[yurious-george]

When a person with ADHD complains of severe anxiety, I recommend that the clinician not immediately accept the patient’s label for her emotional experience. A clinician should say, “Tell me more about your baseless, apprehensive fear,” which is the definition of anxiety. More times than not, a person with ADHD hyperarousal will give a quizzical look and respond, “I never said I was afraid.” If the patient can drop the label long enough to describe what the feeling is like, a clinician will likely hear, “I am always tense; I can’t relax enough to sit and watch a movie or TV program. I always feel like I have to go do something.” The patients are describing the inner experience of hyperactivity when it is not being expressed physically.

At the same time, people with ADHD also have fears that are based on real events in their lives. People with ADHD nervous systems are consistently inconsistent. The person is never sure that her abilities and intellect will show up when they are needed. Not being able to measure up at the job or at school, or in social circles is humiliating. It is understandable that people with ADHD live with persistent fear. These fears are real, so they do not indicate an anxiety disorder.

holy SHIT

[avawtsn]

Ooo okay, I really wanted to know what the source of this was and it’s Additude magazine, a 2021 last-updated-in-2021 article here titled Why Anxiety Disorder Is So Often Misdiagnosed.

I know I vibed with this quote and saw others do so in the tags so I thought a source would be helpful.

[brightlotusmoon]

[3liza]

dysautonomic conditions are also often comorbid with adhd, meaning sometimes you have ADHD and POTS and when you stand up or just have a weird blood pressure hiccup you are suddenly having a “panic attack” which is actually just low blood pressure. very cool. POTS patients score higher on ADHD measures when standing vs sitting or lying down lol

[kamlo]

please stop treating the word neurodivergent like it means the overlap between autism and adhd

[kamlo]

i dont know how to articulate this well but some of you act like neurodiversity starts with adhd and ends with autism. you talk about "the neurodivergent experience" and everytime you mean "the overlapping experience of adhd and autism."

please remember us when talking about neurodiversity. ocd, dyslexia, dyscaculia, personality disorders, tourettes, intellectual disabilities, schizo-spec disorders, etc. all fall under neurodiversity.

please stop saying neurodivergent when you mean "autism and adhd."

this post is okay to reblog but do not clown on it

[upsettingandunfortunateclasshate]

Why do we love to pathologise normal behaviour online?

By reducing nuances of mental health to sweeping statements, social media might actually be leading to over-diagnosis.

Did you enjoy reading as a child? I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, but the cherished hours you spent reading Harry Potter books were actually just your body’s way of dissociating in an uncomfortable environment (also RIP to your idea of JK Rowling as a decent person). Do you sometimes forget to text your friends back? It’s probably, definitely, because of a past trauma, and certainly not the natural result of a culture in which we are expected to be socially available at all times. Better get a therapist on the line! Do you struggle to concentrate at your office job, where you spend eight hours a day performing boring tasks in front of a screen? I hate to be the one to tell you this, but there’s probably something immutably wrong with the chemicals in your brain. 

As far as the internet is concerned, just about everything you do might be evidence of a troubling pathology. Social media can undeniably be a great resource for people experiencing mental illness, alongside people who have ADHD, and people who fall somewhere along the autism spectrum. A condition like ADHD, for example, is still said to be underdiagnosed (particularly among women) and raising awareness about this might bring people to a diagnosis they sorely need. But as with many things online, there is a downside to a free, entirely unregulated flow of information. 

This is good. It talks about capitalism too.

