While I have empathy, the reason we’re in the state of recognising and intervening with neurodiversity is the work that educators, parents and researchers have done over the past sixty years. Pleae recognise this for the progress it represents.
People do the best with what they have and what they know. No it’s not your fault. Neither is it your parents or teachers when they don’t have the knowledge or tools to help them. There is a solid chance that they were as lost, frustrated and confused as you. Or they’re simply shitty people…
In 50 years time there will be another condition that we don’t know about now, for which we are not providing accommodation, which causes kids harm, that your kids will look back on and be absolutely shocked, like why the fuck was this ever tolerated and how could we not know. Obesity? Usage of social media? Assessment?
I wholeheartedly support this viewpoint.
I was diagnosed with ADHD at 38 and to say my life was a mess beforehand would be a massive understatement. Without making this too long, I’ve had between 50-60 jobs and would lose them from just not turning up if I couldn’t get out of bed or just being confrontational with people if they treated us like shit etc.
In the 3 years since my diagnosis and medication I managed to train to be a software developer and landed my dream job doing it for a living.
The horrible thing to think about is if I didn’t luck myself into working for Apple at the Genius Bar, I wouldn’t have been diagnosed. They gave free healthcare (UK, we have the NHS but mental health is underfunded and the wait times for things like this would be over a year). Apple literally changed my life; not just with the diagnosis, but with helping people see their potential.
The hardest part of a late diagnosis which still to this day it’s hard to let the past be the past, but it’s the what ifs, what if I got diagnosed earlier etc. the amount of money I’ve spent on weed, Xanax, coke, and messing about with friends (most of which likely have ADHD, due to being very similar and people in these drug circles all have that in common) I could have my own house and be set and only need to work part time (still done think I’m built for a 9-5 and still get depressed over the hours).
All this said, I don’t blame anybody for the late diagnosis. Like you say people were working with the knowledge they had at the time and although my issues perfectly aligned with ADHD and the content in this post, people just didn’t know enough back then and it is what it is.
Most of the drug users and smokers are above average intelligence. Most of the intelligent people are depressed.
Great job world.
Yep. I’ve had substance abuse problems and severe depression my whole life. I’ve had people telling me I have “genius” intelligence but I can’t do some of the most basic tasks like paying bills and managing finances and making any plans for my future whatsoever.
But I know quantum physics! Lots of use for that shit, right?? I can’t count the number of job interviews where the hiring manager asked me about interactions between quarks and the strong nuclear force.
As an aside my therapist just diagnosed me as autistic, as a middle-aged man that’s a whole basket of cats I don’t know what to do with yet.
My man I feel for you there so much it hurts.
Interviews in jobs suitable to my intelligence level:
“Wow that’s quite some knowledge! But have you been doing only this and nothing else for 15 years with certified evidence of steady infinite progression with no stopping?”
Interviews for jobs I might have a shot at:
“So on your availability here I notice you said Monday through Friday but can I pull you for holidays and weekends on short notice anyway? We work hard and play hard like a family here heh heh…So what is your definition of ‘solid gold standard servitude in worship of The Customer?’”
Couldn’t read the post because it’s blocked by a wall of arrogance. Suck it up, but treat people better than you were treated
It took me ages to realise this. People with ADHD are always portrayed as lazy but they don’t struggle with hard work, they struggle with boring work. Before I knew I had ADHD I always found I was getting in trouble for not finishing boring work so I always used to prioritise tasks by how much fun they were and start with the most boring. I just ended up getting nothing done.
Then they also get mad when you find an easier way to accomplish the same thing in a fraction of the time or even automating it.
This is when you learn to just not tell anyone that you’re saving time and pretend it takes as long as everyone else lol
This reminds me of a punishment homework thing I was given in my youth, I had to write out something a bunch of times, which was a shit punishment to begin with and only happened once in like, grade 3 or something. Maybe even grade 1 when we were learning to write, idk. Maybe it wasn’t a punishment (it felt like one).
Instead of writing the letter “i” at the start of every line like I was supposed to, I just put a long line down the page to be that letter on every line.
The only part of this that I remember to this day is that I got it back with that line circled in red and the word “lazy!” Written next to it, with points off of the assignment for it.
That’s literally the only thing I recall about it, that finding an “easy” way to write the same letter across multiple lines was lazy, therefore I’m lazy and worthless. I don’t even remember if I passed or failed it, because that was less important to my young mind than being called lazy for simply trying to optimize my working time.
