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I have a question: How can you see in my head so clearly in this video? I was diagnosed with ADHD in early elementary school and I was wondering what is it that I'm experiencing and I couldn't explain those symptoms. And suddenly here you are explaining the same exact thing I have while i didn't have any answer to it. It cleared a lot for me, thank you!
To the paralysis - I’m not sure if this is a common thing - for me, say it’s 10 o’clock and I have an appointment at noon, I get stuck in this frustrated head space where I don’t know what to do with the time because it feels like not enough time to start a task but too much time to not do anything.
For me I have tasks in mind that take only a small amount of time and can be left unfinished without being mad. A game that is quick to boot up and doesnt require a set amount of time like pokemon does this for me. I can pick that up for 10 minutes and then put it down. Chores as well, just cleaning the hobs or something, something short. I can leave one half of the hobs unclean, although hoovering is dangerous because as soon as the hoover comes out the entire house will be clean, regardless of obligations.
I actually had an appointment with a counselor recently to discuss ADHD treatment. I completely forgot and missed the meeting but, you know, baby’s steps.
@@evanshearin6490 my sister's psychiatrist has ADHD (as does my sister) and they regularly have times when she forgets their appointment or to send in a prescription etc.
When I worked as a cashier before being diagnosed, I was confused why I had to split 1 dollar bills into groups of fives to actually count it. If I went over the number literally vanished from my head
I teared up when he talked about ADHD kids with high intelligence brute forcing their way through life until it doesn't work anymore. I didn't know other people struggled with this. He KNOWS what he's talking about, thank you Dr. K
I had a different reaction. I laughed. But just because it's so absurdly true and relatable. You just learn to fill in the blanks as well as you possibly can and that way it looks from the outside like you were paying attention. And you just "cheat" your way through things in various ways until it no longer works and you crash and wonder what in the world is wrong with you. He DOES know what he's talking about. I used to beat myself up because I used to think I could put in more ram than I had lol. But eventually I just accepted that I'd reached my limit and started looking for the extra armour and weapons. Started using calendars and notifications, like he said. Started trying to hack my attention at various times of the day when I knew I usually had better energy and focus. And things got a little easier, but still not quite good enough to not get overwhelmed. I'm still trying to learn to separate what's working for me and what's not. What is clear, though, is that I'm still struggling to function in society.
This was me too. Head of my class right up to the last couple of years of high school and failing at everything in adulthood. I'm finally getting things together at 50 as I understand how my brain works and I put things in place that work for me.
TRUE. Graduated HS early with a 4.2 weighted GPA. Got into college and the last year I was like I cant adult AT ALL. Still graduated with a 3.8 GPA 2 BFAs and a minor in philosophy. I can hyperfocus on learning just straight getting info dumped on but I cant organize to save my life
im undiagnosed this broke a reality to me felt like my whole personality as a human is just adaption, i was allways the kid that said he isnt smart he just uses logic because i could never follow a teacher longer then 5 minutes without spacing out. gotta go to the doc soon.
Bruh it was the "teacher calls on you and you learn how to gather info and answer quickly" part for me. I've gotten to the point where I can still keep up with the workload, but building a conceptual understanding on the spot makes it especially difficult because I can't trust myself to just learn concepts just by their equations. I'm in uni for an ME major atm, passed my dynamics class because I test extremely well- now I'm accidentally the professor's pet and he keeps calling on me, even though my way to compensate for my poor attention has become solving the problem on my own conceptually to keep myself engaged. I can never answer his questions, and it pulls me out of my train of thought. Even worse, professors use slides a *lot*. Working a problem on a board makes it easy for me to follow conceptually while also listening to what's being said. When it's a slide, I have to rely on the slide info because I won't have time or attention to follow both without losing one half of it.
What he said about ADHD people only feeling relief when they accomplish something really struck a chord with me. I'm honestly shook, that resonated so much to me. Like I don't feel good after I accomplish something, I just don't feel AS shitty as I did.
I started putting in "celebrate [thing]" in my calander, right after a hard task. Did I call my dentist? Let me celebrate that with a nice lunch! Did I get my teeth cleaned? Let's go see a movie! Did I get a job? Fancy coffee for me! It's not a huge thing but it helps. Been 3 years and now I do a little dance before getting to treat to really get my brain to feel good about what I did. It makes life more fun and thakes the edge off of the hard stuff. I can totally recommend this! We all deserve to celebrate our accomplishments :3
When I first got diagnosed at 17, that was the first thing my parents said to the pediatric psychologist was "she can sit in her room playing video games for hours on end, I dont get it" And then she had to explain to them. It was so powerful for me because I grew up thinking I was this horrible person who lacked direction and motivation.
I got diagnosed age 8, but the psychologist didn't deem int necessary to tell my parents *anything* about ADHD, so they assumed it was "gone" when I entered puberty, cuz teens are complicated and emotional, right? also given that I have both, ADHD and ASD from my mom(she's undiagnosed, but I'm like an exact copy of her in quirks, struggles and overall behavior) it's not surprising that my parents didn't think I was that much out of the ordinary.
It was the exact same for me. For me it even got to the point where I didn’t want to stay home when I was sick because I wasn’t allowed to play games or have my phone and I would be so incredibly unfathomably bored because all I could do was lay in bed or watch TV.
I graduated from university with high distinction a few months ago and I literally did not care lol. Everyone's like "you must feel so proud and accomplished!" And I'm just like "...no? Should I be?"
@@Lapeocon straight up. I almost dropped out because I simply don't care. And people have a hard time getting that when I told them I don't care I really have no feeling either way.
My procrastination and ADHD task paralysis love to join hands. I'm unable to do anything until I do the thing I am avoiding, so a lot of time passes and nothing else gets done either. The fixation on the thing I am afraid of doing makes it more terrifying in my mind, becomes more delayed, and thus it becomes even more important and paralyzing.
The guilt to do anything else is so powerful. I cant do physically anything unless i do the task that im supposed to do, but procrastination holds me back. So its an endless cycle of laying on the bed and staring at the ceiling
@@kikumon90 doing some task you enjoy beforehand helped me. Like cleaning or pruning my plants. Its still sorta a cleaning task, but you ease yourself into it and then you realise you're actually doing the cleaning.
Man i have this with pretty much anything i do. Its most annoying when i plan on cooking something but then my mind sort of paralyzes me bc the task seems too terrifying and i cant do anything at all. So i often end up barely eating anything that day...
Hyper focus is when I spent eight hours sewing a beautiful top the same day we’re going to leave for vacation because I waited till the last minute to do it. only thing left was the straps which is the easiest part, took the sewing machine with me on vacation didn’t finish it there brought it home and never finished it since. A project that became an obsession is now unfinished and abandoned sitting in my little shelf just waiting to be completed. Maybe one day I will finish it.
I doubt you eventually finished it, lmao. I have several projects that just need 3% to be done, but heaven knows I'm not touching any of them again. Reason why you need someone that isn't like you and typically has OCD, or at least likes to finish things. They will micro-manage your projects completion.
For me the hyperfocus problem is not so much me not being able to control when I use it, but that I completely lose track of everything else. I simply forget anything else exists, I forget that food is a thing, that bathroom breaks are a thing, that time exists... I simply do the thing until I can't anymore, because I feel faint and dizzy from hunger, or because I need to use the bathroom NOW. And I completely forgot about the meetings and tasks I had. Meds make it easier for me to break out of that, I haven't really had a hyperfocus since I take them, I have a much easier time both paying attention, and breaking out of a focus with meds.
Your description of what it’s like to be a gifted ADHD child brute-forcing their way through, then growing up and hitting the wall is scary accurate for me.
100% same. My grandparents and family friends would always coo about how smart I was as a kid but I struggled so hard in school because I couldn't make myself focus if it was stimulating for me. It would physically hurt to try, I would cry while doing homework 90% of the time. I am also 100% the college kid who didn't do any of the reading but my teachers never knew because I could somehow always answer and discuss the text anyway. I didn't even know how I did it half the time! My partner now is even baffled. He says I'm the smartest person he's ever met but I struggle so much with simple everyday things. He's so loving though and is so patient with me. He's been a huge help in building systems to make it easier.
@@hotarubinariko wow you just explained my experience so perfectly I'm actually little creeped out... I've never been diagnosed with ADHD tho i just thought of it as having bad discipline
@@hotarubinariko It’s great that you’ve found such a supportive partner in your husband. (And I mean this in the sense of “partner” as “someone who you work with”, not “spouse or equivalent”.) I hope things get easier.
The "brute forcing things with extra IQ" really resonated with me. I always wondered how I got through school with A's and B's when I could never focus in class. The huge downside to this is that I ended up not actually learning much of anything.
@@AlexandreLopsz wooow, thats exactly me but i'm 31 now because i procrastinated the hell out of my whole university life. Fortunatley my professor is very understanding and has agreed to meet every week to create artificial pressure in short time intervalls. Hoping for the best now.
A big thing I don't see talked about enough in ADHD discussions is the insane amount of emotional dysregulation and rejection sensitivity dysphoria that comes with it. Would you be able to chat a bit about that in the future?
Absolutely this. It's hard to rank symptoms, but emotional dysregulation has got to be one of the worst for me. Everything is so much harder to manage when your entire day is ruined because you burned the eggs at breakfast.
My brother has severe ADHD and he has real issues with judging other peoples' emotions, which more or less prevents him from being empathetic. He also does not know when to stop during an argument because he can't tell at what point he starts to permanently scarr someone emotionally, so arguments with him tend to be longer and louder than with other people.
@@ahsookee I sympathize w both you & your brother on that. Sometimes when we ADHD folks are really passionate (or even just hyperfocused) on something, we can go into overdrive in our search to be heard & understood- especially if we've spent a lot of time being or feeling misunderstood. That doesn't make his points turning to rants or tirades ok tho. Perhaps, if you feel up for it, you could talk to him about it when y'all are calm & getting along- personally, I benefit from the positive, negative, positive (& maybe a solution) sandwich, maybe it will help him. Ex: "Hey, bro, I admire your passion & enjoy the things you talk about. Sometimes it does feel like you start to talk at me (or others) & your drive to be heard can be hurtful. I know that's not your goal, so maybe we could work out a discreet signal I could give you when you're starting down that path? And later I can tell you what I noticed to help you learn others' discomfort signals for yourself.
The worst part about being an intelligent female with ADHD is getting misdiagnosed as not having it during childhood because I don’t display the correct systems. People get frustrated with you. They wonder why you are the way you are. “You’re so smart. What’s the excuse.” “You’re just being lazy.” “You don’t strike me as having ADHD. You’re too smart for that.”Or if I was overstimulated and asked to change my environment in school in order to focus better, I was just being too sensitive. This video has been so affirming for me. I was also definitely the kid that didn’t pay attention, got called upon, gave the correct answer, and the teacher was like “oh, I guess you were paying attention.”
The absolute most annoying thing anyone's ever told me was "Just don't get distracted". What's next? "don't get hit by a car" when I've just been hit on a zebra crossing
The shame and blame that we're "not living up to our potential", "we're wasting time", "we're not applying ourselves", "if you just paid more attention", is so defeating!
Yeah my mom always used it as an insult against me that I'm "very sensitive" so I did everything not to be sensitive anymore. The only thing it accomplished is that I have to relearn to actually "feel how I feel" again.
I was diagnosed at 44 years old. I believe one of the best things to come out of social media platforms like TikTok is the opening of the conversations about mental health. We can finally be seen, and even though acceptance is so new there's still a lot of "Oh, everybody says they have that" clapback, at least we know we aren't alone.
His statements on high IQ ADHD kids brute forcing their way through school hits me like a truck because thats exactly what I did. I also mastered zoning out while looking like I was paying attention. Now I'm 24, burnt out, unable to brute force my way through stuff anymore. Dr K's statements on under/over diagnosing should also really include gender as a factor. ADHD women have been so underdiagnosed due to gender biases ("Women can't have ADHD") and different symptom presentation (ADHD women are exceptionally good at masking because of expectations put on women growing up + their symptoms tend to be way more internalized). I had a female friend who CLEARLY had ADHD, she couldn't hold a conversation no matter how hard she tried because she always got so distracted but her psychiatrist, therapist, and doctors refused to even TEST her because "ADHD is overdiagnosed" even though women are proven to be severely underdiagnosed. Meanwhile I have a male friend walked into his general practitioners office, said he thinks he may have ADHD, and the GP prescribed him adderall without ever seeing a psychiatrist/therapist or any other kind of mental health physician nor was required to see one to continue getting refills. Personally, I had to take a multi hour test from the DSM and it took 2 different sessions meanwhile I still got treated with suspicion from my GP.
yeah I can relate to this, ADHD runs in my family like my dad/brother and a bunch of my cousins got officially diagnosed but I was good enough at taking tests in school they just never looked into it for me. And now I'm 27 and realizing I'm almost positive I have it too and it makes getting my work done for my actual job really hard.
Expectation? Or is it the personality? Girls tend to be agreeable (meaning they are relatively obedient) and extraverted, which usually leaves good impression on parents and teachers. So ADHD symptoms tend to get compensated with good impression, causing it to be underdiagnosed. Boys on the other hand is disagreeable, introverted, and may show certain extent to disruptive behavior, which parents and teachers usually not overlook, leading to over-diagnosis.
@@ifluxion what you're describing is the result of social conditioning. Girls are expected to be agreeable, obedient, etc from a young age and are punished for not doing so. This has very little to do with personality and more to do with societal expectations of women. Boys are not raised to be this way (hence "boys will be boys") which is why women learn to mask their symptoms from a very young age and are severely underdiagnosed as a result.
Same, that was exactly what I did throughout my entire life as a young man, I'm just thankful I managed to fix my ADHD in my 20s, just having the initiative to study psychology in my free time and discovering an healthy routine and diet.
My girlfriend and her family don't have ADHD and honestly, I've been asked all the questions "how did you get through school without studying" "why can't you do anything if you have an appt. at 5 oclock" "What do you mean you always have a concert and thought processes going on in your head" etc. etc. I will simply show them this video, because I am honestly finding safety in the fact that for once, someone is understanding what I am going through in words better than I can describe. Thank you for this :)
Yesss! I have a round table of several perspectives of thoughts and things running through my head at warp speed at all times. I have my logical internal voice, my voice that's into whatever looks shiny and pretty at the time and always wants crafts, the one who has anxiety about being late or random accidents happening, intrusive thoughts about random crap, the one that's just a running list of everything I have to do today over and over so I don't forget on a loop until I do one of them then it's the rest over and over, the one that keeps track of all the stuff for my kids and husband, the snarky bully one that criticizes me for everything, the one that looks for any reason to stay home and another that wants excuses to go out and dress up, and then random music lyrics and movie dialogue that ties into whatever I'm doing and some kind of morbid comedian. All. The. Time. It's not like multiple personalities because they're all me but it's like I have facets like a gemstone or something. If I try to explain it people just look at me like I'm terrifying and ask if I feel okay 🤦
Lisa and Austin - I SOOOOO relate to this! I was talking with my husband yesterday about my inner monologue and he was like, "what, you're hearing voices now?" I was taken aback. Doesn't everyone have mental "chatter" like that? I couldn't explain to him that it's not really a separate voice, but it says all sorts of things that may or may not be true or relevant. Doesn't everyone have 10 things running through their mind at the same time?
Dude 21:11 hit me so hard. I think this is why I've spent my 34 years getting two Masters, in library science and crime scene investigation (two VERY different fields), volunteering at botanical gardens, opening an Etsy shop, working at 4 different libraries, and now, interning at a coroner's office. I have this very deep-seated feeling of inadequacy mentally because I can't remember anything or learn anything sufficiently so I feel this need to 'prove' myself constantly that I am mentally adequate. Now my head is just full of information that is mostly useless, and to make it worse, your earlier point of feeling 'relieved' and not 'proud' is still the case; I feel no true sense of accomplishment at having done these things, just a sense of relief whenever they were over.
I hit this wall in my 30's. I've been struggling with mental adequacy for 5+ years now. Your comment about only having relief whenever a task is accomplished is a daily struggle for me and a massive reason for my lack of motivation.
@@deanag8457but what good does that do us. All I ever did was pass tests but the point of school was to get us used to being a mindless drone who values obedience and repetition which is hell for us.
White/brown noise story: I was still in college when my kids were little. I had homework to do with a lot of reading (one of my biggest struggle) but also had to take my son to a birthday party at Chucky Cheese. I took him and my books to a room full of screaming kids. This was ome of my best reading ever happened in that environment. I realized the noise was loud but became a blur and my brain could turn off that information. Unlike at home where I might hear a drip and hyper focus on that rather than the words I need to read.
It feels like thinking so fast your main train of thought stops for a fraction of a second to think something else then continue or derail. To me it feels kind of like this: " I have to go to the gro-OHLOOKAPENNY-cery shop to pick up some eggs and milk then rush home to start make~du~du~dududuuu~ing-OOHILOVETHISSONG !!! When did i hear this song the last time hmmm "
The part that hit me is where she stopped filling the flowers, just to write down that she needs pills only to walk away forgetting about the cereal and flowers and thinking about the Latin origins of medical words instead. Just to, seconds later, remember she forgot to do like 3 things. Accurate af.
I think so fast that it's rarely a full sentence, a thought is more like the vibe and meaning of the sentence without having words. So when I have a thought that actually consists of words, it does feel like hearing a voice sometimes.
I have conversations from different people's perspective happen out loud A LOT. I can stop it at any time and they are my own thoughts and scenarios. I never heard voices and I hope I never will.
@@ytilaeR_ My parents always say: If I give you 3 tasks to do, you forget 2 of them. My mom also says: If your head wasn't stuck on your body, you would even forget to bring your head. Which I find funny.
I think that there are other parts to the paralysis, such as being too overwhelmed that you can't start. Difficulty starting a task due to knowing said task will not give stimulation or dopamine. Time blindness and not understanding how long a task will take, or even knowing how long a task may take and not wanting to spend that time to due such task not being stimulating enough until it is necessary.
Yes, I can't gage time. I don't know how long something will take. I'm either early or late. I feel paralyzed like I can't do anything because I will miss the event or meeting.
And as more time passes I become increasingly less likely to start/achieve that task. starting things is the most difficult thing for me, literally starting anything! So I definitely agree with you here.
What I found really difficult about the ADHD diagnosis process, was a lot of the questions are purely (as Dr K says), about whether you fail to function or not. I function to a mediocre level, but through great effort, and I know ADHD symptoms make things harder than they need to be, but the process doesn't care and so I was told I don't have ADHD. I was honest about my level of functioning, but couldn't then go on to explain that there's more to it than that. Something being unreasonably difficult is invisible, you either do it or you don't as far as others can see.
This reassures me, that I still might have ADHD, even though I just about don't pass as ADHD according to all the self tests I've done. Things like: "Are you on time?" Yes. Actually more like 5min early. Because I panic about being late and plan everything to death, check the time several times and plan to leave the house 10min before I have to so I'm actually out of the door on time and I usually have a Plan B should I miss the bus anyway... "Do you buy things impulsively?" No. But I grab a lot of things impulsively that I want to buy. I think I usually don't end up buying them because I grew up in a household where one of the biggest sources of conflict was buying things we don't need. So being very hesitant to buy something is now deeply ingrained in my brain. (The list goes on...)
Yes, I was very glad that my psychiatrist put my answers into perspective with already adopted strategies and/or masking. I almost never miss appointments, but that is because I put every little thing in my google calendar and have a widget on my home screen and basically check it a hundred times every day. So he said: ok, you found an actual strategy that works for you, but if you wouldn't do that? If it's not in my calendar it is not happening. The same goes for things like wandering around/fidgeting. I wouldn't do that excessively but only because my anxiety to be perceived as weird and rude is more severe than the urge to this. I really think it should be considered how hard it is to function and if there are already coping strategies in place.
At work I have a schedule to follow all day and alarms to keep me on track. I have a set time to do everything so it's not that bad. Things like my glasses, keys, employee badge, and phone generally have a set place to be when I get home, so few problems there. However, I do occasionally forget one of those important items somewhere in my rush to get to work. The times I've gone to work without my phone or glasses are frankly embarrassing. And finishing my housework and personal errands is nigh impossible.
My psychotherapist told me I'm a hypochondriac for wanting to test for adhd so yeah...most people that work in the field aren't good enough to work with us yet here they are, with their bought diplomas or whatever.
@@skeletoninyourbody9896 Sounds like you need a different psychiatrist. Doctors are less people and more a product you buy(in terms of what they should mean to you) . If you're dissatisfied with the product go get different product. I've not heard of many doctors refusing to do a noninvasive test because of hypochondriac tendencies so... Get a different doctor.
Thank you. Your comments about ADHD and gifted children hit really hard. I've felt like a failure my whole life because I never "lived up to my potential", and having someone explain why with a really accessible analogy is really validating.
“Not living up to your potential” was the bane of my entire existence. I graduated hs with the lowest gpa in my whole graduating class but was also the only one in my school district to get a perfect score on the sat.
The "1 minute in my head" was so brilliant. I'm currently cleaning my room and I feel like I moved stuff around for three hours and my room is still a mess haha
@@KxNOxUTA Yes, also I just move from task to task if I don't have enough room to finish another. I sorta try to make room in the middle and throw everything I can't order in the middle of the room. Then I go around the room ordering and cleaning.
Yep. With cleaning, hour 3 is like the end of my "pre-game". The last 30 minutes is where 80% of the cleaning itself gets done because that's when I realize I'm running out of time. (And I only "realize" because my spouse tells me we're going to be late for something....again.)
A strategy that works for me when cleaning is to not try to focus at all on what I'm cleaning. I just try to sort of get myself started, and then whatever "cleanable" thing I come across, I engage with *immediately* even if it interrupts something else I was doing. It's chaotic, but eventually sort of converges into a clean apartment as long as every individual step doesn't increase the messiness significantly. It's like, I can start vacuuming, notice a piece of trash on the floor, go put it away, sort a few dishes in the sink, wipe the tables, then go back to the vacuum for a bit, notice that some surfaces are dusty and start dusting them, et cetera. It's very low friction and if anyone looked at me doing it they'd probably be very confused, but for my brain it's just the easiest way to get things done.
I am a medical student with ADHD and all i can say as a kid, I was "brute forcing" everything that I sort of develop a fine observational skill. I don't ask questions to people (sometimes I do, it depends on my social anxiety level), I'll just observe everything around me to give me a clue to answer my own questions. It has a perk in the clinical as I can spot what's wrong with the patient quickly, but I sometimes get in trouble for not asking the most basic questions that you can't get with pure observation (like name, age, occupation)
I've been brute forcing since I was in the second grade. That's when the insomnia started. Developed a system of staying up one night reading and sleeping the next. Did this all throughout grade school. Read damn near every book in my schools library. I even read the dictionary and read it 2 more times as an adult. But if I try to think of a good word to use I never can but if I'm talking ahead of myself I often say words I can't define but when checked {love google b4 that it wasn't easy to get validation cuz nobody b carrying a dictionary around..well nobody but me...and how did i know that easy because all the kids always pointed out my differences from others very slanderously ( dont even knoe if thats a word but if it isnt i will ™️ it) totally forgot my point or if i haf one...uhmm dont know how to end this so just gonna do it😊
Same here, but in IT Support instead of medicine. I've got two big motivators: empathy for helping people solve their problems, and solving novel problems. But like you, I don't ask enough questions... I'm too busy looking for all the clues and investigating all the possibilities.
