I came across Dr Daniel Amen's work yesterday via a youtube video of one of his lectures, and basically he focuses on exploring the *different types of ADD *people can suffer, by coupling diagnosis with brain imaging.

This adds massively to the credibility of the condition, for any naysayers. It made me wonder why we don't get brain scans in our own diagnoses (or maybe you guys did? idk).

I guess I'm just linking it here in case anyone else enjoys reading psychology websites; i like the way they list clusters of symptoms/behaviour in 7 types, and i like the way they talk about it here in the article too. Well-written ADHD content deserves to be celebrated, right?

Feels a bit like I'm being picky now but I feel like my psychiatrist should have taken the time to explore what "type" of add i am, as well. might be helpful to understand that - to understand it objectively, because i could always guess at it myself.

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.”

I've always made up a person to fit in. Masking has taken a toll and I hate the person I've pretended to be. That person is boring, polished, and an over achiever. Since.I was punished severely on a daily basis at 4 years old and afterwards, my true self never was known to me. Only my self who could survive.

Where do we find our unmasked real self after reaching "the big one" burnout? When your braim stops working, you're no longer functional, and the person you made can no longer be sustained, what do you do?

I'm in my 40s and it's rough.

I’ve been off work in April. I’d been struggling to do anything, even the simplest of tasks and eventually everything ground to a halt. It’s usually pretty bad during winter times, but some years it’s particularly horrible. I was diagnosed initially as Bipolar Type 2 as the issue seemed to be a cycle of long downs and ups. Then I got an ADHD diagnosis and the medication helped with the ‘brain fog’. But it didn’t solve everything. After awhile the task initiation problem always reappears. My doctors often say it’s depression and increase the anti-depressant medication I’m on. Sometimes you get a temporary bump in activity a few weeks later but it never really goes away for good.

A recent trip to the northern summer where my symptoms mostly alleviated suggested it’s likely a co-morbidity between Seasonal Affective Disorder and ADHD. I’ve started light therapy which is helping a little, but I still feel stuck.

The attached image is my ‘model’ for how I function. Currently, at the start of Spring, I feel the same as I did late April when I left work. This makes sense accordingly to the model. But it feels like the uptake in energy during the summer is masking this task initiation problem rather than being a ‘cure’ for it. Every time the energy dips below normal it reveals how much I’m struggling.

I’m sick of this. I just want to go back to work. Summers are great – I go running, eat healthy, get creative, fix up the house. Every other season is rubbish.

This is more of a rant than anything else, but any advice would be appreciated. Other than saying ‘just start small and do the task’ that is. I’ve been given that advice way too many times to no effect.

I cannot function without stress. I don't work better under stress, I can ONLY work if I'm stressed. So all my life I'm rushing and hurrying artificially even if there is no objective reason to do that. This model was working great for me all my life until now when I'm in my twenties and my body is collapsing with GERD, proctological issues, bruxism, headaches, tinnitus, fibromyalgia... They say, "Oh, you just have to do things based on novelty and interes" but bitch you cannot make EVERYTHING interesting and new. When I start to give a fuck about everything and relax I end up doing no shit. And honestly I don't know what to do. The meds they were giving me just cause the same stress artificially elevating my noradrenaline and the evening crush is even worse compared to days when I'm stressing myself on my own means. I feel myself in a "stress yourself out and die or don't do anything and die as well" situation... Psychiatrist and meds, psychologist, supplements, weekly meetings in ADHD support group, physical activity, good sleep, good nutrition, all these ergonomical lifehacks like "pomodoro", "make the task easy", "just divide the task into subtasks", "reward yourself", "body double", "listen to podcasts while cleaning" etc... All this shit is not working. There is no brand new method left that I haven‘t tried and I'm deeply frustrated. I can only stress myself out until my body completely desintegrates. Just venting

Hello everyone,

I'd love to hear your personal stories and honest reflections regarding ADHD medication. Whether you've been on it for a few weeks or several years, your perspective matters.

Could you share:

Initial Thoughts: What were your fears, hopes, or expectations before starting?

The Experience: What effects did you notice first (both positive and challenging)? How did it impact your focus, emotions, and daily routine?

The Balance: Looking back, how do you weigh the benefits against the side effects? Do you feel it was the right choice for you?