Hi everyone,
I’ve been told by others with ADHD that they think I have it. But I sometimes wonder if it’s not just bad habits / low willpower / low discipline / the internet and it’s short and fast instant gratification.
I have been to a psychiatrist and he said it sounds like I might have ADD/ADHD/something. (I don’t know the exact differences, as I’m new to it.)
Here are some issues (symptoms?) that I struggle with:
- Easily distracted.
- Easily overwhelmed / overstimulated by smells, noise / textures.
- Items in no. 2 make it hard to focus / work
- Mind is almost always running at 100km/hr.
- Been told I’m very random and my thoughts are very much so.
- Feels like a machine of thoughts are going off all the time in my head.
- Hard to relax / shut down.
- Can’t listen to music with any lyrics, gets stuck on repeat in my head for days and wake up at night with the song playing like a recording.
- Always extreme one way or the other, struggle with balance.
- Often jittery, tapping my feet, drumming with my hands on my lap.
- Jaw gets sore from clenching it all the time, even at night.
- Can’t listen to music for longer than 3 songs, and can only be instrumental / ambient.
- White noise is best, but makes me sleepy.
- Can’t listen to the radio or podcasts when walking or driving. Always want silence.
- Get worked up quickly, always an underlying tension in my mind and body.
- Can only spend time in small groups with very close people. Otherwise I want to crawl into a dark hole.
- Our town is too big, not even a city, want to live in the country. All the details and sound and litter and people and visuals drive me up the wall.
- I notice EVERYTHING.
- I can’t sit still for very long.
- I can get lost for hours researching a tooic IF I’m interested in it.
- Procrastination level is “over 9000.”
- Takes a LOT to get me to even START doing something I’m not interested in.
- Crap, I think this list is just going to keep going, so I’m just going to submit it now…
Some of the sensory stuff here smells a bit like the autism spectrum. Executive function issues also tend to fit under the ADHD/autistic umbrella. May be worth brushing up & seeing if any of that applies.
I agree that sensory sensitivities are also more common in ASD, but ADHD, especially in more severe cases, can also have sensory sensitivities as can OCD and other conditions.
OP I think there’s enough here to justify an evaluation by a psychologist if you can afford it / it’s available where you are. If not, reading about ADHD and applying some of those strategies will not hurt you. I’d recommend ADHD 2.0 as a starting point.
ADHD and anxiety are also comorbid, and some of your symptoms may be more about anxiety and might respond well to anxiety related interventions. ACT (acceptance and commitment therapy) has several good workbooks about anxiety which could be helpful.
Thanks for this, will read up about it a bit. Also, wondered about OCD, but I don’t have the “touch the door knob 3 times” or anything. I do have an issue with remembering things, and do have a thing about washing my hands and cleaning everything with wipes. Even take wipes to work with sanitiser as well.
OCD doesn’t have to have rituals necessarily but that’s what most people think of as a hallmark of OCD. A differential dx like this is important, but hard to do without a professional who can help you not just list your symptoms, but assess the qualitative nature of them.
Regardless, it does sound like this impacts your functioning and happiness, I’m glad you’re reaching out and getting some support.
Thanks soo much for the support and kind words. Appreciated. :-)
Classic ADHD. Your brain doesn’t handle dopamine correctly. It’s not a lack of personal discipline. You don’t ask a person with a broken leg to suck it up and walk it off. You shouldn’t ask a person with a broken brain to think their way past these issues.
Get diagnosed and get help - meds and coping strategies. There is a lot of good advice on YouTube and the like to help with “hacks” to pair dopamine-releasing activities with chores you can’t seem to make yourself do. The right meds can have a near miraculous effect.
Good luck!
Thank you! So would you suggest anything specific to get me started on youtube, whilst I try get an appointment set with a medical professional?
This channel is good but not limited to just ADHD: https://youtube.com/@HealthyGamerGG?si=ygXtysTYD4gb2S5O
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/@HealthyGamerGG?si=ygXtysTYD4gb2S5O
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Here is some information on diagnosing ADHD: https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/diagnosis.html
Please note that nobody here can diagnose you. Please see a medical professional, they’ll be able to get you started down the right path.
Thanks a mill! Yes, I didn’t post for diagnosis, just to see if it is something to pursue with a specialist.
If you’re like me and freeze on the spot, you could also write your symptoms down before going in.
I was diagnosed super young, but then I had to change doctors after my first one retired. I took medication for about a year as a teenager, but I didn’t start medication again until I was in my 20’s.
