I’m going with my inability to think about anything that isn’t currently in range of my senses.
That bill that needs paid, that doctors appointment, the fact that there’s half a gallon of gas in my car, NONE of it exists until I get an email, calendar alert, or I hop in the car and need to be somewhere in 5 minutes.
People take good drugs to reach that state of not thinking about things!
Sometimes I feel like I can’t clean up because if I put something away I won’t remember about it anymore. Imagine the chaos.
My desk at work is scattered with sticky notes and scratch paper. If I clear them before they are resolved EVERYTHING would fall apart.
As much as I dislike diagnosing strangers on the internet… this is classic ADHD. The brain doesn’t really form working memory so short-term things just don’t exist unless you see them. Meds help but even still I rely on a lot of those same tools you described. I can’t live without my calendar with everything written down. I have daily alarms for set things in my schedule so I don’t forget. Notes around my workspace that don’t go until the task is 100% resolved. I’ve also learned to organize my house so that as many things as possible are visible. If it’s away in a cabinet then it may as well not be there so I have a ton of nice-looking baskets and things all around for organization. I think the only things in my house that are really tucked away are dishes and cleaning supplies, mostly out of necessity for space/safety. And even those I’ll remember because they a separate task will drive me to need them and seek them out.
I spent years thinking I had a serious memory problem. A partner once said my memory was worse than her ex who had brain damage. I accepted it as just a part of me. Turns out, I have severe ADHD and the Adderall does wonders for my day-to-day functioning.
I think your diagnosis is spot on. A few years ago I decided to learn more about ADHD to help me understand my new stepson, and as I’m reading “Unlike a neurotypical brain, someone with ADHD will…” and I realized that I couldnt relate to the “normal” descriptions at all.
I asked my Doctor about my discovery (nearly 40 years into my life) and he said a lot of people thought they developed mental disorders over the pandemic and since I currently had a job, (he didn’t bother to learn it was my fourth one in the last 6 years) that I seemed “to be doing alright enough”.
Fucking asshole.
Some doctors can be real shitty like that sometimes. The medical community’s understanding of ADHD has really evolved a lot over the past couple decades, but a lot of people are still stuck in the mindset that it’s mostly in kids or that if you’re managing your life then it’s not worth worrying about. The good news is you can bypass them! Typically a good doctor will send you to a therapist for an eval, so you can just find your own to do the test. It usually takes longer to get an appointment, but if you can get with a psychiatrist and not a psychologist you don’t even need to go back to a doc for meds. Psychology today’s website is a pretty good starting point to find someone in your area that focuses on ADHA, and possibly even adults with ADHD. The diagnosis takes some time and often finding the right meds can be a long journey sometimes, but when you find what works it can be life changing.
I have ability to ignore pain, stressful situation and/or things I don’t want , it has helped me immensely but also is a problem when I have to understand people’s nature , what type they are, it also does not help me control my emotions, when I am excited to meet some one, I will just talk truth to them.
I believe it’s kind of like autism, cause I know I should control myself but I really can’t it’s like I am on cliff and falling down but I can’t find the rock to hold onto , I just talk.
That there must be something fundamentally unlikable about me but I don’t know what it is and nobody seems to want to tell me so that I can change it.
I’m not one to default to “counselor!”, but I don’t know how else you get an honest opinion.
I don’t see how a counselor is going to give me an objective answer when they only know my perception of things. They don’t know how I interact with people in real life, no matter how self aware and honest I try to be.
It’s worth trying. They can breakdown situations and tell you how it looks from an outside perspective be it something you did or something you said.
Without knowing much, if you’re closed off to this idea, maybe you’re closed off to the people you’re interacting with also?
I went to the local counselor last year and I ready don’t like her and do not trust her opinion. It’s not a counselor thing in general, but I genuinely don’t see how someone with such a limited perspective of my personality could tell me why I cant get people to be my friend or where I’m going wrong when interacting with people. Am I supposed to recall past social interactions so they can critique it based on how I remember it? That doesn’t make any sense to me.
You don’t have to stick with the same person. Ask for a consult and if you aren’t vibing with them just move on.
