Is ADHD a real disorder?

fuck old lunch i am sorry. i would be so miserable.

i am fortunate enough to have a private office with a door at work, i close it all the time because it can be extremely hard to re-focus after being interrupted

btw i found out that taking magnesium supplements seems to help reduce the amount that i clench and grind my teeth, one of the worst side effects of stimulant meds

Like it just sucks, and I knew it would suck before we moved to this stupid space, but it would suck so much less if so many people weren't just outright inconsiderate (e.g. 'forgetting' to turn their ringtones off every goddamn day, projecting their voices to the cheap seats while speaking on the phone or to their immediate neighbor, etc.).

I'm not one to casually toss around the word 'evil' but whoever invented the open-plan office...I'm staring daggers at you rn, dude.

not in an open plan office but might as well be with people YELLING into speakerphone as i listen to entire conversations 2 offices away with no regard for my very special brain. i have a box of gun range ear plugs i got for my last office. i will have to dig them up again.

Is this the definitive ADHD thread or is there a better one on 77?

hey yall, i think my son has adhd and also i think i have adhd bc all the shit he does that looks adhd-ish is shit i do

(also stuff my brother does/did and he was diagnosed in childhood)

hey! if you have the time & means - it is not easy to do, booking appointments and obtaining sometimes multiple referrals, etc - to obtain a formal diagnosis (for either you or your son really, not making a distinction), i recommend it. it makes everything else so much easier, - medication, accommodations, support & therapies, etc

https://www.hcp.med.harvard.edu/ncs/ftpdir/adhd/ASRS-5_English.pdf

https://add.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/adhd-questionnaire-ASRS111.pdf

i did these brief screeners, so there might be something to it

I had / have pretty severe undiagnosed ADHD, and at school I read *a lot*, just not what I was supposed to, and due to never being able to get myself together to do any homework just managed to scrape enough GCSEs to get into sixth form, and got into the then-worst-rated university in the UK, which I was later thrown out of for not handing any essays in. Since then I've managed to get my life together (to a certain extent) but still have a problem in that I've read about lots of things but have never been in circles where I actually discuss them with anyone, so when I get caught out pronouncing something the "wrong way" as has happened on here very recently, it feels less like a debate between adults and more like a personal attack on my failure to talk / think well enough. (also oversensitivity to criticism is a typical AHDH thing too, I know)

language has always been in a state of flux and nothing is "proper" and as long as you understand someone it's rude to interrupt imo - I say fuck "proper" and people that sneer at how others express themselves have always been amongst the worst gatekeeper arsewipes of polite society. I like malapropisms and misunderstandings, who the fuck wants a world where every dickhead talks in technically faultless R4 presenter Estuary English?

if it helps even the most educated people pronounce things "wrong" and i had to google how to say "camembert" (because i'm pretty sure i've never heard anyone say it irl, i'm not educated in cheese) so i could attempt to read LJ's historic cooking post. this isn't meant to negate what you are feeling--i have some of the same complexes so i know what you mean.

I remember how to say camembert from the Gong album Camembert Electrique.

for context here should mention that I have worked in language teaching for 18 years and have an MA in linguistics, not to show off about it, just, even this does not help.

yeah that kind of highlights how irrational our brains are doesn't it

Hi CaAL! Are you still undiagnosed? Are you thinking of going for a diagnosis? This is a thing I wonder about but which seems to be quite difficult/expensive in the UK. (fellow scatterbrained university dropout fistbump - also congrats on getting your MA!)

Anyway I feel you on taking things - mild affectionate ribbing/"bants", internet abruptness - as personal attacks and can relate way too much to the whole "rejection-sensitive" side of ADHD.

And I've definitely had ILX posts which were followed by not so much a "you're wrong because x" but an inscrutable zing which I couldn't parse at all and left me studying my post looking for the stupidest part to, idk, present it in a different light in the hope of - what? receiving a pat on the head, a confirmation that I had correctly parsed the cleverer person's snark, and an end of term report of "not quite as stupid as we all thought", perhaps? tbf I usually do find many stupid parts on closer examination but rarely become any wiser about whether I've found the actual zingably stupid part.