I dunno, but at this point I kind feel like that teacher was a bit of an asshole.
You gotta try to make a perfectly spaced dashed line down the page, as fast as you can. It’s a bit of a challenge and get all the I’s out of the way. Then the teacher can’t say boo.
I basically don’t write anything anymore. So no matter how “lazy” it might be, a dashed line like you suggest is a skill issue that I couldn’t master at age… 7?
I still haven’t because I don’t put pen to paper often, if at all. If I need to write 100 lines of the same thing, that’s what copy/paste is for.
I will say though, I’ve found putting pencil/pen to paper and brain dumping to be rather therapeutic at times! In your secret notebook you can even trash that teacher that tried to dissuade you from writing. :D
(Got this idea from The Artist’s Way book. Lol)
“Why didn’t you show your work, so I can see how you think?”
Because I did it in my head and got the right answer. This isn’t about you.
Lol I hated this too, I really did. But like a lot of answers here, I can appreciate it somewhat now. Especially when trying to learn to code.
I think learning to break down problems might even be MORE valuable to people like us with ADHD, even if we hate it, because we tend to intuit our way through things by the seat of our pants.
Also sometimes I got really lucky and arrived at the correct answer in a bizarre and inconsistent way.
In the end, it’s very valuable to be able to communicate your process to others. Even if it’s irritating and awful to get through.
I also wonder if those like myself, who really REALLY hated math until my brain started to appreciate it in my adult years, just gnash our teeth at these memories because it made us feel stupid when we struggled to keep up with that slow, methodical raw-logic stuff…
EDIT: I can see you were the polar opposite of myself, ridiculously GOOD at math but found it a waste of time showing how you got there. That makes sense. I have zero idea what that’s like lol.
I wouldn’t have minded it nearly as much, had they not accused me of cheating on the exam. That sticks in the craw.
It’s funny, because in high school, I remember getting poor marks on proofs - and HATING them - because I was like “this is so fucking obvious jesus tap dancing christ” and just… skipped lots of steps.
Fast forward to college and logic theory: that ended up being one of my favorite classes, because machine theory and problem reduction is a fascinating domain, and FAR more interesting than “prove this shape is the shape we say it is” or whatever vapid bullshit they had us doing in high school.
Ok but forcing me to show my work was one of those things I hated until I was extremely grateful for it. I didn’t need to show my work to prove my answer was correct in elementary school, but it was a slow drift from “I can do it in my head with ease” to “I need to document my steps so I can check where the error occurred”. Also “it’s not enough to be correct, you need to be correct with evidence” is the reality for people who do math for a living
Best I can do is lots of evidence proving I’m incorrect…
Better than no evidence
The “show your work” is about checking if you understand the logic in getting the answer. We had lots of questions out of 5. Right answer was only worth 1 mark, the other 4 were the steps and reasoning. This type of setup punishes those that skip right to the answer, or have memorized answers. But rewards those that show they know the concepts
What part of what you said changes what I said?
That you need to show your work, so they can test if they taught you the principles.
If I arrive at the correct answer every single time then I clearly understand the principles.
Maybe you do, but some arrive at the answer using the wrong techniwue that doesnt work when the equation is altered. There is no way you are doing calculus and functions and relations in your head. Process and method is the important part.
Right, so nothing.
My brain didn’t go through the steps like that. It looked at the problem and found the answer.
It’s why they thought I was cheating: my scantron results were above 90% correct, and the written portion was scored abysmally for lack of work.
That’s a failure of Test Design, not of student ability.
Do you understand the purpose of school, or…?
It doesn’t matter if you use mental math or not, you just need to write what you did in your head on the paper.
I think you are missing the point about the goal of schooling, it is not to get correct answers but to teach people methods of problem solving, so when faced with a brand new problem you can extrapolate methods and find a solution. As acedemia progresses solutions are not possible in your head, so applying principles is the goal.
I had the exact same problem.
I was always a space cadet in class, falling behind, but accelled in testing, add on top that I sucked at showing my work, and my teacher was adamant that I must be cheating somehow.
Literally every single damn math class I ever took
I had to retake an algebra 2 exam multiple times because they thought I was cheating- including sitting IN the principal’s office, yet the scores were all within points of each other.
They were so fucking salty about it too when there was no “gotcha.” I wish I could time travel back to advocate for myself, because I would have TORN THEM A NEW ONE. My parents were apathetic cowards.
