i thought you guys would find this thread i wrote interesting
This is not just feminist BS. A LOT of medical conditions are studied more in men. I have read multiple recherche papers on everything from Autism to heart disease where they only studied men for some reason but almost none when they only studied women, with the exception of diseases that only women can get. So basically if you are a women and you share the same problem as a man the data is inherently skewed.
A lot of medical conditions are also studied mostly on WHITE men which makes it even more exclusive category. Psychology research mostly done on Western students as well which are a very specific and very different category of people from everyone else.
So we have most of our research which affects the well-being of all of us done mostly on White Western males with higher education. Just think about it.
So my therapist has been helping me get to grips with my ADHD, and also the concept that I’m not shit at being an adult, I just can’t do things the way everyone has always told me to do them. Like every single “organize your life” books have always left me wanting to cry with frustration, and after I got hold of a copy of Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD
by Susan Pinsky I realized that was because they primarily focus on “aesthetic” over “function”. And the function of most standard “organize your life books” is to “make things look Show Home Perfect”.
So the standard “hide all your unsightly things by doing xyz” may look nice for the first week or so, but by the end of the week it’ll look like a tornado made of pure inhuman frustration ripped through the house as I try to find the fucking advil.
To give you an example of the kind of hell I’ve been fumbling my way through the last 20 odd years: dishes will be washed and left in the drying wrack but never put away. Which means I can’t wash more dishes, which means dishes pile up, which means I can’t make food, which means I don’t eat, which means my CFS gets worse, which means I don’t have the energy to put the dishes away, and so on so forth until I have a meltdown, cry to ETD (who also likely has ADHD but has never had it confirmed) about how I can’t cope with life, and then we fix it for a while, but inevitably end up back at square one within about a week.
Pinsky’s solution to this was “remove an obstacle between you and your goal, if that means taking all the doors off your kitchen cabinets to make things easier, so be it.”
And lemme tell you, fucking revolutionary.
Laundry never ends up in the hamper??? why???? is it a closed hamper??? Remove the lid. Throw it out the window. Clothes are now miraculously finding their way into the hamper??? Rejoice????
Mail ends up spread out over every available flat surface? Put a sorting station right where your mail arrives. Put a shredder or “junk” basket under it. Shred or dump the junk immediately. Realize you only actually have two real letters that need attention, feel less overwhelmed, pay your bills on time.
Like I’m not saying this book is miraculous, but it did help me realize that I was effectively torturing myself by trying to conform to certain ideals of “perfect house keeping”, and presenting a certain image rather than just allowing myself to live in my space as effectively as possible. And why? Why was I doing that? Cause people with different lives and capabilities are perceived as the norm? Fuck that. If this was a physical problem I wouldn’t be forcing myself to conform to an ableist standard, so why am I doing it with this?
My lived space will never look a certain way, and that’s okay. It will never look show home perfect, and that’s okay. It will likely always be cluttered and eclectic where nothing matches, and that’s okay. Sometimes I will have odd socks on because sorting them out required too much mental energy, and that’s okay. Actually fuck sorting socks, just buy all your socks in the same color. Problem solved. Boring sure, but also one less thing to do, which means more time to hyper fixate on fun things. Which really, what else is my life for if not to write screeds and screeds of vampire shit posts, I ask you.
idk if it’s just how my very silly brain operates but does anybody else get like. a weird second wave of procrastination right before you finish something. like you already did 70-90% of the work, it realistically won’t take you that long to be done, but for some reason. u just can’t. like. time’s up on executive function. like. oh sorry did you want to not be worried about this? bc im going to make u have to be worried about this. thanks!
– You have to shower. You cannot shower. You are standing right in front of the shower. You want to shower. You cannot shower.
– The meeting begins. “Did everyone see the email?” There is a chorus of nodding heads. You nod, too. You think you may possibly have checked an email account before, on one single occasion, at some unknown time, probably in a past life.
– You are hungry. You have been hungry for three days now. The hunger has not spontaneously resolved itself. How inconvenient, you think. How rude.
– You depend on your planner/calendar. You loathe your planner/calendar. You can’t function without it. You live in constant fear of it. It’s an unhealthy relationship. You think you both should start seeing other people.
– There is a pile on your floor. It is a treasure trove, the Room of Requirement. It has everything. You look for something specific. It has nothing. There was never any pile.
– There’s been a change of plans, they say. You don’t understand. They repeat: “there’s been a change of plans.” You don’t understand. The mere suggestion causes a buzzing in your head that drowns out everything else. You don’t understand.
– You’re in class and you don’t understand the lecture. You look back at your past notes. You look at a calendar. You have not been to class in two weeks. You have no memory of this supposed time. Where did it go? Why did it leave?
– “Organizational tips for success: Keep a planner! Write it down! Stick to a schedule! Make a list!” You are torn between deranged laughter and ugly crying. You choose both.
