Reminiscing on my school days, my mother recently suggested that I might have ADHD (Inattentive).
Really have spent the past few weeks reflecting on how figuring that out sooner could have cleared up so many things.
My brother in law has ADHD. He lives next door to me.
He has a car he parks on the street. In my city you’re required to get a registration sticker for your car, it’s like $100 or something, good for a year. Every day you don’t have a valid sticker you can get a new ticket on your car. It takes two minutes to go online and order a new one.
For the last three years, hes been racking up tickets on his car for an expired sticker. One a week roughly, $60 per ticket I think. He usually lets them pile up until he gets final notices then pays them all online at double the cost.
Twice now he’s has his car booted, then impounded, due to unpaid tickets. He even includes tickets on his car as part of budgeting. I’ve offered a couple times if he’d hand me his license to go online and order the sticker for him. I’ve stopped offering since that offer is met with intense anger.
It takes TWO MINUTES to go online and order a new one. Poor guy
I sometimes can’t order food for my cat online for months and feed him with some local shop one when it runs out at the last minute
Or litter same story.
It would be cheaper, more choice, maybe healthier but I can’t force myself to sit click on site, choose one, find credit card, type it etc.
So I always wait till last drop of cat food runs out and then full of guilt hurry outside to search for open shop. At least there is less choice in local shops.
Choices paralyse me. I will spent hours thinking which one to choose even if it’s completely minor and especially online as IRL I simply can’t stand too long I have to grab something.
Also one shopkeeper I think thought I was into her I think but now after a while she just looks sad and annoyed when I come instead of joyous and kind of eee weird but I have no idea to be honest it all may be just overthinking which is also a problem. I am fucking clueless and I don’t even know if I was/am interested. Probably not right I would know if I was I hope it would be obvious like idk heart pounding or whatever. Right? Right?
nope, it’s not easy and it’s definitely going to take 1-2 years. The worst part is that I have no guarantees it’s gonna work
Haha I’m so quirky, right? I also need to order a new fridge because mine broke a month ago but it’s so funny having adhd!
Even ADHD-oriented media is often being dishonest with people who suspect themselves to have this condition, being toxicly positive and showing ADHD as a “superpower” as if you can hyperfocus your way to success. It is neither a gift nor even an equal exchange between advantages and drawbacks like “you’ll be always late but also always creative!” It’s a crippling thing that may ruin career or end a relationship. There is nothing good with ADHD.
or end a relationship
Rather that relationship doesn’t even start, not because you insult someone (that happens, but you’re forgiven), not because you are not likeable (I thought I’m that for a long time, and lots of moments I am), but because you just don’t (despite being hit on by people amazingly beautiful and interesting and intelligent and sending electric shocks your way by simply texting you).
Though I guess someone giving you chances for over a year qualifies as a relationship which ends at some point. Just dysfunctional.
There is nothing good with ADHD.
It gives incentives to be a kinder person. You feel emotions connected to hurt\comfort more acutely than those connected to prestige, power, dominance. You dream far and swift. You don’t care about lying (EDIT: I meant that you don’t lie, not the opposite).
Any time I want to say what you said and recount all the suffering, I notice that I like it more than the alternative.
Also I still think it can be an equal exchange in a world more friendly to ADHD people.
EDIT: And it can be used against fear.
I’m beginning to suspect “superfocus” is just what normal people do when they focus.
Nah, super focus is totally a thing, just not everyone does it.
My wife can’t sit in a computer chair for 8 hours straight playing a game/editing a video/writing something/reading Wikipedia really hard, but I can.
And no, I can’t control it so it’s not a superpower, it’s random enforced focus and it’s only sometimes a helpful thing. Usually the work I do when doing it gets worse much faster and it does major damage to your body to sit in 1 position for that long not peeing.
I can’t control it so it’s not a superpower, it’s random enforced focus
I call it catching the wave. You cant predict the wave and you have no idea if it will ever even happen. Sometimes just have to sit and wait for the motivation to complete tasks to hit, then ride it as long as I can until it tapers off again.
No, no, I know what hyperfocus is, it’s the reason I no longer touch creative writing with a ten foot pole after getting bombarded with “but you wrote this one in an hour and it is awesome! just write another one!” :D
I meant that I am wondering if normal people just get the same productivity but without it being flipped on or off randomly, provided they don’t get distracted by something. You know, kinda like learning that it’s not just a tv thing that people can say “okay, let’s do this” and actually sit down and do “this” and not have to beat their brain into submission first.
