A friend of mine was recently diagnosed with adhd and I’m having a hard time understanding how it works, being a child of the 80s/90s it was always just explained in a very simplified manner and as just kind of an auxiliary problem. Thank you in advance.
In: Biology
I recently got diagnosed too. I’ve been struggling with it my whole life, and as a result I developed anxiety from trying to cope with the symptoms, and more recently I developed depression too.
The way I described it to my friends is it’s like I felt I was constantly running around trying to keep up with everything. I was constantly in sprint mode just trying to keep day to day life going. Obviously sprinting everywhere is not sustainable and eventually you just have to stop.
When I started getting treatment (Counselling, self help, medication etc) it felt like I had been gifted a car. I could suddenly keep up with everything. I realised everyone else was sitting behind the wheel of a car and was able to move from one task to the other with ease and without using their own energy to do it.
For me starting or switching tasks is extremely difficult. It’s the actual putting myself into the right position/place or whatever to do the thing I need to do. I could spend hours *thinking* about the minutia of the next task I need to do. I could go over every muscle movement again and again in my mind, but no matter how small I break down the task, starting is a mammoth effort. Event if it’s something I love to do…
Hyperfocus is a big one for me. If left alone doing something I like I could completely forget about time. I might miss a meal or forget an appointment, it could be hours since I’ve had some water and I won’t even notice I’m thirsty. But as soon as I stop what I’m doing, I find it extremely difficult to go back. If I can’t finish a drawing/painting, short story in one sitting, then chances are it’s never getting finished.
Switching tasks is anxiety inducing at times. Even just the idea of stepping away from my desk in work to go pee can play on my mind for an hour until I’m absolutely bursting… Because I know that it’ll only take 2-3 minutes to go pee, but it might take me 30 minutes to get back into my groove, and by that time it’s nearly lunch so I might as well just wait for lunch. But then I’ll go time blind again and suddenly it’s 2 hours since I originally planned in having lunch and I still haven’t peed.
BUT sometimes I’ll be working, and generally it’s when I’m going something repetitive that doesn’t require much brain power, my mind will drift. And then I’ll have a question like “which of the Everest Sherpas has sumitted the mountain the most” and then I can’t stop thinking about that question. So I google it, and then I fall into a bit of a rabbit hole and before you know it an hour has gone by and I’ve done barely any work.
Now apply that to everything. Getting out of bed. Getting dressed. Brushing your teeth. Showering. Eating. Cooking. Shopping. Tidying up after yourself. Doing the dishes. Vacuuming. Laundry. Refilling your water bottle. Turning on the tv. Turning off the tv. Standing up to grab your guitar/controller/book/whatever hobby to genuinely want to do Going to bed. Meeting up with friends. Packing for vacation. Packing your bag for the next day. Going on a bike ride. Going to the gym. Every single thing you need or want to do takes an enormous amount of mental energy just to START.
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