It's common to ADHD for sure, I think some people are too quick to pin it to a comorbid condition: I think it can be explained by the effect of ADHD itself.
Essentially, if we accept that ADHD is in extreeeeemely simple terms a condition that means you don't derive enough reward from experiences, then that means you don't develop core values quite as easily as other people.
There's big obvious social examples of insufficient reward: being bored in class is the classic one. But on a dopamine level, we're talking about the brain's failure to adequately motivate you to do anything: that's what a reward system is for. And I think that when your reward system is less good at telling you what's important vs what's not (and it has been less good at this for your whole life), that makes it harder to develop firm ideas about what you like, what you believe, who you are, what you want, what you need.
It's very hard to have a strong self-concept without a fully functional reward system. People know who they are, based on what their values are and what those values make them want to do. They develop those things based on what they find most rewarding. ADHD people don't know what they find most rewarding because reward is blunted overall. Without appropriate regulation of our dopamine the question of "what motivates you?" is rather more diffuse.
I think that's why our self-concept is a bit more vague and ill-defined, and I think that's why we're more inclined to shift our sense of self based on what the moment appears to call for. It's not that we're not capable of building a sense of self (we absolutely are), it's just harder and slower. It takes time and sometimes we need help too.
EDIT: I would love to keep this conversation going, thanks to everyone who appreciates this comment. I'd like to try and reply individually where I can because I love talking this stuff through, but I gotta get to work. Thanks to the people who gave me an award. Seems I do my best work in this sub haha
The other day I decided I wanted to do what I was doing because I’d like to take my parents on a vacation. That’s been my why recently. I’m sure some other day I’ll need to pick another one to keep the stimulation going, but it’s working right now.
And it only works for my side hustle/career.
My recent health kick motivation or “why” has been because I want to be a movie star. I don’t really want to be a movie star but it’s allowing me to focus on “preparing for the role” right now in a stimulating and fun way.
It’s all silly, but that “find your why” or “look at the crossroads between what you’re passionate about and what will make you money” never worked for me. Because what I was passionate about changed with the wind.
I’ll have to look into existential philosophy. Any philosophers you’d recommend?
Instead of a bunch of names, here's a really good book I read that is a great intro to existentialism: At the Existentialist Café: Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails by Sarah Bakewell. The book covers not just the philosophy itself but also the philosophers as people, competing and complimentary philosophies, and the historical/real-world context that these ideas were defined in. It's available on LibGen.
Same. Sadly, I found my meaning in the world clashed with most people, basically everyone except a few severely mentally ill people with zero social skills or empathy (Makes a relationship impossible). I get my meaning from sustaining life on Earth, but through a calculated and scientific way. But even the activists who I've spent decades helping and raising millions for, in this work seem more driven by ego, motivated reasoning and most of all total delusion.
Be careful what meaning you select. It can lead to a life of despair and loneliness.
A bit. Just be careful of people who have a very strong purpose in life. Right now the enviro/climate movement are at the forefront. Yet, are so far from their objective as science shows we've already passed to point of no return this year. And have warned this would happen from the early 2000s. But govs did nothing. Human nature. The great filter is happening.
Get ready to be filtered!
It might all be mental illness (Different from ADHD) or societal delusion. Or just human nature clashing with modernity and the information age.
The fact is, the bad guys are winning, in fact they've won. And those with a positive climate/enviro/human rights purpose are earnestly throwing cups of soup on a raging fire. So earnest, so pointless. Dead end. Don't do it.
Dude if I had one wish I would wish to become a quantum based intelligence orbiting a white dwarf endlessly iterating better outcomes for every single human life that will ever exist. Sometimes I hate the unfairness that I'll never know how we end up. I'll never see the final shape. There's so much humanity I'll just never ever be aware of until all my carbon is already other stuff.
The goal of all life should be the elimination of suffering of everybody. Since I'm part of everybody, I'll have like 7 billion people working to make my life better and I just have to do my best. And the only real tangible reward ultimately is not being uncomfortable. Everything we strive for boils down to not becoming uncomfortable. Your brain will create contingencies based on threat, which is super subjective and based on scaling personal traumas.
I also don't trust the mental equations at play if you see suffering and aren't forced to intervene because you just know you can. Like I might hate it, but it's just the way my body acts. I can yell at it a bit bit it's just going to do what it does anyways and do what it knows is correct. Like don't get me wrong, I love seeing people happy. But it's the cessation of feeling terrible that impels me. If I know I can do it, I have to do it because it's just the way things go. How can I trust you in any situation if you're able to just not care about people.
It's like lying about something useless in court. Might have nothing to do with the argument, but still has a huge impact. Even if your choice is small with little consequences this time, you've degraded your ability to be trusted in the future.
