Edit
After reading all the responses below and receiving much helpful advice, I reflected on my hesitance of getting medical help. I realized I didn’t want to feel like I “gave up”. I come from a poor family of immigrants and my parents sacrificed a lot for me to have an opportunity, so when I’m discussing these mental problems I face with loved ones, there’s always a suggestive undertone of being unappreciative(remember your parents slaved away doing manual labor jobs so you could complain about your comfy, well paid office job)
I now realize my own happiness/fulfillment is my responsibility, public opinion be damned. Thank you all. I will seek help ASAP
Double edit
I’m on strattera(atomoxetine) now. It’s helped me focus my thoughts a lot more.
Original:
Not sure if this is typical or not but it perplexes me to no end. I’ve always struggled with remembering things, decision paralysis, bad sleeping patterns, interpersonal relationships(appearing distant), mood swings of joy and apathy(high peaks and low valleys), addictive personality traits(coffee/nicotine/alcohol). But on a good day I can do the work of a whole team. I’ve often spearheaded entire projects solo from concept to design to implementation. Despite a very rough start in my early adult life and after getting tired from most jobs for petty things like disagreements or tardiness, I’ve been solid for about 7 years. I’ve learned to communicate effectively without getting emotional, how to manage relationships, how to work around the difficulties of my ADHD, I’ve turned my skills into a well paying career and can politic with the best of them. My son was diagnosed and I never was because Hispanics don’t believe in ADHD(“everyone has those problems, you just need to manage xyz better”)
I’ve tried to explain my patterns to loved ones in hopes of feeling understood but even those closest to me say it’s all mental. I feel like no one understands. I’ve been called brilliant/highly intelligent many times but have been told I need to apply myself. I feel like it’s both a strength and a weakness.
Anyways, I have health coverage now and am scared of prescription medicines. Not sure if I should just keep braving on towards my future without getting some sense of closure. I believe my father is also on the spectrum because he has always embodied all the symptoms (irregular sleep, obsession with pet projects, irregular moods, difficulty managing relationships/being empathetic/sympathetic, etc).
I hate being told that I’m not trying hard enough when it feels like I need to keep double the pace of everyone else just to be on par. Should I start allowing myself to be disagreeable? Maybe call bs what it is and not dance around it so much? Should I seek treatment? Should I keep quiet and bite down on the rag?
Sorry for the rant. No one seems to understand.
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Not sure if you can use this to explain it to them, but I’ve always liked this:
A true ELI5 on how this actually affects people is ‘ICNU’: Interest, Challenge, Novelty, and Urgency. If something doesn’t meet one of those four categories, someone with ADHD just isn’t going to be able to do it. Let’s use doing the dishes as an example–is it interesting? Not even slightly. Challenging? Not really. Novel? Nah. Urgent? Not yet–but once that person with ADHD actually needs clean dishes, then it gets done, because it now meets one of those four criteria. In that sense, putting things off until the very last second is essentially a coping mechanism for ADHD, rather than a symptom of it itself.
Source (I know): https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/o5bojv/eli5_how_adhd_affects_adults/
I also like this one:
Have you ever walked into a room and suddenly forgotten what exactly it was that you went in there for? It seems to be a phenomenon that most people can empathize with. Now imagine that same thing happening but with practically everything you do. If I put the oven on and don’t keep my focus consciously on the cooking - say I go into the other room to grab something - chances are high I’ll just totally forget I ever put the oven on until I smell something burning. If something catches my attention as I’m getting out of my car in a parking lot I might end up leaving the keys in the unlocked vehicle and not realizing until I get back out of the store (that’s happened more than once). If my boss gives me a task and I don’t immediately write it down on the list I keep beside me, I will forget in an instant not only what it was I was asked to do, but that I was even ever asked to do something in the first place. In a way it’s like having a faulty short term memory.
If you’ve ever seen the Matt Smith episodes of Doctor Who - the villains called “The Silence” are an incredibly accurate analogy for what ADD is like for me. They are terrifying creatures but if you look away from them even for an instant, you forget they were ever there.
I realize this just makes me sound flighty or spacey to a fault, which I guess in a way is what ADD is. I think everyone exists on a spectrum of attention. For most people the odd flighty moment is the norm - the walking into a room and forgetting what you were going in there for, or the driving home from work and realizing you can’t recall the drive at all - but ADD sufferers are at the much more extreme end of this spectrum
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2eh7ca/eli5_what_exactly_is_adhd/
Saved and meant to get back to this.
Anyway, two books I highly recommend:
ADHD for Adults(because adult challenges can be quite different from childhood, and being diagnosed as an adult is a different experience). This book is largely about how to identify when ADHD is affecting you, and developing strategies to compensate.“Your Erroneous Zones” by Wayne Dyer. Early self-help book, but he’s introducing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in laymen’s terms (not even sure it was called CBT back then).
Thanks, I’ll check those out. I am on strattera(atomoxetine) now and it has helped a good bit.
If you don’t know of her, check out Jessica on How to ADHD.
She’s a riot, my ADHD friends/family say she really gets presenting to someone with ADHD, she holds their attention well.
One video is her Ted talk. Very moving (and funny, and insightful).
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
