adhd-for-adhders

[adhd-for-adhders]

Tips for Living With ADHD (From Someone Who Actually Has It)

There is a lot of advice floating around online for how to manage the symptoms of ADHD. 

Most of it is bad. 

A lot of the advice available for coping with ADHD has been written by people who don’t actually have it. Much of it is either aimed at parents raising ADHD children, or it simply amounts to “just try harder and figure out how to remember things better”. It’s hard for people who don’t have ADHD to understand that there’s more to it than “being easily distracted”, and the advice they give for managing the disorder is sometimes woefully out of touch. 

Luckily, I have ADHD, and I’ve had to deal with it all my life. ADHD has not prevented me from getting a master’s degree, writing a novel, keeping my apartment clean or advancing in my career, because I’ve figured out some coping strategies like:

Train yourself to do the “keys, phone, wallet” dance. Misplacing things sucks, and it happens a lot with ADHD. To keep at least the important things from going missing, I have taught myself to physically tap my keys, wallet and phone before I leave any location. Getting into this habit took a few weeks, but now it’s muscle memory - and it’s saved me a lot of headaches over the years. 

Start a Bullet Journal or find a good day planner. My bullet journal is my life. For those of you who aren’t familiar with them, bullet journals are basically grid notebooks written with a special system that lets you quickly keep track of and organize all the things you need to remember. Their customizability lets you organize things in a way that makes sense to your brain (and there’s no need to make them as fancy as the ones on Instagram). Plus, the fact that it’s not an app or online tool helps me avoid distraction.

Do a daily 15-minute sweep of your apartment. Household chores can quickly get away from you, until your apartment is so overwhelmingly gross that you don’t even know where to start. Keep things to a dull roar with a fifteen-minute daily sweep - bag up garbage, move the dishes to the kitchen, throw laundry into a hamper, wipe up obvious spills. When your space is less overwhelming, it’s easier to tackle bigger chores when you need to. 

Set reminders to reply to emails and messages. If I don’t answer a message immediately, under normal circumstances, there’s a 50/50 chance I’ll never remember to answer it. If I know I need to reply to a message, I’ll set a quick reminder in my phone to respond - Siri can set reminders for me instantly, and it helps a lot with communication. 

Prioritize tasks and do the most important ones first. My brain has a limited ability to concentrate on tasks that I’m not hyper-fixated on. Attention is a finite resource for me - once I start to get tired or burnt out, the odds of me completing a task I’m not interested in drops to almost nothing. Order your tasks by importance, not difficulty; sometimes I’m only able to do 1-2 very simple things in a day, and it’s important to make sure those are the things that most needed to get done. 

Use the Pomodoro method for getting things done. I need pressure and deadlines to get things done, which is sort of difficult to replicate after college - the only person who cares if I work on my art or write a novel is me. So I use the Pomodoro method - this is basically where you set a timer for 25 minutes, work until it goes off, set a time for 5 minutes, relax until it goes off, and so on. There are even apps like “Focus To-Do” that automatically use Pomodoro timers and can even track how many you do on each task per day. 

Put reminders of daily tasks in places where you can see them. I have several houseplants, and the only reason those houseplants are alive is because they have brightly-coloured sticky notes on them that say WATER ME EVERY FRIDAY. Putting up visual reminders might seem tacky or childish, but if that’s what works for you, then that’s what you need to do. Putting a chore chart for yourself on the fridge is way less embarrassing than getting a pest problem because you lost track of chores. 

Tackle chores and cleaning in stages. Deep-cleaning my whole apartment in one day is simply not going to happen. It’s just not. So when it’s time to deep-clean, I spread it out in stages - one day is the day to tackle the fridge, the next day is the bathrooms, the day after that is closet organization, etc. Breaking things into manageable chunks is how I’ve tackled everything from my graduate thesis to moving - I accept that I need to spread big tasks out across more days than other people do, and adapt accordingly. 

