ace-in-a-box - Tumblr blog

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if you’re neurodivergent and only know how to motivate yourself through hyperfocus or blind panic clap your hands

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What people think executive dysfunction is: avoiding chores, school, and work

What executive dysfunction actually is: me staring at the ceiling for two hours trying to figure out why I can’t move to get dressed

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using a reward system to accomplish things with ADHD is just

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Guaranteed basic income to every citizen, whether or not they are employed to ensure their survival and that they live in a dignified, humane way, preventing poverty, illness, homelessness, reducing crime, encouraging higher education and learning vocations as well as helping society become more prosperous as a whole. 

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Tony listening to his child talk gibberish and drool all over his Armani suit: That is so fascinating. you’re incredible. Continue your story, I’m intrigued. I love you more than anything else in the universe. You are already the perfect human being. You literally do not need to learn or do anything else ever in your life. I would kill and die for you.

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me: *attempting to take a nap this very moment*

my brain: bro

me: stop

my brain: you know what’s COOL?

me: please let me sleep

my brain: you know what you’ve ALWAYS wanted to learn about??

me: i just want to sleep

my brain: LAWS AND TRADITIONS IN JAPAN THAT ARE DIFFERENT FROM AMERICA!! THATD BE SO COOL, RIGHT?? :D

me: ….

me:

me: you’re completely right let’s learn right this moment

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The more I deal with my ADHD, the more I realize how a lot of the big issues are related. 

Below I’ve listed three difficulties caused by ADHD (1, 2 and 3) and issues that are caused by the difficulties (a to h). 

These are quite simplified for the sake of explanation but the information is all correct.  

(I’ve also linked my coping tips for the issues making it a kind of an ADHD masterpost, I guess).

1) ADHDers aren’t deficit in attention, but rather have a hard time controlling the subject of our attention. I call the tendency to get distracted ‘distractable energy’.

2) ADHD makes it hard for us to do thing cause the brain doesn’t find it worth it.

3) ADHD makes it hard for us to understand and deal with our emotions and also makes us hypersensitive.

a) Distractability: Issues 1 and 2. Unless things are interesting, they lose our interest and our attention easily drifts away.

b) “Driven by a motor”: Issue 1. Everyone’s brains get random impulses to do things but our minds can’t shift attention away from it so we act on them.

c) Full of energy: Issues 1 and 2. See (b). We don’t actually have more energy, rather its the ‘distractable energy’. Doing things is just just less boring than not doing things.

d) Hyperfixations/ hyperfocus: Issue 1. We can’t shift our attention away from these things.

e) Inattention: Issue 1 and 2. We have hard time keeping our attention on things that our brain doesn’t find interesting.

f) Fidgeting: Issue 1. See ©. Doing something physical uses up the ‘distractable energy’ and allows us to work on what we want to do.

g) RSD: Issue 3. Our tendency to misunderstand emotions and hypersensitivity makes us feel rejected when not and feel it harder.

h) Sleep: Issue 1. Our mind is easily distracted cause of the distractable energy so has hard time switching off.

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Only an adhd brain will scream both “Too Much Input” and “Not Enough Input” at you at the same time.

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when ur adhd clashes with ur depression and you’re bored af and can’t focus on books, or tv, movies, or anything. but you can’t go outside or do literally anything whatsoever because your body won’t move because you’re so fatigued. and all you wanna do is cry bc ur locked in ur own body

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a lot of people think executive dysfunction just means procrastinating with homework or other school/work related things, so here is a list of simple things that are unnecessarily difficult/energy consuming for me bc of executive dysfunction:

brushing my teeth

putting something back in its drawer

actually untying my shoes to take them off/put them back on (I just stuff hold the back of my shoe so it doesn’t get crushed then shove my foot in)

recycling instead of tossing something in the trash

taking out the trash

standing up from my desk chair to do something else

stapling a paper

refilling my water bottle

ordering at a fast food restaurant

laundry in general

sharpening pencils instead of switching to a different one

getting up from bed to use the bathroom in the middle of the night

returning library books vs continually renewing them

logging into websites when my username or password aren’t saved

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Some things I’m learning on this personal ADHD-diagnosis journey:

Some doctors will dismiss you when you admit that, yes, you got straight As in school and were never a classroom disturbance. 

But that doesn’t erase the truth:

I got straight As because I liked school, liked learning, and wasn’t bored.

When I was bored in the classroom, I wrote novels instead of paying attention; that was quiet. I daydreamed all the time; so quiet. After being caught at this once or twice, my ADHD-sensitivity to criticism (rejection sensitivity dysphoria) clicked in and I realized if I answered a question at the beginning of class, the teacher would ignore me for the rest and never put me on the spot. I slipped headphones under my long hair and listened to CDs. Do you know how many times I listened to Tori Amos’s “Winter” on repeat in math class? How many times I invented “Student Council business” to get out of a class that was boring me to rage or tears? Do they care that, even though you got straight As, you missed more than a month of school days in your senior year because you just couldn’t deal with it anymore?