The white noise stimulus thing finally makes sense. When I write (scientific papers, fiction, etc.) I like to listen to dull podcasts or boring Netflix in the background. People have asked me how I could possibly focus with "entertainment" in the background and I couldn't explain, but I know I function better with some kind of distraction because it frees up the creative and analytical part of my brain to do its thing while the spastic part of my brain is pacified and shuts the heck up for once. :)
I also find that there's a delicate tipping point between too little stimulation and too much, especially depending on the complexity or difficulty level of the task in question.
I like waves, certain types of music and shows I'm already familiar with, but the white noise produced by white noise machines is pretty painful for me to listen to. I can't focus if that noise is happening. I can barely exist in the room. Ugh. It's awesome when you can find the 'noise' that works for you.
@@spinthepickle1244 definitely. For me, I have an assortment of specific "focus" songs I turn to, usually 30 minute extensions of choice video game music that I've consistently fallen back on with success. Things like playlists are more iffy for me because the change in music forces my brain to acknowledge and maybe be excited or whatever for the next song, but the same familiar song looping over and over melts seamlessly in my mind within like 5 minutes, making it completely non-distracting while filling the mental space to help me focus (plus the association with This Music = Focus Time also helps). Plus, when I need to take 30 seconds to rest my hands or zone out, then the music is still there for me to appreciate more presently without having to interrupt my groove :)
It used to take me hours to complete my homework when I was a kid because I had to sit at the table alone, in silence. I was so bored I couldn't focus. I asked if I could have music. My wonderful mother was doubtful but allowed it. Since then, I got it done without a problem. Used to do essays to TV shows or instrumental music. Lyrics or new songs can distract me too much. Then there's my chem test in high school. My teacher would play classical music during every test which would normally help a lot. Then a song, which one of my favorites Dance Dance Revolution songs was based on, came on. I couldn't answer a single question during the entity of the song.
wow so good, the description with "relief vs accomplishment" was spot on - i studied hard for 2 month, got a notification mail telling me i have the best grade and it felt like nothing. Maybe it was the time of the day when i found out, but i felt/feel mostly indifferent to the grade . The constant rewards during studying, like takeway or so, actually felt more rewarding. Aswell i didnt have a week schedule for the time after the exam- so in the future i even need to plan that ahead so i dont fall in a hole without routine.
I have been without my ADD meds for going on 3 weeks and... the hyperfocus short is so spot on. I accidentally spent 10 hours cleaning my room last week. I was organizing and sorting and it was like 8pm, time to wind down. Just one more thing... and then i looked up and it was 2am. My back was screaming, my bladder was ready to burst, my eyes were burning... never been able to harness it effectively.
Oh, a few months ago I built a 3D printer. Box showed up at my house at 6pm, started building it and got extremely involved in it... Until 6am, when I finished building it. 12 freaking hours! The worst thing? The university exam I had at 10am, that I inevitably failed
I get this with video games pretty badly. Something I do to break hyper focus when I need to is I set an alarm to go off on my phone to act as a reminder to do something else.
DR. K is out here, describing exactly what happened to me when I went from an honours student in high school to crashing hard in my first year of university....
@@what3269 🥹 aw geez Congrats 🫂 sigh i just feel defeated after all the attempts and transfers and failed classes ya know. But thank you for the kind words. I’ll definitely try again
@@copiouscat Oh, I feel you. I felt that way, for a long time. I'm not advocating just bashing your head into the wall some more either. Only go for the degree if it's something you really want. And even then, take the time to be in the right place to try again. Like, figure out what coping strategies work best for you, if medication helps, that's great. For me, getting the diagnosis helped SO much. Medication, knowing what strategies work for me, and tech advancements (notifications on my phone, timers, calendars, etc), it's the only way I've managed.
@@copiouscat I managed to drop out with only 3 classes to go, avoid school for 7 years, then decided to finish my degree. It went a lot better then, but I still didn't want any more. Now, almost 15 years after getting my BA, I'm working on my MS in an entirely different field and loving it. The difference, though, is that now I KNOW I have ADHD, and now I've figured out what coping mechanisms work for me, and I have meds. It makes everything possible now. I'm still occasionally overwhelmed or miss deadlines, but I'm no longer hovering on the edge of a mental breakdown. It IS doable.
It makes me so uncomfortable when people minimize a real disorder by saying, "Like, literally anything is an ADHD symptom!" Hidden to me until I was 30 years old, this disorder devastated my life. Knowing full well how many people would now choose to downplay people who genuinely have crippling ADHD symptoms since "oh, everyone is a little ADHD," is simply terrible.
Honestly, I feel the opposite. I dislike it when people gatekeep disorders, saying "you must be this negatively affected by it to have it." Not everyone's life is devastated by things like ADHD. Claiming so might just stop a lot of mildly afflicted folks from receiving diagnosis or help.
I don't have OCD, but for over a good decade everyone was saying, "this thing is my OCD" about everything. I can't imagine what an individual with legit OCD must have felt, and were likely dismissed a lot due to the attitude towards what OCD is. Now that I finally have my ADHD diagnosed, I am self-conscious about people believing me/taking me seriously.
@@ShazySoft There has to be a threshold for a diagnosis of any disease or problem, Is the issue impairing your function in the world built for the average person in a way that lowers your chances of having some kind of stability and success? Then there is a need to intervene professionally to fix the issue.
This was really helpful. I often wondered why I got so frustrated when people either interrupt my thought process or a task that I’m doing because not only do I have trouble switching the task but I know that when I go back to it, I have to start all over again or I’ll forget about it altogether. And I don’t think it’s necessarily like start all over again as in everything I accomplished in that task from square one but I think it’s that I used so much effort to get the task started that once I’m doing it I need to complete it or it’s harder to re-start.
It all makes sense. When I used to fly to other countries with my dad for work, in the plane, I felt "the zone." By which I mean, I absolutely BLAZED through fourteen assignments and two essays for my grade 7 classes. Most days, I struggled to get even two assignments done. One 11 hour plane journey, and all of my work for the MONTH was done (my teacher gave us contracts; all of our work for the month was detailed out in this big grid-style chart) After I finished the work, I started drawing to commemorate. It was this big concentric spiral and it flared out into a bunch of smaller spikes. I have no idea where the concept came from, but it sits on my fridge to this day to remind me that I AM capable, that I can do things when I put my mind to it. Cling to those moments: remember that you are and will always be good enough. ADHD often gets talked about in the more intellectual capacity, but the oft-overlooked part of it is how it can affect people emotionally. I've seen it tear the best kind of people down, and if you suffer with it, you don't deserve that. You ARE good enough.
Me listening to airplane noises on RUclips thinking it is a cure somehow and then realising that's a dream lol since everyone is different, but I can only keep on dreaming
You are SO right about the emotional part-even if you don't know you're ADHD. I wasn't diagnosed until my late 30s, and while the label helped explain WHY I struggled so much, it's been the actual seeking & receiving of treatment that has been helping me reframe my thoughts, regulate my emotions & rebuild my esteem. I'm so grateful to live in a time that this is finally being talked about-w/out shame & am able to use others' stories to help myself & my kiddo, who's also ADHD.
I feel like not having much else to do makes it easier to get the school work done. I’m currently in college and working and I have such a hard time doing the online work at home but if I take my computer to work with me and do it on my lunch break then it is easy to get a lot done
Your RAM analogy crushed me. I was diagnosed at 26. I often wonder if my diagnosis was accidental because my life isn't impaired the way it was before I started medication. Then I heard your RAM analogy. That was me as a child and teenager. I had a school psychologist recommend medical intervention at 15 and had a well-meaning teacher tell my parents that I was just bored because I was gifted. I underperformed for another decade before I broke down and pursued a diagnosis as an adult. Thank you for validating me and others like me.
@Samuel Kerl God, I wish I knew. For me, the answer to increasing the amount I could save was medication. However, I am still trying to put a ridiculous amount of RAM into a computer that is running windows 98.
Man, that “what hyper focus is really like” is right on the mark. It can occasionally be useful, but most of the time it is destructive to your health, relationships, and other tasks that need to be done.
I hope you get this post. I am 75 and 10 years ago made the decision to separate myself from being around anyone. Still every morning I can't make any decision to leave my home unless I have to order food from groceries, etc. My ADHD is worse than ever. this video helped me understand how to help myself. My oldest son has lived this way 30 years. He was evaluated at 7 to be "genius IQ" but could not be in a classroom. Thank you.
This is really informative! I was one of the “gifted” kids with a high IQ score and when you talked about the “brute force” when asked questions…too real. I would blaze through everything with high marks without studying and with haphazard attention by using “common sense” - until I couldn’t. I got passed over for a diagnosis even though I had a lot of classic, noticeable symptoms as a kid, while my two first cousins got diagnosed in elementary school because their grades were struggling. I didn’t get diagnosed and treated until I was 27.
Same, though I crashed and burned in college because I had no idea how to study. Being a woman, they tried to diagnose me with everything but the obvious (I didn't even really question them, then).
I have adhd and autism and I was diagnosed early (thank non existent god)and I have found studying to not help a single but I still get good grades and all that but studying is kinda just a waste of time for me.
exactly the same for me, that part felt like he was describing me... I had high school tests where I didn't attend a single class and got max grade, but when adult life came, things got really tough!
To answer the question @25:20, as a recently diagnosed ADHD, 30 year old female. The signs were there my whole life, but it wasn't too disruptive too my life until I was older and sought out a diagnosis for whatever was going on. Considering that women/girls are now diagnosed its safe to say they are getting better at diagnosing it. When I was in school I was either stupid or a genius, no one ever considered adhd but my male classmates if they acted out at all everyone said "definitely adhd"
I was evaluated about 2yrs ago, and we “ruled out” ADHD because I scored so well on the tests. I had a high IQ, so no ADHD. Listening to this video makes me want to angry-cry. Because of this video, I’m going to contact the people who did my testing, and ask to be tested for the markers you’re discussing.
“High IQ so no ADHD” … if that’s really what they said, that evaluator was absurdly incompetent. I was diagnosed at age 6 in the early 00s and also determined to have 98th percentile intelligence for my age group at the same time. There is no correlation at all between ADHD and “IQ” except that some with ADHD will perform better on IQ assessments with medication or accommodations (extra time, distraction reduced room, etc). Intelligence tests generally are less impacted than knowledge tests by accommodations (or at least that was my understanding of why I could still score exceptionally without treatment)
DUDE NO SAME I got diagnosed with asd at an in school psychiatrist in 2nd grade I didn’t know what that meant so I never thought much about it some things in my schedule changed and I could go to this fun room if I wanted! Fast forward a couple years and a couple lessons on emotions (focusing on asd) 6th grade killed me. I just kept getting frustrated at the adults for not listening to me I kept saying that I cant turn my brain off and I ended up brute forcing my way through the rest of school. 8th grade rolls around I’m diagnosed with mdd and general anxiety disorder. 9th grade and I’m retested finally after so much begging and the physiotherapist is saying I have above average iq and it looks like asd but there’s a handful of inconsistencies. Brute force my way through school dealing with ✨emotional abuse✨ as I have throughout my life. I end up going through a phase of self diagnosing (which is quite cringe and wrong I know) honestly I have to at this point because it seems like I’m the only one willing to care so I’ve done so much research. I’ve kept waffling back and forth on wether or not I have ADHD because look at me I’m tired and I just can’t focus on anything that isn’t stimulating I’ve gone from hyper focus to hyper focus looking and scouring for something that makes me happy again. I just don’t want to live anymore honestly it’s frustrating now that I’m an adult and I don’t know how to do anything useful. Im suffering and Ive hurt others wether they want to admit it or not. I don’t know what else to to
Definitely go get a second opinion. One indicator that’s good to look at is whether your working memory IQ is as high as your other IQ subscores. You might score in the high 99th percentile on everything else but have a measly 96th percentile on working memory. That’s super super high. But it’s also super low compared to the rest of your brain function and can be an indicator of giftedness+ADHD
ADHD paralysis for me feels the same like sleep paralysis, like when your mind is fully awake but you body is fully paralyized and you can't move anything but all senses are on high alert. Task paralysis feels kind like the same. You know what you have to do, you know how important it is but you can't do anything till it's that urgent that panic levels are high enough to do it finally. Aaaand sometimes they are not done till the right mood, stimulus and energy all met at the same time.
OMG my mind is totally blown right now. What you explained at 21:00 about smart ADHD kids not paying attention in class, but doing some brute force reasoning…this is 💯 why I was diagnosed at 34. I literally never realized that was my thinking process in the classroom.
Yes this was 100% totally me! Most of the teachers thought I was super smart and good at school work but either lazy or needed to apply myself more. The better teachers noted I was often distracted and distracting others lol and very talkative 😅 but a lot of them, especially by 3rd grade teacher, they thought it was disappointing to see how my grades had gone down a little due to lack of attention and needing to focus more and that I was quite capable. As if I had no excuse for my behaviour. And I also needed to listen better in class and follow instructions. But for other teachers especially where I was interested in the topic would just say that I was easily distracted but super bright, really quick at learning and will go far, but I need to focus a little better. Lol. Btw are a guy or girl? I have read that the smart part is the reason why somepeople are missed out on being diagnosed as a kid. But I've also read that it was primarily focused on hyperactivity part of ADHD and mostly boys were recognised with ADHD more than girls in the classroom because girls were able to hide it better, because people weren't as aware of the inattention part of the disorder, so that's why there's more women now being diagnosed later on in life. I'm 36 and have only just been diagnosed. I was very much the same as going through school pretty easily, had no issues until got to my school certificate and then the high school certificate and I couldn't just work my way through questions, I had to actually remember the stuff, and have paid attention. I was so great at science and maths in year 7 and 8. Changed schools, maths became harder, much harder lol. And I couldn't pay attention or quite get it as much anymore. I studied so much for the maths test in year 10 for the school certificate and only just came back with 70 out of 100. Buuuut the other topics that I was more interested in, I studied less for and got a bit higher. Luckily the next year maths wasn't compulsory so I was like well that's out the window, and chose subjects I was better at, ie enjoyed more. Still managed to get into uni really lucky through an art program via an interview lol. And now I work in IT. Lol. Completely different to that! XD Anyhow yeah I think it was both the fact that girls were less diagnosed or looked at back when I was a kid, and also because no one noticed how much I really struggled... And even if I did try to explain stuff to people as to why I wasn't quite getting something, I was seen as lazy or quite capable and not applying myself. Fun. Lol. I am lucky though in that my parents eased off their expectations of me by the time I went to Uni. I think because of the maths thing and I showed how much I did "apply" myself and it still didn't stick lol. That they were happy for me to find what I was good at and go from there. But still struggled through Uni and entering the work place because of ADHD and so on
@@CaioKaos congrats on that journey! I'm trying to encourage a few friends to go get see a Psych for diagnosis. They think they may have ADHD and are not sure, so I said best to go and find out to be sure, especially if they find they struggle with certain things that ADHD people struggle with and it affects them.
“Some people with adhd are running around in a loin cloth just leveling up their strength. So they can punch people. In a video game” I’m glad you clarified it was in a video game. I was really concerned that I would have to do this literally in real life to solve my problems. Thanks dr k.
Hi! So true, flashcards spaced-repetition and active-recall opened the way for me to dump and sustain info in the hard disk (long term memory). Now I'm working on my emotions, focus, motivation. I'm 35 now, 3 months on drugs, adhd from the start of my life, high iq, zero memory, easily distracted, a lot of procrastination
I have never heard such a good description of what it is like to be a gifted child with ADHD. I feel so seen. When I hit college the load became too much because my schedule wasn't the same every day anymore and I absolutely crashed and burned. I eventually had to hire an executive functioning coach in coach to teach me how to organize my ideas in a way that wasn't overwhelming for me. That said, I think you got hyperfocus wrong. One thing I never hear anyone mention about hyperfocus is how your other senses stop processing. When I'm hyperfocused my brain stops processing sound.. I literally cannot hear the people or things around me. People get mad because they think I'm ignoring them, but I literally cannot hear them. It can be a real problem.
YES! I experience the same thing with hyperfocus. When I am in hyperfocus mode people have to say my name a few times to get me to notice them. I have always thought it was just me being really into what I was doing
That aspect of hyperfocus is also a spectrum though. For me, it's just like really strong focus that I can't control. Everything around me still exists, but I don't get distracted. I can tell if someone is talking to me or if people are moving around me, but it just gets tuned out unless I'm addressed directly (preferably by name), in which case I snap out of it but feel very agitated. I know people who describe it as just an intense urge to stick on the same thing but they can be pulled out of it from external factors, and others that simply shut down everything but the task as you described. Andddd ADHD oversharing lol but yeah, definitely a spectrum
i literally dropped out of college two days ago due to the overload of having a completely different, and unusual schedule to me. it was too much for me to jump into all at once, even with medication. i don't attend any form of coaching, but i might look into it because you just described what i am going through to a T.
@@100MagicChickens ADHD group coaching is even better than one on one. All of it is great. Highly, highly recommend you check out some of the options out there.
I cant tell you how many times people have yelled at me when I couldn't hear them cause I was paying attention to something else. It gets really bad when I'm stressed though. I cant hear SHIT. I can only think about what's stressing me out.
The "Brown Noise" topic is so validating. I went back to graduate school at the age of 40, and the only strategy that I'd discovered for effectively accomplishing anything academically was to go to a semi-crowded coffee shop, or even a bench in the mall - and then put in earplugs. I needed the random background noise and visuals of people talking and moving, but not directly attempting to interact with me. If I tried to read/write/think in a library, or at the edge of a river, or someplace too quiet and peaceful - either my exhaustion would overwhelm me and I'd fall asleep, or my mind would wander far afield from what I was "supposed" to be working on, and I would get painfully fidgety and restless. Conversely - environments that were too loud or too much risk of people engaging me only resulted in overwhelm and mental shutdown... my mind just reverted to an internal "buzz" or "hum" that kicked me into hyper-awareness mode, a purely reactive state of being where I'm constantly "at the ready" to navigate any and all incoming stimuli. It's actually somewhat peaceful, in its own right, and feels a lot like the "flow" state often referenced in psychology - but it's entirely externally directed at the expense of my own agenda. By the way, graduate school was for becoming a mental health professional. I had accidentally cobbled together enough coping strategies to stumble my way over the finish line and haphazardly graduate, only to be administering an ADHD screening to the parent of a client I was working with a couple years later... and as I skimmed through the 100-question screening, I suddenly went "Oh shit." I could answer in the affirmative to about 90% of the symptoms and life struggles. Point being - our minds are costantly working to optimize performance in their own way. The more these discoveries are shared and recognized amongst people who struggle together, the more we can feel "seen" and a little less odd, because we're not broken... we're just wired differently.
This! My productivity levels in coffee shops is at its highest. Never really known why, but the visual stimulus makes sense. I thought it was a social thing, feeling part of a crowd.
This sorta resonates with me because I'm a psychology student and have just recently realised I have a high chance of having ADHD by casually solving a screening test with my friends after a lecture. I'm looking into getting a professional opinion/diagnosis soon, hopefully.
As a college student that possibly has ADHD(tho definitely some problem with focus and memory. my therapist and I think it's ADHD, but I'm trying to get a psychiatrist so i can get some formal diagnosis), i have been trying to find the sweet spot of "enough people are around me that I'll feel bad if someone sees me doing something not productive" but without the "oo what's that? what are those people talking about? the lighting in here is kinda weird. I'm suddenly very aware of this chair I'm sitting in and i don't like it." And then it's been an hour and i haven't read a single line of my textbook. I'm gonna try Starbucks again today bc, while i don't like coffee(i get chai lattes, they're fine), boba places are way too bright and loud, and hopefully using brown noise will help lol
@@cartoondeathnoises8756 Omg I had the same thought. I thought I was a pressuring myself to be productive because I'm hogging a seat at a public space. I can't work in the office unless I play some music in my earbuds to mute my surroundings. Otherwise, I would either read the same paragraph over and over again cause I keep overhearing other people's conversations, or give my 2 cents in a conversation that I wasn't invited to (got a warning for this). My office is doing hotdesking and I have to pick my seat carefully because I dislike it when the lights shine into my eyes, when the sun is too bright and my screen becomes too dark during the day, when it's too windy when it rains because I can feel the wind on my skin and it's distracting, when there is a coworker that joins online meetings from their seats, and a few more that I can't remember. I'm supposed to be working now, but I just spent 30 minutes typing a youtube comment. I usually play kpop since I don't understand the language and there are so many things that are happening at once.
the stimulation is the reason why I tend to talk to myself when i'm alone cause that way I have a chance of focusing on one thing. but even then i sometimes stumble in my "conversations"
i found out it works too , talking to myself , giving myself steps to do each time to not zone out or just do nothing , sometimes just saying what i am doing works too
I’ve been binging these videos. I don’t even know if you or your team reads these comments especially on old videos. But I just have to say that this channel is the single most valuable channel on all of RUclips, for me personally. (And I’ve consumed more than my fair share.) Because I was recently able to finally & fully understand that I wanted to gain more grit (in addition to self love, thanks to one of your videos) I’ve been listening to and watching your videos consistently as I accomplish some really challenging home improvement tasks. It’s a win-win-win for my ADD brain. I’m a 41 year old woman and I can say that I feel more empowered than I ever have before since watching these videos over the past few months. I’ve learned so much and gain so much perspective. Thank you so much for this gift. You are truly improving lives and I believe your work is a beautiful act of love that is inspiring so many.
And omg just reading through all of the comments on this video is the most validated I’ve ever felt in my entire existence. It does sometimes feel really fuckn hard to make the bed! How amazing it must feel to actually feel accomplished when I achieve tasks - instead of just ever so slight relief, and then anxiety about the next thing.
i didnt get diagnosed with adhd until recently, im closing in on 30 and its scary how much this video just checks all my boxes, especially the brute forcing my way through school. never did homework, never studied for a test, got As and Bs throughout school, tested for over 130 IQ in high school. but that backfired hard as an adult as i never really had to learn to live with ADHD0, and now i almost feel like a dementia patient, cus i cant remember anything anymore. my brain feels like it have completely short circuted luckily i got a job with lots of smaller tasks that i have to do at the same time, so my ADHD kinda works in my favour Edit: damn didnt expect this to resonate with so many! Thankfully the reasearch and understanfing of ADHD had bevome a lot better the last decade, and it seems to be much more understanding of how to live with it.
100%, me cramming for tests and not retaining the knowledge bc ‘I got through the test’ wish I knew about adhd in school instead of at 25 after it’s all done lol
@@marshadirocca2550 Reminds me a lot of especially my university exams. People will ask me which questions I was asked or what I answered, but I can't even remember it almost already 10 minutes after the exam. As well as I quickly forget most of the topics I studied for.
I understand your experience.. Being diagnosed late in life was the best thing that happened to me because I understand so much of my past experiences now.
I'm exactly you. wtf. I remember how I could zone out and when I got called on or need to write something down like a due date, I could "play back" the audio I heard in the classroom to maybe hear the last 10 words or so of the teacher. Ofc if the class was too loud and I wouldn't have heard them anyway, the "play back" feature didn't work.
This makes too much sense. I am 38 and suspecting I might have inattentive ADHD. And yeah, I was a smart shy quiet girl when I was a teenager. And I hit a wall several times in the last few years by getting burnt out. Also, I have just realised that I masked the fact that I was not paying attention with shyness. I have figured out years ago that I have never actually been shy. But it somehow made my life easier to let people think I was and I never really thought about why that was.