I had more to say about the language/pronunciation side of things but this is already one of my signature rambling overlong posts - another possible ADHD indicator iirc - so maybe I'll come back to that later...

Hi, I would just add to spacecadet (and CaAL) that if you are thinking about getting a diagnosis through the NHS, and you think that would be *helpful* to you (and no, it won't make randoms be any nicer to you on the internet, but it *is* very useful in both self-understanding and e.g. work environments for being able to say to HR "yes, you DO have to make these concessions for me") - it does take an insanely long amount of time. It took over 3 years to go from my therapist saying "I really think you might be autistic" to a full, proper medical diagnosis of a doctor saying "yup, totally autistic with a possible side order of attention deficit', and like... 3 years is what? A college degree chunk of time?

But getting to the other side of that 3-year process (and I'm now several years on) has made such a difference in my life that even though I'd prefer there hadn't been that long a wait, I am still glad that I got in the queue to start with.

Which is a way of gently suggesting to spacecadet, "make an appointment with your GP, gather your evidence together in written format, and refuse to leave the doctor's office until they have agreed to give you a referral, no matter *how long* your GP warns you it might take."

Obviously, I could write a novel-length post about ~taking stuff overly personally on ILX~ and being neurodivergent both on the receiving end and the giving end of that, but I don't think that would be helpful. But I do think that encouraging people "diagnosis takes a long time, but you probably will get something out of it" is helpful? I hope? Shutting up now.

Not diagnosed, no, feel it's a waste of time even trying in the UK, ready to be corrected on this of course. Also no intention to ever get any medication for it, and fine

think maybe an under discussed part of growing up with this in the UK is that we have built a whole culture around piss-taking, and being someone who "can't take a joke" is viewed as a moral failing.

Ahh, presenting written evidence neatly and concise enough for a GP's patience: kryptonite for the is-it-ADHD-or-not mind...! But yeah, that's what it would need (& thanks for the advice, it is helpful). Oof re 3+ years!

I wouldn't expect it to result in much except just knowing - not sure I'd want ADHD meds and can't see my GP prescribing them to a middle-aged person with high blood pressure - and wouldn't dare mention it to my employer except in extreme circumstances (NB we get moved into an open plan area when we go back to the office, and I am very bad at concentrating in noisy open spaces, so that might be those extreme circs), but it would be nice to know, I think?

What I'd like ideally is to find an experienced therapist/clinical psychologist to ask "I have these problems which might be ADHD or anxiety or just laziness, and these traits which might be ADHD or ASD (or dyspraxia etc) or none of the above, which diagnosis seems closest & most worth pursuing, if any?" before I shoot for one or the other with a GP, but I don't know how to find someone good or if it would be inappropriate to ask.

(this is where I daydream of a big spirally brainstorm mindmap with diagnostic traits surrounded by issues linked or coloured according to which of the conditions they might indicate, but then I don't know where to start or how to lay it out, and of course I never actually start making one)

I have dropped hints describing day-to-day problems with phrases pretty adjacent to ADHD/ASD diagnostic criteria in previous CBT sessions for depression/social anxiety and got no bites. That might mean my problems do not in fact resemble either to a trained counsellor, or it might mean that it's beyond the scope of your 6 NHS-referred sessions which are expected to cover depression or anxiety and nothing else. *shrug*

CaAL, if anything I like people who occasionally say things wrong, as it shows the people who were big childhood readers, and those are my kind of people.

(I almost certainly say a bunch of stuff wrong myself and have no idea! And sometimes I have to say a word I've never said out loud before and I don't stop to think about it until I get to a point in the sentence where the new word is unavoidable and then, argh, doubt sets in, sudden terror.)

But sometimes a friend or colleague says a word wrong and I have to say it in the next sentence, and I'm never sure whether to copy them or if I may as well say it right - I usually do the latter but maybe that is a bit smug and it would be better just to avoid the word altogether. Would I feel shamed or chided? I might, yes. Should I feel like that? Probably not, but I still don't want to do that to anyone else. Hmm.

And I have corrected my bf a few times, but usually only because I think there is something interesting about the correct pronunciation of the word which, say, reveals something about its etymology - but these "interesting" things are often not as interesting to him or to anyone else, I admit, and so could also have been better skipped.

