Sorry for the negative post but this disorder is genuinely terrible. I was diagnosed a few months ago and from the report I received it seems like I have an extremely bad case of it.
I lost 8 percent of my final grade in an operating system class because I submitted the wrong file.
Fine, I have syncthing setup between my desktop and laptop so I’ll just check if the assignment is on my shared folder in my desktop. It’s not.
Ok, I’ll turn on my laptop and grab the file itself. Oh, I have a boot error and now I need to open up the recovery environment to see if the hard drive is even being recognized.
It’s not. Now I have to open up the laptop and reconnect it.
At this point it’s been 30 minutes of me scrambling to get my laptop up and working again and I found the damn assignment there. I emailed my professor and I’m praying that he reevaluates the assignment because the earlier submission had nothing on it. It was just the default assignment.
None of this shit would have happened had I taken just one second to check over what I submitted a month earlier.
I hate reading articles pertaining to ADHD as if it’s some quirky condition that just takes a little bit of time and medication to work through. Its not. I have to constantly remind myself that I’m even conscious in order to function at all, and now I have to sustain extra mental effort to do a relatively hard task.
The only thing that keeps me going is my boss saying “nice work” when I diagnose an issue successfully. It feels infantilizing, as if he knows there’s something going on with me that’s making it hard to cope with the demands of life but “atleast he’s trying his best, atleast he shows up to work, this customer said he had a friendly attitude”.
Sure, I know that there are multiple problems with the diagnosis! I was specifically talking about a tendency of pathologizing everyone who doesn’t fulfill societal expectations or who deviates from the norm in some aspects of their life.
ADHD would mean someone has severe problems in all aspects of their life. Not just in one aspect, for example only in school/work/university.
I feel it is getting increasingly unbalanced in favour of seeing the issues in people instead of addressing the issues in the system.
The thing is… getting the support you need doesnt magically “fix” ADHD. Much like a wheelchair or crutches will not “fix” a broken or missing leg. It just makes it so you are on a more even playing field as everyone else.
Does society sometimes pathologize benign behavior or attribute normal immaturity for ADHD? Yeah. Society pathologizes a lot of arguably benign behaviors and traits. Are a lot of symptoms of ADHD still going to be a problem in a society based on luxury space communism? Yep. Even in a perfect utopia you are going to have to do things that you dont want to do. You are going to have to remember to eat, drink and take medication. You are going to have to regulate your emotions and how you interact with others.
ADHD diagnosis is about identifying who needs additional support. i.e cognative behavioral therapy, medication, accomodations etc. It is a way for a healthy society to offer additional support to people that need it.
