If you haven’t heard this cliche while discussing your neurodivergency with someone, then I envy your luck. Yesterday I fucked up, I feel shitty, but also I am pissed.
Our brains are impulsive af and tend to forget the most important information. We mess up, our RSD (and empathy) kicks in, we feel terrible, we vow to be more careful, but guess what? Thats fucking exhausting.
As a result, we start overthinking our every waking moment, stressing over every little thing. Because, we are trying to be aware of the things we cannot perceive.
At some point, hopefully we realize that we cannot live like that, and we start to arbitrarily ignore our compulsion to overthink. Most often that works out great because most often the threat is not real, but sometimes we make the wrong call.
The times we overthink are still more than the times we do not, and we still mess up. Let us have our fucking peace.
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I’m in my mid 30s, and I have been dealing with ADHD my whole life. I have some important, but hard advice. If you aren’t up for that, just don’t read the rest of my comment.
I get the frustration of having people not struggling telling you to just struggle harder, and people you would expect sympathy from (friends, family) not supporting or sympathizing with you.
That said, and this is a bitter pill to swallow, the world at large does not care about your personal conditions. Whether you are a reliable friend, teammate, worker, spouse, etc matters far more than your ever present inner turmoil.
Work with medical professionals to get your symptoms under control so you don’t beat yourself up at every turn for fucking up in ways that you are predisposed to. Learn to work with and around your own shortcomings and limitations instead of beating your head against the same damn wall every time. Build proper internal responses and coping skills to these events.
You clearly are aware of some of your own behavioral and thinking patterns that are not good or helpful, like overanalyzation after a fuck up. You already have your targets for things about yourself to work on.
This is not a nice thing to hear or to have to do, but it is essential if you want to survive as a grown ass adult in this world. You don’t need to be perfect, but you will need to keep trying to do better, forever.
You can blame the condition that you are just going to have to live the rest of your life with, or you can take ownership that you fucked up again and work to not do it going forward. The fact that you are already beating yourself up about your mistake does not invalidate the right of other people to be frustrated at what happened.
No one has the right to make their internal turmoil everyone else’s problem, even if it may be particularly burdensome. The world should be far more sympathetic and empathetic, but at some point you have to take responsibility for you. That means more than “I feel so bad”, it also means “What can I do to prevent repeats, that I can actually follow through on rather than just have as magical thinking?”
Don’t make plans dependent on getting your shit together. Make plans that will still work even if you keep fucking up in the same ways you did before.
It all gets easier with time, as long as you keep trying.
I mostly agree, but (what else ^^):
No one has the right to make their internal turmoil everyone else’s problem, even if it may be particularly burdensome. The world should be far more sympathetic and empathetic, but at some point you have to take responsibility for you.
IMO you do take responsibility when you tell others about your boundaries and how they can work around them. If they don’t want to because it also costs them a little bit of energy and disrupts their typical workflows they have (again: IMO) no right to blame it all on you. If I tell them “I can’t do X” or something and they again and again expect me to do X, it’s also on them.
Simple example: I tell colleagues, family, whatever to please remind me again if they feel I missed something they expected of me. If they do, all is good. If they later are pissed that I missed something and immediately blame me … sorry my friend, I warned you. (If I had the ability to set a reminder, sure that’s on me for not doing that. But it doesn’t always work that way.)
There are times in our lives when people will need to rely on us. Whether or not you tell them that you are unreliable, or ask that they remind you; it is reasonable for them to be upset if you wind up letting them down. You are not immune from blame. It doesn’t suddenly become their fault for relying on you when you mess up. It is still you who messed up.
If you tell them you can’t do what they rely on you to do, then no, you haven’t fucked up, they have fucked up. They should not have relied on you. When you promise someone to do something and you don’t, yeah, then you fucked up, but if you don’t do that, then it’s 100% their fault.
This is so situational. Obviously if someone asks you for something and you say no upfront, then ya I agree with you. Sometimes we don’t have a choice who we rely on though.
Children are an easy example. Your children rely on you for everything and there’s no one else they can rely on. Sick parents? Siblings that don’t have spouses? You can’t just shed yourself of all responsibilities or obligations in this life, even when they’re hard or near impossible for you to do. That’s just reality.
