reminder that adhd medication isn't a luxury or preference, but a lifesaving medication. a 10 year long study in the usa showed that, when properly medicated, the rate of car crashes people with adhd get into goes down significantly--men's rate drops by 38%, and women's by 42%. the med shortage, denial of meds by doctors, rising prices, and war on drugs has killed--with such a car dependent society, not driving frequently isn't an option, which means we need better healthcare and need it now.

https://shorturl.at/8VD8B

edit because i forgot to explain: short link is to an article by the washington post, it should be free to read

I'm pretty sure there's also been a study that unmedicated ADHD increases the risk of developing dementia in old age. I'll get back to yall when I find the study

Found it and here's a Washington Post article if you don't want to read a medical journal.

@icy-moons thank you for this incredibly important addition!!! People with adhd are almost 3 times as likely to get dementia, and the way to prevent that is stimulant medication--more people need to know this

ADHD

2016

Zhou Wendou

[video description: a short clip showing a large metal sphere in the center of a shallow pool of dark liquid. the same dark liquid is pouring over the sphere, coating it, while windshield wipers installed onto the sphere attempt to wipe it away, only for more liquid to immediately fall and cover the clean spots. end video description.]

Man when I was growing up and dealing with my undiagnosed, unmedicated ADHD and having the worst time, my parents would say, “If you can’t do this now, how are you going to handle being an adult?” all. the. fucking. time.

But all of my problems are actually so fixable.

My mom is out of town and asked me to take out her trash. I forgot. And when I remembered I had two seconds of freaking out before I put together a plan: I got two big plastic boxes, loaded her trash into the trunk of my car, and threw it out in my apartment complex’s dumpster. The only bad thing that happened is I had a small leak into one of the boxes, and I’ve already got that soaking with bleach in my tub. FIXING my terrible ADHD mistake took less effort than doing it properly and you are the only people who will know.

But nooooo when I was a kid it was always ~do it right the first time exactly how we expect or it can’t be done at all~. No fucking wonder I’m a mess of an adult now.

And can we talk about how “how are you going to handle being an adult?” encourages suicidal ideation as well? Bc holy FUCK

The fact is, if no one teaches you these coping strategies, if no one encourages your creativity and problem-solving, you WILL suffer as an adult - but that’s still not your fault.

SO many ADHD kids that go undiagnosed because they’re “gifted” or fly under the radar crash and burn in college. So many crash and burn trying to hold down a stable job.

This isn’t mean to be doom and gloom, it’s meant as an admonishment to parents and teachers and administrators and therapists and all other adults: if you see a child who is struggling and you do not give them coping techniques; if you do not teach them a different way to accomplish the task, or if you don’t encourage them to think up ways that work for them, you are setting that child up for failure.

I’ve had to do so much work just to stay afloat as an ADHD adult. It’s hard. Sometimes it feels impossibly hard. But I just keep trying to stick with the tricks I know work; to try out new ones, and if something is novel and works for a bit, great!! If the novelty wears off and the coping technique stops working, that’s normal for ADHD too. You are not FAILING if the thing that worked for two weeks suddenly isn’t working anymore. We thrive off novelty, period.

Some of the techniques will stick, I promise.

My parents spent years and years trying to teach me to keep track of my keys with shame. 

Never. Fucking. Worked. 

I’d do shit like walk around the neighborhood for two hours in winter rather than admit that my keys were lost again. And even when I could keep track of my keys, it was a constant drain of executive function points that I could have been spending on things like homework.

My husband hung little key hooks by the front door, and it worked instantly. Not 100% effective, but like 99% effective. And when my keys do get lost, instead of blaming myself, I stop and think about why the system broke and how I might need to modify it. Oh, there was snow, and dealing with boots and other outerwear distracted me as I came in the door? Yeah, that might happen. How do I incorporate key hanging into the process of wet boot removal?

as someone without ADHD but who lives with someone with ADHD who has in turn experienced all the constant parental shaming we’re talking about, the things he’s most terrified of doing or thinks i’ll get mad at him for are actually not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things.

scared to use the oven in case he forgets to turn it off: ovens can stay on for a while. i’m never gone so long i wouldn’t notice and turn it off myself.

scared to forget to lock the door: who cares? we don’t have anything valuable anyone would want to steal, and they did, a locked door wouldn’t stop them.

scared to park in the garage in case he hits either wall and damages the property: yeah that would definitely suck but 1) he’ll get a scratch on his car, whoopdeedo, and 2) a garage door can be fixed. it might cost money but whatever. mistakes happen. all you can do is fix them.

