While I have empathy, the reason we’re in the state of recognising and intervening with neurodiversity is the work that educators, parents and researchers have done over the past sixty years. Pleae recognise this for the progress it represents.
People do the best with what they have and what they know. No it’s not your fault. Neither is it your parents or teachers when they don’t have the knowledge or tools to help them. There is a solid chance that they were as lost, frustrated and confused as you. Or they’re simply shitty people…
In 50 years time there will be another condition that we don’t know about now, for which we are not providing accommodation, which causes kids harm, that your kids will look back on and be absolutely shocked, like why the fuck was this ever tolerated and how could we not know. Obesity? Usage of social media? Assessment?
I wholeheartedly support this viewpoint.
I was diagnosed with ADHD at 38 and to say my life was a mess beforehand would be a massive understatement. Without making this too long, I’ve had between 50-60 jobs and would lose them from just not turning up if I couldn’t get out of bed or just being confrontational with people if they treated us like shit etc.
In the 3 years since my diagnosis and medication I managed to train to be a software developer and landed my dream job doing it for a living.
The horrible thing to think about is if I didn’t luck myself into working for Apple at the Genius Bar, I wouldn’t have been diagnosed. They gave free healthcare (UK, we have the NHS but mental health is underfunded and the wait times for things like this would be over a year). Apple literally changed my life; not just with the diagnosis, but with helping people see their potential.
The hardest part of a late diagnosis which still to this day it’s hard to let the past be the past, but it’s the what ifs, what if I got diagnosed earlier etc. the amount of money I’ve spent on weed, Xanax, coke, and messing about with friends (most of which likely have ADHD, due to being very similar and people in these drug circles all have that in common) I could have my own house and be set and only need to work part time (still done think I’m built for a 9-5 and still get depressed over the hours).
All this said, I don’t blame anybody for the late diagnosis. Like you say people were working with the knowledge they had at the time and although my issues perfectly aligned with ADHD and the content in this post, people just didn’t know enough back then and it is what it is.
Couldn’t read the post because it’s blocked by a wall of arrogance. Suck it up, but treat people better than you were treated
Most of the drug users and smokers are above average intelligence. Most of the intelligent people are depressed.
Great job world.
Yep. I’ve had substance abuse problems and severe depression my whole life. I’ve had people telling me I have “genius” intelligence but I can’t do some of the most basic tasks like paying bills and managing finances and making any plans for my future whatsoever.
But I know quantum physics! Lots of use for that shit, right?? I can’t count the number of job interviews where the hiring manager asked me about interactions between quarks and the strong nuclear force.
As an aside my therapist just diagnosed me as autistic, as a middle-aged man that’s a whole basket of cats I don’t know what to do with yet.
My man I feel for you there so much it hurts.
Interviews in jobs suitable to my intelligence level:
“Wow that’s quite some knowledge! But have you been doing only this and nothing else for 15 years with certified evidence of steady infinite progression with no stopping?”
Interviews for jobs I might have a shot at:
“So on your availability here I notice you said Monday through Friday but can I pull you for holidays and weekends on short notice anyway? We work hard and play hard like a family here heh heh…So what is your definition of ‘solid gold standard servitude in worship of The Customer?’”
There are lots of boring un stimulating tasks that are super important that’s the issue. I have adhd and I cope with my issues to be able to be a functional adult. Things like the dishes and the laundry and cleaning need to be done. Some task that seem repetitive for forcing a basic understanding of the subject. I’ve met so many people in my field who are adhd and say they are super productive on complex tasks but lack basic understanding on fundamental subjects in the field because they skip all the “boring stuff”. Life is not always exciting or stimulating sometimes you have to force yourself to do something. Neurotypicals do the same thing.
The difference with ADHD, especially untreated ADHD, and the idea of “sometimes you have to force yourself to do something” is that, as a person with ADHD, trying to force myself to do stuff, without the assistance of medication, can often be a bit like trying to nail jello to the wall.
It might work for a short time, but eventually, it’ll be laying on the floor, not doing what you want it to do… Much like me.