Like all cutting injustices, it’s stuck with me.
I would have sued them personally for defamation just under the small claims court amount ($10k) with a jury demand. Small claims cases in my state cannot be dismissed for cause of action. They could ask for a summary judgement, but that would still cost more in attorneys fees than just settling.
Suing who? Admins right? Because you wouldn’t get much out of teachers. (In the US anyway) 😂
You can put a lien on their house if they didn’t pay. Then if they want to ever sell the house or get another loan they have to pay you.
That’s probably what better parents might have done. Mine did nothing.
Of course, to bring it up now is only to be met with a constant stream of, “I don’t remember that.”
The tree remembers what the axe forgets.
I deconstructed the underlying methodology of the creator of the system in order to understand their internalized blind spots or artificial limitations imposed on them by unrelated third parties at the time of the systems creation.
This applies so hard to programmers, as well. I love making things automated, but I never have the time to make them properly.
Me when I write a simple BASH script:
“Oh my gosh it actually WORKS!..Whelp, that should hold. On to the next thing!”
Come join us on the QA side! I’m an automation developer, so it’s my job to make things automated :)
Hahaha! I’m a full stack… I’m supposed to do both. Lol. I need more automation…!!!
Hello, me!
Why hello there, me! Have a great day. ;)
Add the extra layer of my mother not appreciating my interests and thinking what I now do for a living was a waste of time… And a dash of expecting me to somehow just be able to perfectly do chores they never taught me how to do when I was young. Yes, this is the first time I’ve ever mopped a floor at 17 years old. How the fuck is that my fault?
Shit, sounds a lot like my mom. She always complained I never helped with chores, but she never asked or told me to do any. Worse, whenever I did anything, like washing the dishes, instead of saying “thanks”, she would tell me to stop because she’d do it.
I remember this progress as a kid. Nothing was taught until after I did something wrong. It ended up discouraging me from trying, because every time I did something that I thought was “right,” my mom complained about it.
At first the rule was “put dirty dishes in the sink.”
Then when I put dishes in the sink, the complaint became, “Why did you put dishes in the sink without washing them?”
So then I learned to wash dishes, and set them in the drying rack. To which my mom would complain, “Why are there dishes in the drying rack? You should put them away.”
Okay, so I washed and put dishes in the cabinets. “Why are the dishes all wet?”
…
How about teaching kids each step beforehand, instead of complaining that they don’t magically know/do everything?
As a child of Baby Boomers, they really never wanted an answer - they just wanted to complain about something. And they probably never wanted to be parents in the first place.
God, it sucks to be a child of parents that never wanted children
Like I get that it was the social expectation but c’mon, what the hell, you brought me into existence, and for what?
My mom aborted my brother because she didn’t want a son. I think it was for the best. She was a manipulative abusive pos to my sister and I. I hate to think how she would have treated him.
:(
That hits hard because if I wasn’t adopted, that was almost my fate. Guess I wouldn’t have known either way…
But I’m glad I’m here, and I’m glad you and your sister are here. We can make this place better for each other. 🫂
It really do be falling on our few generations, huh? Fixing shit? Guess you’re right. I’m glad you got a chance at life with people who wanted you. I’m glad you’re alright.
This so much.
Keep it up with these posts, if I share enough of them with my clearly very painfully obviously super adhd girlfriend I might eventually convince her to go see a therapist and seek a diagnosis someday
Call her doctor, make an appointment, save it in her calendar, remind her in the lead up, drive her there, get the referral. Walk her to the post box to send it off, sit next to her to phone the intake office to confirm they got the referral, set appointments on her phone for every 6 months to sit with her and call to check the cancellation list until you get an appointment. Drive her to that appointment.
If she has ADHD, the steps involved in getting a diagnosis are bigger than Mt Everest, she will need a neurotypical Sherpa.
Call her doctor
Agh, they usually say “The patient needs to be the one to make the appointment.” >:(
But, yeah OP, if you are right there with her every step of the way, she can do it, and I bet that would be very helpful, like bowling with guard rails! She can feel the empowerment of doing the work, but you’re there to bump away the possibility of falling off into failure. :)
Oh I fully plan to, I’m not super neurotypical myself but I manage fine. There’s extenuating circumstances involving family insurance that means she probably can’t do it for another year or so but once that’s over I’m gonna drag her to all of that stuff.