Audiobooks and podcasts are your friend. If I’m doing a task that doesn’t require a lot of concentration - like mopping, or dishes, or walking the dog - my mind wanders… and it often wanders to another task I could be doing, causing me to abandon what I’m working on. I’ve found that the best way to prevent that is to keep my mind occupied. Throwing on some headphones and listening to an audiobook (which I rent from the Libby app for free!) has been a win-win situation for me; it helps me stay on-task, and it helps me reach my reading goal every year. 

ADHD can make it difficult to thrive in a world that wasn’t built for our brains. But when you find the right strategies, it’s possible to accomplish your dreams and navigate the world in your own way. 

[adhd-for-adhders]

EMAILS TO MAKE YOUR LIFE EASIER

Hello friends and enemies,

I have decided to do a masters degree for some fucking reason. Due to these godforsaken circumstances, I am going to be a student again.

Now, based on my experience being an undergrad with my Brain and Misc Issues, I knew that my hubris in pursuing YET MORE EDUCATION would result in having to write a lot of stressful emails, while dealing with a stressful situation.

So, to help myself cope in advance, I’ve decided to write drafts of these emails in advance, so that it’s less agonisingly painful to deal with this shit when it comes up.

And you can use them too!

under the cut, I have some draft emails for when you need to tell your lecturers:

I’m going to miss a lecture.

I have missed a lecture

I will be turning in an assignment late

I have missed a deadline

I have had a personal crisis which impacts my studies.

SEND AT START OF SEMESTER: explaining that you fidget/stim without using the word stim.

Keep reading

[adhd-for-adhders]

Hi y’all!

This isn't a new informational post, and I’m sorry about that, it’s been way too long since I’ve written one.

But I’m writing a speech to actually perform in tournaments and stuff, and a big part of it is debunking those dumb ADHD stereotypes, stigmas, myths, and misconceptions, but I know I don’t know all of them and it would help a lot if y'all could please send in the ones you’ve heard/experienced! It can be an ask, dm, or just reblogging or commenting on this post but it’d be really helpful!

Thanks everyone!

[adhd-for-adhders]

I can drink 3 cups of coffee and go straight to sleep, this is just one example of what is fundamentaly wrong with me as a person

[adhd-for-adhders]

Do you know if everyone with adhd experiences hyperfixation? Im pretty sure I have it but I’m unsure if I’ve ever hyperfixated tho it’s possible I did and didn’t realise it

You know what? I never considered that not all ADHDers experience hyperfocus.

So I did some research.

 I’ll put the sciencey, fully-explained answer below the cut for those who just want the tl;dr.

Hyperfixation isn't an “official” symptom of ADHD, but our brains are more likely to hyperfocus and do it more often than non-ADHD brains. This is because our brains are low on dopamine and need more stimulation, and activities that cause us to hyperfixate increase our dopamine, give us the right amount of stimulation, and are “more gratifying” to our brains than it would be to a non-ADHD brain doing a task that gives them dopamine.

The way I differentiate a hyperfixation from an activity that I just enjoy is by crossing off this checklist of sorts:

Will I do this activity for long periods of time?

Basically what I mean is that I usually can't do an activity for more than a few hours at most before I start to get fidgety or bored of it and switch to a new activity. But with a hyperfixation, I often won’t stop doing the activity until I have to, like if I have to go to class or my mom is telling me to do something.

Am I doing things I usually find boring because of this activity?

For example, I’ve ended up reading entire (long) wikipedia pages on hyperfixations of mine, even though I usually can’t stand doing that.

Am I doing this activity almost obsessively?

And what I mean by this is that I always want to do the activity and I’m doing it almost all the time. For me personally, I used to be hyperfixated on writing, so I’d wake up early so I could do it before school, I’d want to do it during school, and I’d do it almost immediately after I got home.

Am I ignoring other things I should do or I have to do for this activity?

This one’s pretty simple: hyper fixations often cause me to ignore things I have to do like classwork, eating, and even sleeping.

If the activity you’re doing checks off at least one of these bulletpoints, it’s probably a hyperfixation and not just something you enjoy.

Links

Hyperfixation vs addiction and dependence

Hyperfocus explained

Scientific study on what causes ADHD

Why ADHD brains need more stimulation

Article from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) about everything ADHD

ADDitude Magazine homepage (they’re a really great resource for everything ADHD without being headache-inducingly scientific like NCBI I definitely recommend scrolling through their website)

And now for the answer with all the science behind it! 

