‘i don’t have adhd but this adhd post is #relateable’
(the majority of this post is pulled from an older reblog I did on my main, @vantasticmess.)
it’s ADHD Awareness Month so here’s a post about it. :D
I’ve gotten sooo many ‘#not adhd but man i feel this’ tags on adhd posts i’ve made, and tbh tags of this type drive me nuts (b/c they make me doubt the validity of my diagnosis.)
but if you, a not-adhd person, see a post about adhd experiences and relate to it, please consider the following:
maybe it’s because most things that adhd people experience are things that most everyone experiences sometimes, only they experience it all the time.
at its heart, adhd is the inability to pick what your attention is locked onto, sometimes combined with a need to move constantly (hyperactivity). This manifests as:
lively internal life + rapid thought & intuitive leaps of cognition - good when being creative, bad when trying to make a logical decision
short attention span + being easily distracted
unnaturally long attention span + inability to notice outside stimuli
short term memory dysfunction
no sense of priority (everything is equally important)
no sense of time in relation to self (cannot effectively tell how long an activity will take or develop a sense of urgency based on a deadline until the deadline is perilously close or already passed)
failure to follow through (leaving work incomplete)
forgetting to remember/remembering tasks at inappropriate times
And pretty much everyone experiences one or all of these things at times, and these symptoms can spring from other causes than ADHD (for instance, executive dysfunction accompanies depression and anxiety as well).
But adhd people have this happen so constantly and so intrusively that we cannot complete basic tasks, even if we want to:
The only thing consistent about us is inconsistent results: sometimes we’re on time, sometimes we’re not. sometimes we’re reliable, sometimes we’re not. sometimes we’re studious, sometimes we’re not … (and trust me we’re not enjoying it any more than you are)
We fail classes, we drop out of college, we lose jobs, and no matter how much we try, we cannot fix it.
We can’t just remove distractions - our brains are a distraction.
We can’t just ‘try harder’ - our wayward mind might be focusing on our studying today, but tomorrow it might not. The same effort level will have wildly different results on different days because our attention cooperated … or didn’t.
it is literally impossible for us to choose our focus. pretty much ever.
it pisses off our friends, it pisses off our bosses, it pisses off our family, and it even pisses off ourselves. it affects every part of our life.
So adhd shitposts can be pretty relateable, even if you don’t have adhd. But if this list sounds familiar - if the contents of it happen to you to the point that you’re getting in trouble at school or your job and you’re pissing off your friends? might be worth looking into what’s going on with you.
blakekathryn
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