scared to forget his laundry in the washer (which he’s done several times now): just wash it again. 

scared to forget his meds before work: i bought him a little med bottle for his keychain so he can take a couple spares with him.

scared to forget something i asked him to do: i’ll remind him or, better yet, we’ll do it together.

scared to leave something out in the kitchen: ?? ??? i will put it away.  

to me, unless something causes actual bodily harm or death, it’s not that big a deal. everything can be fixed. everything. the worst that can ever happen is that you lose time or money, and maybe it’s a lot of time and maybe it’s a lot of money, but the point is, it can be fixed. you can burn your entire fucking house down and as long as no one’s hurt, nearly everything can be replaced. no doubt it will suck and you’ll lose a few things of sentimental value, but it’s just stuff. just physical objects that you own. and the place you live is just a building. imo it’s way more worth it to live without shame or fear and make the occasional mistake/forget something important than it is to be constantly vigilant of what-ifs. 

My life changed when I learned HOW to fix mistakes. When a mistake wasn’t a spiral to despair. When I finally quit trying to be perfect and decided to use my weird brain for creative solutions. ADHD brains are WIRED to be creative and beautiful problem solvers. When you accept that your can be GOOD at fixing mistakes, they become opportunities to shine instead of abuse yourself. And that’s a WONDERFUL feeling!

i keep mentioning the bread pudding incident and not telling the full story and at some point i really should

Yes you should.

im procrastinating so i will tell the story.

despite the incident in question happening about a year and a half ago, it has two preceding incidents, the contents of which are needed in order to understand the full scale of the bread pudding incident.

two facts about me:

1) i recently found out i have what was described to me as “the worst case of adhd that (my therapist) had ever seen”, totally unmedicated and,

2) i cannot reliably count to ten.

so a couple years ago, i tried to get into box-baking. my husband is an incredible baker, and has made some awesome things (including one time a pancake-based strawberry shortcake for my birthday because i hate cake? he’s a gem) but he doesnt always have energy to bake and i crave brownies literally at every minute of every hour of every day, so i was like ok sick ill bake box brownies. thats easy. (i have since, with a liberal amount of help, learned how to reliably box bake precisely one brand of brownie)

the first time, i misread the instructions and made them with the oil and water reversed and only one egg. they were inedible. the second time i realized we had no eggs ¾ of the way through, panicked, put in applesauce but only half the required applesauce, and they came out (mostly) inedible.

so at the time my sister sensibly decided “you cannot bake any more” and i sensibly agreed with her.

last year in the deep swings of my masters-induced depression i figured i had forgotten about a loaf of french bread in my fridge for weeks and it was approximately the same hardness as a stone. i should use it for something! bread pudding. that is what you use stale bread for.

i cook to taste—i rarely use recipes, because of the aforementioned “i have the attention span of a gnat and i cannot count to ten” so using a recipe? pretty much useless. this does not work to bake. so i googled a recipe, figured, okay, i can get the ingredients, and pretty much guess? i closed the recipe immediately afterward, and forgot my laptop even existed within minutes.

things bread pudding requires: stale bread. butter. milk. sugar. cinnamon. raisins. eggs. vanilla. and, if you are southern™, alcohol.

things i had in the house: stale bread. margarine. sugar. pumpkin spice. one egg. vanilla. alcohol.

first i broke up the bread. with a hammer! like you do, for weeks-old french bread. i put it all in a casserole dish, because that was what was clean. no milk? water is fine! throw that shit in! how much water? i dont know. enough to get it wet! submerge all the ingredients. how much sugar? i don’t know. the recipe said brown sugar.

me: can i use the brown sugar to make bread pudding? james: sure. but don’t use much. me: ok. (takes less than a teaspoon of brown sugar, one of the big-ish clumps) that’s enough, right? throw that in there. that’s enough sugar! i don’t need more white sugar.

pumpkin spice is essentially cinnamon! can’t use too much vanilla. just shake a little bit in there. that’s good, that’s enough. how much was that? two drops? plenty! that’s how much vanilla it needs, right? how much margarine? i don’t know! i closed the recipe. let’s get three or four big pats. i don’t have any stick margarine. crack that egg in there.

can’t forget the whiskey! just slop some in there. i’m southern. a dollop? a dollop. a dollop sounds right.

