adhd-gotmelike

[adhd-gotmelike]

Just so you younger ADHD people know this, it's pretty accepted that the hormone shifts associated with menopause exacerbate ADHD. Looks like a lot of uterus-havers realize or get diagnosed then, because the coping skills they'd developed stop being enough. My memory is much worse than it used to be, and it's really upsetting, but we're all working to help me find coping skills. It'd be nice if we lived in a society where this didn't blindside quite so many people.

On the other hand, when I'm reasonably content I now vocal stim way more, which is silly and wouldn't fly in some households, but I think it's kinda fun.

[adhd-gotmelike]

Hack for if you're struggling with ADHD paralysis and you can't get started on a task:

Step 1: Add some silly rule to the task to make it more interesting and whimsical.

Step 2: Pretend Sam Reich just told you to do it.

Here are a few examples that have worked for me recently.

(Bonus points if you can hear the setup in your head. "Alright, players, for your next challenge" 🎶ding🎶)

[adhd-gotmelike]

Why do they even make apps for ADHD. You want me to use my 24/7 handheld immediate distraction device? To manage my 'gets distracted too easily' disorder? Ooooh we developed the perfect tool for managing your anemia. Its hosted in Dracula's castle. 👍

[adhd-gotmelike]

its maddening to me when people discusss school issues and you can tell they dont give a single thought to disabled kids, institutionalised kids, untold scores of dead kids whose graves are etched with fantasies written by their parents. it's always appeal to some median presentable child stripped of interiority, inherently oppositional against learning for no motive, transformed into property which must be totally controlled for their own good. i don't care about your imagined construct of the median child. the system should be built for the most vulnerable children who are stripped of their voices and erased from reality. i think we should sacrifice bureaucratic efficiency if it means less kids get killed and institutionalised. i think standardised testing should be stripped bare (less frequent, results completely anonymised to parents and schools so they have no individual incentives for results). i think homework should be minimised even if it meant worse learning outcomes (which it doesnt in the majority of cases) so that less kids get killed and institutionalised. these are sacrifices which should be uncontroversial to anyone who isn't a eugenicist, and who recognises that the current education system is a disability filter

[adhd-gotmelike]

"A guide to cooking with ADHD"

*looks inside*

"Plan all of your meals up to two weeks in advance"

[adhd-gotmelike]

A little reminder that the "scary" neurodivergents belong in the community too. The ones with intrusive thoughts. The ones who seem self-centered.

The people with ocd, bpd, npd. Stuff like that. They belong here too.

[adhd-gotmelike]

this is your gentle reminder to stop fighting against your adhd and instead structure your life around it

buy a pack of chapsticks and put one in the pocket of all of your coats and jackets because you always forget to bring one and chapped lips is sensory hell

leave important things where you can see them. if they go in a box or a drawer you will forget they exist

put any appointments or deadlines in your phone calendar As Soon As you get them. set a reminder for a week before, a day before, an hour before, as many as you need as often as you need them.

when that little voice in your head says "i dont need to write that down, ill remember it" that is the devil talking!!! write it down anyway!!

plan for down time. have a few hours at the end of every day to just do fun stuff like engage in your hyperfixations. even if you didnt get all of your work done that day, have the rest anyway. you probably spent the whole day beating yourself up for not doing what you Should be doing, so you still need the break.

if you never eat vegetables because its too much effort to chop and cook them, get the frozen or canned shit. it doesnt go off for ages and you just have to microwave it. theres no point buying fresh vegetables if they just keep going off and being left to rot in the bottom of your fridge

if you struggle to decide what to have for dinner every day, take the decision out of it. choose a set of meals and eat those on rotation until you get sick of them, then choose some new ones and do it again.

its not stupid if it works! our brains literally have a chemical deficiency. you are allowed to accommodate yourself. go forth and stop making your life more difficult than it has to be because "this shouldn't be this hard". it is hard, so make it easier.

[adhd-gotmelike]

adhd will get you thinking "i should make this doctors appointment" every day for 7 months and counting

[adhd-gotmelike]

Okay so when I got sucked into the phantom zone last week while watching youtube shorts a lot of the content it fed me was ADHD tips and a lot of it was either useless for me or redundant but there was one REALLY good tip about taking breaks that wasn't about taking breaks it was about RETURNING from breaks and the tip is: when you are about to go on a break, before you step away from your task (work, craft project, school stuff) decide what you'll do as the first thing when you sit back down at your task and set up your workspace to do that thing.

