This is me. Help how do i do stuff?
Coffee did not help me. A few years ago i was averaging 2 liters of coffee per day it was a real problem. I don’t drink coffee anymore.
Have you talked with a psychiatrist and gotten a diagnosis yet? That’s a good step to take towards helping yourself, but start with your own doctor of you haven’t already, and get a referral (or however it works in your country). If you have ADHD it’s often that the brain is underestimated hence stimulants work wonders for ADHD to get the brain knocked back on track. You’d probably need to try a variety of stimulants to find what works for you even within the same family of stimulants like release times and brands, small variations can make you react differently.
I wish you the best and hope you’ll find something that works. This forum is a great source of help and motivation.
I got put on Ritalin. Was told it’s a miracle drug. All it does is make me extra nervous and jittery but it doesn’t help my (lack of) motivation at all.
Sounds like it could be too high a dose if you get jittery, been there at 30-40mg but 20mg + 10mg both extended release later in the day works really well for me.
Remember that the way Ritalin (methylphenidate) works is not by boosting dopamin but rather slow down dopamin uptake. You still need to create the first “spark of dopamin” yourself that then slowly snowballs itself stronger. I’d say you need to take it at least a few days to weeks to see an effect and learn how it affects you. Start at just 10 to 20mg. Otherwise try another variation of methylphenidate like concerta or medikinet.
Medication + therapy is the magic combo. Adderall was the magic bullet for me but I was lucky, and I hate that it only works for a limited time each day. And even then, it just makes actually doing things not suck. The drive, time management, and understanding what motivates me all come from therapy
The best analogy I found was it’s like wading through a river to get to the other side. Medicine gets you out of the river, but you need therapy to find the bridge and cross it.
Some people say “hack yourself” … create a TODO list in anyway you like. First thing on that list is to “create a list” and cross that off after you’ve listed some items.
Keep the items small and doable. Going outside or watch a movie isn’t a “big” item but it’s worth on this list damnit!
Don’t be down on yourself for any reason about doing nothing on the list. If you are, recognize that you did that, forgive yourself for feeling that way and try again. Feel free to throw out items and put even simpler tasks on it, if you can.
Doesn’t work for everyone, but it does work for some.
Free time helps. But also, finding other people in the hobby/trade to work with helps. Being in a book club is nice, because talking about the book you read can be as much fun as reading the book. Same with art.
I feel like watching new movies is a no-brainer, though. I might suggest pulling from the Criterion Collection on random, maybe by genre. But it’s often fun to watch this stuff with other people.
Got my wife into old movies for a minute. “Bringing up Baby” and “One Two Three” managed to hold up after over 60 years. Give those two a shot.
*wants to doomscroll* *does*
Of course that’s the only one that actually works
The minimum time commitment is what gets me. I can have my phone out and social media open in seconds
Making your phone more difficult to use is a good idea. Keep it in another room, enter a passcode manually, turn it off, etc.
The real solution is for governments to ban addictive software development practices.
Wants to go to bed, doesn’t
Yeah, that’s depression.
I think this is less a sign of depression these days as much as it is just falling victim to attention capitalism. Your brain chemistry is being hijacked to keep you scrolling and watching and wasting time.
Losing interest in things you want to do is a sign of depression, this post is more just pointing out the reason people are depressed.
Well, depression/anxiety is spending your time agonizing about it and not doing it. Most people are doing this to some extent they just have brains that don’t have them dwelling on it all day. I have friends of all sorts who casually lament not reading or not picking up an instrument. Some are depressed some aren’t.
That sounds more like depression to me. Because, when you really enjoy something, your hyper focus is kicking in and you can’t let go of it.
Or, you really enjoy a hobby but your hyperfocus makes you research the hobby instead of doing it. E.g. you like photography and your hyperfocus kicks in researching places to go take photos, or gear to buy… Or you spend hours choosing the best cycling route until it’s too dark or the weather changes and you go “What happened to my beautiful afternoon??”.
My hyperfocus tends to kick in whenever the ADHD gremlin inside my brain chooses, not always when I’m doing whatever I enjoy. I wish that was always the case.
Fuck. This is me with music production about a month ago. I produced exactly 5 seconds of music trying to learn it after several days of endlessly learning about it.
The hyper focus only kicks in when i’m doing something, the problem is to start to do something
Precisely. When trying to talk to others about this, I usually use the term activation energy
Understanding it doesn’t help in alleviating it, though.
Send help!
Not necessarily. I definitely go through waves like this, and it doesn’t feel like depression to me.
I’ll have a couple of days (or weeks) where I want to do things, but not enough to actually motivate myself to start any of it. Then I’ll bounce back for a while and be so focused on something that I’ll forget about taking care of basic needs like eating and sleeping.
I’ve kinda learned to embrace those extremes. What I hate is the middle ground where I want to focus and get something done, but I realize about every 5 minutes that my brain is off topic again.