what temperature do you cook bread budding at? i don’t know. this casserole dish is only barely like, a tiny bit full. just coating the bottom. not much, then. 250 is probably right?

and then i forgot i was cooking until the kitchen began to smell.

the object which was removed from the oven was approximately the same size and density as a bowl full of very, very burned sand. two square inches of it was the correct texture for bread pudding—i.e, soft, squishy. the rest of it was as like unto hardened lava, and the same color. a single taste revealed it to taste like wet, disgusting bread or almost sort of exactly-unlike-bread-pudding but in the saddest way imaginable, the potential had been there, and had not been achieved. the brown sugar had not even dissolved it was just there. in a chunk. burned into the bread. it all smelled strongly of whiskey. it took about three weeks to soak totally off of my casserole dish, full of daily-replaced soapy boiling water.

so i’m not allowed to bake any more.

This is the most “Cooking while ADHD” thing I’ve ever read and I feel much better about Switching “3 Eggs & 4 cups flour”  to “4 eggs and 3 Cups flour” earlier this morning.

hey remember this post? in case you’re wondering “i think i might have adhd and it’s too much work to get it diagnosed/medicated” then let me tell you i now regularly bake bread from scratch, bake cakes, have perfected my ideal chocolate chip cookie recipe, and i can make three different types of biscotti. and also pie. and quiche.

if you need something to tell you “it’s worth doing the work to go get diagnosed and medicated for your adhd” let it be that i, jon “bread pudding incident” phaedrus, am now not only allowed but encouraged to bake.

WE LOVE A SUCESS STORY!

I hate that no one talks about just how distressing memory loss from adhd actually is. I always see memes that are like “haha I forgot my phone, I don’t remember where my laptop is, etc”, but no one seems to talk about how it can really fuck you up long term to just, not remember things that are completely mundane to non-adhd’ers. The memory loss is, however, so frustrating to us. I cannot physically count how many meltdowns I have had over the sheer mental frustration and torture of not being able to remember seemingly simple things

This is why I get meal kits. Do I need them? No. Can I easily make them myself? For way cheaper? Yes. WILL I??? No.

Other tips: if you are going to buy things that aren’t pre-taxed, you need to make a habit of always doing the prep AS SOON AS YOU GET HOME. it will NEVER HAPPEN if you don’t.

Get the bulk pack of steaks! But you are never gonna eat them before they go bad. If you freeze them in individual ziplocks as soon as you unpack you probably will?

Get the celery, but you need to cut it ALL UP and store it in the fridge in water or it will rot.

And don’t do all tgese at once, get like, one or two prep things a trip. You aren’t gonna get it started if it’s a huge task.

Don’t pass by these tips because you don’t have ADHD! 

These are valid points for the busy parent, the overstressed college student, and the person working the “wrong” shift. 

Real story - I have thrown away SO MUCH meat and produce in my time. Frozen veggies can even be better than fresh, since they are picked when ripe and frozen rather than picked early and expected to ripen in shipping. My local grocer will sometimes pre-chop less-than-desirable veggies and sell them in the discount cooler - a chopped onion is more useful than a whole one! Meat in bulk packs is WAY cheaper, but you have to make breaking up that huge pack part of putting away the groceries. Also, having a place to put the groceries away helps make the process easier. It’s taken me more than one decade of life to figure these things out. 

It’s not lazy if it is efficient. Professionals call it “time management.” 

Sometimes, usually, when I’m struggling mentally with something, and the brain weasels take hold, I worry that I don’t actually have ADHD and somehow manipulated my therapist into giving me a diagnosis because I’m an evil, trash person who needs a cover for being a lazy piece of shit who just needs to try harder.

Then I catch myself making gluten-free waffles because I was hungry and found out there was only one left in the freezer. So I break out all the ingredients to make gluten-free waffles, and I realize, hey, this leaves me with enough eggs to make meringues; I should make those too while I’m dirtying up the kitchen, and so I can throw this egg carton away. It’d be a shame to waste the egg yolks, though, so I should probably make custard too. I can turn it into ice cream for later. I should clean the ice cream machine while the waffle iron heats up. Oh, hey, that's where my glasses went. Oh, you know what, I should leave the masa out and make tortilas for dinner...

Meanwhile on the other side of the kitchen unattended:

Id: a gif of a cluttered kitchen. From left to right a medium-sized milk pan sits on the stove; a faint glow underneath indicates that the burner is on. Next to it a medium bowl sits with a whisk handle protruding over the lip. Next to that a red kitchen stand mixer is in mition, whisking the contents of a stainless steel bowl. Beside that an even larger bowl sits with a spatula protruding from the top; it appears to be filled with batter. On the far right next to the sink a waffle iron steams gently. End id.

