cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/53114956

A couple of times when I've played Dynasty Warriors with my girlfriend (who has ADHD diagnosis), I noticed that she would be literally running in circles having absolutely no idea where she was. She's not a gamer and controlling the camera can be finnicky for someone who isn't used to dual analogs, so there's that, but she also has trouble reading the minimap.

Yesterday I've had her play Crash Bandicoot 3 and she got "lost" in stage 2, the first underwater level. At the first sphere with electricity thingy, she thought she was supposed to keep going right, she didn't notice the pipe opening leading down.

Is "getting lost" like that common for people with ADHD?

She's also pretty lousy at Bomberman games, but she enjoys playing them.

So, it's my first time working in a country that legally requires workplaces to accommodate neurodivergence. I have been upfront about my diagnosis since I joined.

It's my first admin-heavy role, and turns out, ADHD doesn't like double checking if every single field on a page was filled in correctly.

After being put on a PIP, I've been working on an autohotkey script that automates the clicking and navigation, and prompts me to enter data where needed. In theory, tihs means I don't miss out on anything as long as the script works fine, and when you don't do the clicking yourself, mistakes are easier to spot when you check.

I presented it to my manager (first time manager, woo.) today during the weekly review, and this was what they said: "My concern is, would you be able to follow the process and do the task if you were to lose access to this tool you have built?"

It seems like no degree of explaining that it's not that I do not know how to do the task correctly, my brain just loathes the finer details and would mean the work would be more prone to error will get through to them.

I will be resigning before the final check next week anyway, but just want some advice on how to respond to that question in the future.

saldy I have to do things and procrastinate them. I get to work I end up doing completly unrelated things – I finally learned to do my financial accounting lol. And the more I push one thing, the harder it gets to follow other important things, like workout.

It's annoying and hard. losing day after day to procrastination and or headaches and sleepyness from too many thoughts at night makes it even harder.

I know I am on a good track and need a few days until the system starts working again, but sometimes it just feels bad when 2 days in a row you fail to meet any goals.

Also fuck headaches and insomia, literally unnecessary debuffs. And they make handling my adhd so much worse.

Sometimes I become hyper-aware of the area around my collarbone and it gets very distracting. It is most noticeable when reading and sometimes when trying to sleep. It can get to a point where I have to stop reading because of how distracting it is, and also makes it harder fall asleep.

Has anyone had anything like this and/or know of any ways to alleviate it?

Recently started going through the ADHD diagnosis pathway after putting it off for years; as is tradition. Over the course of a couple months I saw a psychiatrist, did the screening, got told I have ADHD and started a trial medication. It was life changing. The greatest improvement in my quality of life on par only with moving out of home.

The problem? My psychiatrist tore her Achilles tendon days before our follow up session where I would receive a written diagnosis and be able to get prescriptions easily and readily from a general practitioner. The only advice I got from them was to have my gp handle my prescriptions (which I can't do) in a no reply text before becoming unreachable for who knows how fuck long.

My trial medication is now starting to run out and I am having to ration it out to try and keep it going. On the days I don't take it I can already feel my pre-medication normal returning.

• Inability to start tasks on demand
• Frequent breaks during tasks where I do nothing
• Uncontrollable/ unstoppable train of thought
• Anxiety increasing
• Disproportionate emotional reactions
• Apartment returning to its cluttered state Inability to put things down in their place or keep track of where I put a thing down
• Loss of confidence particularly in social situations
• Forgetfulness in general increasing
• Sleep cycle deviating from normal circadian rhythm to pre-medication "normal"

And to top it all off

• Depressive symptoms returning including suicidal thoughts
• Anxiety driven self harm increasing

Its been one fucking day and already I don't understand how I lived like this for my entire life up until 2 months ago. Its so frustrating.

I felt normal for the first time ever. I felt like I could relate to the experiences of others for the first time ever. I felt like I was progressing my life for the first time since graduating highschool and in a direction that I both wanted and chose for myself for the first time ever.

And now I can feel it all slipping away. Regressing into patterns I never used to realise were avoidable, that weren't my fault.

I've already tried contacting my psychiatrist, I've already tried explaining my unusual circumstances to a doctor. All I can do is wait for an unknowable length of time for my psychiatrist to recover or spend hundreds to thousands of dollars and months of my life going through the diagnosis process again.

That or spend hundreds of dollars illegally purchasing medication risking my health and lawful repercussions in the process. All for a medication that I know works, has been prescribed to me by a psychiatrist and made me feel human.

Thanks for reading.