You can’t shed all responsibilities or obligations, but most of them you can. In the end, it only depends on what your goals are. Do you want healthy, happy children? Then you’ll probably have to do something for that. If not though? Then you don’t. You can get by with a lot of “what if I just don’t?”
Lol sure, you could neglect your children, that’s always an option. Makes you a bad person though. Potentially a criminal too, depends on the exact nature of the neglect.
In the case of children i would say that having them in the first place(in majority of cases) is a promise that they can rely on you so it is kind of a bad example
i had this freind, very good friend that i kinda dropped because he wasnt such a good friend after all:
he didnt believe in adhd, altough he pretty much had adhd. he drank alcohol, i took ritalin. he said i should drink instead, since i was funnier when i did. but i stopped.
to make a long story short: he said adhd is made up, ritalin is no good, what i described as mind changing is just a drug effect, and by the way, can you please stop being so goddamn unreliable?
he didnt get it till the end. adhd was like “hey squirrel” and i wasnt like that. but i was unreliable … it is just like, my charakter. no specific reason.
he would always complain about this third friend, who also has some issues - he and the third friend would work together, and the third friend would frequently have anger fits, like, illogical ones. like, losing his pen while working, and then having hour long anger issues with everybbody, while hey tried to reason with him.
I tried to explain to him that it ist about the pen at all, but about the social situation and the stress involved, and that he shouldnt always put our mutual friend in these situations when he 100% fears that our friend will have a melt down.
afterwards, he would bitch about it, like talk bad about our mutual friend.
He full on knew that our mutual friend couldnt handle a stressfull work enviroment, and put him into it regardless.
well, 3 months ago i called it quits and put a stop to all of that. walked away frome a wohle friend group.
Boy, that reply really got away from you huh?
i dont quite grasp what you are implying, and which reply we are talking about. but no, i am always like this. my explanation but not excuse is that i am an autistic dude with adhd. i am always on a crusade, its quite the curse. very stressfull.
I feel ya man and to be honest I understand what you are getting at more than I understand what others are trying to say, so I just wanted to point that out.
If we let others know of our limitations and they expect us to magically overcome those limitations that’s on them.
Example: I forget things ALL the time. I can’t control what I forget. I try to ensure that I do things to help me remember. But I will forget things. If I’ve explained that to someone and they still get angry with me over forgetting something, that’s their problem. My forgetfulness is far more stressful to me than it is to them and I’m not taking on any extra guilt for their unreasonable expectations of me. I’ll apologize and move on.
Sometimes this is what it requires. There are good people out there, I hope you make contact with more of those instead :)
thanks. it was the first time i did that, ever. i saw that there is a power and freedom in thast decision. i said no multiple times, that was not accepted, and i walked away to show that i am not that kind of guy. it was hurtfull to learn that i was never taken serious in a “friend friend” capacity. it is true. for them, i am just a wierd sometimes obnoxious guy that talks a lot of crazy shit. i decided that i dont need to change their perception they have about me. i also realized that it is utterly pointless to discuss it with my former friend; he thinks he is morally right to abuse our friendship, he has always had very thought out buisness arguments when it came to take advantage of sourrounding people.
like, “if they dont know i overcharge them, its ok for me and them.”
keep in mind that we are talking about friends and favours.
well *uck it.
i can live without them.
yeah, but “I have ADHD, so I’ll never be on time” is a very shitty excuse. You waste other people’s time.
“I have ADHD, so I hate queuing, so I’m not going with you to that famous museum” is boundaries.
don’t confuse boundaries with expecting everyone around you to put up with your symptoms all the time.
There’s also a big difference between “I’ll never be on time” and “there will be times I’m late because I have adhd”. But seriously if someone can’t handle my adhd symptoms I don’t expect them to, but they should also not expect me to care that they can’t deal with them. Because I don’t.
This doesn’t seem reasonable… If you accept some responsibility, duty, job, whatever, it’s your responsibility to ensure that you take whatever steps are necessary for you to complete that task. It’s not everyone else’s job to babysit you and make sure you actually do the thing you agreed to do.
I probably just wouldn’t ask you for anything anymore after you burned me the first time and just go with someone else… You might think that’s unfair, but we’ve all got our own problems and my time is better spent going with a more reliable option.
