Depends on the thing.
Super high level, ADHD is an issue with the reward system of the brain failing to deliver reward when it’s supposed to. Your brain is supposed to try to find a new task when it’s not getting it’s reward anymore; it’s how that frontal cortex problem solving engine gets driven around by all the parts that handle motivation, wants and desires.
Sometimes no reward is being given, so you keep slipping off to a different task, and sometimes too much reward is being given and so you stay on a task way too long.
And, to be clear: these are not huge rewards we’re talking about like a wave of pleasure or noticable feeling, just the baseline steering signals.
Sometimes the task you need to do provides no “normal” reward but neither does what you’re doing right now, so your problem solver sees no reason to switch. Sometimes a nudge can help because fulfilling a request or suggestion can come with some reward, or at least you’re just swapping out neutral tasks with some minor effort.
Sometimes the task is unpleasant to some minor degree, so not only is the reward not there, it’s also a punishment. Or the thing you’re currently doing is providing some degree of reward.
In either case, switching means actively going against everything your problem solver uses to decide what to do. Needless to say, that’s really hard, and being nudged often feels more like being nagged, or like they’re upset with you, because your problem solver (also known as your conscious self) knows this is all going on, but knowing how the engine is working doesn’t make it work differently.
So you’ve been sitting there trying to push a granite block up a hill for an hour, and then someone comes up and starts pushing on your back. They haven’t removed the part that made it hard, but they added something uncomfortable to your current situation.
Before I got on medication following my diagnosis, me and my partner handled it by just being really cognizant of what our mental states are, and communicating clearly. “You asked me to remind you”, “I need to do it, but I’m stuck”, and effectively asking for permission before annoying someone to the point where the current blocker is less desirable than doing the thing. Requires a lot of trust and good communication though.
It’s difficult to describe subjective feelings, but what can sometimes look like “sitting on the couch watching short YouTube videos about sheep dogs instead of brushing your teeth and going to bed” is actually: sitting on the couch bored out of your mind and desperately wanting to go to bed, but the sheepdogs are providing short bursts of novelty and cute. Removing your lap blanket provides no joy and makes you cold. Standing up provides no joy and makes you less comfortable. Walking to the bathroom provides no joy and now you’re in the dark bathroom. Brushing your teeth provides no joy, tastes bad, and is intensely boring. Walking to the bedroom provides no joy. Getting into bed and snuggling up provides joy.
Summed up: sheep dogs provide continuous minor joy, and only costs the physical misery of staying awake, the confused guilt of paralysis, and the promise of future misery. Going to bed is a promise of some joy, but it comes with a bunch of steps that are at best neutral and often entail anti-joy. It just doesn’t add up. Other people get a tiny hit of joy from each substep, which is why they can say “I’m done looking at sheepdogs, I’m going to bed” and then just magically do it.
“Before you go to bed, you need to slowly press your bare foot into this fresh dog poop, toes spread of course” isn’t often made better by someone saying “it’s not that bad, come on, you can do it, I believe in you, then you can get some rest for once”.
That youtube short part really hurts, I know thats whats going on, but getting the move on is so impossible. I also can’t get my brain to understand that sleeping is not wasting time, even while I’m wasting time watching nothings on youtube.
Sometimes I picture my prefrontal cortex as a well meaning bureaucrat who’s just like "oh, trust me, I know the rules are terrible and there’s an active problem. Nothing I can do about it though, I just work here. Second that order comes in though, I’m on it boss, you better believe. You’re gonna want to talk to my manager. Yeah, he doesn’t take calls. It sucks, could maybe get something fixed around here. "
Can you expand on this please? I don’t know what my prefrontal cortex’s role is and don’t get what this means. If it’s a way of getting past the task resistance, that would be very helpful.
Sure! Unfortunately, it was purely a joke and has no helpful qualities that I can think of.
Your prefrontal cortex is the very front edge of your brain, and it’s (very generally because brains are complicated) responsible for problem solving, decision making and stuff like that.