I hope she does. I don’t think I’m ADHD but my partner was just diagnosed a few months ago. Now that we think about it it’s not a surprise at all lol
It feels really nice to have more understanding and more context for both of us.
I think it will help too. She resists by saying “well what will it really change?” but it can and will change quite a lot if she understands how her brain works and can build some support structures to help with it. She really doesn’t want to be medicated either which I totally get.
My ADHD doctor told me:
“Medication tends to be Plan Z. We do everything we can with working with your lifestyle, your habits, your thought patterns, and then consider the lowest effective dose if we need to.” I liked that approach. I didn’t want medication either.
Understanding how you work differently than others expect is extremely powerful.
However, eventually after MUCH STRUGGLE… I’m taking a puny 5mg generic Adderall daily…and it makes the monkey-radio stop switching channels in my brain for a minute.
A lot of people describe it like getting glasses when they didn’t think they needed them. “Wait… you’re supposed to be able to see all those leaves from this far!!! WOW!”
I guess just make sure you’re seeing a psychologist first, because psychiatrists are basically all ’ bout 'dem pills lol.
Totally agree, and get that. I wouldn’t want medication necessarily either. You don’t have to medicate at all! In fact maybe just knowing and working with it would be a good first test.
I did the opposite for the last part. I just went the “lazy” path of just doing hard things. As they were easy for me and rewarded more. If the hard things were rewarded less, why bother in the first place?
So I got based by teachers as “not precise enough” because they could clearly see I totally understood what the exercise wanted me to do, I just didn’t do “the easy part” of writing it properly.
I don’t have a diagnosis yet but this is extremely relatable to me and I hope it gets better when I get one
The only thing a diagnosis changes is external proof that you have ADHD. If that will help you then yes it will get better.
Personally I stopped taking ADHD meds. They changed me into a different person and I’d rather learn to live with myself.
I think it would help me feel more sure because I have some absolute proof that I’m making all of this up, although I have heard some people saying that they still have imposter sydrome. Also I hope that meds help me stay focused without tooo many side effects
I hope so too!
I got diagnosed a year ago lmao
Did it get better or just the same shit as before
On ritalin (adrerall is not allowed here) yeah it goes away.
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I feel fucking seen by this post
It rings right to my core
Same, feels very uncomfortable to confront personally. Ooof size: collosal.
I’m getting a sort of buffer underrun when doing routine so I’ll always try and make trivial tasks or busywork faster, more efficient, or superfluous through process design. When I cannot do that, I’ll listen to music or podcasts, that helps somewhat.
The main drawback of this condition is that many employers think I simply “like to work” and bury me in even more busywork.The reward for being good at toil is more toil.
Signed,
The guy who was good at streamlining and ended up with 3-4 different jobs but only one salaryThat’s why I think it can suit us quite well to be self-employed, and get paid to do enough different challenging things to keep it interesting.
Your work directly translating into money is nice.
But also, huge asterisk there, because I found out my carefully honed 3D modeling skills aren’t worth “living money” unless you’re crazy good, and also the official stuff like licensing and taxes are totally those “pick up your socks boring tasks” that we put off at the last minute sooo…
I dunno, I can’t seem to decide whether it’s worth trying to find a job I can “leave at work” that doesn’t drive me crazy, or hustle to make my own venture viable. 🤔
I can’t stand the thought of selling myself every few years to job hop, let alone having to do it every day trying to monetize one of the few things left that I enjoy. When I was coming out of high school I entertained the thought of running my own PC/electronics repair business. It took maybe two months as a field service tech to put those thoughts away for good.
This is the ultimate lesson, especially if you’re in a for-profit venture. That is what I have learned from decades of working: Never do more work than the minimum that is expected from you.
It isn’t as bad if you work at an NGO or in public service of some type, because at least the fruits of your labor don’t go directly into the pockets of uber-wealthy CEOs. But if you’re in the private sector, fuck all that shit.
It’s actually the normies who can’t even do laundry without a little neurotransmitter bottle from mommy frontal cortex. We fight demons every day.
"Your home is tidy because you anticipate getting a little dopamine reward for a job well done. (How cute)
My home is tidy through determination, anger, sheer force of will, to do the thing despite every fiber of my being desperately trying to pull me away from it. Knowing that it simply must be done has to suffice as its own reward.
We are not the same."
