work is a completely different hat - the Program Director. This is the adult in the room; the super clerk, the master accountant, the disciplined project manager who works the spreadsheet and the gantt chart to make sure what the Artistic Director has chosen can be paid for with the budget and delivered on time.
You need both executives to produce an effective arts festival. But the Artistic Director position is less of a discipline that can be described algorithmically and more of an art form itself. To really pull off a great arts festival, you need a hurricane supernova of an Artistic Director who will be impossible to control, will drive his colleagues a little crazy, especially the Program Director, but who will find the most unexpected genius in the most obscure artists who together will combine to deliver an experience that moves the audience and uncovers thoughts and feelings that nobody knew were there to be had.
And of course, without the Program Director, there's no way all those artists will be paid because the budget will be exceeded by a factor of 10, and the gantt chart will be spaghetti mashed pototoes Jackson Pollock disaster.
But the two of them together, and an army of clerks, interns, admins, techs, and junior ADHD creatives might just pull off the festival of a lifetime.
> Yeah, ADHD is a difference to non-ADHD, but that doesn't make it a disability. It's just a different mode of thought,
It's a great theory but I consider it a disability that I have to wrestle with myself _every single night_ to force myself to start doing the dishes, which I want to do but my ADHD brain doesn't find interesting enough to start doing. I can spend several minutes just physically pacing and trying to hype myself up to start on something that I _want_ to do, and it is every day, for basically every task that my brain doesn't find interesting, and it doesn't get easier.
Also, brainscans of ADHD-diagnosed individuals clearly show certain parts of the brain are under-developed compared to normal.
Same, but it's fast paced music, usually psytrance to do the laundry and the dishes. In fact psytrance is great for the ADHD brain, it's fast, it's always evolving with tons of different sounds and effects to keep you interested, and there's no vocals to distract.
For me it's all about the reassuring inevitability of the techno kick drum, always thudding on, comfortingly constant. I love psytrance but techno is life.
you know what i do when i put a podcast on? i stop everything and listen to it.
you know what i do when i put music on? i'll go on my computer and distract myself with "remastering" the album because i'll end up hyperfocusing on something that sounds "off" about the music while i'm trying to do my chore that is clearly not enjoyable.
Let’s not conflate ADHD with personality traits. I actually feel that my personality is high in conscientiousness, but my ADHD makes it extremely difficult to actually execute the behaviors that my personality would prefer. If that makes any sense…
So you would not ask the Artistic Director to focus on his year-long visit planning, take notes of all the names, and come on time at representation ?
I mean, if ADHD is just about being very open minded and dedicated to non-mathematical subjects, that would be fine, but I think people would still struggle with ADHD in the context you describe if they can't focus, can't resist distraction and can't listen well to what people express for instance in a theatre piece.
I think you have such an inability to understand art that you think it's just fuzzy magic, but in fact there are still people, plans, budgets, timetable to respect, notes to take even when scouting.
I think people are getting too hung up on the term disability. A big reason why it's used in the US is a legal one: to simplify, if it's a disability, employers must make reasonable accommodations for it.
> Yeah, ADHD is a difference to non-ADHD, but that doesn't make it a disability. It's just a different mode of thought, in the same way that introversion and extroversion are different modes of thought. Most people in fact have periods of introversion and extroversion, and surely modes of attention are not fixed or static in people either.
I talked briefly with a psychiatrist about this - to be clinically diagnosed with ADHD (in his clinic anyhow...) it has to be severe enough to be a major detriment to your life, basically. To quote DSM-5
> There is clear evidence that the symptoms interfere with or reduce the quality of social, academic, or occupational functioning.
How would you define a disability? What criteria must be met?
Looking back in my life, I've built sophisticated TODO list and second brain systems to help me manage. Now it's obvious that it's because my working memory is poor because of my neurodivergency. Omnifocus (for GTD) and Obsidian (to be an extension of my brain) are my goto for leveraging my ADHD superpower.
If you're looking for a community to learn more for yourself or for someone else: reddit.com/r/adhd is a great place to start.
Thanks for this playlist. The part describing time blindness and intention deficit hit me on the head. The lack of accountability truly is one of my worst enemies. If I have a task that doesn't have immediate accountability I will not perform it as soon as I should. Looks like I finally found my issue and I can start working on it. You changed my life with just a hyperlink.
originalvichy - You made my week. I hope you find a doc that can support you in this. Don't hesitate to each out to me (email in profile) if you need a sounding board.
If I may suggest, check your magnesium blood levels (and your daughter's).
Magnesium deficiency is also associated with symptoms similar to ADHD. Even for people who really have ADHD, several studies show that magnesium supplementation greatly improves many issues.
Magnesium helps a bit, but sugar in my experience is ADHD in powder form. The least carbs I eat, the better my brain functions. On a complete carnivore (i.e. zero carb) diet experiment, after the initial adaptation, my focus and motivation is increased 10-fold. But then I get bored, I cheat and I go into a deep unmotivated funk for a week.
It makes sense, as ADHD is mostly a dopamine-system imbalance, and carbs tend to increase the levels of tryptophan (serotonin), while proteins increase tyrosine (dopamine). The higher the levels of one, the lower the levels of the other. I'm a layman, this is my pet theory, but there's definitely not enough focus on the dietary aspect of mental health in my opinion.
I have ADHD and feel very lucky to find programming so fun/interesting/engaging — if I didn’t love the job I wouldn’t be able to do it.
I have about equal problems with under focus in areas outside programming like project management compared to problems with hyper focus when programming. I often end up so focused when programming that I won’t notice people talking to me until they wave a hand in front of my face. I really like Tandem (free app) for a single feature: it will auto-join Zoom meetings on your calendar, and it pops up a BIG bar at the top of your screen about 2 minutes before that slowly counts down. It’s about the only thing I’ve found that gets me into a meeting on the dot instead of 1-2 minutes late.
To deal with project management shenanigans like tasking, backlog grooming, prioritization on projects I run, I find it really helpful to “force the issue” by doing a quick 15 minute collaborate re-prioritization session with my project group before any bigger whole team meetings. That’s been a lightweight way to “partner with more organized teammates” without someone turning into my perpetual minder. This is an area where medication helps me too; I really needed medication to get through most of college, but didn’t need it at all to advance from newgrad to senior at Airbnb. As the scope of my work continues to expand and project management becomes a larger part of my role, I’m resuming that part of my treatment.
The other killer tool for me has been Notion (disclaimer: I decided to work at Notion after realizing how much it helped me). I used to “lose” a lot more work items when I needed to track them in JIRA; often I gave up waiting for it to load or struggling with the IT department locking down things like bulk changing issues. Being able to write up issues, brainstorm them, and then make fine grained checklists all in one place works a lot better for me then juggling JIRA and Confluence. The same goes for personal life tasks like tracking a job search, shopping for furniture, or indexing home contractors.
I suspect I have adhd and am getting tested in late jan. One key thing I’ve noticed is that if I like something, I can stay attentive, with breaks, for 10+hours at a time. When I hate something, it’s difficult to even sit for an hour. Is this in line with your experiences?
The thing that really clicked for me and lead to me getting my own diagnosis was this: a lot of the way in which we talk about ADHD is from the perspective of those around the person, rather than the person itself. I never really identified with the typical way ADHD is talked about. Attention deficit? I don't have an attention deficit, I can pay way too much attention, and often am, at the wrong thing, and cannot redirect it to what is actually important. Same thing, but two different perspectives. It may seem like I can't focus to an outside observer, but that's not how I experience it at all.
> a lot of the way in which we talk about ADHD is from the perspective of those around the person, rather than the person itself.
This is something that I've been very frustrated with recently, because it's really spot on. A lot of that is because it's a neurodevelopmental disorder, so most people that identify it are parents/teachers/caretakers doing so in children. And so the material is targeted at them.
I feel like it's only been relatively recently that there's becoming more resources available aimed at the people that have it. The disconnect between the experience of those behaviors and how those behaviors may be perceived is...quite large.
re: attention deficit -- it's a horrible term because as you note, there's not always a deficit. The real issue behind it is that there's an inability to regulate attention...so if the brain wants to engage with something, that's what it's doing. likewise if the brain doesn't see any value in something...it'll go to great lengths to avoid it like the boring plague that it is.
Focusing on things you like and procrastinating or finding distractions from things you don't isn't itself adhd. It's that, taken to an extreme that impacts your ability to function socially and/or professionally, along with a full awareness of it and an inability to adjust. There are other behaviors, which all taken together are what determine a diagnosis.
