ADHD

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/15467370

me_irl

Hi everyone. I don't have ADHD, but someone who joined my family some time ago does (we'll call him T), and is currently going through some trouble which I find quite perplexing.

Some background: T has two daughters (8yo and 6yo) under shared custody with his ex-wife (they spend roughly the same time with each of them during the week). T has had some serious difficulties through his life, some of which are structural and will likely stay with him forever, such as difficulty to hold onto a job or keeping his house tidy (even less so when his kids are home), and others of which are temporary by nature, such as the recent death of his mother.

His daughters had been having some issues for quite some time, including school performance and very frequent misbehaving. I don't particularly dislike kids, but holy shit, the very moment they got used to me, they became imps, almost constant screaming, fighting each other, not attending to reason, and so on. And I've barely seen them a handful of times. Anyhow, T decided to seek the root of these issues, discussed with his ex-wife the possibility of getting them evaluated for ADHD, and the ex-wife refused. T went forwards anyway, and the girls are now diagnosed with ADHD, and assigned to a psychologist who should theoretically have a session with them each month, but in practice, they're given less than 5 appointments a year. In general, T's complaints that he wanted more guidance on what to do with them have fallen on deaf ears.

A few weeks ago, social services knock into T's home, and naturally, they find that the house is a mess, because it always is. They take note of it all, and recently summoned him for a meeting.

T's current partner recently told me how the meeting went: social services claimed that the kids are sometimes late to class and they sometimes don't go at all, attributed all the responsibility to him, and he refuted that, while he's sometimes late when it's his turn to take them to school, they only completely miss class when they're staying with their mother. Social services disregarded this (shouldn't they have the means to corroborate it?), and proceeded to explain that, as a person with ADHD who cannot keep his life in order, he doesn't seem to have the competencies to raise the kids, so they want to impose a change in custody where they would stay with him less than 33% of the time.

What I'm getting from this is that the only thing the administration will take into account when determining whether you should be raising your kids or not is your medical conditions and how disorganized is your house. The kids have some issues, sure (I'm not arguing that they being late to class or missing at all is ok), but if there are two separated parents, and one has an ADHD diagnosis and the other doesn't, is it ok to attribute all issues on the diagnosed parent rather than checking where the problems are coming from? Shouldn't the fact that the kids have ADHD a reason to want to make sure and the parent who does also have it to be more involved in their upbringing, since the one who doesn't will have less experience with it and its difficulties?

I just wonder if it actually did get worse or it just seems like that because as an adult you have a lot more on your plate than you did when you were a kid/teen

And second grade...

And third grade...

And fourth grade...

Sometimes I wonder what the next 40 years would have been like if I'd gotten some help instead of just getting yelled at for being lazy.

Hi !

Just to go straight to the point, my doctor is thinking of trying Strattera in me, since it was recently made available as a generic and I tend to have prevailing side effects with stimulant medication (ritalin, Rubifen, elvanse).

I have some questions that would like to hear from people that are/were on this medication to share:

1. I understand this is non-stimulating and seems to work akin to an antidepressant. Therefore, do I have to take it every day? Even on days I do not need ? With stimulant medication I only take it when doing theoretical work, and skip it when on the laboratory or other minor tasks and would never take it in days I'm not working, because I can't just interact with people and gives me a baseline anxiety the whole day.

2. What benefits did it gave you ?

3. Any prevailing side effects?

4. How does it compare with stimulant medication (after taking it for some weeks)?

For a bit of context:

I've been diagnosed for about 6 years now, and started with Ritalin XR. However, I could only keep using it for some months since it gave seriously side effects that persisted 3-5 months after stopping it. I later switched to Ritalin IR, which worked for some time and gave me less side effects. But it started to be ineffective after some months.

Then my doctor tried Elvanse (Vyvanse), it worked on keeping me focused, but the anxiety and the huge time frame of action of the drug led to me only taking it once or twice a week.

I'm now back on Ritalin IR, but always feel the anxiety and aversion to interact with people that I always feel with these 3 stimulants.

I just started interning and it's my first office job (Yay!) but most of the clothes I feel comfortable wearing are not really office attire. Especially shoes. I have no "appropriate" shoes because shoes have always been a particular source of sensory issues so I wear the same black pair of mesh trainers. I have to commute in a big city so I end up walking a decent amount, and shoes that are tight and/or heavy really mess with my focus.

Do you guys have any advice on how to find comfortable shoes that are at least a bit more office appropriate? Maybe solid clean white sneakers? For reference I'm female.

For me showering means standing in a windowless room staring at a blank wall for 20 minutes (I get lost in my thoughts). Also there are several steps and I have to think about each of them.
This means that I only end up showering when my fear of coming across as dirty becomes bigger than the dread of being bored.
What do you do?

Holy fucking shit.

I love these guys. It's not the first mental health video they've done, but now there will be at least one about adult ADHD. I'm actually excited to see this.

I feel seen.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/14974194

Me irule

So I've noticed a pattern in my life that I was hoping someone could empathize with.

I've been training for over a year for a physical test that I really want to pass. The other day I tried to do the exercises that I'll have to do in the test and I completed all of them successfully and now I feel that I've lost some of my motivation to get better. It's as if I was trying to prove that I could do it and I feel that I have, although I really haven't since I haven't taken the test. I've noticed this before. A couple years ago I tried really hard to get into a prestigious degree in a reputable university through my own merit. I managed to get in and soon after I lost interest and quit. Has anyone experienced something like this before?