The paralysis is very real and very strong. The contrary feelings fighting eachother in your head, one voice saying how important it is and that you need to do it, another that’s breaking down the task into every motion required, so one job becomes a quintillion individual steps, which makes you feel overwhelmed and anxious at even the thought of trying to do the job, and another voice berating you for being a lazy fuck who can’t even do the most simple shit, like get off the couch and do the thing.
In the end you just feel horrible, both about the thing you should have done and about your worth as a person, leading to depression, which exacerbates the issue further.
It’s a cycle of violence that most ADHD people have suffered with for their entire life.
I know. I am diagnosed adhd and untreated training your willpower and your self control is possible. It requires dedication and finding what works right for you. For me I use extreme scheduling, I wake up at the same time every day and sleep at the same time, every meal same time. As soon as I know I need to do something I immediately right it down, dishes cleaning everything is scheduled. It took years but it’s also been working for years. Start small force yourself to do small things. It is harder than it is for a neurotypical but that’s the burden we bare. Best you can do is deal with it using medication, therapy and mindfulness. You are more then your serotonin levels you don’t need to enjoy something to do it. You don’t even need to be engaged. The neurotypical secret is most the things they do they half ass, don’t worry about perfection just do. Another thing I see adhd people have trouble with is trying to multi task all the time. Don’t it’s a trap your brain isn’t ment for context switching that much. You can modulate yourself a lot better then you think you can. It’s just hard but that’s doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing
My work doesn’t afford me to be focused on a single task until completion. That’s the nature of the job I have, and there’s nothing that I can do, nor anything my manager can do about that.
Forcing myself into rigorous scheduling is a trap for my mind. If a task takes longer than expected (which is frequent because I’m also very time blind), then I feel like I’m running behind and I have to rush to catch up. If something takes less time than expected, I end up in the mental trap of “I don’t need to do x until y time” so I go do something else, and that distraction usually puts me behind my schedule, back to the first problem.
I end up constantly panicked because I’m running behind all the time. At the end of the day, though I may have completed everything, and done so in a reasonable timeframe, the only emotion that lingers is the feeling of disappointment in myself, that I couldn’t keep up with the schedule.
That feeling leads to depression, which leads to me giving up on the entire system, after skipping it for several weeks and being “several weeks behind” on everything; and that leads to further depression.
If your scheduling thing works for you, awesome, I’m glad you found something that works for you, for the reasons I’ve stated and so many more, it does not work for me.
However, I recognise that you’re saying this because you found what works for you, and it’s brought so much order to the chaos that is normal for your mind from before; and you want to help others find the same happiness you have using this method. That’s fine, and I hope your comment helps someone. I’m not that someone. I appreciate what you’re trying to do here regardless.
I have my own solution now, and it’s working quite well for me. My doctor and I built the therapy that I use to maintain order in the chaos of my life and mind, and I recognize that my therapy isn’t going to work for others. Which is why I’m not saying what it specifically involves. I will say that medication is part of it. It works for me, and if anyone wants to pursue something similar, they should talk with their doctor about what therapy might be right for them.
I won’t tell you that your methodology doesn’t work, it clearly does. It works for you.
The only point I’m trying to make here is that, though it may work for you, it may not work for others, and they will have to find a different solution and/or therapy for themselves which works for them.
There is no universal solution for ADHD. For some it can be managed with mindfulness, scheduling, and a force of will, and little more. Others may need assistance in the form of gadgets, widgets, and thingamajigs (maybe fidget things? IDK)… Others may only need a small amount of medication to manage it, and others may need multiple medications before they see the results they’re after.
All of these methods of therapy are valid for the people that benefit from them. Most of them won’t work for most ADHD people, they’ll have to find which one is going to work for them, and it’s likely that one or more will work, they’ll just have to figure out which one is the best for them by working with their doctor to figure it out. Hopefully that doctor is a psychiatrist with a specialty in ADHD; but I digress.
I’ve tried most of what you suggest and it did not work for me. That’s fine. It works for you and I’m happy for that. The fact that I couldn’t use that method to overcome my challenges, doesn’t, and shouldn’t imply that I’m somehow worse for it, or that I lack willpower, or that I can’t make the hard choice or make the sacrifice to make it work. I’m easily one of the most willful people I know, even before I started my current therapy. The condition is simply more complex than a matter of having the willpower to overcome it. That may work for some, like yourself; or it may work for short periods of time, like it did for me; or it may not work at all for others. Everyone is different.