Social workers, counsellors, therapists are trained to talk through these things and understand your thought process. There are basic needs every human has, and you’d be surprised how they can help you with your own introspection.
It can be mock conversations or real ones, you can talk about how you would typically act or respond to people, and they will help you understand others possible perspectives.
There’s a lot a therapist can offer you.
Mental health services in my area are severely limited, unfortunately. We literally have a counselor and an emergency psychiatrist that you have to end up in the psych ward to see. I’d do something about my shortcomings if I had options that were not Better Help, trust me. It’s pretty shitty being aware of your problems and having no means of fixing them and I certainly wouldn’t choose this path.
Sorry to hear your options are so limited. That’s quite unfortunate (seems to be the case for too many people).
Are there any online services in your area? It’s not ideal but you could do virtual sessions?
Interacting with a counselor is interacting with a person in real life. That’s kinda the point.
no matter how self aware and honest I try to be
Unless you’re not actually doing that?
You’re free to interact with me, anyway you like. Hell, you can call me. I’ll be open and honest with my reactions, nothing to lose. For what it’s worth, I’m old, maybe I got some perspective for you. Don’t mean I’m wise! DM me though. Post responses keep getting lost. Maybe you can help me with that?
And keep working on being self-aware and honest. That never hurt anyone.
At very least I try to be to honest with myself, I’m sure that doesn’t always work because I’m human, but as far as I know I am pretty aware of my faults.
But the way I interact with a counselor is not how I interact with anyone else that I come across. The setting is very awkward and I am very bad at communicating how I feel or do things. It would be very inaccurate.
I know at least two times when I was definitely hallucinating in my adult life, which makes me uncertain how many other times I was hallucinating that I don’t know about.
Sure your memory of events wasn’t scrambled? That’s common with our brains. Seeing Yoda sitting on the TV is a different deal.
When I did meth 20-years ago, I had a banger after 3-days. Sat on the phone with my mom, soberly discussing what was happening at my apartment, no idea it wasn’t real. People were walking in and out, chatting with me.
We talking that kinda hallucination? A whole story that played out? Or you just see something for a flash, something that couldn’t be real?
The first one was a “what I’m seeing can’t be real, trucks don’t grow lips” and then having to look back on a weird few days and wonder how much of it happened as it appeared.
The more recent one could be a scrambled memory thing, I suppose. It was very “Mandela Effect”, the world was one way for a long time and then suddenly it wasnt. I rode past this mural every day on my commute, some basketballer shilling cognac, and the ad read “Never let them see your next move”. Then, one day and forever after, it read “Make moves that make movements.” There was one specific day I noticed it was different than I remembered, very unsettling.
In effect, if one was a true hallucination (stress, fatigue, now-discontinued energy drink) and the other was an overwritten memory, the result is the same: I can’t trust my own brain and the inputs it gives me.
Were you really sleep deprived, by chance? Because it’s actually not overly unusual in that case. Sleep deprivation wreak havoc on the body and brain.
Ooh I like this one… or do I? Does this comment even exist?
My codependency. I completely rely on others for my own validity. If people are busy/don’t want to hang, it really upsets me.
I know it burns out my closest friends. I talk to most of them daily and over analyze the fuck out of our friendship if they get busy/distracted.
I’m honestly lucky I still have the ones I do. I’m also starting my first therapy session on 31 Jan so I don’t lose the people I have in my life.
The fact you’re aware of that is huge! You’re on your way!
Bruh Lemmy is so fucking supportive and wholesome. Thank you!
I will admit tho, it’s taken me until my mid-thirties to hit this point, and there are many relationships from my past that I wish I could have saved. Can’t dwell there though, gotta save the ones I have now and be the best wife I can be for my husband (and the best me I can be for myself!)
I 100% believe you’ve got this. You’re 90% of the way there already. You have identified a problem, determined the source of the problem, determined the problem’s current and probable effects in your lives and the lives of others, identified several solutions, and have a plan in place. All you need is the methodology for solving this problem (which you already have on the calendar).
You’re so close!