There’s not a lot of information out there about ADHD and hyperfocus. According to WebMD, hyperfocus isn’t an “official” symptom of ADHD. However, a study (it was never sourced or linked) that recorded the brain activity of a group of people that were intensely focusing “found differences that could mean” that ADHDers are more prone to hyperfixating.

In addition, a study done in 2000 by a group of people from the Department of Medical Genetics in the City of Hope Medical Center proposed that ADHD is polygenically inherited - meaning that two or more genes cause ADHD. The specific genes that cause ADHD then influence the levels of dopamine, norepinephrine, and other neurotransmitters (which act as messengers in the brain) and cause the levels of those hormones to be lower.

Dopamine plays a role how motivated you are to do a task. If a task doesn’t release as much dopamine, your brain will be less willing to do it, and if a task releases more, your brain will be more willing to do it. So, since ADHD brains have overall lower levels of dopamine (which causes executive dysfunction), our brains are less motivated to complete a task unless it gives us more dopamine, which stimulates our brain in the way that non-ADHD brains are usually.

When people in general do activities they enjoy, their brains get little bursts of dopamine. So when we ADHDers do an activity that we really enjoy (one that gives a larger dopamine burst than other activities we enjoy), we’re much more motivated to do that activity specifically, as it stimulates our brain just the right way that allows us to do it for longer periods of time than other activities. Or as ADDitude Magazine put it, “dopamine-increasing behaviors are even more gratifying to ADHD brains.”

Non-ADHD brains get that stimulation from the more “mundane” activities because their brains have higher levels of dopamine, so those activities stimulate their brain enough to keep them engaged.

[adhd-for-adhders]

Tips for Working with ADHD During Online School (or Work)!

This is really late and I don’t really know why I didn't do this earlier, but here we are! I thought I’d publish a list of tips and tricks that have helped me while doing school online - mostly long homework sessions - (and might help with online working). Even though it is the summer, some people are still working or doing summer school, so I hope this helps someone who needs it!

Get everything you’ll need or even the stuff you might need. It saves you from having to get up if you’re on a roll and breaking your streak (or maybe you find you can’t get up to get it bc ~executive dysfunction~)

If you find you don’t have something you need and it’s not pressing, wait until a pause or you’re getting up anyways, ie you’re getting up to fill your water bottle and you’re gonna need your phone charger. Take that time to go to the bathroom, get a snack, etc. I find this the best way to get around executive dysfunction because I didn’t want to get up for that one small thing earlier, but now I’m up for something else and I can kinda justify my other tasks, in a way? It’s like, I get up, and I'm like “well I'm already getting water, might as well just grab a snack and my phone charger too”

I’m terrible at prioritizing, so I try to prioritize the most obvious assignments first. You have one assignment due at 3 and another at 6? Do the 3 pm deadline first. You have a certain class that you have more missing assignments in than another? Do that homework first. If you can’t prioritize, try to think of the most logical order.

I usually do all my assignments for one class in a block because I get on a roll. Like, my brain is thinking in chemistry or whatever, so I knock out all my chem assignments at one time (this has to do with ADHD brains not being very good at jumping from task to task).

I started planning heavy hw days on google calendar. For example, I just list all the assignments I have to do and what time to do them and calendar will give me a little notification 10 and 5 minutes before a new task starts (this also helps me keep track of how time is passing because adhd brains aren’t too great at that either). Tip: give yourself much more time than you think you need—I usually give an hour unless it’s a super short assignment. Even if you’re 100% sure that you’ll finish it in under an hour, give yourself an hour and you feel a sense of accomplishment (and get a lil dopamine boost—we tend to be short on that too) because you finished something earlier than expected and you get ahead of schedule (which, if you finish before you plan on, will also give you a dopamine boost at the end).

Keep a bottle of water near you and a snack or two if you want. I need my meds to stay focused on my assignments for longer than an hour or so and it drastically improves my executive function (this is specifically for me, I don't know how meds work for everyone else). But the side effects of all three different types of meds I’ve taken have all come up/been worse when I don’t drink enough water. Also it’s just good for you. My meds kill my appetite, so I don’t need snacks, but if you get hungry, go for it.