Buy Joy, someone will likely ask, what about the waffle in the freezer? Did you get food?

Ahaha. No. No, I did not.

Did I get distracted thinking about making this post instead of getting a snack even after realizing this?

... God fucking damit.

anyways can we start recognizing adhd as an actual and serious disorder that

ADHD is:

None of this is because people with ADHD as a group are, like, bad or lazy or evil or irresponsible or don’t care. People with ADHD are just people, and exist on the same range of good, bad, and in-between that all people do. However, the parts of our brains that are meant to help us regulate our emotions, plan for the future, remember to do important things, and not act on every impulse that crosses our minds just don’t work properly. A lot of us might lean in to an airhead, spacy artistic type, class clown, or similar persona to mask our deep shame over not being able to “just” do all these basic things that other people seem to do with no trouble at all. 

Additionally, even accessing ADHD treatment can be extremely challenging, because stimulant medications are controlled substances and there are so many false and damaging perceptions about the condition and medications out there. And even when you have a well-established diagnosis and are well controlled on a medication you’ve taken for years, you are never far away from potential disruptions to your treatment. I personally am a white professional with good health insurance and was able to get diagnosed and medication prescribed - which in itself is often really difficult - but even from that position of privilege I have experienced multiple gaps in my treatment for reasons like:

Again, this is a LEGAL medication that I am LEGALLY prescribed by my supportive doctor with consultation from my supportive psychologist, for my actual disabling medical condition, and which all parties involved agree is extremely effective in helping me manage said condition. I’m in about the best situation you can be in short of being a millionaire who doesn’t have to worry about things like preapprovals or copays or taking sick time from work. 

I’ve also heard from others who have had to change doctors due to moving, job or insurance changes, etc., only to get issues like:

ADHD is a treatable and manageable condition, but it isn’t a joke, it isn’t “made up,” we aren’t “all a little ADHD these days anyway”. It’s a complex and wide-ranging condition that can impact nearly every part of your life in serious and possibly very damaging ways.

Hold on I need to schedule an appointment

OP you could’ve gone to my house and punched me in the face

Wait, sleep disorders, too?!

There’s a reason the joke goes “five out of 100 people have ADHD. One’s diagnosed, one’s getting by, one’s depressed, one’s an addict and one’s in jail”.

Seriously though, I quit binge drinking cold the week that I got properly medicated for ADHD. If you have substance use issues, gambling (including loot boxes etc), or other significant behavioural addictions, and you recognise the things described here as problems in your life, for the love of god please go get tested. Even just take a look at the Brown Adult ADD Self-Report Scale and see if it reads like a callout post.

Tiktok is helpful sometimes.

Saw a video of a woman with ADHD and she explained that, if you have a hard time eating produce before it goes bad because Object Permanence Is Hard, put your produce on the door!

Whenever you need a condiment, it's because you know you want it, so you don't have to see it on the door. And, frankly, produce drawers, especially deep ones, are almost impossible to organize so something is always going bad.

Gonna try the "condiments in the drawers, produce on the door" for a while and see how it takes. Leftovers on top for easy visibility (another object permanence issue), frequently used items in the middle, more produce on the bottom (mostly bunny food).

Very interesting, this is something I never would have thought of but upon reading it and thinking more about it, it’s pretty brilliant and the thought of it makes my brain happy. I may have to try this out.

So my therapist and I were talking today about ADHD brains, and what “executive function” means, and we discovered a really interesting thing about how my brain works. I don’t know how much it will extend to other people, but I’m throwing it out there in case it’s useful for anyone else.

Usually it takes me about 1.5 - 2 hours each morning, to go from “booting up my computer” to “actually starting on my first task”.  This is true whether I work from home or work in the office, whether it’s a coding day or a meeting day, whether I jump out of bed when the alarm goes off or if I’m very seriously giving consideration to sleeping under my desk while my computer boots.  I don’t want it to take that long, but extensive experimentation has shown that it definitely does.

Today I decided to try an experiment.  Instead of my normal morning routine (where I check email, IMs, to-do list, and self-care list, and compile that into an enormous to-do list for the day, then sort that list in order of “if everything goes sideways and I get to only one thing, what thing will be the most painful if it happens tomorrow instead of today”, and then set up multiple desktops on my macbook so that each task – including “brush teeth” has its own desktop, and then put the desktops in the assigned priority-order), I decided I’d just jump right into my first task, and see if I could get myself a hyper-focused hour of work before someone came into the office to bug me.