This doesn’t seem reasonable… If you accept some responsibility
But … that was the point. “Telling them your boundaries” implies not accepting something you are not up to. My managers know that I am not a good manager myself. I have a lot of qualities, at being a driving force in a project is not among them. So they don’t utilize me for that. Which is good.
Yes, it would be on me if I constantly tell them “sure, just let me handle it” and then not handle it. But that would be the opposite of what I wrote above.
I don’t disagree with your quoted section. I was more referring to this:
Simple example: I tell colleagues, family, whatever to please remind me again if they feel I missed something they expected of me. If they do, all is good. If they later are pissed that I missed something and immediately blame me … sorry my friend, I warned you.
You can’t expect people to constantly remind you and check up on you. I would rather just do the thing myself at that point.
I think this may be a misunderstanding of what they are saying.
If you think I’ve forgotten a task you asked me to do, then I probably have. Say something. Don’t sit there stewing like I forgot it on purpose.
It’s not about them constantly checking up and reminding, it’s about reacting with anger to something we have no control over.
Yes and no; you left out part of my quote. Stuff that can be put in a reminder is up to me (especially if I tell them “I’ll handle it”). But if for whatever reason that’s not possible and I tell them “you might have to remind me again next week” and they are fine with that, then they shouldn’t be pissed if I indeed needed a reminder. That’s what I meant with “I warned them”.
Exactly. No idea why people have downvoted you.
Our happiness relies on being able to accept the limitations we have. If others can’t accept them that’s on them. And honestly it’s not that big a deal. I am successful and have been in the same profession for over 20 years. Everyone I work with knows about it and works with me. I also work around their limitations. That’s just part of being on a team.
You do you I guess.
Goddamn I needed to hear this
thats what i mean. this doesnt help. ritalin helps. because when i take ritalin, i can like understand what you are saying.
its not about KNOWING things, we all know what we shuould do.
Its about executing things.
ADHD is a reason not an excuse.
Not for this specific case but I’ve often said “It’s an explanation, not an excuse”
It can be our greatest weakness if we are not aware of it acting on us. Amd like all weakness it can become our strength when we work with it.
I am stealing that phrase, thanks 🙏
People mistaking reason for excuses is a deliberate act to dismiss our suffering. Deliberate.
The thing I learnt is only assholes expect you to remember 100% of thing 100% of the time.
If you get asked something you can always delay them by saying “I added that to our documentation, let me pull it up”
Now suddenly you go from someone others think as doesn’t know anything, to the person who actually updates documentation with evolving changes.
Perhaps you can take solace in knowing that when you hear the phrase “good in a crisis” you can bet your ass that they only got that way by constantly fucking things up and making it work at the last second.
Those “planners” and people who can “remember things that aren’t directly in front of their face” just freeze up like a deer in headlights when things go sideways.
Where do I learn the skill of remembering/noticing things that are directly in front of my face
If you can handle the things that aren’t, we should team up.
Most of my brains bandwidth is used up by remembering things like that my passport is in that canvas bag half under my bed and that my birth certificate is in a specific stack of paper at my mums house in my former room. So yes, let’s!
Perfect! I don’t know where ANY of that shit is! You’re hired!
There’s also a subset of us that were exposed to random, horrific child abuse and developed crisis management skills early out of necessity.
When one of my sites had 2 feet of flooding in the server room and everyone was freaking out, I stepped in, downed the racks, cut the power, and began moving the equipment before my phone even rang.
They praised me for this but in my heart I knew it was nothing compared to having your bedroom door kicked off the hinges by a drunk, angry man four times your size at 3am because you dared to go to bed without emptying the dishwasher.
If I can survive that, no other crisis compares.
I needed 3 years of ritalin therapy before realizing that all these self managment tips from people that dont have adhd CAN’T work. I saw that because 3 years of ritalin changed me like I never did before.
the problem is: people think I am diddling around because I do nothing. before, I would do a lot of things and always have breakdowns and stop doing them. I was depressed and worse all my life, well maybe not till age fourteen.
Now, I do nothing, i am am kinda happy and pleased with my self like I never was before.
people just dont get it.
i dig being happy. But they want me to be a busybody.
But I really dont know WHY I should be. I just wanna have peace.
I read a Simon Sinek book as part of a management book club and even hit bullshit misinformation on ADHD in there. It’s fucking pervasive and, as a millennial, I am now primarily just fighting against my own shitty internalization from years of passive aggressive bullshit.