Studies are beginning to come out that women often go undiagnosed as children. So now we're seeing women getting their diagnosis in their late 30s-40s.
I'm 32, male, just got diagnosed. Was a straight A student in high school but procrastinated and brute forced every assignment at the last minute. Also was a major night owl when I discovered video games, so I was getting like 3 or 4 hrs sleep most nights... I masked my inattention in class as tiredness, often falling asleep then answering questions correctly when I got woken up. Only made it through college by finding study buddies who held me accountable to meet up, and now adult engineering jobs have been a massive rollercoaster since I never learned the time management and prioritization skills earlier in life / my brain fights me constantly when I try to learn now. This episode hit home so hard.
I've been suspecting ADHD in myself since i first found out about it, like a.. year ago i guess. But upon speaking about it with my mom she said it isn't possible because i'm not hyperactive, i'm "lazy" and "i don't care about anything". I was like, okay i guess i'm just dumb, lazy, ect.. But it gotten so hard to live, my depression, anxiety and stuff gotten worse and worse and WORSE. Until i got fed up, i started reading into it more to have a serious talk with my mom. She read about it while i was at work, and confessed to me that in childhood a doctor told her that they had a suspicion about me having ADHD. She brushed him off and ignored it. So i went through school struggling so much. I couldn't make friends, i couldn't pay attention, school work didn't interest me, i always got distracted at making doodles and internet, i only did best in english class and art class because i liked it(english is not my native language), i was quiet and anxious, barely did my homework, i went through my last year of school just.. SLEEPING in my classes, i have no idea how i got through my exams, JUST HOW i got out of school with acceptable results. i somehow winged it without much practice, because i couldn't focus on it, i just hated it. teachers were frustrated with me and everyone including myself just thought i was stupid and a lazy loser. I'm 20 right now, working in retail. (my second job.) At work my colleagues might have some problem and think there is no fixing it now, but i somehow find an unorthodox answer\solution and they are always surprised at that. It's hard sometimes because i get terrible sensory overload, but i just push through until i'm home and i pass out, sleeping too much, for more than 8 hours, barely getting myself to clean my room, our apartment. all i have interest in is art and internet, fandoms and stuff, but even doing that got hard, i just wanted to sleep and sleep and nothing else, having zero energy. I just got medication recently and i already feel a bit more fresh minded, and just relieved that i finally know what is wrong with me. I always felt so bad when i forgot important things, messed up because i was asked to buy something without being given exact specifics, but was blamed because it is so OBVIOUS to them, but not to me. But having ADHD explains so much, explains EVERYTHING.
I’m so upset for you! You know yourself better than anyone. It doesn’t have to be physically hyper, especially in women. The internalized thought patterns are as hyper as the physicality of a boy acting out
I'm listening to this while working and literally holding back tears. I was just diagnosed 8 months ago. About 3 years ago, I was in grad school and got my dream job as a project manager in a hospital. Then it was like my brain completely short circuited. I was missing deadlines, couldn't retain any new information, I was missing turns while driving, missing appointments, became ridiculously disorganized. I started failing out of my grad program and felt like a complete failure at work (because I was). I was convinced I had early onset dementia or a brain tumor. Additionally, I started having panic attacks but I thought it was a problem with my heart. I saw 2 neurologists, 2 cardiologists, my pcp who ALL referred me to psychiatry. It took me over 2 years to see a psychiatrist because I was convinced something physical was wrong with me. I ended up seeing a psychiatrist and he diagnosed me with adhd after 6 months of ruling other things out. I'm on meds now and although I don't feel perfect, EVERYTHING has improved. He literally saved my life. When I finally saw him, I was such a mess that I didn't want to live anymore. I thank God for Dr's like him.
The ADHD for higher intelligence kids portion hit very close to home for me. I have always had ADHD but wasn’t diagnosed until I took myself in. I was always very intelligent and near the top of my class until sophomore year of high school when I hit my wall. I was trying to tell my parents/teachers something was wrong but they didn’t listen. My grades went down a lot and most adults blamed it on drugs and alcohol which I had never touched at that point. Going from the perfect child to a disappointment in a very short time for something I felt I had no control over sent me into a deep depression that I’m still trying to crawl out of years later
I was there as well. Through lists and calendars I was able to make an external hard drive of sorts that let me focus on just the very next thing instead of the entire list at once, knowing my phone would remind me when it is time to do that important thing that I mustn't forget. It can get better.
I am the same, until college I was able to expand my ram and even passed the CPA exam but years later, I hit a wall. I could not process any new updates on accounting rules that I need for work. I realized I did not learn as much in college, I just went through it using logic and stuff. Now I've decided to change careers but still stuck to where..
Without any intention to be hostile, but he had kids with an IQ in the ballpark of 140 in mind (130 is roughly a PR of 99%, 140 is 99.5% or higher, obv depending where you live). This isn't being "intelligent", the top 1% of wealthy americans for example have a net worth of 11.1million+ or make about 800k+ a year (as a comparisson to being "well off"). If you pair an exceptional cognitive ability with the disability of being able to channel it or better said sometimes without the ability to control it and you add some extra bs to that it is an actual recepie for disaster. Just on a sidenote regarding drugs: addiction in ADD/ADHD is extremely common going as far that it can be an important cornerstone for diagnosis. Smoking is extremely overrepresented in that group and the chances of quitting are extremely small (well, nicotine stimulates dopamine release so I guess that's an obv one, but so does cocaine as well...)
21:00 this is so true, now I undestand my scholl grades, it is a literal graph of how the deductive and cognitive reasoning began to fail to me as the tests become more complex, this shit is so real. I literaly remember that in every question I started to think about, I would start to look for the 2 answers with the best probability of being right, like, every question would have like 3 complete bullshit answers and 2 ambiguous answers, and 99% of time is one of these 2 answers who is right, maybe this is why ADHD kids finishes their tests after everyone else, every question has 2 more steps to answer, and reasoning takes a lot of time.
I literaly remember a test that all classes were mix up, I remember being sounrounded with fundamental school kids and 4 or 5 college students in the room with me, and I was the literal last of them to stood up and give my test. For years I was deeply ashamed of this memory, now that I understand it, I don't fell it at all.
22:00 the wall you described was the challenge for me, I actualy entered a very deep depression in this stage of my life, both because of the limit of my "ram" and because of the pandemic, I was so desperate, my grades hit almost zero imediatly, I won't focus because the habient Iwas studying on was so distrctive, my lack of planing made me lost all of the homework deadlines and even some test dates, and I sudenly felt extremely dumb because my reasoning stopped working.
This video actually made me choke up a little lol. I've never heard such an accurate, compassionate description of my life and how my brain works. I only got diagnosed at 21 after struggling with 'something' for my entire life, but being able to stumble my way through due to being naturally quite intelligent. This unfortunately lead to me totally falling apart once that coping mechanism stopped working as I entered adulthood. ADHD is ridiculed and underplayed so much by those who don't suffer from it, so many people genuinely think we're just 'lazy' or that we lack discipline and it's so incredibly upsetting because I know that I have to try 100x harder in my everyday life just to simply FUNCTION at any level, and even still, I'm seen as lazy, and told how 'everyone has these issues'. Thank you for your work Dr. K, you are a wonderful person.
My adhd experience in school was not really punching people in video games, but rather myself. Every exam, I stayed up the night before, punch myself mentally and sometimes physically, trying to binge all the information so it could last until the next day. Every single exam felt like a one-try boss fight “either you die this time, or you don’t” - that’s what I told myself repeatedly, ‘surviving’ my way through gifted class in high school with decent grades. I’m now 20, hit a wall some months ago, on a break from college and learning more about myself. Thank you for your informative videos and for each person who shared their story here. I don’t feel like a strange alien living on this planet anymore. Have a good day!
16:00 wow. this. this i feel is one of the largest issues i struggle with in my career. i feel like everybody around me can so easily manage multiple projects, quickly swap to handle burning fires, and just pick up everything where they left it. meanwhile, anything that throws me off my path completely destroys most progress that i made. most of the advice i've been given by peers/leaders is to write things down - which does mitigate the effect to a small degree - but writing everything down then leaves me with loads and loads of random notes everywhere that's just overwhelming
I got myself one of those small filofax things that's small enough to keep on me all the time that I can keep a running list in. Kind if like a basic bullet journal method. Really helps to just brain dump everything on paper so that I can see it all at once and keep in one place so I won't get overwhelmed. If it's on my phone it might as well not exist 😅 maybe try out different ways to see what works? Won't fix the whole problem but every little bit helps
Man, I almost teared up reading this cuz I've dealt with this my whole working life (I had enough coping skills to get through school). I was a teacher for 4 yrs and seeing how everyone else could task manage so smoothly made me feel like absolute shit cuz I couldn't keep up. I just started therapy this month and finally was told, "You definitely fit the criteria for ADHD, so no wonder you were struggling".
I have run out of space on my 2 monitors for sticky notes so I have additional ones on my desk and windows desktop and I ask coworkers questions in Microsoft teams so that I can Google the answer in teams later if I feel like I've already asked the question. This is not limited to the adhd experience
@@brittanyarrington3971 That's great that you got a diagnosis! I got diagnosed with inattentive ADHD earlier this year - meds have helped, but I still need to do a lot of work on my side
I'm literally in tears at the RAM metaphor. Just got diagnosed and I went so long withough anyone noticing because I was gifted and my sister had ADHD and I didn't suffer like her. Could never put it into words so thank you!!!!
god having adhd is so difficult, a lot of this hits home so hard esepically the bit about intelligence, ive actually feel shame at how easy i find almost everything and yet never want to do anything. I know i could excel at anything if i was just able to try and work at something but im just too tired and things get boring extremely quickly even still ive managed to excel in some things even though ive never even studied for anything in my life lol even sitting in a quiet classroom made me feel like im was going insane. my issues with work are by far the worst, ive never wanted to work at anything and every job ive had made me incredibly depressed and ive had a bunch of different jobs.
mabe you could do little reframing - even if some things come eazy to you motyvation does not comes to you as eazly as others - at least for now- so be proud of every inch of efort youve put in something even tho it costed you much more than others ... but also i dont recommend suferring in a jobs you hate:/
I have a very similar issue. I was able to hold jobs down because of low self worth related to trauma, and after working that all out, now I can’t hold down a job because they keep making me depressed. And my therapist just seems disappointed in me when I say I quit something again. Like, help me instead??? The hospitality industry is toxic af and I don’t know what to do about work cause that’s all I know. I’ve worked as a graphic designer for a while but I still struggle with that even though I enjoyed it, and I admit I’m scared to put myself and my work out there as I’m afraid I won’t be reliable enough to properly commit.
Fucking this, literally what i always have feel. I was quite literally going insane in school, totally bruteforce it. Now im in college, i've managed not to fail any subjects just by ram power, I don't study for shit (or 1 day before my tests and exams) and I always forget the dates of the tests. I just now have a booking with a psychiatrist (in 2 months) and I hope it will be good.
Try construction work Something like plumbing or electricity. With me it helped me a lot. Everyday on different jobs motivates me idk try it if you don't know what you want. You can make good money 2
Wow, the 'brute force' talk really hits home. This was me exactly when I was a kid. Was undiagnosed until ~30 years old. High IQ compensated all those years. Definitely hit that wall. That was 3.5 years ago, to this day I am still struggling to get my (working) life in order.
I'm very interested in hearing about your experience, this 'brute force' was something that I have always done. For the whole time that I was studying, I was in this 'brute force' mode where I only felt relieved after I graduated college just a few months ago. I'm 22yo right now and currently working as a programmer, I would like to know more about the 'wall' that I would probably face someday. Is it a state where you can't feel yourself growing anymore? Or is it something like gaining knowledge becomes significantly harder?
@@cosmicHatdog For me it wasn't really a sudden stop but more like getting stuck in mud. At the age of 16 I started to get more and more tired. By the age of 18 I got (wrongly) diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I eventually got my Bachelors degree, but also got carried by the IQ instead of putting in the work. For me working on a project for longer than 2 - 3 weeks is very hard. After 1 week I am already looking for a new challenge. Gaining knowledge or learning something new isn't necessarily significantly harder. But working regularly and "normal" hours (40hr/wk) is impossible for me. Having 2 kids doesn't help ;), but for me they take priority over anything work related.
@@cosmicHatdog for me, the wall I hit _was_ college. I did fine in high school with the extra-ram-brute-forcing; a lot of my high school strategy was "forget to do all your homework but ace all the tests/projects", and since I was a big reader outside of school I just kind of osmosed a lot of general knowledge from reading constantly. But when I got to college, suddenly I _didn't_ already know most of what I needed to know to pass my classes, and because I'd coasted all the way through my education up til then, I had _zero_ studying skills developed. I was utterly incapable of handling a full-time course load and kept having to drop down to 3 classes, 1 of which I would inevitably fail or just barely pass because it fell to the bottom of my priority list. I couldn't manage my deadlines, couldn't prioritize my work properly, and worst of all, I couldn't bank on my high school strategies anymore because acing tests wouldn't make up for points lost on homework. It took me 6 years to earn a 2-year degree and I changed my major about 3 separate times before I finally settled on math. (The one thing I was actually interested enough in to feel like doing the homework was a fun challenge instead of a boring chore. It probably helped that math doesn't require reading, you're supposed to get it all out of the lecture since math textbooks just universally suck at explaining things.) A few years later, after failing miserably to hold a stable job for any appreciable amount of time, I ended up with an ADHD diagnosis and an Adderall prescription, went back to college and managed to complete a 2-semester accounting certificate program _in the allotted 2 semesters,_ and got myself a stable job in accounting. The difference was night and day. I was able to schedule out my course-work, plan around deadlines, focus on my readings, take effective notes, etc etc. It was _wild_ how much easier it was for me this time around. But even then I still had this problem where I'd get about 6 weeks into a semester and my brain would go "Okay, we're done now! Time to move on to something new!" But there were....10 weeks left in the course.... This remains the biggest struggle I have with any kind of formal schooling, my brain just checks out after a few weeks and then I have to drag it through the rest of the semester kicking and screaming. At work, there's a noticeable difference in how well I can function on meds vs off meds (I've had to work without them for long stretches of time periodically due to insurance nonsense or healthcare red-tape). Without them, it's much harder for me to get work done without getting distracted constantly, my productivity takes a huge hit, and a lot of tasks end up being forgotten or pushed off til "later" (which means I forgot about it and then remembered several days later that it still hadn't been done yet). I also use so much more mental energy to get through the work day that I am just, absolutely friend when I get home and I can't do anything more involved than staring vacantly at the TV until bedtime. I have enough coping strategies now to be relatively functional at work without meds, with a lot of reliance on to-do lists and having a routine, but I can tell that there's absolutely no way pre-diagnosis me would've been able to function effectively at the jobs I've had since then. So for me, to answer this question about what The Wall is like: > "Is it a state where you can't feel yourself growing anymore? Or is it something like gaining knowledge becomes significantly harder?" It's nothing like that at all. Calling it a wall can be a bit misleading actually, because it's more like a breaking point. To use the RAM analogy, it's like you suddenly have so many files dumped on you at the same time that _no_ amount of additional RAM can allow you to keep them all open at once and the system just crashes. Or like, you've been marching along carrying a heavy backpack that kept getting more and more weight added to it but you just kept building up stronger and stronger muscles to handle carrying it, and then suddenly someone asks you to move this anvil and you collapse under the weight of it. Nobody around you can understand why it's so hard for you to move the anvil because _they_ all managed it just fine when it got dumped on them, and that's when you find out that they've all been using a dolly this entire time while you were continuing to carry all the weight on your back. If you managed to graduate without hitting your wall, then you might never hit it. Most likely you'd hit it if you went back for post-graduate schooling, or you might hit it if you get promoted or end up taking on a heavier workload than you're currently managing. If it happens at work, it'll probably feel like you're constantly overwhelmed, always behind on your work, can't catch up or stay caught-up for longer than a couple days at a time, and you'll start to feel burnt out very quickly.
@@TheGuindo What you describe is exactly what happened to me in college. 10 years took me to complete a 4-year degree. I was unable of paying attention in class during school and highschool, my mind constantly shifting from one thought to another, but I always got great grades because almost everything was perfectly explained in the books that I could always read later. That way of getting through your studies suddenly doesn't work anymore when you're in college, so I was in trouble. I'm not diagnosed with ADHD yet but reading things like this makes me think I should really get tested by a professional. Up until now I just thought I had to work harder, but you know, 10 years to get a degree makes me think there's has to be something more
What you said about kids compensating for ADHD because they're smart explains a lot about myself. As a kid I was a straight-A student, but in my late teens, after I found my passion (I've been taughting myself computer programming since I was fourteen), going to class to learn about something that I wasn't interested into was painful. As a yound adult my life totally derailed. I didn't manage to get a degree and couldn't keep a job for more than two months. Until wasn't diagnosed with ADHD (when I was 30yo!) I thought I was irresponsible, lazy, someone who would never amount to anything in life. Being diagnosed changed my life completely. I took the reins of my life, started a family, became a responsible person and a well respected professional.
Thanks... Reading this made me kinda happy. I was the same "gifted" till high school and a part of uni and then I was "irresponsible" and lazy, and "had so much potential, only if I tried harder"... Now I'm 26 and just got diagnosed with last month. I hope things work out for me as well.
I had a similar experience. People always told me I was smart but I always felt like I was winging it through school (reality was, I was using the last minute stress to cram as much knowledge as possible before tests). It wasn't till I was 26 did I actually get diagnosed with adhd after about 7 years of different mood disorder diagnosis. Now, 4 years later and with a lot of learning about the condition, I'm able to live a more normal life and not treat myself poorly when I struggle. Not to mention I've went from 3 different medication to 1 so a bit healthier too.
23:16 I may be mixing metaphors here but that whole speech on adding more RAM blew me away. 🔥🔥🔥 It makes me think that coming back to a task and not being able to pick up where you left off efficiently has something to do with that inability to save documents. It's something I've been noticing and kind of bewildered by. I'll come back to a very concrete visible task - say, cleaning out the fridge - after a short break. And it feels completely different. Overwhelming. Senses are heightened. And there's a cascade effect of fear and aversion (to stimulus) into like crushing dread and shame and abstractions. It makes me want to retreat into tasks I know I can manage (or at least face without experiencing this) like writing and other laptop work. Or to make sure it NEVER happens again by implementing a rigid system for housework.
As an adult who's starting to question my attention abilities and seeing patterns appear as I look back on my life, I'm a bit scared of going to get evaluated. Especially on Tiktok, it seems that everyone has ADHD because every single experience they relate is relatable to some degree to everyone, and I don't want to create a fake disorder for me. What if I'm falling into a confirmation bias where the more I consume ADHD content, the more I confirm I can relate, even though it might just be that I'm not making an effort to stay focused on tasks and sorting through my thoughts. I would have to show up to a therapist and make a fool of myself because I fell into a trend on the internet and misinterpreted the ways I function. I'm also scared as an adult woman, my symptoms won't be recognised and I might be sent away even though I need support
Omg I'm going through the exact same thing... I'm self diagnosing so hard 😭 I fear meeting with a psychiatrist and telling him all my miss interpreted behaviors.
Here’s the thing: adhd struggles are things everyone struggles with once in a while. It’s ok to have these occasional struggles, it doesn’t mean you have ADHD. However, those who really do have ADHD struggle with these things on a constant and daily basis, to the point it affects their daily life and ability to function “normally”. Speaking as someone who was diagnosed with both ADHD and ASD only after becoming an adult because I was able to cope and mask so well growing up but once adulthood hit, it became so much more apparent that I was struggling… sometimes seeking a therapist or psychologist to discuss these things or seek an evaluation can be good even just to put your mind at ease.
Your confirmation bias does not necessarily create a false diagnoses. I hear this so much from women - that they think they need to self-diagnose to be sure they know exactly what is "wrong" before seeking treatment so they don't "embarras" themselves. First, you don't have to go to a professional with a potential list of conditions to justify being evaluated. All you have to say is "I'm struggling and I need help" and let them evaluate from there. Go to more than one if you want to be sure. A lot of conditions have overlapping symptoms. Sometimes focus and energy issues can stem from hormonal and nutrition issues and sometimes cognitive conditions. My best advice is to STOP watching TikTok, RUclips, etc to self diagnose (there's so much bad, inaccurate and misleading content on social media). FUN FACT: it's very common that many people with ADHD have one or two other diagnosed conditions as well, and those conditions can have overlapping symptoms, and not every professional is well trained in identifying and treating ADHD, especially for women. So, stop spinning and finding reasons to be scared of something that hasn't even happened yet, and go talk to a few professionals about struggling in general. You don't need to justify a visit with anything more than that!
Oh man the talk about adhd paralysis was so interesting. I think I can attribute my procrastination in part to this - in school when I was writing papers, I would always do it all in one sitting, from research to outline to writing it. I HATED the idea of breaking it up into chunks and working on it a little bit over the course of a few days or weeks, because I always had this feeling that I'd forget everything between work sessions. Thankfully I've spent the last couple of years finally learning how to properly break tasks down into chunks. It feels so much better - way less stressful than pulling all-nighters. I turn 31 next week and I'm so glad I've finally learned this skill!
Yep. I would not do it, for a long time, but when I finally start, if I have to stop it's probably not getting finished later. And either way it'll be not very good because it's so boring my brain is a mess and I couldn't get myself to go back to it to proofread.
I have NEVER been able to understand how people can break up tasks. And it got worse after my TBI 10 years ago. When I start breaking up tasks, I get distracted with the task of...breaking up tasks. I could have been finished with whatever it was by that time
For those asking how I learned how to break stuff down into chunks: I've been listening to a podcast called the Perfectionism Project for years. The host has a technique she calls "power planning" that has worked super well for me. She's better at explaining it and has tonssss of episodes, so if you're interested, go check out the podcast 😊
I can't believe how spot on the analysis for "gifted" kids with adhd was. This was exactly how my life went. I brute forced it all the way through high school, somehow got my bachelor's degree and I am now completely done with everything life related at the age of 25 (So I now hit my wall, as Dr. K described it). The funny thing is, I was tested for my IQ when I was 10 by my therapist at that time, who figured I couldn't possibly have ADHD, since my IQ was so high. I am glad that I finally got my real diagnosis this year, but man - life could have been WAAAY easier if my struggles were taken serious back then.
I feel so called out by that part. I made it through nursing school, but working night shift in a quiet environment with low stimulation, and I started losing my mind. I wasn't diagnosed yet, so I didn't know to ask for accommodation and my attempts to adapt got me in trouble. 😵💫
I mean, I never studied once in highschool and had to drop out of college because I couldn't do assignments. I'm not sure people who brute force through school and get degrees are on my level of disorder. Maybe I have something else 🥲
@@kech267 the main benefits I see to getting diagnosed are 1) getting treatment/medication and 2) being allowed accommodations at work/school. Had I gotten diagnosed before I got fired from my last job, I could have either gotten some accommodations or sued them for discrimination. And much to my surprise, medication turned the volume of the noise in my head way down.
23:46 you made a really good point here, I’m not sure if it’s the adhd or not but alot of the time when I zone out there’s just no thought like at all just blank
Honestly the white noise like that rumbling actually drives me nuts with my adhd. Something more subtle like a fan going actually can help though, especially when falling asleep.
