Sorry for the negative post but this disorder is genuinely terrible. I was diagnosed a few months ago and from the report I received it seems like I have an extremely bad case of it.
I lost 8 percent of my final grade in an operating system class because I submitted the wrong file.
Fine, I have syncthing setup between my desktop and laptop so I’ll just check if the assignment is on my shared folder in my desktop. It’s not.
Ok, I’ll turn on my laptop and grab the file itself. Oh, I have a boot error and now I need to open up the recovery environment to see if the hard drive is even being recognized.
It’s not. Now I have to open up the laptop and reconnect it.
At this point it’s been 30 minutes of me scrambling to get my laptop up and working again and I found the damn assignment there. I emailed my professor and I’m praying that he reevaluates the assignment because the earlier submission had nothing on it. It was just the default assignment.
None of this shit would have happened had I taken just one second to check over what I submitted a month earlier.
I hate reading articles pertaining to ADHD as if it’s some quirky condition that just takes a little bit of time and medication to work through. Its not. I have to constantly remind myself that I’m even conscious in order to function at all, and now I have to sustain extra mental effort to do a relatively hard task.
The only thing that keeps me going is my boss saying “nice work” when I diagnose an issue successfully. It feels infantilizing, as if he knows there’s something going on with me that’s making it hard to cope with the demands of life but “atleast he’s trying his best, atleast he shows up to work, this customer said he had a friendly attitude”.
I randomly got interested in a niche industry and started hyperfocusing on learning about it in my free time, without any intent other than indulging my curiosity. Sometime afterwards I was looking for work and saw an opportunity in that industry. I responded and was able to come across like a highly experienced enthusiast whom specialised in the field the company needed experience in. They hired me and I quickly became the most senior person in the company in technical areas related to the industry. It was a large pay increase, the company is great and I’ve been with them for many years now. None of it would’ve happened without my highly inquisitive nature, which I consider as a positive effect of my ADHD. The specific opportunity coming up was still complete luck. But given the number of tangents I’ve gone on in the past, diving deep into learning the intricacies of some niche or hobby, I’d likely be open to similar kinds of opportunities in those areas in ways I’ve never even considered. I’ve always thought of it as just ‘going with the flow’, but I think for the average neurotypical person it’s often unreasonable to think that would actually get you far in life.
When I was younger, it could feel like a super power when I could hyper focus on something, but as I grow older, my body is showing clear signs of long term damage from substance abuse as self medication as well as getting fat from food binges following 12 hours hyper focus sessions.
It turns out eating 3600 calories in one meal is worse than 3 800 calories meals. Who would’ve thunk.
Eventually, the “good job” stops coming. The little oversights start to pile up. It’s not a super power. It’s damaging physically to act like it is.
I love the hyper focus, but the fucking thing is slowly killing me.
I don’t disagree but thinking of the disorder in purely negative terms is not helpful. It feels like there are some things we are better at. Listening to comedy podcasts I discover many comedians are ADHD and adjacent types e.g. autism. It wouldn’t be a surprise to learn that many creative people are classified as ‘disordered’. I think the key to managing this condition are
- medication
- good routines (sleep, work, diet, exercise)
- self awareness and acceptance
If you take one or more of these away, life among neurotypical people becomes untenable. It’s in comparison to neurotypical people that we can feel inadequate and anything we can do to address those issues will improve the situation for everyone.
People who claim having ADHD has benefits or is a super power are just saying it to make it sound less bad. The reality is that ADHD sucks. It’s not impossible to deal with most of the time once you learn more about yourself and how your ADHD impacts you and what can help you manage the symptoms. Every individual is different. And sometimes we just have to accept that we mess up and that, although we are responsible for those mess ups and we have to work extra hard to blend in and try not to mess up too badly, it’s also a handicap that we didn’t ask for.
I don’t get why people say they have certain positive traits thanks to their ADHD. Why can’t it be because they themselves, as people, are good at something? Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses and every individual is unique. ADHD makes things more difficult, but not impossible. We just have to work with what we have and all we can do is try to find ways to get what we want in a way that works for us.
I’ve had moments where I genuinely felt like ADHD has benefited me, like when went into hyperfocus mode and launched some new project I would have never started otherwise. I feel like I’m a bit more creative and enthusiastic at times. But 99% of the time ADHD is just a condition that sucks for me.
For me the worst part of ADHD is letting my emotions stifle momentum. If you have chronic depression, you will rarely feel the upsides of ADHD. So you get deadlocked - you’re a fuckup because you’re depressed, and you’re depressed because you’re a fuckup. Somehow you gotta break the cycle.