There are lots of boring un stimulating tasks that are super important that’s the issue. I have adhd and I cope with my issues to be able to be a functional adult. Things like the dishes and the laundry and cleaning need to be done. Some task that seem repetitive for forcing a basic understanding of the subject. I’ve met so many people in my field who are adhd and say they are super productive on complex tasks but lack basic understanding on fundamental subjects in the field because they skip all the “boring stuff”. Life is not always exciting or stimulating sometimes you have to force yourself to do something. Neurotypicals do the same thing.
The difference with ADHD, especially untreated ADHD, and the idea of “sometimes you have to force yourself to do something” is that, as a person with ADHD, trying to force myself to do stuff, without the assistance of medication, can often be a bit like trying to nail jello to the wall.
It might work for a short time, but eventually, it’ll be laying on the floor, not doing what you want it to do… Much like me.
The paralysis is very real and very strong. The contrary feelings fighting eachother in your head, one voice saying how important it is and that you need to do it, another that’s breaking down the task into every motion required, so one job becomes a quintillion individual steps, which makes you feel overwhelmed and anxious at even the thought of trying to do the job, and another voice berating you for being a lazy fuck who can’t even do the most simple shit, like get off the couch and do the thing.
In the end you just feel horrible, both about the thing you should have done and about your worth as a person, leading to depression, which exacerbates the issue further.
It’s a cycle of violence that most ADHD people have suffered with for their entire life.
Well thanks for confirming that I’ve had undiagnosed ADHD for my entire life.
I know. I am diagnosed adhd and untreated training your willpower and your self control is possible. It requires dedication and finding what works right for you. For me I use extreme scheduling, I wake up at the same time every day and sleep at the same time, every meal same time. As soon as I know I need to do something I immediately right it down, dishes cleaning everything is scheduled. It took years but it’s also been working for years. Start small force yourself to do small things. It is harder than it is for a neurotypical but that’s the burden we bare. Best you can do is deal with it using medication, therapy and mindfulness. You are more then your serotonin levels you don’t need to enjoy something to do it. You don’t even need to be engaged. The neurotypical secret is most the things they do they half ass, don’t worry about perfection just do. Another thing I see adhd people have trouble with is trying to multi task all the time. Don’t it’s a trap your brain isn’t ment for context switching that much. You can modulate yourself a lot better then you think you can. It’s just hard but that’s doesn’t mean it isn’t worth doing
My work doesn’t afford me to be focused on a single task until completion. That’s the nature of the job I have, and there’s nothing that I can do, nor anything my manager can do about that.
Forcing myself into rigorous scheduling is a trap for my mind. If a task takes longer than expected (which is frequent because I’m also very time blind), then I feel like I’m running behind and I have to rush to catch up. If something takes less time than expected, I end up in the mental trap of “I don’t need to do x until y time” so I go do something else, and that distraction usually puts me behind my schedule, back to the first problem.
I end up constantly panicked because I’m running behind all the time. At the end of the day, though I may have completed everything, and done so in a reasonable timeframe, the only emotion that lingers is the feeling of disappointment in myself, that I couldn’t keep up with the schedule.
That feeling leads to depression, which leads to me giving up on the entire system, after skipping it for several weeks and being “several weeks behind” on everything; and that leads to further depression.
If your scheduling thing works for you, awesome, I’m glad you found something that works for you, for the reasons I’ve stated and so many more, it does not work for me.
However, I recognise that you’re saying this because you found what works for you, and it’s brought so much order to the chaos that is normal for your mind from before; and you want to help others find the same happiness you have using this method. That’s fine, and I hope your comment helps someone. I’m not that someone. I appreciate what you’re trying to do here regardless.
I have my own solution now, and it’s working quite well for me. My doctor and I built the therapy that I use to maintain order in the chaos of my life and mind, and I recognize that my therapy isn’t going to work for others. Which is why I’m not saying what it specifically involves. I will say that medication is part of it. It works for me, and if anyone wants to pursue something similar, they should talk with their doctor about what therapy might be right for them.
I won’t tell you that your methodology doesn’t work, it clearly does. It works for you.
The only point I’m trying to make here is that, though it may work for you, it may not work for others, and they will have to find a different solution and/or therapy for themselves which works for them.
There is no universal solution for ADHD. For some it can be managed with mindfulness, scheduling, and a force of will, and little more. Others may need assistance in the form of gadgets, widgets, and thingamajigs (maybe fidget things? IDK)… Others may only need a small amount of medication to manage it, and others may need multiple medications before they see the results they’re after.
