Here’s something that happens to ADHD children a lot: Getting pushed beyond their limits by accident. Here’s how it works and why it’s so bad.
Child says, “I can’t do this.”
Adult (teacher or parent) does not believe it, because Adult has seen Child do things that Adult considers more difficult, and Child is too young to properly articulate why the task is difficult.
Adult decides that the problem is something other than true inability, like laziness, lack of self-confidence, stubbornness, or lack of motivation.
Adult applies motivation in the form of harsher and harsher scoldings and punishments. Child becomes horribly distressed by these punishments. Finally, the negative emotions produce a wave of adrenaline that temporarily repairs the neurotransmitter deficits caused by ADHD, and Child manages to do the task, nearly dropping from relief when it’s finally done.
The lesson Adult takes away is that Child was able to do it all along, the task was quite reasonable, and Child just wasn’t trying hard enough. Now, surely Child has mastered the task and learned the value of simply following instructions the first time.
The lessons Child takes away? Well, it varies, but it might be:
-How to do the task while in a state of extreme panic, which does NOT easily translate into doing the task when calm.
-Using emergency fight-or-flight overdrive to deal with normal daily problems is reasonable and even expected.
-It’s not acceptable to refuse tasks, no matter how difficult or potentially harmful.
-Asking for help does not result in getting useful help.
I’m now in my 30’s, trying to overcome chronic depression, and one major barrier is that, thanks to the constant unreasonable demands placed on me as a child, I never had the chance to develop actual healthy techniques for getting stuff done. At 19, I finally learned to write without panic, but I still need to rely on my adrenaline addiction for simple things like making phone calls, tidying the house, and paying bills. Sometimes, I do mean things to myself to generate the adrenaline rush, because there’s no one else around to punish me.
But hey, at least I didn’t get those terrible drugs, right? That might have had nasty side effects.
There’s a lot of overlap between ADHD traits and autism traits. Whether you meet the diagnostic criteria for ADHD, too, I have no idea (because I’m a random person on the Internet), but you might find ADHD resources helpful in figuring out your life challenges.
A lot of “help” for executive function skills comes from neurotypicals who are naturally good at it and lack insight into people who aren’t, which makes it spectacularly useless to the people who actually need it.
Well shit this explains so much about me
This is why I want to scream when NT professionals try to insist that forcing ADD people into “the zone” is the best treatment for ADD. Forced focus is exhausting because it’s fueled by adrenaline. We have reams of medical data that frequent adrenaline rushes in young people are horribly bad for their development and causes a laundry list of problems later in life, both physical and mental.
Literally NT professionals: I know you can accomplish this task if I push you into a state of artificial panic every time I want you to do it.
Me: Or you could, idk, help break the task into smaller, less scary bits, use a reward structure at each stage to reinforce positive association, or even turn it into a game because ADD people are kind of hardwired to love game-like structures and anything that has a whiff of fun to it.
NT professionals: That requires imagination, time, and mental energy that I, a NT person who is not struggling with overwhelming self-doubt and mental block at this moment, simply cannot be bothered to spare.
Me: Oh right, of course. Carry on with terrorizing small children, then.
Nothing like the abusive teaching styles described above happened to me, because I was good at doing work, until I magically stopped being good at doing work sometime in 9th grade and instead started being bad at doing work. At that point and at my school, teachers were more loose about when work got done, so I started procrastinating until the last minute. This worked really well for me and I have had all A’s and the extremely occasional B+ in every class.
It’s only now, reading this post, that I’m realizing why my clever “do it at the last minute” strategy works so well.
😦
One of the reasons I work in the stressful jobs I do (aside from my abysmal college performance)
Is that it’s hard for me to get any work done unless it feels like a life-or-death situation
So, I work at a place where life-or-death situations happen on the regs
I was a really great worker until I switched into an office track and realized that without the nonstop panic and stress of a retail/food service position i’m almost entirely unable to prioritize and complete tasks.
a while back someone reblogged one of my poems on tumblr with the tag “no one deserves to be atlas”
and it hit me pretty hard and i want to talk about that today
listen, you are not a life support machine, you are not to be expected to carry someone’s organs. it is easy to fall into the rhythm of building your life around people who hope they are already dying, but that is not healthy.
i know. i am no stranger to people like this. i have known people who swallow pills with a snakejaw, who drink vodka straight without flinching and pray quietly that it’ll kill them, who smoke on their roof at 2am while crying. people who starve themselves until they can barely stand, who burn or cut or bruise their bodies because no one taught them to forgive themselves and be soft with their own skins. i have been these people.
there is only so much help you can give. if you learn anything, learn how to tell them: i am sorry, i cannot do this today. i am aching from holding the weight of your sky, please talk to a professional.
i see a mentality a lot amongst middle and high schoolers. i see it in college kids too, in some of my closest friends and in the drug dealer i talk to on weeknights. and the mentality says “if you are not willing to drop everything for me, you are toxic and a bad friend”
i understand that mental illness does a good job of making you feel isolated and it makes you scared of losing people, but realize that your support systems hurt too, and in ways that you might not even know.
listen, no teenager should have to add “keep my friends alive” to their to do list.
it can be hard to exist sometimes and it is okay to need help but you cannot place your fate in someone else’s hands. they shake just as much as yours, they are not any safer.
if you love your friends do not make them be atlas. they are not titans. they are small and afraid too.