My immediate problem is I have an extremely hard time asking for help, in any context. I think it stems from trust issues. My immediate thought when something needs to be done is “I will do it, or it won’t be done and I will deal with that outcome”, because I think the chances someone else will actually do it when asked, the way I want it done, are pretty low.
Makes you a rock star at work until you break under that expectation you set. Makes for weird relationship dynamics when you help all the time and never ask/expect that it will be reciprocated. It’s just not a great position for fostering healthy interpersonal dynamics in general. I’d argue that it might also sap energy from working towards some things you want done, and are unhappy, deep down, are left undone.
I think there’s even a name for it - helper syndrome or something. It’s a weird “It actually works pretty well, until it doesn’t” position.
Oh hey you’re me? I am working on this with my therapist right now and we’ve been thinking it’s a trauma response from a mix of my mother being a leech, being constantly abandoned as a kid, and the subsequent need for control with a dozen or two little side dishes in there to flesh out the ‘I will never ask for help’ dinner.
It’s difficult for me too sometimes. I was sick so I was trying to figure out who should I ask to bring me some medicine from pharmacy or whether to not ask anyone. Maybe I could go there myself even though I was very sick or maybe I could be without medicine. Finally I asked a friend. I almost didn’t ask her because I didn’t want to bother her and I would’ve hated it if she said no.
God, where would I even begin? I hate almost everything about myself.
One big thing I cannot stand is how emotionally overreactive I am. When I get upset about something, I get so deeply and incredibly upset to the point where it doesn’t even make sense. I feel things way too incredibly deeply and I hate it.
Another is that I endlessly frustrate myself by being lonely, but at the same time never putting myself out there to try to meet new people. But I hate new people and getting to know them. I only like people that I already know well.
And to top it all off, I made the mistake of letting someone get too close to my heart only for them to leave me. It’s not even their fault because they are literally just my coworker…we weren’t even friends outside of work. But I made the mistake of liking them and getting close to them. And if I can’t even handle that with just a coworker, I don’t know how I could ever put myself out there to be vulnerable for a relationship more than that knowing that they might leave me.
My insurance changes Jan 1st and I’m going to really try to give therapy a go this time around when I get my updated insurance info. I tried months back but quit after one session after seeing the price. Honestly I wonder if I need pills or something because I am just so incredibly frustrated with life and everything and I can’t stop crying like an idiot.
Good luck on your journey! Therapy is expensive and it can take a while until you find the right therapist. But it will be worth it, trust me.
Good luck buddy! Therapy really helped me, although it might take a few tries to find a therapist you like.
Procrastination. Seriously, I’m meant to be in bed right now!
My inability to both talk to new people, and stop talking once I start. It’s like I have to mentally burst through a brick wall, and then can’t figure out how to stop.
I feel awkward as fuck.
It’s OK to not talk…it is also OK to talk too much
Let me try on this one because I feel you.
It’s tough to interact, I feel the same way with literally every person I meet.
Ask a question, ideally open ended, not yes or no.
“Hey this is my friend bigchungus”
You: hey, I’m a buddy of op from his gay porno days. How do you know op?
It incentives the other person to share a little about themselves. And then just be curious. They’ll ask you plenty of questions but the reality is everyone else knows way more about the world combined than you do. Be open, share, but pause and see what their reaction is.
I find most of the people I connect with are people I think I may have nothing in common with but the more I ask them questions the more I realize we are similar and it’s easier to open up to.
Also alcohol. Alcohol and drugs. But mainly the the first part.
ADHD. I blurt shit out. My emotions are about 6 steps ahead of the rest of my brain. Uninteresting things are death. Time is either too fast or too slow. Sitting still for long periods of time is torture
You can make a virtue out of it.
I also can’t sit still. Not even for two minutes. But I have a job at the computer. Requires sitting most of the time.
I think that I’m never going to get spinal disc problems like all the other people who sit all day long. Spinal discs need motion to stay healthy. Trouble comes from sitting motionless.
My spine stays in motion all the time and now I feel good about it.
I’m too self aware that I’m paralyzed by most aspects of daily life. I’m frustrating to myself.
For me it’s gotta be my shaky hands. I don’t know why they’re so shaky but it makes typing hard and I have to take pictures multiple times to get one not blurry. Super frustrating!
