Words Have Power

i am experiencing the mental WOAG sorry post cancelled my power just went out but my string lights strobed for 5 seconds before going red and then shutting off. should i be concerned

never mind the power came back on and now they are purple so i’m going to bed. nighty night

i know vitamin c basically neutralizes adhd meds but lemonade good

yea lol

ADHD Medication information sheet

I have been struggling

For a long fucking time

with why my adderall was having such uneven effects and varying efficacy

and the weird pattern of what made it work and not work and if it was building up in my system or not

and fucking nobody told me I shouldn’t drink a glass of Kool-Aid to take the pills with

or eat fucking Pop-Tarts or Life cereal

this is the most useful information I have ever received from tubr and it seems to be confirmed by several other places upon searching

so this actually should be spread like wildfire like actually

October is ADHD awareness month! 🎉

I was gunna put this in the tags but it’s a lot. When i first started going through the process of getting a diagnosis, i was labelled with ODD. I immediately took issue with this, it seemed like an unfair diagnosis based entirely on the session the psychiatrist had with my parents (which mostly consisted of “my child is being really difficult on purpose”), and Hoo Boy when i tell you ODD immediately strips you of your ability to call out anyone on anything, that would be an understatement. I couldn’t even disagree or bring up my concerns about the validity of MY OWN DIAGNOSIS without it being labelled as oppositional defiance. Whenever i displayed any negative emotion the “treatments” did so much more harm than good. When you label someone as ‘defiant’ (ugh), when that word is put on their medical record, that person is never allowed to complain about anything again. Knowing that POC are disproportionately affected with this diagnosis makes me feel sick, i can only imagine what’s being swept under the rug as someone just being “defiant to authority”, not even just in the medical field but as justification for police brutality and mass incarceration. When i say medical racism kills people, this is what i mean.

this is so fucking important. reblog.

Not telling your kid they have a learning disability, chronic illness, mental illness etc. so they can “feel normal” actually does the opposite. They will not feel normal if they do not have the context to understand that their normal will be different from that of their peers.

The amount of times I’ve heard a parent say something like “I’m just not going to tell my son he has ADHD, I want him to feel normal.” HE DOES NOT. HE DOES NOT FEEL NORMAL. HE IS WONDERING WHY HE IS STRUGGLING AND COMING TO THE CONCLUSION HE IS AN IRREDEEMABLE FAILURE.

That's not, "I want my kid to feel normal," that's, "I don't want to deal with my kid's issues so I'm gonna lie and pretend they don't exist."

absolutely the worst thing that can happen to a person is to think "where should I put this object? oh I know, I'll put it somewhere intuitive and reasonable. I'll put it somewhere really convenient where it will make sense to look for it later"

trying to retrace my footsteps thinking where did I put this... all I remember is that I put it somewhere that Made Sense (derogatory)

Me: Can we start writing now?

My ADHD brain:

people say folks with adhd struggle with "delayed rewards" aka long term goals and as such we tend to focus more on short term rewards. what they don't talk about is that at when we Do accomplish long term goals we don't actually feel anything proportionate to the amount of work we did to achieve it. In my head I suffered for a while and then money spontaneously appeared in my bank account.

"Don't you feel satisfied that your windows are so clean now?" It sucked and it sucked and now I don't care. I just remember the sucking.

Hello, I have ADHD and I am also a licensed clinical therapist!

This part sucks. Not gonna lie to you. That said, our brains DO still get rewards, just not from "task completion" (something something, the combination of executive functioning whammy that is task initiation, task break down, task execution, and task transition following completion). Instead our rewards tend to come from one or more of a few areas:

Sometimes individuals have other things that can trigger rewards for them, and it's always worth making a note when you run across something like that!

I find that by popping off one of these options DURING or IMMEDIATELY AFTER a task that would otherwise be next to impossible to get thru without becoming a raging self hating asshole can make a big difference in how one experiences that task.

Examples: when I need to clean the house because my maintenance routine has fallen apart, I prep a vape with sativa delta or sativa THC, and shove it in my binder. I take a hit periodically throughout the task process to keep me functional and regulated. I also set pomodoro timers for 45 min each so I can alternate between "working" and "resting".

When I fall behind on notes, my wife buys me peanut M&Ms from the corner store and I pop a pair of M&Ms for every late note I submit for work.

When I'm having a low-function work day, I will prioritize taking my breaks outside with the dogs, and sometimes will splash water around from the hose on them and myself for a bit of a temperature change.

