yup-i-made-an-adhd-blog

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48 Apps for Autistics and ADHDers

Neurodivergent_lou

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From the book Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD:

Putting a coat on the back of a chair by the door is fine, but if you prefer, use coat hooks and a large catch-all basket for dropping keys, hats, gloves.

Small bookcase end-table next to the couch to store craft projects, books, and other things being worked on for easy access.

Add a storage unit near the dining room table to transition between eating and working there.

Daily toiletry items should be stored in a basket that you can move easily

Extra toiletries and medicine cabinet items go in open shelf/basket storage so they can be seen and used easily. If items no longer fit, purge the excess. Don’t obscure the view!

If you disrobe in the bathroom, place a tall hamper in there.

Keep a set of cleaning supplies in each bathroom

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can we talk about the neurodivergent or just general overwhelm experience of "what am I gonna do if my brain just never Works?"

what if I'm past the point of functioning already? what if I'm never able to focus on this assignment and I just fail the class? what if by the time I escape executive dysfunction it's too late? what if I don't make it out of bed before my appointment? what if the year ends and I never did any of the things I said I would?

it's like trying to start your car over and over again and having to face the fact that you might just be out of gas. and what then? you're stranded. it's not your fault you can't drive with no gas but everyone will call you irresponsible for letting it get that low. it's worth mentioning that they're the ones who wanted you to drive all over the place constantly, but you can't say that then. and it doesn't get you un-stranded. you might need to abandon your car and find another way home to sort it out, and not get where you were going. but that's "giving up."

so you twist the key again, and again and again. maybe it will finally start if you just try hard enough. and time keeps coming, like a train at the intersection. time doesn't care.

I'm terrified.

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I think one of the hardest struggles of adhd for me is the lack of automaticity. Neurotypical people seem to be able to do things automatically. For them, get dressed consists of one step--get dressed.

But with adhd, it's hard to do things automatically because your brain is elsewhere, both consciously and subconsciously. "Getting dressed" isn't just one step, it's many. It's getting up, going to the closet, opening the closet, throwing the clothes on the bed, changing, put old clothes in the hamper, etc. etc.

And your brain can stop paying attention at any one of those steps. If you're not careful when you get up, you might go to the kitchen instead of the closet. If you're not paying attention, you might forget to put the old clothes in the hamper.

I think this is one of the reasons that compensating for unmedicated adhd is HIGHLY energy consuming. With anything you do, there are a million little micro steps where you can get derailed. I think this is why anxiety is often comorbid with adhd: it's one of the only conditions that forces you to always, always stress about what step you fucked up on.

#ah. i like this articulation

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The problem with ADHD and perfectionism isn't that if it's not perfect it's good. It's either perfect or catastrophically bad. It's perfectionism born of missed details, forgotten steps. It's perfectionism or you glue the project together the wrong way up. It's perfectionism or you miss that important date.

ADHD forces you into this incredibly binary system. You can choose to get something done today or you can't no matter how hard you try. You can either remember something perfectly vividly or you can't remember what you did 5 seconds ago. You can either be perfect or you can be a failure, there is no "you can be good, you can be okay, you can be enough today".

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It’s literally that simple

Friend: “hey my son can’t concentrate on his homework. He chooses to do literally anything else everytime. He said his head doesn’t feel like it.”

Me: “Did you give him music?”

Friend: “No! No tech until he’s done! He doesn’t need more distracted.”

Me:

“k, bring me the child”

*Go to her house*

*points to the obviously ADHD boy struggling with his homework*

Me: “so your head doesn’t feel like doing homework?”

Son: “yeah. It would rather do ANYTHING else.”

Me: *unwrapping earbuds* here, listen to this for an hour while you do it.

French voice: 1hr later

Son: “k I’m done! :-)”

Friend: “wow, what’d you give him? Concentra, Adderall, Ritalin‽”

Me: “Sweet Dreams by Eurythmics” and some lo-fi.

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this is a joke but also it’s not

#my apartment looks like this…. #hmmm not this one so much but last one

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being an adhd person living with an adhd person sometimes means having to come up with interesting solutions to problems

I have a very good medication taking routine, I very rarely miss my morning and night meds, my roommate is not good at this, so my roommate sheepishly asked if I could remind them to take their meds when I take mine

in order to remind myself to do this I have had to keep their medication right next to mine (this is fine I will not mix them up because I am very careful about medications to a slightly excessive degree)

however my roommate is leaving early tomorrow for a work trip, and we forgot to sort out what will be done about their morning medication before they went to bed, I'm currently very sick and have been sleeping in a lot so I might not wake up to an early alarm

I can't leave the meds out in the kitchen with a note because the ✨adhd✨makes the chances of them simply not noticing it very high (also I don't know where my stationary is)

I thought of putting it on top of something they'll take with them but I have no idea what they'll be taking and also their stuff is kind of everywhere because we're both still unpacking from moving house

the solution

I put them in a little pill carrier and sat them on top of the bag of cat biscuits

because if there is one thing they will definitely do before they leave, it's feed the cat, because the cat sure as fuck will not let them forget