Nail on the head for ADHD hyperfocus. Studying for exams in university I could easily go for 10 straight hours, forgetting to eat in the interim, if I found the course enjoyable.
I thought I'd love Notion at first in my new company after several years and several companies all using Confluence and Jira. But I miss Confluence, Jira less. I've encountered a common sentiment that Notion doesn't scale well because of it's lack of ridge structure and document/page hierarchy.
If you have ADHD are you any kind of protected class? AFAIK the answer is no (regardless of what the answer _should_ be), so as long as this is the case I'm not divulging s.h.i.t!
me: I guess technically I have a disability
imaginary boss: oh yeah is it one of <list of job-protected disabilities>
me: no
imaginary boss: well what are the impacts to your job?
me: cant focus or complete tasks as good as my peers who dont have it
imaginary boss: should be no problemo at all. especially when i'm in the big stack-ranking-by-another-name meeting later this year
The ADA includes ADHD as a recognized disability. For an employee who has ADHD, the act can require the employer to provide reasonable accommodations, as long as it doesn’t create undue hardship for the business.
Not everyone who has ADHD is a “qualified individual” according to the ADA, says Nancy O’Mara Ezold, an employment lawyer and partner in the Philadelphia-based Ezold Law Firm.
Not noticing/caring about other people's feelings might be some kind of autism-spectrum disorder comorbidity (from what I understand, ADD/ADHD and autism spectrum disorder occur together pretty frequently[0])
Not a psychiatrist, just wanted to mention it as something you might consider, that you or other people reading this might not be aware of.
In my experience, it's not that you don't understand or can't comprehend how other people are feeling: it's that you just miss it a lot of times, because you're not paying attention.
We can understand how people feel, but it's usually not something that pops into our heads, because we're distracted/occupied with something else.
In cases when we're not (rare, and as assholish as it is), we can care about and work with other people's emotions.
Agreed, what we have is often simply dismissed as selfishness or self-centeredness. It’s hard to keep tabs on others’ emotional state when there is so much going on upstairs all the damn time.
I think people tend to get too attached to the medical taxonomy which has some clear problems.
In my case I think the rationalization of emotions and the dismissal of irrational emotions is a coping mechanism that was brought about by hypersensitivity. Later on I had brain inflammation (CFS/ME) which inhibits emotional response as well a a host of other hormones. I now have effective medication, but I’d still rather not deal with other people’s feelings.
What a surprise that within my lifetime, having a short attention span has gone from a personal failing to a condition, to finally conferring the status of a protected class. This should really help equitably distribute jobs like, you know, maintaining nuclear power plants and putting people into space, that previously required concentration and focus that some people just weren't born with. /s
People have difficulty regulating all sorts of things. Personally struggling with addiction or depression or attachment issues or trauma or physical pain or attention span is foundational to the human experience. You'd be wildly abnormal if you didn't have to deal with at least one of these things to get through the day. And sometimes pharmaceutical intervention can help. I just think the wild over diagnosis and medication of what is essentially a personal struggle that's completely normal (what else can we call something that a third of the population has?) encourages the pathologization of normal human functioning at the same time as it creates victim mentality and removes responsibility and agency from individuals. For the express purpose of putting agency in the hands of psychiatric experts. We're all apparently sick except for them.
There’s such a large difference between normal human functioning, which can include struggles, and a condition where those struggles are a problem to the point where they require a psychologist to help.
For example, everyone feels anxious at points but not everyone has anxiety. I’ve been very anxious at times in my life, such around major assignments when I was in school. However these struggles were appropriate given my situation and I was able to get back to my normal life pretty quickly. In contrast, my father was absolutely non-functional for most of my childhood. He literally would not make phone calls because he was so anxious to talk to people. He had no friends, the only people he ever talked to outside of minimal interactions at work were myself, my mother, and his own parents. Medication and therapy turned that around real quick. I’m just a year he was totally normal, had started making friends and going outside of the house to run errands.
There are probably people who are getting therapy and accommodations for ADHD when they don’t need them. But is that really so bad? Why shouldn’t people, even if they don’t have a disorder, get therapy and accommodations to help them succeed?
Overmedication is a different issue, and definitely a real one. But that’s on doctors and drug companies - it doesn’t negate the reality that some people have disorders which need medications, therapy, and accommodations.
I think from personal experience I have a high degree of confidence that ADHD is real. I have a couple friends with ADHD and it is obvious their attention works in a different way - they are sometimes totally engrossed in something, so much so that it’s almost impossible to get them to think about anything else, while other times they are easily distracted. I have other friends who seem normal to me but who say they have benefited from therapy for ADHD, and I don’t see any problem with that. I have observed both of these categories of people taking responsibility for their lives and working to improve themselves, often with the help of therapy but not without their own agency.
I'm looking back on this thread and I really don't see what prompted you to go off on this rant. Which, while not like unhinged or anything, I just don't think is appropriate for the conversation that was taking place, or this audience.
I'm stuck here because what I genuinely want to say is something like "this sounds like a conversation to have with your therapist" which is truly what I believe. But that seems unlikely for obvious reasons, and it's easy to read it as a joke.
Anyway, it's not! This sounds like something you should explore with a focused, knowledgable third party that is invested in taking seriously why you feel so strongly about it. They have paid professionals for that but maybe a friend or a priest or something would work too.
Because I would easily classify as having ADHD, CPTSD and various addictions. I've done years of therapy to make myself not feel like these things are my fault, and I still consider them personal flaws and I don't want to be medicated or treated with kid gloves or stand on anything other than my own ability to hold my own shit together, hard as that sometimes is. I know that's not an acceptable view in AA or psychotherapy, or maybe to the audience here, but if you're asking what prompts me to be defensive about treating such things as handicaps rather than obstacles, there you have it.
Seriously, I hope you don't really believe that you have to do everything on your own. Getting help with things is okay too. It might even help you get to the point where you can hold your own shit together sooner.
> Personally struggling with addiction or depression or attachment issues or trauma or physical pain or attention span is foundational to the human experience
And when they're chronic and severely life impacting, all of those things are disabilities. With medical interventions.
> You'd be wildly abnormal if you didn't have to deal with at least one of these things to get through the day.
You're correct. However the disorders don't describe people that experience them chronically and more severely than the rest of the population.
> I just think the wild over diagnosis and medication of what is essentially a personal struggle that's completely normal
Citation?
>what else can we call something that a third of the population has?
Again, citation? My understanding is that it's much closer to 5%.
> encourages the pathologization of normal human functioning at the same time as it creates victim mentality and removes responsibility and agency from individuals
oh man, I wish it removed any responsibility. Nope. Still gotta make sure my taxes get paid on time or else get thousands of dollars in fees. I know because I've neglected to do so before until the IRS was threatening to garnish my wages. Twice.
> it creates victim mentality
No, it creates an environment that we have a better chance of succeeding in, and helps combat the narrative that we're just failures.
The misunderstanding that these conditions are medical realities is why they have to be protected classes. Clinical addiction, depression and PTSD are also considered disabilities under the ADA depending on context.
I was introduced to all of these techniques at some point throughout my childhood and pre-mid-20s life. None of them really helped me. Prescription amphetamines did, though.
It kind of sucks feeling dependent on them to do uninteresting tasks and make it through the less-interesting workdays, but it sure beats being a 25-year-old NEET.
Fortunately, as software engineers, we have the privilege of being able to be choosy about our jobs. Which means I can find a new job or team as soon as things stop being fun.
I sometimes wonder if I would be capable of doing anything but programming work without completely hating my life. I'd probably be using my prescription every day at that point, instead of 3-4 times a week.
Same here, I've noticed about 18 months or so in I get bored of every gig I've had an because of that have jumped every 2 or 3 years.
It has helped in some ones as I've got a lot of exposure but as I get older I'm starting to worry about how sustainable it is, and if I am just doomed to a life of pushing myself through a lot of things with medication.
I thought I could manage my symptoms, and this was mostly successful, especially at work. That all broke when we had our first child. Routine instantly gone, and every time I got used to a new one, our child grew and changed. "How could you forget to feed/change/etc your own child?" would be my wife's exasperated response. But I started taking more notes and setting more reminders and things were getting better. Then we had twins.
I have a problem of inefficiently over-working. I don't get enough done during the day, so I then pressure myself to keep working to "get something done". Anybody have a coping mechanism for that?
When I was in the office I would try to "work hard until lunch", then break, then "work hard until 5", and then go to an after-work class, so I was forced into time boxes. That hasn't worked out so well remotely.
