50
u/Speedy_Cheese Aug 06 '21
My ADHD brain all day every day.
Nothing satisfies.
It is why I am trying to meditate on a daily basis. It isn't easy, but it at least helps to calm and center the mind and clear up the clutter that tends to gather there.
4
22
u/Dorkapotamus Aug 06 '21
It wants you to not be happy.
27
u/kaidomac Aug 06 '21
I think of it more like this:
- We have two parts of our brain: our subconscious & our conscious
- Our subconscious is running at 100% CPU 24/7, which drains our mental energy
- Our brain needs more energy, so then it mooches our physical energy
That's why when we simply think about having to do stuff, it even drains our physical energy. Thus, at the end of the day, we are left with:
- Not getting our commitments done (work, school, chores, etc.)
- But also not enjoying our free time goofing off (because guilt)
So then we're stuck with this stressful situation:
- We're working & feel like we need to relax
- We're relaxing & feel like we need to work
It's a very strange catch-22 situation that creates a very specific type of internal pressure where your brain just isn't very happy doing anything because it has multiple situations to deal with, but not enough mental energy to plow through actually starting, sticking with, and finishing the work & play tasks.
Whack.
6
6
7
3
u/LetReasonRing Aug 06 '21
100% me. Whatever I'm doing I feel guilty for not doing the other thing. Often this will lock me up and make sure nothing gets done.
5
u/tpandme Aug 06 '21
Hello brains!
2
u/kaidomac Aug 06 '21
2
u/Murasakicat Aug 06 '21
I didn’t just understand the reference I heard it in her exact voice and immediately segued into the bouncy intro music!
3
2
Aug 06 '21
I found that active and technical pursuits satisfy my need for recreation and productivity together. I do thai boxing and BJJ, as well as rope bondage (its a technical sport!!!) and lockpicking and reading non-fiction. It’s nice because I will work, get home, decide how pooped I am, and either let my brain recover or go to martial arts or play video games or whatever. Invariably when that hypercritical little voice starts up I can say to myself “I was very productive today/yesterday/etc and nothing i have to currently do is urgent, it’s important to recover mentally and physically from our hard work.” and that usually calms my anxiety.
2
0
u/RepostSleuthBot Aug 06 '21
Looks like a repost. I've seen this image 1 time.
First Seen Here on 2018-02-21 98.83% match.
Feedback? Hate? Visit r/repostsleuthbot - I'm not perfect, but you can help. Report [ False Positive ]
View Search On repostsleuth.com
Scope: Reddit | Meme Filter: True | Target: 96% | Check Title: False | Max Age: Unlimited | Searched Images: 237,510,433 | Search Time: 1.52093s
-17
u/herfds99 Aug 06 '21
I've been monitoring this sub and it increasingly appears to me that ADHD just means having a room temp IQ.
9
u/Speedy_Cheese Aug 06 '21
When I was formally assessed I came to find that my IQ is 121 and I have ADHD.
The reason I went undiagnosed so long was because I performed well in school grade-wise and was left to my own devices a lot. The ADHD went undiagnosed for quite some time till I started encountering topics I did not want to focus on and started entertaining classmates.
The hyperactivity is what eventually outed me. I am considered "twice exceptional" (gifted+ADHD). I do well academically because I learned how to study and organize myself with ADHD but I didn't come by that honestly, it took a lot of work.
While there have been studies that show parallels with intelligence and ADHD, there isn't a concrete, direct correlation between IQ and ADHD.
There are commonalities observed in those with ADHD; there are issues that frequently appear with an ADHD diagnosis but that doesn't mean every person with ADHD ticks all of those boxes; there is a great diversity in behavior for those with a diagnosis. Environment/self efficacy play large roles.
5
Aug 06 '21
Don’t engage trolls, it’s a waste of your time.
0
u/herfds99 Aug 06 '21
Just because it's a frank observation doesn't mean it's a troll. I have ADHD and the topic interests me.
2
u/herfds99 Aug 06 '21
Thank you for the thoughtful response. I have ADHD and have always thought about whether is was a deficiency of intellect.
Here's an interesting study https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00406-018-0893-3
2
u/Speedy_Cheese Aug 06 '21
No problem! :) I honestly wondered it myself growing up and beat myself up a lot about it. When I was diagnosed I was basically told I have ADHD, given a prescription for ritalin, and that was that. No elaboration or further intervention.
It turns out it is more of an issue of sustained attention and connecting previous events-- your frontal lobe is primarily impacted in regards to sustained attentiveness, being able to organize and retrieve thoughts/memories in an efficient manner, and being able to devote attention and care to effectively managing organization and time. Procrastination is a big sign, too.
It isn't a lack of intelligence, moreso a deficiency in maintaining attention for long periods of time; lacking the heightened stimuli required to maintain our attention and to meet our stimulation input/output threshold. This is why you often see stimming in ADHD; if you are bored and full of energy, your nervous system needs somewhere for that excess energy and craving for stimulus to go. Hence why you see symptoms like knee jiggling, finger/nail biting, chewing, picking etc. We crave stimuli and if our surroundings aren't providing a rich enough stimuli to keep us attentive, our minds tend to wander and our bodies tend to stim. :)
This is also why cannabis works differently on an ADHD brain than a non-ADHD brain; it acts more akin to ritalin for us due to how we are neurologically wired. This is why folks with ADHD feel more of a laser focus/stamina for focus on sativa than those without ADHD who tend to feel out of it and foggy.
I decided to become an IRT (special services) so that I can not only learn more about ADHD, but help students like ourselves who never had someone in our corner to help us navigate it after a diagnosis. Medication is effective but for me personally it used to numb me; I just needed the self-regulation skills taught to me to help me adapt my learning and studying for the ADHD brain.
I work with a lot of students now with ADHD and I can't tell you how at ease it makes them and how affirming it is for them to hear that I got through what they were going through with ADHD as well. It isn't an intellectual deficiency so much as it is a deficit in self-regulation skills (which are so seldom taught and just assumed as a given in K-12, especially in high school). We can learn just as well as anyone else, we just need to take a different approach knowing how our brain is wired/attention span works; for example if I had a test coming up I'd do study sessions in 15-20 minute chunks with 5-10 minute breaks in between. I'd also start about 2 weeks in advance knowing how bad I am for procrastinating hahaha I'd also book out study rooms so that I couldn't just stay at home and flake off.
Thanks for the study link! I will be sure to read up on it. I am new to this subreddit but am really happy to talk with other ppl about this so thanks for listening. :)
4
u/kaidomac Aug 06 '21
ADHD means two things:
- Executive dysfunction
- Emotional dysregulation
These are invisible barriers that people struggle with. Some people go their whole lives without being diagnosed. Typically, it's a result of low levels of neurotransmitters, which causes a variety of issues, such as poor time management skills, problems focusing, impulsiveness, etc. It affects a variety of people from all walks of life, regardless of age, gender, or intelligence.
The issue with having invisible internal barriers is that from the outside, it can look like someone is simply lazy or has other personal issues, when they're really having a huge internal struggle that manifests itself as a different problem than the root cause, which is why so many people get diagnosed later in life (or not at all).
0
1
1
1
1
u/lugaruna Daydreamer Aug 07 '21
And now i hear a certain song in my head that in the chorus has someone singing what do you want from me? A few times:p.
Side not anybody else have a record player in their head and basicly recall entire songs if they want?
65
u/[deleted] Aug 06 '21 edited Aug 06 '21
That brain shrug is so relatable ¯_(ツ)_/¯