It’s the part of your brain that makes the call to actually remove the blanket.
These are called “executive functions”.
It’s also very associated with a lot of parts of personality expression, so while it’s not where “you” are, damage to it has a more pronounced impact than other parts of your brain, so sometimes people treat it like it’s “you”.
It picks which tasks to do based on that reward system I mentioned in my original comment. It doesn’t directly control which task it’s pointed at trying to solve, so it can come up with a plan to do what’s needed, and then discover that the first step is “bad” and it should keep doing what it’s doing.
That’s the little man sitting at a desk who knows it’s all fucked. Did all the work and then was directed to ignore it, knowing that was the wrong call. Something else is in charge of that reward process (kinda), and you can’t “reason” with that process.
Does all of this ring true for anybody else without diagnosed ADHD? Because this is exactly how I feel constantly but I also hate to self-diagnose based on internet discussion.
I feel like ADHD is one of those things where everybody relates to it a bit, so it’s hard to know if I should look into getting a diagnosis.
Don’t self diagnose based on a single internet discussion but self diagnosis is crucial to getting yourself some relief. I didn’t get a diagnosis until I was about 40, and even at this point the change was dramatic. I don’t take stimulants but I take a few medications and it made life so much easier, I doubled my salary in 3 years, bought a house, just had a fantastic few years. But I also have a ton of trauma, I hurt a lot of people and myself from being so chaotic and depressed and incapable of processing thoughts or feelings, or being able to handle basic finances. I also lost like 15 years of good life where I could have been successful and happy instead of depressed and stuck in a shitty job with no clear way out.
If you’re reading these discussions and realizing that it seems a little too familiar, take this seriously. If you decide you have it, don’t take anyone’s word that you don’t. Its hard to get treated IMO, so if you see a therapist and they don’t want to treat you for ADHD, then bye bye, find another one who will take it seriously. I went to therapists on and off for years trying to figure out why I was depressed, and they basically told me I was okay, the normal amount of unhappy with regular life stuff. I finally got on a mild antidepressant and it helped immensely. I fought and found out the antidepressant had an off label use for treating mild ADHD, and when my daughter got diagnosed I looked more into it. When I went to therapists to get treated for ADHD, they told me I was just depressed. so you gotta fight for yourself, but this world is a fuck, and it can be extremely worth while once you get what you might need.
Yeah, a lot of brain things are like that. The way I look at it is, everyone sees a little of it, but some people see a lot of it. If you see a lot, it’s not self diagnosis to say “I have a lot of symptoms in common with people who have this, so I asked a professional”.
You also don’t need a diagnosis to practice some of the coping strategies that people have that are non-medication. If they turn out to be helpful, that’s maybe a another reason to ask a professional.
Self diagnosis is a bad idea, but it’s also a bad idea to ignore marked similarities you see between yourself and others. And stuff like “always put your keys and wallet in a specific basket” is only the cost of the basket.
Reading this post and peoples comments got me thinking about neuroplasticity. There’s lots in life that nudges us towards neurodivergence - I’m fairly confident I’m diagnosable just from working in IT for decades. Back when I started and was more customer-facing, I was far better with people and could easily break down what’s happening for laypeople.
Now that I’ve zoomed out and gotten far deeper technologically, I feel like I’ve adapted into the ASD / ADHD realm
Same. I’m even a bit afraid of talking to a doctor about it because I feel like such a farse. I totally feel like I have ADHD but I’m also highly functioning. But when I think about how I’m functioning, it’s basically a series of ways I trick my brain dominoes into falling into place. At work I carefully manage all my notifications - I must avoid being distracted by them, but must put systems into place to remind me of every task.
Read my response to this, you gotta keep fighting for yourself. I’m not against therapists bug I think there is something in their training, or maybe something to do with the business of mental health in general, that introduces all these disincentives to treatment for some people. If you take the self assessment and it seems like you have it you gotta fight like hell. I can’t even begin to describe how much better my life is and how much happier I am now that I’ve been treating it for a few years
No. There are tests for the types of functional behavior differences that comprise ADHD, but they can’t really be administered outside of a moderately controlled setting.