Being remote makes it 100x harder to block out time to work. Obviously everyone is different, but here’s what helps me:
- make a to-do list on paper and keeping it visible
- set phone in a different room or have it run out of battery so you won’t be distracted (assuming you don’t need it)
- set a timer and try to complete x amount of tasks before it ends
Crossing tasks off on paper is more rewarding than on an app. If you find yourself unable to start a task, restart the timer and pick a different one - It’s better to get something done.
Also, remember that it may be better to get sleep than to stay up all night catching up. No point in doing all of that if you’ll be unable to work effectively the next day.
YMMV but I’ve always found it easier to start work early, like 7am (where others roll in at 9:30). I found nobody really bothered me until stand up at 10:30, which was a decent chunk of time.
second this. Time without other people's stuff in your stuff is invaluable.
I would add that pomodoros can be really good for tracking how much you've gotten done, and then being able to walk away after a certain amount of time has been spent being productive.
You may be getting more done than you realize - one of the factors of add is that once a task is complete, it flies the cognitive coop. I have this problem in spades.
Also, it may be helpful to realize that if you're working on code, some of the work is finding the solution. Even if you don't have a scrap of working code to show for it, having done some work to find out what doesn't work or just reading documentation is productive work.
Beware that imposter syndrome, it's a real doozie.
Work more by working less, work faster by slowing down. You end up neglecting important things that help you work faster and better by trying to make up for not having gotten enough done or well enough, etc. Don’t skip preparation steps that help you get things done better and remove frustrations. Recognize when you’re “done” being productive for the day and just accept it.
Learn how rushing and working too long are counterproductive and think about things that are impediments to getting stuff done and try to make them better.
Don’t have adhd that I know of but always find myself strangely relating to descriptions of it.
The timeboxes you describe have worked best for me. I put them on my calendar and have the computer go “ping” when it’s time. And there’s always a workout scheduled after work that forces me to stop.
Seems to work well if not better remotely because there’s fewer external distractions to disrupt my timeboxes.
The problem with working late is that it just steals energy from tomorrow. Best to say “Fuck it didn’t get anything done today” and try again.
For me, ADHD is a lot about procrastination, which is basically fear of uncomfortable work forcing me to do something else. I will reflexively open a new tab on my browser and auto-complete some distracting website (hello, HN!) 20 times a day. I have about a billion half-finished projects lying around the house. I finally finished some gifts for a friend recently after fiddling with them for over 2 years.
I was diagnosed with ADHD/ADD relatively late (about 17). Before the diagnoses I’d tried planners, digital reminders, Pomodoro timers… but the only thing that’s consistently worked is medication. It’s hard to overstate just how much Adderall has improved my life and I’m positive I have a much happier life and higher income because of my altered ability to delay gratification and do long, boring tasks without issue. Highly recommend speaking to a doctor if you think you could benefit.
That might not be that late. I finally got diagnosed at 41, and my psych said adult ADHD being diagnosed so late is surprisingly common.
In retrospect, it's obvious I've struggled with it for most of my adult life, but I learned to cope. Usually by self-medicating. Like you, Adderall seems like a winner.
Heck, some places and/or doctors still think that it's solely something for children, and adults can't even have it, and so flat-out refuse to diagnose adults. Thankfully this is changing.
What kind of doctor do you go to with this? I’ve never gone to anyone other than my primary care doctor and the spectrum of titles mental health professionals have makes it all very confusing to me.
What's pretty brutal is that the heathcare system is basically set up to just destroy folks with ADHD, or at least, I should say, that has been my experience, and it seems to be shared. Personally, after almost a year of trying, on the recommendation of a friend, I talked with https://www.donefirst.com/, and then after that also talked to my (new, for unrelated reasons) PCP.
I originally went to see a normal therapist because of some issues I was having; ADHD wasn't even on my radar. She's the one who first pointed me at the issue, and I didn't even believe her at first! Once I read up on ADHD and realized that other people's descriptions matched my experience perfectly, I just Googled for an ADHD specialist near where I live; the first one didn't return my call, but I managed to set up an initial evaluation appointment with the second one. This was out-of-network and a bit expensive, but totally worth it; I would have probably given up before finding somebody available in-network.
Once I had my initial diagnosis, the ADHD specialist pointed me at a bunch of resources. Learning more about ADHD made a massive difference right away—just reading other people's experiences helped clear some painful guilt and cognitive dissonance. He also referred me to a psychiatrist in case I wanted to try medication; I wasn't sure at first, but after doing a bunch of reading, decided to give it a go. The combination of learning, building new skills/habits and medication ended up making a massive change to my life, a lot more than I expected.
From what I've heard, people have very mixed experiences around ADHD with their primary care doctors or even general mental health specialists; I expect that finding somebody who actively specializes in ADHD can help avoid some of these. Going out-of-network was expensive (maybe $1500 or $2000 for initial consultations + follow-up appointments in the first year), but it made such a change that I'm sure it was a major win even in purely financial terms.
Primary care docs should be able to walk with you on this. After pushing my doc a little bit, he gave me a questionnaire to complete and two weeks later I was starting different medications. There are all kinds of storied on reddit.com/r/adhd of people having issues with their doc. A psychiatrist would have a deeper expertise in managing ADHD if you can get access to one.
Like AJayWalker said, bring it up with your PCP. Just say: I think I may have AD(H)D, can you give me some recommendations of who to talk to? My PCP had a few, and I had to call around, because some weren't taking new patients. Some PCPs will treat it directly, but many won't. You're better off going to a place that deals with that and other psych issues frequently.
I was lucky to have a teacher refer me to a mental health clinic, where a Licensed Mental Health Counselor was the one to write my prescriptions, rather than a doctor. That may be a good place to start. Otherwise you could bring it up with your primary care provider perhaps.
About two years ago, I read a comment on here about the signs that you might have ADHD. I already knew that I had ADHD — I’d been diagnosed and treated in my late teens. However, the medication had done a number on me and after a year or so I’d dropped it completely.
I’m in my thirties now, and was stuck at home during lockdown with my then pregnant wife. I’m a working developer, but I knew my work was inconsistent. I blamed myself, and had mostly forgotten the diagnosis. Living and working in the same house as me had made my wife begin to notice just how much ADHD affected me day to day, and was starting to become frustrated with it.
Immediately after reading the comment on here, I created a doctors appointment. I ended up going back on Adderall, but when discussing dosage I asked for the lowest dose possible. 5mg. My doctor told me it was a child’s dose (not in a mean or demeaning way,) and was happy to start me there.
I’m still at 5mg. It hasn’t made living with me the easiest, for sure. But according to my wife it’s been a huge improvement. I’m so much more focused and capable. I really cannot overstate the improvement at home. My wife is less nervous about distractions and issues related to having a newborn being taken care of by a wife with ADHD.
Of course, it’s helped at work as well. I’ve been more productive than I previously thought possible. I’ve also just learned so much more and read so much more. Earlier this year, I ended up realizing that I’d like to try interviewing for the first time in years. Within a month, I’d doubled my salary. That last part is probably the least reproducible thing. But I do think I was essentially accepting a salary level I could live with because I knew I was an inconsistent employee and my employer was letting it slide.
Obviously, everyone’s body and mind are different. This isn’t meant as an unreserved ad for ADHD medication. Living with someone who could give me her perspective I’m really helped — I probably wouldn’t have stuck with it had she not been able to articulate a marked improvement within a few weeks.
Still, this single recommendation to go to the doctor and talk about ADHD was the single biggest life improvement me or my family could have ever received.
Man, does that ever resonate. I had years of just beating myself up over not being good enough before I caved and went back on my meds, and since then I have come to believe that the combination of the kinds of lateral thinking and hyperfocus that are endemic to add, with the crutch of adderall, actually grant me significant advantages that neurotypical types lack. My .emacs is my pride and joy and it does most of my work for me.
If being on adderall is a little new to you, and you're on such a low dose, might I recommend supplementing with chelated magnesium and agmatine sulfate. These are vitamins that (somehow - I knew for a little while how when I was researching them but tbh that knowledge has flown the coop since) will suppress the development of a tolerance, if taken daily alongside the adderall. One of the pitfalls of being medicated with this stuff is that you're kind of on a steady uphill slope that eventually, if you get to where I am (15mg x 3 / day) means that when you need to take a break, you become more or less an obnoxious vegetable. Don't freak out - it's a looong slope (and probably not as dire an outcome as I may have made it sound), but you can make it longer with these to help mitigate, and you'll be thanking yourself for avoiding hard crashes.
