Is ADHD a real disorder?

I set alarms but then I just ignore them when they go off.

Meds arrived last week or the week before and the difference is remarkable.

I often set multiple for a single work call or kid pickup or whatever - ten minute warning, five minute warning, one minute warning, etc.

how do you remember to set your alarms and timers? i keep forgetting

― Kate (rushomancy), Thursday, 27 July 2023 14:58 (four days ago) link

Sheer terror after doing stuff like forgetting to pick up my daughter at dance class on time, missing work calls, etc. I always set them right away.

this ^^^

Yeah, at the very second an appointment or plan is made — without fail — you must set the alarm / reminder. Or it will be Lost To The Ages.

I have a sort of hottake theory that fear someone will get mad at you is actually a good ADHD management tool, albeit not the most pleasant one. It's sort of one of the things in my marriage that makes it work but that I don't normally talk about that my wife is not one to let things slide, lol. I think I actually respond really well to people who are willing to hold me accountable.

Really informative piece on the history of ADHD, with much on where we're at.

"Opening the amphetamine floodgates by dropping the neurobiological and moralistic justifications around ADHD would help a lot of people, but so too would changing the social imperatives and circumstances (cutthroat competition at work and in schools, a fraying social safety net, intensive smartphone and social media use, etc.) that spur amphetamine use."

https://thepointmag.com/politics/who-deserves-amphetamines/

I’m not an expert but I’m not sure it’s true that “no one knows what causes ADHD.” And the insinuation that our perception of its existence is due to our competitive society and strict schooling seems… well unverifiable at best. A lot of “hmm, just wondering” in this article when actually ADHD is probably the most studied condition on earth

"We could also just change the entire structure and nature of society" cool thinkpiece, one amphetamines please

Tracer I think it's actually cancer (and specifically breast cancer), if you go by NIH research funding.

https://www.globaldownsyndrome.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/NIH-pie-chart-2.jpg

The big teal slice is cancer

(That's not a great chart, but pretty much any "NIH funding by institute" data will show the same thing. There's cancer and everything else.

The National Cancer Institute gets four or five times the budget of neurological disorders or mental health.

YMP you could be right. I have heard there are "more studies" about ADHD published every year than anything else. Not sure of the relationship to money spent.

It's crunch time on some reports so I took an extra Adderall this afternoon. My bathroom hasn't been this clean all year.

I have a sort of hottake theory that fear someone will get mad at you is actually a good ADHD management tool, albeit not the most pleasant one. It's sort of one of the things in my marriage that makes it work but that I don't normally talk about that my wife is not one to let things slide, lol. I think I actually respond really well to people who are willing to hold me accountable.

I am starting to think I eventually alienate almost everyone by not noticing ways in which they are trying to hold me accountable because their methods of communication don't get through to me. My housemate has been trying to communicate to me apparently for years that I let fruit go bad in the fruit bowl and that this upsets her greatly because she routinely has to clean up moldy fruit. Her way of communicating is to say "ew, gross" whenever she finds moldy fruit. (She says she's done this many times, and I believe her, but I only remember it happening once or twice.) But to me, one conversation where she said "Hey, can we talk? You have a pattern of doing this, and it's affecting me, and I need you to make it stop," and it would have stopped. I can't tell if I'm being unreasonable by wanting people to talk to me that directly. I present pretty neurotypical as far as I can tell, so I think I've been blundering through life pissing people off and never noticing, and letting them think that I notice and don't care.

There's more to the housemate drama, which I talked about in the teacher thread. But basically ADHD + full-time teaching + migraines are not a great combo for making me sensitive to the feelings and needs of others, and I don't know what to do about that.

you may have adhd but your housemate seems to have 'passive-aggressive non-communication is actually the only form of communication that is possible syndrome' which is much worse imho. my motto is that for anyone who can't directly communicate their issue to me, that is 100% their problem and not mine.

Thank you map, that makes me feel a little better, though I suspect I'm not a reliable narrator here because I can't know what I didn't hear.

But a certain point I do start to feel like the guy in Memento whose wife keeps letting him inject her with insulin because she's like, "surely at some point he HAS to remember that he keeps doing this," and it's like, no, that is literally not how his brain works any percent of the time, you are multiplying numbers by zero and expecting to get something other than zero.

Habit-forming can be really hard for ppl with adhd, as well as managing little tasks that seem obvious to neurotypical ppl (like throwing away rotten fruit). I used to get so fucking mad at my husband over these little things that it *seemed* he wouldn’t do - all little things but I would snap at him and be like “why can’t you just [put the peanut butter in the same place you always get it from so I don’t have to hunt for it every time; put your pills back in the cupboard bc this tiny vanity is always cluttered with yr shit; stop leaving your shoes in a goddamn spot where I trip on them; put the damn empty toilet roll in the garbage that is right fucking there, closer than the vanity where you always leave it]”.