Absolutely. People want there to be a fair trade-off, but life just doesn’t work that way. I’ve seen similar romanticization of autism too, especially with the “savants”.
Sorry. Most of that shit has been my fault, and people like me.
In recent times, there’s been a push to reclassify certain disabilities from … disabilities, into “neurodivergence.” in an attempt to destigmatize certain disorders, and cast them in a new light as part of human evolution.
The idea that life is a min-maxing situation comes from the “just world fallacy”, the fallacious belief that all good and evils “must balance out”. Someone born with some profound disability might have no overarching heartwarming lesson for society to learn, and life might just be about abject cruelty.
I don’t know if the community appreciates or hates that change, but, I’ve seen autism go from being called something quite hateful (/r) in the 1990s, to becoming a spectrum, to people working with autistic people and just calling them “different”.
The romanticization might come from movies like Rain Man, and the few high profile savant cases (on ASD), e.g: I recall speculation that Bill Gates and Elon Musk both had Asperger’s Syndrome.
What’s your take on this?
As a low support / “high functioning” (which feels like a toxic phrase for “good at masking and compensating”) autist, it’s easy for me say “I’m just different” and blame my disadvantages on a society that fails to accomodate for that divergence. I often stay away from spaces where I know I won’t be comfortable, I miss out on events I fear may overwhelm me, I retreat when I don’t feel like I can handle navigating the minefield of social interaction. I’m excluding myself from things, because I know (or fear) those things won’t cater to my differences, but I’m not universally unable to participate, so it feels less like a disability to me (more on that later).
That most certainly doesn’t hold for people whose “functioning” is more severely impaired. If you respond to unexpected changes with anxiety attacks because you can’t adjust quickly, that certainly presents a disability in the literal sense and a challenge in dealing with everyday occurrences.
I feel like the shift away from calling it a disability is partially due to the stigma of treating people with disabilities as lesser, partially because it’s not always a visible physical disability and I’ve seen people argue that it’s not a real disability. Both of those are bad, but instead of engaging them, It’s sometimes easier to sidestep. Instead of arguing whether I’m disabled or not, I’ll call it a neurodivergence, because my brain being different is something that’s beyond argument.
There is also the opposite to disdain or dismissal: Pity or praise. Instead of treating me as defective or overdramatic, some people have responded with some form of “oh you poor thing, that must be hard” or “you’re so strong, making your way through life despite those challenges”.
The first one may be half-right, but it just feels like something you’d say when you don’t know what’s appropriate and are trying to play it safe with the empathy angle.
The second feels hollow, because I don’t feel stronger. I struggle far more than I could even express, because expressing thoughts in itself is a struggle. I spent forever writing this comment. To consider myself stronger than others would require me to somehow quantify my difficulties and weigh them up against theirs. I don’t think that’s productive. I think it will lead to some form of “suffering olympics”, which is a mindset I’d like to avoid.
And really, what else would I do? Sit in a corner and cry about the injustice of the universe? Might as well curse the sun for being hot, it doesn’t change anything. Better to look for shade instead of dwelling on the problem.
I don’t want people to treat me like I’m subhuman, nor like I’m superhuman. I don’t want people to invalidate my difficulties, nor make a point of dwelling on them. I want people to acknowledge that this is how I work, to understand if I’m doing something “wrong” or have difficulties, possibly help me if it’s reasonable.
I don’t need a lot of accommodation, just some patience, understanding when I express myself poorly or do things a certain way that suits me more and maybe someone to handle difficult communication on my behalf. So I wouldn’t describe myself as disabled, whether or not that would be accurate, because of the social baggage that word carries. I’d rather leave the relevant help resources for those that need it more.
That’s not to discount anyone else’s self-description. If you feel like “disability” fits your condition, I’m not going to invalidate that. You know your experience better than anyone else. In fact, I can see an argument that my self-exclusion as response to my difficulties presents some degree of disability to participate.