There are probably completely different “problems” in the brain whose results are all classified as ADHD. Some people with are “inattentive” ADD, others are “hyper-attentive” ADHD.
There are also various levels of ADHD. I think everyone has some level of “ADHD”: everyone can understand having trouble starting tasks or forgetting things. These are the symptoms of ADHD. But people diagnosed have them much more severe (sometimes to a flat-out “how?” extent). Some people with ADHD can get by with mental techniques and planners, others really need medication.
e.g. having trouble getting up (normal) vs spending hours in bed not realizing any time passed (ADD). Not being able to focus for long (normal) vs losing focus literally every 5 seconds and getting distracted by anything (ADHD).
I discovered in my 30s that I have ADHD. In reading this Im surprised at how many of these techniques I discovered out of trial, error, and necessity.
Most are great like headphones, writing things down, blocking out distractions, but the long boring task one fascinates me. For me it actually helps to turn on some video series I’m mildly interested in while doing that long boring task. In-office was so much harder because I could never try having Netflix open.
I’m a professor now and allow students particular freedoms along these lines, like wearing headphones or skipping lecture for the recorded one. I recently had a student who was able to participate more and keep up with the lecture much better by looking down and slowly maintaining a game on his phone.
> I’m a professor now and allow students particular freedoms along these lines, like wearing headphones or skipping lecture for the recorded one. I recently had a student who was able to participate more and keep up with the lecture much better by looking down and slowly maintaining a game on his phone.
Man, I do the same thing. Zoom meetings have been great for this because I can do that to help me pay attention while still looking like I'm paying attention for the other person on the call. It's funny because it first almost felt like deception, but really it's the opposite: I'm paying more attention than if I weren't doing anything else and worrying about my body language instead...
I wish I had had you as a professor. Such a struggle to work around notions of "what normal folks should be able to do".
The worst of it was, when I would go to rectify things that got done late or needed extra work, it was all "yeah sure, here's this thing you can do and these deadlines and you'll need to schedule time with me to review during this weird window of time and make sure to fill out these other forms". All of a sudden my late work consists of new scheduling, bureaucracy, and extra deadlines. Throws hands in air
I have ADHD, and this is why i absolutely hate open-floor offices. I can't get anything done if there are people around me. I am next to worthless. Even if i put on headphones with really loud white noise, i can't help but be distracted by anything that happens.
Also, i didn't know to call my problem ADHD for a long time. So, employees or employers first need to recognize there is a problem with ADHD, then they absolutely need to do what the article says and let someone have a private office if they need to come in or work from home.
I’ve been diagnosed with ADHD (inattentive subtype) and I’m not sure how well understood the professionals have of this thing. While I had problems focusing on uninteresting things (school, SAT tests, even my own code when I didn’t 100% believe in it), I’ve mostly managed to remove this problem by only working on interesting things (dropping out of college, starting a company, being the shot caller, etc). But then if this is the solution can we really call it a disorder?
I am farther along that spectrum than you, and can't even get myself to get through (or started on) projects that I'm excited about most of the time.
And that's what makes it a disorder. The threshold may be vague, but it's not something we can just rule out as inconvenient but manageable under ideal circumstances.
Well they gave me pills and I'm a little worried about how liberally they hand out ADHD medicine because I know people who have become addicted or dependent on it to function. The psychologist neither put me on a spectrum (it was just a binary diagnosis) nor did anything more than the IQ test + questionnaire combo for the diagnosis. I also know people who went and paid the money to get the diagnosis just to get the drugs so they could study harder (maybe they were actually on the spectrum too but it didn't seem like it).
I don't doubt you when you say you have it worse and that it's a disorder, but I don't think the professionals have their shit together for this either. If I had taken the drugs I'd probably be stuck leading a normal life, addicted to Adderal, or worse not on medication and failing to achieve any goals. In either case for me personally the doctors didn't have the answer.
I could find you a dozen stories of people with severe ADHD who were denied medication, and a dozen more who had to jump through ridiculous hoops to fill their prescriptions.
Taking a prescribed dosage with the intent to improve your life very rarely leads to addiction.
Medication is only one half of the solution. The other half is cognitive behavioral therapy.
Using both together has been shown by peer reviewed studies to be very effective for most patients.
> But then if this is the solution can we really call it a disorder?
What's called a "disorder" is in the eye of the beholder. Disorders are defined relative to the norm, based on whether they cause difficulties to the person or not. I'm lucky to be interested and skilled in IT where there's a huge over-representation of ADHD and ASD people I can get along with, where my needs are mostly already accommodated for; but I'm well aware that should I choose a different field of work to pursue a career in I'd very likely have a very bad time.
So, imagine a world where the proportions are inverted. There would be majority of people we currently call neurodivergent and some minority of people we currently call neurotypical. In such world, it would be that minority that would struggle with jobs, schools, shopping centers, governmental offices that aren't accommodated to how they process and react to the world around. It would be them who have a "disorder".
In a world that doesn't ask me to do things I have difficulty with, I'd have no "disorder" at all. Some of us are lucky enough to have arranged their lifes in a way that minimizes these situations, but others did not have such luck.
My god... checklists, templates, and instructions should not be ADHD accommodations. These should just be good general business practices afforded to every employee.
I've been asking for this type of stuff and consistent work (not full stack in multiple stacks/languages for 8+ apps), and it's like the people in power just don't care.
It can be true that something is useful for all, but especially useful for some. This is a common theme in disability accommodations; they often are useful/helpful for abled people too.
I think they are more than just useful. I think the reproducibility, regulatory, and continuity aspects of having documented instructions, templates, and checklists are vital to a business.
Does anybody have advice for dealing with oncall (for all the software people out there)? My issues are light as they go, and I’m pretty productive for things with timeframes longer than a week, but managing a ticket queue is just brutal, and basically impossible once I end up with pager-induced sleep deprivation. Long-term I think I just need a job that doesn’t involve a lot of ticket management, but switching isn’t an option at the moment, and I need to find something to reduce the amount of slack other people have to pick up.
Oncall shifts shouldn't be so burdensome, even for neurotypical people. That sounds like a real systemic problem. What is happening that regularly requires all the emergency tickets?
I agree with sibling comment, the environment sounds bad. If you need to chat with someone about it let me know, I'm happy to talk through things.
Unrelated, I actually love oncall work. If I get woken for something pointlessly, I fix it immediately. I'm a night person by nature, so staying up until 3am fixing a but and the sleeping during the day feels great. It's a constant stream of shiny things to chase and fix.
This is an excellent guide. Some thoughts on ADHD as a social phenomenon:
I’ve seen more comments on HN recently about the disorder, and people sharing their experiences. I personally believe that it’s more commonplace than seen, and my personal theory is that maybe many people have it on the lower end of the spectrum, and thus are high functioning.
But I’m also wondering that if the characteristic symptoms of ADHD also exist beyond the neurological condition and maybe people who have other disorders might also experience ADHD symptoms and thus self-diagnose it?
In my own limited experience, the common diagnostic process seems awfully lax, while the rigorous version takes hours and costs thousands to undertake. So could there also be a lot of people being misdiagnosed?
I’m also wondering if it’s possible to manifest ADHD symptoms or even start thinking like someone with it, due to the environmental factors of modern life, specifically continuous attention-diverting digital lifestyles.
Finally, for whatever reason ADHD is currently the internet condition en vogue, much like self-diagnosing Asperger’s was in the 2000s and identifying as an introvert was a few years ago, see this recent tweet skewering a fatuous graphic attributing a common non-ADHD related issue to ADHD:
A core part of ADHD diagnosis is if the patterns have been present since you were a kid.
It also requires there be a struggle or problem with the patterns that cause issues with normal living and functioning.
The industry in general (well, the part of it HN folks have tended to be from), is maturing and that can bring folks to have to seriously face these issues. It isn’t as new and shiny as it once was. Also, stress from the pandemic and burnout and very non-ADHD friendly circumstances have been turning the screws and making it significantly more painful - which also highlights it.
Severe ADHD. Best solution I had was tons of pair programming. A buddy helps so much for keeping me on task.
Medication was amazing, but it causes severe Nerve pain. So gave it up.
Making someone with ADHD inhabit an open plan office is cruel and unusual punishment. Hell, it is so for any knowledge work without ADHD. That has been known ever since the Peopleware book came out so many years ago. Let these folks work at home.