– You type a few words, your phone rings, you answer. You frown and type a few words. A text, you open it and respond. You forget what you were doing. You type a few words. A text, you ignore it. You type a thousand words. A text, you open it. “Why haven’t you responded?” It’s been a week.
– You need your medication, you call to renew your prescription. You’re out of refills and the doctor needs to see you before you renew. You don’t get your medication again for six months.
– You want to RSVP to your cousin’s wedding but there’s no email address or phone number, just a card in an envelope that you have to put in the mailbox. You put it somewhere that you won’t forget it. The wedding was yesterday.
– “Look, it’s just one more stop before we head home, why are you making such a big deal of it?”
– “Hey, I invited our friends over to hang out for the day and maybe get lunch. You said you were free today, right?” You’re always free but you never have time. It takes an hour to decide what lunch will be.
– You write the shopping list. You stand in front of your door holding your keys while you tape the list to your phone. You step outside and realize you don’t know where your keys are. You step inside and they’re in your hand. You go to the store and pull out your phone. There never was a list.
– You’re meeting someone for what you’re sure is the tenth time. They say their name and all you hear is a high-pitched ringing. You carefully avoid interacting with them for the rest of the evening so you don’t run the risk of having to introduce them to anyone.
– “C’mon, you were in ceramics with me, we made clay boxes together. I sat next to you for two years!” You’ve never seen this person before in your life.
– You have to be somewhere at 6AM. You can’t be late. You don’t sleep the night before to be sure you can make it. When you’re late to work the next week your boss says “you can be on time when you want to be, you’re choosing to show me that you don’t care.” You don’t sleep to make it in to work on time tomorrow. You never sleep. You never sleep.
– You have to pee but if you don’t finish typing this sentence you’ll forget what you were saying. By the time you finish typing your body doesn’t notice that you still have to pee.
–the Only Mood everyone else knows about: i wanna do THIS and THIS and THIS and THIS and THIS and–SQUIRREL
–galaxy brain: i was listening to the lecture but the prof said something that reminded me of something else and now i’m not sure how much time i was lost in thought
–the tutorial only comes in video format: i’m sorry, but you’ve thrown off the emperor’s groove *hurls product & its tutorial video into the sun*
–damn you hyperfocus: i went to bed intending to wake up and write but this morning i was possessed by a cleanliness spirit and spent the next 14 hours organizing the apartment
–i dont think u tried at all.jpg: did i seriously spend an entire free day refreshing twitter b/c i didn’t want to spend 10 minutes finishing my hw but wouldn’t let myself do anything else until i finished it???? (yes)
–patrick star: *unlocks phone* time to check the weather. *opens twitter* the weather. *opens messenger* the weather. *opens mobage game* the weather. *opens facebook* the weather. *opens twitter again* THE WEA–
–smells like depression: literally everything is too boring. i’m going back to sleep
That autistic / ADHD feel when you want to do… something.
I call this “activity cravings” because it’s like when you want a certain food but you aren’t sure which food. But for activities.
Do I want to go for a walk? Play a game? If so, what kind of game? DO I want to make things? Read? Watch tv? A movie?
then when that executive dysfunction comes into play and since you could do literally anything in the world, you end up trapped and unable to choose anything to do at all, and do nothing instead but live in that restlessness
One of the best additions to this post yet. This is one of those nuances of choice paralysis that people fail to understand – sometimes it is because we lack the executive function to choose, sometimes we want to do all the things and can’t choose.
And, if your depressive anhedonia kicks in, even if you DO decide on something, you quit 10 minutes later because the thing just isn’t doing it for you.
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god this post is such a mood, all the time
Me on my days off from work
Do I have “I’m Not Being Productive Enough” fatigue or “I Need A Break From Productivity” fatigue?
Will I become an overworked wreck or an underworked anxiety ball? tune in next w
ADHD is related to several sleep problems, but the most frequent seems the delayed sleep phase syndrome, a disturbance of the circadian rhythm. Research of children and adults with ADHD (when compared to controls) shows that the majority of these individuals has a late sleep onset that is associated with a late onset of the sleep hormone melatonin (van der Heijden et al, 2005; van Veen et al, 2010). Melatonin is produced by the pineal gland in the brain when it is getting dark in the evening, and we wake up by light in the morning. The onset of the melatonin production helps to fall asleep. For most adults the onset of melatonin is around 9.30 pm; in ADHD children compared to controls this occurs at least 45 minutes later, and in adults with ADHD even 90 minutes (van der Heijden ea, 2005; van Veen ea 2010). After melatonin onset, it normally takes 2 hours to fall asleep, but in adults with ADHD it takes at least 3 hours (Bijlenga et al, 2013). So it does make sense that so many people with ADHD have difficulty falling asleep on time. This late onset of melatonin is driven by genes that regulate the biological clock, and those genes have been linked psychiatric disorders like ADHD and bipolar disorder (Landgraf et al, 2014). What the exact relationship is between this late sleep pattern and ADHD is still unknown.
The Paradox Machine 