Imagine that almost everything in your life, is the equivalent of starting on a test/exam 2 hours before the deadline, even though you've had a week or two to finish it.
ADHD does affect everything in my life, but I don't relate to this part. For me, it primarily manifests as there being an immense amount of inertia required to do things I don't want to do. I have no issue doing things I intrinsically want to do.
If it's a TV show, hobby, or fun-having activity that I really like, then I'm perfectly able to do them. If I don't like them, then, yeah, they're probably never getting done, or only getting done in a very pathological way. Procrastinating 3 months of work until the day before the deadline, procrastinating cleaning something for a year until someone has to come over to visit, procrastinating taxes until an hour before midnight on tax day. It's the same story every time.
If it's a hobby or TV show I don't like, then I have no reason to continue it. My ADHD and motivation signal to me what what I actually do and don't want to do during my fleeting period of existence. I feel no guilt about dropping something like that if it can't hold my attention. I only feel guilt when it's something I really should be doing, like work, paperwork, etc., and especially things where I know I'm losing lots of money by not doing it.
There are plenty of things I want to want to do, and those things will never get done. But if I actually want to do something, with no meta-layers, then there's no issue for me.
Personally I think the reason is that the cognitive dissonance gets in the way... I know that I absolutely should urgently do X (important thing I'm putting off) and all the time I don't, I cannot reconcile a deliberate decision to do Y (trivial thing I'd really enjoy). So with the inability to do either X or Y, I just end up being fully stuck and in total deadlock.
Most of the time this situation is preceded by many days, weeks or months of me DOING all those things I enjoy while blissfully neglecting the things I should be doing. It's the end result of this behaviour that eventually leads to the deadlock.
But you’re right that the “neglect phase” accounts for the vast majority of time. And when I’m in that, I forget all about the existence of the “deadlock phase” even though I’ll be hurtling towards another one.
Good to know that this self-destructive behaviour is common at least :)
I’m so happy to see this discussion happening on HN
It was a massive paradigm shift for me which I'm only still coming to terms with. The various discussions that pop up on HN about this topic have been hugely helpful. More so than many other places on the internet.
Isn't it more likely that a constant stream of never ending notifications and interruptions decrease our attention span to seconds? You can't read a book because you can't read an article, and you can't read and article because you read 6 line long hackernews or reddit comment that "might" contain some knowledge. Your brain evolved to adapt and it adapted to a world where everything might take your attention elsewhere. You can work to fix this.
And even if it is "ordinary laziness", that doesn't mean that seeking confirmation of it something is ADHD or not is a bad exercise, if you can afford it. The lack of motivation also is a very good sign that the OP is heavily disconnected from their work, and needs to find another job or lifestyle, especially if it's this bad and they don't have ADHD.
If it is ADHD, then you have confirmation of a very helpful community and set of medical and psychological tools that you can apply, and you can ignore vast amounts of advice that just doesn't work for people with ADHD.
> Do we really need to go to a doctor so that we hear that we have a problem, and we might need medicine, to focus?
Modern society can be very inflexible if you're in the wrong spot, and don't have the ability to explain why the fit is so bad.
Lastly, many people who do have ADHD have been told that they are lazy or haven't lived to their potential their entire lives. They know they don't fit in. They pick over their brains, looking for ways to do better, trying ways to do better. They are, as a population, far more self-examined than the norm. They don't need your doubt, they have plenty of their own.
Consider how people like to say they have OCD because they think it’s just “liking to be clean”. Most people like things to be clean, right? So anyone could be diagnosed with OCD on a bad day, couldn’t they? No, because OCD is caused by underlying physical problems with the brain that cause very specific symptoms that interfere greatly with your life. When you see a person who is actually diagnosed with OCD, it becomes really clear that none of these other jokers have it.
The problem with ADHD is that instead of hand washing or checking doors or other very unusual rituals, it mostly just looks like laziness to a casual observer.
OCD is merely a label for a cluster of symptoms. It says nothing about the cause. The same can be said for the majority of psychiatric diagnoses afaik.
E.g. “Doctors aren’t sure why some people have OCD.” - https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/obsessive-compulsive-dis...
E.g. 2: OCD can be a symptom of a strep infection and nothing to do with brain chemistry. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/pandas/
For OCD: Research suggests that OCD involves problems in communication between the front part of the brain and deeper structures of the brain. These brain structures use a neurotransmitter (basically, a chemical messenger) called serotonin. Pictures of the brain at work also show that, in some people, the brain circuits involved in OCD become more normal with either medications that affect serotonin levels (serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SRIs) or cognitive behavior therapy (CBT).
Just because we don’t know the precise cause doesn’t mean we cannot, in the meantime, help alleviate the symptoms for someone suffering from the syndrome (since we don’t know the precise cause).
Please don’t get in the way of this by implying people are “making it up,” because, simply, they are not. Both of these are extremely well studied syndromes, but really only in the last few decades.
I didn’t imply anything contrary to that.