I am a manager with ADHD who manages some people with ADHD and it’s hard for all of us - I try to give my reports space to fail and overcome ruts “If you find yourself in an unproductive mood don’t beat yourself up - if your performance is an issue I’ll let you know well before any administrative actions are taken” and it’s still an issue.
I am hoping it isn’t as deeply beaten into genz but school absolutely wailed on us for momentary distraction… I remember being in a parent teacher meeting (there were a lot of those) where my mom asked “And xmunk is doing well on tests and retaining the knowledge?” And the teacher replied “Well yes, but he’s rarely focused in class and is disruptive during our quiet study time.” … I seriously want to go back and slap that teacher ‘Study time doesn’t benefit me, and if I’m being disruptive to others just fucking send me out to run around in circles in the playground or some shit.’ But no… my grades suffered not because of academic failures but because I was partially graded on my ability to mask.
Be fucking kind to your brain - there is an expected level of performance for your job and as long as you’re above that you can give yourself a brain break and you should not feel guilty about it.
I never mention my ADHD to anyone but my therapist and friends I’ve known for several years. I don’t want people to change how they treat me, whether for better or worse, when they find out about it.
I find it helps navigate certain quirks and get the help I need to thrive. For example, after disclosing I have ADHD, people are much more open to move when I am affected by background noise.
I do the opposite and tell everyone. I am who I am and they can accept me or not, no skin off my back. But when I eventually forget something, I’d rather them already know it’s not personal or because I don’t care, in fact it’s not about them at all. It’s because my brain just sabatoges me sometimes.
I came here to say something but then I saw a shiny. The shiny has my attention now. The words above no longer have my interest.
What’s RSD?
rejection sensivity disorder, fear of being rejectected
fear is a light word to describe it tbh, i’d opt more for “irrational mental anguish over the slightest implication someone might think even slightly less of you, which is strong enough some can feel physical discomfort when it triggers, and leads directly to an impossible to fulfil instinct of constant people pleasing and having difficulty saying no to anything”
should have told me that when i was 25 :-) in my case, i realized that the queasy feeling and the unrelentless pressure i felt around people, was., in fact, fear. it began when people in my school started to form peer groups that hung around after school. yes, i had my cirlce of friends, but parties, social gatherings and stuff filled my with worry and anxiousness. i knew i didnt want to go, buit i didnt know why. at the same time, i wanted to go, because i had social needs, regardless. so i would drink. that helped a great deal. i was very social when being drunk.
well. when you have autism, you have problems identifying feelings.
the clown part about the whole thing is, i always thought that idea to be utterly ridicoulus. i perfectly knew what i was feeling at all times. i was angry or totally depressed or enthusiastic. thats about it. i had no middle feelings.
today i recognised that i have all sorts of feelings, but they are like behind a pane of milky glass, and i kinda have to guess what they are.
One of the worst things in my life is not knowing where my brain disorders end and where my personality begins. It feels like no matter what I do, I’m never good enough for myself.
Absolutely, I mean, we should still do our personal best when it comes to important tasks, but some days, our best feels like very little to nothing.
I already try to work with lists and break down tasks into smaller tasks, but that can lead to 30 items per week. If it’s going really great, I do 25. But among the 5 failed tasks could be something really important, like a last deadline for a bill before it goes to court, tax filing before thousands are lost, even watering a flower etc. To others, it may appear like I achieved nothing, but honestly I’m already happy it went that way and some stuff got done.
Honestly, I can’t bear to imagine the rest of my life dealing with this. Truly, I’ll never amount to more than scraping by in life, and it’s such a shitty bleak picture. But whatever, I’ve already mourned for the normal life I’ll never lead, and I’ll keep doing my best which isn’t good enough until everything falls apart completely, then I’ll kill myself. Happy Friday!
First and foremost, I don’t know your circumstances but I can relate and I’m sorry. Your worth isn’t measured by “productivity” or “what you amount to”, you matter. Work Culture and general North American society isn’t great for us with ADHD, all we can do is try our best. I swear to you that even when things look dark and there’s no way out, it does end. I’m going to put a ramble of my experience in a spoiler.