[lilnasxdaily]

LIL NAS X for The New York Times Magazine Jul. 2021 photographed by Shikeith

[despairhasitsown-calm]

a while ago i attended this lecture on autism. guy in the audience said he had many of the symptoms that were presented and asked what should he do to get treatment and possibly a diagnosis. instead of answering his question the psychologist went on a tangent about how “the clinic reigns all powerful over guesswork”, and how actually it has become a trend amongst little children on the internet to claim that they are autistic for cool points, and that this hurts real autistic people. no she didn’t tell him how to get his symptoms looked into, she just made it very clear that to her, aknowledging your own symptoms is bad and evil and hurts the poor real mentally ill people.

an ex-friend of mine, then a psychology major and by now probably a full psychologist, once lectured me on how horrible and bad it was that i told her “i probably have some sort of neurodivergency”, and that if i were her patient she would never give me a diagnosis because “you aren’t like this now, but i know that if you get a diagnosis you’ll use it as an excuse to start treating people badly. that’s just how mentally ill people are.”

same ex-friend was extremely disgusted when she found out that fans sometimes make neurodivergency headcanons for characters that have the same symptoms as they do, and that authors sometimes write books with neurodivergent protagonists in stories that don’t focus on that (ex: she seemed horrified that percy jackson has adhd?)

multiple psychologists i’ve seen on facebook agree that they should refuse to treat patients that say “i’m here because i have symptoms of a disorder and wonder if i have it”, and that a patient should arrive to a psychologist as a blank slate.

school psychologist asked me how i was feeling about my trauma situation and i told him i thought my friends would leave me. instead of addressing the issue he said that that no i didn’t, that i was lying, that i had searched “bpd symptoms” online and now i was faking symptoms because i wanted to have bpd, that he shouldn’t have told me he suspected i had a personality disorder because now look what was happening. no, i didn’t search bpd symptoms online. yes, my friends left me, it was a completely founded belief and not a symptom, let alone a faked symptom.

so the next time you hear someone saying they’re “anti self-diagnosis” i want you to understand what they’re saying. what they’re saying is:

- i don’t want people to be aware of their own symptoms

- i don’t think my patients should have access to any information that doesn’t come from me

- i don’t think neurodivergent people should learn how to cope with their symptoms and live “normal” lives

- i think neurodivergent people should be denied a diagnosis because the moment they get one they will become evil and dangerous

- i don’t think people who don’t look like a stereotype could possibly be neurodivergent, even if they have all the symptoms, so i think they are faking it for attention and should be denied treatment

[asd-and-others]

- I don’t think anyone who doesn’t have access to quality care deserves the right to self-advocacy

- Every mental illness or neurodivergence can be better spotted from the outside than the inside

- Neurodivergent and mentally ill people are incapable of self-understanding

[0x1-deactivated20220826]

i have a rare form of synesthesia where i can hear music

[0x1-deactivated20220826]

[beaft]

hanging out with other ADHD people is such a balm. i can interrupt them midsentence and go “look at that nice duck!!” and they’ll immediately turn around and go “oh my god that is a GOOD duck” instead of just snapping at me to pay attention

[tonysopranobignaturals-deactiva]

post on here: anyone else hate green grapes?

comment: this is actually a sign of both childhood trauma and adhd,

[dykesville]

op I know this is a joke but studies have actually shown a connection between affinity for grapes and adhd! our taste receptors show more affinity for sweet foods, which means that nah I’m just kidding but someone on here would say this

[tonysopranobignaturals-deactiva]

I CAN'T KEEP GETTING TRICKED LIKE THIS MBDJGJGDGJKL

[goodbye-friends36294]

ADHD tips from my school counselors:

“You need to create a study routine!”

“You need to stop fidgeting…you’re distracting yourself!”

“Get more exercise and take your meds!”

“Stop procrastinating!”

ADHD tips from my friends with ADHD:

“I eat one chocolate chip for every page I read.”

“I can only study by playing the gravity game on the Quizlet website. I need to beat my friend’s high score.”

“Every ten minutes I get up, put on one song by Taylor Swift, and wiggle around until I feel better.”

“Instead of checkboxes, I draw little flowers next to each task, and after I finished the task, I color in the flower in a fun color.”

[crimsoncadmium]

In my experience moving your body while you think really helps. Like talking with your hands while trying to memorize text or pacing. I love pacing.