I was anxious that the new doctor wouldn’t believe me, but my speech patterns apparently partly gave me away lol. I try SO hard to speak at normal speeds, but I’m not always successful. Anyways, having stuff written down before I went to the doctor helped me a lot. Instead of worrying about if the doctor believed me, I was worried about reading the list properly.
If these things are making life more difficult for you, I would absolutely go. Don’t be afraid to get a second opinion if your doctor happens to be someone who “doesn’t believe” in ADHD. Starting medication honestly probably saved me from falling through the cracks. I’m better with timing, attendance, social skills, emotional regulation, paying attention, and many other things.
Best of luck!
Thanks so much for sharing, your support motivates me to get it checked out. I just don’t have the patience (no pun intended) with the doctors and trying all the different meds. Been on 2 ADHD meds that didn’t work, as well as on my 5 type of antidepressant / anxiety meds. :-/
Still far from good. Struggling a lot.
I’ve found that leveraging my ADHD helps a lot. Typically I can’t get going writing code is an exercise in frustration I’m so easily distracted. But the times I really shine are in the midst of crisis. When others are getting inundated in inputs and struggling to know what direction to go, I’m happily sucking down all that input and directing traffic to make sure we successfully navigate whatever the current crisis is.
Find the places where you are strong and leverage those.
Basically how it is with me in the freight industry
The amount of pallets I can keep track of at work and plans for loading trailers at the same time while keeping the paperwork straight is astonishing
Can’t remember where I park my car everyday when I get to work let alone where I stuffed my keys when I got there, but those aren’t important. Crunch time to get pallets loaded to make gate time is.
So I’ll take the victory where I can
This is a spectacular take. Thanks for sharing it.
Thanks, will have to think about it. Didn’t know what leverage meant. (English is not my first language)
But thank you for sharing and will look into it.
Never posted here and only lurking because I’ve never been diagnosed and I just feel close to people suffering from ADHD as I can relate with a lot of symptoms.
I relate with 95% of the points you enumerate. If you get diagnosed, please, follow up.
Will do! And thanks!
The “bad habits” are caused by ADHD which gives low motivation
Also some of the stuff here looks like ASD (such as not liking going with too many people, overstimulation, wanting to live in the country)
Based on your description the ADHD part is basically without a doubt, you can look up autism resources on YouTube, there are quite a few interesting channels
I don’t disagree, those kinda things (stimulation, people) can be issues for ASD, but I think they can also be ADHD issues. I love people and am very sociable, but because i struggle to talk about things “normally” and get bored easily I really prefer small groups of close friends.
I’d happily hang out with my close friends pretty much all the time, especially if it was just two or three of us. But if its a big group, I get easily bored and end up interrupting / dominating the conversation, or I just switch off and play on my phone, or just leave.
Even if when I’m having fun in a big group, I will involuntarily start eavesdropping on another conversation that’s happening in the group and stop being able to focus on what the person I’m talking to is saying. If its a fun drunken party, it can be okay to shout across the room to join another conversation, but it’s often very rude, especially to the person right in front of me that is telling me something and I’ve just started to blank… So small groups are easier.
Similarly, I love the busyness and novelty of the city, but since moving to the countryside with my partner, I realise how much background noises and stuff happening was really distracting me and making it harder to be focused and relaxed. So now, I do prefer the country.
Tldr: if you have problems with attention, that can impact social interactions, and how you react to stimulation. This leads to similar behaviour as someone with ASD, but for different reasons.
The whole reason I’m subscribed here is because so many of my ASD things are also ADHD related even though I don’t have that particular disorder. I would never get a diagnosis of ADHD because I don’t have enough of the required symptoms. There are only 2 criteria I don’t meet out of the ASD list.
Thanks so much, will have a look. Just so careful nowadays with so many self-diagnosed people labelling themselves as ADHD / autistic / AuDHD (new??) and wearing it like a badge or personality upgrade. I don’t want the labels or anything, just find the source of my problems. :-(
Yeah I get your point of view, I’m diagnosed for ADHD and my psychiatrist told me I might be asperger, and after looking into it both those things basically explain everything I do, and I’m understanding more of my behavior almost everyday since.
I also think it’s not necessarily bad to wear it as a badge, as it can be a big part of who you are (just like many other minorities which are very vocal about it) and it normalizes the fact of talking about it and shows what autistic people might look like, which can be far from the stereotype.