I've got ADHD and actually found the opposite for me. Work from home was disastrous because there are so many potential distractions at home, and little accountability. I would see some dust and go get a broom to sweep, or go brush my teeth in case I forgot, or get food, or take "just five minutes" (soon 30) to check social media, or decide I need to make my bed. Any frustration or roadblock meant I would find something to derail me, and this all contributed to depression that made it even harder to focus on work.
Going back to the office was a huge boon for me, even before starting medication. I'm currently the only person on my team working 100% from office, and I would walk barefoot over broken glass to my open plan office before I would ever willing return to working from home.
I'm not sure if you've got ADHD; I know there's a lot of variation in personal experience. I've heard similar sentiments from multiple people with ADHD regarding working from home, although I think I'm a bit of a freak for tolerating open plan offices well.
What to do when when the ADHD procrastination issue leads to something being neglected? I've had this with both a roommate, and coworker. When reminded it's genuine embarrassment and apology. But then the problem doesn't get fixed. And repeat. I know it's not intentional. I just want to be able to use the sink. I never really knew how to handle that conversation.
Try offering to help. No, it's not your responsibility. But if it's something you want done, and the other person is struggling with it (they are, you're just not seeing that part), then help can go a long way. Even just company.
It'll also help build your relationship with that person, and they'll most likely want to repay the favor in the future when you could use a hand.
I recently heard about OCPD, Obsessive–compulsive personality disorder [1].
I strongly believe, that someone I know very well falls into that category. There are a lot of habits which align. like the need for lists, strong moral compass, unability to accept the approach of others, micromanagement. But also disorganisation in some aspects of life.
That person also went to lots of different therapies in life but mainly to treat other aspects, like depression and self-doubt. And nobody ever diagnosed OCPD or ADHD. But the person himself thinks that it could very much be ADHD.
The thing is, how do you correctly diagnose ADHD? How can you be sure? What's the most significant trait? Is it a problem if someone gets treated (and medicated) with diagnosed ADHD without having it?
What really annoys me with ADHD is that it often paints a binary word with people who can focus and people who cannot. In reality it’s like everything else, it’s a spectrum.
I'm diagnosed. I think the underlying nutrition/chemical baselines of individuals need to be studied. It makes no sense to lump all these symptoms under one label. I guess that's just the state of psychiatry though... Could some model of the brain be made for machine learning tools to play with?
Also, does it matter? People are all different. The only thing that puts importance on these arbitrary differentiators is if you can integrate with the arbitrary rules that we created
I think it matters in terms of treatment plans. Sinus issues can cause ADHD symptoms. Nutrient deficiencies can cause them. Brain damage. Immune problems. And so on.
If we were better able to uncover what helps move people toward their preferred homeostatic state, it would reduce a lot of suffering. As it is, we spray and pray, shotgun blasting people's brains with amphetamines, bupropion, methylphenidate...
What I imagine is a spreadsheet with all of the values we uncover that affect an individual's state of mind. I guess that would be a simulation of human physiology and I'm curious if that's being worked on at all...
The guide is only good for people who have received a diagnosis or are aware of their own behaviour. For the folks who don't aware of their own ADHD behaviour, they think it's completely normal to interrupt, to feel restless, to blame the job to be so boring, to plan for the immediate need instead of long term etc
A close family member exhibit the ADHD behaviour. Growing up, I thought that the normal adults are all restless talk over other people and only think short term. I unconsciously mimic the behaviour. The traits really hurt me during my early career because the traits come across as non-professional and blunt to others. I've since identified those traits and fixed my own behaviour. I've since advanced my career and increased my income quite a bit.
I brought up the topic with the family member and was interrupted.
Stigma is the biggest problem with conservative managers and business owners deciding people working in the most productive and less stressful way to them makes them a "snowflake", or not management material, or less-than.
I have so much energy but can only funnel it into things I’m passionate about. Those small boring tasks pile up and cause problems for me, despite the fact that I can work on other things for hours on end.
But that's probably not ADHD. I can focus on boring stuff for hours, so I suppose I don't have ADHD. But I have boring tasks piling (in fact I introduced my team the concept of cancelling BS tickets so we just don't do what we think we'll never do instead of piling it forever), and I can work for hours on fun useless things that never turn productive: so I think that's not ADHD, and I think your comment is just every human ever.
The question is - do they pile up to the point they cause distress, sometimes crushing distress, because no matter what, no matter how important it is - until you feel panic, you can’t do it?
If they don’t really matter and meh, then that’s fine. But if they do matter, and no matter what you can’t do it? That is when it starts to become a problem.
If that sounds familiar, then you might want to get checked.
I agree that everyone has things they would rather do, but I wasn’t exactly talking about useless things. Difficult or boring tasks are super easy for me if I’m passionate about them. (Rebuilding my website, dealing with customers, etc)
I am by no means trying to generalize ADHD, just sharing my personal experiences.
I have ADHD (probably - I am diagnosed but don't fully trust the diagnosis testing). I think it makes me struggle more with general programming, but I thrive with creative engineering thinking: things like challenging the status quo, sharing motivational energy at the right time, and hyper focusing when I construct an environment to do so efficiently.
I think all of the accommodations listed would benefit a general workforce, and do not consider it a disability accommodations guide, but rather a best practice guide.
I'm painfully ADHD. Extreme. But I have slowly realized that what was actually hurting me is the belief that there is a way to "waste time" ... when I actually relax then I take pretty good care of myself and my surroundings. Of course the modern world is not exactly a place where people relax so I doubt many have realized this. For me yoga is an absolute blessing, I stay away from all amphetamines (never drank coffee) although I did try it a couple of times so I know how it works and I'm glad I don't do it to meet deadlines or further "my career".
Anyway, although I can never predict what I will do or how much I will get done it seems that I am steadily accomplishing more as I learn to relax. Accepting some of my bad habits has made them easier to manage and hopefully let go of eventually and engineering my environment so that I make smaller circles when I'm trying to avoid things has also helped. Most of all though I think what allows me to relax is that I have obtained a sufficient level of skill to survive and I am curious to learn more, even though I am a NDTM I am still converging, all the DTMs are puzzled by my behaviour but I arrive in similar places nevertheless. My credentials / certifications don't necessarily match the things I know, which can be annoying. I wish the evaluation system was decoupled from the education system.
I believe philosophy is the most important tool to better your condition and computer science, scratch that, lisp! is an amazing gateway into philosophy... Evolving to extinction is not intelligence.
I think there is inherent tension in accommodating both people who need emotional understanding and people who have a physically hard time providing it.
I’m not sure it can be or should be resolved. My friends and I are mega nerds and high functioning ADHD. These are the people who I like to build things with. It seems as if we’ve accidentally set up a separatist enclave and It works for us. I think people should play to their strengths to make the most out of their individual situations.
> "Recording (on a tape recorder, or your smart phone) “notes-to-self” or meetings instead of taking copious notes at meetings"
I have ADHD. I was surprised to see this one. When I stopped typing and (only) recording meetings and started writing notes by hand, it forced me to pay attention and think through what I was writing. Research backs this up as well.
In fact, I rarely look back on my notes. The mental process in the moment of writing it down is far more important in my opinion.
I've organically done almost everything on this list to be productive. Either I've got severe ADHD (which I've suspected since I was young, but have not been diagnosed), or these techniques are valuable to anyone.
The tricky part - for most people they would be helpful.
If you struggle to function as a ‘normal’ adult without them? Or spend a truly inordinate amount of time and effort compared to your peers doing them just trying to get to the point you're somewhat ‘normal’? That is more than likely ADHD (or something else, but a problem)
I failed courses in college due to inability to focus. Can't hear what someone is saying directly to me because I'm obsessed with minutiae. Have definitely struggled all my life trying to pay attention and do things. So yeah probably ADHD, but no point in getting it diagnosed now. Almost 50, and have figured out how to be very productive and happy at this point.
> Can't hear what someone is saying directly to me because I'm obsessed with minutiae.
This was something I had no idea was a symptom of ADHD before I got diagnosed. It was extremely distressing to experience. I'd be sitting next to my partner, no other noises distracting me, no phone dividing my attention, etc, and I'd know they were talking to me and that I wanted to hear what they say and I'd recognize that I was hearing syllables just fine but was entirely unable to process the sounds I was hearing.
I finally got diagnosed and started taking drugs (Vyvanse, which is a slow release drug that's apparently mellower than Adderall). They've been extremely helpful to get me to a baseline where I could actually start work to improve things for myself.
If it's not distressing, then it's not a problem. Many folks have figured out ways to cope - adjustments to environment, routines that help them, etc. So congrats on surviving it. :)
COVID has definitely shaken a lot of that up, and I've known several people who had to really sit down and figure it out recently.