I took it so personally that he couldn’t do these simple things when I made it clear how annoying they all were. It took years for me to realize he genuinely struggled to remember or to see things that were obvious to me. I know this guy, I know he’s not dismissive or lazy, I know he’s thoughtful and respectful. And I could see how terrible he felt every time I screeched at him over these things. He hated it but he couldn’t avoid it. Then I realized what was going on, and that if these small things were his biggest faults, I needed to fucking chill. So now I just don’t really care. And I’ve easily developed habits on his behalf (he would never ever put in wallet/keys etc in the same place, so when we get home from somewhere I now just automatically say “keys wallet” and he puts them in there spot; if we’re visiting ppl he puts his shit down and never remembers to collect it all so now it’s a reflex to say, as we’re leaving “got your keys? Wallet? Sunnies? Phone?”

Except for the goddamn shoes. That still annoys me tbh.

I agree with map, but for your own comfort, lily, I think I’d just explain to yr roommate (if you haven’t already) that if something is a problem she needs to just say it bluntly. ADHD is a disability and you’re more than allowed to ask for accommodations.

for me i'm into accountability for sure, but fear and shame, they don't work super good for me. when i feel that way, i avoid whatever is making me feel ashamed. like, one of the things my ex would say to me is "you keep leaving the cupboard doors open". it's true. i did, i kept leaving the cupboard doors open. i denied it, though, i always denied it... i hear someone telling me something i'm doing wrong, but i don't know how to do it _right_. so i kept leaving the cupboard doors open and they kept getting frustrated with me. every time that happened, she had negative feelings about me, i had negative feelings about me, and nothing happened to change the situation.

well, we broke up eventually. to my mind, it _wasn't_ because we didn't communicate effectively. our inability to communicate effectively sure as hell made that breakup difficult, though.

Yeah, it's interesting that this thread is talking about ADHD and relationships, because that's something I've been thinking about a lot lately. My wife and I are both non-neurotypical. I am ADHD. She would probably have several diagnoses, but has only spent limited time with mental health professionals many decades ago so I don't really know the total extent. ADHD is definitely among them though. We have a lot of conflict in our relationship. It's very emotionally unhealthy and we would probably be better off not being together, but the process of divorce is so daunting. I have an extreme aversion to big life events like that, and just "go along to get along" because the process of change feels like my brain would get ripped out of my skull.

Anyway, lately, as I've been pondering my own ADHD, it's become more apparent to me that many of her actions that I have interpreted as irresponsibility or callousness could also be attributable to disability. It's difficult, because disability or not, I still feel disrespected.

At the same time, I've been having difficulty with a work colleague recently because she has occasionally taken personal offense at behaviors of mine (forgetfulness, disorganization, misunderstandings) that are linked to ADHD. I suspect that this colleague is non-neurotypical as well.

As David Berman asked, "Why can't monsters get along with other monsters?"

see to me this is where i start looking at things from a "neurodivergent" framework. i do have challenges that neurotypical people don't, but really, the example i gave... why should that example be specific to neurodivergent people? i'm not sure my having ADHD is even relevant to what happened in that situation. it's just about appreciating that people are different, that what may be easy for one person is hard for another, that blaming and shaming someone for having difficulty doing something that might be easy for another person doesn't _help_, doesn't lead to good outcomes.

it's easy for me to look at that situation from another perspective. like, i expect things to be in a certain place, and if i have a partner who puts things in a _different_ place, i get upset. i could say "that's not where that belongs!" or, maybe they don't have a rigid and precise sense of where things _belong_ like i do. maybe they can't remember. i mean, it's ok for them to not be able to remember something like that, right? people can only do what they can do. it's not _really_ a question of "you did it wrong, stop doing it wrong" but finding a way to take this unhealthy pattern and make it healthy. and that's not going to be done entirely through negative feedback!

it blows my mind that being praised is literally a _fetish_ for so many people. it's, like, seen as _demimonde_ somehow to have a deep hunger for praise and validation. that's fucking _wild_. my girlfriend and i, who are both highly neurodivergent, we praise each other _all the time_, sincerely. when one of us does something that's hard, that's praiseworthy. you did the dishes! good job! you set a boundary! good job! even things that people might not normally be praiseworthy. my girlfriend comes to me in crisis, she's in a bad way, she hasn't taken care of herself, she feels so much guilt and shame about doing these things and not telling me, the first thing i tell her is what a good job she's done, that she's taking care of herself, that i'm proud of her. that's just not the life experience i grew up with!

as to david berman's question... i thought of myself as a monster for a long time. it was kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy... if i saw myself as a monster, i felt i had to act like one. i'm not a monster. i don't have to act like one. that's a big part of the answer, for me. when i care about myself, when i believe i'm worth caring about, i behave in ways that don't just benefit me, but often benefit the people around me. that's what i've found.