Devotional blog dedicated to the Goddess Sigyn offering support to those who are "holding the bowl" within difficult relationships.
Further, while a decrease in symptoms at puberty is common for boys, the opposite is true for girls, whose symptoms intensify as estrogen increases in their system, thus complicating the general perception that ADHD is resolved by puberty.
ADHD Is Different for Women, Marie Yagoda, http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/04/adhd-is-different-for-women/381158/
I’m gonna murder an estrogen.
(via actuallyadhd)
Well
(via ghostfiish)
There’s a lot to adhd that most people don’t realize. While attention issues and hyperactivity are well-known, the majority of people don’t know most of the symptoms. Here is a partial list.
-Poor motor skills
-Delayed physical and social development
-having a “multi-track” style of thinking
-Forms of disordered thinking, including blocking, circumstantiality, clanging, derailment, pressure of speech, tangentiality, and more.
-Hyperfocus
-Fidgeting
-Restless leg syndrome
-Forgetfulness
-Poor concept of time passage
-Overactive metabolism
-Sensory processing issues
-Meltdowns
-Inability to understand nonverbal communications
-Obsession with fairness or balance
-Impulsivity
-Poor social awareness
-High emotionality
-General executive dysfunction
-Atypical response to stimulants
-Racing thoughts
-Tactile issues
-Discomfort with a lack of pattern or predictability
-Echolalia
-Easily bored, and finding boredom to be highly upsetting
-Difficulty understanding and following instructions
-Literal-mindedness
-Delays in linguistic development
-Auditory processing issues (lots of us keep subtitles on all the time, or rely on lip reading, and really hate phone calls!)
-Poor short term memoryThis is nowhere near an exhaustive list. The reason I’m making this post is so people realize that adhd is a developmental disability that affects every aspect of our lives, and is more than just distractibility or high energy. We’re not just poorly behaved, and in fact, we’re probably trying our best. So please be patient with us. Stop telling us that this isn’t real. Thank you.
printing this out for my kid and I to read together
Finally, Science Proves What Every Person With ADHD Has Been Saying For Decades
God
Kids with ADHD Must Fidget To Learn; Sitting Still Hurts Concentration And Performance
MY FELLOW FIBRO WARRIORS (and others who experience cognitive fog)
This product is so freaking cool. I got my pack at Papersource, I bet you can find them online. I know we all make lists, but really, how often do we check those lists? Not often enough.
Now your list can go on your wrist!! Hot damn.
Oh my god I need, link???????
These are the best idea ever!
oooooh
You can buy them [here]
oh my goodness, this would be great for ADHD too.
You know, I never see any positivity posts for people who have ADHD and struggled because of it. So shout out to ADHD kids who:
- Were told they were just lazy, stupid, or weren’t applying themselves
- Were put on medications with side effects worse than the intended effect
- Tried so hard to study, and just couldn’t do it
- Who had to be pulled from regular classes to be put into smaller ones away from all of their friends, and later had to awkwardly explain or excuse why
- Have so many incomplete works because they got distracted and just never went back to it
- Could relate to the “stupid” characters in TV shows who were forgetful or easily distracted and treated as a joke
- Had their interests/hobbies taken away from them as a last-ditch attempt to get them to focus
- Are always running late
- Are effected by their ADHD daily and ignored by the mentally ill community for ADHD “not being serious enough.”
You’re super cute, and great for getting through all of that.
ALSO SHOUTOUT TO THE ADHD ADULTS WHO ARE DENIED CARE OR SUPPORT OR JUST PLAIN TOLD THEY DON’T EXIST BECAUSE ADHD SOMEHOW MAGICALLY VANISHES ON YOUR 18TH BIRTHDAY
Nearly everyone with ADHD answers an emphatic yes to the question: “Have you always been more sensitive than others to rejection, teasing, criticism, or your own perception that you have failed or fallen short?” This is the definition of a condition called rejection-sensitive dysphoria. When I ask ADHDers to elaborate on it, they say: “I’m always tense. I can never relax. I can’t just sit there and watch a TV program with the rest of the family. I can’t turn my brain and body off to go to sleep at night. Because I’m sensitive to my perception that other people disapprove of me, I am fearful in personal interactions.” They are describing the inner experience of being hyperactive or hyper-aroused. Remember that most kids after age 14 don’t show much overt hyperactivity, but it’s still present internally, if you ask them about it.
The emotional response to the perception of failure is catastrophic for those with the condition. The term “dysphoria” means “difficult to bear,” and most people with ADHD report that they “can hardly stand it.” They are not wimps; disapproval hurts them much more than it hurts neurotypical people.