[kadywicker]

listen you can say “capitalism makes living with adhd/autism really difficult and in a non-capitalist society these things would not be so hard and neurodivergent people would thrive better” without saying “adhd/autism are the biproduct of capitalism and everything you think is a symptom is really just being unable to cope with capitalism” like…… don’t erase neurodivergence and pretend it’s just a social phenomenon. 

saying “actually neurodivergence is just made up by a social structure i oppose” is not as progressive as you think it is

[qunari]

I’ve tried to explain this SO many times.

my adhd and disability combined leave me functioning somewhat outside of capitalism. that is, i can’t work, I’m fully dependent.

without the stress of daily functioning within a capitalistic structure (i spend a most of my time doing whatever the hell i want,) i still suffer the effects of my adhd A Lot.

my adhd causes insomnia, and my lack of sleep severely impacts my mental and physical health. i have rsd, which severely impacts my social life. i have executive dysfunction, which even without work and schedules, makes my life absolute hell, by impairing my ability to feed myself, keep my spaces clean, and generally take care of myself to an extent that without outside care, i would be extremely unhealthy. none of these things are the product of capitalism. the impacts exist outside of capitalism.

in a perfect, leftist world, i would struggle the exact same amount to sleep, eat, have a social life, and be healthy.

to believe my adhd is a product of capitalism is either accusing my symptoms of being made up, or severely underestimating the scope of the effects.

treating adhd like it’s just an impairment to productivity is a capitalistic misrepresentation, and has no business in leftist arguments.

[firespirited]

This tracks with my family history with neurodivergence: they married someone who could fill in the gaps, kept extremely simple lives or stayed together as siblings carrying eachother and still had the occasional “bad stretches” despite it. We have to accept that even in a utopia we won’t all be productive little worker bees and reject the mindset that an individual must be “contributing” for their life to have worth. There are plenty of people right now considered high worth, high earners, “productive citizens” who are leaving a negative footprint on the world and wounding the people around them and we never question their right to life and yet we still look at the disabled like parasites, even amongst disabled people, the mindset runs deep. Leftism has to value life, all life with no strings attached, or it’s just the same ol elitist shite repackaged.

[shoefaced-deactivated20210321]

I think everyone who has ever cursorily related to adhd memes should actually open a new tab, type “symptoms of adhd,” and read a little bit about it. Relating to a meme doesn’t automatically mean you have adhd, but you also could have it without realizing.

If you read the symptoms, you might find that many or even most them fit you. If not, you’ll still have more understanding about what adhd people experience. There is literally no harm in learning more about adhd beyond memes.

[tfw-adhd]

This!!

And if you relate to the memes, think you might have ADHD, but don’t relate to all the symptoms you find…. take a look at these Venn Diagrams of overlapping symptoms. Especially this ADHD-Autism-PTSD diagram, because those three have so many symptoms in common!

[sandersstudies]

Having ADHD is like just now I went to look up salmon recipes but suddenly I’m building a shelf

[sandersstudies]

The transition also came from a purely logical train of thought but that doesn’t mean it was correct

[sandersstudies]

I actually walked away from washing dishes because my train of thought went “I’m tired of cleaning dishes and I have to go to work soon and then I will have to come home and make dinner and I will be MORE tired” and then I thought “wait I can save myself being tired making dinner LATER if I simply put dinner in the slow cooker to cook NOW” and we have leftover salmon that will go bad if I don’t use it soon so I started googling salmon slow cooker recipes but halfway through I thought about how getting the slow cooker out is a hassle because there is never enough counter space and then I REMEMBERED I bought a shelf to put counter things to have more counter space but I’d left the box in the car so I went out and got the box and completely assembled a shelf but I still haven’t started dinner OR finished the dishes.

[keepcalmandcarriefischer]

Hey OP, you are late for work now

[sandersstudies]

FUCK

[adhdtogether]

This is it.

This is exactly what an ADHD train of thought can look like. And I'd bet money that this happened in the span of about 10 seconds.