> Please don’t get in the way of this by implying people are “making it up,” because, simply, they are not. Both of these are extremely well studied syndromes, but really only in the last few decades.
I didn’t imply people are making it up.
HN guidelines are “Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.”.
I understand that you find it natural to jump to conclusions about what others think, but it really damages good discussion.
> correlations
Exactly - for many psychiatric symptoms the causes are not actually known -instead we just measure a bunch of complicated things and try to read the tea leaves.
There is a hell of a lot of bullshit in psychology and psychiatry, sometimes to the point of abusing those they are supposed to help.
I do think that the beliefs like "my brain is wired wrong" or "it's a brain chemistry problem" are usually wrong for some conditions, and that those beliefs can be harmful because they discourage seeking less obvious solutions or solutions particular to the person.
Also you do not want unrealistic expectations of a "cure", or to encourage seeking of dangerous interventions.
The friends I have with mental health issues usually have another layer of strange personal beliefs, which doesn't help either!
It is a difficult topic to comment on, because people tend to be sensitive about it, for valid reasons.
> It is a difficult topic to comment on, because people tend to be sensitive about it, for valid reasons.
It definitely is.
Having been recently diagnosed (via medical professionals) with ADHD, I've suddenly encountered for the first time what it's like to be on the other side of this.
I previously had a very misinformed idea of what ADHD (and related things like OCD) actually were. I wouldn't have trivialised them necessarily in words or conversation, but I definitely had a completely wrong understanding of the seriousness of these conditions. I didn't know what I didn't know.
The misconceptions about some of these conditions are so widespread that in my case, I've found it actively unhelpful in some cases to talk to many people in my life about it. Having done the research, I now understand much more about how my brain works and why some things are much harder for me than others, but trying to bridge the gap in this knowledge with others is really hard. Even those closest to me either view the diagnosis with suspicion (and I don't blame them for that if they have the same misconcieved idea about the condition that I did). Others just listen to me describing the problems I have and dismiss them (not intentionally) by saying things like "everyone has those problems"!
I've heard (perhaps even read on HN) that after being diagnosed with ADHD in adulthood you go through a bit of a grieving phase, in denial, then angry at medical professionals who didn't it spot it before, and then sadness at how your life might have been had you realised you had this condition much earlier. I'm in that phase now, and so the lack of understanding from others (which again, I don't blame them for) makes this all the more harder. I'm trying to reincorporate this new understanding into the "model" of myself that I've constructed over many years (without this important information) - it's tough and rather isolating.
So all of that said. I guess I'm likely to view a lot of discussion on this topic through my own specific lens, which is likely to make me overly sensitive to perceived "trivialisation".
It's interesting to recognise that I wouldn't have had this sensitivity at all only just a matter of weeks ago. It's funny how your outlook on things can change so significantly in a short space of time.
> You can work to fix this.
Going to a doctor is "working to fix it", and it's a lot of work to keep the prescriptions filled since nobody will give you more than 30 days supply of the useful medicines. There is plenty of other stuff you can do. It's just none of it works unless you do the medication first.
If you don't have the physical causes of ADHD, the medication won't help much, but other things like therapy or going on vacation will. With ADHD it's the opposite.
https://humanparts.medium.com/laziness-does-not-exist-3af27e...
It's not that I can't read a book, I just forget that I wanted to read it. Then by the time I remember I already have my phone out and hn pulled up. Call it laziness, call it ADHD. I don't care, and I don't expect sympathy just like someone who can't do calculus doesn't need sympathy. Some things just seem harder for me than they are for some people.
Seriously though, is there a dx for not having any common sense?
I feel like a lot of us here would be terminal cases
WTF does that even mean
There are similar phenomena of people doing that with all sorts of maladies or abstract identities, from chronic fatigue syndrome to being an introvert. I find ADHD to be an odd choice though, relatively. It seems like it's been at least a decade or two where over-diagnosis of ADD/ADHD was highly criticized, albeit when it comes to diagnosing children (mostly boys) and giving them Ritalin and not adults.
Also, ADHD is in fact under-diagnosed, particularly in adults and especially in women.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4195639/
Some children are overmedicated, but there's evidence it's also underdiagnosed in children.
Funnily enough, I chanced upon a random YouTube video yesterday and the very top comment was someone mentioning ADHD and others chiming in, while skeptics criticizing the self-diagnosing and likening it to those who self-diagnose other conditions such as depression:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ph3ZCriWAw&lc=Ugw0IXd-rBjzj...
Whether right or wrong, it definitely is a known internet social phenomenon. That's what the ancestral post in this current subthread was referring to by referring to ADHD as the new Asperger's.
I don't discount this completely, but I think the argument could be equally strong that we have gained a lot of additional understanding over the last 20 years. There are plenty of conditions that used to be rarely diagnosed (or didn't even exist in medical science) but now are. Just because something didn't used to have a label or definition, but now does, doesn't make it any less valid.
