1. ADHD Predominantly Inattentive (ADHD-PI)
2. ADHD Predominantly Hyperactive (ADHD-PH?)
3. ADHD Combined (ADHD-C)
ADD falls under the first one. It makes sense that you'd recognize yourself in that. They're now considered to be the same disorder, but just presenting in a different way.
One of the things that's usually not discussed, but what you should watch out for is emotional control. Apparently it's easier for people with ADHD to have their emotions flip. Russell Barkley has an amazing series of lectures about it. You can find various bits on YouTube. You could see if maybe you'll discover even more about yourself.
ADHD can be a huuuuge problem in relationships. Especially if you're going out with someone who would score very high on conscientiousness. They won't understand that things that are easy for them are hard for you, and will assume that you're just trying to piss them off, or are incorrigibly lazy. This is exacerbated because it's not like you can't do those things, it's just that you will inconsistently do them, and average towards not doing them.
On my partners request I should add.
For fun my then partner took the test as well.
My score 80% or whatever: “severe autistic traits”. WTF?! Ouch...
Hers? A clean 0. Zero?! You’re kidding. Sure she’s probably the most compassionate human being I’ve ever met, but come on!
Eventually we got a daughter and split up a year later.
Best thing that could have happened for anyone of us, daughter included, and we have a great relationship where we hang out all the time.
I believe in part this is because she doesn’t expect “normal” from me when we’re no longer together.
It also gave me a wake-up call telling me I had shit to properly sort out.
Here's a fantastic lecture (split into ~5 minute segments -- this guy gets it :) by Dr. Barkley:
ADHD - The 30 Essential Ideas Everyone Needs to Know
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzhbAK1pdPM&list=PLzBixSjmbc...
The general physician I went to initially to kick of the quest for diagnosis obviously had an interest and gave me a book called “the answer” (edit).
If you are Swedish: “hemligheten”
In english the tag line (translated by me): “from moments to lasting relationships”
The Answer: How to start a relationship and make it last
https://www.amazon.com/Answer-start-relationship-make-last/d...
Why the same pattern I saw in how I had to be ”interested” to give something or someone my attention repeated over and over.
I’ve had many relationships over the years with a specific pattern: I lose interest in about a year.
One total burn-out after another. Extreme interest followed by absolutely nothing.
There’s a follow up book I can’t find in English called (my translation): ”The dark secret”, that treats what they call ”deorganized attachement”
This one’s actually more relevant for me personally as my youth and upbringing was... “interesting” and in several ways traumatic.
On the topic of books:
“Healing ADD” was really useful for my partner:
https://www.bookdepository.com/Healing-Add-Daniel-Amen/97804...
Many responsibilities in family life are uninteresting. Often I have to be patient for weeks in order to work on something I find interesting. Months ago I found a great programming project to work on. However, I'm caught in a period in which my wife is working a lot of extra hours, leaving me to deal with cooking, house repair, running my daughter to activities, finances, etc. I also work full-time as a developer. On top of it, I'm the president for my daughter's basketball league, which requires a lot of attention to administrative tasks. I'm perpetually at odds with my desire to work on the interesting project and getting done what needs to be done.
I'm coming out of a mini-depression now. As an example of what it's like, several weeks ago I was sent a link to post to our league's FB page. The link pertains to an event next weekend. Posting would have taken under 5 minutes, but I shied away from it until yesterday. The thought of one more trivial task in my day completely paralyzed me for weeks, but I felt increasing anxiety and the depression worsened.
In my younger days, I would have ignored needs to focus on what made me feel happy at the time. Nowadays I feel too anxious when I do so.
Same. It's subsided to a large extent, but I spent years in that state. I'm not even angry at my brain, but just a little sad about how much time and opportunities this wasted for me.
> In my younger days, I would have ignored needs to focus on what made me feel happy at the time. Nowadays I feel too anxious when I do so.
Same. Except I do wish I got back to that "younger days" state. Literally nothing ended up badly from doing that; hell, I owe my whole programming career to it. Between doing what you want instead of what you have to vs. the other way around, the worst is really the third option: being paralyzed by an internal conflict and doing neither.
Wow, this describes a few recent events for me. Thanks for sharing!
Who is “her” in this case — the writer or the daughter?
Would definitely be interested in hearing your wins running a family and managing this
So in short list format, just sharing some methods I employ, sans digressions:
0. Awareness. Took way too long for me to reach it.
1. What is mentioned in the article: prioritisation! That needs to lead to routine. Hard work this, but most important, as I have to be able to engage auto-pilot for "non-interesting" tasks.
2. Sleep. Just do it. I have found out that lack of sleep takes me down hyper-focus lane. Great when you are alone and is tinkering along for a weekend. Not at all in basically all other scenarios. Hit bed before 11.