Long ramble of my experience
My ADHD got me into a pit of credit card debt, small compared to others at just under $19k CAD but I still had $20k+ in my student loan and I couldn’t see a way out, struggled hard, kept deferring payments and hitting overdraft, legit at my worst point I was $20 from bankruptcy, I probably could have got support from family and my at the time girlfriend (now partner) but I was too ashamed of it, I didn’t want to admit it to my partner (and she knew it, I don’t lie well, not that that’s a skill I really want to have). It put a lot of strain on my relationship, made me the most anxious I’ve ever been and very nearly ended my relationship, my life was on the verge of falling apart completely, I’d be lying if I didn’t have the exact same thoughts.
I was diagnosed 3 years ago at 31, I did what my dad (who’s likely got ADHD if not AuDHD, but won’t get evaluated) did and expended all my energy on work to the detriment of other parts of my life, I also struggled with binging (spending is obvious, but also alcohol and food) and emotional regulation.
My partner is the reason I got evaluated, she convinced me to get into therapy (I have a good therapist who has ADHD, didn’t know that when I found them). After diagnosis, it took me at least a year to begin accepting that I have ADHD (funny that putting a name to it changes things right), that it effects everything I do and that I have, and will always have it. Hardest thing was realising just his much of my personality is influenced by it. Medication is helpful but it’s not perfect, but with therapy, it’s helped address some of the maladaptive coping mechanisms I developed.
If you have access to therapy and aren’t already, it helped me immensely. Depending where you live there may be resources you can access through your health authority. We’re here if you want, even just venting can be helpful.
Go get professional help. This is incredibly disordered thinking.
Not a healthy outlook.
In therapy and on meds, which is why I’m still limping along instead of giving up 👍
Intellectually I don’t think there’s much point to continuing existence, but working on that in therapy and thanks to medication I’m emotionally disconnected from the depressive Bad Thoughts ™️, so I’m still just going until I can’t. The depression can get better but the ADHD can’t really.
So, I might not really want to exist, but I feel apathetic about it generally! 🎉
The good thing is that what is considered “being successful” is completely arbitrary and in the grand scheme of things completely irrelevant. You don’t need to “be successful” to lead a happy life. This “scraping by” you say is a pretty bleak picture is just so because you think it is, you can be absolutely happy living like that. I hope you’ll be able to be happy eventually <3
From a critter in a similar spot (as opposed to some arrogant, condescending prick, which is apparently the norm in this thread), good luck having life! If you figure out a neat secret trick that makes it good, lemme know :P
Won’t blame you if you don’t, though. Some of us just can’t, and no amount of “just get over it” is ever gonna “fix” us so we act like others want us to regardless of what that does to us.
That’s exhausting? All I hear is fucking excuses. /s
That’s why at some point you lose the ability to feel terrible. Name more iconic duo
As someone who was long term emotionally abused by someone “because of their adhd” and then later diagnosed with adhd myself, I think a lot of the confusion and messiness around this topic comes from genuinely bad-intentioned (or very young/ immature) people misusing medical language to stymie fair communication in relationships. Many people need accomodations, different communication styles, certain boundaries or conditions to function but they know how to meet their own needs without hurting people and apologize when they need to apologize. But, assholes who want to blame or harm or use others have adopted the exact same terminology as the nice people who just are trying to get their needs met in good faith. I think this is where a lot of the frustration about neurodivergence as an “excuse” comes from. It can be hard to tell which sort of person you’re talking to and unfortunately citing adhd or another condition is sometimes used to shut down someone else’s legitimate hurt feelings about something disappointing or genuinely fucked up that occurred.
it also takes time and maturity and healthcare to figure out what you need for accommodations, how to manage one’s emotions, how to have healthy conflict, etc. No one is perfect or born knowing these things, and not everyone communicating badly or unfairly is doing it on purpose or old enough to know better. People DO need to get the help they need in order to stop, though. If you do have adhd, it can also be messy and hard to discern honest important feedback vs bad faith or unrealistic expectations from others. Recommend therapy for sorting through that.
Edit: just wanna be extra clear that i am NOT saying the above is what you were doing!! Just offering a possible explanation for why OTHER people may be acting and feeling the way they do, and what I think some people actually mean when they say this. Tldr it may not have to do with you at all, lots of jerks are muddying the waters.