I've known people at 60+ that got finally checked though, and it was immense just figuring out what had been going on. So don't necessarily write it off just because of age.
It probably is, but if you have it under control then it's not really disabling, is it? Good job getting there. You're just old enough that you likely had to manage without the social resources to assist, and that's no small thing.
The other side of that however is, if someone is doing fine, is it worth the risk that comes with changing things and potentially causing other problems?
I once had a partner with very, very bad ADHD. So bad it seemed to be causing us huge life issues, due to a recent change in circumstances.
She went in, got tested - sure enough - got medication, and it helped.
It also helped her run both of us ‘off a cliff’ in a really terrible way shortly after due to some deep seated psychological problems she had been hiding the entire time. She previously was never able to follow through with the terrible consequences of it because of ADHD - and that was a rather unpleasant experience.
The medication is great for being able to slow down and focus enough to accomplish what you set your mind to, but if there is another problem going on sometimes that just means you can cause yourself much deeper problems.
People are complex. I’d never urge someone to seek treatment for something that wasn’t causing them distress that outweighed the risks.
You don't "fix" a person. Mental health is not a binary.
Just because helping her with her ADHD didn't just flip a switch and "solve" her mental health doesn't mean it didn't help her.
The threshold for ADHD being a disorder is it causing distress in someone's life. Unfortunately, most of that distress tends to be invisible, so it's not something you can just decide as a third party without a lot of training and empathy.
If you want to reach your end goal of good mental health, you have to work on every problem that exists. Healing one aspect of mental health often has a positive domino effect, but that's not the case every time.
People are complex, and so is treatment. I would never urge someone to avoid treatment for something that is hard to solve, because health is worth the effort.
It unblocked something which very shortly caused massive massive problems - as in 9 major crimes in less than 6 months type problems, where before she got so nervous she couldn’t even speed. she’s lucky she didn’t get deported or thrown in jail for years. If she was a man, she definitely would have.
It’s easy to say it’s all good - and time will tell. But yikes.
That's really tragic, and I'm sorry that happened to the two of you. It sounds though like there were undiagnosed issues at hand - ADD won't really give someone anxiety about speeding (if anything, it will cause them to do it more, either from hyperfocus on the task of driving or by lack of focus on the speedo).
I know amphetamines can also nominally 'treat' things like depression and anxiety, by dumping reward chemicals into the brain (but, as it seems happened here, also exacerbate a latent set of bad behaviors). You really don't want to make someone who's afraid of the world / mad at the world / frustrated with the world more motivated, which is the essence of how a lot of ADD meds work.
That’s one of the great things about the ADA: Anna compaction can help almost anyone. Common examples are crash bars and ramps, but this is an example of another group of accommodations with wider scope.
I have wondered if I have had ADHD or not. I like the suggestions. I also feel that confronting and healing wounds, such as wounds related to being bullied growing up or having a difficult upbringing may be very helpful for relieving ADHD symptoms. Being blunt, for example, is a symptom of ADHD; it is also, I feel, a reaction against years of feeling unheard -- something I think that can be confronted and healed so that one learns how to express themselves healthfully and in a wholesome way, without feeling unheard, but also without being overly confrontational.
my favorite source on both ADHD and ADD is Dr. Gabor Maté. i've learned so much from both his free lectures on Youtube, as well as his book 'Scattered Minds'. the blurb on his website has some great points:
"Scattered Minds: The Origins and Healing of Attention Deficit Disorder – published in the U.S. as Scattered: How Attention Deficit Disorder Originates And What You Can Do About It – is written from the inside by a doctor who himself has Attention Deficit Disorder. It offers a completely new perspective on ADD and a new approach to helping children and adults living with the problems Attention Deficit Disorder presents.
- Demonstrates that ADD is not an inherited illness, but a reversible impairment, a developmental delay
Explains that in ADD, circuits in the brain whose job is emotional self-regulation and attention control fail to develop in infancy—and why
- Shows how “tuning out” and distractibility are the psychological products of life experience, from in utero onwards
- Allows parents to understand what makes their ADD children tick, and adults with ADD to gain insights into their emotions and behaviors
- Expresses optimism about neurological development even in adulthood
- Presents a program of how to promote this development in children and adults alike"
I’m skeptical of a random dude claiming to have found the source of all ADHD and that it can be universally unlearned. Seems pretty similar to the concept of homosexuality being considered a lifestyle choice.
All of this talk is making me kick myself internally for (un)successfully procrastinating actually filling out the survey to start the diagnosis process for ADHD. :)
It is almost cruel the extent to which the ADHD evaluation process for adults is structured. There are so many laborious steps and appointments and diagnostic procedures and so on. One is likely, by virtue of the ADHD, already struggling just to get through work and personal obligations already; adding on top an incredibly dull and complex multistep process, coloured as it is by an apparent moral panic about prescribing low grade amphetamines, is really not a fantastic standard of care.
Hey thanks to everyone for sharing your stories. In many i can reflect my own life. It rly helps to know people have the same struggle and are still kind of mastering themself through their journey. And that some of you are getting the recognition at work or are recognizing people with adhd and trying to integrate us.
As someone on the Autism spectrum, I tried some of that advice in a workplace where colleagues were repeatedly complaining about my behaviour.
While there were small improvements, it never felt like it really fixed the "problem". I think the only solution is to ensure you work with like-minded people.
As a millennial that lucked out of the psych-diagnostic phase of Western Upbringing (thanks Mom!), I don't know if I am autistic, ADHD, Bipolar, or any of it, but I can say this: ADHD is a power trait for understanding the modern world. You probably need to be ADHD in the future.
I agree. People who can sip from firehoses of information are going to be rewarded. I have a feeling that anything that requires long-chunks of attention has a high chance of being automatable.
My ability to skim read has worked wonders for my career. I can't sit and read an article or book from top to bottom, but I estimate I consume 10x as much information daily than the average person. It's a blessing and a curse.
I would like to be in a work environment where things make sense.
An environment where colleagues and managers don't make seemingly irrational decisions.
I get things done when I am left to get on with them.
I don't like it when I question tasks I am given, and it is interpreted as me not understanding it.
I understand it just fine. I'm baffled by the vague and inaccurate definitions of the tasks. I then question whether it is me missing something obvious, or them missing the essence of it.
It's not me. It's everyone else that has the issues.
The clinical evidence that it "exists" is an interpretation of common grouped symptoms... There can be no real proof that it exists or doesn't, because there is no underlying cause that can be tested for. The diagnosis is just a description of symptoms, like a cough and runny nose. It's possible that there is a 'cough and runny nose disorder' which simply causes these symptoms with no other reason, but it's far more likely that you just have a cold. For the purposes of treatment, it's convenient to call these issues, that are all treated together in the same way, ADHD. But there is no evidence that I'm aware of that shows this is anything other than a symptom of poor habits and upbringing, symptoms which could be permanently fixed through lifestyle changes.
Now, why do we think ADHD rates seem to correlate with lifelong access to the internet?
> The clinical evidence that it "exists" is an interpretation of common grouped symptoms... There can be no real proof that it exists or doesn't, because there is no underlying cause that can be tested for.
Incorrect. Here are 3 of many studies that show empirical evidence for physical differences in patients diagnosed with ADHD.
> Now, why do we think ADHD rates seem to correlate with lifelong access to the internet?
Because we are all connected constantly to a dopamine producing machine that exacerbates ADHD symptoms. You can't see how this correlation could simply be a correlation and not a cause?
You misunderstand me. Changes in the brain happen from all kinds of behaviors. Some harmful behaviors can change the brain, and then removing those behaviors will change it back. ADHD brain is an explanation of the symptoms, but it does not constitute a cause. People with similar anything in behavior will have similar brain scans in some way. It may very well be the case that bad behaviors modify the brain and cause ADHD symptoms. This does not mean it's a disorder, or needs medicinal treatment, any more than obesity is/does. You can treat obesity by stopping the behaviors that caused it, or exercising, even when obesity has physical changes to the body and brain. This means obesity is a problem, but not a disorder. It can be treated without chemical intervention, and it's not an intrinsic part of the person's life. I have seen no scientific argument why this is not also the case for ADHD. I believe the current treatment methods for ADHD are basically the equivalent of treating obesity with cholesterol medications; that is, it's treating a second order symptom.
IDK what I have exactly but it’s some combination of Aspergers and ADHD. I can mow through a lot of tasks and projects. When it comes to research or exploring some big problem domain, I can do that really well.