Maybe you need to lay off the pancakes. Too much sugar!
Haha maybe!
I believe that’s a symptom of thyroid problems.
I believe I have something to ask my doctor lol
I had a coworker who had this. She is young, in her 30s, and she had (and still has, but I don’t see her anymore) what’s called an essential tremor. It’s totally benign and harmless with no known cause, but it’s mostly seen in old people. Young people can definitely have it, but it just seems to be significantly less common.
It was never super obvious that she had it as hers was pretty mild. But if you watched her work closely, you would notice it. Or when she would try to show me something under the microscope, I would notice because she couldn’t keep the slide still and everything would be wiggling.
She was absolutely more than capable of doing her job with it though. It just made it seem like she had a bit too much coffee lol. Maybe there might be people out there with a tremor that have tips for some of the tasks that frustrate you like picture taking.
Take any steroids as a kid?
Purely anecdotal, and with the caveat that I don’t know shit about fuck, but I have a friend who is passively shaky, and it’s because he was on steroids for asthma, as he had it really bad when he was younger.
Watching him pack a bowl these days is stressful…
Whats the drinking situation?
I’ll have a cider or two most nights, but that’s more of a recent thing. It doesn’t go away with alcohol either 😞
Any stimulants?
Nope, don’t think so. If you’re really curious, I take a couple antidepressants - aripiprazole and desipramine - lithium, and I’ll often have weed and alcohol. That’s about it for substances.
I would look into the Abillify/aripiprazole
What do you take that for? Antipsychotics (particularly atypical) are terrifyingly overprescrived and often inappropriately in my conjecture.
Treatment resistant depression, they’ve tried a whole mess of drugs on me over the years lol. This prompted me to message my doctor though, so thanks! Maybe I won’t just have to suck it up and deal with this
What antis have you tried? The other thing I was going to mention was what’s your sleep deal?
Do you go to sleep roughly and get up at the same time everyday and expose your eyes to bright light? Avoid bright + blue light in the evening? That was a big thing for me that I think a lot of people are doing incorrectly but obviously depression is a multi-headed beast more often than not.
Circadian rhythm and sleep are criminally underexamined areas
Small talk. Not sure why but it’s incredibly difficult for me to initiate a small talk or make it flow nicely from one topic to another. It’s a reason i find myself resisting the idea of dating or simply went out to socialise, or even talk to my neighbours. The anxiety always there.
FORD. Family, occupation, recreation, dreams. If you know the FORD of a person after meeting them for the first time chances are they will want to talk to you again. They just spent 20 minutes telling you about the 4 most important things for them and you actively listened. Of course they are going to want to be around you, you not only gave them attention they felt comfortable telling you information. Which gets retroconned. They didn’t trust you and then tell you, they told you therefore they must have trusted you.
Don’t bother with weather or whatever the local sports ball team did last night against the opposing sports ball team.
One big problem I have with getting to know new people is these questions are often reciprocated to one another. And when people ask me the same questions, they get to know exactly how pathetic and empty my life is. I try to avoid the questions but it just makes me uncomfortable because there often is no easy out.
I don’t have hobbies or passions to talk about. When I get home from work, I literally do nothing but veg out on the couch all evening, mindlessly scrolling on things like YouTube or Lemmy. I don’t have a significant other or children or pets or friends to talk about. And I don’t like people knowing this stuff about me until we’ve gotten close to one another. My life is so pathetic and embarrassing that it makes this stuff really tricky.
I was at the dentist office around Halloween, and there was an old lady in the waiting room with me. She was a small talker and I learned something from this exchange.
“Oh, don’t their decorations look cute!”
“Yes, I love Halloween!”
“Oh, yes, all the kids in their cute costumes. Do you have children?”
"Yes but they are older now, youngest in high school "
It was like she had practiced for a long time, wasn’t like she was intrusive or pushy, just light conversation, and it is a SKILL not a talent. You can do it. Look around and comment on something. Practice. ETA: you don’t have kids so the dance move would be “No, do you have kids or grandkids?” It can keep going without you sharing, it’s sort of a game I think.