I hope you can find the answers you’re looking for, whether it’s in those topics or something completely different, it just feels great when you finally understand why you’re a bit weird and discover that the way others think is just so far from how you think, it’s a good tool and very validating :)
EDIT: just to add on AuDHD, over the years we are discovering that there is a huge overlap between Autism and ADHD, but the symptoms of those conditions can mask each other which leads to a late or no diagnosis. On my end I can really see how ADHD makes me comfortable to start talking to a stranger while they don’t see that I’m doing a lot of the interaction in “manual” mode, very self consciously. On the other hand, autism makes me enjoy being calm and chilling which hides the hyperactivity… It’s… interesting. There are much less resources on that but the few ones I found really really match my experience.
Not an expert or anything but as a person diagnosed with ADHD I have most of those symptoms
So does a friend of mine who takes Adderall (ADHD too)
Mostly excluding the music & sensory stuff tbh
Sounds like ADHD except 12, 13, 14. Those sound like something else.
You need to see qualified professionals. Some people who have symptoms of ADD might have those because of trauma, autism, anxiety, depression, “bad habits” and any mix of all of them.
No one here can diagnose you.
Thanks, will do, and yeah, not here for diagnosis, just wanted to see if it is something that needs to be looked at.
Yeah dude, I agree with the rest of the posts. Your Psych is more than likely dead-on Especially if drinks like Monster make you feel like you’re ‘honing in’; That was my self-medication until I got my Diagnosis, and thankfully one I was able to stop after getting help + meds. My heart thanks me at least lol
Getting onto ADHD meds (Vyvanse [so frakkin expensive, my god] for me, but different meds work for different people, and you may have to try a few before you find one that works.) was a complete game changer. I can’t overstate how much better I could focus or just… Live. Heck it even helped some of my lifelong anxiety, and I’m even able to help with picking up around the house (i.e.walking by a pile of stuff and not thinking it’s a million impossible tasks), which is something I’ve always struggled with too.
Unfortunately I’m too old to go get an official ASD diagnosis, however both therapists I’ve seen and my psych agree I likely have both. It’s helped me fix a lot of issues in my life and given a lot of background that lets me notice better when I’m about to meltdown. It lets me sometimes at least try to defuse it before it goes off, y’know?
This list is reallllllly similar to a lot of things I deal with. The meltdowns, the anxiety about people or busy places, and noticing absolutely everything around you.
About the music stuff- did you ever play Guitar Hero / Rock Band back in the day? If it was enjoyable, consider trying out an instrument. Guitars / Basses can be bought for fairly cheap, and there are games like Rocksmith (get the 2014 one, the new one’s subscription BS), and it can help gamify learning music. I’ve been playing stringed instruments since I was 11, and I found that over time I began to more ignore the vocals and focus on the technical complexities of the music themselves. Being able to take that, and eventually nail a song in Rocksmith, gave me a much deeper appreciation for music. Also Rocksmith lets you control volume for the vocal tracks too, so every song becomes an instrumental! A secondhand guitar of decent build is probably 300$ or so (I bought a Gibson Melody Maker in 2007 brand new in box for $500, so there’s ‘cheaper’ options available, especially used. Ibanez is pretty decent for starter gear too)
Even if meds aren’t a silver bullet that fixes everything (I still struggle with executive function), getting any of the benefits will make one hell of a difference. I can at the very least get some enjoyment out of doing tasks like chores now. Still working on starting and actually finishing all my projects tho XD
You’ll be alright, my dude. Promise! We’ve all been there. Getting the right meds and good tools will make the sun come out, at least a little bit.
First step is asking for help, you did good there :) You’re seeing a shrink, good! Have a chat about trying something for it; It could help immensely and make life less like running a marathon in a minefield.
There’s a great community here for ya. Heck even I’m usually a lurker (that Anxiety thing, y’know) but I just wanted to chip in.
You got this. <3 Remember to be excellent to yourself, too. 🎸
Ha I only intended this to be short, yet it’s a mile long. My bad! Rofl
Adhd combined at least with being hypersensory, which is probably why it seems to you like it is presenting different than you might expect. There are many aspects of this that are not only due to adhd. Every individual brings all the rest of them to their presentation too. Even stuff that is learned after birth or cultural can have a dramatic affect on how easy it is to diagnose, since most diagnostic criteria is still not well developed.
Other possible things to look into after the adhd diagnosis would be if autism or borderline personality disorder are also present. If so they don’t appear to be your main focus.
And keep in mind, while humans have made all kinds of seemingly separate categories for these things, at their root many of them are largely part the same thing. The categories are mostly about what strengths and weaknesses you ended up with. But you will usually have some overlap with other categories. Start with what is impacting your life the most. And after that is settled, see if anything else is still worth it at that point.
