this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2023
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ADHD memes
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The problem is that the symptoms of adhd are things that everyone experiences. What makes it adhd is the frequency, severity, and it negatively affecting their lives.
Well I'm glad we've all given ourselves nerve damage from reading a book for too long
No feathers ruffled.
A lot of ADHD symptoms are variants on normal burn out. The difference is the trigger level and severity.
By analogy, it's like going for a run. Everyone gets tired etc. ADHD is like going for a run with an invisible parachute deployed behind you. You can still run, but it's exhausting. You are also a lot more prone to being knocked about by cross winds etc. Unfortunately, without a sense of scale, the problems all sound like the same issues a normal person has running.
This is a common issue amungst people who randomly happen across here.
Going pee isn’t anything to be concerned about, but if you’re doing it 60 times a day, it’s probably something to look into. This applies to any symptom and why ADHD is typically glossed over like you’re doing.
"I can't wear mismatched socks! I'm so OCD!"
What counts as a diagnosis? Technically I've had a medical doctor (no clue what their specialty was) try to prescribe me adhd meds when I was like a toddler (my mom refused). Ironically, the reason my parents brought me at all was mostly sleeping problems IIRC. Even with treatment for sleep apnea and when I'm regularly getting 9 hours of sleep, my adhd symptom's don't seem to change much. If anything, being exhausted might make me more normal.
A diagnosis counts as a diagnosis. ADHD worth any concern is easily identified and diagnosed. If it is hard to determine, it's very likely one (or some) of the countless other things that cause the same symptoms and are more often fixable, but can cause harm/damage if ignored. It is quite simply a numbers game and of all the things causing symptoms like foggy short-term memory, attention drain, daily fatigue, etc, ADHD as the cause would definitely be a single digit percentile. This makes it a concern that people—ironically as someone else put it—gloss over their problems with alignment to memes/post as conviction over professional diagnosis. It also makes things more difficult for the community and those within that do indeed have ADHD.
Again, I'm not saying this is the case, but the remarkable uptick in ADHD's trend lately is certainly making me consider that people are neglecting their health or are indirectly encouraging others to. If I see a meme about ADHD being the LOL cause of needing to sneeze, I'm calling it.
My unscientific and uninformed observation is that social media, especially TikTok and Reels seem to mess with peoples’ dopamine reward systems and cause them to become very impulsive and have short attention spans. Either that or literally every single one of my coworkers under 30 also have ADHD.
Isnt what they call VAST ?
I thought VAST was some doctor’s proposal for a new name for ADHD. Because “Deficit” doesn’t really fit the disorder in reality.
There has been an uptick in ADHD TikTok videos over the last year or so. There are a few TikTokers that do basically nothing else. Since the core symptoms of ADHD won't provide you with content forever, those channels have continuously moved into symptoms that are more and more loosely connected to ADHD and thus more and more present in people who don't have ADHD.
Now, since medical professionals have been super reluctant to diagnose or treat ADHD for some reason, there is a huge distrust in diagnoses. It's said that ADHD is both the most underdiagnosed and overdiagnosed psychiatric disorder at the same time.
So people who have been convinced on TikTok that they have ADHD because they have trouble prioritizing household chores and walk around objects by swooning their hip out of the way will not trust a psychiatrist when they tell them that what they have is not ADHD.
There are tons of communities all over social media where people who have been "denied their diagnosis" gather and circle jerk about how all their life's problems would be solved if only someone finally wrote "this guy ADHDs" on some piece of paper for them, much to the detriment of real undiagnosed people who go under in this sea of confirmation bias and projection.
I feel the same way sometimes.
I have some news for you on that front.
I think OP was more about the trend of self diagnosed people acting like they were really diagnosed people while we all know that self diagnoses aren't worth anything.
I too do oppose this trend since it fuels the "ADHD is a made up dad that parents make up so they don't have to take responsibility for just not disciplining their child enough" crowd that just will not die out and harms diagnosed ADHD patients like myself.
Thanks, that was a really interesting read, and illuminating as well!