Most of the time, I like having someone or a list giving me explicit instructions, kind of like a checklist I can check off. So even if you don’t use a calendar, I suggest putting your assignments in a numbered or bulleted list and then you can just check them off as you move down the list. It also tells me what to do next, because I’ll just do whatever I feel like doing most of the time and a list gives me direction. (Also, having one central list helps me keep everything in one place so I don’t have to go hunting through each of my class schedules for all my class assignments)

I have a little calendar chart for the week I created on google docs and there I list what assignments are due on which days of the week that I fill out on Monday. Once I fill it out, I spread out the assignments over the week (because a good 75% of them are due on Friday) so I have around 4 assignments due each day (which generally takes me from 9 or 10 to anywhere from 3 to 5. Even then I’ll usually not have enough work to spread over 5 days (because most of my teachers aren’t pure evil) so I’ll sprinkle in some of my many missing assignments in there on the lighter days. Also, it prevents me from only doing one or two assignments for a few days and then realizing that to not have any late work, I’ll have to complete 5 in one day (that’s happened before. It was extremely stressful and I didn't finish all my assignments. 0/10 do not recommend).

Take plenty of little breaks. We’ll get mentally tired from hours straight of just doing schoolwork (I’m not 100% sure if this is an adhd thing so don’t quote me on it but I’m pretty sure) so take a 15-30 minute break every few hours or assignments, maybe 20 minutes every 1.5 hours or after you finish two assignments or whatever works for you. Read a few chapters of your book, watch an episode of your favorite show, or make some food and scroll mindlessly through tumblr, whatever makes you happy. Just plan them ahead so you don’t get sucked in to doing 3, 4, 5 hours of work nonstop by setting an alarm for a specific time or putting it on your calendar.

Have a special place to do your work. I can't speak for everyone, but a lot of my motivation comes from habits, so I’ll do work (and only work) at my desk and not in my chair or bed or whatever (even though it’s way more comfortable) so when I sit down my brains like “ok it’s time to work I gotchu”

Not necessarily for working, but for zoom calls: get your favorite stim to use during those. A lot of teachers will ramble on and on and I’ve gotten so fidgety during these calls its really noticeable (aka, you can literally see me trying to crack my neck/back/fingers every five seconds) so I’ve taken to having some scissors and one of my many balls of yarn on my desk so I can start braiding or fingerknitting some yarn while my teachers ramble.

Sidenote: fingerknitting is a really great stim (for me, at least) because it requires basic, repetitive motions that don’t require me to look at my fingers. I once read like 14 (?) scenes of Shakespeare almost all in a row and I swear, I was only able to do that because of the fingerknitting. It’s super simple and you could probably find dozens of short tutorials on youtube.

I'm pretty sure this is only a mac thing, but on my computer, I have it set to announce the time on the hour, every hour and I find it helps with my complete time blindness and helps me not get sucked into doing a 1 hour project for 2 hours. Also if i'm working on a project that’s taking longer than expected and I have a zoom call at, say, 11, then the computer will break me out of my homework trance and I’ll realize what time it is (if that makes sense) and it’s prevented me from being late to a zoom many times. To get your macbook to do this, you go to the desktop —> settings —> date and time —> and then click “announce the time”, and you can choose whether you want it to announce it every hour, half an hour, or fifteen minutes.

Feel free to add your own! Happy studying/working!

[adhd-for-adhders]

Stay safe everyone!!

https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/05/26/4chan-alt-right-operation-pridefall-pride-month-cyber-attack-starbucks-amazon-homophobia/

Brace yourselves, everybody: The fascists of 4chan are planning an anti-LGBT social media blitz starting June 1 for Pride Month

Expect to see a lot of alt-right bots and sockpuppets doing everything possible to increase tension, division, and bad feelings in the LGBTQ+ community.

Basic guidelines:

Focus on your own goals and experiences for Pride Month—instead of just responding to the latest outrage, focus on connecting to people you care about, doing things you enjoy, promoting good causes, sharing media you like, or fundraising for organizations doing good work.