Stuff like saying a list of words and seeing how many you can recall in a fixed time can’t really be done reliably in a quiz.
There are tools that can say “based on what you answered, there’s a high/low probability you’d benefit from further consultation”. They’re basically “how often do you interrupt?”, “how often do you zone out?”.
Basically a structured way of “what I’m hearing you say is …”. “Based on how you describe yourself as ADHD as hell, you might benefit from asking someone about that”.
Self assessments can be wrong about what they suggest you ask about. If you have a concern or behaviors that you do that upset you or cause problems, then that’s worth addressing and following until you get help, but it might not be what you thought. Or the doctor might have been mistaken, since they’re also fallible, but hopefully the more objective tests can lend objectively to their conclusions.
Yo, same… Add on a history of past drug abuse (several years clean), and I can’t imagine any doctor not immediately assuming I’m drug seeking and just trying to get some Adderall.
I’m not sure if I have ADHD per-se, but I’m certainly neurodivergent and the venn diagrams of ADHD and my flavor of neurodivergence overlap quite a bit.
I relate, but haven’t been diagnosed with ADHD. Got a doctor’s appointment tomorrow to get a referral to a psychologist for a psych evaluation, however, so I’ll let you know!
Oh yeah. Wonderful memories of psyching myself up to do Thing and then suddenly getting nagged to do Thing and dropping in absolute negatives on the good old motivation.
That’s a wonderful example at the end there, gotta remember it when I talk to people who don’t get why I was standing in doors dressed and couldn’t go outside.
This, this hits so hard. Yes. Everything yes. The blanket. I don’t think anyone else in the world really understood how the blanket trapped me. Thank you for saying this.
Depends on the thing.
Super high level, ADHD is an issue with the reward system of the brain failing to deliver reward when it’s supposed to. Your brain is supposed to try to find a new task when it’s not getting it’s reward anymore; it’s how that frontal cortex problem solving engine gets driven around by all the parts that handle motivation, wants and desires.
Sometimes no reward is being given, so you keep slipping off to a different task, and sometimes too much reward is being given and so you stay on a task way too long.
And, to be clear: these are not huge rewards we’re talking about like a wave of pleasure or noticable feeling, just the baseline steering signals.
Sometimes the task you need to do provides no “normal” reward but neither does what you’re doing right now, so your problem solver sees no reason to switch. Sometimes a nudge can help because fulfilling a request or suggestion can come with some reward, or at least you’re just swapping out neutral tasks with some minor effort.
Sometimes the task is unpleasant to some minor degree, so not only is the reward not there, it’s also a punishment. Or the thing you’re currently doing is providing some degree of reward.
In either case, switching means actively going against everything your problem solver uses to decide what to do. Needless to say, that’s really hard, and being nudged often feels more like being nagged, or like they’re upset with you, because your problem solver (also known as your conscious self) knows this is all going on, but knowing how the engine is working doesn’t make it work differently.
So you’ve been sitting there trying to push a granite block up a hill for an hour, and then someone comes up and starts pushing on your back. They haven’t removed the part that made it hard, but they added something uncomfortable to your current situation.
Before I got on medication following my diagnosis, me and my partner handled it by just being really cognizant of what our mental states are, and communicating clearly. “You asked me to remind you”, “I need to do it, but I’m stuck”, and effectively asking for permission before annoying someone to the point where the current blocker is less desirable than doing the thing. Requires a lot of trust and good communication though.
It’s difficult to describe subjective feelings, but what can sometimes look like “sitting on the couch watching short YouTube videos about sheep dogs instead of brushing your teeth and going to bed” is actually: sitting on the couch bored out of your mind and desperately wanting to go to bed, but the sheepdogs are providing short bursts of novelty and cute. Removing your lap blanket provides no joy and makes you cold. Standing up provides no joy and makes you less comfortable. Walking to the bathroom provides no joy and now you’re in the dark bathroom. Brushing your teeth provides no joy, tastes bad, and is intensely boring. Walking to the bedroom provides no joy. Getting into bed and snuggling up provides joy.