Thank you for your time :)

Ps.: I'm not sure this is related to ADHD, I just figured it might be and the people here might be able to advise me.

Cooking my dinner, best set a timer because I'm bound to forget it's in the over.

Get bored and start reading book.

Timer's done - I'll turn off the alarm and just finish the page.

Ten minutes later ...Wait, what's that burning smell?

I am going to an appt. across town, in part to get my meds refilled. I wasn't paying attention and missed my stop, but I also overestimated the travel time required, and am on my way in the other direction with plenty of time to spare. 😸

Just what the title says. I'm taking atomoxetine since 13 months, and this week will be my first psychological session. I've severe ED issues, to the point I can't do almost anything productive (including meditation itself), no matter how much I want to.

I had to buy a plane ticket which costed 80 $, and since I needed to do two super quick checks before buying it I obviously waited a month. Plane ticket is now 280 $. Cheers

How do you stayed focused on a task when the task involves some type of waiting?

For example, I have a really hard time staying focused at work. The problem for me is, our software can be really really really slow. While I’m waiting for Outlook to load an email, or our internal tooling to populate data, I find my mind is wandering. Often, I’ll start on another task or pick up my phone and just completely forget about the first thing I started.

At the end of the day, I have to figure out why I have 8 half written emails open in the background of my PC.

How do you stay on track when your tasks require patience?

I've found that breaking a daunting task down into concrete steps and eating away at it in baby steps helps me get it done. When I take Concerta, it helps me focus on the boring nitty-gritty bits, and it enables me to focus on activities like reading where you don't have to do any planning. But the actual process planning/task breakup stays just as cognitively straining as before and becomes the new bottleneck to my productivity. Can this also be fixed with a pill, or does everyone have it this hard and is it a skill that you get better at over time?

Not my vid. Just YouTube algorithm recommendations combining my technology interests with my ADHD.

And guess what is on back order at every nearby pharmacy? I'll give you a hint: it's not the $300 per month name brand.

So I guess I switch to Adderall xr tomorrow?

So when I went through school you'd have two types of struggling kids:

Kid A would struggle to pass tests, but work hard and get every assignment done so they can keep their average in check. Teachers like this kid. Not that there's anything wrong with this kid, but teachers project virtue on them sometimes just to shame kid B when kid B asks for consideration.

Kid B is who I assume many people here were and who I was. Kid B struggled to get from start to finish of all of the assignments that kept popping up and per haps couldn't do the same task for very long. Kid B, however, could get high grades on most tests. If Kid B asks for some consideration to pass the class as they've gotten the information but weren't able to finish all of the assignments and are told no, because Kid A exists and "I can stand someone who struggles with the tests but does the work, but I'll never tolerate someone who is lazy".

I have cptsd from years spent as kid B, but I'm pretty sure that's a generic thing that happened to others as well. I had that quote shoved down my throat by a double digit number of adults. And the too-radical thought is this: I believe the teaching approach that holds kid A as a paragon of virtue and kid B as a lazy snot is quite discriminatory and maybe those are just two differently struggling kids. And maybe some consideration should be given to both. And maybe PTSD causing trauma should be withheld from both groups

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/13788914

Internal conflict [Haus of Decline]

https://www.hausofdecline.com/

I've long had problems with random, unfounded bouts of anxiety. I've been taking Strattera and it has partially helped with this: when it works (which is 80% of the time), I can feel it keeping me in a mellow headspace at moments when I would have previously had racing thoughts and mental tunnel vision. Specifically, the source of the anxiety is still there, because I can feel it spark into action and put adrenaline into my blood, but the Strattera seems to be blocking it from affecting my mind in any way. While this is a significant improvement, it's still not perfect because the adrenaline in my blood still tires my body out quite quickly.

Recently I went a whole day on 2 hours of sleep, and I realized the sleep deprivation stopped my anxiety more optimally than the Strattera. My brain was too sleep deprived for the unfounded anxiety/fight or flight to even be initiated, which meant there was no adrenaline to block from affecting my mind in the first place. What's more, my mind was just generally more chilled out and slowed down (no hyperactivity or hyperfocus or anything), kinda a bit like if I was stoned, and I felt far less inhibition to spontaneously blurt out thoughts that appeared in my head without thinking about them, which I actually quite enjoyed because it meant I was being my peak authentic self.

Whilst the Strattera helped stop the immediate effects of my anxiety, the sleep deprivation got me into the actual overall target state that I want to be in. Now I obviously can't go about being sleep deprived every day from now on. Does somebody understand the chemistry of what Strattera does vs. what the sleep deprivation does? Is there any medication that could create the same desirable effects as the sleep deprivation?

I'm sure many of you are familiar with the issue of making excuses for everything. I don't just mean excusing your unfinished chores by saying "I have ADHD", I mean excuses and fabrications in general - at work, you might say you're nearly finished with a project, but really you're halfway done at best, at home you might say you couldn't start the dishwasher because of how angry your pregnant wife was at you for choosing the wrong program on the washing machine, so you were scared to start the dishwasher - fully ignoring the fact that you were supposed to start the dishwasher BEFORE even being confronted about the washing machine. The last one is a stupid example, but it happened an hour ago and it's a pattern I hate about myself.

If you've had a similar issue and identified it, what has helped you improve yourself? I may never be perfect to the point I'll get everything done that I need to, but I'd like to at least stop making stupid excuses that just bring up fights that could've been avoided.