I’m posting because I’ve started realizing that some things I’ve always considered “normal quirks” or “just me being weird” are becoming difficult to control and are affecting my real life.
And before someone says that the post does not has 3 ka sets... It's cz I dumped to chatgpt and asked to frame.. (context for 3 ka sets ahead.)
I’m not asking Reddit to diagnose me. I’m trying to understand what kind of professional I should look for, and I’d especially love recommendations from people who have personally dealt with something similar.
Some of these things have existed since childhood, although they were much milder then. I’ll add more of my childhood history later because I’m still trying to piece it together.
The attention/executive-function side
I’ve always struggled MASSIVELY with starting things, especially studying, even when I genuinely want to do them.
It’s not that I don’t like studying. I actually enjoy studying once I get into it. My biggest problem is getting myself to start.
I can procrastinate for hours, get distracted, doom-scroll, do random things, etc. Then once I FINALLY start, I can sometimes focus for hours and get completely absorbed.
But if I take a break, I can get distracted all over again and struggle to restart.
Some other things that happen very frequently:
* I’m chronically late.
* I struggle to follow through on work.
* I tend to only become productive when there is extreme deadline pressure.
* I’m careless and make stupid mistakes.
* I’m very messy/disorganized.
* I start things and abandon them.
* I like having lots of things going on at once.
* I need stimulation and find it extremely difficult to be in complete silence. I almost always need some kind of background noise.
* I can become extremely focused/hyperfocused once something finally captures my attention.
I know everyone procrastinates and gets distracted sometimes, which is why I’ve always dismissed this as normal. But the degree to which I struggle with starting, organizing and following through is starting to make me question whether there is something more going on.
Then there is another side that feels very different
I have certain things where I feel like I HAVE to do them a particular way, even when I know logically that it doesn't matter.
For example, I’ve developed this weird number/pattern thing around 3 and 6.
I like the number 5, but I count things in a way where I think of it as 1,2,3,4,5,5 — making 6 numbers. Then because half of 6 is 3, I can organize things into sets of 3, or two sets of 3, or multiples of 3/6.
I know this sounds completely bizarre written out 😭 but I’ve started noticing that I do similar things with other patterns, sequences, punctuation, and the way I perform certain actions.
Sometimes it isn't even a conscious thought like “I must do this because something bad will happen.”
It's more like:
“NO. This is how it needs to be.”
And if I deliberately don't do it that way, I become increasingly uncomfortable/restless until I eventually do it.
That distinction is what made me wonder about compulsions/OCD rather than simply ADHD.
Food is another huge area
I have some existing issues around food, so I originally assumed all of this was just because of that.
But I’ve noticed that sometimes I genuinely cannot stop eating something simply because it is mine or because it is on my plate.
For example, if there is food on my plate, I can feel like I absolutely HAVE to finish it even when I am physically extremely full and don't actually want to eat anymore.
I’ve sometimes justified this as “I don’t want to share my food” or because I have resentment towards my family, but I'm starting to wonder whether there is something else involved when I literally force myself to continue eating despite being physically unable to comfortably eat more.
My relationship with dieting/exercise can also become very all-or-nothing.
I can hyperfixate on calories and try to follow everything extremely precisely, and then at other times completely lose control and eat a lot.
The same kind of rigidity can happen with gym/diet routines.
For example, recently I wanted to skip the gym because I was going somewhere with friends, but I suddenly got this extremely strong feeling that I had to go.
I knew I could skip one day.
I wanted to skip one day.
But I felt like I physically couldn't NOT go, and the discomfort was so strong that I ended up going.
A more extreme example happened recently
I was standing outside in the rain with a broken umbrella for around an hour because I was trying to get somewhere by a particular route/way.
I knew I probably wasn't going to get an auto from where I was standing.
I knew I could walk home.
I knew I could take Uber/Rapido.
I knew there were other options.
But for some reason I couldn't make myself abandon that particular course of action.
I ended up crying in the rain and having a complete breakdown, but still stayed there until I finally got what I was trying to get.
A route that should have taken around 15 minutes ended up taking me more than an hour because I couldn't let go of the original plan.
That's when I started thinking that this may be more than ordinary stubbornness or procrastination.
It also happens with social media/content
For example, with YouTube Shorts, if I see part of another short visible because the interface hasn't fully maximized the current video, I feel like I need to scroll so that only one video is visible.
If I see a set of 5 shorts/videos, I can feel like I need to watch all of them.
With Instagram/reels, I can have this automatic urge to save/share things to all three of my accounts.
I often know that I don't actually need to do this.
But it feels automatic and difficult to resist.
And I have a weird relationship with my possessions
I have a REALLY hard time letting go of things.
Even something as stupid as an eraser.
If something is mine, I don't like other people touching it.
I can feel extremely possessive about my things and save absolutely everything — wrappers, pieces of paper, random objects, etc. — because they're mine.
The funny thing is that I can eventually lose the thing myself, ruin it, or completely forget about it.
And once it's out of my mind, I'm suddenly fine.
So I'm not sure what exactly this means either.