If you see someone promoting hateful or divisive opinions, don’t engage with them and boost their metrics—block and report them

Remember that a lot of troll operations aim to make us feel hopeless and divided. Trolls take our community’s existing vulnerabilities and divisions, and weaponize them. These trolls will be leaning hard on filling social media with new stories about homophobic and transphobic violence and suicide statistics, so we’re upset, in a defensive mentality, and feeling isolated and alone. We have to work together to promote solidarity and positivity.

Double-check news stories before spreading them. Be extra suspicious before you signalboost something. Screencaps can be fabricated; so can videos and images. Google for other sources, check reputable news sites, or look it up on Snopes

Don’t assume people are who they say they are. Trolls will especially assume identities they can use to promote division. They’ll pose as LGBT people so they can inflame infighting or attack LGBT people with fewer consequences, or to frame different groups for misdeeds.

Take care of yourself and don’t let them get you down. Pride 2020 has a huge damper because we can’t do a lot of the things that help us renew and recharge. Being in quarantine means we miss out on festivals, dancing, parades, performances, workshops, and important community-building events. We were already going to have to work to make it a decent Pride at a distance. 4chan wants to make things even worse, so that so we end up feeling paranoid, hypervigilant, abandoned, and at each other’s throats. Do your best to promote your own mental health and everybody else’s, and unplug from social media when you need to.

[adhd-for-adhders]

Hi guys! As some of you might know, Trump recently cut US funding to the World Health Organization, which is the part of the UN that helps with pandemic stuff like our current coronavirus pandemic. It’s one of the many things he’s done that I could argue for hours about, but I’m not gonna do that here. Anyways, the US makes up over 20% of WHO’s funding, and cutting it now, during a pandemic, is terrible for the organization and the countries that rely heavily on their support. Right now, they are helping to provide masks and PPEs to more developing countries that need them like countries in Africa, India, and others.

I was not going to take Trump’s crap this time, as it could immediately endanger people, especially in countries I care about, so I did some research and learned that you can, in fact, donate to WHO. So, I started a fundraiser so we could try to make up the difference that Trump is denying WHO, and I wanted to share this with y'all so it can get out there in the world, yknow?

https://fundraise.unfoundation.org/fundraiser/2760337

Here is the link, and please donate if you can! The fundraiser is set up on the special website dedicated to donating to WHO, so all of your donations will go to them. If you can’t donate, please reblog! 

[adhd-for-adhders]

Okay this might sound weird but here goes

My mom and I were having a debate (read: argument) for whatever reason because I said that sugar makes me tired because ADHD and she was like “but can you prove that?? Where’s the research??” and I was like “I’m pretty sure how my body reacts to sugar” but she wouldn’t listen so anyways

Please reblog this if you have ADHD and you get tired/feel mellower when you eat certain amounts of sugar and/or drink certain amounts of caffeine I need to prove my mother wrong

[adhd-for-adhders]

If you don’t know her, HowToADHD is the handle of an amazing youtuber that makes videos on strategies to deal with ADHD. There’s a lot of those out there, I know, like ADDitude Magazine, Understood.org, etc. (They’re pretty cool, go check them out). In fact, I can find so much research on ADHD, so many people telling me what it is, what I can do, how I feel; but not a lot of it is by actual people with ADHD aimed at people with ADHD. I know, there are people out there, but not that I see wildly. However, HowToADHD--her name’s actually Jessica, lol--makes (very entertaining) videos on why we do what we do, feel how we feel while giving us strategies--and she herself has ADHD. She’s essentially what this blog is, except on youtube, because I can write, but sure as hell don't know how to make a youtube video--yes, she's also the one that inspired this blog.

As I was scrolling through youtube like two weeks ago, I found this video of hers and I saved it to my “to-watch” list (it’s like 150+ videos long because I never remove videos), because I didn’t want to/couldn’t watch it at the time. Now today, I think I reached that point where I was like “okay, it’s ~breakdown time~”, as I do when I have waaaay too much work (and honestly, I’m surprised it didn't happen earlier). AKA: so much stress, me being overwhelmed as hell, and, of course, starting crying randomly (~emotions~). I literally almost started to break down in the middle of a zoom call, and thankfully my video and audio was turned off.

