ADHD Women

You gotta live in the world that exists, not the one you wish for.

But also, you gotta strive for the world you wish for while living in the one that exists.

There's a big gray area between "being an asshole" and "refusing to constantly eat other people's shit", and a lot of what's acceptable to ask for is merely what's in vogue rather than what's needed.

I have a middle aged cousin with severe, untreated autism and he had to learn to live alone, get a job, pay rent, etc.

My friend's sister has Down's Syndrome and she's learning to walk again after breaking her ankle at the job that pays her less than subsistence, because that's a thing you can legally do to people with Down's Syndrome.

Then theres the flipside where you function too well to get any supports, but getting that level of functioning takes an insanely prioritized lifestyle that leaves you failing at basically everything, but not enough to get supports, but in order to fail enough to get supports you'd have to lose the little you have that you are desperately trying to cling on to

Sounds like YOU gotta live in the world that exists, not the one you wish for.

Glad your cousin, a one-off individual that you know, got a job and could afford rent. I've worked myself to near death at plenty of jobs, and have never made enough to cover rent for myself. Let alone food, bills, etc.

Get down off your high horse and quit measuring our lives by your ruler.

Edit: This guy shows up, spouts some nasty judgement against ND folks, compared us all to their cousin who is "one of the good ones", and I'm the one getting down voted? What the actual fuck?

That sounds an awful lot like emotional repression, and it’s not healthy. Those generations are not known for their impeccable mental health.

I also hope you realize your comment implies that people with ADHD and autism just need some willpower to feel better.

Let's not forget the survivorship bias at play here. I don't want to take this somewhere morbid, but the older people you know survived to make it to be old. There were people from their generation with undiagnosed issues that did not.

If that were true a lot of people weren't struggling as much as they do.

I think you are right to an extent, but the philosophy isn't healthy, though I don't think you are wrong in pointing it out, you are just pointing to the cracks in the sidewalk. I think it's more in line with the idea of being born without a finger or a hand. As you progress in life you adjust and learn to live with your disability. It's the same for mental health, except that you can't just point to your missing attention span and say, "it's a disability." People want proof, otherwise they think you are trying to take advantage (a problem that arose in the late 50s as a response to the Beat generation, and propagated by the government through Vietnam and onwards). The older generations have the same problems as us, but if they are old enough to be around to talk about it then they have learned to adapt. This is a dangerous way of thinking in the same way that it's dangerous for a parent to tell a teen that life isn't that difficult in high school. Sure, with more life experience it may be easier to cope, but that experience doesn't mean fuck all to the teen dealing with bullying. Problems are problems, and ignoring your fellow human isn't the cure, it's just another disease. Be kind.

People are downvoting you, but I think you are on to something.

My parents and grandparents are/were quite similar to me, but never diagnosed. It wouldn't surprise me if a few of them also have/had ADHD.

That said, without therapy or medication I noticed that they learned to just plough through. That was their coping strategy. It isn't 100% successful, but it was what they had.

I also think the distractions of modern life don't help. With smartphones, the internet, games and streaming services - there are just so many distractions that make life harder.

Perhaps "ploughing through" would work better without all the distractions.