If emotional pain is internalized, a person may experience depression and loss of self-esteem in the short term. If emotions are externalized, pain can be expressed as rage at the person or situation that wounded them.
In the long term, there are two personality outcomes. The person with ADHD becomes a people pleaser, always making sure that friends, acquaintances, and family approve of him. After years of constant vigilance, the ADHD person becomes a chameleon who has lost track of what she wants for her own life. Others find that the pain of failure is so bad that they refuse to try anything unless they are assured of a quick, easy, and complete success. Taking a chance is too big an emotional risk. Their lives remain stunted and limited.
For many years, rejection-sensitive dysphoria has been the hallmark of what has been called atypical depression. The reason that it was not called “typical” depression is that it is not depression at all but the ADHD nervous system’s instantaneous response to the trigger of rejection.
– William Dodson, M.D., ADDitude Magazine (via
)
I didn’t know it had a name and this was the last straw for me today and I’m sobbing.
it’s not just me. it has a name.
(via twistedingenue)
So this was originally a comment on a post about depression and so forth, but it actually occurred to me that it might be more helpful in a tag somewhere where someone might see it, rather than buried in 68k notes. So here’s the thing: I’m not great at explaining what executive functioning problems ARE, but I tried to explain what they feel like.
Looking at a dirty litterbox and a sink full of dishes and going “fuck this noise” and going back on tumblr feels a lot like laziness, even if you are feeling kind of like crying just looking at them. But it can also be your brain being currently incapable of putting together the steps you need to take in order to DO those things, you can’t quite put together that cleaning the litterbox is:
- Get a trash bag
- Get the litter scoop
- Get clean litter
- Open trash bag
- Move litterbox to accessible position
- Crouch down by the litterbox
- Scoop out poop and clumps
- Tie off trash bag
- Add some clean litter to box
- Put litterbox back in its original position
- Put litter scoop away
- Put clean litter away
- Throw away trash bag
When you’re having executive functioning issues, you look at the dirty litterbox and even if you don’t realize it, you can’t work out those steps, you just see the dirty litterbox and know that it needs to be clean and all those steps are mushing together into one big ball of overwhelming stress and you can’t quite figure out where to start, and it takes a LOT of mental and emotional momentum to start, and when you’re depressed or overwhelmed or whatever it can be next to impossible to GET that mental and emotional momentum.
This isn’t the best explanation of executive dysfunction, probably, but it’s the best I’ve got, and it can be awful, and it can make you feel like a lazy useless person when you’re nothing of the sort, and it’s so insidious, because when you’re NOT having these issues it’s the easiest thing in the world to subconsciously put all those steps together and get from “dirty litterbox” to “clean litterbox” without any conscious thought.
This can happen when you’re depressed, if you have ADHD or autism, if you have anxiety… there are a lot of reasons you might run into problems with your executive functioning. It can be simple things like cleaning the litterbox, it can be things you do (or try to do) regularly like your math homework, it can be something like going to the gym or cooking dinner or getting out of bed in the morning.
But the most important thing to take away from this is that there is a huge difference between “I could do this but I really don’t want to” and “I cannot do this”, and when you learn to recognize the difference, you can begin to stop calling yourself “lazy” and “useless” and “worthless” during those times when you CAN’T do this even if you want to.
Yeah, autistic people, people with depression, or ADHD, or anxiety… we can all be lazy sometimes. And that’s okay, it’s normal to be lazy sometimes. And we can still have issues with laziness. But the difference is real, and important, and I feel like not enough people outside of the autistic and maybe ADHD communities realize that this is something that they might be struggling with.
Attention Disorders Can Take a Toll on Marriage
Does your husband or wife constantly forget chores and lose track of the calendar? Do you sometimes feel that instead of living with a spouse, you’re raising another child?
Your marriage may be suffering from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
An A.D.H.D. marriage? It may sound like a punch line, but the idea that attention problems can take a toll on adult relationships is getting more attention from mental health experts. In a marriage, the common symptoms of the disorder — distraction, disorganization, forgetfulness — can easily be misinterpreted as laziness, selfishness, and a lack of love and concern.
Adults with attention disorders often learn coping skills to help them stay organized and focused at work, but experts say many of them struggle at home, where their tendency to become distracted is a constant source of conflict. Some research suggests that these adults are twice as likely to be divorced; another study found high levels of distress in 60 percent of marriages where one spouse had the disorder.
Holding the Bowl 