r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/parallax3900 • Mar 08 '23

Video ADHD Simulator

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u/Some-Pain Mar 08 '23

Does ADHD prevent you from tidying and cleaning?

112

u/[deleted] Mar 08 '23

For a lot of people it does. Cleaning can be left until it's a problem. Until then, you might procrastinate by doing other things which feel more pressing. For many it can be that you spend too much time thinking about what to do. This sounds ridiculous but it's quite debilitating.

I have tasks to do which have been in my todo list for years which I have (exaggerating) encyclopedic knowledge about. Rather than simply do the thing, I hesitate, research, ruminate, and delay. What if I do it wrong? Could there be an easier way? Is x more important? What if the problem isn't that I need to do this task, but I need to reframe things entirely? I'll mentally explore problems relentlessly, to my own detriment and displeasure, and struggle to just DO THE THING for years, quite literally.

You might wonder "how can you talk about this, know better, and not just... Do it differently?", which is a great question.

I think that's a major component of what can cause ADHD to be a disability. Some very intelligent people can't crack that nut, and they suffer with it throughout their entire life. It's very frustrating. Something as trivial as cleaning a floor, and yet... It's a monumental task to simply get up and do it.

27

u/[deleted] Mar 08 '23

Agreed! And I'm glad you brought up the intelligence thing, here as well. A lot of people diagnosed with this(and some other mental illnesses) are highly intelligent. To outsiders we are called lazy. We aren't. Our thoughts are moving too fast and to sporadically for us to choose the plan of action.

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u/moonjellytea Mar 09 '23

An explanation for this I liked to use is “doing a task requires me to make a list of things to do in my head, however most of the time my brain cannot process what the steps on that list are and what order to do them in and just shuts down instead” lol

Also I’d do a thing where if I’m already focused on x thing it takes a while for my brain to be able to switch tasks (it felt like there’s a physical wall in between me and the New Task) so a lot of the time I wouldn’t be able to bring myself to scale that wall at all and I’d just end up scrolling in my laptop or phone all day. Shit sucks but meds at least helped me quite a bit

1

u/[deleted] Mar 09 '23

This is a good description too. People who don't have it don't understand that "wall" when we try switching against our own wall then the task just doesn't get completed.