[dissociacrip]

rsd is not a condition. rsd is not a diagnosis. rsd is not a medically recognized symptom of adhd and the experience "rsd" describes is not exclusive to adhd at all. this does not mean people with adhd can't experience rejection sensitivity, but "rsd" as an "adhd" thing is a concept with no emprical backing developed by one man, with claims of it being brain-based without any evidence behind that claim, as well as many other claims surrounding the "nature" of rsd. adhd is a condition characterized by executive dysfunction, which can involve emotional dysregulation, but acknowledging that is different from the framework of "rsd" and seeing people on this site pass this around without critical thought and even claiming rsd is "adhd only >:(" makes me sick. you're buying into what's basically pop psychology instead of scientific research.

emotional dysregulation and rejection sensitivity is by no means adhd exclusive, and people with adhd experiencing those things doesn't need to have its own special label or whatever when there's no meaningful difference between someone with adhd experiencing those things and someone without adhd experiencing those things. that's not logical and a ridiculous mentality of "rsd is adhd ONLY because our rejection sensitivity is SPECIAL" completely goes against building common ground with other neurodivergent people for petty and invalid reasons.

the amount of misinfo going around about adhd on this site is uncanny. please investigate claims others make about disability and do your research - actual research, which doesn't include tumblr posts that lack citation and oft unreliable sources like ADDitude Mag and WebMD. it would be INFINITELY more productive to operate on a shared experience of emotional dysregulation and rejection sensitivity among varying groups of neurodivergent people than to feed into this nonsensical idea of "adhd-only special super rejection sensitivity."

[kindestegg]

if you allow me to second this op, i became aware of the whole rsd thing being bullshit during my research for my current graduation work. i looked through many articles, hundreds even, in english, portuguese, spanish... granted, i did not exhaust EVERY possible science research website, but i favored ones that had good rep and that i already knew could help me get easy resources. still, no mention of rejection sensitive dysphoria, for my research that contained adhd as a keyword.

i feel like the case that happens here is that people see adhd and rsd through the lens of false correlation, and by that i mean, they observe a phenomenon that DOES happen, which is people with adhd feeling alienated from their peers and having a negative sense of self when it comes to social situations, and immediately think: “oh! this happens a lot with people who have adhd? must be a symptom!” when rather, it is related, yes, but it is more of a risk.

and this risk is not related to the very existence of adhd, but rather to outside circumstance, specifically ableism and underdiagnosis. during my research, some articles would cite going undiagnosed until adulthood as a higher risk for comorbid anxiety and depression. also, negative labels and rejection from family and peers contributed to low self esteem, negative self perception and oh shocker!/s social anxiety (sources, if you want them, sorry some of them are in portuguese: 1, 2, 3, 4).

its not that adhd CAUSES any of this. its just that its a high risk because of ableist environments and often a lack of diagnosis, which leads to you feeling pretty fucking bad about yourself and wondering why are you so different. i mean, i know i did. but i think thats something that can happen with ANY disorder, specially disorders that can persist through your whole life and affect pretty much every corner of your life. i may even be confident enough to say that, if i had done a research on autism, i may have found pretty similar results. ableism and rejection is something common to the experiences of pretty much all of us neurodivergent people!! there is literally no need to confuse a common experience with something that only this disorder or that disorder can have.

[dissociacrip]

don't apologize, this is good!

[abcsofadhd]

(source: me)

[meangirlnurse]

ADHD isn’t a substitute for a personality and not all of your personality and mannerisms can be attributed to ADHD

[umbrellanumber5-deactivated2021]

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Never related to anything more

[woundliqour]

[aggressivewhenstartled]

This is why I get meal kits. Do I need them? No. Can I easily make them myself? For way cheaper? Yes. WILL I??? No.

Other tips: if you are going to buy things that aren’t pre-taxed, you need to make a habit of always doing the prep AS SOON AS YOU GET HOME. it will NEVER HAPPEN if you don’t.

Get the bulk pack of steaks! But you are never gonna eat them before they go bad. If you freeze them in individual ziplocks as soon as you unpack you probably will?

Get the celery, but you need to cut it ALL UP and store it in the fridge in water or it will rot.

And don’t do all tgese at once, get like, one or two prep things a trip. You aren’t gonna get it started if it’s a huge task.