If people leave me alone and give me some wide berth to go complete some massive project I can do that fine. Better than fine. I can do projects that 15 people together can’t do, by myself.
I typically am able to develop an extremely accurate prediction of the future from the base technology up to the market.
However.
At this point in my life, it isn’t a matter of “if” I am going to get into severe interpersonal problems and fights with co-workers it is “when.”
What has helped me is to have a small group of friends who I use to improve my decision making quality. Left to my own devices, I misunderstand and misinterpret people and this leads to war in many cases.
I can’t read peoples intentions, I don’t understand peoples motivations, I can’t understand what “normal and expected behaviors” are.
Once I get pissed off at someone, I stay pissed off permanently. That person is “dead” to me. This is apparently typical of people with Aspergers.
My favorite analogy is this: “normal people have a wide variety of tools ranging from soft to hard in their toolbox. People with Aspergers open their toolbox and all they have is a hammer.”
That is exactly how I feel. Once I lose my composure, I only have a hammer to solve the problem.
This leads me to become highly paranoid. When people start annoying me or infringing on me, interfering with my ability to work on my own terms - I start building resentments.
I get along really well with older people who have calmed down. Mid career managers and I do not have a great track record.
My career has been a nightmare. A lot of great parts. The number one thing that protects me now is having a panel of advisors who have normal brains. Without these advisors, I am literally wandering blind through the land of the humans, unable to understand them.
On the surface I often look and act normal, underneath the hood I am a genius and a mess. Working in the modern workplace has been a nightmare. I have come to realize that people like me don’t get to “win” in corporate. Sooner or later, they figure out what I am (different) and it’s over. Highly discriminatory against people like me.
My idea of heaven now is not to be promoted, but to be left alone to pursue my interests where they align with the corporation.
I tend to have a very massive positive impact at companies where I work. My ideas, creativity, research and insights result in massive wins. But other people always get the credit, never need. I am so misunderstood, it’s my lot in life. I don’t expect to ever have my abilities respected, noticed or rewarded.
Not sure why you are getting down voted… your post was quite vulnerable.
There were a couple interesting tid bits in what you wrote, but I will refrain from arm chair diagnosis.
I am glad you have some supportive friends, we all need that. You might also consider seeking out professional support. Finding a good therapist is tough, but when you do, it can be life changing.
I agree with you overall, it was definitely a very "raw" and vulnerable post.
I wasn't one of the downvoters, but I think those "couple interesting tidbits" might be the reason for downvotes. People aren't comfortable reading someone's delusions of grandeur, even if they might be true. It is just off-putting to hear someone very confidently proclaim "under the hood I am a genius and a mess" and "my ideas, creativity, research and insights result in massive wins. But other people always get the credit". The post can easily be interpreted as a "oh woe poor me, I am a super productive genius who turns everything he touches into gold, but people like me never win the corporate game because the system is rigged" type of a humblebrag that is not being entirely truthful.
Again, even if it is actually the truth, it just leaves a sour taste. Probably because all of it seems like just shifting the blame onto everyone else and going on a rant that can be boiled down to "I am a misunderstood genius, but everyone else gets the credit every single time for every massive win I get for my company, because great winners like me just never get to win in corporate, the system is rigged".
This is quite out there and is something a lot of people with some heavy overestimation of their abilities say. Because to them it seems like they are "losing the corporate game" due to them somehow being discriminated against for their ingenuity and smarts, and not due to their actual lack of ability coupled with massive overconfidence in their ability. After all, as the famous quote says, if everywhere you go you see assholes, you might be the one who is the asshole.
I taught myself to code and built several applications with millions of users. I have switched careers multiple times and risen to upper 1% in each area rapidly.
Last year: My total income was about $2 million.
The numbers say my intelligence is unlike anything normally found, but it comes with some disability. I work 7 days a week. My mind never rests. You wouldn't enjoy being me :)
My dad once told me: His tested IQ was 145+. Everyone in my family has similar stories. Photographic memories, Each of my family members has independently found a way to make millions of dollars. Its atypical intelligence profile.
People generally tend not to like me, and it happens quickly. My facial reactions, emotional game and how I open conversations: People don't like it.
That's why I didn't downvote or dismiss it. It is entirely possible that those things are saying are true, and I believe you.
I was talking about the overall manner of how you said it being something that puts people off, not necessarily the content. Like, even if the content is legitimate, the tone just makes it all sour. I am not trying to be mean or attack you, but your last reply was kind of a perfect example of what I am talking about.
If you figure out how to work around the "people don't like me and how i converse with them" issue (which imo is just a lack of social skills, regardless of whether it is due to neurodivergence or not), you are gonna become legitimately unstoppable if you combine it with the rest of your skills/intelligence.
I hear you, definitely good points as well. It doesn’t come off well which I think either gives credence to
a) douche canoe
b) neurodiverse
I have some experience with this, picked up on some clues and ran with option B.
It’s kind of odd, but personality and intellect feel a bit like a zero sum equation. The more truly brilliant a person, the more likely they have trouble ‘reading the room’. Obviously there are exceptions and it isn’t so simple, but I have seen it play out more often than not.
I was eventually diagnosed with Aspergers late in life and I can relate a lot to the sentiment in this comment.
(I'm not as talented as 'aspergersadd' but usually came up with good technical solutions for companies I worked for - however my interpersonal relationships and ability to deal with workplace stress and emotions were a disaster)
Great managers understand the strengths and weaknesses of people and set them up to be as beneficial as they can be, not everyone is a great manager. Not everyone needs a great manager, but you do.
You do seem to be doing a pretty good job of understanding yourself, keep that up. Try to figure out how you can expand your skills at navigating yourself and the world.
Send me an email if you’d like, not at the moment but I’m occasionally in the position to find and hire great people.
I'm much earlier in my career and I think I am running into the things you talk about. I want to learn from your experience. Can you DM me? (Email in profile)
I find it extremely interesting that ADHD is basically a United States thing, I had never heard of this thing in Europe, but in the US, it is actually talked about like it's an actual pathology, that can be actually diagnosed, and treated of course, surprise surprise, with Ritalin/Adderal.
No doubt that we are not all cognitively equal, but I am a personally convinced it is a total scam invented to put people on drugs.
One of the worst cases of ADHD I've personally seen was from someone from Bulgaria. I have neighbors who have it who are Russian.
The difference is, in those cultures you just 'try harder' or drink yourself into a stupor/early death if you can't fit in. The US at least gives folks options.
> One of the worst cases of ADHD I've personally seen was from someone from Bulgaria. I have neighbors who have it who are Russian.
Sure, millions of people, myself included, do have attention deficit issues, but the question is whether it is an actual pathology or something socio-educo-cultural. The very diagnostic seems to be extremely controversial amongst scientists, according to google. My bulshit meter is activated because again, while people with troubles of attention can be found everywhere, the United States is about the only country where ADHD is a thing.
PS: in terms of options, cocaine works as well and for sale everywhere in the world.
If something is clearly causing severe life issues in both places (as in clear issues with mental well being, same everything in that sense), but one writes it off as ‘whatever, they’re losers’ and the the other gives treatment and helps - I don’t think it’s that it isn’t a pathology in the place that just calls them losers and refuses to do anything.
Since a pathology is a disease (aka something not working) and all. And it clearly isn’t working in either place.
There is a reason why life expectancy is dramatically shorter for men in Eastern Europe, it isn’t just ADHD that gets this treatment.
And suggested illegal street drugs of unknown potency or other problems is somehow better than regulated and tested stimulants is more than a bit bizarre.
> If something is clearly causing severe life issues in both places (as in clear issues with mental well being, same everything in that sense), but one writes it off as ‘whatever, they’re losers’ and the the other gives treatment and helps - I don’t think it’s that it isn’t a pathology in the . place that just calls them losers and refuses to do anything.
There is no need to make a false dychotomy here: I have nothing about the use of substances if they help people struggling with attention and concentration, and there are probably tons of people on similar drugs in Europe. The only difference is that the United States is the only place where ADHD is a thing, e.g: considered an actual pathology despite the absence of any demonstration of a confirmatory physical (including chemical) abnormality in the brain. And I believe it leads to massive over-prescriptions.
> And suggested illegal street drugs of unknown potency or other problems is somehow better than regulated and tested stimulants is more than a bit bizarre.
I'm not suggesting anything, I used the example of cocaine as a substance that is known to improve concentration too. My point being, Adderal/Ritalin are not the magic drug that treats ADHD, they are just brain enhancing substances as well, sold by pharmacies.
Which is clearly false (ADHD is not only recognized in the US), and disingenuous to boot.