After that, I finally got around to watching that video because I really needed some help. And not the general “just sit down and do it” or “leave your phone in the other room, iT dIsTrAcTs yOU”--I needed some ADHD advice. So I end my zoom call, start the video, and I’m shook. Like, a lot of the advice sounds really obvious to me, but I didn't think of it until she brought it up. It felt like all the weight of the stress and how overwhelmed I felt just was lifted. I know how corny or cliche or what have you that sounds, but it actually did (it probably shows how deep of a sh*thole I was in). Like, I just watched a video, but I felt way better than I had in awhile. So, y'all get a long, over-sharing rant because this video needed to be on this blog because the video basically gives you strategies for what my last post was about, and I couldn't not explain how amazing this video (and the youtuber) is.

And before you even think it, no, this isn't a paid promotion or whatever. She's just really awesome and I’m not cool enough to be promoting anyone (or to be paid).

TL; DR: This is an amazing video by an amazing person, go watch it, it helped me when I was at my breaking point with online learning (AKA today).

[adhd-for-adhders]

Online Learning

Hey all you ADHD and neurodivergent peeps out there! Just a friendly reminder—don’t be afraid to ask teachers for extra help/instruction while doing online learning, even if you don’t have an IEP or a 504 plan! They’ll likely (hopefully) be understanding and I know a little help can go a long way, and the way they’e giving information and work may not be the best for the way your brain works! If you need some help/guidance on how to ask for that kind of thing (because anxiety and/or RSD) I can give you the text I copy/paste into all the emails I send to my teachers because I always get nervous that I’m being rude or I’ll offend them somehow (love that RSD, am I right?) and I eventually just created a template of sorts. Just dm me or tell me in a reblog!

Also, super important: turning in something incomplete is much better than turning nothing at all!!! Those lecture notes that you were supposed to do but couldn’t finish? Turn the work you could finish in—you’ll still get some credit. You might get an incomplete grade for it, but 70 or even 50 percent is so much better than a flat zero. If you find you are able to finish the rest of it later, attach it to however you turn in assignments later and write the the teacher that you turned the rest in. They probably won’t give you full credit, but it shows them that you did do the rest of the work, and they may grade you a little easier for that (I got this advice all the time from doctors and school counselors all them time when I was going into high school and told them I have trouble with homework). Also, a lot of schools are going to credit/no credit grading, so those partial grades? They’re going to be the difference between getting credit and getting no credit and having to retake the class (I’ve seen this is my own grades).

These both apply for non-online learning too, by the way!

I hope you guys are doing well, social distancing, and are surviving during the time of online learning! (I’m sure struggling with that). If you ever need some advice, encouragement, or just need to vent, don’t be afraid to dm me!

Stay healthy!

Jamie

[adhd-for-adhders]

this is the offical ‘i care’ symbol this is how it works: basically you reblog this and your followers know that you care and that they can message you about anything anon or not and you will reply back or at least look at there message. if you care about your followers please reblog

[adhd-for-adhders]

ADHD!!!

Hi there! I guess this is going to be like an intro thing so here it is:

I made this blog (actually like weeks before this post but ADHD amirite) because I noticed there’s a lot of ADHD info out there, but it’s mostly geared towards neurotypical adults who have kids/know someone with ADHD and I was like “what about those kids who wanna know about themselves or are currently hyperfixating in ADHD??” (I think I might just be genuinely fascinated) and of course the answer was to make a tumblr blog for kids with ADHD/adults who don’t want to sift through long boring medical journals that gave a bunch of information about everything from good stims to medication info to hyperfixations explained by someone with ADHD.

There are plenty of great ADHD blogs out there, like @thatadhdmood (who I follow) who gives some good advice/tips or just gets questions out there using their follower base—which is really cool and helpful—and @adhd-alien who makes super cool info comics—go check her out—but I don’t think there are any (I haven’t found any at least) blogs that are mostly informational/advisory so I made this one! Hope you learn something or whatever you came here for!