Asklemmy

"Just do [X]" does not compute, whether X is "yoga", "sports", "[specific diet]", "the laundry", or simply "it". It is never simply "just". The inability to "just" start doing a thing (especially without any immediate reward) is one of the central symptoms of ADHD and if you say "just do [X]", you're essentially saying "just don't have ADHD".

ADHD also doesn't mean you are/were bad in school. Not by a long shot.

I'm aware that I am a very messy person and I desperately wish I wasn't. My executive dysfunction makes cleaning and keeping things clean so damn hard

The more I read all this, the more I understand that I should diagnose for ADHD as those descriptions are just too damn fitting.

I was always sort of smart and stupid at the same time, unable to focus on specific things while being hyper-focused on something not always relevant. Procrastinating like crazy, but when it’s really bad, able to do a lot last minute.

Reading one sentence over and over again and still not knowing what it says is definitely something that did happen to me many times, I'm just focused on something else and cannot help it.

Thriving on chaos.

Feeling the calmest when in a tempest.

That they have it

Everything, but mostly that it gets its name based on what annoys others instead of what bothers us. Attention problems and Hiperactivity are just two tiny parts of ADHD. There are other much more significant symptoms

In general the disorder is related to not properly processing neurotransmitters so everything that is "managed" by neurotransmitters can be out of whack. And some folks seem to have more problems with one kind of neurotransmitters than others.

Neurotransmitters are things like Dopamine, Serotonin, Endorfine, Noradrenalin. Example of stuff that are managed by them: Movement, control of the body, stress, sleep, attention, memory, learning, inhibition, joy, pain relief.

So, just by that you can probably imagine how broad the effects of ADHD might be.

We still don't know any way to treat the root cause effectively (neurotransmitters being "killed"). The only thing that helps, is forcing the body to generate more of those neurotransmitters, hoping that it'll process more of them that way. That works even with different stuff. If we generate more Dopamine, the body ends up processing more of the Serotonin it already produces too. That's why stimulants work so well at regulating us - it floods our brain with artificial stuff that end up "shielding" the natural stuff to let them do their job too.

That is also why stimulants can sometimes make us more relaxed or even sleepy - it's not that the stimulant itself causes that, but it let's the body finally process everything properly so it can understand that it is supposed to be sleepy.

For someone without ADHD where the neurotransmitters are processed properly, stimulants will do nothing more than stimulate.

When there are no more spoons, you need to just go to bed.

That me starting work at 2 am is not my choice, it's my brain's choice

Communication is difficult for us. Masking is tiring as fuck.

It doesn’t manifest exactly the same in everyone with ADHD

We have excess focus just no control over its direction.