1. Never tell anyone what you're planning to do until you do it (you will get a premature dopamine hit and sense of accomplishment from telling them and lose motivation to actually do it)
This is why I hate it when people trivialize ADHD, treating it like just this silly little quirk. Throwing around jokes about "squirrels" and being distracted by "shiny things."
This is what living with untreated ADHD is like. It's fucking hell.
Having ADHD is so fun because sometimes youre looking for something that you use regularly and definitely put away in a smart and reasonable place and you have absolutely 0 hope of remembering where and finding it. And then other times ur like "hmm I need a some kind of small pointed object. I feel like i remember seeing a paperclip under the left couch cushion a month ago, i wonder if its still there" and it is
"wait but if u saw the paperclip why would u just leave it there?" its the adhd. Also if i had put it away then i wouldnt have been able to find it a month later when i needed it. So. Checkmate neurotypicals.
Problem is when the ADHD catalogue is out of date, when you go to check under the couch cushion for that paperclip and it ISNT there, sometimes your brain will just give you a montage of false memories of everywhere you've ever seen a paper clip, like this
for some, ADHD has its perks. but for others, it can be an overwhelming and destructive force. its hard having to “clean up” and organize your life when theres a constant pushback from your own brain!
Not to go "if you have ADHD just go for a run" or anything, but I am so serious if you have ADHD you should regularly go outside, no headphones no phone no nothing and just stand and observe for a while until you've had enough. Not until you get bored, until you've had enough. Drink your coffee without watching tiktok. Have a bath without music. Turn down the volume in your headphones. I cannot overstate how much learning to be bored is cruicial with ADHD. Life is not just about pleasure, no matter what your dysregulated dopamine system thinks, and when you teach your brain to be okay with being bored, then boring tasks stop feeling like torture. By letting yourself be bored you are yoinking your system out of the high/low binary and allow for the highs to feel like actual highs and not just anything that isn't low. I am so serious go literally touch grass. Listen to the sounds in your flat. Stimulate your body the way it was designed. It lowers anxiety and makes you feel like you're real and best of all it's completely free
By the way, you can improve your executive function. You can literally build it like a muscle.
Yes, even if you're neurodivergent. I don't have ADHD, but it is allegedly a thing with ADHD as well. And I am autistic, and after a bunch of nerve damage (severe enough that I was basically housebound for 6 months), I had to completely rebuild my ability to get my brain to Do Things from what felt like nearly scratch.
This is specifically from ADDitude magazine, so written specifically for ADHD (and while focused in large part on kids, also definitely includes adults and adult activities):
Executive functioning skills range from working memory to cognitive flexibility to inhibitory control, and beyond. They power our daily func
Here's a link on this for autism (though as an editor wow did that title need an editor lol):
Practical Strategies for Enhancing Executive Functioning Difficulties in Adults With Autism - Living with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) as
Resources on this aren't great because they're mainly aimed at neurotypical therapists or parents of neurdivergent children. There's worksheets you can do that help a lot too or thought work you can do to sort of build the neuro-infrastructure for tasks.
But a lot of the stuff is just like. fun. Pulling from both the first article and my own experience:
Play games or video games where you have to make a lot of decisions. Literally go make a ton of picrews or do online dress-up dolls if you like. It helped me.
Art, especially forms of art that require patience, planning ahead, or in contrast improvisation
Listening to longform storytelling without visuals, e.g. just listening regularly to audiobooks or narrative podcasts, etc.
Meditation
Martial arts
Sports in general
Board games like chess or Catan (I actually found a big list of what board games are good for building what executive functioning skills here)
Woodworking
Cooking
If you're bad at time management play games or video games with a bunch of timers
Things can be easier. You do not have to be stuck forever.
Having ADHD is so fun because sometimes youre looking for something that you use regularly and definitely put away in a smart and reasonable place and you have absolutely 0 hope of remembering where and finding it. And then other times ur like "hmm I need a some kind of small pointed object. I feel like i remember seeing a paperclip under the left couch cushion a month ago, i wonder if its still there" and it is
"wait but if u saw the paperclip why would u just leave it there?" its the adhd. Also if i had put it away then i wouldnt have been able to find it a month later when i needed it. So. Checkmate neurotypicals.
Problem is when the ADHD catalogue is out of date, when you go to check under the couch cushion for that paperclip and it ISNT there, sometimes your brain will just give you a montage of false memories of everywhere you've ever seen a paper clip, like this
So a few months ago I learned that when you have ADD/ADHD, in order to efficiently manage it (and thus reduce the stress that comes with it), you need to concentrate on four things:
Sleep
Nutrition
Activity
Personal time/space
OH HEY GUYS LOOK AN ACRONYM THAT’S ACTUALLY EASY TO REMEMBER!
SNAP
Do you feel yucky and aren’t sure why? Look at your SNAP. Figure out what you’re missing.
Are you getting enough sleep?
Are you eating enough, and is what you’re eating mostly made of nutritious foods?
Are you getting enough physical activity?