Same, that noise actually just gave me a headache. The sound was to long on the same frequnce for my likeing and I hated every second of it. It did gaveme relief, after it was done and it was quite.
The ADHD Paralysis happens to me a lot. Yesterday I had a dentist appointment at 4pm, before it, from 10 pm till 14:30 I did nothing except "relax to prepare myself mentally to start getting ready to go to the dentist" and it happens a lot, after the dentist, picked up some packages on my way back, so when I got home I pushed for the next day the rest of the tasks I needed and wanted to do because I did enough for the day XD and needed to recover.
When he was talking about the whole sequencing thing, my brain exploded. I had NO idea that people could do that automatically! I have to schedule EVERYTHING and always underestimate how long something will take to do and how much I can get done in a day
I'm very sure that I have ADHD based on consistently experiencing every symptom I have heard of both inattentive and hyperactive ADHD. The problem is that I've been able to brute force my way all the way to the 5th year of a masters degree in computer science. I'm trying to get a diagnosis but it's hard to convince them that I've gotten this far "just fine" with ADHD. I guess writing the last 20 pages of a 25 page report in 3 days is apparently "Just fine".
if you can- go to a psychology/psychiatry place that specializes in adhd with specific examples. I legit was also brute forcing my way through life till i went somewhere like that, and got diagnosed
Wait until you no longer have the forced structure... I did great in college because I had short classes that I was able to hyperfocus on, now I do not have the structure and for years it just keeps getting worse. I've been trying to get in to a doctor to get a diagnosis and some help finding my structure again
Ok so, I found university MUCH easier than school. Weird right? No, because the environment happened to be optimal for me to hyperfocus. The environment at school left me disassociating all the time. It had nothing to do with the difficulty level of what I was doing. I got low-mid grades at school, and near top marks at uni. It wasn't easy, but easier. I still had to work my ass off. The point is that environment makes a huge different to functioning, and just because they perceive it as 'just fine' now, doesn't mean it will be that way in a workplace environment.
@LaurArt_UK lol complete opposite for me - multi-step chem material specifically killed me. i kept completely blanking on what i was doing legit in the middle of writing steps, prompting re-starting from scratch ever 5 min.
@@ADHD-Dogs-Art-And-More The freaking lack of structure... I did great in school. Started to struggle in uni since it became more dependent on me figuring out my schedules, but it was still manageable like, half the time. Now I'm trying to do PhD studies and *everything* is in my hands now, no one is giving me any kind of structure to lean on, and I am *plummeting* I hate this ;__;
This is literally the best video on ADHD I have seen yet! I am 31, a mom of 3 and was just diagnosed last week. I was for sure one of those kids that compensated, masked, and muscled through my deficits with IQ and cognitive function. I had suspected I had adhd for years but I didn’t hit a wall until I had my third baby and was no longer able to “download more RAM” and couldn’t consistently meet my children’s needs anymore, let alone my own needs. This led to a spiraling of postpartum depression. I’m in therapy now and looking into “gearing up” with external systems to help me function better!
21:06 was... an epiphany. Immediately understanding and solving the problem in front of me based mostly on intuition is how I've managed most of, well, life.
I found that I need noise a lot or else I lose focus and zone out. The Animators Survival Guide book states that playing music makes you less efficient at animating however for me it's the opposite, usually when I animate. I create a playlist or just listen to one song on repeat over and over again that aligns with the mood of the animation and often gets me hyped and focused while also allowing me to better grasp the feel of the scene the whole time I'm animating.
I really like songs with a lot of electric guitar, but listening to songs I know too well like classic rock or lyrics in general often distract me from boring tasks, or the actual melody is basic and boring. I ended up finding Instrumental Progressive Metal which generally has no lyrics, and a high tempo, high energy composition that helps me really get into the work mindset. I'll bounce between that and lo-fi depending on my energy levels but might be worth trying instrumental genre's if after a while your current one stops working
I use music to keep myself stimulated enough to work properly or do my chores, and the type of music depends on my mood. Sometimes it's too much with everything going on, but it's so helpful!!
I'm the worst at conversations. I either try to be relatable by over sharing and then I'm seen as insensitive by not just listening. or i have a really hard time waiting for them to get it all out so I'm already preplanning what I am going to say. I've also been known to walk off mid conversations (gets distracted) and come back to it half hour later like I never left. My brain doesn't realize there has been a gap in time.
I tune out after a few seconds, then have to scramble to figure out what they were just talking about. This is seconds after asking them a question that I need an answer to, too.
That’s me, too! I didn’t even realize I was walking off mid conversation until someone confronted me about how rude I was. Luckily, a dear friend explained to them that I’m just like that and I wasn’t trying to be an asshole. I have no idea how many other times I did that 😅
This video is nothing but incredible Ive just recently got my ADHD disgnosis at age 25 and slowly everything is clearing up for me. I can finally understand how i got through school, i just brute forced my way. I can finally tell why i cant concentrate when i sometimes really need to but then sit at my desk for 8 hours playing some random game or building legos. When you mentioned the lack of sleep during the hyperfocus part, you perfectly described how it went for me: Somewhat brute forced my way through everything with 2-4 hours of sleep for many years and then crashed down into a depressive episode that eventually developed a full depression cuz of other circumstances and some horrible people around me. The moment i had access to the correct meds it was like a switch in my brain was flipped and now i can just clearly see all of it. Thank you so much for what you do
Another note on ADHD Paralysis: Social distancing was a blessing for me. Contact-free deliveries mean I don't have to be there when the package or food arrives. They'll put it on the floor, and then I get a ping on my phone or email, and I can go and take it in. This means I don't have to schedule a task in my brain to be there when it arrives and can go about my other tasks as they come.
My university had a study area on the first floor of one of their libraries where it wasn't totally silent and people talked to eachother and worked on projects and talked on their phones or whatever. I really liked studying in this area, there was a good amount of auditory stimulation but it wasn't very distracting because there were so many conversations going on at once that it sort of blended together into noise.
Yesss I felt that way in my classes, too; hanging around a bustling room to tune out while working has always been really nice for me. xD! Other times I use music to get this effect; loud or repetitive music to just help me tune out and start floating, focusing on whatever I wanted to do.
We had multiple on-campus cafés that I used to love going to to do homework/study. Not only was the auditory stimulation just perfect but also everyone _else_ was studying, so it gave me that external social pressure for me to study too.
@@taylorbritt499 Body doubling I think is what that phenomenon is called - when you have someone else with you also doing a thing helps you stay on task, too? I think? idk if they had to be doing the same thing, or just have someone there in general.
You were so spot on talking about gifted kids with ADHD. Lived my life this way, and still do to an extent. I've somehow managed to always stay ahead of the curve but it's definitely not something I can keep sustaining. The amount of knowledge I have is pretty staggering due to hyper focusing my way into at least a solid grasp of any subject put in front of me. The two big issues for me are as follows. My hunger for knowledge has come to the point in so many subjects that in order to keep furthering my skills/knowledge in them I need to devote insane amounts of time into researching and putting things into practice. This is doable when you have one or two main focuses in life. Not so feasible with dozens of subjects and hundreds of books/articles I've already cataloged for the future. The main hangup for me however is I'm literally starting to hit a sort of mental storage limit. I've always been blessed with a near photographic memory. I can read something once and recall it nearly exactly and if I'm fuzzy on the details I have always been able to rely on knowing where I found the info, in many cases down to the page number of a book. Now it's getting to the point where things get jumbled or I can't recall the "small" details that are vitally important without going back over the info multiple times.
Whoah. Yours is a perspective I haven't encountered before in relation to ADHD, and I strongly relate. I wouldn't say I have a true photographic memory (no page numbers, etc) but I have enjoyed the ability to absorb and recreate processes almost perfectly my first attempt, like watching somebody build a bicycle in a RUclips video then I can just do it too. I also have an insatiable appetite for learning interesting things about my hobbies (there are several), alsi somewhat related topics that might be useful, and general life things like deep diving into vitamin or exercise research, and I have probably written 1000 pages of notes with linked sources in OneNote. Recently, I keep having to revisit sections of notes, however, reread them and come to the same conclusions I already did years ago. Even more eerie is reading an article, thinking "this is great I should jot down some quick notes and save the link" only to find it's already in the relevant section of my notes. It's almost like I filled my hard drive and it keeps having to erase things to free up space and re-write them when I rediscover the info later.
I feel like this is a pretty common gifted ADHD thing. I've always been intuitive and extremely good at grasping complex topics in-depth and on a granular level, but when you're constantly seeking some new, stimulating thing to be *really* into, you end up learning and learning until the point where you can't just be passively driven deeper by your own brain chemistry and have to exercise real willpower to get deeper..... but at that point it's not giving you the same stimulation you picked it up for in the first place, so you find some new thing... but you can only know so much before you start to forget other things, and so you repeatedly fill your brain just to have gaps. Hyperfocus on a special interest only lasts until you run out of interest, unfortunately, and while you can learn new things, you'll end up forgetting some stuff too. It's nice that interest comes back once you've put something down for a bit, but you will have to relearn some stuff.
@@LifeInJambles It feels like a trap sometimes to me, endlessly seeking knowledge even about highly engaging / interesting topics, but it often manifests as spending more time "researching" or "preparing" for some hobby or activity than actually doing the thing. I convinced myself in the past that this was giving me some leg up for when I actually started doing the thing, and in a few areas it was perhaps a small boost up front, but in hindsight it looks a heck of a lot like spending hundreds of hours at a computer typing notes and very little time implementing those ideas into tangible actions. It's honestly kinda heartbreaking, like I've been a hamster on a wheel for years but didn't realize I wasn't getting anywhere in reality.
@@Govanification as someone with a fully-designed 4-link cantilever suspension sitting in plans on my computer as the first step of a drift truck build that will theoretically replace or at least reinforce almost every bit of my truck, but very little work actually done on that truck, I feel personally attacked by this insight.
Let's not get into all I know about photography, which I convinced myself I would pursue as an occupation, but which I spent all that time learning about only to get bored once I knew a bunch about it..
The portion about Adhd in the classroom impacted me so much... I was always able to pass classes and answer questions when I was called on. But i couldn't focus on class. I have horrible attention deficit... And I always told myself I'd do better if i just tried... The issue was I tried... Very Hard! But I could not maintain attention in class. Now I was diagnosed with A.D.H.D extremely early on in my life. But my parents didn't believe in it, telling me I'm not trying hard enough or i just need to behave. After growing up, being an adult and looking back the insight from Dr. K, everything makes so much sense. And I wish I was able to understand my situation back then so I could find habits that would allow me to compensate for my deficits...
"Most people will grow out of ADHD" my ass. A doctor in the psych ward made that exact same statement before stripping me of my diagnosis, for something that I still experience to this day.
@@eetein9704 Yes, but it's also misinformation that is, in my case. Believed by the Doctor in question. Not the content creator themselves. If they held this view, I would be understandably upset with *him* though.
I have ADHD and hyperfocus isn't quite like that for me. For me it's an issue of someone can come up to me and try talking to me and I'll completely ignore the fact that they are there, or give a subtle acknowledgement that they are there and talking to me and so they begin talking... but I really have them completely tuned out and am entirely focused on whatever it is i'm doing. Which means they can have a quick conversation with me (obviously they would realize what is going on if it's anything more than a quick conversation) while i'm locked in and I won't remember a single thing. It's as if they aren't there. A bit like when you drive home from work and can't remember anything that happened during the drive. This sounds great... a super power to tune people out and get things done... and it is great when you are working on a task and don't have anyone approach you during the task. But it poses issues when someone asks you to do something or asks a quick question and thinks you have answered when in reality you were in some sort of ADHD autopilot. So whatever they asked you either doesn't get done or whatever simple answer you give to a question may not be accurate. That is what hyperfocus is like for me with my ADHD.
@@okieoiogh8235 Captain obvious over here with a hot take. Of course it can be rude. But that doesn't mean it's intentional. It's why I take steps to not let my ADHD interfere in these types of interactions.
ADHD causes me to jump from task to task because I can never trust myself enough to remember to do a task later. Because of that, I have to try to address everything immediately, and in the process of doing so, I find myself addressing each and every new thing I see and forgetting the initial task that led me here.
your first point about having enough stimulus in your environment was interesting because i am the type of adhd that needs to constantly have something to listen to in the background.. so whether i’m working or cleaning the house or taking a shower or brushing my teeth i have this unquenchable desire to have SOMETHING to listen to in the background
watching the second one i’m honestly surprised how CLEAN and TIDY and ORGANIZED her flat seems.. but yes it is similar to how my mind works:. but we tend to have this out of sight out of mind issue and end up leaving a lot of items out so we can see them which ends up looking messy and cluttered.. honestly with her level of cleanliness and tidiness i would say she’s winning lol
This section on ADHD Paralysis has done a better job explaining to me exactly what I am going through and the process to fix it than everything else I have tried or seen. Thank you so much for this video.
This actually made me tear up because I finally after 37 years (diagnosed in 3rd grade) feel like someone finally actually understands me, like actually really understands what I go thru inside my head. This guy explains this so well, I've spent the last 25+ years trying to explain what this guy did in 45 minutes. I want to hug this guy for a good 5 minutes and I hate people touching me or near me or me them.
My child is also ADHD. In the middle of his 5th grade semester he was diagnosed. A few weeks later his teacher called me and said she has never been a believer in ADHD/ medicating ADHD. But that after she had watched his complete transformation she is an advocate.
I'm still working on this, so it's improving over time: It really helps to practise discipline every day. Sometimes I get super into my uni work and I have to collect my kid, and it's annoying because I'm in a flow state type thing, and I know I probably won't be like that tomorrow. It's important to remind myself sometimes I need to stop, even though it feels like pain in the soul. Other days the work is boring or topics keep changing and I have a constant urge to do something else for a little while, or go into 'philosophical daydreaming' mode. It helps to say to myself 'no'. Then close my eyes, take a few deep breaths and push on, whether it helps focus or not. Again it's no overnight thing, but like meditation you have to practising sucking at it and you start to get improvement over the months, the years. Another thing is, useful as to-do lists and schedules are, you're probably not going to keep checking them throughout the day, so use an Alexa device or better yet, a smart watch that vibrates and tells you what to do and when. The downfall is if you fall behind or other problems that need addressing pop up, you feel a ton of pressure and it's hard to re-prioritise as you go along. I hope to find an app where it's easy to change the schedule around for that day only quickly and easily. Otherwise things kinda fall apart and I'm all over the place, getting grouchy. Any time I notice I've got distracted again or spend too long on something I have to aloud say 'no'. Take some deep breaths and go back to the to-do list. It also takes time to realise what you can do in a day, I have a habit of putting 4 days worth of stuff in a day's to-do's. Another great tip is buy a pocket sized annual diary. Any time you hear about an appointment time, meet-up with friends etc, write it in there immediately! Tell them to shut up while you jot it down, and set a reminder immediately! Otherwise, you'll probably not turn up. I've only just discovered brown noise and it's great when meditation just isn't up for the task in that moment. It's like a buzzing that massages the brain. Wim Hof breathing works well too, but it rarely appeals in the moment. People have started complimenting me on how organised I am, but it's because I have to be. Take away my schedule, annual diary, reminders or to-do list and I'm neglecting everything because I accidently picked up a guitar, or googled an answer to a random question that popped in my head. Now realising I've been typing a while and it's way past bedtime. Like I said, it's a semi-working progress...
bro you've no idea how helpful this video has been. I'm 20 years old and have been considering getting an ADHD diagnosis but have been very aprehensive. The whole thing about ADHD paralysis resonates with me so much and I thought it was something everyone did. I feel very heard. I think I will get a psychiatric apointment soon. If I don't beat around the bush that is hahaha
The getting diagnosed thing is a problem I've had for years. "yea I'll totally go next week". many months later and still havent gone. Its like one of those things you always remember for like 2min and then forget until next week. But this time, in like maybe 2weeks Ill go for sure
I am also waiting on an appointment, i never wanted to get that ADHD stamp before, but honestly medication is worth it and i quite like my fellow ADHDers, I like our minds
The ADHD paralysis section: I've never felt so seen in my entire life. I actually almost want to cry. I was a super high IQ kid who wasn't diagnosed until 31 (due to being a woman, uneducated parents, and now realizing my high IQ helping me mask more efficiently). I definitely hit that wall around when I started college and could never understand why I struggled SO HARD despite being as smart as I am. Since learning about my ADHD, it's like taking off really dark sunglasses you had no idea you had on all your life. Everything suddenly is clear and makes SO much sense. It's really sad that I went so long and struggled as hard as I did simply because we don't have any proper education about spotting those of us that mask so well.
Exactly! I got to college and flunked most of my classes because I could not write essays for the life of me. I got so anxious whenever I tried to sit down and write one that I would end up crying. But I excelled in classes that weren't essay based (like, thankfully, my psychology courses).
Just by the way, I've watched hundreds if not thousands of hours of videos on ADHD and Asperger's. This was by far and away the most useful and informative video I've ever watched! Please keep up the good work! And thank you!
Task paralysis is actually how I did so well in college. I was extremely dysfunctional in elementary and middle school, then progressively got better when I moved into high school, then in college I excelled. It’s because I now had almost no homework and only exams, so my brain would get stuck on an upcoming exam and I would literally do nothing but study for that exam until I took it and then I would move on to the next exam. My college had little homework and lots of tests (like 20+ per semester), so I did really well. Now I’m in the real world and struggling a lot again.
I’d say I was very similar. Especially with the tests, but even with the assignments in uni. I could hyper focus on each one and then move on the the next. But I can’t function in the “real” world haha 😂
The High IQ in children hit me hard. It for me showed by never learning, thus not learning how to learn. I hard crashed when i reached 11th grade, didnt manage to keep up with classes (as learning on your own became required) Due to not Understanding classes i dreaded em, started dropping school, ruined my Last degrees, fell into a pit for 8 years, no motivation, didnt do anything outside of Video games and alike, slowly managed to crawl out of thanks to friends and a psychiatrist and now for the first time managed to want, find and hold a job and am aiming to get further Education now that i manage to do BASIC neseccities to go further.
It was also 11th grade for me (or the Dutch equivalent). Luckily for me, repeating a year isn’t as looked down upon here (since we have a levels system in high school), so I just repeated the year, barely made it to my last year, and aced my exams and graduated with pretty good grades without really studying lol. I started treating classes as though they were optional my last year yet apparently that worked better for me🤷♀️
I got distracted so much as a child without technology, back in my days. I would just doodle, or stare and daydream, browse through the material I have to learn, I could spend hours being distracted. Now I have the internet, and at work I'm listening to podcasts, audiobooks, or just focus on some imperfection and be entertained by it for half an hour. I think having internet/ access to distraction is more educative for me.
Great video. I wish I had listened to it, but I was too busy cleaning dishes, cooking dinner, learning new piano piece, cleaning my home and sketching a painting... replay it is then
Tip I learned during my pregnancy. If I am working on a project that requires long hours of focus I write on 2 sticky notes what I am supposed to be doing. 1 with the higher level list for the day, and the other a break down of the one I'm working on for the next hour. I even set a timer for 2minutes for writing down what I'm working on for the next hour. Then as I complete each granular task I mark it off. That way if I get distracted I know pretty close to where I left off. These lists literally start with "Get Glasses, Get a cup of Water, Get a cup of coffee, Go Pee, Open X File, Read Paragraph 1, Make Y changes" Those two minutes changed my life. Once I get to "Make Y changes" I spend another 2minutes writing down a break down of that and doing that. I do this on a regular sized post-it so it is self limiting.
15:25 - What I hear is "I will forget this other task at 3pm if I do anything else in the meantime, so I built a coping mechanism where I fixate on that 3pm task and prevent myself from forgetting it." So I've started changing my coping mechanism to set alarms that read the alarm name out loud and the name of the alarm tells me what I was supposed to remember (or just a regular alarm and I sometimes forget what the alarm was for). Lists don't help me when I forget about the list.
I was diagnosed with ADHD at age 25, and it was a life changing thing for me. No one ever saw ADHD tendencies in me growing up, and I definitely see it now (your "smart kid with ADHD" explanation mid-video makes sense for me). Once my husband learned all about having an ADHD spouse and looked at the things I do day-to-day, he one day said out loud, "I see why you like Vine/TikTok videos so much. The length of the videos and the content (I watch funny ones) are perfect for people like you". He was way too on the nose. Vine compilations stimulate my brain in a way not much else does. I appreciate this video so much, it's helping me understand things about my brain that other books and videos don't
Also diagnosed with adhd at 25 and damn life makes sense now! Gifted child with adhd tendencies that got overlooked because my grades were good (until they weren’t). After I got my diagnosis my dad said "that actually makes sense" 😂
25 now, talked with a colleague that has ADHD diagnosed and I was like "well - this is definitely me as well". Trying to find a therapist right now and I feel like there's definitely more going on with me than just (possibly) ADHD. But yeah.. reading about it, seeing TikToks etc., always thinking "I'm pretty sure that's what I got as well" is kind of.. relieving for me - just seeing a clear tendency when before I always was like.. Depression? Anxiety? something more rare? I don't f*ing know.
@@marshadirocca2550 Yes! My previous provider, who I sought the diagnosis with and eventually got it, told me that I was an honor student as a kid/teen and therefore she didn't feel she could diagnose me with it. Masking is a thing, even if you don't know you have ADHD or autism. Also, school was my getaway from my home life so I poured all my efforts into it. My family also kinda gets it with my ADHD too, and I know for a fact my dad has it, but he hasn't sought a diagnosis or treatment and he's doing fine anyway. Glad you got your diagnosis!