I don’t know if it’s harder to force ourselves to do the “boring stuff” more than neurotypicals, but I know the main reason I do the things I do is “because someone has to do it.” Kind of a sucky reason to do anything, but it at least helps me get through some of the everyday tasks, even if not completely. Everyone has to find their own way to cope, doesn’t matter if we have ADHD or something “wrong” with us or not. One thing to keep in mind is an imperfect something is better than a perfect nothing
It took me ages to realise this. People with ADHD are always portrayed as lazy but they don’t struggle with hard work, they struggle with boring work. Before I knew I had ADHD I always found I was getting in trouble for not finishing boring work so I always used to prioritise tasks by how much fun they were and start with the most boring. I just ended up getting nothing done.
Then they also get mad when you find an easier way to accomplish the same thing in a fraction of the time or even automating it.
This reminds me of a punishment homework thing I was given in my youth, I had to write out something a bunch of times, which was a shit punishment to begin with and only happened once in like, grade 3 or something. Maybe even grade 1 when we were learning to write, idk. Maybe it wasn’t a punishment (it felt like one).
Instead of writing the letter “i” at the start of every line like I was supposed to, I just put a long line down the page to be that letter on every line.
The only part of this that I remember to this day is that I got it back with that line circled in red and the word “lazy!” Written next to it, with points off of the assignment for it.
That’s literally the only thing I recall about it, that finding an “easy” way to write the same letter across multiple lines was lazy, therefore I’m lazy and worthless. I don’t even remember if I passed or failed it, because that was less important to my young mind than being called lazy for simply trying to optimize my working time.
I dunno, but at this point I kind feel like that teacher was a bit of an asshole.
You gotta try to make a perfectly spaced dashed line down the page, as fast as you can. It’s a bit of a challenge and get all the I’s out of the way. Then the teacher can’t say boo.
This applies so hard to programmers, as well. I love making things automated, but I never have the time to make them properly.
Come join us on the QA side! I’m an automation developer, so it’s my job to make things automated :)
“Why didn’t you show your work, so I can see how you think?”
Because I did it in my head and got the right answer. This isn’t about you.
Lol I hated this too, I really did. But like a lot of answers here, I can appreciate it somewhat now. Especially when trying to learn to code.
I think learning to break down problems might even be MORE valuable to people like us with ADHD, even if we hate it, because we tend to intuit our way through things by the seat of our pants.
Also sometimes I got really lucky and arrived at the correct answer in a bizarre and inconsistent way.
In the end, it’s very valuable to be able to communicate your process to others. Even if it’s irritating and awful to get through.
I also wonder if those like myself, who really REALLY hated math until my brain started to appreciate it in my adult years, just gnash our teeth at these memories because it made us feel stupid when we struggled to keep up with that slow, methodical raw-logic stuff…
EDIT: I can see you were the polar opposite of myself, ridiculously GOOD at math but found it a waste of time showing how you got there. That makes sense. I have zero idea what that’s like lol.
It’s funny, because in high school, I remember getting poor marks on proofs - and HATING them - because I was like “this is so fucking obvious jesus tap dancing christ” and just… skipped lots of steps.
Fast forward to college and logic theory: that ended up being one of my favorite classes, because machine theory and problem reduction is a fascinating domain, and FAR more interesting than “prove this shape is the shape we say it is” or whatever vapid bullshit they had us doing in high school.
Ok but forcing me to show my work was one of those things I hated until I was extremely grateful for it. I didn’t need to show my work to prove my answer was correct in elementary school, but it was a slow drift from “I can do it in my head with ease” to “I need to document my steps so I can check where the error occurred”. Also “it’s not enough to be correct, you need to be correct with evidence” is the reality for people who do math for a living
The “show your work” is about checking if you understand the logic in getting the answer. We had lots of questions out of 5. Right answer was only worth 1 mark, the other 4 were the steps and reasoning. This type of setup punishes those that skip right to the answer, or have memorized answers. But rewards those that show they know the concepts