I also left the pill box sitting open so they wouldn't just move it out of the way automatically without realising what was in it, thankfully the cat biscuits are kept up high where the cat can't reach and knock the pills over (not that she would try anyway she is exceptionally lazy)

adhd roommates by theory sounds like it should be a disaster (and admittedly when it comes to washing the dishes it is) but it's nice to live with someone who thinks the way you think so we can do little things for each other like this in ways that make sense to us

I'm certain if I were neurotypical I would

A) have left the pills on the counter with a note and incorrectly assumed that would do the job just fine and

B) I'd be able to do that because I would probably know exactly where my stationary is

and to add an extra dash of ✨adhd fuckery✨ while writing this post I just looked up at my pills container and noticed my roommates pills weren't there for tomorrow, and got very confused before remembering I had JUST put them out on the cat food and was also literally in the middle of writing this post about how I put them out on the cat food

no fucking wonder neurotypicals can't figure us out

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Speaking of therapy, I say, as though we're old friends, and you're not a stranger trapped in this metaphorical elevator with me and you can hear the suspension wires starting to fray.

I've been doing a lot of work recently that's focused on imposter syndrome and the feeling that no matter how well or how much I do, I'm not good enough. That I'm somehow tricking everyone into thinking my work is actually good.

Some days it's a minor niggle in my head that I can gentle and soothe with logic and affirmations. Or smother, depending on the mood. Other times it's loud and all-consuming and the mental anguish it causes me is so real I can feel it twitching in my muscles. This desperate fight-or-flight instinct with nowhere to go and nothing to fight but myself.

Anyway, because I'm several types of Mentally Unwell™, I was switching between workshop sheets ahead of next week. Filling in different forms. (Trying to get a good grade in therapy) And I got my "recognize your harmful ADHD coping mechanisms" worksheet mixed in with the "you're not actually lying to people, you just feel like you are because your brain is full of weasels" worksheet, and seeing them side by side made something go topsy turvy in my head, and I just had to sit and breathe for a couple of minutes until the urge to scream passed. Because it clicked, it all suddenly clicked.

The reason the imposter syndrome workshops and therapy sessions aren't sticking was because I do routinely trick people into thinking I'm someone I'm not.

Because I'm masking my ADHD for their convenience.

I've always known there was something wrong with me. My neurotypical peers made it abundantly clear I didn't fit in or was failing in some way I couldn't see nor remedy, no matter how hard I tried.

So I compressed myself into a workaholic box of hyper-competence in the hopes they'd stop noticing the flaws and exploit like me instead. And then subsequently lived with the daily fear that if they looked too close, they'd realize I'm a monumental fuck up with enough personal baggage to block the Suez Canal.

If you ever need someone to burn themselves to ashes for your comfort and convenience, I'm your gal.

Or I used to. Until I had a bit of a breakdown, and the rubber band holding my brain together snapped and pinged off into the stratosphere, never to be seen again.

Unfortunately, the trauma of living like that didn't also fuck off and instead left a gaping maw where my personality ought to be, so now I get to deal with that aftermath.

And it's that aftermath that's affecting the imposter syndrome shit. Because yes, I am hyper-competent and good at what I do-- but it doesn't feel real because that is how I mask.

And the truly frustrating thing is I am good at what I do. I am not pretending. I worked hard to be good at this. It just feels like I'm dicking around because 90% of my personality turns out to be trauma masquerading as humor in a trenchcoat, and having people genuinely like something weird I'm doing is so foreign my brain has decided it's just another form of masking.

I'm pretending to be a good author so people will think I'm a good author, and my brain thinks we are in Danger of being found out. We are in Danger, and writing is Dangerous because then people will know I'm Weird and not whatever palatable version I've presented myself as for their NT sensibilities.

Like the neurotic vampire with a raging praise kink wasn't an obvious giveaway.

Anyway. I got nothing else. Thanks for listening.

I'm going to go be very normal in another room and not stare into the abyss of my own soul for a bit.

#ooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh wow

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POV: mister Devon Price, PhD, telling me that I am right about everything

Source: Unmasking Autism, discovering the new faces of neurodiversity

#stuff like this makes me go oh tism? at myself #its not 100% but its uhh i think almost all #everything except the . i keep going to type the tag and forgetting PH my god everything except the RIGID SCHEDULE #but thats cuz im a mess #but all the rigidity only crops up so much when im like. anxious #otherwise i like to do stuff as it comes to me i cna be more vibey and chill but like nooot without knowing i have time for that mode yanno #i also take zero time to think i think out loud while i am talking #i think i saw somewhere abt how adhd and autism mask EACH OTHER and im wonderin! #but yeah goes on this blog bc i keep coming to conclusions rhat make me go oh both huh

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The thing with ADHD is that my focus is like a piglet that I don't control. To make it stay where I want it to be I'll first have to find it, catch it, build a pen, and then realise in hindsight that I should probably have built the pen before I caught the pig, because now I'll have to build the pen one-handed with a wriggling, shrieking piglet under one arm.