3. Eat and drink. Healthy and just enough. The effects are similar to #2 if I don't.
4. Physical activities. Go for a 20 min run. It is boring, but reach the point of proper sweating and keep going for another 10-20 min. The effects on me are amazing and in many ways resemble #5, only even better.
5. Breathe. Honestly, I have started practicing mindfulness and it just works for me. It takes me down into myself and allows me to spread focus.
On the bus right now, and this is what I can think of at the moment. Always a work in progress. I'll see about that blog...
Long time skateboarder, hung up in a 9-5, knees are starting to shit the bed at 30, and don't skate much any more as a result. Realized, fairly recently, that over the years my mental state was declining/flatlining largely in part to not exercising. Skating is just fun, provides a sense of freedom, used to be a huge part of my social life, and the physical activity kept my body and mind in shape, and it's totally left a negative impact not having that involved in 50%+ of my daily activities.
Going on a tangent, but I recently purchased a recumbent bike as a means of remaining stimulated/keeping boredom at bay while exercising, and it's hands down one of the best purchases I've ever made. It's a matter of going to YouTube and popping on a walkthrough on a framework/library/etc, the news, documentary, or anything of interest, and just peddling away for the next hour... Only problem is, it's hard to stop going once you start :/
Anyways, read through this thread and your mentions, as someone else has mentioned, are the most articulate descriptions of the struggles that one faces with ADD. Personally, I'm in an environment where many don't consider it "real" and look down upon those who have sought medical help as "meth addicts", and my only wish is for them to understand and also to be able to distinguish the medications from one another and not group them with illicit/highly toxic drugs.
Glad to have come across yours and many other's comments on the topic. Made my morning :)
Strength training with barbells fixed all those aches and pains in my knees and joints that braces and doctors and physical therapy couldn't. When I started squatting, I suddenly stopped being afraid to walk down stairs. My posture improved. I noticed I had way more endurance when riding, and it made ever part of that, from carving to pumping, easier and better and more powerful.
For me personally, resistance training with weights is better than almost any other exercise for managing ADHD. I don't know what it is, but something about lifting keeps me focused and calm for a few days after a workout. Cardio never really did that for me.
It’s two sides to it as I see, as going all in with athletics obviously gives you the physical bit “for free”. Well not for free, really, but you know what I mean.
The other part is the strict routine you have to keep.
It’s not ever a problem as life revolves around an interest!
Rather, I used to get annoyed if something disrupted my routine regarding food, rest and practice.
To get better and stonger (interest) I have to eat, sleep and turn up ready for practice two times, every day.
Ah... good times! But also severely limiting. But also great... But... :)
Awesome that I could help make your day! Inspiring even.
Routine is useful. My life is full of mini routines, although not necessarily making as cohesive as a picture as they could, there are certainly plenty of gaps.
I have a bad problem where things go to shit if a normal "auto-pilot" task of mine has to changed.
Simple example, I always have my keys in my pocket, I feel for them as I walk out the door. They're there, I continue. Same thing with my truck (it has manual locks) - I feel for the big plastic on the key, then close the locked door.
However, when leaving the house without pockets (in dirtbike gear), there is room for things to go wrong for me.
I can't just check that pocket. So I either have to replay putting the keys in my bag or not be lazy and check the bag.
I've had to learn to not be lazy and require physical proof... because last time it turns out they were indeed in the bag, _but the bag was in the house_.
I actually use a pocket of a specific jacket whether I use it or not.
This is where I put them on entry, and this is where the check is on exit.
Without routines like these anything can and will happen, just ask my (soon to be) wife! :)
It gets easier with routines and practice and will eventually start a positive spiral if you stick to it for a few weeks.
If you “lose” it (you will) and end up out of the spiral or going backwards, remind yourself of how good your brain felt after that 30 min run or 15 minute of focused breathing.
You probably have a hyper-sensitive brain of sorts, and you will know what I mean. It sensitive in a way that it behaves like a sponge. Feed it good stuff and it will behave better.
Drain it with no good sleep, bad food, sugar and intense focus without rest? Setting of a bad spiral. Learn to feel when this kicks in.
The work never stops, so force it! Just do it.
My 11 year old son was diagnosed with ADHD-PI over a year ago, and we've had great success with with all of the above areas for him. 0, 1, 2, and 4 especially. We've gotten things running pretty well at home by recognizing he needs a break from homework to "run around in circles (as he calls it)" for a bit, setting up physical activities like shooting hoops that are easy to start/stop, having a strong routine in the morning before school, and making sure we don't slip at bed times. Another key to his success is his teacher. She's been simply amazing at letting him sit, stand, take 5 to go run up/down stairs, etc. when he needs it. Most importantly, he recognizes that she genuinely cares and it makes him want to do well, unlike a past teacher or two that simply treated him like a nuisance.
