I’ve seen so many people reblog this with ‘I don’t have ADHD but I relate to all of this’ and I just wanted to add:
this list is mostly about inattention, overthinking things, and failure to follow through.
at its heart, adhd is the inability to pick what your attention is locked onto, sometimes combined with a need to move constantly (hyperactivity). This manifests as:
- lively internal life + rapid thought & intuitive leaps of cognition - good when being creative, bad when trying to make a logical decision
- overthinking things
- impulsive behavior
- short attention span + being easily distracted
- unnaturally long attention span + inability to notice outside stimuli
- short term memory dysfunction
- executive dysfunction
- no sense of priority (everything is equally important)
- no sense of time in relation to self (cannot effectively tell how long an activity will take or develop a sense of urgency based on a deadline until the deadline is perilously close or already passed)
- failure to follow through (leaving work incomplete)
- forgetting to remember/remembering tasks at inappropriate times
- intrusive thoughts
And pretty much everyone experiences one or all of these things at times, and these symptoms can spring from other causes than ADHD (for instance, executive dysfunction accompanies depression and anxiety as well).
But adhd people have this happen so constantly and so intrusively that we cannot complete basic tasks, even if we want to:
- The only thing consistent about us is inconsistent results: sometimes we’re on time, sometimes we’re not. sometimes we’re reliable, sometimes we’re not. sometimes we’re studious, sometimes we’re not … (and trust me we’re not enjoying it any more than you are)
- We fail classes, we drop out of college, we lose jobs, and no matter how much we try, we cannot fix it.
- We can’t just remove distractions - our brains are a distraction.
- We can’t just ‘try harder’ - our wayward mind might be focusing on our studying today, but tomorrow it might not. The same effort level will have wildly different results on different days because our attention cooperated … or didn’t.
- it is literally impossible for us to choose our focus. pretty much ever.
Another common tag? ‘I wanted to read all of this but I couldn’t’. that’s adhd.
So this list is pretty relateable, even if you don’t have adhd. But if this happens to you to the point that you’re getting in trouble at school or your job and you’re pissing off your friends? might be worth looking into what’s going on with you.