Summed up: sheep dogs provide continuous minor joy, and only costs the physical misery of staying awake, the confused guilt of paralysis, and the promise of future misery. Going to bed is a promise of some joy, but it comes with a bunch of steps that are at best neutral and often entail anti-joy. It just doesn’t add up. Other people get a tiny hit of joy from each substep, which is why they can say “I’m done looking at sheepdogs, I’m going to bed” and then just magically do it.
“Before you go to bed, you need to slowly press your bare foot into this fresh dog poop, toes spread of course” isn’t often made better by someone saying “it’s not that bad, come on, you can do it, I believe in you, then you can get some rest for once”.
That youtube short part really hurts, I know thats whats going on, but getting the move on is so impossible. I also can’t get my brain to understand that sleeping is not wasting time, even while I’m wasting time watching nothings on youtube.
Sometimes I picture my prefrontal cortex as a well meaning bureaucrat who’s just like "oh, trust me, I know the rules are terrible and there’s an active problem. Nothing I can do about it though, I just work here. Second that order comes in though, I’m on it boss, you better believe. You’re gonna want to talk to my manager. Yeah, he doesn’t take calls. It sucks, could maybe get something fixed around here. "
Can you expand on this please? I don’t know what my prefrontal cortex’s role is and don’t get what this means. If it’s a way of getting past the task resistance, that would be very helpful.
Sure! Unfortunately, it was purely a joke and has no helpful qualities that I can think of.
Your prefrontal cortex is the very front edge of your brain, and it’s (very generally because brains are complicated) responsible for problem solving, decision making and stuff like that.
It’s the part of your brain that makes the call to actually remove the blanket.
These are called “executive functions”.
It’s also very associated with a lot of parts of personality expression, so while it’s not where “you” are, damage to it has a more pronounced impact than other parts of your brain, so sometimes people treat it like it’s “you”.
It picks which tasks to do based on that reward system I mentioned in my original comment. It doesn’t directly control which task it’s pointed at trying to solve, so it can come up with a plan to do what’s needed, and then discover that the first step is “bad” and it should keep doing what it’s doing.
That’s the little man sitting at a desk who knows it’s all fucked. Did all the work and then was directed to ignore it, knowing that was the wrong call. Something else is in charge of that reward process (kinda), and you can’t “reason” with that process.
Does all of this ring true for anybody else without diagnosed ADHD? Because this is exactly how I feel constantly but I also hate to self-diagnose based on internet discussion.
I feel like ADHD is one of those things where everybody relates to it a bit, so it’s hard to know if I should look into getting a diagnosis.
Don’t self diagnose based on a single internet discussion but self diagnosis is crucial to getting yourself some relief. I didn’t get a diagnosis until I was about 40, and even at this point the change was dramatic. I don’t take stimulants but I take a few medications and it made life so much easier, I doubled my salary in 3 years, bought a house, just had a fantastic few years. But I also have a ton of trauma, I hurt a lot of people and myself from being so chaotic and depressed and incapable of processing thoughts or feelings, or being able to handle basic finances. I also lost like 15 years of good life where I could have been successful and happy instead of depressed and stuck in a shitty job with no clear way out.
If you’re reading these discussions and realizing that it seems a little too familiar, take this seriously. If you decide you have it, don’t take anyone’s word that you don’t. Its hard to get treated IMO, so if you see a therapist and they don’t want to treat you for ADHD, then bye bye, find another one who will take it seriously. I went to therapists on and off for years trying to figure out why I was depressed, and they basically told me I was okay, the normal amount of unhappy with regular life stuff. I finally got on a mild antidepressant and it helped immensely. I fought and found out the antidepressant had an off label use for treating mild ADHD, and when my daughter got diagnosed I looked more into it. When I went to therapists to get treated for ADHD, they told me I was just depressed. so you gotta fight for yourself, but this world is a fuck, and it can be extremely worth while once you get what you might need.