The morning routine is probably the biggest win, though. We went from barely able to get out the door in time for school to our son often getting up early and getting fully ready (dressed, bed made, breakfast eaten, lunch packed, showered, etc) before mom or I even get out of bed. He's always so proud of himself when that happens, too.
I'm separated and co-parenting and realized that I would freak out every Thursday because clearly my place is too shitty for the kids to arrive, and obviously I'm a terrible father. Once I could name the "Thursday freakout", it became a lot easier to manage and to reduce the intensity from wanting to bail on everyone to just laughing it off.
It gets easier (before it gets harder?, don't know yet.) A former colleague put it best -- the highs are higher, and the lows are lower. It's just no one really tells you how low the lows can be.
I would really like to read that - and I hope this doesn't come out as cynical or heartless, I can understand that having ADD comes with challenges. I am simply intellectually curious to hear how someone lives with such a condition.
I also feel/think - but I might be 100% wrong - that many of us have "some" light form of ADD, perhaps driven by our use of mobile devices. Curious to hear if you have any thought about it.
Well, it’s a spectrum, isn’t it!
I’ve said it a couple of times already in this thread, all is well as long as daily suffering is at a minimal, for anyone that happens to be involved.
Mobile device (constant access to information specifically) is a big problem for me, that is for sure.
I remember playing computer games competitively impacted me in a really negative way when I was younger as well, much in the same way.
The “feeling” in my brain and mind is pretty similar (phone vs gaming) and it seems to create a really bad disconnect emotionally.
This “disconnect” leads to a kind of apathy and when in that state pretty much nothing of value can happen.
I’m currently making a routine of handing my phone to my partner when at home, as I’m unable to handle it.
There’s just so much interesting stuff all over and “interesting” trumps pretty much everything else, often at the expense of relationships.
For a concrete example I described a typical grocery store situation in another post.
Given how poignantly you expressed my own experience of living with ADHD Primarily Inattentive (what you called ADD above), and as someone on the cusp of becoming a father, I would appreciate this more than I can express.
As an adult with ADD, it was a miraculous new perspective on tracking all the things I used to fail to do. I so, so wish I'd had it when I was dealing with small children.
I can't count the number of times while talking to my psychologist, in the middle of a breakdown thinking "If only there were a system that I could offload all of the dumb things I can't remember to do..."
...and then laughing my way out of the room because my wife told me weeks earlier that she wishes I were using my journal. She notices that I'm happier when I use it, she is much happier because she doesn't have to ask me to do something 4 times...
Using OrgMode for keeping my work-life in order has been a life-changer. But perhaps a bullet journal is more suited for keeping personal, and family life. I've never looked into them properly, but will definitely do so today.
I’m constantly playing the “no ones died yet on my watch” card.
It somehow doesn’t make her feel any better.
This was while sorting out the effects of neglecting loved and dear ones at a point in time.
It goes something like this:
—-
You met an a-hole one day. Yeah, it’s just another a-hole.
You meet a-holes everyday?
Well, maybe you’re the a-hole.
—-
Worth thinking about if you find yourself in bad spots all the time.
I do not have ADD (afaik), and I also recognize myself in a lot of this. I think many of these behaviors are very common in general.
The question is always: does it impede a “normal” life and is anyone constantly suffering?
I thought my so called issues were perfectly manageable until I got my second child.
I described it in a different post as being stuck in development.
Remaining a child in many ways, and constantly fighting overwhelming emotions or, almost worse, non at all.
I decided I couldn’t keep doing what I was doing, and it’s been a struggle ever since.
Mostly I make it work, but my partner might have a word or two about these things:
Going to the grocery store with a long list of items, only to be overwhelmed by the astounding number of types of coffee.
Spending 45 minutes looking online for anything regarding beans and grounds. Fascinating stuff! Animals eating from the trees and pooing the beans out?! Wow.
Leaving after one hour with a bag of potatoes — cause’ couldn't handle it.
You can probably see that if this is a repeating pattern someone’s bound to suffer.
Anxiety is just around the corner with depression right behind it, stemming from these issues.
Not a single blog-post but a lot of potential knowledge.
I’ve landed in static. Either GH pages or through netlify CMS. For now.
Needs re-evaluation, I can tell. But when?! I have a family to run.
Basically, it boils down to: commit to either doing most of it yourself, with carefully considered bits of outsourced help, or go for an outsourced solution and deal with the bits you need to change.
The former usually is more fun, and probably works best for stuff you need to work on (as in, alter) over time.
The latter is less fun, but if you can handle working within the boundaries presented and if the thing you're doing is throwaway or relatively unchanging, it's probably the best way to go.