Anhedonia – not finding pleasure in things you normally take pleasure in – is a symptom of depression.
When depressed, you will also be reluctant to start things, and won’t find things appealing.
This sets up a nasty vicious cycle where ‘life feels bleak’ -> ‘nothing sounds fun’ -> do nothing -> don’t have fun -> ‘Hey I’m not having fun, life really is pretty bleak right now’ -> More depressed.
The way to break that cycle is to do things that you enjoy. Doing things solely for the sake of having fun is an important part of handling depression. Not only does it keep you from getting more depressed, but it can make you go ‘Hey I’m having a really nice day’ and give you bouncy energy to do productive things with.
I get so focused on all the things that need doing that I forget that when depressed, doing things solely because they’re fun is the practical thing to do if I want to get thing done.
There is a difference between procrastination and having trouble activating. If there’s a thing you need to do and you know you aren’t going to be able to do it now, do something fun, and afterwards you will have better odds of actually doing the thing.
If you find yourself in the situation in the picture, pick something that you are intellectually aware you would find fun if you were feeling better and start doing it.’ This means that you are focusing on something other than *sigh* and playing a game can make you feel productive, put ‘life is good!’ and ‘I can succeed at things!’ chemicals into a brain that is sorely in need of them.
A couple weeks ago when I couldn’t even find any interest in reading fanfic, I eventually managed to start playing a random RPG and felt much better a few hours later.
i certainly wasn’t expecting anything close to actual, halfway decent advice that might help some folks out when i threw this little Funne Picture out into the wild, but that’s nice. thank you. i’m not sure if i’ll ever break this little cycle for more than a few hours, but .. yeah man. it’s just a little nice to see folks trying to help other folks out on posts of mine instead of the usual terrible nonsense
Exactly what I needed right now.
Easy to parse version:
Anhedonia is a symptom of depression, it’s not finding enjoyment in things that once made you happy.
If you find yourself in this situation, pick something that you KNOW you would find fun or enjoyable.
When you’re depressed, the best thing to do is do things BECAUSE they’re fun, it’ll help motivate you more.
A part of being an adult is living with regret and not allowing it to consume you. The older you get, the more mistakes you’ve made, opportunities you’ve missed, people you’ve disappointed. And every day you have to remind yourself to be kind and forgiving of yourself. You accept and love the you from the past and understand that it’s all a part of the process. Then you move on and live your best life, knowing now as old as you feel today, you’ll never be this young again.
with mother’s day coming up pretty soon let’s all keep in mind that not everyone has positive feelings about or a healthy relationship with their mother.
some people grew up with abusive mothers, some people grew up with absent mothers, and some people have mothers who they just don’t get along with because of personality clashes or a radical difference in beliefs.
while it’s completely okay to celebrate mother’s day and talk about how much you love your own mother, please keep in mind that there are people who are not going to be celebrating and who do not have the positive relationship with their mother that you do. try to refrain from making or reblogging shaming, guilt-tripping posts saying/implying that someone is not a good person for not being with their mother on mother’s day or for not having loving feelings towards their mother and consider tagging your mother’s day posts so that people can avoid seeing them if they want to. also, if you see someone you follow or someone you know having a bad time on mother’s day because it brings up negative feelings for them please consider reaching out to that person and offering them a kind word of support.
mothers are generally seen to be good and wonderful and most of them are! but mothers are not incapable of being abusive and they are not incapable of doing something wrong and unfortunately not everyone was lucky enough to grow up with a mother who loved them and treated them the way a good mother should. please keep these people in mind on mother’s day and do not treat people badly for not celebrating mother’s day or for expressing negative feelings about their mother. there’s a reason they’re not celebrating and a reason those feelings exist. please respect that.
Casual reminder that disabilities are often based on the day or the unique challenges of the situation. People who need a wheelchair on most days might not on one particular day. People who use an emotional support animal may not need it 24/7. People who rely on canes may only need it when they’re having bad days. It doesn’t mean they’re faking of their disability isn’t valid. Energy levels and pain fluctuate and that’s okay.
Holding the Bowl 