It. Was. Terrible.

I mean, I got the task done, in record time. Then I checked Tumblr. Then I checked Facebook. Then I composed a summary of David Graeber’s argument that the European Age of Exploitation cannot be understood without knowing why the Chinese decided to abandon paper money.  Then I replied to all my Facebook messages. Then I helped Jessica at work set up her code. There followed a relatively productive afternoon where I helped my boss sort out a personnel problem, set priorities for our department, contributed to one meeting, ran yet another meeting, got consensus on a project, and helped Jessica again – but I didn’t eat my midmorning snack until 1pm, I never did brush my teeth, and my knees are killing me because all through the second meeting my body was sending “This posture hurts! Change position! Get! Up!” signals, and I couldn’t summon the focus to actually move from the floor to the couch. By the time my therapist called, my phone was on 3% and I couldn’t find my bluetooth headphones. I’m still 400 calories under my target for the day, because I missed 900 calories during my workday and I couldn’t figure out how to add more than 500 calories to my dinner.

So my therapist and I talked about this strange mix of symptoms: knocking out task after task of helping people at work, but unable to feed myself; incredibly highly effective code debugging, but also getting lost in Tumblr for an hour. I wasn’t under-stimulated, but I also didn’t get to pick what I focused on.  And he talked about how executive function isn’t just one thing, which I knew, but mentioned specifically that one element of executive function is taking your own initiative, deciding your actions for yourself, rather than just reacting to stimuli.  And it hit me —

I can’t do that.  

I thrive in hyper-focused development environments, where I react to each compiler error by debugging the error … but I break down when the compiler runs without error; I don’t know what to do if I don’t have the error-stimulus deciding my actions.

I thrive in high-multi-tasking environments like running a retail store at Christmas, where I do a task, and then look around and see which notification is the highest priority, and then do that task.  But I struggle in January and February, when all the customers are gone and I don’t know what to do.

And today, I was entirely stimulus-driven.  Jessica asked for help, and I helped her. Kathy commented on Facebook, and I replied to her. Ryan asked about a report, and I explained it to him. Mark brought up something that reminded me of David Graeber, and I typed up a history essay.  Anything that didn’t have a notification – brushing my teeth, eating my snack, charging my phone – didn’t get done.

And that’s when it hit me.  My usual morning routing isn’t a waste of 2 hours.  It’s setting up my environment so that I will be stimulated to do the things I want to do.

I have barely any initiative-decide-for-myself at all.  I get one (1) intitiativon each morning, and I have to spend it wisely.  And what I do with it, each day, is set up the stimuli I will experience throughout the day.

I don’t have any initiative left by that point, but I don’t need to: I get the stimulus to do my work, maintain my health, connect with friends, and clean my house, and I’m too executive-dysfunction-deprived to do anything but respond to stimulus, and so I do all those things. This explains why I need to leave such specific directions to myself: not “write chapter 5″, but “Open C:/Documents/Writing/NovelTitle/Chapter5.doc”.  The first one isn’t a stimulus to action; the second one is. 

It’s also why I have such a hard time with “leisure”, and why my “randomized leisure activity” deck helped me so much; because by the time I get to the end of the day, and I’m out of spoons and I have earned a fun and relaxing evening…. I cannot – by definition – decide what would be fun and relaxing.

Like I say, I have no idea whether that will be any good for anyone else, but it prompted some interesting introspection, and I wanted to share. Now if you’ll excuse me, I still need to go brush my teeth

I would love a tutorial of how you do the desktop thing! Sounds super cool and might be useful!!

Seconding that request for a tutorial, this sounds super helpful

It relies on a feature of MacOS and Linux that allows me to open multiple desktops – essentially meta-windows that can hold all of the windows I need for a given project.  I can swipe through to find anything I need for any given project, but when I have a desktop open, I can only see the things I need for this project.

[ID: A screenshot of the top inch of a Macbook screen.  There are 18 rectangles across the image. Some are recognizably thumbnails from common software applications such as YouTube, email programs, or spreadsheets. Others contain only a single digital sticky note.] So what I do is, I open at least one window for everything I need to do that day.  If that’s replying to an email, then I open that email in a separate window. If it’s doing yoga, I open the YouTube video for that routine in a separate window. If it’s writing, then I open the writing software and also any notes or reference materials for the thing I’m writing.