There are a couple of words he's said wrong a few times that I've never commented on because there just isn't an interesting aside there to sweeten the blow of "you're wrong". It might be a bit late now! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

think maybe an under discussed part of growing up with this in the UK is that we have built a whole culture around piss-taking, and being someone who "can't take a joke" is viewed as a moral failing.

― 好 now 烧烤 (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Saturday, 19 September 2020 13:25

There was a really, really good thread about this a few years back - I think it was called something like The Tyranny of Humour (sp?) or maybe there was a similar thread on this kind of topic. Humour as something one has to "take" has this air of inherent cruelty and oneupmanship to it that is often about establishing a pecking order.

It is fraught, and it is doubly fraught if one is navigating it while being neurodiverse!

Passing Spacecadet - I hear you, on a lot of these things. I went through pretty similar myself, so I really relate. (And I hope that the amount I relate to your experiences is not distorting my view of what you describe!)

CBT practitioners... hmmm, I mean, my experience was that these people were very, very invested in their particular technique, and only that technique - and any area where one brought up 'well, I am really struggling with this stuff because my brain is... different?' was completely rubbished, like 'the technique works regardless of your brain!' And any area where one brought up - 'maybe this environment *IS* a problem, and I can't change my attitude towards it, I really do need the environment changed' was also rubbished on a... well, you're just not applying these techniques hard enough. Which was extremely unhelpful. If you are trying to flag up your specific neurodiverse issues to them - they are trained to view individual issues as noise and distraction from the technique, and will not pick up on hints you might be neurodiverse.

Full disclosure - I did, through the whole process of getting my NHS diagnosis, have a private therapist (initially paid for partly by work, but I found her so useful I kept going). And yeah, one of the things that we did do, is she sat me down with the diagnostic criteria for autism, and pointed out examples of every single one that I matched. (Even ones that I had missed!) So I was able to take *that* to my GP and get a referral to an ASD / ADD specialist. (I think there may be threads on ILX about how to find a therapist? I think Captain Awkard had a good guide, too.)

I don't know if this was me being very lucky, or just how specialists *are*, but the specialist I finally saw for ASD was also extremely knowledgeable about ADD and did consider both. (And I had another friend in London who was referred by her GP for ADD, and the specialist did a whole evaluation, and came back 'no, you match more closely with ASD' - so this is definitely a thing that specialists do!) So I do think that, if you got the diagnostic criteria (and they are available on the internet) and marked down how many of them you matched, that is definitely a thing that the specialists are trained to differentiate. It doesn't have to be a carefully written out documentation, it can literally just be a print-out of the diagnostic criteria with a big green tick next to each one you match. (Which is what I gave to my GP.)

But a lot of it comes down to - what do you want to get out of this? I had honestly got to the point where I would no longer have been able to *work* if I had gone untreated, so I had a very big incentive to persist with a diagnosis.

I have wandered back into this thread to see the words "sweeten the blow" staring back out of my post, and that is not a phrase.

That's another thing I'm increasingly doing these days: getting halfway through a sentence and realising I've forgotten the common English (my native language) idiom I was going to use and throwing together some words at random, not sure whether I should go "is that a phrase?" or just attempt to bluff my way through and hope nobody notices.

Help - linguistic faculties dying...

(I hate piss-taking "bantz" where you're supposed to shrug off the rudest or most incorrect takes, but if you ever try to get your own one in everyone goes "ooooOOOOOOhhhh" and it's not clear whether you've gone too far or whether everyone is still just taking the piss because you don't normally join in)

This was an xpost - I'm about to have dinner and will read your new post later. Thank you, Branwell!

How weird that this thread is revived today! I have been thinking about ADHD. I would never have thought myself an ADD type (hyperactive? me? ACTIVE? me?) until someone I follow on SM posted about the traits approx 6 months ago and they were not what I had previously associated with it. And I've been idly wondering since, but particularly today. Plus also bundled in with the other thing I've wondered about since University. This has prompted me to go off and investigate...

The early part of this thread seems about as edifying as the tell me about autism one. Can't tell if bants or pure ignorance.