@@D4mnis There often can be more than ADHD going on. I have other disorders on top of it and it makes things harder. But I hope you can seek the answers you need! The internet has been a huge beacon of comfort and also information with this stuff, and I'm glad it's led to people feeling less alone and also understanding themselves better. I'm still on a journey of understanding my brain 5 years post-diagnosis and I get it so much more now
Been diagnosed with adhd my whole life, never really did any reading into it before so finding more about it at 21 is pretty interesting, when you noted that TikTok and other social media platforms put all sorts of stimuli right in your face I realized I was watching this video in windowed mode so I can look around at other things 😮💨😂
Man that thing with relief instead of accomplishment really hit home with me, i have ADD and when i heard you talk about this i started to look back and from what i can remember, i am not sure i have actually felt accomplishment or at least not from what i remember, but i can recount countless times when ive finished something and felt relief. man that really helped me put some thing into perspective
Wow the description of “RAM” In kids with ADHD was totally my experience. Could not focus or pay attention to save my life but I was really smart so I skated by got iq tested and placed into gifted programs and accelerated learning classes and could not keep up to save my life. Never was able to get anything done or turned in on time but tested out of everything and now I’m an adult ADHD burn out 💁🏻♀️
I don’t remember the last time I just sat down and watched a 40 minute video like this and actually resonated with it, everything is so true I’m just speechless.
the RAM analogy really hit home for me…I was just diagnosed with ADD (predominantly inattentive) yesterday. For most of my life, I’ve been engaging in this perpetual, exhausting game of catch-up. The only reason I wouldn’t fall miles behind was because I would keep using my intellect to close the distance at the very last minute (almost like a speed booster of sorts). And you might ask “well what’s the problem if you’re ultimately able to deliver?” The problem is that using that speed booster tears you apart and conceals the fact that 99% of the time, you’re not running properly. I have spent the vast majority of my life in a state of panic, exhaustion, and distress, but because I was able to produce results, nobody considered that I could be dealing with a disability. Instead, people just assumed I had a poor work ethic, poor time management skills, or just didn’t care. And eventually, since this was the only narrative I’d ever heard, I internalized it and started believing it was true. I have spent my whole life fully convinced that my inability to function “normally” was a moral failing. Eventually, I started my first semester at an Ivy League institution and my terrain became rougher than ever before. Too rough. Due to the rigor of my environment, my speed booster was no longer effective. I broke down and fell flat on my face, which is what finally led to my diagnosis. I’m 18 years old and feel such an immense sense of grief. Due to being undiagnosed, I grappled with severe depression and anxiety throughout my adolescence. Still, 18 is young in the grand scheme of things. I can only imagine the grief that people diagnosed in late adulthood must feel…
I feel you so much man! Im 17 and about to graduate.Throughout my time is school, guilt played a huge part in my day to day life. I felt like a loser cause I couldnt get my self to do anything school related as soon as I was home and the only reason Im still good in school is because of my intellect. Its awful being good, but never being able to reach your full potential cause youre "lazy". I wouldnt be me without ADHD, but it takes a heavy toll on me sometimes
Heyo, just described what I went through 9 years ago, well done figuring this out sooner rather than later (perceptive, right?). Two cents, glad you count your blessings as you didn't go through your 20's figuring this out in your 30's (or even later). It's hard to say ADHD when you're not 'bouncing off the walls' like you typically hear people describe it. So it is tough, in my opinion, to find help and be diagnosed early on with ADD. To be honest, the silver lining in being diagnosed after my teen years would be knowing the difference between my emotions vs emotions on medication (sometimes made me feel a little isolated). Over all, much happier because I feel more like myself and a sense that I have a fighting chance with new tools. Personally, meds are not magic drugs that make you do your work for you or make you want to study harder, they only HELP you focus on what you want to focus on. I could just as easily focus on games or RUclips comments rather than studying (case in point). I am in my fourth year of getting my phD, dyslexia included, so what I want to say is - fight on, really glad you posted this for others to read!
This was me too. I managed somehow to finish university but I had so many moments like with my final project wherever was staying up all night to get it done after having had paralysis for weeks. I’m in my early 30s and starting to think marine I have adhd because I’m noticing more of the difficulties I’m dealing with and why it’s probably happening. I figured since I got a degree and did “fine” that I was just lazy with no work ethic.
something fun to known is that add doesnt actually exist its just adhd. ADD was used before for people like myself who have adhd but arent hyperactive but later studies shows that people with adhd have diffrent periods where they experience diffrent types of adhd. Or i might just be that u were tired or something like it while getting diagnosed but the basic stay. Just a fun thought because i was also diagnosed with add and I just recently found it the term doesnt exist anymore
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Can you do a video about adhd comorebitatee thing all anxiety depression ocd rds and other.
I have a question: How can you see in my head so clearly in this video? I was diagnosed with ADHD in early elementary school and I was wondering what is it that I'm experiencing and I couldn't explain those symptoms. And suddenly here you are explaining the same exact thing I have while i didn't have any answer to it. It cleared a lot for me, thank you!
What's the success rate of this program?
One of the easy things to copy and fake ADHD
When your ADHD u would be worrying about the food u just want shopping .
For me its usually best to have some music on repeat in the background.
To the paralysis - I’m not sure if this is a common thing - for me, say it’s 10 o’clock and I have an appointment at noon, I get stuck in this frustrated head space where I don’t know what to do with the time because it feels like not enough time to start a task but too much time to not do anything.
Same, the joys of time blindness.
For me I have tasks in mind that take only a small amount of time and can be left unfinished without being mad. A game that is quick to boot up and doesnt require a set amount of time like pokemon does this for me. I can pick that up for 10 minutes and then put it down. Chores as well, just cleaning the hobs or something, something short. I can leave one half of the hobs unclean, although hoovering is dangerous because as soon as the hoover comes out the entire house will be clean, regardless of obligations.
YES
I do this all the time!
this is what he means by executive function, your brain struggles with filling the time with tasks..prioritizing based on time.
The best analogy I ever heard about ADHD was, "Imagine that you're trying to count money, but several people are standing behind you saying numbers."
and it's the same number you know is wrong but you keep losing count anyways.
I actually had an appointment with a counselor recently to discuss ADHD treatment. I completely forgot and missed the meeting but, you know, baby’s steps.
@@evanshearin6490 my sister's psychiatrist has ADHD (as does my sister) and they regularly have times when she forgets their appointment or to send in a prescription etc.
When I worked as a cashier before being diagnosed, I was confused why I had to split 1 dollar bills into groups of fives to actually count it. If I went over the number literally vanished from my head
Damn! Never heard that before... so true!
I teared up when he talked about ADHD kids with high intelligence brute forcing their way through life until it doesn't work anymore. I didn't know other people struggled with this. He KNOWS what he's talking about, thank you Dr. K
I had a different reaction. I laughed. But just because it's so absurdly true and relatable. You just learn to fill in the blanks as well as you possibly can and that way it looks from the outside like you were paying attention. And you just "cheat" your way through things in various ways until it no longer works and you crash and wonder what in the world is wrong with you. He DOES know what he's talking about. I used to beat myself up because I used to think I could put in more ram than I had lol. But eventually I just accepted that I'd reached my limit and started looking for the extra armour and weapons. Started using calendars and notifications, like he said. Started trying to hack my attention at various times of the day when I knew I usually had better energy and focus. And things got a little easier, but still not quite good enough to not get overwhelmed. I'm still trying to learn to separate what's working for me and what's not. What is clear, though, is that I'm still struggling to function in society.
This was me too. Head of my class right up to the last couple of years of high school and failing at everything in adulthood. I'm finally getting things together at 50 as I understand how my brain works and I put things in place that work for me.
TRUE. Graduated HS early with a 4.2 weighted GPA. Got into college and the last year I was like I cant adult AT ALL. Still graduated with a 3.8 GPA 2 BFAs and a minor in philosophy. I can hyperfocus on learning just straight getting info dumped on but I cant organize to save my life
im undiagnosed this broke a reality to me felt like my whole personality as a human is just adaption, i was allways the kid that said he isnt smart he just uses logic because i could never follow a teacher longer then 5 minutes without spacing out. gotta go to the doc soon.
Bruh it was the "teacher calls on you and you learn how to gather info and answer quickly" part for me. I've gotten to the point where I can still keep up with the workload, but building a conceptual understanding on the spot makes it especially difficult because I can't trust myself to just learn concepts just by their equations. I'm in uni for an ME major atm, passed my dynamics class because I test extremely well- now I'm accidentally the professor's pet and he keeps calling on me, even though my way to compensate for my poor attention has become solving the problem on my own conceptually to keep myself engaged. I can never answer his questions, and it pulls me out of my train of thought.
Even worse, professors use slides a *lot*. Working a problem on a board makes it easy for me to follow conceptually while also listening to what's being said. When it's a slide, I have to rely on the slide info because I won't have time or attention to follow both without losing one half of it.
What he said about ADHD people only feeling relief when they accomplish something really struck a chord with me. I'm honestly shook, that resonated so much to me. Like I don't feel good after I accomplish something, I just don't feel AS shitty as I did.
This.
I started putting in "celebrate [thing]" in my calander, right after a hard task. Did I call my dentist? Let me celebrate that with a nice lunch! Did I get my teeth cleaned? Let's go see a movie! Did I get a job? Fancy coffee for me!
It's not a huge thing but it helps. Been 3 years and now I do a little dance before getting to treat to really get my brain to feel good about what I did. It makes life more fun and thakes the edge off of the hard stuff. I can totally recommend this! We all deserve to celebrate our accomplishments :3
Not even finished watching this but same!
Saaaaame
same.
When I first got diagnosed at 17, that was the first thing my parents said to the pediatric psychologist was "she can sit in her room playing video games for hours on end, I dont get it" And then she had to explain to them. It was so powerful for me because I grew up thinking I was this horrible person who lacked direction and motivation.
Same. I sent this video to my mom so that she can understand my brain function a little more.
wow. didn’t realize some neurotypical people genuinely don’t understand that kind of thing. lol i never stopped to think of it as abnormal
I got diagnosed age 8, but the psychologist didn't deem int necessary to tell my parents *anything* about ADHD, so they assumed it was "gone" when I entered puberty, cuz teens are complicated and emotional, right?
also given that I have both, ADHD and ASD from my mom(she's undiagnosed, but I'm like an exact copy of her in quirks, struggles and overall behavior) it's not surprising that my parents didn't think I was that much out of the ordinary.
It was the exact same for me. For me it even got to the point where I didn’t want to stay home when I was sick because I wasn’t allowed to play games or have my phone and I would be so incredibly unfathomably bored because all I could do was lay in bed or watch TV.
Same here
The worst thing about ADHD is how boring special events can feel. I feel happier and more alert in my space, than anything else.
I graduated from university with high distinction a few months ago and I literally did not care lol. Everyone's like "you must feel so proud and accomplished!" And I'm just like "...no? Should I be?"
So, fucking, true. Going out on the boat with the family and dogs? Meh... I wanna stay home in my cold room reading.
@@Lapeocon yeah,
Everything is just a relief its over,
Not something to remember fondly.
It's such a weird headspace to be in.
@@Lapeocon straight up. I almost dropped out because I simply don't care. And people have a hard time getting that when I told them I don't care I really have no feeling either way.
It's the understimulation he's talking about. Family gathering, just ''Hanging out'' going around without goals or doing an activity is hell for me.
My procrastination and ADHD task paralysis love to join hands. I'm unable to do anything until I do the thing I am avoiding, so a lot of time passes and nothing else gets done either. The fixation on the thing I am afraid of doing makes it more terrifying in my mind, becomes more delayed, and thus it becomes even more important and paralyzing.
This
The guilt to do anything else is so powerful. I cant do physically anything unless i do the task that im supposed to do, but procrastination holds me back. So its an endless cycle of laying on the bed and staring at the ceiling
@@floranse5205 literally laying in bed staring at the ceiling avoiding cleaning when I read this 😲
@@kikumon90 doing some task you enjoy beforehand helped me. Like cleaning or pruning my plants. Its still sorta a cleaning task, but you ease yourself into it and then you realise you're actually doing the cleaning.
Man i have this with pretty much anything i do. Its most annoying when i plan on cooking something but then my mind sort of paralyzes me bc the task seems too terrifying and i cant do anything at all. So i often end up barely eating anything that day...
Hyper focus is when I spent eight hours sewing a beautiful top the same day we’re going to leave for vacation because I waited till the last minute to do it. only thing left was the straps which is the easiest part, took the sewing machine with me on vacation didn’t finish it there brought it home and never finished it since. A project that became an obsession is now unfinished and abandoned sitting in my little shelf just waiting to be completed. Maybe one day I will finish it.
I doubt you eventually finished it, lmao.
I have several projects that just need 3% to be done, but heaven knows I'm not touching any of them again.
Reason why you need someone that isn't like you and typically has OCD, or at least likes to finish things.
They will micro-manage your projects completion.
Lmaoo totally can relate 😂😂😂
FINISH ITTTTTT I want an update
Yes! My colleague and good friend is a bit OCD, and she is literally my second brain. I honestly think I would be unemployed without her. 🥲
For me the hyperfocus problem is not so much me not being able to control when I use it, but that I completely lose track of everything else. I simply forget anything else exists, I forget that food is a thing, that bathroom breaks are a thing, that time exists... I simply do the thing until I can't anymore, because I feel faint and dizzy from hunger, or because I need to use the bathroom NOW. And I completely forgot about the meetings and tasks I had. Meds make it easier for me to break out of that, I haven't really had a hyperfocus since I take them, I have a much easier time both paying attention, and breaking out of a focus with meds.
Your description of what it’s like to be a gifted ADHD child brute-forcing their way through, then growing up and hitting the wall is scary accurate for me.
Same. I'm deconstructing the wall but damn, it's hard.
100% same. My grandparents and family friends would always coo about how smart I was as a kid but I struggled so hard in school because I couldn't make myself focus if it was stimulating for me. It would physically hurt to try, I would cry while doing homework 90% of the time. I am also 100% the college kid who didn't do any of the reading but my teachers never knew because I could somehow always answer and discuss the text anyway. I didn't even know how I did it half the time! My partner now is even baffled. He says I'm the smartest person he's ever met but I struggle so much with simple everyday things. He's so loving though and is so patient with me. He's been a huge help in building systems to make it easier.
Worse is that we were raised with so much knowledge of ADHD as a stigma but no tools to deal with ADHD besides drugs. :(
@@hotarubinariko wow you just explained my experience so perfectly I'm actually little creeped out... I've never been diagnosed with ADHD tho i just thought of it as having bad discipline
@@hotarubinariko It’s great that you’ve found such a supportive partner in your husband. (And I mean this in the sense of “partner” as “someone who you work with”, not “spouse or equivalent”.) I hope things get easier.
The "brute forcing things with extra IQ" really resonated with me. I always wondered how I got through school with A's and B's when I could never focus in class. The huge downside to this is that I ended up not actually learning much of anything.
Tried downloading more RAM but I'm afraid we've been bamboozled.
I did this in college and now that I'm in the end, I'm getting diagnosed with ADHD because of my trouble with writing my Thesis
@@AlexandreLopsz wooow, thats exactly me but i'm 31 now because i procrastinated the hell out of my whole university life. Fortunatley my professor is very understanding and has agreed to meet every week to create artificial pressure in short time intervalls. Hoping for the best now.
@@AlexandreLopsz Samezies!
same, school was fine, now i hit the wall in uni
A big thing I don't see talked about enough in ADHD discussions is the insane amount of emotional dysregulation and rejection sensitivity dysphoria that comes with it. Would you be able to chat a bit about that in the future?
I really really want to see a video about this topic so thank you for suggesting it 😊
Same!!
Absolutely this. It's hard to rank symptoms, but emotional dysregulation has got to be one of the worst for me. Everything is so much harder to manage when your entire day is ruined because you burned the eggs at breakfast.
My brother has severe ADHD and he has real issues with judging other peoples' emotions, which more or less prevents him from being empathetic. He also does not know when to stop during an argument because he can't tell at what point he starts to permanently scarr someone emotionally, so arguments with him tend to be longer and louder than with other people.
@@ahsookee I sympathize w both you & your brother on that. Sometimes when we ADHD folks are really passionate (or even just hyperfocused) on something, we can go into overdrive in our search to be heard & understood- especially if we've spent a lot of time being or feeling misunderstood. That doesn't make his points turning to rants or tirades ok tho. Perhaps, if you feel up for it, you could talk to him about it when y'all are calm & getting along- personally, I benefit from the positive, negative, positive (& maybe a solution) sandwich, maybe it will help him. Ex: "Hey, bro, I admire your passion & enjoy the things you talk about. Sometimes it does feel like you start to talk at me (or others) & your drive to be heard can be hurtful. I know that's not your goal, so maybe we could work out a discreet signal I could give you when you're starting down that path? And later I can tell you what I noticed to help you learn others' discomfort signals for yourself.
The worst part about being an intelligent female with ADHD is getting misdiagnosed as not having it during childhood because I don’t display the correct systems. People get frustrated with you. They wonder why you are the way you are. “You’re so smart. What’s the excuse.” “You’re just being lazy.” “You don’t strike me as having ADHD. You’re too smart for that.”Or if I was overstimulated and asked to change my environment in school in order to focus better, I was just being too sensitive. This video has been so affirming for me. I was also definitely the kid that didn’t pay attention, got called upon, gave the correct answer, and the teacher was like “oh, I guess you were paying attention.”
The absolute most annoying thing anyone's ever told me was "Just don't get distracted". What's next? "don't get hit by a car" when I've just been hit on a zebra crossing
The shame and blame that we're "not living up to our potential", "we're wasting time", "we're not applying ourselves", "if you just paid more attention", is so defeating!
Yeah my mom always used it as an insult against me that I'm "very sensitive" so I did everything not to be sensitive anymore. The only thing it accomplished is that I have to relearn to actually "feel how I feel" again.
I was diagnosed at 44 years old. I believe one of the best things to come out of social media platforms like TikTok is the opening of the conversations about mental health. We can finally be seen, and even though acceptance is so new there's still a lot of "Oh, everybody says they have that" clapback, at least we know we aren't alone.
I am a 58 year old women who works as a scientist and going through the process of being diagnosed with ADHD but I know I have it, it was a shock.
His statements on high IQ ADHD kids brute forcing their way through school hits me like a truck because thats exactly what I did. I also mastered zoning out while looking like I was paying attention. Now I'm 24, burnt out, unable to brute force my way through stuff anymore.
Dr K's statements on under/over diagnosing should also really include gender as a factor. ADHD women have been so underdiagnosed due to gender biases ("Women can't have ADHD") and different symptom presentation (ADHD women are exceptionally good at masking because of expectations put on women growing up + their symptoms tend to be way more internalized). I had a female friend who CLEARLY had ADHD, she couldn't hold a conversation no matter how hard she tried because she always got so distracted but her psychiatrist, therapist, and doctors refused to even TEST her because "ADHD is overdiagnosed" even though women are proven to be severely underdiagnosed. Meanwhile I have a male friend walked into his general practitioners office, said he thinks he may have ADHD, and the GP prescribed him adderall without ever seeing a psychiatrist/therapist or any other kind of mental health physician nor was required to see one to continue getting refills. Personally, I had to take a multi hour test from the DSM and it took 2 different sessions meanwhile I still got treated with suspicion from my GP.
yeah I can relate to this, ADHD runs in my family like my dad/brother and a bunch of my cousins got officially diagnosed but I was good enough at taking tests in school they just never looked into it for me. And now I'm 27 and realizing I'm almost positive I have it too and it makes getting my work done for my actual job really hard.
I had the same situation but I'm a man. it was really frustrating as everyone thought I was lying for pills.
Expectation? Or is it the personality? Girls tend to be agreeable (meaning they are relatively obedient) and extraverted, which usually leaves good impression on parents and teachers. So ADHD symptoms tend to get compensated with good impression, causing it to be underdiagnosed. Boys on the other hand is disagreeable, introverted, and may show certain extent to disruptive behavior, which parents and teachers usually not overlook, leading to over-diagnosis.
@@ifluxion what you're describing is the result of social conditioning. Girls are expected to be agreeable, obedient, etc from a young age and are punished for not doing so. This has very little to do with personality and more to do with societal expectations of women. Boys are not raised to be this way (hence "boys will be boys") which is why women learn to mask their symptoms from a very young age and are severely underdiagnosed as a result.
Same, that was exactly what I did throughout my entire life as a young man, I'm just thankful I managed to fix my ADHD in my 20s, just having the initiative to study psychology in my free time and discovering an healthy routine and diet.
My girlfriend and her family don't have ADHD and honestly, I've been asked all the questions "how did you get through school without studying" "why can't you do anything if you have an appt. at 5 oclock" "What do you mean you always have a concert and thought processes going on in your head" etc. etc. I will simply show them this video, because I am honestly finding safety in the fact that for once, someone is understanding what I am going through in words better than I can describe. Thank you for this :)
I feel you :)
All of those statements are relatable, thank you
Yesss! I have a round table of several perspectives of thoughts and things running through my head at warp speed at all times. I have my logical internal voice, my voice that's into whatever looks shiny and pretty at the time and always wants crafts, the one who has anxiety about being late or random accidents happening, intrusive thoughts about random crap, the one that's just a running list of everything I have to do today over and over so I don't forget on a loop until I do one of them then it's the rest over and over, the one that keeps track of all the stuff for my kids and husband, the snarky bully one that criticizes me for everything, the one that looks for any reason to stay home and another that wants excuses to go out and dress up, and then random music lyrics and movie dialogue that ties into whatever I'm doing and some kind of morbid comedian.
All. The. Time. It's not like multiple personalities because they're all me but it's like I have facets like a gemstone or something. If I try to explain it people just look at me like I'm terrifying and ask if I feel okay 🤦
Lisa and Austin - I SOOOOO relate to this! I was talking with my husband yesterday about my inner monologue and he was like, "what, you're hearing voices now?" I was taken aback. Doesn't everyone have mental "chatter" like that? I couldn't explain to him that it's not really a separate voice, but it says all sorts of things that may or may not be true or relevant. Doesn't everyone have 10 things running through their mind at the same time?
"How could you get through school without studying?" My question to them is: "How were you able to get through studying when you also have school?".
Dude 21:11 hit me so hard. I think this is why I've spent my 34 years getting two Masters, in library science and crime scene investigation (two VERY different fields), volunteering at botanical gardens, opening an Etsy shop, working at 4 different libraries, and now, interning at a coroner's office. I have this very deep-seated feeling of inadequacy mentally because I can't remember anything or learn anything sufficiently so I feel this need to 'prove' myself constantly that I am mentally adequate. Now my head is just full of information that is mostly useless, and to make it worse, your earlier point of feeling 'relieved' and not 'proud' is still the case; I feel no true sense of accomplishment at having done these things, just a sense of relief whenever they were over.
Yes. This is me.
I hit this wall in my 30's. I've been struggling with mental adequacy for 5+ years now. Your comment about only having relief whenever a task is accomplished is a daily struggle for me and a massive reason for my lack of motivation.
I slept through my A school in the Navy but i always had the answers. Finished the class 7th 🤷🏾♂️
Ouch
@@deanag8457but what good does that do us. All I ever did was pass tests but the point of school was to get us used to being a mindless drone who values obedience and repetition which is hell for us.
White/brown noise story: I was still in college when my kids were little. I had homework to do with a lot of reading (one of my biggest struggle) but also had to take my son to a birthday party at Chucky Cheese. I took him and my books to a room full of screaming kids. This was ome of my best reading ever happened in that environment. I realized the noise was loud but became a blur and my brain could turn off that information. Unlike at home where I might hear a drip and hyper focus on that rather than the words I need to read.
The ADHD simulator is so accurate… tho to be clear, you do not usually hear voices, those are just thoughts. Hard to explain, but it’s accurate.
It feels like thinking so fast your main train of thought stops for a fraction of a second to think something else then continue or derail. To me it feels kind of like this: " I have to go to the gro-OHLOOKAPENNY-cery shop to pick up some eggs and milk then rush home to start make~du~du~dududuuu~ing-OOHILOVETHISSONG !!! When did i hear this song the last time hmmm "
The part that hit me is where she stopped filling the flowers, just to write down that she needs pills only to walk away forgetting about the cereal and flowers and thinking about the Latin origins of medical words instead. Just to, seconds later, remember she forgot to do like 3 things. Accurate af.
I think so fast that it's rarely a full sentence, a thought is more like the vibe and meaning of the sentence without having words. So when I have a thought that actually consists of words, it does feel like hearing a voice sometimes.
I have conversations from different people's perspective happen out loud A LOT. I can stop it at any time and they are my own thoughts and scenarios. I never heard voices and I hope I never will.
@@ytilaeR_ My parents always say: If I give you 3 tasks to do, you forget 2 of them. My mom also says: If your head wasn't stuck on your body, you would even forget to bring your head. Which I find funny.
I think that there are other parts to the paralysis, such as being too overwhelmed that you can't start. Difficulty starting a task due to knowing said task will not give stimulation or dopamine. Time blindness and not understanding how long a task will take, or even knowing how long a task may take and not wanting to spend that time to due such task not being stimulating enough until it is necessary.