[ID: A screenshot of a web browser with two tabs open. The active tab is called “Write your words”. The inactive tab is called “Dear Senator Hickenlooper”.  The active tab has a date at the top and a cursor on an otherwise blank page.] If it’s a thing that really doesn’t involve the computer at all – eg non-guided meditation, getting dressed, sweeping the floor, etc – then I make a text note for that task, and that’s my window for it.

[ID: a screenshot of the full screen of a Macbook. Some of the thumbnails from the first screenshot are recognizable along the top.  Other windows are showing in miniature. There are several web pages in separate windows, an email program, an IM program, and seven digital sticky notes.] So once I’ve got my list of tasks, each of which has at least one window, I make one desktop per task.  I prioritize them according to which task, if I didn’t do it today, is most likely to make tomorrow sucky, and put the desktops in that order. The other huge advantage of this system is that it can help me overcome the Wall of Awful by dividing the two hardest parts of the task into separate activities. First thing in the morning, I open up everything I will need for the task, but I know that I am in no way intending to actually do the task. So I can do the “What am I even doing here? What’s the first step? How would I do that? Where is that information?” work without the pressure of feeling like I’m about to screw everything up; maybe future-me is gonna screw everything up, but current-me is just trying to find the right folder.  And yet, when it comes time to actually do the task, everything I need for it is right there, at my fingertips, easily accessible, which makes getting started that much easier.  Sometimes that makes the anxiety of each half overcome-able, where trying to do the whole thing together would overwhelm me past the meltdown point. So here, for example, I have the code I will need to run in AWS, a web tab logged into AWS, and my email reminding me of what I need to do.  If I arrive at this desktop and frantically scan my eyes around wondering what’s going on, I am very likely to find (a) what I need to do (b) where I need to do it, and © the things I need to do it with.

[ID: A screenshot of most a computer screen.  A web browser spans most of the top of the screen, with two AWS-related tabs open.  At the left edge of the screen where the web browser is not covering, an IDE window is visible, with a command prompt showing underneath the web browser.  On the bottom right, part of an email is visible, reading “The lambda runs and is running. Need to drop partitions that aren’t using current data, and write the full backfilled date range. Then I can UAT.”] So it’s pretty specific to my work environment and my needs, but hopefully the concept makes sense, and you guys can adapt it to help do what you need!

I love this and was really excited to read your answer to how you manage desktops. You can do a similar thing, i.e. creating multiple desktops, in Windows OS as well. Here’s a link to a tutorial: https://www.windowscentral.com/how-use-multiple-desktops-windows-10

I AM SO EXCITED TO LEARN YOU CAN DO THIS IN WINDOWS

**stares at myself and my massive amounts of browser tabs** dear self, remember when we used desktops to not distract ourselves when we were writing our thesis????

all of this

A fun way to get yourself to do chores when you have adhd is to simulate a sense of panic by setting horrible deadlines that fit into other things that you’re doing.

For example, you set up a kettle of water to boil for your tea. Quick! Wipe down the whole counter before it’s done boiling, for the love of god you’re running out of time! Wipe it down! The water is almost boiling.

The water is boiling and your counter is clean. Now set your timer for your tea for three minutes and of my god there’s cups in your room! Quick! Get all the cups from everywhere in the house! Run! You’ve only got three minutes! Get all the dishes into the kitchen!

Oh would you look at that. You got all the dishes in the sink and now your tea is ready. Nice. Now you can chill with your tea.

I’ve found that little stuff like that helps me. Forcing myself into unexpected last minute deadlines. It fills up empty space and my house is a little bit cleaner.

I HATE that I know this works- legit heating something up in the microwave? Rushing to put everything away before it goes off because there is something satisfying about beating it and you feel accomplished.

So I tried this, and I'm genuinely shocked that it worked???

Like, I'm overjoyed that I found a way to do chores without minutes of trying to force myself, but it actually worked??? What kind of sorcery is this???

This will probably work. And I will hate every second of my life while it works.

If you were wondering what use negative emotions have, it’s this sort of thing.

Learning to accommodate your ADHD and cultivate good writing habits that don't lead to complete creative and executive function burnout is a tough thing to learn but is possible.

A lot of writing advice out there isn't hugely helpful for ADHD brains. Unhelpful things like "you just gotta sit down and do it" don't work when trying to focus on something you don't want to do actively shut down parts of your brain.

