If you haven’t heard this cliche while discussing your neurodivergency with someone, then I envy your luck. Yesterday I fucked up, I feel shitty, but also I am pissed.
Our brains are impulsive af and tend to forget the most important information. We mess up, our RSD (and empathy) kicks in, we feel terrible, we vow to be more careful, but guess what? Thats fucking exhausting.
As a result, we start overthinking our every waking moment, stressing over every little thing. Because, we are trying to be aware of the things we cannot perceive.
At some point, hopefully we realize that we cannot live like that, and we start to arbitrarily ignore our compulsion to overthink. Most often that works out great because most often the threat is not real, but sometimes we make the wrong call.
The times we overthink are still more than the times we do not, and we still mess up. Let us have our fucking peace.
The thing I learnt is only assholes expect you to remember 100% of thing 100% of the time.
If you get asked something you can always delay them by saying “I added that to our documentation, let me pull it up”
Now suddenly you go from someone others think as doesn’t know anything, to the person who actually updates documentation with evolving changes.
Perhaps you can take solace in knowing that when you hear the phrase “good in a crisis” you can bet your ass that they only got that way by constantly fucking things up and making it work at the last second.
Those “planners” and people who can “remember things that aren’t directly in front of their face” just freeze up like a deer in headlights when things go sideways.
There’s also a subset of us that were exposed to random, horrific child abuse and developed crisis management skills early out of necessity.
When one of my sites had 2 feet of flooding in the server room and everyone was freaking out, I stepped in, downed the racks, cut the power, and began moving the equipment before my phone even rang.
They praised me for this but in my heart I knew it was nothing compared to having your bedroom door kicked off the hinges by a drunk, angry man four times your size at 3am because you dared to go to bed without emptying the dishwasher.
If I can survive that, no other crisis compares.
I’m in my mid 30s, and I have been dealing with ADHD my whole life. I have some important, but hard advice. If you aren’t up for that, just don’t read the rest of my comment.
I get the frustration of having people not struggling telling you to just struggle harder, and people you would expect sympathy from (friends, family) not supporting or sympathizing with you.
That said, and this is a bitter pill to swallow, the world at large does not care about your personal conditions. Whether you are a reliable friend, teammate, worker, spouse, etc matters far more than your ever present inner turmoil.
Work with medical professionals to get your symptoms under control so you don’t beat yourself up at every turn for fucking up in ways that you are predisposed to. Learn to work with and around your own shortcomings and limitations instead of beating your head against the same damn wall every time. Build proper internal responses and coping skills to these events.
You clearly are aware of some of your own behavioral and thinking patterns that are not good or helpful, like overanalyzation after a fuck up. You already have your targets for things about yourself to work on.
This is not a nice thing to hear or to have to do, but it is essential if you want to survive as a grown ass adult in this world. You don’t need to be perfect, but you will need to keep trying to do better, forever.
You can blame the condition that you are just going to have to live the rest of your life with, or you can take ownership that you fucked up again and work to not do it going forward. The fact that you are already beating yourself up about your mistake does not invalidate the right of other people to be frustrated at what happened.
No one has the right to make their internal turmoil everyone else’s problem, even if it may be particularly burdensome. The world should be far more sympathetic and empathetic, but at some point you have to take responsibility for you. That means more than “I feel so bad”, it also means “What can I do to prevent repeats, that I can actually follow through on rather than just have as magical thinking?”
Don’t make plans dependent on getting your shit together. Make plans that will still work even if you keep fucking up in the same ways you did before.
It all gets easier with time, as long as you keep trying.
I mostly agree, but (what else ^^):
No one has the right to make their internal turmoil everyone else’s problem, even if it may be particularly burdensome. The world should be far more sympathetic and empathetic, but at some point you have to take responsibility for you.
IMO you do take responsibility when you tell others about your boundaries and how they can work around them. If they don’t want to because it also costs them a little bit of energy and disrupts their typical workflows they have (again: IMO) no right to blame it all on you. If I tell them “I can’t do X” or something and they again and again expect me to do X, it’s also on them.
Simple example: I tell colleagues, family, whatever to please remind me again if they feel I missed something they expected of me. If they do, all is good. If they later are pissed that I missed something and immediately blame me … sorry my friend, I warned you. (If I had the ability to set a reminder, sure that’s on me for not doing that. But it doesn’t always work that way.)