Quick update since I’ve posted this here: I saw someone and I’ve been given concerta on a medium dose, as to see whether it helps. I know some friends and family that say only vivance helped them, but it’s way out of my price range. Even this concerta generic is already 2/3 of the vivance price.
On day 2 of concerta, and I don’t feel much, despite it being one of the “instant kick-in slower release” meds out there.
Yesterday, the first day, did feel like my thoughts weren’t so rapid, perhaps slower. But the biggest thing was that I felt like my thoughts weren’t shooting out in 360 degrees all the time, like chaotic. It felt more like they were more together, or focused, like a drain pipe going forwards from my head, not frazzled and static like before.
Today doesn’t feel like anything. :-/
Thank you every one for your extremely kind and well thought out posts. I apologise for replying so late, but the responses were so many and so well written, I (ironically?) got overwhelmed and froze up.
I’m sorry if i didn’t reply to everyone’s posts, but your kindness and willingness to support, explain and uphold as a community is truly heart warming.
So this post will be saved for all the golden nuggets that need to be looked into and read up on further.
Thanks again, so much, to all of you. I have the details of some psychiatrists, and will establish contact to take this further.
Hi everyone, thanks so much for all the comments and feedback. I will try my best to answer all your questions:
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I’m late 30’s male and been finding these “traits” becoming more prominent in my life as i get older.
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Not sure if I could be on some autistic spectrum, as I’ve been told to be an “empath / hyper sensitive personality.” (Once again, I am not a psychiatrist, so I’m making massive assumptions about emotional IQ and autism.)
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The audio / texture / visual over-stimulation might also link to the HSP element in no.2.
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I have been to a psychiatrist and taken a generic of ritallin for a few months, but to me it didnt help, as it was like taking 12 espressos or strapping a jet engine to a bicycle and trying to steer that. :-(
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Was put on Attencit for about 2 weeks and nothing happened there either. (I assume it takes weeks before you have any evidence of it working?)
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Not on any meds apart from the meds for anxiety / depression.
I am autistic and empathic, which did indeed make it tough to get diagnosed. I had to go to the hospitals school for a year for them to figure out my diagnosis at the time(this was 30 years ago). I personally also don’t really have my own emotions, and despite having high empathy it took me a long time to figure out what other peoples emotions were even though they impacted me quite notably.
I am hypersensory which is the term for how strongly your sensory input is perceived by your brain. I need significantly less input to feel comfortable than what is common/average. And anything above that starts to bother me, or can even cause a sensation similar to pain. Just a strong “please stop doing this” message from the nervous system. It sounds like you are on this side of that particular spectrum as well from your main post.
From your list, I would say adhd is likely what is affecting you most. You may indeed also have autism, but if so I would leave it to second and go for an adhd diagnosis first. They diagnose one at a time generally. And there also isn’t really any kind of official diagnosis or support for being hypersensory that I know of, just having the knowledge to help yourself really.
Want to add that my ADD is the “hyperfocus” kind that doesn’t respond as well to Ritalin. Sometimes seizure medications help. It depends on the brain region affected. So keep trying. I recommend the book Healing ADHD by Daniel Amen for its excellent explanation of the different types and therapies that have been effective for each.
I will have a look at the reading, thanks so much for the tip!
Vyvanse gave me so much anxiety that just missing the bus on a quiet day made me feel like I was suffocating. It’s crazy that these medications affect us all so differently.
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Here’s a meme i saw yesterday about ADHD (all my ADHD friends have said it’s pretty accurate 😆):
The difference between ADD and ADHD is the presence of the word “Hyperactive” (Wich most people with ADD/ADHD do in fact have).
Aside from your condition we need a bit more info so we can help you.
Are you at school/university?
Or do you already got yourself a degree and have entered the “adult world” and thus facing new challenges?
ADD is just the outdated term for ADHD. One does not need to have hyperactivity to be diagnosed with ADHD; there are multiple subtypes.
Yep! This one took me a while to figure out because both my brother and I have ADHD, but he’s hyperactive and I’m inattentive.
I really hate the ADHD moniker. It gives people an entirely wrong idea of what the condition is, and what symptoms are associated with it.
It should really be renamed EFD (Executive Function Disorder)
I like EFD much better. “ADHD” has a stigma attached to it now and it makes me hesitant to tell people I have it. More often than not, they’ll immediately form an opinion about you based on that alone.