And you explicitly referred to cocaine as an equivalent option to prescribed medication. Despite it being highly illegal in nearly every country in the world, of difficult to ascertain quality or purity (and often cut with dangerous or unknown substances), and would be used in this context with no professional oversight - since it’s highly illegal.
> And you explicitly referred to cocaine as an equivalent option to prescribed medication.
No, I tried and failed to make you understand my main point that these drugs which are 'presecribed' for a pathology whose existence has yet to be scientifically demonstrated, are actually no different from cocaine in what they do when you take them. I've seen comments in this thread saying that since Adderal/Ritaline works and has positive effects, therefor the existance of ADHD is demonstrated. After all, that's an opinion as well, so please let me keep mine that Adderal/Ritaline are nothing but legal meth.
You have no idea what you are talking about. These stimulants work markedly different for folks with this different brain chemistry, and pretty clearly so.
20mg of Adderall for someone with ADHD (who benefits from it?) - finally only having one thing at a time they are thinking about instead of 20. And most of the time, they can sleep better that night - maybe even a ‘finally can sleep’ night.
Someone with normal brain chemistry? Obsessive, hyper focus and unable to sleep potentially for days.
And for anyone reading this who is wondering if that sounds familiar - a certain type of ADHD does tend to manifest as the ‘stays up for days working on the cool problem until they are so exhausted they pass out’, which looks remarkably like stimulant abuse for someone with ‘normal’ (quotes because it’s not like we fully understand what that means either) brain chemistry. And it happens without any external drugs or chemicals.
Medication (with stimulants) often allows the person to stop or control it when it isn’t helpful or desirable, and actually sleep. Which is quite unintuitive at first.
Inattentive type is also a thing, and often looks like someone who is always daydreaming/off in their own world. That tends to show up more in women, but that’s only a rough categorization. Some folks cycle back and forth.
Overall as pointed out elsewhere, it’s the difficulty in regulating and directing attention that is the problem, and when it causes distress and difficulty living a normal life is when it gets categorized as a disorder.
> These stimulants work markedly different for folks with this different brain chemistry, and pretty clearly so.
They are both brain stimulants, that's why I coined this "Legal meth".
PS: As for the rest of your arguments, not gonna answer because I have no idea what you are talking about, trying to mean, or even if this gibbering makes any sense at all. Please take your Adderall actually.
> The only difference is that the United States is the only place where ADHD is a thing,
This is just simply untrue. It is true that how seriously it is taken and what is usually prescribed as treatment varies significantly, but it is understood to be a real thing across Europe, at least. I have multiple friends in multiple countries who have received a diagnosis.
ADHD is not simply attention deficit, it's executive dysfunction. People with ADHD find it extremely hard to regulate their attention, among other things.
ADHD people can focus on things they enjoy or are interested in (More precisely, something that stimulates them) for excessive periods of time.
When something doesn't stimulate them, it's extremely difficult or impossible for them to regulate their attention and force themselves to focus on the task.
I’d even go so far as to say ADHD folks have little to no choice on focusing on things that are exciting for inordinate amounts of time. Sometimes it’s something that resolves quickly (a squirrel! moment), sometimes it’s weeks of coding with little to no self care instead of doing the taxes.
A lot of the common comorbid issues of anxiety or depression can come from the anxiousness and self abuse that comes from doing the exciting/interesting thing despite their every attempt to do what they know they should be doing.
Add in little external beatings in some environments, and it isn’t a pleasant existence.
I don’t get what scientifically separates ADHD from just being less cognitively capable in general or in other ways. Why is it a “special case” such that it has to be treated as a medical condition that requires drugs and special accommodations? I remember when we had AP tests in high school, kids with ADHD diagnosis were given unlimited time, and that felt wrong. The unique classification of ADHD feels to me like a product of America’s unique crossover between societal culture, economics, and medicine rather than something principled. But I am willing to hear a good explanation that changes my perspective.
Given the knee jerk reaction caused by my initial comment, I'm going to propose everyone to wait for 10 years until the rampant overprescriptions of these drugs become clearly in the eye of everyone, the new opioid epidemic.
In the meantime, I'll add ADHD to the list of uniquely american things (alongside circumcision and tipping), even tho I am sure that there are at least more than 0 people in every other country in the world who heard about ADHD before (so impressed by your rhetorical skills guys, merry xmas1).
Describing ADHD as “just less cognitively capable” is harmful as you could confuse knowing things and doing things. People with ADHD often struggle with doing things (starting, switching or sustaining focus on a task), but do struggle with knowing things. It’s a performance disability not an intellectual one.
Look up how stimulants affect an ADHD brain, it’s different to a brain without the disorder. In an ADHD brain neurotransmitters like dopamine are less available and removed quicker. Stimulants often act in ways to enable more dopamine to be around.
An analogy here is imagine having 70% packet loss on your internet connection. Try doing your job with that. You need to make a number of adjustments and accomodations to succeed. Well, when you add in stimulants that packet loss drops significantly to say >10%. I experienced this happen in real time when I started taking medication, and this is backed up by Dr Russel Barkley one of the leading experts in this area.
In a brain without ADHD (or a neurotypical brain) there’s no missing dopamine. So taking stimulants still increases the amount of available dopamine, but now there’s way to much. Norepinephrine is also increased with most stimulants to.
There’s real pharmacological evidence to back treating ADHD with medication. It’s well known to be one of the most successful medical treatments in psychiatry.
Giving kids with ADHD extra time or unlimited time is a reasonable accomodation if you want to test if that kid _knows_ the material. If you want to test if they can do it in the time frame, that’s a different test.
ADHD is not a uniquely American thing. Though there’s decades of stigma and loads of research to still be done. Right now we have treatments that work, and a decent understanding of ways to accommodate people with ADHD.
Medication is temporary, and helps correct for a lack of naturally occurring neurotransmitters. (Though I believe it’s more because our brains reuptake them too fast?)
It’s a bit of a shame the medication is a party drug for nuerotypical people, because I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t even be having this conversation if it wasn’t.
I’ll finish by adding that I think ADHD is horrifically named. The name alone contributed to me not looking into it seriously enough which delayed my diagnosis by at least a decade. The disorder really is more a challenge with executive functioning and the ability to deploy attention where needed. Like many other conditions it’s described by how it affects others, not how it affects those with it. It’s like saying someone who just broke their arm has a problem regulating their volume. Technical correct, but so far off base its harmful.
For me medication has had a profound positive impact on my life. Like getting glasses, but orders of magnitude more.
Please educate yourself. I was as ignorant as you on this topic, then, guess what, I found I actually have it myself and it's explained a lot of the suffering in my life. I am based in Europe FWIW.
EDIT: yikes, given the rest of your comments downthread, please do yourself a favour and do some research before repeating your preconceived and incorrect notions of something you don't know much about. It's fine not to know, it's not fine to think you know something you don't.
> then, guess what, I found I actually have it myself and it's explained a lot of the suffering in my life
Do you realize how weak your argument acutally is? You can now be invested in this believe and it's entirely fine with me but the hard reality remains the following:
Ergo, there is absolutely no scientific diagnosis for these imaginary pathologies, these patologies are diagnosed entirely via symptoms, which isn't necessarily a deal breaker for me, but when I read the list of symptoms, I just call bulshit sorry.
Are you actually trying to to say you think that you know me better than myself, and my suffering is bullshit? Holy shit dude, I'm not the only one that needs to re-evaluate their life. There's being stubborn and there's being a complete idiot that is talking out of their ass.
I have no interest in engaging further with you. Good day.
Hahaha it's almost impossible to get the damn drugs even if you actually need them. That's a very blinkered viewpoint. You've made an assumption and never had it disproved.
That said, there’s plenty of good advice even if it’s a little inconsistent. It’s also fascinating how much the social part overlaps with challenges faced by Autistic people[1].
For ADHD folks who find some of the advice on multitasking/focus in meetings wanting: it’s absolutely okay to stim (perform some stimulating, often repetitive action) when you find your ability to stay focused isn’t what you need or what’s expected. I have a reputation for spending most of my time in meetings playing minesweeper. It’s not because I’m not engaged, it’s because it helps me stay engaged. I happily stop or mute my mic if the clicking sound is disruptive, but otherwise I’ve continually established with teammates and even clients that having that part of my focus on something mostly mechanical helps me stay in the conversation and productive.
1: Which I increasingly feel confident in the idea that there’s no meaningful distinction and ADHD should/likely eventually will be considered part of the spectrum, but that’s not why I’m commenting.