Eli5 What is executive disfunction?
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Hi, I have executive dysfunction. For context, it has quite a lot of overlap with ADHD (which I was originally diagnosed with) and ASD (which I suspected I had later in life) [Side note, the difference is that if you had no developmental disorders as a child, that doesn’t count as either disorder]
ExDy for me is like, you know how you have your laundry? It’s there, it’s been there for weeks, and you want to do it. But you can’t. Why? You literally just can’t. Your body won’t do it even though you tell yourself over and over “Man I really gotta go do that”. My ability to Execute tasks is Dysfunctional. You can look up the concept of energy spoons to really get this idea. I know that doing something good for myself will make me feel better, but I still can’t get myself to do it
In the broader sense this extends to several categories:
Inhibition (being able to stop yourself)
Shift (being able to move from one task to another)
Self Regulation (being able to calm down and think)
Initiation (being able to start tasks, like I mentioned)
Working Memory (being able to recall what someone said you two seconds ago)
Organization (being able to manage your time)
Social Awareness (being able to understand how you affect others and picking up on social cues)
A lot of what I mentioned above is also a lot of the problems you see with ADHD and ASD. ADHD has way too much shift, little inhibition, and awful working memory. ASD has 0 social awareness and bad self regulation. However while those disorders have their stats dialed to 11 for some, while the rest are on 2s, mine would be like 5s across the board
Basically this all boils down to… you don’t work like other people do. And you’re very aware of it. To me, it feels like everyone else has been on NG+ the entire time and I’m in a never ending tutorial. Dealing with ExDy takes a lot of mental effort, and sometimes I still don’t get much done, but since learning about it I’ve been able to manage it much much better
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