And sometimes the pig will tire itself out and stay where I want it to be while I work. Those are good days, I can keep an eye on it and make sure it's there every few minutes and make good progress. And then sometimes someone interrupts my work and I can hear how the piglet seizes the opportunity and starts chewing through the pen's wall to make itself an escape route, and there's no polite way to wriggle myself out of the conversation to stop it.

One glance and it's gone. Three minutes into the conversation and I can't focus on anything but thinking "oh god how far could it have escaped by now."

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I see a lot of people joking about the adhd thing of "I have a appointment/phone call at 3pm, guess I won't do anything all day!"

But no one seems to make the connection that it's a time blindness thing. One of the symptoms of ADHD is not having a good and accurate sense of time. And not doing stuff prior to an event with a hard deadline is an obvious coping mechanism for that.

Can I go to the store? It's 10am and the appointment is at 3pm. How long does going to the store take? An hour? Three hours? Five hours? I DON'T KNOW!

I get anxious trying to do things before appointments because I'm aware that I don't know how long those things take, and that if I think I do, I may be very wrong. Too often I've been like "hey I can walk to the corner store and grab a drink, that'll take like 15 minutes!" and then an hour later I get back and whoops my rice has burnt.

Plus there's also the fact that ADHD people know that motivation and focus is a two-edged sword.

Like, let's say you decide to play a video game. You've got time, you can pause/save whenever, so this should be a perfect fit to make good use of your waiting-time. So you start playing and WHOOPS you get really focused for some reason today (because people with ADHD do not get to pick when their brain decides to focus) and the next time you look at the clock it's 2:49 and you haven't showered or dressed and the appointment is 30 minutes away. Fuck. (you could have set an alarm, but now you're asking people with the forgetting-things-and-time-ignoring condition to remember it set alarms)

And with motivation, it can be almost worse. Instead of playing a game, you so something useful or creative. You clean your room or fix your plumbing or write a story or draw a picture. And suddenly it's great. Your brain is firing on all cylinders. You've got all the motivation you can ask for, and you are FLYING. the ideas are brilliant, your hands are nimble, you're getting stuff done you've been putting off for weeks or months. And then the alarm goes off. Time to go to your appointment. Fuck.

You drive there, your brain still full of ideas and plans. But by the time you get back, the motivation is gone. You may still have the ideas but you don't have the drive to write them down. You can't force yourself to do it. Your sink is still in pieces. Your room is half-cleaned, and you have to shove all the sorted clothes into one big bin just so you have somewhere to sleep. You've left things half finished again, in a cycle that has been repeating your whole fucking life. It seems sometimes that nothing ever gets finished.

So next time you don't even start. There's not time. You've been burnt too many times. Why add another half-completed project to your pile of shame?

My point is that people seem to be going "lol I can't do anything all day if I have an appointment at 3pm" like this is a quirky "oh I'm so scatterbrained!" weirdness they alone have, and not a major complication of a disabling mental illness.

(and that's not even getting into the secondary effects. If you know that having an appointment ruins your whole damn day, you're going to avoid them. Even when it's things like "going to that party" or "meeting your friends for a drink/game" or "going to a movie with that cute girl from your math class". Things you should enjoy. Things that'd help you be social. Things that make you feel human.)

#ohhhh ok so i *should* hang out with my friend today still

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Fuck this one hits home.

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adhd is so embarrassing ur basically like “I have to have fun right the fuck now or I’m throwing myself off the roof” 90% of the time and you also have very little control over this

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#if i am autistic im rbing stuff to here rn anyways #anyways anyways #shit hits rn BUT i like. remember my child self so fondly now bc i stayed angry and self assured for SO long #so long so long the description of that invisible but inevitable gut dropping moment hits rn tho im kind of #in stasis but im like. storing energy u know. i have fucking no clue at all what im doing and #i figured shit out and stayed ans became confident bc i did literally like #i had a rule where i just never said no to some things no wonder i burnt out BUT #i lived messy and horribly and exhiloratingly and joyously yanno? it was bad ppl get sick of me but also #if people stick around you can only love and be loved in full u know #idk gotta go get rejected a bunch in art and in ppl i truly like #have that half assed sloppy mode as long as im doing well in a few places i give a shit abt #like to point to #and get to go hey my intention is messy living i am trying this weird thing hehe! #and then have an excuse to act weird bc i like. warned ya djdjsjjd idk but i just feel soooo out of the loop and CONFUSED #and ive neverrrrr actually felt out of touch like this before cuz i would just be like no youre dumb and wrong wtf just rock solid unshakabl #pandemic isolation if i am autistic eradicated my fucking mask i think thats the person who died thats who i mourned #i build that person up for 22 years just to kill it and im too embarassed to be as messy as i was at 14 at 25 #because i shouldnt need to be just as messy but i feel like i dont know shit #idk if i got off track oh well