For me, usually:
Time blindness + procrastination -> overanalyzing -> time passes -> overwhelmed -> paralysis
@@Mary1337 That's the EXACT same cycle I get stuck in.
THIS, SO MUCH THIS
Yes, I can't gage time. I don't know how long something will take. I'm either early or late. I feel paralyzed like I can't do anything because I will miss the event or meeting.
And as more time passes I become increasingly less likely to start/achieve that task.
starting things is the most difficult thing for me, literally starting anything!
So I definitely agree with you here.
What I found really difficult about the ADHD diagnosis process, was a lot of the questions are purely (as Dr K says), about whether you fail to function or not. I function to a mediocre level, but through great effort, and I know ADHD symptoms make things harder than they need to be, but the process doesn't care and so I was told I don't have ADHD. I was honest about my level of functioning, but couldn't then go on to explain that there's more to it than that. Something being unreasonably difficult is invisible, you either do it or you don't as far as others can see.
This reassures me, that I still might have ADHD, even though I just about don't pass as ADHD according to all the self tests I've done. Things like: "Are you on time?" Yes. Actually more like 5min early. Because I panic about being late and plan everything to death, check the time several times and plan to leave the house 10min before I have to so I'm actually out of the door on time and I usually have a Plan B should I miss the bus anyway...
"Do you buy things impulsively?" No. But I grab a lot of things impulsively that I want to buy. I think I usually don't end up buying them because I grew up in a household where one of the biggest sources of conflict was buying things we don't need. So being very hesitant to buy something is now deeply ingrained in my brain.
(The list goes on...)
Yes, I was very glad that my psychiatrist put my answers into perspective with already adopted strategies and/or masking. I almost never miss appointments, but that is because I put every little thing in my google calendar and have a widget on my home screen and basically check it a hundred times every day. So he said: ok, you found an actual strategy that works for you, but if you wouldn't do that? If it's not in my calendar it is not happening. The same goes for things like wandering around/fidgeting. I wouldn't do that excessively but only because my anxiety to be perceived as weird and rude is more severe than the urge to this.
I really think it should be considered how hard it is to function and if there are already coping strategies in place.
At work I have a schedule to follow all day and alarms to keep me on track. I have a set time to do everything so it's not that bad. Things like my glasses, keys, employee badge, and phone generally have a set place to be when I get home, so few problems there. However, I do occasionally forget one of those important items somewhere in my rush to get to work. The times I've gone to work without my phone or glasses are frankly embarrassing. And finishing my housework and personal errands is nigh impossible.
My psychotherapist told me I'm a hypochondriac for wanting to test for adhd so yeah...most people that work in the field aren't good enough to work with us yet here they are, with their bought diplomas or whatever.
@@skeletoninyourbody9896 Sounds like you need a different psychiatrist. Doctors are less people and more a product you buy(in terms of what they should mean to you) . If you're dissatisfied with the product go get different product. I've not heard of many doctors refusing to do a noninvasive test because of hypochondriac tendencies so... Get a different doctor.
Thank you. Your comments about ADHD and gifted children hit really hard. I've felt like a failure my whole life because I never "lived up to my potential", and having someone explain why with a really accessible analogy is really validating.
“Not living up to your potential” was the bane of my entire existence. I graduated hs with the lowest gpa in my whole graduating class but was also the only one in my school district to get a perfect score on the sat.
The "1 minute in my head" was so brilliant. I'm currently cleaning my room and I feel like I moved stuff around for three hours and my room is still a mess haha
OMG yes, cause cause the order changes again and again as you move them so then you kinda have to re-do half of it? 🙈
@@KxNOxUTA Yes, also I just move from task to task if I don't have enough room to finish another. I sorta try to make room in the middle and throw everything I can't order in the middle of the room. Then I go around the room ordering and cleaning.
Yep. With cleaning, hour 3 is like the end of my "pre-game". The last 30 minutes is where 80% of the cleaning itself gets done because that's when I realize I'm running out of time. (And I only "realize" because my spouse tells me we're going to be late for something....again.)
Amen
A strategy that works for me when cleaning is to not try to focus at all on what I'm cleaning. I just try to sort of get myself started, and then whatever "cleanable" thing I come across, I engage with *immediately* even if it interrupts something else I was doing. It's chaotic, but eventually sort of converges into a clean apartment as long as every individual step doesn't increase the messiness significantly.
It's like, I can start vacuuming, notice a piece of trash on the floor, go put it away, sort a few dishes in the sink, wipe the tables, then go back to the vacuum for a bit, notice that some surfaces are dusty and start dusting them, et cetera. It's very low friction and if anyone looked at me doing it they'd probably be very confused, but for my brain it's just the easiest way to get things done.
I am a medical student with ADHD and all i can say as a kid, I was "brute forcing" everything that I sort of develop a fine observational skill. I don't ask questions to people (sometimes I do, it depends on my social anxiety level), I'll just observe everything around me to give me a clue to answer my own questions. It has a perk in the clinical as I can spot what's wrong with the patient quickly, but I sometimes get in trouble for not asking the most basic questions that you can't get with pure observation (like name, age, occupation)
I've been brute forcing since I was in the second grade. That's when the insomnia started. Developed a system of staying up one night reading and sleeping the next. Did this all throughout grade school. Read damn near every book in my schools library. I even read the dictionary and read it 2 more times as an adult. But if I try to think of a good word to use I never can but if I'm talking ahead of myself I often say words I can't define but when checked {love google b4 that it wasn't easy to get validation cuz nobody b carrying a dictionary around..well nobody but me...and how did i know that easy because all the kids always pointed out my differences from others very slanderously ( dont even knoe if thats a word but if it isnt i will ™️ it) totally forgot my point or if i haf one...uhmm dont know how to end this so just gonna do it😊
I resonate with this an unbelievable amount. It's like I wrote it. Great observation.
That's exactly the experience I had going through paramedic school!
Same here, but in IT Support instead of medicine. I've got two big motivators: empathy for helping people solve their problems, and solving novel problems. But like you, I don't ask enough questions... I'm too busy looking for all the clues and investigating all the possibilities.
The white noise stimulus thing finally makes sense. When I write (scientific papers, fiction, etc.) I like to listen to dull podcasts or boring Netflix in the background. People have asked me how I could possibly focus with "entertainment" in the background and I couldn't explain, but I know I function better with some kind of distraction because it frees up the creative and analytical part of my brain to do its thing while the spastic part of my brain is pacified and shuts the heck up for once. :)
I also find that there's a delicate tipping point between too little stimulation and too much, especially depending on the complexity or difficulty level of the task in question.
I like waves, certain types of music and shows I'm already familiar with, but the white noise produced by white noise machines is pretty painful for me to listen to. I can't focus if that noise is happening. I can barely exist in the room. Ugh. It's awesome when you can find the 'noise' that works for you.
@@spinthepickle1244 definitely. For me, I have an assortment of specific "focus" songs I turn to, usually 30 minute extensions of choice video game music that I've consistently fallen back on with success. Things like playlists are more iffy for me because the change in music forces my brain to acknowledge and maybe be excited or whatever for the next song, but the same familiar song looping over and over melts seamlessly in my mind within like 5 minutes, making it completely non-distracting while filling the mental space to help me focus (plus the association with This Music = Focus Time also helps). Plus, when I need to take 30 seconds to rest my hands or zone out, then the music is still there for me to appreciate more presently without having to interrupt my groove :)
It used to take me hours to complete my homework when I was a kid because I had to sit at the table alone, in silence. I was so bored I couldn't focus. I asked if I could have music. My wonderful mother was doubtful but allowed it. Since then, I got it done without a problem. Used to do essays to TV shows or instrumental music. Lyrics or new songs can distract me too much.
Then there's my chem test in high school. My teacher would play classical music during every test which would normally help a lot. Then a song, which one of my favorites Dance Dance Revolution songs was based on, came on. I couldn't answer a single question during the entity of the song.
@@Phreeque lemme guess, Beethoven Virus?
wow so good, the description with "relief vs accomplishment" was spot on - i studied hard for 2 month, got a notification mail telling me i have the best grade and it felt like nothing. Maybe it was the time of the day when i found out, but i felt/feel mostly indifferent to the grade . The constant rewards during studying, like takeway or so, actually felt more rewarding. Aswell i didnt have a week schedule for the time after the exam- so in the future i even need to plan that ahead so i dont fall in a hole without routine.
I have been without my ADD meds for going on 3 weeks and... the hyperfocus short is so spot on. I accidentally spent 10 hours cleaning my room last week. I was organizing and sorting and it was like 8pm, time to wind down. Just one more thing... and then i looked up and it was 2am. My back was screaming, my bladder was ready to burst, my eyes were burning... never been able to harness it effectively.
Oh, a few months ago I built a 3D printer. Box showed up at my house at 6pm, started building it and got extremely involved in it... Until 6am, when I finished building it. 12 freaking hours! The worst thing? The university exam I had at 10am, that I inevitably failed
Ouch! That sounds all too familiar. Good luck with everything 👍
Ha. 9 - almost 10 -- years here. It's rough but I feel more in control.
@@SideBit it’s been about 10 years since I was last medicated. It’s been a struggle, but now it’s easier to manage when I found out what works
I get this with video games pretty badly. Something I do to break hyper focus when I need to is I set an alarm to go off on my phone to act as a reminder to do something else.
DR. K is out here, describing exactly what happened to me when I went from an honours student in high school to crashing hard in my first year of university....
Sameee here!! But I dropped out 😮💨🥶 and tried again and then dropped out
@@copiouscat Don’t lose hope if it’s something you really want. I’m just about to finally finish the degree. 10 years later.
@@what3269 🥹 aw geez Congrats 🫂 sigh i just feel defeated after all the attempts and transfers and failed classes ya know. But thank you for the kind words. I’ll definitely try again
@@copiouscat Oh, I feel you. I felt that way, for a long time. I'm not advocating just bashing your head into the wall some more either. Only go for the degree if it's something you really want. And even then, take the time to be in the right place to try again. Like, figure out what coping strategies work best for you, if medication helps, that's great. For me, getting the diagnosis helped SO much. Medication, knowing what strategies work for me, and tech advancements (notifications on my phone, timers, calendars, etc), it's the only way I've managed.
@@copiouscat I managed to drop out with only 3 classes to go, avoid school for 7 years, then decided to finish my degree. It went a lot better then, but I still didn't want any more.
Now, almost 15 years after getting my BA, I'm working on my MS in an entirely different field and loving it. The difference, though, is that now I KNOW I have ADHD, and now I've figured out what coping mechanisms work for me, and I have meds. It makes everything possible now. I'm still occasionally overwhelmed or miss deadlines, but I'm no longer hovering on the edge of a mental breakdown. It IS doable.
It makes me so uncomfortable when people minimize a real disorder by saying, "Like, literally anything is an ADHD symptom!" Hidden to me until I was 30 years old, this disorder devastated my life. Knowing full well how many people would now choose to downplay people who genuinely have crippling ADHD symptoms since "oh, everyone is a little ADHD," is simply terrible.
Honestly, I feel the opposite. I dislike it when people gatekeep disorders, saying "you must be this negatively affected by it to have it." Not everyone's life is devastated by things like ADHD. Claiming so might just stop a lot of mildly afflicted folks from receiving diagnosis or help.
I don't have OCD, but for over a good decade everyone was saying, "this thing is my OCD" about everything. I can't imagine what an individual with legit OCD must have felt, and were likely dismissed a lot due to the attitude towards what OCD is.
Now that I finally have my ADHD diagnosed, I am self-conscious about people believing me/taking me seriously.
@@ShazySoft There has to be a threshold for a diagnosis of any disease or problem, Is the issue impairing your function in the world built for the average person in a way that lowers your chances of having some kind of stability and success? Then there is a need to intervene professionally to fix the issue.
@@ShazySoft "Gatekeeping" has got to be one of the most misused terms these days. Defining an illness is NOT gatekeeping it.
@@yohaizilber Why does there have to be that threshold, though? What if someone has a really mild form of ADHD that doesn't devastate their life?
This was really helpful. I often wondered why I got so frustrated when people either interrupt my thought process or a task that I’m doing because not only do I have trouble switching the task but I know that when I go back to it, I have to start all over again or I’ll forget about it altogether. And I don’t think it’s necessarily like start all over again as in everything I accomplished in that task from square one but I think it’s that I used so much effort to get the task started that once I’m doing it I need to complete it or it’s harder to re-start.
It all makes sense. When I used to fly to other countries with my dad for work, in the plane, I felt "the zone." By which I mean, I absolutely BLAZED through fourteen assignments and two essays for my grade 7 classes. Most days, I struggled to get even two assignments done. One 11 hour plane journey, and all of my work for the MONTH was done (my teacher gave us contracts; all of our work for the month was detailed out in this big grid-style chart)
After I finished the work, I started drawing to commemorate. It was this big concentric spiral and it flared out into a bunch of smaller spikes. I have no idea where the concept came from, but it sits on my fridge to this day to remind me that I AM capable, that I can do things when I put my mind to it. Cling to those moments: remember that you are and will always be good enough. ADHD often gets talked about in the more intellectual capacity, but the oft-overlooked part of it is how it can affect people emotionally. I've seen it tear the best kind of people down, and if you suffer with it, you don't deserve that. You ARE good enough.
Me listening to airplane noises on RUclips thinking it is a cure somehow and then realising that's a dream lol since everyone is different, but I can only keep on dreaming
@@nope4309 You'll find your cure too, one day. Keep looking, keep trying. You owe it to yourself to search for your personal cure.
You are SO right about the emotional part-even if you don't know you're ADHD. I wasn't diagnosed until my late 30s, and while the label helped explain WHY I struggled so much, it's been the actual seeking & receiving of treatment that has been helping me reframe my thoughts, regulate my emotions & rebuild my esteem. I'm so grateful to live in a time that this is finally being talked about-w/out shame & am able to use others' stories to help myself & my kiddo, who's also ADHD.
1 month of work done in 11h. Tell me you go to american school without telling me
I feel like not having much else to do makes it easier to get the school work done. I’m currently in college and working and I have such a hard time doing the online work at home but if I take my computer to work with me and do it on my lunch break then it is easy to get a lot done
Your RAM analogy crushed me. I was diagnosed at 26. I often wonder if my diagnosis was accidental because my life isn't impaired the way it was before I started medication. Then I heard your RAM analogy. That was me as a child and teenager. I had a school psychologist recommend medical intervention at 15 and had a well-meaning teacher tell my parents that I was just bored because I was gifted. I underperformed for another decade before I broke down and pursued a diagnosis as an adult. Thank you for validating me and others like me.
same same same same,,,
So what is the solution for the RAM problem?
@Samuel Kerl God, I wish I knew. For me, the answer to increasing the amount I could save was medication. However, I am still trying to put a ridiculous amount of RAM into a computer that is running windows 98.
@@artishking I'm running vista, it's pretty creative but doesn't work when u need it to.
❤
Man, that “what hyper focus is really like” is right on the mark. It can occasionally be useful, but most of the time it is destructive to your health, relationships, and other tasks that need to be done.
I hope you get this post. I am 75 and 10 years ago made the decision to separate myself from being around anyone. Still every morning I can't make any decision to leave my home unless I have to order food from groceries, etc. My ADHD is worse than ever. this video helped me understand how to help myself. My oldest son has lived this way 30 years. He was evaluated at 7 to be "genius IQ" but could not be in a classroom. Thank you.
it’s never too late to work on your mental health
i hope your adhd symptoms become more manageable ❤
Hey mate, I hope you're doing well
i wish you the best of luck, keep truckin on
I wish you a nice and pleasant future
This is really informative! I was one of the “gifted” kids with a high IQ score and when you talked about the “brute force” when asked questions…too real. I would blaze through everything with high marks without studying and with haphazard attention by using “common sense” - until I couldn’t. I got passed over for a diagnosis even though I had a lot of classic, noticeable symptoms as a kid, while my two first cousins got diagnosed in elementary school because their grades were struggling. I didn’t get diagnosed and treated until I was 27.
Same, though I crashed and burned in college because I had no idea how to study. Being a woman, they tried to diagnose me with everything but the obvious (I didn't even really question them, then).
I have adhd and autism and I was diagnosed early (thank non existent god)and I have found studying to not help a single but I still get good grades and all that but studying is kinda just a waste of time for me.
exactly the same for me, that part felt like he was describing me... I had high school tests where I didn't attend a single class and got max grade, but when adult life came, things got really tough!
I don't know if I feel better or I cry now that I know I'm not alone. I feel exactly the same things you've mentioned and also experienced same stuff.
Same story here but I hit a wall last year in university, then I was diagnosed and this year I’m doing much better
To answer the question @25:20, as a recently diagnosed ADHD, 30 year old female. The signs were there my whole life, but it wasn't too disruptive too my life until I was older and sought out a diagnosis for whatever was going on. Considering that women/girls are now diagnosed its safe to say they are getting better at diagnosing it. When I was in school I was either stupid or a genius, no one ever considered adhd but my male classmates if they acted out at all everyone said "definitely adhd"
I was evaluated about 2yrs ago, and we “ruled out” ADHD because I scored so well on the tests. I had a high IQ, so no ADHD. Listening to this video makes me want to angry-cry. Because of this video, I’m going to contact the people who did my testing, and ask to be tested for the markers you’re discussing.
“High IQ so no ADHD” … if that’s really what they said, that evaluator was absurdly incompetent. I was diagnosed at age 6 in the early 00s and also determined to have 98th percentile intelligence for my age group at the same time.
There is no correlation at all between ADHD and “IQ” except that some with ADHD will perform better on IQ assessments with medication or accommodations (extra time, distraction reduced room, etc). Intelligence tests generally are less impacted than knowledge tests by accommodations (or at least that was my understanding of why I could still score exceptionally without treatment)
DUDE NO SAME I got diagnosed with asd at an in school psychiatrist in 2nd grade I didn’t know what that meant so I never thought much about it some things in my schedule changed and I could go to this fun room if I wanted! Fast forward a couple years and a couple lessons on emotions (focusing on asd) 6th grade killed me. I just kept getting frustrated at the adults for not listening to me I kept saying that I cant turn my brain off and I ended up brute forcing my way through the rest of school. 8th grade rolls around I’m diagnosed with mdd and general anxiety disorder. 9th grade and I’m retested finally after so much begging and the physiotherapist is saying I have above average iq and it looks like asd but there’s a handful of inconsistencies. Brute force my way through school dealing with ✨emotional abuse✨ as I have throughout my life. I end up going through a phase of self diagnosing (which is quite cringe and wrong I know) honestly I have to at this point because it seems like I’m the only one willing to care so I’ve done so much research. I’ve kept waffling back and forth on wether or not I have ADHD because look at me I’m tired and I just can’t focus on anything that isn’t stimulating I’ve gone from hyper focus to hyper focus looking and scouring for something that makes me happy again. I just don’t want to live anymore honestly it’s frustrating now that I’m an adult and I don’t know how to do anything useful. Im suffering and Ive hurt others wether they want to admit it or not. I don’t know what else to to
Go to another therapist, they do not deserve your money again. I would go to another one and claim in Google reviews what they did to you
@@javiermendoza5173 This. Don’t go back to incompetent people who undermine your struggles
Definitely go get a second opinion. One indicator that’s good to look at is whether your working memory IQ is as high as your other IQ subscores. You might score in the high 99th percentile on everything else but have a measly 96th percentile on working memory. That’s super super high. But it’s also super low compared to the rest of your brain function and can be an indicator of giftedness+ADHD
I really love how much empathy and compassion is built into the language of your explanations.
ADHD paralysis for me feels the same like sleep paralysis, like when your mind is fully awake but you body is fully paralyized and you can't move anything but all senses are on high alert. Task paralysis feels kind like the same. You know what you have to do, you know how important it is but you can't do anything till it's that urgent that panic levels are high enough to do it finally.
Aaaand sometimes they are not done till the right mood, stimulus and energy all met at the same time.
The best explanation of this I have ever seen. That's exactly what it feels like!
I tried to describe this to my psychiatrist, and he decided it was just "lack of motivation". 😠
i do this, i'm 99% sure i don't have ADHD just a bunch of issues that mimic neurodivergences a lot. you put it into words perfectly!!
YES
That describes all my homework, university assignments, and freelance work at the same time. Also shaving and putting away 2 months old mail.
OMG my mind is totally blown right now. What you explained at 21:00 about smart ADHD kids not paying attention in class, but doing some brute force reasoning…this is 💯 why I was diagnosed at 34. I literally never realized that was my thinking process in the classroom.
Same for me! I was just diagnosed at 33, and it has been an eye opening journey, to understand why I am how I am
Yes this was 100% totally me! Most of the teachers thought I was super smart and good at school work but either lazy or needed to apply myself more. The better teachers noted I was often distracted and distracting others lol and very talkative 😅 but a lot of them, especially by 3rd grade teacher, they thought it was disappointing to see how my grades had gone down a little due to lack of attention and needing to focus more and that I was quite capable. As if I had no excuse for my behaviour. And I also needed to listen better in class and follow instructions. But for other teachers especially where I was interested in the topic would just say that I was easily distracted but super bright, really quick at learning and will go far, but I need to focus a little better. Lol.
Btw are a guy or girl?
I have read that the smart part is the reason why somepeople are missed out on being diagnosed as a kid.
But I've also read that it was primarily focused on hyperactivity part of ADHD and mostly boys were recognised with ADHD more than girls in the classroom because girls were able to hide it better, because people weren't as aware of the inattention part of the disorder, so that's why there's more women now being diagnosed later on in life.
I'm 36 and have only just been diagnosed. I was very much the same as going through school pretty easily, had no issues until got to my school certificate and then the high school certificate and I couldn't just work my way through questions, I had to actually remember the stuff, and have paid attention. I was so great at science and maths in year 7 and 8. Changed schools, maths became harder, much harder lol. And I couldn't pay attention or quite get it as much anymore. I studied so much for the maths test in year 10 for the school certificate and only just came back with 70 out of 100. Buuuut the other topics that I was more interested in, I studied less for and got a bit higher. Luckily the next year maths wasn't compulsory so I was like well that's out the window, and chose subjects I was better at, ie enjoyed more. Still managed to get into uni really lucky through an art program via an interview lol. And now I work in IT. Lol.
Completely different to that! XD
Anyhow yeah I think it was both the fact that girls were less diagnosed or looked at back when I was a kid, and also because no one noticed how much I really struggled... And even if I did try to explain stuff to people as to why I wasn't quite getting something, I was seen as lazy or quite capable and not applying myself. Fun. Lol.
I am lucky though in that my parents eased off their expectations of me by the time I went to Uni. I think because of the maths thing and I showed how much I did "apply" myself and it still didn't stick lol. That they were happy for me to find what I was good at and go from there. But still struggled through Uni and entering the work place because of ADHD and so on
@@CaioKaos congrats on that journey! I'm trying to encourage a few friends to go get see a Psych for diagnosis. They think they may have ADHD and are not sure, so I said best to go and find out to be sure, especially if they find they struggle with certain things that ADHD people struggle with and it affects them.
I don't recall ever studying....prided myself on the fact that I didn't....I still got 3.8GPA in high school. I remember sleeping a lot in class.
Very insightful
“Some people with adhd are running around in a loin cloth just leveling up their strength. So they can punch people. In a video game”
I’m glad you clarified it was in a video game. I was really concerned that I would have to do this literally in real life to solve my problems. Thanks dr k.