Nor does a lot of "hard deadlines" as hard deadlines only really work for ADHD when there's panic involved. We need the adrenaline surge, even sometimes when we're medicated. But that's not healthy and leads to quicker and more prolonged burnout the more you do it. Trust me; I've obliterated my mental health several times this way, and each time it gets harder and harder to bounce back from.

So, what does work for us? Well, like @natalieironside pointed out, finding ways to accommodate your "fun" brain needs is far better than trying to make your brain perform to a neurotypical standard that will cause quicker burnout and force you to rely on hyperfixations to get things done. There are several ways to do this, but my recommendation would be to set yourself small goals with:

A Good Reward System.

I've talked numerous times about needing to make your own dopamine with ADHD. Our brains just don't create enough of it, even when medicated. I use a sticker reward system for myself. It's a fun way to make myself feel better and provide visual feedback that shows progress is being made. Progress my brain would otherwise never acknowledge and continue to make me feel bad for "never getting anything done."

For writing, my suggestion is to set yourself small daily goals. 500 words a day is my go-to; every 500 words, I get a star. If I feel capable of doing more that day? Great. If not, also great! I met my goal for the day.

If that goal is too much for you? Also fine! Start smaller, train your brain to get used to doing a little bit every day. Small progress is still better than no progress.

This reminds me, don't worry if what you thought the story was going to be evolves over time and looks nothing like your original plot outline.

Making plans tend to be viewed as the holy grail of success for ADHD. That if we just write the thing down, plotting it out in meticulous detail, that for once, maybe, we might actually complete something. But the truth is, stories don't always turn out the way you thought they would, and sometimes they need to change from your original plan to be better.

For many folks with ADHD, this can feel like a failure.

We're often told that our inability to stick to plans is a character flaw. So the pressure to "stick with the plan" is real and can even become debilitating. Failure to conform can cause feelings of inadequacy, depression, and general "why bother, I keep fucking up."

But writing is a creative process, and creative processes need to be flexible. So should you plot things out or just write as you go? Honestly, whatever works best for you. I advise doing extremely rough outlining, but again, keep yourself open to the idea that this is flexible. It is not set in stone. You are in control of this, and you can change it as you need.

If you're really struggling with structure or trying to figure out where something is tripping you up, getting other writer friends to beta read can help. Alternatively, you can hire an editor for a manuscript assessment so they can tell you where your strengths are and where things are tripping you up. Sometimes it's good to have another pair of eyes go over things so you can get a fresh perspective and adjust accordingly.

Speaking of editors: Don't Edit During Rough Drafts. It's far too easy to fall down a rabbit hole of hyperfixating on trying to make something "perfect" the first time around when in reality, it's much better to view the project as a whole before you start chopping it into pieces. What you spend weeks editing might not even make the final cut at the end. Save yourself the time now, and save that process for later.

If you really need to edit something, do so at the end of a milestone, like a chapter. But also, don't let yourself get bogged down in it. If you notice something that needs to be changed, leave yourself a note in the margins using the comment feature. It'll make it easier to find things when you get to the redraft stage and also go back and strengthen areas that need it. Can't stop fixating on it? Time to take a break before your ADHD goes down a spiral.

Also, taking a break from your work is not a failure. Sometimes you gotta rest the old brain-meat and come back when you're less burned out.

Check Your Environment.

Are you getting enough stimulation? Or are you getting too much negative stimulation?

I personally can't focus in a minimalist room; my brain just keeps latching onto how empty everything is and starts running in circles looking for stimuli. I like my spaces to be visually interesting. But I also can't focus in a room that's too messy.

As I type this in bed, I'm HUGELY aware of the pile of clothes on the floor that needs to be moved to the laundry. By itself, it wouldn't be a problem, but with the other stimuli in the room (the TV is on, I've got Discord running, I'm on Tumblr, and a small dog is cute at my feet), it's so distracting I keep tabbing out of this post and looking for "soothing" extra stimuli which won't actually help me focus on what I need to do. I'm able to block almost all the other things out, but my attention keeps coming back to the clothes. It is a type of negative stimuli, and it's sapping my energy away from what I want to do.

This is why before I sit down to work every day, I look at my environment to see if it could be benefited from a 15-minute pickup.

Finding the right stimulating environment is almost as important IMO as finding a distraction-free environment.