All of these methods of therapy are valid for the people that benefit from them. Most of them won’t work for most ADHD people, they’ll have to find which one is going to work for them, and it’s likely that one or more will work, they’ll just have to figure out which one is the best for them by working with their doctor to figure it out. Hopefully that doctor is a psychiatrist with a specialty in ADHD; but I digress.
I’ve tried most of what you suggest and it did not work for me. That’s fine. It works for you and I’m happy for that. The fact that I couldn’t use that method to overcome my challenges, doesn’t, and shouldn’t imply that I’m somehow worse for it, or that I lack willpower, or that I can’t make the hard choice or make the sacrifice to make it work. I’m easily one of the most willful people I know, even before I started my current therapy. The condition is simply more complex than a matter of having the willpower to overcome it. That may work for some, like yourself; or it may work for short periods of time, like it did for me; or it may not work at all for others. Everyone is different.
I don’t know if it’s harder to force ourselves to do the “boring stuff” more than neurotypicals, but I know the main reason I do the things I do is “because someone has to do it.” Kind of a sucky reason to do anything, but it at least helps me get through some of the everyday tasks, even if not completely. Everyone has to find their own way to cope, doesn’t matter if we have ADHD or something “wrong” with us or not. One thing to keep in mind is an imperfect something is better than a perfect nothing
Exactly, personally I use the mantra “do what must be done” and try to make it feel inevitable
For fucking real. Same deal with autism for me.
What hurts is guessing wrong what people around you care about and then realizing that what they care about is the thing you cared about before you realized that they actually just didn’t understand what you were actually worried about. It starts to feel like the matrix but you aren’t NEO you’re just the cat.
having grown up with ADD and ADHD being huge in schools and then reading countless studies over the past few decades about how inaccurate diagnoses and the understanding of ADD and ADHD are, I will be very cautious in administering any medication to my children for popular syndromes.
I grew up in such times, myself. I was diagnosed as likely ADHD as a child but never treated because of a mix of stigma and my parents taking that exact reasoning. This led to a childhood of anxiety, academic issues, depression, social awkwardness, and struggling in university, despite having no problems understanding the coursework. As an adult, it caused problems in work and relationships.
I received a diagnosis of “minor adult ADHD” about 5 years ago and received treatment for the first time in my life, which has been life-changing.
My point is: don’t underestimate the impact and trauma caused by living in this society without help to compensate for the challenges that neurodivergent brains have to deal with.
yep, exactly.
for those whom treatment is necessary, safe, effective, and desired, treatment should be available.
neurodivergence, adhd included, is actually widely underdiagnosed - some doctors estimate 1 in 5 people is neurodivergent. And those rates have been rising (though possibly because of increased acceptance)
Turns out it was a small sect known as the “Morning People” oppressing everyone for millennia.
Exactly. They’re the divergent ones.
I recently read an article about a doctor who was making a case that the issue is not that those 1 in 5 are “neurodivergent”, but our current society is causing harm. When he sees ADHD symptoms his first “treatments” are proper nutrition, making sure they feel like they’re doing meaningful things in life, enough exercise, etc…
I’m also sometimes starting to wonder if for a part we’re not just medicating people to “thrive” in a society that’s inhuman, rather than make society work for as many people as possible.
But it’s of course a very complex & grey area, and let’s be honest, something as vague as ADHD probably encompasses a lot of different causes. And it’ll probably take decades of research before we actually manage to split up all the things that are today lumped together into the separate things with each their own propert treatment.
I think I get you.
Like, what if we’re just different, but we need “treatment” to survive in a society that runs on already inhuman paradigms that are called “normal”?
There’s a lot of conflict and debate on this. Would ADHD folks still be “disabled” in a world that didn’t attempt to force them to run like a misshapen gear in industrial-revolution clockwork? Maybe.
I still think it’s a disability though. One we can make peace with, but it makes general survival a huge pain to deal with, and not just in modernized inhuman society.
The correct treatment can make these things much more manageable.
It can have perks. And I like my personality the way it is…but calling it a “superpower” is a huge stretch too. I really don’t think it’s some kind of cool “evolutionary fork” like some people want to push.
I hate lots of things about modern society and it’s sociopath expectations, but also we must be careful not to fall into the trap of not helping people cope when their life falls apart when left to their own devices.
Sounds like you’re putting forward theories of someone who doesn’t believe in ADHD, and then immediately walking it back. Why even type it?