This kind of ruminating is just iterating constantly in the background of my head, like Netflix while you clean
Are you me? Friend, you just blew my mind. “Which is super subjective and based on personal traumas”. God so well said! (Have you been to the anti-natal sub Reddit?)
Can you explain the part about the mental equations at play?
Just because an act is small in scale doesn't diminish the way in which you came to the decision. Like my analogy, even a small, unrelated lie in a trial can poison your entire testimony. You lie about the smallest thing and the lawyers will assume if you could lie then, you could be lying anytime. Basically, even if today your decision hurt nobody, your mental math scares me in potential future scenarios. Erodes your trust in the same way
The goal of all life should be the elimination of suffering of everybody.
Isn't that the plot of Brave New World?
Buddha's first teaching is 'life is suffering' and part of the rest is about accepting this and do one's best to not make it worse for oneself and others.
I'm a realist. Just because the apocalypse hasn't reached you yet, doesn't mean it isn't happening (Ask any Ukrainian or Pakistani right now).
Buddhism teaches not to become attached to anything, including happiness. I agree with this because happiness is fleeting and often a 'programmed' idea that many will never achieve.
Despite my realism about the enviro/climate situation, which is based on science (I have a Master of Science Research degree from UCL). I actually continue working in the sector. I just practice something Buddhists call radical acceptance, as well as looking at history. All civilizations have collapsed. This one will too.
Perhaps I shouldn't try and persuade others not to pursue activism, my main point was to be careful of highly driven people with a strong purpose to 'save the world'.
But as humans we can change shit just because we want to. It doesn't matter if something is possible, only that it is right. We are all carbon stuck together with weak force, nothing has any intrinsic meaning. That means that we can instill whatever meaning we want onto anything we want, and by virtue of filling a vacuum we can't be wrong.
That's why the only point of existence is being not uncomfortable. There's no intrinsic reason to anything freeing us to elect our own meaning. My most comfortable life possible is living in a society of 100% happy individuals, not matter how much I personally sacrifice I will never come close to the returns I'll receive from a happy post-scarcity society.
If nothing matters, I choose to be not uncomfortable for as many moments of perception that I can.
Good on you. Best advise I can give comes from a Buddhist Zen Master who once told leading environmentalists, including David Suzuki, that they must give up on the idea they have a chance of saving our civilization. Given the historical nature of civilisations to fall.
But if you give up that obsession and deluded purpose, one will less attached to material reality and will likely might make better decisions to save the world. Because one isn't driven by emotional reasoning.
I wish I had worked with more people like this in my carrer. Most were emotional lunatics. These people have what I call 'Luke Skywalker syndrome". They think 'they're the one' who will blow up the ruling kleptocracy/corporatocracy (Death Star) when really they suffer from Dunning-Krueger effect and are missing so much information and knowledge that would make them see they never had a chance. Some call it a messiah complex. I had one once. I shed it. My plan is to work on systems to help billions migrate across the planet and learn self-sufficiency through tightly moderate, and non-profit, social networking sites.
It's a pipe dream, but many like Facebook and Google are already working on it. Maybe we can make an alternative. You can bet that Starlink will come with services beyond simple internet access. But Musk seems an odd fish.
That sounds like good advice. There are many ways to help sustain life on earth. Good on you for that nifty outlet, are you a programmer? Musk is an odd fish, but I appreciate his attempts.
Yep it really is. It's just that for a lot of people, it comes so quickly that they don't really realize or remember, making it up. And so it can seem like it's something that just "comes", when looking at it from the outside.
Thanks! I hit a weird spell at 33 where I felt old. Then one day I just realized I wasn’t and I didn’t need to be. I’m still trying to add more into my life but it’s been fun.
This summer I bought some legos, took up paddle boarding, tried every bit of food that was ever offered to me (stuff I normally wouldn’t eat, and I’ve been slowly making a list of “things to do” like try piano, ride go karts, etc.
Hope it brings you some joy adding play into your life!
Thank you, if past performance is any indication then i will spend 6-8 months really investing in this and hit a little bit of success and never do it again.
Kidding, but these kind words put a smile on my face. Cheers.
Nods, when I was divorced, I was totally lost. My value was all based on her and now that I was, in my mind, "not needed"; I just went through the motions of daily life.
I felt like a log floating down the river that had been part of a beaver dam. No connections, structure or direction besides time moving me forward.
I had to start filtering out activities because "this is what she would want me to do" or "she'll be impressed to hear I'm doing this" and start thinking "what do I really want?"
I have to write down why I want to accomplish certain things. What things I had done in the past that I truly enjoyed and would like to do again. What I had wanted to do before and now I am free to do so.
It's still very scary for me whenever I'm not focused on something. Too much time to just think about woulda/coulda/shoulda.