Also find people who don’t need the silence filled, people who like to just sit with you and not talk, not everyone needs that small talk - I think it’s fun but don’t need it, am comfortable with silence too. Just remember it’s a skill you can learn, like cooking. You can even learn to enjoy it if you don’t feel like it’s mandatory.
I have rage issues and I know why. Being angry is a pain killer, a source of temporary energy, a coping mechanism. Got the flu last year and felt like death, walking to my kitchen stubbed my toe, got furious, suddenly I don’t feel sick any more. I have become an addict to the rush of adrenaline I get from being angry.
It has hurt my career, it has ruined friendships, relationships, and caused who knows how many self-inflicted wounds. By every measure I have an incredible life so yeah it is me, the universe clearly doesn’t owe me anything more.
My big wakeup call was this summer when I was staying for a few days at a beach resort sitting on the balcony and just looking at the paradise of jungle+mountains+ocean and I am still mildly annoyed about a thing that happened at work a year ago.
Therapy starts in January when my new better insurance plan kicks in.
Best of luck, friend. I’m also waiting for an insurance update in January to start therapy. I’m afraid of how long I’ll have to wait for an appointment as a new patient though. Haven’t made any prior arrangements because I need to be able to have insurance login details first.
The crippling depression that’s completely stopped me from functioning in any meaningful way. That’s definitely the big one.
Executive dysfunction. I have a horrible time with completing tasks that I’ve built up stress over, my brain just won’t let me start because it feels hopeless. It’s a constant struggle to get things done. And nobody understands. I don’t really expect them to, because “oh sorry that task stressed me out so much that I’ve just completely avoided it” isn’t a valid excuse. ADHD drugs helped but I don’t want to be on them, and a prescription to them bars me from doing other things that I actually enjoy. So I’ll probably just struggle with it the rest of my life.
ADHD drugs helped but I don’t want to be on them, and a prescription to them bars me from doing other things that I actually enjoy.
I’m curious, could you elaborate on this?
I want to be a recreational pilot. I’m quite good at it, very committed to and interested in the procedural aspects of it, and religiously adhere to the safety guidelines. According to FAA rules you cannot have an ADHD diagnosis and be prescribed drugs for it and fly, point blank. I’ve never been officially diagnosed with ADHD, but the FAA reached out and grounded me because I didn’t lie on the medical application and said I’d dealt with depression in the past. Despite the medical examiner clearing me and issuing my certification.
The long, tedious process of trying to be cleared again stressed me out more than flying was fun, and now I’m just sort of in a limbo, after thousands of dollars spent on training.
This is all to say that the process taught me that the stigma around mental illness is alive and well in the USA, and I just don’t want any of it on my medical record anymore. I can deal with it. Mental health support isn’t good enough yet to actually significantly improve my life, or at least it’s never worked well enough for me. So the consequences of having any hint on an official document somewhere of not being 100% mentally stable and content 100% of the time aren’t worth it. Who knows if a new opportunity or new-found passion comes along and I get fucked out of it because I felt sad for a long time and wanted to talk to someone about it, or I wanted some help trying to make my brain work more like everyone else’s. I’ll do what I should’ve done from the start, and suck it up.
Sorry for the rant, definitely more than you were looking for, it’s just been weighing on me.
Holy shit… who hasn’t struggled with depression at some point? I’m so sorry that interfered with your certification. I guess I get why depression is a red flag but it’s just so common, you’d think if you’re cleared by a medical examiner should be enough. And ADD is so common too, but I get why you wouldn’t want it on your record. What a bummer :(
Yeah, it’s a federal agency, and one that’s obsessed with the process of slowly and iteratively improving safety standards. So I understand. It just sucks. 50 years ago mental health wasn’t something the FAA had to think about. Now, so many more prospective pilots have at least something on their record. So they need to catch up. The biggest issue, I think, is that career pilots hide the problems they have in order to keep their jobs. Because they don’t have much of a choice. Suck it up, or jump through a bunch of hoops to seek treatment and still possibly lose your income. Lotta closeted alcoholics in aviation, I’m positive.
