#explaining adhd

[jordienotu]

So im spending christmas at my grandparents this year and staying at their house for 5 nights is actually quite difficult for me. Mainly because im masking the whole time except when im alone at night. I've started explaining my mental health and ADHD quirks and stuff to them throughout the last year and they accept everything but dont quite understand it.

I've been quiet all day and huddled in the corner on my phone for a couple hours (I know its rude) due to my social battery being beyond depleted.

I explained to my nan after she asked for the third time if I was okay that my social battery is like a phone battery, the more you use it the quicker it goes down and needs time to recharge, im not used to being around other people 24/7 so mines been used super quick, with that phrase she understood and left me to it while still including me in the conversation with my grandad etc.

Does anyone else have helpful stories/ideas i can use to prevent becoming an overstimulated gremlin until the 28th when I go home? Advice would be appreciated so so much. I love my grandparents and over the moon they invited me to spend christmas with them, and I dont want to accidentally be rude or (in their eyes) sulk the whole time

[teacherunicorn]

ADHD and Screws Theory:

Some of you may have heard of the spoon concept, where one's mental capability is represented by how many spoons they have. Use up all your spoons, and your brain decides it's done for the day. Number of spoons may vary, but that's the short explanation of that.

I saw a video recently explaining the difference between fucks and spoons. Fucks being the emotional capability you have to put into any given situation.

While the video made good points, I'd like to add my own abstract concept of screws, which is representative of how well I can get my ADHD to understand the task from a normal world point of view.

Basically all situations the world puts you in require screws to be deemed 'acceptable' by society, but where everyone else has both a phillips head and a flat head screwdriver, I only have a phillips head. So if society only gives me flat head screws for a task, I might be able to improvise, but it's a toss up of how society reacts.

Spoons+fucks+phillips head screws? Shit will not only get done, it will be done so amazingly well that I will be called a genius!

Spoons+fucks+flat head screws? Shit will get done, but it'll turn into one of those scenarios at school where my teacher acknowledges that I did wonderful and creative work, however, it didn't match the rubric I was given in the slightest. I'll probably get a good enough grade that it doesn't matter, but there will be a side of lecture to go with it.

Spoons+phillips head screws, but no fucks? Shit will probably get done well, but I'm gonna complain about it the whole time.

Spoons+flat head screws and no fucks? Shit might get done, but I don't really care if it does. At best you will get a "fuck it, good enough" scenario.

Fucks+philips head, but no spoons? Shit will get done out of spite, and I will likely need excessive mental recovery afterwards.

Fucks+flat head screws, but not spoons? This will likely result in some level of ADHD paralysis. If the shit gets done, it will be in a stress induced panic at the last minute. The quality of the work is really hit or miss.

If there are no spoons AND no fucks, it doesn't really matter what kind of screws you give me. We're done, we're closed, try again tomorrow.

And that's how my brain works, hope that clears some things up! Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

[written-by-leftover-dreams]

trying to explain my adhd symptoms, particularly lack of object permanence, to my therapist was so fucking funny. the surprise on her face when i told her things just disappear 😂😭

she was like ??? and then what happens ???

when i finally got my point across she was like “oh… things really do just disappear”

the looks of pity i got were great 😂😂

[tfw-adhd]

Do you have links to any of your sources? I'd like to show my parents, my mother doesn't really believe a lot of what I tell her because I "just saw it on the internet". She's also looked exactly one source up and insisted that executive dysfunction was just a theory.

I’m sorry I don’t really have any articles to share, because most of what I say on here is things that I’ve learned from my psychology course, or that my mother has told me (she’s an autism specialist, and has training on general SEN, too)

But I’ll tell you something AMAZING to look at; How To ADHD on YouTube.

This is one of her videos that talks about how to explain ADHD, so maybe watch this one first, and I’d totally recommend all her other videos.

I think this explains it really well, and even talks about executive function, which you mentioned. I hope this is useful!!

[my-adhd-self]

Is it an ADHD thing to really, really struggle with arts and crafts??  Like, whenever I begin an art project, I never get to finish it bc after two minutes, I’m bored and want to move on to something else.  Or there’s too many steps in the project, and I can’t keep them organized or just don’t know where to begin and I get overwhelmed before I can even start.  Does anyone have any tips for doing art or craft projects with ADHD?  Or any, idk, ADHD friendly craft ideas that are short and simple to do?

[adhddude]

New video is up! It’s about explaining your ADHD to someone that doesn’t have it!

[actuallyadhd]

Hello!! Ah... I have ADD(have been officially diagnosed!), and I've always found it very frustrating and tired to explain to people when I need to, so I've been thinking of making... a picture book of sorts to explain how it affects me personally! AS in, why i Can't focus on things, and how it's how my brain wired? Kind of explaining that in the format of a cute looking picture book where the narrator is this little character that experiences what i go through? {1/}

The problem is that I’m worried about not explaining other traits o ADHD i don’t have? I mean, I want to educate on how frustrating it is sometimes when you can’t focus, but also how helpful it can be and shoot my mind is going way too fast right now I can’t really explain!!! Sorry!!! Ah… Disregard the top bit but do you think about me making a picture book about what’s its like for me having ADD? I feel kind of like I might do something wrong and would like to have different opinions…{2/2}

From September 24 2017

I think that’s a great idea! If you’re worried about people maybe over-generalizing your experience, you can include a page about how other people experience ADHD differently because we’re all different, and so this book is just about you.

-J

[rabbit-with-a-grapefruit-spoon]

I just spent like two hours explaining adhd with my brother to my grandparents (on to side of my family that doesn’t have it everywhere) and holy shitttt am I exhausted. Like I have adhd, both my brothers have adhd and so do a few of my cousins some aunts and uncles probably my gramma and maybe as well my great uncle and probably more as that is all on only one side of my family where it’s just highly concentrated at this point. But anyways that is not the point, the point is that trying to have a conversation with two neurotypicals as two neurodivergents about adhd is so fricking frustrating. So like at times my nana would interrupt my brother or get off topic about something and my brother and I would just look at each other like ‘seriously SERIOUSLY!?!???’ because we can’t just go back to the original conversation after getting side tracked that is literally not possible for us. Or at times she would get really focus on interest and being motivated by that and we were struggling to explain how interest is a factor but now I huge part in like studying for exams for example. (please note my mum, who is the not adhd sibling of her generation, is also trying to help explain this) Or also she, still my nana, got really caught up on how it must be that we can't focus because we can't see how it will immediately affect our futures when studying, which noooo we can see we just can't do anything to make ourselves study or be interested. and my grandpa was better about not interupting he did get kinda confused about if my brother (who doesn’t have an official diagnosis, the other brother and I do) was self diagnosing and how can we be sure if he does have adhd. And at this point when both of his sibling do, at least one cousin, two aunts and uncles and probably more family has it and adhd being known to be hereditary, you kinda get to know the symptoms well and can look at someone and go  ‘oh yeah you’ve got this and this and this and oh that too and this over here and oh yeah your life had kinda fallen apart a bit after high school yeah maybe you do have adhd’ so nope we maybe be ‘self diagnosing’ but when we’re also working for a diagnosis and know it that well its really not in the same category.

(and yes I know that they don’t know about this and are just trying to understand and look out for us but despite having grace to them in conversation that doesn’t make it any less frustrating. and im also only mentioning the more annoying/frustrating things here)