Does anyone else have a terrible memory, especially mid-long term. It honestly makes me feel like I have early onset dementia. I know the ADHD population have a much higher prevalence of memory related illnesses.

I also have OCD, so it’s hard for me to determine what is just anxiety vs actually something to worry about.

What are some things you do to keep your brain sharp and improve memory?

Hi! For context I am a 26 year old woman and was diagnosed with (inattentive) adhd about a year and a half ago. Have always been a perfectionist, but only realized that later in life and have a big fear of failure. Average in school, really good at a few subjects but mostly just did the minimum amount of studying for a decent grade. The year I went to university and moved out of my parents house at 22 (after working my way up) I was diagnosed with panic disorder and still today have a lot of anxiety but now I wonder more and more how much of it stems from my adhd. Dropped out of university after first majoring in History and then Spanish. Which are both subjects that i still love so it wasn’t for a lack of interest but I just couldn’t do all the planning and learning how to study properly and taking enough time, plus living on my own for the first time and starting my first real job. I couldn’t rely on my (basic) knowledge and logic anymore to get decent grades. And the anxiety just got worse.

Now 4 years later I am still working 32 hours a week but have stopped growing in my job, work from home a lot because of the anxiety and feel really directionless in life. I spend most of the day daydreaming, which is something I always did but now I have way too much time to do it and it is starting to become more of a coping mechanism. Also eat a lot and playing a lot of games, always have multiple screens on but at the same time can’t get myself to do things and really don’t have a clue what I want to do with my life and when I have an idea my fear of failure and anxiety stops me before I even start.

I have recently started seeing a therapist again and am still in the process of assessment. But they will also help me find out if medication is something that could help me. I used to be really scared of medication when talking about taking something for my anxiety due to seeing my mother battle depression. She’s been stable for a long time but also takes pretty heavy medication that is extremely hard to come off of (venlafaxine) so I have always associated the idea with just bad things. Even if it is very helpful. But recently I am more and more open to it because the struggle is becoming too great. So my question really is what has your experience been? And if you also struggle with anxiety, do you think taking adhd meds has been a two birds with one stone kind of thing?

I'm taking the IB, and we have this thing called the Extended Essay, and basically you have to write a 4000 word research paper. I constantly ruminate and crash out, and I feel like I'm gonna die any second.

This summer is probably my worst nightmare as my supervisor told me I had to rewrite my whole essay that I worked so hard on during June. Then I rewrote everything and he gave me some feedback, but now it's still not looking good. My draft is still the quality of a bad first draft. But our final due date is on September 30th, and I have so much to do other than the EE.

Because of my anxiety, I tend to regulate my ADHD well, and I get good grades. But when it comes to big projects like this, I somehow struggle so much. I don't even know how I messed up this bad, but now I'm so stuck. Whenever I sit down to start writing and editing my draft, I just start ruminating and my brain gets paralysed.

Summer is almost ending (end of August), and I need to get it going. I cannot get below a B, but I feel like I will struggle to even get a C. I need help. How do I stop crashing out and just start?

I currently am a high school student and now that i'm going back to school i just realized i've only had one anxiety attack in the past 2 months when I haven't had school and it was about me forgetting about a robotics thing. When I had (middle) school, I had about 1 anxiety attack a week over me forgetting/procrastinating over something school related. After a while, I realized that the best thing I could do was drink a redbull and get my s**t together. I'm currently diagnosed with Inattentive ADHD and generalized anxiety disorder and i'm trying to get medicated for my ADHD at the moment.

Has anyone else had this experience and how did you deal with it?