I have ADHD, and most people _mis_understand it. They are familiar with some of the symptoms, like that it’s hard to focus, but completely unfamiliar with others, like that having an hour appointment in the afternoon can basically block out your entire day. I rely on and even thrive with medication, but there’s a nationwide Ritalin shortage that has basically kept me from working for the past month while I figure out a new medication.
Came here to see if anyone had mentioned ADHD. So much misunderstanding. The name of it doesn’t help either.
Sorry to hear about the Ritalin shortage. Going without meds for more than a week super sucks. (I’m on vyvanse though).
Call it EDD (executive dysfunction disorder) which is a part of ADD and you’ll find more people want to know what it is and don’t just assume.
The other one that people never understand is the hyper focus side of ADHD. If I get rolling on a task: 1, don’t stop me I will not get back on task. 2, I will forget that planet earth exists, food becomes an afterthought, and breaks, even restroom breaks simply don’t happen.
It’s super frustrating when people are like “oh sure I know about how ADHD works”, when in reality they skimmed the webmd or wiki page for it that mostly just enumerates various ways in which it may present, without even registering that the implications of how the symptoms affect my life.
people misunderstand it
are familiar with some of the symptoms
On that note, I want to mention that I have seen and heard of a lot of people (mostly online) who self-diagnose with ADHD. Believe it or not, extended social media use (I’m not sure if Lemmy falls into this, it mostly refers to places made to be addictive like TikTok, Instagram and others) has apparently been shown to cause some symptoms of ADHD. I’m just using this comment to tell anyone reading it: if you think you have ADHD or any other mental health issue, talk to a professional, don’t self diagnose. It can be destructive to yourself to think you do or don’t, without checking. If you have symptoms, talk to a professional. And I’m sure OP whose comment I’m responding to will agree with me on this. Thank you. And you will one day thank yourself too.
Yes, I agree, if you think you have it, you should get in touch with a professional. If you don’t have it, you may have some other condition that can be treated, or there may be ways a psychiatrist can help. And if you do have it, treatment can make a huge difference to your quality of life.
having an hour appointment in the afternoon can basically block out your entire day
I’m curious…what do you mean by this? I don’t have ADHD, but I do find it very difficult to relax if I know I have to be somewhere later in the day. Is it anything like that? Or is it something else? Just wondering!
I’ve heard it’s related to time blindness. Basically I can’t become invested in a project if I know I’ll have to break out of it shortly. So if I have an appointment at like 1pm, I either have to start my day really early to make sure I can get like 6 hours of work done before noon, or start my day after the appointment and work into the night.
It’s a lot easier when I’m on Ritalin, but it’s still difficult to plan around.
That’s basically why I always schedule any appointment for early in the morning, if I can.
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Sadly psychiatrists and counselors don’t help here. They see one symptom and think “oh let’s add ADHD to this person’s diagnosis list”. And they wonder why the ritalin shortage exists.
Wait, really? I just posted a comment about how it’s better to talk to a professional instead of self-diagnosing. Your comment makes me question my other comment.
Yes really. It largely depends on the place, but I can absolutely positively confirm this is how many of them operate. Not just with ADHD either. I’ve known people with TBI whose TBI is treated as bipolar on the sole basis that people hear bipolar and think mood swings. There’s one person I know who was put on two lithiums a day for it and then yanked off of it and had to endure a whole month of hallucinations, only to be put on half of the original lithium dose again, all because they didn’t properly insert TBI into the diagnostic list and thereupon this one psychiatrist just assumed it was bipolar (when there are differences in how mood swings from both manifest; TBI is rapid fire and bipolar is more like a long storm).
Every time I mention psychiatrists on this website, I get hated on, but I know my experience and the things I say are not going away. They and counselors DO overstep, they DO take on each others’ roles and functions, and they DO conflict with each other at times. Glad to know though the same people here who say the US health system is shit also claim the psychiatry system is somehow a perfect well-oiled machine, free from people acting outside of their jurisdictions.
It’s still true. There are soooooo many people with diagnoses that don’t match what they actually have. And some consulted professionals are way too quick to diagnose these things, especially in the child psychiatry industry, especially with child psychiatrists (who often put too much emphasis on one family member), especially with things like what I described. It’s far from an archaic experience.
laughcries in neurodivergent
What can you do though: People are idiots and I am one of them.
High five from an ADHDer!
It’s fucking hard to explain that yes, it’s possible for me to look like I’m operating like a normal person… but choosing to live and work in a way compatible with my brain isn’t laziness. The hardest person to convince was myself. Thankfully, now that I’m enlightened, I care a lot less what other people think.