Hi! So true, flashcards spaced-repetition and active-recall opened the way for me to dump and sustain info in the hard disk (long term memory). Now I'm working on my emotions, focus, motivation. I'm 35 now, 3 months on drugs, adhd from the start of my life, high iq, zero memory, easily distracted, a lot of procrastination
I have never heard such a good description of what it is like to be a gifted child with ADHD. I feel so seen. When I hit college the load became too much because my schedule wasn't the same every day anymore and I absolutely crashed and burned. I eventually had to hire an executive functioning coach in coach to teach me how to organize my ideas in a way that wasn't overwhelming for me.
That said, I think you got hyperfocus wrong. One thing I never hear anyone mention about hyperfocus is how your other senses stop processing. When I'm hyperfocused my brain stops processing sound.. I literally cannot hear the people or things around me. People get mad because they think I'm ignoring them, but I literally cannot hear them. It can be a real problem.
YES! I experience the same thing with hyperfocus. When I am in hyperfocus mode people have to say my name a few times to get me to notice them. I have always thought it was just me being really into what I was doing
That aspect of hyperfocus is also a spectrum though. For me, it's just like really strong focus that I can't control. Everything around me still exists, but I don't get distracted. I can tell if someone is talking to me or if people are moving around me, but it just gets tuned out unless I'm addressed directly (preferably by name), in which case I snap out of it but feel very agitated. I know people who describe it as just an intense urge to stick on the same thing but they can be pulled out of it from external factors, and others that simply shut down everything but the task as you described.
Andddd ADHD oversharing lol but yeah, definitely a spectrum
i literally dropped out of college two days ago due to the overload of having a completely different, and unusual schedule to me. it was too much for me to jump into all at once, even with medication. i don't attend any form of coaching, but i might look into it because you just described what i am going through to a T.
@@100MagicChickens ADHD group coaching is even better than one on one. All of it is great. Highly, highly recommend you check out some of the options out there.
I cant tell you how many times people have yelled at me when I couldn't hear them cause I was paying attention to something else. It gets really bad when I'm stressed though. I cant hear SHIT. I can only think about what's stressing me out.
The "Brown Noise" topic is so validating. I went back to graduate school at the age of 40, and the only strategy that I'd discovered for effectively accomplishing anything academically was to go to a semi-crowded coffee shop, or even a bench in the mall - and then put in earplugs. I needed the random background noise and visuals of people talking and moving, but not directly attempting to interact with me. If I tried to read/write/think in a library, or at the edge of a river, or someplace too quiet and peaceful - either my exhaustion would overwhelm me and I'd fall asleep, or my mind would wander far afield from what I was "supposed" to be working on, and I would get painfully fidgety and restless.
Conversely - environments that were too loud or too much risk of people engaging me only resulted in overwhelm and mental shutdown... my mind just reverted to an internal "buzz" or "hum" that kicked me into hyper-awareness mode, a purely reactive state of being where I'm constantly "at the ready" to navigate any and all incoming stimuli. It's actually somewhat peaceful, in its own right, and feels a lot like the "flow" state often referenced in psychology - but it's entirely externally directed at the expense of my own agenda.
By the way, graduate school was for becoming a mental health professional. I had accidentally cobbled together enough coping strategies to stumble my way over the finish line and haphazardly graduate, only to be administering an ADHD screening to the parent of a client I was working with a couple years later... and as I skimmed through the 100-question screening, I suddenly went "Oh shit." I could answer in the affirmative to about 90% of the symptoms and life struggles.
Point being - our minds are costantly working to optimize performance in their own way. The more these discoveries are shared and recognized amongst people who struggle together, the more we can feel "seen" and a little less odd, because we're not broken... we're just wired differently.
This! My productivity levels in coffee shops is at its highest. Never really known why, but the visual stimulus makes sense. I thought it was a social thing, feeling part of a crowd.
Different, not broken 🤘🏼❤️
This sorta resonates with me because I'm a psychology student and have just recently realised I have a high chance of having ADHD by casually solving a screening test with my friends after a lecture. I'm looking into getting a professional opinion/diagnosis soon, hopefully.
As a college student that possibly has ADHD(tho definitely some problem with focus and memory. my therapist and I think it's ADHD, but I'm trying to get a psychiatrist so i can get some formal diagnosis), i have been trying to find the sweet spot of "enough people are around me that I'll feel bad if someone sees me doing something not productive" but without the "oo what's that? what are those people talking about? the lighting in here is kinda weird. I'm suddenly very aware of this chair I'm sitting in and i don't like it." And then it's been an hour and i haven't read a single line of my textbook. I'm gonna try Starbucks again today bc, while i don't like coffee(i get chai lattes, they're fine), boba places are way too bright and loud, and hopefully using brown noise will help lol
@@cartoondeathnoises8756 Omg I had the same thought. I thought I was a pressuring myself to be productive because I'm hogging a seat at a public space.
I can't work in the office unless I play some music in my earbuds to mute my surroundings. Otherwise, I would either read the same paragraph over and over again cause I keep overhearing other people's conversations, or give my 2 cents in a conversation that I wasn't invited to (got a warning for this).
My office is doing hotdesking and I have to pick my seat carefully because I dislike it when the lights shine into my eyes, when the sun is too bright and my screen becomes too dark during the day, when it's too windy when it rains because I can feel the wind on my skin and it's distracting, when there is a coworker that joins online meetings from their seats, and a few more that I can't remember.
I'm supposed to be working now, but I just spent 30 minutes typing a youtube comment.
I usually play kpop since I don't understand the language and there are so many things that are happening at once.
the stimulation is the reason why I tend to talk to myself when i'm alone cause that way I have a chance of focusing on one thing. but even then i sometimes stumble in my "conversations"
Same, I find talking out loud, describing what I’m doing right now really helps me!
glad to know im not the only one that does this. i always thought itd make me seem insane if someone noticed me doing it as often as i do
@@IV31677 we might not be "normal", but how boring the world would be if everyone was lol
i found out it works too , talking to myself , giving myself steps to do each time to not zone out or just do nothing , sometimes just saying what i am doing works too
Same. Self-conversing is one way for me to focus in the midst of sea of stimulation. I even do that in public, because why not 🤷
I’ve been binging these videos. I don’t even know if you or your team reads these comments especially on old videos. But I just have to say that this channel is the single most valuable channel on all of RUclips, for me personally. (And I’ve consumed more than my fair share.)
Because I was recently able to finally & fully understand that I wanted to gain more grit (in addition to self love, thanks to one of your videos) I’ve been listening to and watching your videos consistently as I accomplish some really challenging home improvement tasks. It’s a win-win-win for my ADD brain.
I’m a 41 year old woman and I can say that I feel more empowered than I ever have before since watching these videos over the past few months. I’ve learned so much and gain so much perspective.
Thank you so much for this gift. You are truly improving lives and I believe your work is a beautiful act of love that is inspiring so many.
And omg just reading through all of the comments on this video is the most validated I’ve ever felt in my entire existence. It does sometimes feel really fuckn hard to make the bed! How amazing it must feel to actually feel accomplished when I achieve tasks - instead of just ever so slight relief, and then anxiety about the next thing.
i didnt get diagnosed with adhd until recently, im closing in on 30 and its scary how much this video just checks all my boxes, especially the brute forcing my way through school. never did homework, never studied for a test, got As and Bs throughout school, tested for over 130 IQ in high school. but that backfired hard as an adult as i never really had to learn to live with ADHD0, and now i almost feel like a dementia patient, cus i cant remember anything anymore. my brain feels like it have completely short circuted luckily i got a job with lots of smaller tasks that i have to do at the same time, so my ADHD kinda works in my favour
Edit: damn didnt expect this to resonate with so many! Thankfully the reasearch and understanfing of ADHD had bevome a lot better the last decade, and it seems to be much more understanding of how to live with it.
100%, me cramming for tests and not retaining the knowledge bc ‘I got through the test’ wish I knew about adhd in school instead of at 25 after it’s all done lol
@@marshadirocca2550 Reminds me a lot of especially my university exams. People will ask me which questions I was asked or what I answered, but I can't even remember it almost already 10 minutes after the exam. As well as I quickly forget most of the topics I studied for.
I understand your experience.. Being diagnosed late in life was the best thing that happened to me because I understand so much of my past experiences now.
I'm exactly you. wtf.
I remember how I could zone out and when I got called on or need to write something down like a due date, I could "play back" the audio I heard in the classroom to maybe hear the last 10 words or so of the teacher. Ofc if the class was too loud and I wouldn't have heard them anyway, the "play back" feature didn't work.
THIS!! omg I never thought I've ever know someone that feels this too
This makes too much sense. I am 38 and suspecting I might have inattentive ADHD. And yeah, I was a smart shy quiet girl when I was a teenager. And I hit a wall several times in the last few years by getting burnt out.
Also, I have just realised that I masked the fact that I was not paying attention with shyness. I have figured out years ago that I have never actually been shy. But it somehow made my life easier to let people think I was and I never really thought about why that was.
Oh my god it's been the same thing for me, even the burnouts years later
I'm 38 too, with the same suspicion and same burn out. I'm interested to see where you go from here.
Wow, I was the shy kid too. Not because I was actually shy, but because that distinction served as an excuse to my inattentiveness.
Studies are beginning to come out that women often go undiagnosed as children. So now we're seeing women getting their diagnosis in their late 30s-40s.
I'm 32, male, just got diagnosed. Was a straight A student in high school but procrastinated and brute forced every assignment at the last minute. Also was a major night owl when I discovered video games, so I was getting like 3 or 4 hrs sleep most nights... I masked my inattention in class as tiredness, often falling asleep then answering questions correctly when I got woken up. Only made it through college by finding study buddies who held me accountable to meet up, and now adult engineering jobs have been a massive rollercoaster since I never learned the time management and prioritization skills earlier in life / my brain fights me constantly when I try to learn now. This episode hit home so hard.
I've been suspecting ADHD in myself since i first found out about it, like a.. year ago i guess. But upon speaking about it with my mom she said it isn't possible because i'm not hyperactive, i'm "lazy" and "i don't care about anything". I was like, okay i guess i'm just dumb, lazy, ect..
But it gotten so hard to live, my depression, anxiety and stuff gotten worse and worse and WORSE.
Until i got fed up, i started reading into it more to have a serious talk with my mom.
She read about it while i was at work, and confessed to me that in childhood a doctor told her that they had a suspicion about me having ADHD. She brushed him off and ignored it.
So i went through school struggling so much. I couldn't make friends, i couldn't pay attention, school work didn't interest me, i always got distracted at making doodles and internet, i only did best in english class and art class because i liked it(english is not my native language), i was quiet and anxious, barely did my homework, i went through my last year of school just.. SLEEPING in my classes, i have no idea how i got through my exams, JUST HOW i got out of school with acceptable results.
i somehow winged it without much practice, because i couldn't focus on it, i just hated it.
teachers were frustrated with me and everyone including myself just thought i was stupid and a lazy loser.
I'm 20 right now, working in retail. (my second job.) At work my colleagues might have some problem and think there is no fixing it now, but i somehow find an unorthodox answer\solution and they are always surprised at that. It's hard sometimes because i get terrible sensory overload, but i just push through until i'm home and i pass out, sleeping too much, for more than 8 hours, barely getting myself to clean my room, our apartment. all i have interest in is art and internet, fandoms and stuff, but even doing that got hard, i just wanted to sleep and sleep and nothing else, having zero energy.
I just got medication recently and i already feel a bit more fresh minded, and just relieved that i finally know what is wrong with me.
I always felt so bad when i forgot important things, messed up because i was asked to buy something without being given exact specifics, but was blamed because it is so OBVIOUS to them, but not to me. But having ADHD explains so much, explains EVERYTHING.
I’m so upset for you! You know yourself better than anyone. It doesn’t have to be physically hyper, especially in women. The internalized thought patterns are as hyper as the physicality of a boy acting out
I'm listening to this while working and literally holding back tears. I was just diagnosed 8 months ago. About 3 years ago, I was in grad school and got my dream job as a project manager in a hospital. Then it was like my brain completely short circuited. I was missing deadlines, couldn't retain any new information, I was missing turns while driving, missing appointments, became ridiculously disorganized. I started failing out of my grad program and felt like a complete failure at work (because I was). I was convinced I had early onset dementia or a brain tumor. Additionally, I started having panic attacks but I thought it was a problem with my heart. I saw 2 neurologists, 2 cardiologists, my pcp who ALL referred me to psychiatry. It took me over 2 years to see a psychiatrist because I was convinced something physical was wrong with me. I ended up seeing a psychiatrist and he diagnosed me with adhd after 6 months of ruling other things out. I'm on meds now and although I don't feel perfect, EVERYTHING has improved. He literally saved my life. When I finally saw him, I was such a mess that I didn't want to live anymore. I thank God for Dr's like him.
I broke my brain, too. This got me emotional, too. I understand.
i completely understand you. Even still, I attribute these things to "laziness". It's not easy.
Same with the first time I found out I have adhd. Cried for a week and meds really helped a lot.
Every time I read these experiences it's like looking in the mirror. We're not alone in this.
@@Orioncopes Was it a liberating cry of finally having an explanation or was it of sadness that you have adhd?
The ADHD for higher intelligence kids portion hit very close to home for me. I have always had ADHD but wasn’t diagnosed until I took myself in. I was always very intelligent and near the top of my class until sophomore year of high school when I hit my wall. I was trying to tell my parents/teachers something was wrong but they didn’t listen. My grades went down a lot and most adults blamed it on drugs and alcohol which I had never touched at that point. Going from the perfect child to a disappointment in a very short time for something I felt I had no control over sent me into a deep depression that I’m still trying to crawl out of years later
In my country even those with normal iq don't get diagnosed and we have over a billion in population, i learnt ADHD exist only when i was 19 years
I was there as well.
Through lists and calendars I was able to make an external hard drive of sorts that let me focus on just the very next thing instead of the entire list at once, knowing my phone would remind me when it is time to do that important thing that I mustn't forget.
It can get better.
(The segment starts at 19:50, for anyone wanting to jump to it directly)
I am the same, until college I was able to expand my ram and even passed the CPA exam but years later, I hit a wall. I could not process any new updates on accounting rules that I need for work. I realized I did not learn as much in college, I just went through it using logic and stuff. Now I've decided to change careers but still stuck to where..
Without any intention to be hostile, but he had kids with an IQ in the ballpark of 140 in mind (130 is roughly a PR of 99%, 140 is 99.5% or higher, obv depending where you live). This isn't being "intelligent", the top 1% of wealthy americans for example have a net worth of 11.1million+ or make about 800k+ a year (as a comparisson to being "well off").
If you pair an exceptional cognitive ability with the disability of being able to channel it or better said sometimes without the ability to control it and you add some extra bs to that it is an actual recepie for disaster.
Just on a sidenote regarding drugs: addiction in ADD/ADHD is extremely common going as far that it can be an important cornerstone for diagnosis. Smoking is extremely overrepresented in that group and the chances of quitting are extremely small (well, nicotine stimulates dopamine release so I guess that's an obv one, but so does cocaine as well...)
21:00 this is so true, now I undestand my scholl grades, it is a literal graph of how the deductive and cognitive reasoning began to fail to me as the tests become more complex, this shit is so real. I literaly remember that in every question I started to think about, I would start to look for the 2 answers with the best probability of being right, like, every question would have like 3 complete bullshit answers and 2 ambiguous answers, and 99% of time is one of these 2 answers who is right, maybe this is why ADHD kids finishes their tests after everyone else, every question has 2 more steps to answer, and reasoning takes a lot of time.
I literaly remember a test that all classes were mix up, I remember being sounrounded with fundamental school kids and 4 or 5 college students in the room with me, and I was the literal last of them to stood up and give my test. For years I was deeply ashamed of this memory, now that I understand it, I don't fell it at all.
22:00 the wall you described was the challenge for me, I actualy entered a very deep depression in this stage of my life, both because of the limit of my "ram" and because of the pandemic, I was so desperate, my grades hit almost zero imediatly, I won't focus because the habient Iwas studying on was so distrctive, my lack of planing made me lost all of the homework deadlines and even some test dates, and I sudenly felt extremely dumb because my reasoning stopped working.
This video actually made me choke up a little lol. I've never heard such an accurate, compassionate description of my life and how my brain works. I only got diagnosed at 21 after struggling with 'something' for my entire life, but being able to stumble my way through due to being naturally quite intelligent. This unfortunately lead to me totally falling apart once that coping mechanism stopped working as I entered adulthood. ADHD is ridiculed and underplayed so much by those who don't suffer from it, so many people genuinely think we're just 'lazy' or that we lack discipline and it's so incredibly upsetting because I know that I have to try 100x harder in my everyday life just to simply FUNCTION at any level, and even still, I'm seen as lazy, and told how 'everyone has these issues'. Thank you for your work Dr. K, you are a wonderful person.
mental health is mostly defined by how well people can function within the system without showing signs of stress
My adhd experience in school was not really punching people in video games, but rather myself. Every exam, I stayed up the night before, punch myself mentally and sometimes physically, trying to binge all the information so it could last until the next day. Every single exam felt like a one-try boss fight “either you die this time, or you don’t” - that’s what I told myself repeatedly, ‘surviving’ my way through gifted class in high school with decent grades.
I’m now 20, hit a wall some months ago, on a break from college and learning more about myself. Thank you for your informative videos and for each person who shared their story here. I don’t feel like a strange alien living on this planet anymore. Have a good day!
16:00 wow. this. this i feel is one of the largest issues i struggle with in my career. i feel like everybody around me can so easily manage multiple projects, quickly swap to handle burning fires, and just pick up everything where they left it. meanwhile, anything that throws me off my path completely destroys most progress that i made. most of the advice i've been given by peers/leaders is to write things down - which does mitigate the effect to a small degree - but writing everything down then leaves me with loads and loads of random notes everywhere that's just overwhelming
I got myself one of those small filofax things that's small enough to keep on me all the time that I can keep a running list in. Kind if like a basic bullet journal method. Really helps to just brain dump everything on paper so that I can see it all at once and keep in one place so I won't get overwhelmed. If it's on my phone it might as well not exist 😅 maybe try out different ways to see what works? Won't fix the whole problem but every little bit helps
I feel that so hard... And then I'll proceed to forget what I wrote or still not know what to prioritize...
Man, I almost teared up reading this cuz I've dealt with this my whole working life (I had enough coping skills to get through school). I was a teacher for 4 yrs and seeing how everyone else could task manage so smoothly made me feel like absolute shit cuz I couldn't keep up. I just started therapy this month and finally was told, "You definitely fit the criteria for ADHD, so no wonder you were struggling".
I have run out of space on my 2 monitors for sticky notes so I have additional ones on my desk and windows desktop and I ask coworkers questions in Microsoft teams so that I can Google the answer in teams later if I feel like I've already asked the question. This is not limited to the adhd experience
@@brittanyarrington3971 That's great that you got a diagnosis! I got diagnosed with inattentive ADHD earlier this year - meds have helped, but I still need to do a lot of work on my side
I'm literally in tears at the RAM metaphor. Just got diagnosed and I went so long withough anyone noticing because I was gifted and my sister had ADHD and I didn't suffer like her. Could never put it into words so thank you!!!!
god having adhd is so difficult, a lot of this hits home so hard esepically the bit about intelligence, ive actually feel shame at how easy i find almost everything and yet never want to do anything. I know i could excel at anything if i was just able to try and work at something but im just too tired and things get boring extremely quickly even still ive managed to excel in some things even though ive never even studied for anything in my life lol even sitting in a quiet classroom made me feel like im was going insane. my issues with work are by far the worst, ive never wanted to work at anything and every job ive had made me incredibly depressed and ive had a bunch of different jobs.
mabe you could do little reframing - even if some things come eazy to you motyvation does not comes to you as eazly as others - at least for now- so be proud of every inch of efort youve put in something even tho it costed you much more than others ... but also i dont recommend suferring in a jobs you hate:/
I have a very similar issue. I was able to hold jobs down because of low self worth related to trauma, and after working that all out, now I can’t hold down a job because they keep making me depressed. And my therapist just seems disappointed in me when I say I quit something again. Like, help me instead??? The hospitality industry is toxic af and I don’t know what to do about work cause that’s all I know. I’ve worked as a graphic designer for a while but I still struggle with that even though I enjoyed it, and I admit I’m scared to put myself and my work out there as I’m afraid I won’t be reliable enough to properly commit.
This.
Fucking this, literally what i always have feel. I was quite literally going insane in school, totally bruteforce it. Now im in college, i've managed not to fail any subjects just by ram power, I don't study for shit (or 1 day before my tests and exams) and I always forget the dates of the tests. I just now have a booking with a psychiatrist (in 2 months) and I hope it will be good.
Try construction work Something like plumbing or electricity. With me it helped me a lot. Everyday on different jobs motivates me idk try it if you don't know what you want. You can make good money 2
Wow, the 'brute force' talk really hits home. This was me exactly when I was a kid. Was undiagnosed until ~30 years old. High IQ compensated all those years.
Definitely hit that wall. That was 3.5 years ago, to this day I am still struggling to get my (working) life in order.
I'm very interested in hearing about your experience, this 'brute force' was something that I have always done. For the whole time that I was studying, I was in this 'brute force' mode where I only felt relieved after I graduated college just a few months ago.
I'm 22yo right now and currently working as a programmer, I would like to know more about the 'wall' that I would probably face someday. Is it a state where you can't feel yourself growing anymore? Or is it something like gaining knowledge becomes significantly harder?
@@cosmicHatdog For me it wasn't really a sudden stop but more like getting stuck in mud. At the age of 16 I started to get more and more tired. By the age of 18 I got (wrongly) diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I eventually got my Bachelors degree, but also got carried by the IQ instead of putting in the work.
For me working on a project for longer than 2 - 3 weeks is very hard. After 1 week I am already looking for a new challenge. Gaining knowledge or learning something new isn't necessarily significantly harder. But working regularly and "normal" hours (40hr/wk) is impossible for me. Having 2 kids doesn't help ;), but for me they take priority over anything work related.
@@cosmicHatdog for me, the wall I hit _was_ college. I did fine in high school with the extra-ram-brute-forcing; a lot of my high school strategy was "forget to do all your homework but ace all the tests/projects", and since I was a big reader outside of school I just kind of osmosed a lot of general knowledge from reading constantly. But when I got to college, suddenly I _didn't_ already know most of what I needed to know to pass my classes, and because I'd coasted all the way through my education up til then, I had _zero_ studying skills developed. I was utterly incapable of handling a full-time course load and kept having to drop down to 3 classes, 1 of which I would inevitably fail or just barely pass because it fell to the bottom of my priority list. I couldn't manage my deadlines, couldn't prioritize my work properly, and worst of all, I couldn't bank on my high school strategies anymore because acing tests wouldn't make up for points lost on homework. It took me 6 years to earn a 2-year degree and I changed my major about 3 separate times before I finally settled on math. (The one thing I was actually interested enough in to feel like doing the homework was a fun challenge instead of a boring chore. It probably helped that math doesn't require reading, you're supposed to get it all out of the lecture since math textbooks just universally suck at explaining things.)