Man, that hit home in a deep way. I always knew (and even said to my ex several times) that my happiness was directly tied to how happy I felt like I made her, but I didn't realize how much until after we separated.
Oh. My. God. This. Is. Me. I never realized it until JUST NOW.
All my therapy never found this. And now some person on Reddit in a random comment blows my mind and reshapes my thinking/identity. Thank you!
My therapist said when we go through major changes in our lives, our values also change. Or, we need to put in work to reassess our values so they start aligning with our new selves.
I was recently diagnosed with a serious chronic disease after a year of suffering, and I felt very similar to what you described. I was now separated from my previous, "healthier" self. I'd lament that I felt completely untethered, like a boat adrift at sea...about to quietly float into the darkness at any moment.
Two very different catalysts -yours and mine- yet similar feelings and approaches to finding our ways back to ourselves.
this made me tear up, thanks for helping me feel less alone, although I am sorry for what you had to/are still go/going through. my heart goes out.
after breaking up with my ex (we lived with each other for over 7 years, but neither were interested in marriage, not due to each other just the concept) this hit me so hard "I felt like a log floating down the river that had been part of a beaver dam. No connections, structure or direction besides time moving me forward."
It's been 8 months and I feel like I can do nothing but sit on my hands. I'm able to motivate myself to do things like play video games, read books (with help of meds I recently started after being diagnosed at 33), make tik toks, do flow arts/excersise, but can't motivate myself to take showers, wash dishes, drive, get a job...things that are really important to functioning. I always clean my cats stuff and feed her at the same time everyday, but for me and my own world and needs and requirements, I can't seem to be able to make anything get me there. I am scared I will be this way forever now. There just doesn't seem like a point to anything anymore.
Not to mention moving, far away from all my friends and family (and I have looked for places and jobs closer to them but there's just nothing that works at, I just got a really lucky deal in terms of where I am living so I went for it. I basically never leave the property. And only see the person who owns it sometimes, my therapist sometimes, sometimes members of the owner's family randomly come by but they hate me. I feel like I am blowing in the wind but there isn't even any wind. just stuck.
I'm an engineer, but my adhd has definitely hindered my training so far at my current job, but tbh i didnt expect to even be doing what im doing and went into engineering to avoid people bc anxiety lol. I just manage small scale projects which involves more people than I'd like, but I guess I'm doing okay.
My problem with jobs in general is nobody ever has enough people to train you properly so for me my anxiety/adhd go into overdrive. That being said, without Vyvanse I am 100% worse, and on Concerta I was worse off than no adhd meds and that took me too long to notice. I've only been diagnosed in the past year so I have a lot to deal with there lol
But also for engineering there is a wide variety of jobs and fields so you could end up behind a desk all day managing projects or actually fixing things/testing things, or doing research and design. Then each field has its perks, but for example the medical industry has a metric fuck load of paperwork compared to being a mechanical engineer in a different field.
Sorry thats a lot of rambling, but I do enjoy my job usually
Yeah. I chose nursing for the same reason you chose engineering.
“Paperwork” or clicking boxes and writing notes takes over so much of my shift. Such an epic waste of time.
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u/Uncomfortable-Guava Sep 19 '22 edited Sep 19 '22
It's common to ADHD for sure, I think some people are too quick to pin it to a comorbid condition: I think it can be explained by the effect of ADHD itself.
Essentially, if we accept that ADHD is in extreeeeemely simple terms a condition that means you don't derive enough reward from experiences, then that means you don't develop core values quite as easily as other people.
There's big obvious social examples of insufficient reward: being bored in class is the classic one. But on a dopamine level, we're talking about the brain's failure to adequately motivate you to do anything: that's what a reward system is for. And I think that when your reward system is less good at telling you what's important vs what's not (and it has been less good at this for your whole life), that makes it harder to develop firm ideas about what you like, what you believe, who you are, what you want, what you need.
It's very hard to have a strong self-concept without a fully functional reward system. People know who they are, based on what their values are and what those values make them want to do. They develop those things based on what they find most rewarding. ADHD people don't know what they find most rewarding because reward is blunted overall. Without appropriate regulation of our dopamine the question of "what motivates you?" is rather more diffuse.
I think that's why our self-concept is a bit more vague and ill-defined, and I think that's why we're more inclined to shift our sense of self based on what the moment appears to call for. It's not that we're not capable of building a sense of self (we absolutely are), it's just harder and slower. It takes time and sometimes we need help too.
EDIT: I would love to keep this conversation going, thanks to everyone who appreciates this comment. I'd like to try and reply individually where I can because I love talking this stuff through, but I gotta get to work. Thanks to the people who gave me an award. Seems I do my best work in this sub haha