I hate that I do this, but there are friends/acquaintances in my life that I would mask around, and my mental health and general motivation has been very bad lately, meaning that when they reach out to me, I just don't have the mental stamina -- which I usually had -- to open that message/take that call and reply to them. We were friends sort of out of inertia from the past, and I was kinda hoping we'd drift apart naturally, but they keep calling me even though I told them that my mental health is bad rn and I'd reach out later. I just want to be left to be depressed in peace rn plus seeing them again I'd have to address my compounding guilt of ghosting them, and that's something I'd have to mentally barge though. But it's not their fault that I'm tired 'of them', so it's a tricky situation and I feel like a terrible person for it ending the way it does.

If I don't take meds I feel I should be doing things and then feel bad when I don't.

Or if I do take meds I get a lot of things done and feel productive but zaped of energy.

Hobbies are either invested in and dropped or I just feel 'bored' and don't want to get any of the stuff out to do them. If they stick around a bit longer they then feel like a chore or become a larger project and just another thing in the to-do pile and not relaxing.

Where is the off button and how do I relax?

Anybody have any tricks to stop that? I usually have a song (or several) stuck in my head when not actively talking or thinking, which I like generally. But this is overriding that and it's driving me nuts.

Edit: thanks for the tips, everyone. Eventually Rammstein took over and I was made normal again. But I'll be sure to try some of these next time it happens.

Gives me a little proprioceptive and vestibular stimulation on the side to compliment my attention while passing meds at the window. Might not work / be accessible to everybody but it's something to try and if it adds another tool to your coping skills box you're welcome.

If you struggle to be productive due to your workflow being too unstructured, allowing you to get distracted too easily, this is one way I have found structure your time:

• In essence, you switch from centering your attention around the task to centering it around a timer.

• You start at a timer. You plan what your next step will be (baby steps), and write it down. You allocate yourself time to do that task. Repeat.

• The one sentence goal statement is crucial because it reminds you what you are supposed to be doing during the timer if you get sidetracked.

• If the timer runs out before you finish, that's fine, but you are obliged to come back to the drawing board and re-write the goal statement.

• Snoozing the timer is a bad habit.

i have a lot going on in terms of my mental health, but one thing that is really destroying my life right now seems to be executive dysfunction. i'm well into middle age now and never got assessed, but i'd like to be evaluated and treated if possible. i really don't know where to start. i don't have insurance as i'm unemployed (u.s.). what sort of professional should i see who can help me? any thoughts on what to expect along the way? any advice would be most appreciated!

Though I deleted all social media apps, blocked YT shorts and dont use stuff like TikTok, I still fall into attention traps from time to time and suddenly realize that I have spend 2 hours scrolling through a subredit (for example) full of post totally irrelevant to my life and will now be very late on my schedule.

Do you have any strategies to avoid such situations?

I'm a single parent and have learned the hard way, over the years, what I need, can do, can't do.

I need nearly 100 % home office, as even one office day will take more mental capacity than all the other days combined. Also, on that day, pets and children tend to get sick, doctor appointments happen, contractor needs apartment access.

And yet, I got lured into a job with the good old bait & switch once more. Was supposed to be nearly full remote, limited time with max. 1 office day per week. Got switched to 2 office days min last minute, when I was already too committed to that offer.

Payment is very good, quite excellent, but it is all about office day logistics. Oh, and it's a 2 hour trip one way. With a child coming back from elementary school, having afternoon stuff to go to.

Also, it's hard not to hate the job and its people after getting lured in with broken agreements. I'm not even sure if they are all assholes or I just feel like that.

Needless to say, my stress level is through the roof. The absolute necessity to get up early in the morning makes falling asleep even harder, which intensifies the problem.

The plan, 2 weeks in?

• No foul play, but accept the great benefits regarding sick days. (On full remote jobs, I sometimes just pull through, as long as the pay is really great and above market.)
• Pull through 2 or 4 more weeks, then demand nearly full remote. They vaguely hint at the option to reduce office days at some point. If they say no, I'll just not come in, but won't quit. They'll have to fire me.
• I already started looking for a new job. When I find one, hand in my notice.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/51860922

Please don’t give this the usual

YouTube = downvote

Lemmy treatment. This is a very helpful and hilarious couple talk about autism, ADHD and relationships between autistic/adhd/audhd people and neurotypical people.

Hope this helps some people be seen.

My poor wife has to deal with my adhd all the time, which includes cooking. I can't stand cooking, and have always looked for ways to avoid it. I've seen lots of people on here express the same sentiment, and I'm curious if anybody has any advice? What works for you to trick your brain into cooking?

Contemporary psychiatrists might detect behaviour (in the plot of Herzog's latest film) consistent with autism or ADHD hyper-focus. Not Herzog. “I do not relate to all these trendy terms – I just can’t hear it, it dusts out of my ears,” said the Bavaria-born US-based director, speaking in the idiosyncratic, heavily accented English familiar to viewers of documentaries like My Favourite Fiend. “Neurodivergence sounds like there’s some sort of clinical aberration – these sisters are dead centre.”