I don't think I have ADHD from the admittedly little amount I know about it, but stimulants do have a nice calming effect on me.

I do wonder sometimes and had a very difficult time at school to the point I had multiple suspensions and a social worker assigned to me and never got any qualifications despite most teachers saying I was average to above intelligence, depending what day it was and if I'd complete a day in school without wandering off! But I don't do diagnosis or therapy and it's probably too late for it to make any discernible impact on my life because I'm too old!

CaAL, if anything I like people who occasionally say things wrong, as it shows the people who were big childhood readers, and those are my kind of people.

ditto! Also, some of it speaks to class differences ... like there are words I have only read because I grew up somewhere where people didn't use those words. I definitely have different vocabularies in terms of writing vs. speech -- like I generally avoid saying words out loud that I haven't heard other people say out loud before, in case I say it wrong. I also have the "professional" accent and the "normal" accent and will switch depending on "how I want people to see me."

Kinder - I agree and I just really want to add, that - like autism - many of the traits commonly and publicly associated with ADD and related disorders are the ways that it manifests in nine year old boys. It may manifest differently, but reliably and predictably, in people who are adults or people who are not boys. (The doctor sent me a list of 'how ADD typically manifests in female people' and it wasn't a perfect match for me, but I sent it to my childhood best friend in NY and she was like 'holy hell, this is absolutely 100% me - how did everyone just miss this?')

Feelings about 'correct' language and 'correct' pronounciation (haha I have literally no idea how to spell that word and spellcheck doesn't work in this browser) - I mean, I generally agree with most everything people have said in this revive. I was also a 'read far more widely than I ever talked' child, with a non-native accent. People do totally use pronounciation as a class marker, and a way of excluding and dismissing outsiders. It's not *inherently* dickish to correct people, but it's used so frequently as a power play that it's hard to read the intention of strangers. (Or internet people.)

I moved around so much as a child, that I got so used to the idea of 'new place, new pronounciation' - I now have a habit of picking up non-standard pronounciations, e.g. the programmer at my job before me was Bulgarian and she pronounced variables as 'vahr-EYE-a-bulls' and I loved that, so we all carried on calling them 'vahr-EYE-a-bulls, and whenever consultants come in, we have to remember that is not a real word, that's our institutional slang, and explain.

But I do have to flag up the one exception is proper names of people, places and things. People do have the right to assert the correct pronouncation of their names and localities. Like, if this is about the 'how to pronounce ILX' thread - wow, did I feel my back going up at that discussion - the correct pronounciation reflects its origin and an understanding of its formation process, and I felt the resentment of a Cornish villager watching English newcomers mangling the ancient Kernowek name of my home. Like, placenames become a real bone of contention and highly emotive, for reasons that probably should be respected? Pronounciations can change, and the tone of a place can change - as pointed out, reading the start of this thread reveals that it's generally a good that ILX tone has changed. But I think it helps to understand *why* people have strong feelings about some 'correct' pronounciations - it's not about the pronounciation at all but about 'you need to understand this history'. (That can be good or bad.)

you know whats tough to do when you got the ol adhd

running polls

feel like it's been so bad recently that i've upgraded from adhd to ad4k

From what I've been seeing, the pandemic has messed with ADHD coping mechanisms to such a degree that many people have now become aware that they've always had ADHD brains but were decent at coping (and failing, and coping again) so just felt that this was how everyone functions - I mean, this is me too but I also kinda knew even if I did nothing overtly medical about it - I got really into yoga in my 30s and should prob get back into that and/or meds because omg I am V TIRED. AD4K for real.

this should be an opportunity to have a clean house and go to the gym all the time, things i had been failing at and blaming commuting and long days in the office/elsewhere for work. no it's just that i am permanently too too fatigued to do anything but was just forced to be 25% successful by routines that were imposed on me, but completely unable to establish any routines that are good (just bad, lazy ones) if left to my own devices.

feeling these recent posts

feel like it's been so bad recently that i've upgraded from adhd to ad4k

― TRANCED INTO RADIOACTIVE PUREE (Will M.), Tuesday, October 20, 2020 2:12 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

yep.

but completely unable to establish any routines that are good (just bad, lazy ones) if left to my own devices.