For example we can see differences in ADHD brains with fMRI - something only _relatively_ recently possible. And as medical science gets better at defining and describing these things, more information gets shared, more people talk about their experiences, and the net effect is that unsurprisingly more people identify with that new information. Some self-diagnose rightly or wrongly and leave it at that, others (plenty others I think) use this recognition as a cue to go and speak to a medical expert, which often precedes a formal, valid diagnosis.
Even the ADHD prescribed amphetamine medication is dextroamphetamine, not the scary methamphetamine.
There are also several medications that are not stimulants. While I do believe that children should be prescribed the minimum medications during their formative years, I've talked to several teachers whose students now have a prescription because the children were doing school at home and finally followed the teacher's recommendation.
Yeah, and? There are literally no long term side effects of taking them (except for maybe some positive ones.)
I’m not sure this is true
My point being is that there is absolutely no reason to be a video game completionist.
But we don’t have the parent’s full context - they may have had a dozen other symptoms that they have finally been made aware of, and in that context this may be a symptom.
I don’t play video games enough for it to be one for me, but if I did, I would almost certainly have trouble being a “completionist.” That doesn’t mean I have ADHD, but coupled with about two dozen other personality traits and symptoms, and tons of self-reflection and medical help, it could be a part of that.
The struggle is more than the simplistic description of "this is not interesting. It bores me", it's really "my brain is uncomfortably overwhelmed with coordinating my thoughts with the tasks at hand to the point of feeling angry/anxious/down/<fill in negative emotion>, but oooo I could just cook a familiar recipe which won't require much thinking and can relieve me of, and potentially help with, this mental situation". It's complicated and requires a lot of "tricks" to deal with it. This is the case whether there are tasks to do, if one is just reflecting in thought, thinking up ideas, conversing, reading, etc... even writing this has taken me 10-15 minutes tbh...
this video does a good job of explaining the motivation problem when you have ADHD. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OM0Xv0eVGtY
I also do this. Even worse: the easier and hence duller the task seems, the more difficult it is to get started on it. Once I do start on it and finish 5 minutes later, I need a 20 minute break (WFH doesn't help).
I also often zone out during meetings to the point I haven't got a clue what people are talking about. But to be honest the information content of most meetings is really low.
I've found that having a pen and some notepaper for doodling and writing whatever a speaker is saying is helpful to stay engaged
It’s a vicious cycle leading you on a one way ticket straight to hell and losing everything you care about in life or rotting in prison as an adult that looks invisible to the naked neurotypical eye and dismissed as being lazy when a kid by ignorant parents.
I’ve been this way my entire adult life and I did not realize those were dopamine hits. Wow.
What has helped me is something that the video mentions too, and that's working with a coworker. Not so much pairing (as in, looking at each other's screen), but just saying "I'm working on X now" and feeling like someone else is working on their thing alongside you/simultaneously. That has produced great results for me.
I consider that a hallmark of the syndrome - you are REALLY interested in something, got a project fully prepared around it, and then it sits there waiting for you to do it. All that time you might research it, but it's a problem of getting started even though it is something you are wildly interested in.
Dozens of really interesting things left undone and probably never will get done.
Most of the people who don't understand ADHD and say it is similar to what they go through should be taught about this aspect of it as well.
While I don't dispute the seriousness of ADHD, having never read about it, I can't help but think that the thing you described as the hallmark of the syndrome is just a really common thing among any functioning human being.
A hallmark can't just be considered without the existence of other symptoms. It literally means "If you see this symptom, look for these others to see if it's ADHD." An indicator isn't a solitary rule.
People really like to minimize it because online ADHD conversations don't typically describe the entire diagnosis and its variations. To do so would be far too verbose and extensive for regular discussion.
Isn't that basically how everyone behaves?
For example, I know many people who just don't show up for work. They just can't get up and do it and they get fired. That isn't typical for how "everyone behaves."
ADHD makes even things you love and are wildly interest in, hard to follow through on.
People with ADHD are notorious for starting projects and then leaving them, regardless of how fun or cool said project was.
Procrastinators don't start new projects consecutively. One is a delay tactic. The other is outright avoidance.
The concept of hyperfocus in ADHD was introduced in certain literature to explain a reduced ability of certain ADHD patients to control their attention, such as having difficulty stopping playing a video game to do the dishes. However, that's ambiguously close to normal human behavior of preferring to do fun tasks more than un-fun tasks, so the distinction is best left to professionals.
Regardless, it wouldn't really apply to the OP's description anyway, as accomplishing necessary work tasks before deadlines when necessary isn't the same as someone drawn to fun activities like video games or TV.
As always, it's best to consult professionals. Internet medical advice, especially about ADHD, is increasingly wrong online. It's also worth noting that the concept of "hyperfocus" doesn't even appear in most accepted definitions of ADHD, and isn't considered in diagnostic tests. The idea of "hyperfocus" in ADHD is relatively limited to a few authors and one recent blurb in some European clinical definitions from 2019.
I was referring to official, medical definitions of ADHD and official diagnostic criteria.