ADHD uses pretty powerful drugs. If you don’t have a specific indicator, just behavior then it is normal and correct to try and treat it through other means first.
What are you talking about, spending 8 hours a day in a chair staring into a light-up rectangle and getting yelled at over the phone is the natural human state, and anyone who can’t force themselves to do so has something wrong with them.
Seriously, though, the problem is real. A psychologist can be fully aware the patient has anxiety about paying rent because they can’t make rent, but the only tool available to help them in a professional capacity is treating the anxiety. Same goes for depression and the rest. Hell, thinking about it now, same would have been true of drapetomania.
right, and with that sort of prevalence, and so little detrimental effects to society, there isn’t good enough evidence for advocating “treatment” of most people who just think differently than other people.
largely, they notice or pay attention to different things, so “treatments” are unnecessary, obtrusive or damaging.
exception given to extreme cases, “treating” ADHD seems a lot like removing funding for arts courses because school administrators don’t value the arts.
Hi. I failed out of college, in no small part due to undiagnosed ADHD. I wanna offer a little pushback.
I can’t tell if you want to change society to be less punishing to neurodivergent people, or if your whole thesis is “People with ADHD have little to no trouble in society today”.
If it’s the former: not treating people who are struggling is not the way to change society. Accepting for the sake of argument that ADHD people “pay attention to different things”; paying attention to some things is critical to my ability to thrive. I would love to live in a world where I could just do what I thought was important and still have my needs taken care of, but unfortunately I’m stuck needing to pay attention to stupid bullshit I don’t care about in order to make a living, and that’s a tremendous struggle without medication.
If it’s the latter: Jesus Christ, talk to someone with ADHD.
And finally: I take issue with your metaphor at the end. What do you think is present in an unmedicated person with ADHD that is somehow missing in a medicated person?
“less punishing to neurodivergent people”
I mostly agree with this.
“People with ADHD have little to no trouble in society today”
i disagree, that is antithetical to my previous comment.
that said, neurotypical or divergent, if you don’t have trouble in society today, I want to know more about your society.
“not treating people who are struggling is not the way to change society”
yes, and neither is treating people who don’t wish to be treated or are treated unnecessarily.
are you sure you’re responding to the right comment? I haven’t said many of the things you are arguing against so far.
“and that’s a tremendous struggle without medication”
then according to my previous comment, you are one of the extreme cases that need and want intervention, and should receive it.
“I take issue with your metaphor at the end”
I gather from your preceding assumptions and arguments against things that I have not said, along with your general combative tone, that you have been quixoticaly swept up in an imagined narrative that you feel you must do battle with.
“What do you think is present in an unmedicated person with ADHD that is somehow missing in a medicated person?”
missing? nothing.
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Combative? Take a look in the mirror pal.
I guess I’m ultimately confused about what you’re arguing for. My ADHD is by no means “extreme”; trouble focusing at work or school is one of the baseline things you’re unlikely to get diagnosed without. I can’t imagine any reasonable person advocating for medicating people who don’t stand to benefit from it, which seems to be the motte to your bailey.
“Combative?”
yup.
“Take a look in the mirror pal.”
thank you! that was a nice break.
“I guess I’m ultimately confused about what you’re arguing for.”
I would suggest asking the source for clarification or further information rather than misattributing assumptions and then arguing against those assumptions, none of which are present in the comment you are confused by and subsequently railing against.
“I can’t imagine any reasonable person advocating for medicating people who don’t stand to benefit from it”
tolerant place you’re from.
“seems to be the motte to your baile”
how so?
My original comment isn’t controversial and I didn’t switch positions either.
is this a gaslighting attempt?
are you lighting my gas?
A… Are you a neurotypical telling us what is good for us…? Wow
Oh yeah, light that gas daddy.
we don’t give a shit what “detriment to society” adhd is. Executive dysfunction is detrimental to the quality of life, and that’s one symptom amongst many
the society was built for neurotypical people, and so neurodiverse people need help to function in it in a way that doesn’t make them feel worthless - and that means treatment, be it with therapy and/or meds
“Executive dysfunction is detrimental to the quality of life”
stroof.
“neurodiverse people need help to function in it in a way that doesn’t make them feel worthless”
some neurodiverse people do, but your reasoning implies that neurotypical people do not feel worthless in today’s society.
that’s a take that won’t stand up to much scrutiny.
“…treatment, be it with therapy and/or meds”
apparently we’re in agreement.
treatment, when necessary, effective, and desired, should be available.