But what can you do to make your environment happy-brain-stimulating? That will really depend on your own individual needs. Like I said, I like things to be visually interesting. But I also like to wear noise-canceling headphones to block out the hum of the fridge two rooms away. I also listen to video game music. It's specifically designed to keep you engaged when grinding away at tedious tasks. I do have "hype" playlists, but I use those more for getting myself in the mood to write than trying to sustain workflow. Other people use stim toys. ADHD advocate, BlackGirlLostKeys has a good range of stim toys in her store.

This brings me to:

Hype Yourself Up:

ADHD folks tend to be unnecessarily hard on ourselves. We've been conditioned by a lifetime of "if you just applied yourself" or "but you're so smart!" to set ourselves up for nigh on impossible standards we wouldn't expect of anyone else.

Are you thinking of your work negatively? Do you put yourself down, even humorously? Stop. I know it's a coping mechanism; I do it too. But you need to stop. Training yourself to think negatively about yourself and your work, even as a self-defense mechanism, eventually sticks, and it will become harder and harder to psyche yourself up to do the thing.

It's normal to feel burned out and tired with projects; that also happens to NT people. But unlike NT people, we can't just push through. It can cause us real distress to try and work on things our brains are too tired to do. For me, it even makes my chronic pain exponentially worse. But if you want to work on the thing and are just having an "ooh shiny" day (only ADHD people are funny when they make that joke, NTs don't try it), hyping yourself up can be really helpful. I don't mean to induce hyperfixation--although sometimes that is unavoidable. It's just how our brains work. But rather, make yourself feel good about your work.

A common iteration I say to myself is, "fuck yeah, time to fuck around and find out" as I sit down to write a new draft.

I try to make it into something I will look forward to doing. It's a reward for getting all my other shit done. Got my laundry done? Time to go play around with my vampire son and write an incentive to social reform and/or riot.

Did the dishes? Time to go create a whole new world! Hell yeah!

You can also just straight-up play with your characters. People think it's hilarious that I write fanfic of my own work, but it's also an excellent exercise for working through things like writer's block or burnout. It can be very liberating to take your character out of their world and drop them into a fandom setting.

When a client tells me they're struggling with a character, I tell them to take them out to coffee. Take your character, drop them in a coffee shop. What's their order, how do they interact with the world? How would they exist in this alternate reality while still being true to their canon self? Doing this can not only be silly fun, but it can also help you get a better grasp of your characters and the defining traits you want to emphasize.

Basically, treat it like a fandom you love, and write like you love it. That doesn't mean it won't be hard at times or that you might fall out of love with something and decide to move on to something else. But it's infinitely better than approaching things with the mindest of "ugh, I'm not getting enough done/nothing I do is good enough."

Anyway, this post got waaay longer than is probably helpful, but I hope anyone who needs it will glean something that might be useful to them. Happy writing!

migraine, self care, and accountability

Today is Migraine O’clock

it is such a type of migraine that I had to call in sick at work. Manager not happy, probably cause of how soon to my shift it was. If it becomes a thing, I’ll see if I need to reopen my case file with ODSP, and I’ll take to my social worker. Cause trying to shame me for taking care of myself, not okay. I got a thing about seeking medical care for myself I’m trying to work on, so yeah no. 

Anyways. This particular migraine is slooooooow to respond to pain meds combined with scrambling my sight and cognitive stuff a bit, and giving me some dizziness. Not terribly bad, but not something I’d want to be driving or working with. 

So, I am taking a slow day. A kind, self-care day. Probably not seeing Venom like I had planned (never mind cognitive processing, let’s not risk flashy-lights setting off another migraine).  There’s a few things I need to get done today, but I’m going to be kind to myself as I get them done.

Done:

1) replace light bulb

Doing:

2) laundry

To Do:

3) pick up meds

4) buy - tooth brush and body lotion

5) optional - buy white face paint from dollar store

6) recycle cans

7) put dishes into dishwasher

Oh, there’s more than I expected… but that’s because I broke down “tidy up” into separate tasks. There’s other stuff I want to do. But that’s stuff I’ll get to at some point anyways. 

Done:

1) replace light bulb

7) put dishes into dishwasher

Doing:

2) laundry

To Do:

3) pick up meds

4) buy - tooth brush and body lotion

5) optional - buy white face paint from dollar store

6) recycle cans

Done:

1) replace light bulb

7) put dishes into dishwasher

2) laundry

3) pick up meds

4) buy - tooth brush and body lotion body wash

5) optional - buy white face paint from dollar store walmart

6) recycle cans

Doing:

To Do:

TA DA!!!!