With so many disorder Tiktoks around I can’t help but fail to spot the difference between having actual ADHD vs just having poor focus habits.
I myself have trouble focusing on tasks but I doubt I actually have ADHD given the recent surge of disorder Tiktoks - tho I do have autism - and that my focus is typically normal on tasks I devote to like gaming.
ADHD IS NOT JUST AN INABILITY TO FOCUS. Look up the diagnosis metrics. There are going to be a list of “symptoms” and you have to look at your entire life and analyze if those things have happened to you.
ADHD made me suicidal, and horrifically depressed; as I was unable to focus or stick to anything, which was causing me to fail at every aspect of my life. It was like going through life in a deep fog, with a mind that actively resisted any and all attempts to change. Imagine not having mental control over your own body.
If you’ve every played Silent Hill, I was living my life how it feels to walk through the fog filled town.
I had been on every single anti depressant known to man, stumping my psychiatrist because none of them worked. My hell only ended when I told my Psychiatrist that I was most likely going to be dead within a few months, causing him in desperation (and probably not entirely legally) to prescribe me stimulants without an official diagnosis under the cover that it was off label for my depression.
My life painfully changed over the course of the next 8 months. It was like waking up from a deep coma in which you are aware of everything going on around you, but you are unable to affect it in any way. I essentially metamorphized.
I have since then received an official diagnosis, and my life has been incredible since. It took months of work, and personal growth, but I managed to change.
This organization is incredible, you can find all related information here.
https://chadd.org/for-adults/diagnosis-of-adhd-in-adults/
Yep. All of this, so much. ADHD comes with so many obstacles. Violent mood swings and hyperfixations that in my case were misdiagnosed as bipolar, etc. Easy burnout. Rejection sensitivity that makes communication and goal achievement more difficult. Executive dysfunction where it is harder to do things I want to do. Inability to juggle multiple obligations at once.
In my experience, these are things that everyone deals with on an individual basis to some extent. So for a long time I gaslit myself thinking that I didn’t have it. But after finally being affirmed (the isolation from the pandemic shut-down and I think recovering from COVID infection really destroyed my capacity to mask) I look back on my entire life since childhood and recognize just how much of the trauma I suffered had roots in my untreated ADHD.
Unsolicited advice incoming but you rightfully put a lot of emphasis on the emotional dysregulation aspect of ADHD, which gets chronically overlooked.
Personally I have found that clonidine works really well for my experience of emotional dysregulation and rejection sensitivity. It’s a boring medication - typically it’s just used for lowering blood pressure and it’s quite safe and generally well tolerated. (Obviously stimulant medications increase your BP so taking something that reduces your BP as a side effect is actually beneficial in the long term.)
It might be something that is worth looking into for yourself given what you wrote here.
As a sidebar, I also experience PTSD and clonidine helps with managing my trauma response. One perk of the medication is that it’s fast acting and you don’t get major withdrawals from it so if I had a ton of trauma nightmares the night before or if I’m struggling with PTSD symptoms during the day for whatever reason, I can just increase my dose as needed on that particular day and it helps keep things manageable for me.
Ah, I’ll definitely look into that. Just got through a night of ptsd nightmares myself. Thank you
Oh, shit. Well I’m glad that I mentioned that last part then because I almost didn’t do it. I hope it turns out to be useful advice for you!
I’m sorry to hear you had to go through all that but I’m glad you’re better now and that you shared your story. If you don’t mind answering (please don’t feel obliged at all), can I ask whether you still need simulants or whether that was temporary?
Treatment for ADHD is lifelong. It is like diabetes, when you give a person with diabetes insulin, they will feel better and be a different person, but they cannot just simply stop taking insulin.
I do still take stimulant daily. It is the exact same dosage that me and my doctor worked to find a long while ago. I have no desire to take more, and I no longer have side effects or very minor ones since they petter off after a few months.
It is possible for people to come off stimulants if they wish, but that is rare, and mostly pointless since it’s not as if ADHD is magically going to disappear. It essentially becomes a Plato’s cave scenario.
It’s a shame that you’ve got to think about taking them everyday but I suppose it becomes habit? And great news that you’ve found the right dosage.
It’s just a habit. You just take one pill as soon as you wake up, that’s it. Same as vitamins, or you can do it with breakfast.
I did not have poor focusing problems until lockdown 3 years ago so that’s immediately a sign I DON’T have ADHD.
Though I do have an Autism diagnosis and still show signs of it today.
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/autism/signs/children/ - not sure if the NHS site is reliable.
Focus is not the only symptom, did you read the list on the website I linked? Read the diagnosis section.
Also, autism and ADHD are commonly comorbid.
There needs to be further research on this but ADHD occurs in autistic people at an approximate rate of somewhere between 20-40%.
There’s very little out there about autism or ADHD for adults and almost nothing about comorbid autism and ADHD in adults.
Speaking anecdotally as someone who is autistic and an ADHDer, I fit into neither the ADHD nor the autism categories neatly. My ADHD traits often counterbalance my autistic traits and, likewise, my autistic traits often counterbalance my ADHD traits. (At least when they aren’t ganging up on me.) It’s very complex.