Yeah, a lot of brain things are like that. The way I look at it is, everyone sees a little of it, but some people see a lot of it. If you see a lot, it’s not self diagnosis to say “I have a lot of symptoms in common with people who have this, so I asked a professional”.
You also don’t need a diagnosis to practice some of the coping strategies that people have that are non-medication. If they turn out to be helpful, that’s maybe a another reason to ask a professional.
Self diagnosis is a bad idea, but it’s also a bad idea to ignore marked similarities you see between yourself and others. And stuff like “always put your keys and wallet in a specific basket” is only the cost of the basket.
Reading this post and peoples comments got me thinking about neuroplasticity. There’s lots in life that nudges us towards neurodivergence - I’m fairly confident I’m diagnosable just from working in IT for decades. Back when I started and was more customer-facing, I was far better with people and could easily break down what’s happening for laypeople.
Now that I’ve zoomed out and gotten far deeper technologically, I feel like I’ve adapted into the ASD / ADHD realm
Same. I’m even a bit afraid of talking to a doctor about it because I feel like such a farse. I totally feel like I have ADHD but I’m also highly functioning. But when I think about how I’m functioning, it’s basically a series of ways I trick my brain dominoes into falling into place. At work I carefully manage all my notifications - I must avoid being distracted by them, but must put systems into place to remind me of every task.
Read my response to this, you gotta keep fighting for yourself. I’m not against therapists bug I think there is something in their training, or maybe something to do with the business of mental health in general, that introduces all these disincentives to treatment for some people. If you take the self assessment and it seems like you have it you gotta fight like hell. I can’t even begin to describe how much better my life is and how much happier I am now that I’ve been treating it for a few years
Is there a real assessment one can take online that isn’t basically equivalent to a buzzfeed quizz?
No. There are tests for the types of functional behavior differences that comprise ADHD, but they can’t really be administered outside of a moderately controlled setting.
Stuff like saying a list of words and seeing how many you can recall in a fixed time can’t really be done reliably in a quiz.
There are tools that can say “based on what you answered, there’s a high/low probability you’d benefit from further consultation”. They’re basically “how often do you interrupt?”, “how often do you zone out?”.
Basically a structured way of “what I’m hearing you say is …”. “Based on how you describe yourself as ADHD as hell, you might benefit from asking someone about that”.
Self assessments can be wrong about what they suggest you ask about. If you have a concern or behaviors that you do that upset you or cause problems, then that’s worth addressing and following until you get help, but it might not be what you thought. Or the doctor might have been mistaken, since they’re also fallible, but hopefully the more objective tests can lend objectively to their conclusions.
Yo, same… Add on a history of past drug abuse (several years clean), and I can’t imagine any doctor not immediately assuming I’m drug seeking and just trying to get some Adderall.
I’m not sure if I have ADHD per-se, but I’m certainly neurodivergent and the venn diagrams of ADHD and my flavor of neurodivergence overlap quite a bit.
I relate, but haven’t been diagnosed with ADHD. Got a doctor’s appointment tomorrow to get a referral to a psychologist for a psych evaluation, however, so I’ll let you know!
Oh yeah. Wonderful memories of psyching myself up to do Thing and then suddenly getting nagged to do Thing and dropping in absolute negatives on the good old motivation.
That’s a wonderful example at the end there, gotta remember it when I talk to people who don’t get why I was standing in doors dressed and couldn’t go outside.
Wow, super insightful, thanks a lot!
This, this hits so hard. Yes. Everything yes. The blanket. I don’t think anyone else in the world really understood how the blanket trapped me. Thank you for saying this.
First Lemmy comment I’ve Saved. Well said.
I’m not sure if I have ADHD, but I’m certainly neurodivergent in some way(s), and I definitely struggle with executive functioning.
I’m literally doing it right now.