That means you've got an easy re-entry point to go back to doing the thing instead of sitting back down and having to make a decision or having to reorient from break mode to task mode. You have pre-reoriented and can just go back into working mode.

I've been doing this by circling what my next task on my tasklist is and bringing up the windows that I'll need for the task before I step away from my desk.

Brilliant hack, works great for me, hope it works great for you as well.

[adhd-gotmelike]

In hindsight it's very insulting to be told that flunking out of college due to adhd is actually "quite common"

[adhd-gotmelike]

*Grabs ADHD/autistic/any other person with tone/emotional recognition problems by each side of the face*

Listen to me, listen- don't let people manipulate you by saying you didn't understand them. Don't let people say things thatre blatant insults to you and then go "I was obviously joking, you just can't understand that" when you get mad. Especially if it's a problem you only encounter with them.

Knowing tone for shit or not, if you say you're upset with something someone said about you and they don't immediately say sorry and that they'll avoid it in the future, they're being a dick. You deserve better, no matter what.

[adhd-gotmelike]

this reminds me to ask. Hey, folks who get stuck with executive dysfunction, specifically movement initiation (like when you're trying to get up to, idk, get the ice cream you want for dessert)?

Can you do me a favor? Next time you're stuck, try wiggling your toes and then trying to Get Up To Do The Thing and tell me whether or not it helps?

I have some half assed ideas about why this might work revolving around the possibility of being able to use smaller motions to build up the dopaminergic tone in the striatum of the brain. That's a major structure involved in both motivation and movement, both of which dopamine interact powerfully with. And it does seem to be useful for me, at least. But I can't figure out if that's some internal belief thing on my end or something more generally applicable, and I would love some help figuring out if this is useful for other people.

[adhd-gotmelike]

When I was a kid I kept failing classes because I'd lose my homework. I'd finish it, but between the dining room table and the classroom it would just walk away. Sometimes it ended up in my backpack, sometimes it didn't; sometimes I finished the homework at school and it got home in my backpack but wasn't there the next day.

To attempt to address this, my parents got me a neon orange folder to put in my backpack; it was my homework folder, all homework was to go into that folder and that folder only, and it was to only come out of that folder when it was being worked on. I was to put homework in the homework folder as soon as it was assigned and if I'd worked on it, put it back in the folder as soon as it was finished. The logic here was that using the folder was supposed to be automatic, and you wanted a bright color so it wouldn't get lost in the depths of a backpack.

I think I lost about eight of those before my parents stopped buying orange folders.

So it was very frustrating to search "how to be organized at work as an adult with ADHD" only to get a list that said "set alarms and write things down and try to make friends with a more organized person" which was immediately followed by tips to help your ADHD child stay organized and the one right at the top was to put their homework in a bright folder so they couldn't lose it.

If you have been harmed by the ADHD Tips Industrial Complex you may be entitled to a packet of fun-dip and a cactus cooler as consolation for losing your homework folder again.

[adhd-gotmelike]

rejection sensitivity is so fucking lame. like boo hoo look at me i felt mildly ignored for 30 seconds and already started planning my own funeral liKE BITCH CHILL it was never that serious

[adhd-gotmelike]

I love talking with neurotypical people about my executive dysfunction because I'm like "yeah there's this invisible wall in my head that I'm incapable of getting past no matter what I do and it stops me from doing things" and they're like what the actual fuck

Meanwhile other neurodivergents are like

[adhd-gotmelike]

adhd will get you thinking "i should make this doctors appointment" every day for 7 months and counting

[adhd-gotmelike]

I love talking to kids about disability bc

1. they often just Get It, and

2. they have 0 concept of disability as a tragedy or something pitiable.

I've watched kids get into an argument with a teacher bc they thought wheelchairs were cool. I told a kid that I can't stand for too long sometimes and they replied, "That's okay, I can't do cartwheels sometimes, but I just do other stuff then. You can sit down with me if you want". Today a girl asked me what the headphones on a classmate's desk were for and I told her that headphones are important for some kids because noises bother them, and she said she wished she had headphones at home, because her baby brothers make a lot of noise and it makes it hard to think. The idea that different people could use tools at different times is intuitive and simple and when accessibility aids are explained neutrally, kids don't see them as bad or unfortunate, they're just things that are useful.

Even mental disability!! In Kindergarten the other day one of the kids asked me why his table partner got stickers when nobody else did. I started off by saying, "Well, when you do your work well, it feels good, right? That's your brain giving you a reward," and the kid just right away went, "Oh, and the stickers are like his reward?" YES! You are 5 and have a better grasp on ADHD than most adults! Kids blow me away every day.