― superdeep borehole (harbl), Tuesday, October 27, 2020 2:36 PM (fifteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

YEP

Slowly tapered off my meds (last filled in March) to the point where I haven't taken anything in months. Was surprised to discover that I had developed some mechanisms for chugging along without chemical aid, but that only lasted so long before the fog started setting back in. Getting more forgetful, mind wandering more easily, work is becoming more of a stressful juggling act. I probably need to contact my doc for a script, huh.

Really, the worst part of it all is that I used to write for like a minimum of an hour/day and I think I've sat down and written a total of one (1) time in the past 7+ months.

I am honestly surprised and shocked, though, that I've been able to maintain my old work schedule this whole time even when left more or less to my own devices. Without that my day-to-day would probably lose all coherence.

i was better at going to the gym when my commute in the evening was over an hour. i would go 4x a week, for like two years i was very successful at this. then i got a shorter commute for a year and somehow became more tired. now i have no commute and i make dumb excuses like "i'm too hungry." it's like i am only doing ok when i hate my schedule. that's why i am 10 lbs fatter. i'm going today though.

was also routinely going to bed by 9:45 back then, now it's like 11. not good, folks.

Sleep does really help. Though I am incapable of napping! I started reading How to Bullet Journal articles today, which I'm going to take as a good sign and not another pit of distraction haha

This past year, regardless of the pandemic, I've been really struggling with my ADHD (of which in my case used to be called simply ADD, but apparently they now call it "inattentive ADHD"). I'm just constantly flirting with self sabotage via having no ability to keep myself away from places like this or the general internet in the middle of juggling all sorts of deadlines and projects. Attempting to prevent myself from indulging those stimulation cravings is nearly painful as I try to slam the brakes on my impulses and simultaneously course correct my thinking to simply fucking follow through on the half written email or the piece of information I was supposed to finish calling up on the server. Any time I have to wait for said server to load or whatever might warrant like 5 seconds of "downtime" my junky brain wants to reward itself with a stimulation while I "wait". I'm just slipping into rabbit hole after rabbit hole. Even techniques like "write yourself a list to use to stay on track" can be like pulling teeth to complete, adding sad ironic layers to the madness. But I might be on a bit of an upswing lately... I've been feeling relatively less tortured by these distractions lat- OH shit look at the time gotta send something to the client sorry bye

I feel your pain Evan -- I have definitely found all the disruption of COVID has brought back some of my worse tendencies and made me feel overall more discombobulated and less organized. Very much relate to exactly the way you described that reward addiction (and of course, ILX aside, many sites are very much designed to take advantage of that). I find myself forgetting things more or losing track, or if not then just having this constant dread that I've lost track of something - an email I didn't read carefully, a call I forgot to calendar, a deadline approaching soon that I've forgotten (usually turns out not to be the case but I hate the feeling).

I never completely conquered these tendencies but I got a lot better at controlling them. One thing I have found is that it is almost useless to focus on the habits themselves, like every attempt I make to say "I will not look at facebook for one hour" tends to fail. And my theory about that is that, for me at least, there has to be some motivation to do it other than just "not look at facebook."

In fact, I do best when I don't focus on the habits at all, but on motivating myself to get something done or excel at something. When I find a way to do that (usually it has to be a combination of excitement about the prospect of success AND the fear of failure), and I thus *want* to get the thing(s) done, all the bad habits just naturally become more manageable without me focusing on them.

The only other thing I can say is that exercise, especially vigorous exercise, makes a huge, huge difference. But before COVID I had a great gym routine and I've had a hard time finding something I like as much that I can do at home or outside. I still do my best to exercise - I've been trying to alternate between bodyweight/dumbell days, runs, and long walks. Too many skipped days though.

was also routinely going to bed by 9:45 back then, now it's like 11. not good, folks.

― superdeep borehole (harbl), Tuesday, October 27, 2020 4:06 PM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is me except 11 was my good nights and nowadays 1 AM is very much in play.

i had been considering the possibility that i have undiagnosed adhd, but in trying some screeners it doesn't seem like it. there are a handful of items that are very acutely me--fidgety, attention easily redirected, tends to delay and/or procrastinate when starting a project, tends to finish people's sentences. but there are others that are not me at all--i'm really detail-oriented, i never lose anything, i can wait my turn and stay in my seat.

i guess i wish it were easier to quiet my mind at will but that's probably a common complaint.