I’m still fighting my own preconceptions on that, and it probably is part of the reason I don’t feel like disabled is an accurate description for msyelf. I’ve grown up with a certain set of convictions and prejudice that I’ve deeply internalised. I’ve mostly managed to expunge them when it comes to others, occasionally still catching myself in some judgmental train of thought and then consciously derailing it, but I have difficulties accurately and productively reflecting on my own self-perception. In a way, it’s both the least outwardly toxic, yet most self-destructive form of hypocrisy, and I don’t know how to deal with it.
As for the romanticisation, I feel like that might be the result of efforts to fight the stigma having overshot their goal due to survivorship bias. Yes, people with ASD may have unique talents too. Yes, we’re not all entirely disadvantaged. Yes, ASD doesn’t automatically make us strictly less capable.
But most of us aren’t some insane genius. You just wouldn’t make a big deal out of the average, so the media report on the extraordinary instead. And if someone’s only contact with the topic is through media that show the savants, it’s easy to forget that what they see isn’t representative.
This is just a misunderstanding of statistics. Something being true for the average doesn’t mean it’s true for separate points.
But in average that’s a bit like calling homosexualism a disability.
I like the border between disability and just neurodivergence to be drawn where it needs to be cured with medicine or you turn into a vegetable or can’t survive. Like with schizophrenia, or maybe BPD. With autism and ADHD most of the problems are from trying to follow procedures for people who are different and imitate them, and most of the solutions are about teaching people with these conditions to drop those imitations and know themselves. I mean, medicine helps, but the problems it solves are too mostly about network effect.
I understand what you mean! What I (and probably most of us) want is the balance between “treat me like a normal person” (as in, with the same dignity and less condescension) and “don’t set expectations too high”. I believe portraying persons on the spectre as savant geniuses as in “Rain Man” or ADHD as a “superpower” skews the balance to one side and we just need some disclaimers to even it out.
I hate it. Sure. Being called a retard isn’t great, but having people claim ASDs are just a different way of thinking is downplaying problems. Oh how quirky we are!
If I wasn’t retarded, I would have been able to study properly instead of relying on hyperfocus and high ascociative thinking. I would have graduated. If I wasn’t retarded, I would have been able to do things consistently and perseveer. Instead, I lose and gain weight over and over. I’m going to develop diabetes at this rate. Going to a 24/7 open gym is the only chance I got at staving off the problems caused by depression and my dopamine hunger induced eating disorder. If I wasn’t retarded, people would have appreciated me more. Instead, I am too much. Say too much. Exist too much. Even when I predict something, or suggest something that people think was good, they believe someone else in the group thought of it.
Furthermore, downplaying the issues could have people mistake just how capable people with autism/ADHD are. People shouldn’t think that starting a family with someone autistic is just “going to be a little different.” People seriously ought to reconsider marrying someone lacking theory of mind skills. And autists should seriously reconsider whether or not they are suitable parents. Baby cries? Can’t have a meltdown. Baby needs consistent care? Better not have exec. dys. inhibiting your jobsecurity and energy management. Need to be able to get on the level of the child, make the child feel heard and understood? Sucks for the kid if the parent lacks that ability too. Both my parents are autistic/AD(H)D, and were downright neglectful and one abusive. They have no real friends. They struggle with emotional regulation and communication. I’ve been working my ass off to become better than them.
I don’t care what people call having multiple mental disabilities. What’s important is helping children on the spectrum. Early detection could have spared me further brain damage and subsequent stacking of developmental problems.
I think it’s definitely had the positive effects that you mention. People are far less cruel, more understanding, and also WAY more willing to go seek help with these types of problems than they used to be.
The negative effect is that anytime something becomes romanticized, it’s human nature for people to adopt it as an identity, which introduces a lot of noise to the conversation, and we lose some of our objectivity toward it, as now there’s an emotional attachment to the label itself. For example:
- Back in the day (early 2010s?) of tumblr, when people first started collecting mental health labels like personal trading cards.
- Or now, with the plethora of pseudoscientific misinformation about mental health on tiktok: random people are just making up terms or symptoms and pitching them in a nearly universally relatable way like horoscopes.
- If you offer people a label that makes them feel part of a group, supported, and potentially explain why a bunch of things in their life are hard, it’s in our nature to gravitate toward that.
All that being said, I still think it’s a net-positive effect. This is just what happens anytime something clinical enters the mainstream conversation.