(Absences, I learned, mean nothing if you have straight As. Lies about how you spend your time mean nothing. Listening to the same song over and over and over to drown out the boredom means nothing.)

They don’t ask if all those papers and assignments that got those good grades were completed in a panic the night before after breaking down crying because how could I be so stupid, I knew this was going to happen, why can’t I stop procrastinating, why can’t I just have more willpower, why I am I such a failure? They don’t ask if you can’t finish work without a deadline, and that if the deadline is too vague or far away it means nothing except that you have longer to procrastinate until you panic. They don’t ask how many times you’ve started something and been unable to finish even though you want to, you really really want to. But you can’t. You know it doesn’t make sense. Knowing changes nothing.

Did you get bad grades? Were you a classroom disturbance? What were your report cards like?

They don’t ask if you’re living up to your potential. They don’t ask if knowing you’re not living up to your potential is the slow poison that taints every other aspect of your life.

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Some doctors will say, “ADHD involves impulsivity. Were you promiscuous, did you have problems with drugs or alcohol?” And you will say, “No.” They will dismiss you.

They will not ask if you have a history of overspending, of impulse buying even when your brain says, “Sweetheart, you know you can’t afford that.” They won’t ask if you’re able to be patient when you want attention or feedback or praise. They won’t ask if you’ve pretended that some new piece of clothing was older, or bought second-hand. They won’t ask how much of those university loans you spent not on tuition, but on feeding the pleasure center of your brain that just wants more. More pretty dresses, more video games, more chocolate.

They will not ask how much time you spend on the internet, refreshing pages because you just can’t focus on anything else, and refreshing pages is easy, and might mean a little dopamine hit. They will not ask about the intensity of your interests. When you say the word “hyperfixation” they look uncomfortable, like you know a word you’re not supposed to know. Like they might have to take you seriously.

They’ll still dismiss you, though. You got good grades, you’re put together, you’re not fidgeting.

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Some doctors will interrupt you when you’re trying to explain something, and yes, your explanation involves 23 diversions because you’re trying to really explain it. Really explain it so they understand. They will hold up a hand. They will snap, “Stop talking,” and your rejection-sensitive dysphoria will cripple you. You will want to vomit. You will start to cry and pretend you’re not crying. They will say, “I think you have anxiety, take these drugs. They will say, you are depressed, take these ones.” They will not listen when you say, “But the anxiety and depression have a common root; why won’t you listen to me?” They will not listen when you say, “Why are you treating the symptoms but not the underlying cause?”

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Some doctors will treat you like you’re a drug-seeker, especially if you come in with too much knowledge (because you like learning, because you’ve always liked learning, because maybe you can’t control much of anything but you can read, read, read and cling to that knowledge like a lifeline; you can always be clever. You can always be smart. Less rejection that way.). They may narrow their eyes like you want medication for a nefarious purpose when all you really want is to be able to turn the key in the ignition and start the car. The car is good; there’s nothing mechanically wrong. The tank is full. But without a key, you cannot turn the damn thing on. And because your brain is not always your ally in these things, it whispers, “You’re imagining this. You have the key. It’s in your pocket. Just take it out.” But you don’t have a pocket. You don’t have a key. Telling yourself you do, you just need to find it, just need to manufacture it out of thin air does not make it true.

I’ve learned that to get help, the right kind of help, you sometimes have to turn yourself inside out. You have to somehow accomplish the things your condition makes most difficult: you must accept rejection, you must persevere beyond what you think possible, you must stand up for yourself over and over and get used to disagreeing with people trying to dismiss you, you must not let yourself be silenced.

I have a doctor who is listening to me now. It’s slow-going. It’s frustrating. It’s hard. The last year–more–of trying to make myself understood has been exhausting. But then, hasn’t my whole life been exhausting? Of course it has. I got good grades, I wasn’t a classroom disturbance. No one knew I was suffering. I slipped through the cracks.

The car’s been sitting idle a long time. I’ve probably done some damage to the clutch. But maybe I have a key. Maybe the car will shudder to life when I turn it.

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because we don’t grow up and turn into adhd/autistic adults, right?

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undefined

adhd as vines/tiktoks + those with adhd energies #1

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a lot of children - especially mentally ill children - end up traumatized not because someone was specifically hurting them but because their needs weren’t being met, or because their problems weren’t being seen, or because they were rendered particularly vulnerable by other aspects of their identity, like queerness or race. 

and it can be hard to look at your childhood and go “I was hurt” and also know that the hurt wasn’t deliberate. it’s uniquely painful to not have someone to blame. 

you do not have to excuse the people who hurt you, even if it was unintentional. & acknowledging your own pain does not necessarily entail blaming them for it.

you are allowed to do what you need to do in order to recover. 

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was trying to sleep but then my third eye snapped open involuntarily so I had to make this