If I've overextended myself but still have essential tasks to complete, I will pause about every 15-30min to do a breathing exercise (5-6 count breath in through the nose, and 2-3 count breath out through the mouth - this is really good for short energy boosts and overcoming brainfog)

It's important to keep in mind, that these are not "incentives" in the traditional sense, where if you don't do the task, you don't get the reward. ANY use of your executive functioning would be rewarded in the brain to some extent for regulated neurotypicals, and just because our reward systems aren't great at self-activating as expected, doesn't mean we should have to live without the positive reinforcement that EVERYONE is supposed to get. So if you made an attempt at the thing, you get to trigger your reward response.

Overtime, myself and clients I work with have all noticed a shift in how we perceive tasks once this becomes common practice. Because we now have history and memories of tasks feeling positive to do (even when they are demanding or difficult for us), it becomes easier to interact with that task overall. You start to better notice the changes in approach that may make it even easier. You stop dreading the knowledge that the task needs to be done. It's easier to hop back into maintenance routines even after they've fallen apart. Basically, when you manually trigger what your brain NEEDS and can't self-create, a lot of the distressing aspects of executive function become WAY more manageable.

There's also a lot to be said about the experience of shifting self shaming and self blaming around what it means to "succeed" at a thing or "complete" a task, but that's sort of a different post. For now, suffice to say that being the kind and compassionate and understanding person you likely are for others, FOR YOURSELF, makes a big difference in how easy or hard the above strats will be to execute.

You probably know a few of the things that manually trigger that reward response for you. How can you make that ability work in your favor?

So if your brain won't give you a reward for completeing a task...store bought is fine?

can we talk about the guilt that comes along with having ADHD?

the guilt that hits you when you walk around your messy, cluttered room, knowing you don’t yet have the motivation or hyperfocus to clean it, even though you want to.

the guilt that hits you when you retell a story for the thousandth time and the person you’re talking to gets bored or annoyed or confused by it, cuz you couldn’t remember you had told it before.

the guilt that hits you when you ask someone to repeat what they’re saying multiple times because you keep forgetting or you just can’t hear them.

the guilt that hits you when you forget something super important after you leave for a trip, and you ask to go back for it.

the guilt that hits you when you know you’re overanalyzing something someone said to you, but it still hurts.

the guilt that hits you when you snap at people who are just talking to you while you’re hyperfocused.

the guilt that hits you when you realize you don’t remember jackshit about your life, you don’t have any memories, and you wonder what it was all like.

the guilt that hits you when someone asks you to just shut up or sit still after you were just expressing your emotions, your happiness even, but were just a little too loud about it.

all the guilt. over everything. we should talk about that all more.

adulthood is just a constant struggle of, “man, i want cookies for breakfast, but I also recognize this is a bad nutritional decision.  On the other hand, the only one who can stop me is me.  i know that fucker’s weaknesses.  i could totally take me in a fight.”

frog and toad are my two remaining brain cells struggling to keep my horrible body alive

I know this is meant to be funny but it actually makes such a good point about how ADHD and executive dysfunction can impact people in really major ways, including financially

[Image description: a mock-receipt, titled "Costs of ADHD."

/end of ID]

having ADHD and being poor simultaneously is an extra layer of difficulty on top of an untenable situation.

The ADHD tax is real. Either you are paying on the back end for stuff that works with your ADHD like convenience foods and disposable single-use toothbrushes or you are paying for forgotten food and discarded projects.

that executive dysfunction feel when you want to eat but there are too many steps in the process between you and food

fucking adhd. I have to run a con on my own brain to get anything done.

I'm staging everything I'll need to do paperwork and a stressful phone call, real sneaky-like so as not to alert my brain to the plan. Going into the kitchen for coffee and casually turning on my computer as I pass. Telling myself I'm just picking up these papers so I don't step on them. Planting my favorite pen in a strategic position.

Later, I'll subtly imply that completing this task is quick, it's easy, and it's free. And then I'll see everything laid out and think "well, surely a little 5-minute trial run won't hurt, and of course I can stop if I want to." and that's when the bear traps will be activated.

and maybe you're thinking nobody would fall for that but lemme tell ya: I know the mark and he's a real goober. you can trick him into taking pills just by placing them on top of a package of mint oreos. he doesn't even question it, just finds the pills on his way to the cookies and goes "sure, why not?"

Sometimes I can force myself to hyper focus when I get like this. But not always. I will have to work on tricking myself. It sounds better.

big ole comic about adult ADHD diagnosis + big feelings + making sure childhood me is okay