A smart therapist gave me the insight that things like ILX and facebook and instagram and reddit and whatever else give you this sense of neverending work to be done -- that you can wind up feeling almost a need or responsibility to see if there's yet another response to yet another comment you made in turn demanding yet another comment - there's the reward aspect but there's also this false sense of importance and urgency created, I *need* to respond to whoever responded to me, I can't just let it drop.

but there are others that are not me at all--i'm really detail-oriented, i never lose anything, i can wait my turn and stay in my seat.

I think a lot of the online tests don't speak to "corrective behaviours" or coping mechanisms, hence the need for medical diagnosis with a pro with ADHD and its subtypes (if someone wants to go that route - I realize some people don't.) I am these things too, but they're entirely possible because of a kind of conscious programming, like I go through an order of operations to make sure I don't lose things, for instance. Even when I'm buying something with a debit card, I have a mantra going through my head "remember your card, remember your card, say thanks, take bags, etc."

And the part of ADD/ADHD about talking too much, fidgeting, nail biting, not paying complete attention, etc - all of these things are things I used to do as a kid/teen and was shamed for, so figured out ways to not do them or not do them so obviously. My mind is almost never quiet. Meditation feels like going to the dentist. Though on the topic of exercise, the best for me is rock climbing or bouldering - it's such a level of mind/body concentration that it quiets my mind and feels great at the same time.

oh yeah I can totally relate to "corrective behaviors" and corrective thought patterns like that. Tons of those.

I was diagnosed with ADD (or ADHD inattentive-type ) when I was a teen. Put me on Ritalin, which didn't make much of a difference because I wasn't actually trying to DO ANYTHING back then. I didn't care about doing good in school, so even if I was on the right kind of medicine, I wasn't applying myself toward anything. Stopped taking Ritalin after a year or two and just went about my life to mixed results.

I recently came across all this old paperwork where the psychiatrist was discussing my diagnosis and it hit me with stunning clarity - this is a huge part of why my life is still so ramshackle as I'm approaching 40. Now that I can see the connections between this diagnosis and my behavior and the things that are going on inside my brain, I really want to get back into treatment for it. I'm currently using all my medical money to pay for braces for my kid though. Some day.

Regarding ritalin though, I'm scared to try it. I also have a huge insomnia problem and I'm worried a stimulant could make that go badly.

― how's life, Wednesday, April 4, 2018 3:41 PM (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Jesus fucking christ. Not doing great with this. Never going to get into actual therapy. Anyone got any good self-help book recommendations?

i am also incapable of napping, no matter how tired i am. and this is me: Meditation feels like going to the dentist, i will never be capable of meditating or doing yoga. i am best at repetitive exercise that takes some technique i have to focus on and improvement that can be measured because i love measurements and numbers. i cannot clear the garbage in my head i can only count it!

i'm incapable of intentionally napping, but very capable of napping when watching something on tv that i'd like to be paying attention to.

i am also incapable of napping, no matter how tired i am. and this is me: Meditation feels like going to the dentist, i will never be capable of meditating or doing yoga. i am best at repetitive exercise that takes some technique i have to focus on and improvement that can be measured because i love measurements and numbers. i cannot clear the garbage in my head i can only count it!

― superdeep borehole (harbl), Wednesday, October 28, 2020 9:46 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

This sounds like me too, hence lifting. I also found, however, that this made me hate running on a treadmill, because I obsessively watch the numbers and come up with little micro-goals that wind up demoralizing me and reducing my stamina rather than increasing it. Whereas if I just run outside in nice natural surroundings I do much better.

got diagnosed, explains a lot. i'd always felt 'lazy'. i'd also normalized a lot of traits and behaviors that have really impacted my life in a subtle way.

however, despite dabbling a handful of times in adderall and vyvanse which absolutely work for me, doc prescribed wellbutrin instead, which i am disappointed by as it doesn't seem to have any effect whatsoever

anyone else figure this out relatively late in life?