Are you getting enough alone time to decompress, to reset your sensory overload, to spend time in your head, and relax?
I have found that 1) I feel so, so much better when I’m actively putting effort into my SNAP, and 2) if I feel weird, it’s way easier to narrow down what might be the problem by asking myself those questions.
i dont see why i cant start a trend, so here goes. lets try to build back our attention spans. lets try to focus on just one thing for as long as possible. lets not watch those "asmr for people with adhd" videos where they fuck up adhd folks even worse. lets resist the urge to reach for our phones when watching a movie. lets read the articles we reblog, even when theyre boring. i know its hard, i have adhd too, but its worth it. i also know that this hard work doesnt always seem super impressive to other people, so id love for yall to tell me in the tags or replies if youve done something, no matter how small, for your attention span. you deserve to feel like youve taken back some of what social media has ripped from you
While my inability to harness and direct my focus is certainly one of the more annoying and hindering aspects of my ADHD, I think the worst part for me is the emotional dysregulation and the way negative emotions can effectively become a lightning rod for my wandering attention.
Like right now. I’m pissed off at something going on behind the scenes, and I literally cannot think of anything else. Can I distract myself? Yeah, sure, for about ten minutes. But can I do anything meaningful? No. Because I’m expending all my energy and attention on not thinking about the thing that’s hurting me. And then something reminds me of the fuckery going on, and the rage comes back full force like a blunt force blow to my chest, and I’m left gasping in the wake of the intensity to both escape the situation and to turn around and inflict the exact same damage back.
The impulsive part of my brain knows the latter would be quicker. It’s easier to lash out than do the work required to move on. It’s more rewarding because I’d get the immediate emotional catharsis my dysfunctional, dopamine-deprived brain is craving.
In the barest of terms, the anger is stimulating. And that’s dangerous.
If you’re not careful, that’s how you burn not just bridges but yourself as well. (Not to mention the people around you.) And right now, the entire inside of my head is a tinderbox of petty fuckery that won’t accomplish anything if I act on it, but fuck me if the temptation to drop the match just isn’t there all the time.
Anyway, I’m filling out an ADHD worksheet for a workshop I’m supposed to be doing, and I’m annoyed that all the questions are about productivity, with zero mention of literally anything else. And, like, granted, I knew there would be an emphasis on productivity going into this because there always is. But it’d just be nice to see mention of the other things and their importance rather than just treating them like a footnote.
I’m more than my inability to focus. I’m an entire array of dysfunctional fuckery that needs to be wrangled on an hourly basis, and it’d be nice to have it acknowledged how much energy that takes. That’s all.
Reblogging again for these tags because you nailed my experience exactly. And yes it DOES feel like it’s always anger! it’s the least comfortable emotion others want to “deal with” you having so you just learn to isolate until you can be Friendly™ again. So then you develop a very skewed perception of and delicate relationship with anger as an emotion– you never learn (or feel confident about) when anger would actually be appropriate so even when you have a legit reason to be pissed, you STILL assume you’re overreacting, or worry if you actually Say Something, you’ll just work yourself into a frenzy that’s disproportionate to the situation. So you take the time to calm down and rationalize to yourself why you shouldn’t be mad/frustrated/annoyed and why everything is okay and why it’s not worth it to raise issue… so eventually you become either someone who’s mad/annoyed/irritated at everything all the time and should be avoided or spoken delicately to, or someone who won’t push back when someone actually crosses a line, because you can never decide where the line is “supposed” to be.
and anger is, I think (*obviously I’m not a psych this is just my feeling on it, maybe it’s BS), the easiest emotion for adhd to latch onto because it’s SO stimulating. and it’s so stimulating because it makes you feel– in the most monkey-brain, basic sense– Powerful, perhaps because whatever is making you feel “angry” is actually making you feel very powerless and threatened (fear, grief, loss, rejection, etc– all very defeated, sunken feelings). So anger is like your brain’s cure-all for “I’m threatened/powerless, that’s bad for me,” because, “well if I get PISSED i’ll feel POWERFUL. THAT’S GOOD FOR ME.” ergo… instant stimulation. It’s a motivator, and for people who are chronically unmotivated, it’s like candy for the brain– candy it can make itself at the seemingly slightest provocation.
executive dysfunction is legitimately physically uncomfortable. i’ll be trapped between two things, weirdly caught on how-much-time-it-might-take-me. i take hours worried im going to take hours doing things. i’ll sit on the floor for the entire day, caught up in the middle of not-doing the chores i actually do want to be doing.
& the amount of mental energy that goes into it. & the legitimate amount of anger and discomfort and self-hate. is not “being lazy”. it’d be a lot less work if i didn’t have to fight myself to just get up and do it.
i just need you to understand it’s not effortless. it’s never effortless. it’s not “okay let me just get up and finally start doing this.” it’s more like. i am slamming my foot on the pedal but the car is in neutral and nothing is moving. it’s more like shouting instructions into a dying telephone. it’s more like being trapped in a small electric box, and someone who hates me is administering shocks.
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