When it comes to CRUD web stuff, for example, I find that Wordpress is often the best way to go, even though I hate most of it with a passion. But the fact is that with just a few plugins (Advanced Custom Fields primarily!), it's often one of the best solutions available for a typical website, especially if it has news/blog type stuff and if it's not mission-critical to yourself or the client.
The same applies to smaller 'units' of code. Every time you add code that isn't your own, you add limitations and risks, but in practice it's often worth it. The skill I'm trying to improve is to know when to make what choice in this regard.
(to be clear, when I choose Wordpress, I'm basically accepting that almost the whole thing is a dumpster fire. Most of my work then involves isolating myself from the resulting mess, whether by avoiding WP's templating/querying system, or making sure a site runs on its own server. And yet it's still worth it at times)
I burst into laughter when I read this, holy shit if I'm not doing the exact same thing right now. You could probably graph my mood by HN comments frequency.
What is it now — cache invalidation and naming things? :)
I second this!
My (adult) daughter inherited ADD from me. Which means she and I understand each other in a way that her mother and her twin brother do not understand us. At least they've learned to just let us do the grocery shopping and not try to help.
Just wondering, what sort of things are you trying to combat that?
The best thing I've found is to just accept you have the ADHD and work around it. If I know I'm going to do a tedious task that is going to be boring and require concentration, I usually give myself a 2-3 minute break every 20 minutes just to get up and walk around. It's very important to have discipline to make sure the break doesn't turn into a huge 45 minute sidetrack.
I am fully aware of the trick and I could just choose right now to violate the thing entirely. It still works.
I don't suppose that counts as tricking your mind into thinking something is interesting. Still works.
But having had an intake of decent energy during the day, and a 30 min run in the evening allows my brain to brush the teeth and put three beasts to bed at night without collapsing into apathy.
I have to constantly interrupt what I’m doing during the day and “check the sensors” so to speak.
Hands up if you’ve been so consumed you missed lunch more than one instance this last month!
Keep doing that, and the deterioration is in progress.
If not of oneself perhaps relationships? And what is “self”?
Right now is the worst. I made a list of work I need to do today, but none of it was very stimulating. So I opened up Hacker News, saw this article, and have been on this for close to an hour now. In that time, I've read it and a lot of comments (Jordan's comments being my favorite so far). I've decided to try Todoist as suggested by the author, so I've set that up. I already know that I'm going to fall away from it like I do every other organizational method (Evernote, Keep, Kanban varieties, physical notebooks), so a little mini bit of negativity has set in. And now all I want to do is get up from my desk, and run around to see how my employees are doing. I have 60 of them, so that could take awhile. And before I know it, I've done nothing but read about ADHD and talk about the weekend all day.
I really bash myself for these periods of the day. I feel like I'm wearing a sign on my forehead that says "Brian hasn't done anything for 4 hours!" And that sign would be true. On the flip-side when a problem comes along, I'm all over it. I'll work night and day to get it done. I'll do so to the short term detriment of relationships, but I'll solve it. If I have constant interesting problems flowing in, I look like a working machine. If I just have boring redundant work like dealing with employee "time cards" or invoices, it takes all day to get to it, and I look like I'm day-dreaming or lazy.
It's now an hour and 15 into this sidetrack. So I think I'll go get some water, walk around, and maybe sit back down and get some work done before 9am. I'll have to or else I won't get anything done. I have to attend 3 meetings in a row where I'm listening and not speaking. If you are ADHD, you know how that's going to go.
So about 30 minutes of active listening and 150 minutes of some of the deepest problem solving time where you can miraculously focus on all the problems you couldn't before? (The hard part is if somebody talks directly to you during the latter and not the former. You'll never know, though, unless somebody tells you about it later.)
I have ADD and pretty much recognize myself in a lot of this.
It’s almost impossible to focus on anything that is not interesting “right now” and what is “interesting” changes in cycles spanning a few weeks.
During a cycle I become completely absorbed, you know, not eat, not sleep and not being communicative, absorbed.
For a long time this worked out both personally (depending on who you ask) and with my employers/employees that so far have had no issues with my rather irregular rhythm (thank you tech!).
Oh, the storytelling and talking... I feel sorry for my brain and, in retrospect, people that had to listen (I’m sorry! And I didn’t mean to be rude and offensive, it was just my thoughts at that very second!).
As life have changed mainly through becoming a dad it has also become a lot more difficult —- not everything about kids is “interesting”, and staying up to 4 to tinker with something “interesting” is just such a bad idea when someone jumps on your face at 6.
Everyone needs food? And it’s my responsibility? Today again?! Phew... etc.
Spending energy on “non-interesting” things really is draining and seem to lead to kind of mini depressions.
I’m happy that I’ve come to a point where I at least can see some of this behavior which allows me to work on some changes.
Hard work though!
Perhaps I should write about how I run(?) a family with ADD? It would make for a lot of laughs and a some sad stuff.