There are times in our lives when people will need to rely on us. Whether or not you tell them that you are unreliable, or ask that they remind you; it is reasonable for them to be upset if you wind up letting them down. You are not immune from blame. It doesn’t suddenly become their fault for relying on you when you mess up. It is still you who messed up.
yeah, but “I have ADHD, so I’ll never be on time” is a very shitty excuse. You waste other people’s time.
“I have ADHD, so I hate queuing, so I’m not going with you to that famous museum” is boundaries.
don’t confuse boundaries with expecting everyone around you to put up with your symptoms all the time.
Why the fuck is that not a valid excuse? It can be impossible to find sufficient support and adjustments to enable yourself to reliably arrive on time, saying shit like this is a great way to make people who are already struggling feel even more worthless, jesus christ.
Yeah sure, you can’t expect people to literally always be able to accomodate every struggle everyone may have, but to just summarily say “deal with it” is so heartless…
You can always, always, plan things in a way that you’re an hour ahead of schedule. And you’ll be on time. Or like 30 min too early.
It’s your struggle and you can deal with it in a way that’s costly to you or to everyone around you.
And the trend this days seems to completely utterly ignore your symptoms, develop zero coping mechanisms, and then rant on lemmy about the cruel society.
I got diagnosed with ADHD and you will never hear me reference it for any excuse for anything ever. It’s the worst crutch to excuse lack of self improvement.
All a person can do is deal with themselves and grow.
I regret society ever learning about it, it is so abused as an excuse to forgive a lack of personal awareness and growth.
I just roll my eyes at the shit people say claiming they have ADHD. Pathetic really.
I think it should be relative to the person’s abilities. 8 hours of work, laundry, 50 minutes focussed studying, healthy dinner, remembering aunt’s birthday and bedtime at 10 might seem reasonable to most. Some with ADHD might also pull it off. For others, their best is to do one of those things after work.
Different people, good and bad days. Absolute measure & judgement for everybody is the problem.
All a person can do is deal with themselves and grow
Then why are you projecting your own view of ADHD onto it? Not really dealing with yourself if you’re judging everyone else with ADHD based off your own difficulties.
Only thing I’m rolling my eyes at here is blatant hypocrisy. Pathetic really.
Pathetic huh? Maybe dont be so desperate to paint other as the villain.
Good luck in life.
Maybe dont be so desperate to paint other as the villain.
Dude, you started whining and complaining about people who you’ve invented in your head after basing all of the troubles of people you’ve never met off of what you’ve personally gone through. You literally started this. You don’t get to whine when someone points out your behavior is no different than what you’re complaining about. You created a strawman and lit it on fire.
You’re a narcissist. I’m going to block you now because I can see absolutely zero value from anything that you’re contributing. It’s just malice, hatred, small mindedness, and self absorption. Especially when looking at your other comments in this thread like “I don’t care about peoples birthdays, it’s selfish bullshit and everyone loves me for it once I point that out.” Jesus christ.
ADHD is a reason not an excuse.
Not for this specific case but I’ve often said “It’s an explanation, not an excuse”
I read a Simon Sinek book as part of a management book club and even hit bullshit misinformation on ADHD in there. It’s fucking pervasive and, as a millennial, I am now primarily just fighting against my own shitty internalization from years of passive aggressive bullshit.
I am a manager with ADHD who manages some people with ADHD and it’s hard for all of us - I try to give my reports space to fail and overcome ruts “If you find yourself in an unproductive mood don’t beat yourself up - if your performance is an issue I’ll let you know well before any administrative actions are taken” and it’s still an issue.
I am hoping it isn’t as deeply beaten into genz but school absolutely wailed on us for momentary distraction… I remember being in a parent teacher meeting (there were a lot of those) where my mom asked “And xmunk is doing well on tests and retaining the knowledge?” And the teacher replied “Well yes, but he’s rarely focused in class and is disruptive during our quiet study time.” … I seriously want to go back and slap that teacher ‘Study time doesn’t benefit me, and if I’m being disruptive to others just fucking send me out to run around in circles in the playground or some shit.’ But no… my grades suffered not because of academic failures but because I was partially graded on my ability to mask.
Be fucking kind to your brain - there is an expected level of performance for your job and as long as you’re above that you can give yourself a brain break and you should not feel guilty about it.
This thread has successfully convinced me that this community is not of people who have ADHD or for supporting same, but of people who hate anyone who does whether that’s self-hate from internalized abusive BS or just plain ableism.
Am interested in finding one that’s isn’t awful, if there’s one hidden away somewhere. Will be blocking this pit.
or it is about people learning who they are, accepting themselves, and figuring out how to stand up for their own well being.