Achalasia. My esophagus does not squeeze food/liquid and it gets stuck in my esophagus. Since the nerves in the esophagus are dead (paraphrasing of course) this then causes the top stomach sphincter to not know food/liquid is coming and to open up. Instead, (pre-surgery) food/liquid piles up on top of the stomach and I would have to hope the sphincter would open up and let food in. I had times where I could not swallow water as it would just sit at the entrance waiting to be let in & would have to force myself to vomit as it started to hurt.
Post-surgery (heller myotomy with fundoplication) my esophagus is effectively a slip & slide and I rely on gravity to be able to get food down my esophagus and into my stomach. The top stomach sphincter has now been cut open and never closes anymore. They then stitch part of the top stomach lobe to the sphincter/ esophagus junction area to prevent stomach acid from backwashing.
Even if space travel for the masses occurred during my lifetime, I will never be able to go to space because I rely on gravity to get food to pass through my esophagus.
Wow that sounds heavy, first time I ever heard of it. At what age you got it diagnosed and treated?
First Dr visit was sometime in 2018 with surgery in Q2 2019’ish. I would have been 37’ish when symptoms first started coming on.
From what I’ve read, only 1 in 200,000 have it so it took multiple Dr’s to finally find one who said to me, “I was just at a convention last month and heard a talk about a condition like yours and just happens one of the top Dr’s on achalasia lives here in our city.” Few months later and I was scheduled for surgery and it’s been worlds better post-surgery. :)
It definitely affects my life every day with what I can & cannot eat (bread is a nightmare) but I take it in stride and drinks copius amounts of water with every meal.
How does that work for laying flat? If your stomach sphincter doesn’t close, do you have issues with reflux coming back up if you lay flat/try to sleep too soon after eating, or does the backwash stop it enough that it doesn’t matter your position? Either way, it sounds awful.
I do have to be cognitive of bending over after swallowing something because I can feel it trying to make it’s way back up.
For about a year, I used a husband pillow behind my pillow so I would sleep upright. Eventually, I figured out what works best for my body which is basically just make sure I don’t eat at least 2 hours before bed.
Other than that, the fundoplication takes care of preventing stomach contents from coming back. Here’s a quick video!
Even if space travel for the masses occurred during my lifetime, I will never be able to go to space because I rely on gravity to get food to pass through my esophagus.
This was my first thought reading your comment. Have you considered the possibility that you are a bird?
Do you know if it’s possible to have some mild form of this? Me and my brother have been trying to work out our “digestive” issues for a few years with doctors with no success.
I can relate to the feeling of food/drink feeling like its “piling up” because sometimes I throw up last nights dinner when I’m brushing my tongue the next day.
It’s something that’s gotten worse as I’ve gotten older. I don’t know if that plays into it.
Never hurts to get checked. See about having an enscopy performed and they can check it out. Another procedure is called a Esophageal Manometry. They put a thin tube up your nose and down your throat and make you swallow fluids to measure how well your esophagus squeezes or in my case, they said it spasmed and basically doesn’t respond as it hood.
I wish you the best.
Any type of neurodivergence is not graspable for the majority of people, as it would require high skills to think in somebody elses shoes.
Debilitating chronic fatigue is called being lazy and as I just found out very recenty I have cerebrospinal fluid leaks which cause these issues. Hope it gets fixed soon. And shoutout to the doctors trying to tell me it is in my head and doesn’t require urgent care.
And shoutout to the doctors trying to tell me it is in my head and doesn’t require urgent care.
Fuck those people… >:|
@rip_art_bell Yes I have Fibromyalgia and not many people know about how that works.
I was gonna bring this one up, not because i have it, but my mother does. I barely under stood it after it was explained several times. Hardly no one knew what it was when my mother was diagnosed, some of other docters havent had even heard of it according to her.
@Breezy Yes sadly most doctors haven’t heard of it and if they have some don’t think it’s actually a thing. I’m very lucky in having my mum that also has the same condition so it’s nice to know i’m not the only one going through things.
Also no one knows if it is genetic there has been very little research about it let alone in that area. Glad you came to comment hope your mother has learnt to deal with the pains, fog and tiredness.
@shinigamiookamiryuu It’s really unknown how Fibro forms, to be put simply it’s your body sending the wrong signals to your brain telling your body it is in pain (This is only one thing in fibro but a big part of it). Sadly there isn’t a easy way to test for Fibro, you have to be tested for many other things before you get to the possible diagnosis but as @xmunk mentioned most doctors don’t understand it, some don’t even think it is an actual thing.
Hypothetically, could dogs be used to diagnose it? I know dogs’ smelling ability can detect depression, cancer, and DID. Why not fibro?