A few years later, after failing miserably to hold a stable job for any appreciable amount of time, I ended up with an ADHD diagnosis and an Adderall prescription, went back to college and managed to complete a 2-semester accounting certificate program _in the allotted 2 semesters,_ and got myself a stable job in accounting. The difference was night and day. I was able to schedule out my course-work, plan around deadlines, focus on my readings, take effective notes, etc etc. It was _wild_ how much easier it was for me this time around. But even then I still had this problem where I'd get about 6 weeks into a semester and my brain would go "Okay, we're done now! Time to move on to something new!" But there were....10 weeks left in the course.... This remains the biggest struggle I have with any kind of formal schooling, my brain just checks out after a few weeks and then I have to drag it through the rest of the semester kicking and screaming.
At work, there's a noticeable difference in how well I can function on meds vs off meds (I've had to work without them for long stretches of time periodically due to insurance nonsense or healthcare red-tape). Without them, it's much harder for me to get work done without getting distracted constantly, my productivity takes a huge hit, and a lot of tasks end up being forgotten or pushed off til "later" (which means I forgot about it and then remembered several days later that it still hadn't been done yet). I also use so much more mental energy to get through the work day that I am just, absolutely friend when I get home and I can't do anything more involved than staring vacantly at the TV until bedtime. I have enough coping strategies now to be relatively functional at work without meds, with a lot of reliance on to-do lists and having a routine, but I can tell that there's absolutely no way pre-diagnosis me would've been able to function effectively at the jobs I've had since then.
So for me, to answer this question about what The Wall is like:
> "Is it a state where you can't feel yourself growing anymore? Or is it something like gaining knowledge becomes significantly harder?"
It's nothing like that at all. Calling it a wall can be a bit misleading actually, because it's more like a breaking point. To use the RAM analogy, it's like you suddenly have so many files dumped on you at the same time that _no_ amount of additional RAM can allow you to keep them all open at once and the system just crashes. Or like, you've been marching along carrying a heavy backpack that kept getting more and more weight added to it but you just kept building up stronger and stronger muscles to handle carrying it, and then suddenly someone asks you to move this anvil and you collapse under the weight of it. Nobody around you can understand why it's so hard for you to move the anvil because _they_ all managed it just fine when it got dumped on them, and that's when you find out that they've all been using a dolly this entire time while you were continuing to carry all the weight on your back.
If you managed to graduate without hitting your wall, then you might never hit it. Most likely you'd hit it if you went back for post-graduate schooling, or you might hit it if you get promoted or end up taking on a heavier workload than you're currently managing. If it happens at work, it'll probably feel like you're constantly overwhelmed, always behind on your work, can't catch up or stay caught-up for longer than a couple days at a time, and you'll start to feel burnt out very quickly.
@@TheGuindo What are your "dollies" so to speak?
@@TheGuindo What you describe is exactly what happened to me in college. 10 years took me to complete a 4-year degree. I was unable of paying attention in class during school and highschool, my mind constantly shifting from one thought to another, but I always got great grades because almost everything was perfectly explained in the books that I could always read later. That way of getting through your studies suddenly doesn't work anymore when you're in college, so I was in trouble.
I'm not diagnosed with ADHD yet but reading things like this makes me think I should really get tested by a professional. Up until now I just thought I had to work harder, but you know, 10 years to get a degree makes me think there's has to be something more
What you said about kids compensating for ADHD because they're smart explains a lot about myself. As a kid I was a straight-A student, but in my late teens, after I found my passion (I've been taughting myself computer programming since I was fourteen), going to class to learn about something that I wasn't interested into was painful. As a yound adult my life totally derailed. I didn't manage to get a degree and couldn't keep a job for more than two months. Until wasn't diagnosed with ADHD (when I was 30yo!) I thought I was irresponsible, lazy, someone who would never amount to anything in life. Being diagnosed changed my life completely. I took the reins of my life, started a family, became a responsible person and a well respected professional.
Were you prescribed anything?
Thanks... Reading this made me kinda happy. I was the same "gifted" till high school and a part of uni and then I was "irresponsible" and lazy, and "had so much potential, only if I tried harder"... Now I'm 26 and just got diagnosed with last month. I hope things work out for me as well.
@@shivam_k09 I bet you will do great!
Вы меня вдохновили своим комментарием. Мне 34 года и я только учусь жить с ADHD.
I had a similar experience. People always told me I was smart but I always felt like I was winging it through school (reality was, I was using the last minute stress to cram as much knowledge as possible before tests). It wasn't till I was 26 did I actually get diagnosed with adhd after about 7 years of different mood disorder diagnosis. Now, 4 years later and with a lot of learning about the condition, I'm able to live a more normal life and not treat myself poorly when I struggle. Not to mention I've went from 3 different medication to 1 so a bit healthier too.
23:16 I may be mixing metaphors here but that whole speech on adding more RAM blew me away. 🔥🔥🔥 It makes me think that coming back to a task and not being able to pick up where you left off efficiently has something to do with that inability to save documents.
It's something I've been noticing and kind of bewildered by. I'll come back to a very concrete visible task - say, cleaning out the fridge - after a short break. And it feels completely different. Overwhelming.
Senses are heightened. And there's a cascade effect of fear and aversion (to stimulus) into like crushing dread and shame and abstractions.
It makes me want to retreat into tasks I know I can manage (or at least face without experiencing this) like writing and other laptop work. Or to make sure it NEVER happens again by implementing a rigid system for housework.
As an adult who's starting to question my attention abilities and seeing patterns appear as I look back on my life, I'm a bit scared of going to get evaluated. Especially on Tiktok, it seems that everyone has ADHD because every single experience they relate is relatable to some degree to everyone, and I don't want to create a fake disorder for me. What if I'm falling into a confirmation bias where the more I consume ADHD content, the more I confirm I can relate, even though it might just be that I'm not making an effort to stay focused on tasks and sorting through my thoughts. I would have to show up to a therapist and make a fool of myself because I fell into a trend on the internet and misinterpreted the ways I function. I'm also scared as an adult woman, my symptoms won't be recognised and I might be sent away even though I need support
Omg I'm going through the exact same thing... I'm self diagnosing so hard 😭 I fear meeting with a psychiatrist and telling him all my miss interpreted behaviors.
Why is all of you saying exactly what I'm thinking and feeling this is getting creepy yall lol
Here’s the thing: adhd struggles are things everyone struggles with once in a while. It’s ok to have these occasional struggles, it doesn’t mean you have ADHD.
However, those who really do have ADHD struggle with these things on a constant and daily basis, to the point it affects their daily life and ability to function “normally”.
Speaking as someone who was diagnosed with both ADHD and ASD only after becoming an adult because I was able to cope and mask so well growing up but once adulthood hit, it became so much more apparent that I was struggling… sometimes seeking a therapist or psychologist to discuss these things or seek an evaluation can be good even just to put your mind at ease.
Your confirmation bias does not necessarily create a false diagnoses. I hear this so much from women - that they think they need to self-diagnose to be sure they know exactly what is "wrong" before seeking treatment so they don't "embarras" themselves. First, you don't have to go to a professional with a potential list of conditions to justify being evaluated. All you have to say is "I'm struggling and I need help" and let them evaluate from there. Go to more than one if you want to be sure. A lot of conditions have overlapping symptoms. Sometimes focus and energy issues can stem from hormonal and nutrition issues and sometimes cognitive conditions. My best advice is to STOP watching TikTok, RUclips, etc to self diagnose (there's so much bad, inaccurate and misleading content on social media).
FUN FACT: it's very common that many people with ADHD have one or two other diagnosed conditions as well, and those conditions can have overlapping symptoms, and not every professional is well trained in identifying and treating ADHD, especially for women. So, stop spinning and finding reasons to be scared of something that hasn't even happened yet, and go talk to a few professionals about struggling in general. You don't need to justify a visit with anything more than that!
Yep, this leads to so much self doubt
Oh man the talk about adhd paralysis was so interesting. I think I can attribute my procrastination in part to this - in school when I was writing papers, I would always do it all in one sitting, from research to outline to writing it. I HATED the idea of breaking it up into chunks and working on it a little bit over the course of a few days or weeks, because I always had this feeling that I'd forget everything between work sessions.
Thankfully I've spent the last couple of years finally learning how to properly break tasks down into chunks. It feels so much better - way less stressful than pulling all-nighters. I turn 31 next week and I'm so glad I've finally learned this skill!
thats awesome, happy birthday!
Can you tell us how you did it please?
Yep. I would not do it, for a long time, but when I finally start, if I have to stop it's probably not getting finished later. And either way it'll be not very good because it's so boring my brain is a mess and I couldn't get myself to go back to it to proofread.
I have NEVER been able to understand how people can break up tasks. And it got worse after my TBI 10 years ago. When I start breaking up tasks, I get distracted with the task of...breaking up tasks. I could have been finished with whatever it was by that time
For those asking how I learned how to break stuff down into chunks: I've been listening to a podcast called the Perfectionism Project for years. The host has a technique she calls "power planning" that has worked super well for me. She's better at explaining it and has tonssss of episodes, so if you're interested, go check out the podcast 😊
I can't believe how spot on the analysis for "gifted" kids with adhd was. This was exactly how my life went. I brute forced it all the way through high school, somehow got my bachelor's degree and I am now completely done with everything life related at the age of 25 (So I now hit my wall, as Dr. K described it).
The funny thing is, I was tested for my IQ when I was 10 by my therapist at that time, who figured I couldn't possibly have ADHD, since my IQ was so high. I am glad that I finally got my real diagnosis this year, but man - life could have been WAAAY easier if my struggles were taken serious back then.
I feel so called out by that part. I made it through nursing school, but working night shift in a quiet environment with low stimulation, and I started losing my mind. I wasn't diagnosed yet, so I didn't know to ask for accommodation and my attempts to adapt got me in trouble. 😵💫
I am also bruteforcing now but have a lot of these symptoms without being diagnosed yet
Should I get a real diagnosis? Am not sure what the benefits of it are?
I mean, I never studied once in highschool and had to drop out of college because I couldn't do assignments. I'm not sure people who brute force through school and get degrees are on my level of disorder. Maybe I have something else 🥲
@@kech267 the main benefits I see to getting diagnosed are 1) getting treatment/medication and 2) being allowed accommodations at work/school. Had I gotten diagnosed before I got fired from my last job, I could have either gotten some accommodations or sued them for discrimination. And much to my surprise, medication turned the volume of the noise in my head way down.
23:46 you made a really good point here, I’m not sure if it’s the adhd or not but alot of the time when I zone out there’s just no thought like at all just blank
Honestly the white noise like that rumbling actually drives me nuts with my adhd. Something more subtle like a fan going actually can help though, especially when falling asleep.
Same, that noise actually just gave me a headache. The sound was to long on the same frequnce for my likeing and I hated every second of it. It did gaveme relief, after it was done and it was quite.
Cars going by, lawnmowers, other loud distracting things. It's almost like there is always something being loud nearby.
@@dampintellect which can kill any productive moment I've had. It's just the worse 😕
@@jackbordar2727 oh same. I kept skipping ahead until i saw the time signature lol
Im wondering if that is because of the wind too?
The ADHD Paralysis happens to me a lot. Yesterday I had a dentist appointment at 4pm, before it, from 10 pm till 14:30 I did nothing except "relax to prepare myself mentally to start getting ready to go to the dentist" and it happens a lot, after the dentist, picked up some packages on my way back, so when I got home I pushed for the next day the rest of the tasks I needed and wanted to do because I did enough for the day XD and needed to recover.
Story of my life
This is exactly what happens to me everytime I have appointment or plans ro do something
When he was talking about the whole sequencing thing, my brain exploded. I had NO idea that people could do that automatically! I have to schedule EVERYTHING and always underestimate how long something will take to do and how much I can get done in a day
I'm very sure that I have ADHD based on consistently experiencing every symptom I have heard of both inattentive and hyperactive ADHD. The problem is that I've been able to brute force my way all the way to the 5th year of a masters degree in computer science. I'm trying to get a diagnosis but it's hard to convince them that I've gotten this far "just fine" with ADHD. I guess writing the last 20 pages of a 25 page report in 3 days is apparently "Just fine".
if you can- go to a psychology/psychiatry place that specializes in adhd with specific examples. I legit was also brute forcing my way through life till i went somewhere like that, and got diagnosed
Wait until you no longer have the forced structure... I did great in college because I had short classes that I was able to hyperfocus on, now I do not have the structure and for years it just keeps getting worse. I've been trying to get in to a doctor to get a diagnosis and some help finding my structure again
Ok so, I found university MUCH easier than school. Weird right? No, because the environment happened to be optimal for me to hyperfocus. The environment at school left me disassociating all the time. It had nothing to do with the difficulty level of what I was doing. I got low-mid grades at school, and near top marks at uni. It wasn't easy, but easier. I still had to work my ass off. The point is that environment makes a huge different to functioning, and just because they perceive it as 'just fine' now, doesn't mean it will be that way in a workplace environment.
@LaurArt_UK lol complete opposite for me - multi-step chem material specifically killed me. i kept completely blanking on what i was doing legit in the middle of writing steps, prompting re-starting from scratch ever 5 min.
@@ADHD-Dogs-Art-And-More The freaking lack of structure... I did great in school. Started to struggle in uni since it became more dependent on me figuring out my schedules, but it was still manageable like, half the time. Now I'm trying to do PhD studies and *everything* is in my hands now, no one is giving me any kind of structure to lean on, and I am *plummeting* I hate this ;__;
This is literally the best video on ADHD I have seen yet! I am 31, a mom of 3 and was just diagnosed last week. I was for sure one of those kids that compensated, masked, and muscled through my deficits with IQ and cognitive function. I had suspected I had adhd for years but I didn’t hit a wall until I had my third baby and was no longer able to “download more RAM” and couldn’t consistently meet my children’s needs anymore, let alone my own needs. This led to a spiraling of postpartum depression. I’m in therapy now and looking into “gearing up” with external systems to help me function better!
21:06 was... an epiphany. Immediately understanding and solving the problem in front of me based mostly on intuition is how I've managed most of, well, life.
I found that I need noise a lot or else I lose focus and zone out. The Animators Survival Guide book states that playing music makes you less efficient at animating however for me it's the opposite, usually when I animate. I create a playlist or just listen to one song on repeat over and over again that aligns with the mood of the animation and often gets me hyped and focused while also allowing me to better grasp the feel of the scene the whole time I'm animating.
100% I currently have been listening to the Hamilton soundtrack often at work when I need to focus on one task for a bit.
I really like songs with a lot of electric guitar, but listening to songs I know too well like classic rock or lyrics in general often distract me from boring tasks, or the actual melody is basic and boring. I ended up finding Instrumental Progressive Metal which generally has no lyrics, and a high tempo, high energy composition that helps me really get into the work mindset. I'll bounce between that and lo-fi depending on my energy levels but might be worth trying instrumental genre's if after a while your current one stops working
I use music to keep myself stimulated enough to work properly or do my chores, and the type of music depends on my mood. Sometimes it's too much with everything going on, but it's so helpful!!
I'm the worst at conversations. I either try to be relatable by over sharing and then I'm seen as insensitive by not just listening. or i have a really hard time waiting for them to get it all out so I'm already preplanning what I am going to say. I've also been known to walk off mid conversations (gets distracted) and come back to it half hour later like I never left. My brain doesn't realize there has been a gap in time.
I tune out after a few seconds, then have to scramble to figure out what they were just talking about. This is seconds after asking them a question that I need an answer to, too.
😂😂 that sounds like me 🤯🤯
That’s me, too! I didn’t even realize I was walking off mid conversation until someone confronted me about how rude I was. Luckily, a dear friend explained to them that I’m just like that and I wasn’t trying to be an asshole. I have no idea how many other times I did that 😅
This video is nothing but incredible
Ive just recently got my ADHD disgnosis at age 25 and slowly everything is clearing up for me.
I can finally understand how i got through school, i just brute forced my way.
I can finally tell why i cant concentrate when i sometimes really need to but then sit at my desk for 8 hours playing some random game or building legos.
When you mentioned the lack of sleep during the hyperfocus part, you perfectly described how it went for me:
Somewhat brute forced my way through everything with 2-4 hours of sleep for many years and then crashed down into a depressive episode that eventually developed a full depression cuz of other circumstances and some horrible people around me.
The moment i had access to the correct meds it was like a switch in my brain was flipped and now i can just clearly see all of it.
Thank you so much for what you do
Another note on ADHD Paralysis: Social distancing was a blessing for me.
Contact-free deliveries mean I don't have to be there when the package or food arrives. They'll put it on the floor, and then I get a ping on my phone or email, and I can go and take it in.
This means I don't have to schedule a task in my brain to be there when it arrives and can go about my other tasks as they come.
My university had a study area on the first floor of one of their libraries where it wasn't totally silent and people talked to eachother and worked on projects and talked on their phones or whatever. I really liked studying in this area, there was a good amount of auditory stimulation but it wasn't very distracting because there were so many conversations going on at once that it sort of blended together into noise.
Same!
Yesss I felt that way in my classes, too; hanging around a bustling room to tune out while working has always been really nice for me. xD!
Other times I use music to get this effect; loud or repetitive music to just help me tune out and start floating, focusing on whatever I wanted to do.
We had multiple on-campus cafés that I used to love going to to do homework/study. Not only was the auditory stimulation just perfect but also everyone _else_ was studying, so it gave me that external social pressure for me to study too.
@@taylorbritt499 Body doubling I think is what that phenomenon is called - when you have someone else with you also doing a thing helps you stay on task, too? I think? idk if they had to be doing the same thing, or just have someone there in general.
You were so spot on talking about gifted kids with ADHD. Lived my life this way, and still do to an extent. I've somehow managed to always stay ahead of the curve but it's definitely not something I can keep sustaining.
The amount of knowledge I have is pretty staggering due to hyper focusing my way into at least a solid grasp of any subject put in front of me.
The two big issues for me are as follows. My hunger for knowledge has come to the point in so many subjects that in order to keep furthering my skills/knowledge in them I need to devote insane amounts of time into researching and putting things into practice.
This is doable when you have one or two main focuses in life. Not so feasible with dozens of subjects and hundreds of books/articles I've already cataloged for the future.
The main hangup for me however is I'm literally starting to hit a sort of mental storage limit. I've always been blessed with a near photographic memory. I can read something once and recall it nearly exactly and if I'm fuzzy on the details I have always been able to rely on knowing where I found the info, in many cases down to the page number of a book.
Now it's getting to the point where things get jumbled or I can't recall the "small" details that are vitally important without going back over the info multiple times.
Whoah. Yours is a perspective I haven't encountered before in relation to ADHD, and I strongly relate.
I wouldn't say I have a true photographic memory (no page numbers, etc) but I have enjoyed the ability to absorb and recreate processes almost perfectly my first attempt, like watching somebody build a bicycle in a RUclips video then I can just do it too.
I also have an insatiable appetite for learning interesting things about my hobbies (there are several), alsi somewhat related topics that might be useful, and general life things like deep diving into vitamin or exercise research, and I have probably written 1000 pages of notes with linked sources in OneNote. Recently, I keep having to revisit sections of notes, however, reread them and come to the same conclusions I already did years ago. Even more eerie is reading an article, thinking "this is great I should jot down some quick notes and save the link" only to find it's already in the relevant section of my notes.
It's almost like I filled my hard drive and it keeps having to erase things to free up space and re-write them when I rediscover the info later.
I feel like this is a pretty common gifted ADHD thing. I've always been intuitive and extremely good at grasping complex topics in-depth and on a granular level, but when you're constantly seeking some new, stimulating thing to be *really* into, you end up learning and learning until the point where you can't just be passively driven deeper by your own brain chemistry and have to exercise real willpower to get deeper..... but at that point it's not giving you the same stimulation you picked it up for in the first place, so you find some new thing... but you can only know so much before you start to forget other things, and so you repeatedly fill your brain just to have gaps.
Hyperfocus on a special interest only lasts until you run out of interest, unfortunately, and while you can learn new things, you'll end up forgetting some stuff too. It's nice that interest comes back once you've put something down for a bit, but you will have to relearn some stuff.
@@LifeInJambles It feels like a trap sometimes to me, endlessly seeking knowledge even about highly engaging / interesting topics, but it often manifests as spending more time "researching" or "preparing" for some hobby or activity than actually doing the thing. I convinced myself in the past that this was giving me some leg up for when I actually started doing the thing, and in a few areas it was perhaps a small boost up front, but in hindsight it looks a heck of a lot like spending hundreds of hours at a computer typing notes and very little time implementing those ideas into tangible actions. It's honestly kinda heartbreaking, like I've been a hamster on a wheel for years but didn't realize I wasn't getting anywhere in reality.
@@Govanification as someone with a fully-designed 4-link cantilever suspension sitting in plans on my computer as the first step of a drift truck build that will theoretically replace or at least reinforce almost every bit of my truck, but very little work actually done on that truck, I feel personally attacked by this insight.
Let's not get into all I know about photography, which I convinced myself I would pursue as an occupation, but which I spent all that time learning about only to get bored once I knew a bunch about it..
The portion about Adhd in the classroom impacted me so much... I was always able to pass classes and answer questions when I was called on. But i couldn't focus on class. I have horrible attention deficit... And I always told myself I'd do better if i just tried... The issue was I tried... Very Hard! But I could not maintain attention in class.
Now I was diagnosed with A.D.H.D extremely early on in my life. But my parents didn't believe in it, telling me I'm not trying hard enough or i just need to behave.
After growing up, being an adult and looking back the insight from Dr. K, everything makes so much sense. And I wish I was able to understand my situation back then so I could find habits that would allow me to compensate for my deficits...
"Most people will grow out of ADHD" my ass.
A doctor in the psych ward made that exact same statement before stripping me of my diagnosis, for something that I still experience to this day.
he said the opposite of "most people"
@@eetein9704 Yes, but it's also misinformation that is, in my case. Believed by the Doctor in question. Not the content creator themselves. If they held this view, I would be understandably upset with *him* though.
@@trixxyvkitsune4347 even if they did say “most people” that doesn’t mean “all people” and you could be one of those that it doesn’t apply to.
I never grew out of it, it’s just easier to deal with.
I have ADHD and hyperfocus isn't quite like that for me. For me it's an issue of someone can come up to me and try talking to me and I'll completely ignore the fact that they are there, or give a subtle acknowledgement that they are there and talking to me and so they begin talking... but I really have them completely tuned out and am entirely focused on whatever it is i'm doing. Which means they can have a quick conversation with me (obviously they would realize what is going on if it's anything more than a quick conversation) while i'm locked in and I won't remember a single thing. It's as if they aren't there. A bit like when you drive home from work and can't remember anything that happened during the drive. This sounds great... a super power to tune people out and get things done... and it is great when you are working on a task and don't have anyone approach you during the task. But it poses issues when someone asks you to do something or asks a quick question and thinks you have answered when in reality you were in some sort of ADHD autopilot. So whatever they asked you either doesn't get done or whatever simple answer you give to a question may not be accurate. That is what hyperfocus is like for me with my ADHD.
oh damn this is something but i am not quiwt sure what it is
Same thing with me
That's called being rude.
@@okieoiogh8235 Captain obvious over here with a hot take. Of course it can be rude. But that doesn't mean it's intentional. It's why I take steps to not let my ADHD interfere in these types of interactions.
@@CarlHancock I feel like prioritizing communication when someone is directly in your face is more of an upbringing thing and not ADHD.
ADHD causes me to jump from task to task because I can never trust myself enough to remember to do a task later. Because of that, I have to try to address everything immediately, and in the process of doing so, I find myself addressing each and every new thing I see and forgetting the initial task that led me here.
your first point about having enough stimulus in your environment was interesting because i am the type of adhd that needs to constantly have something to listen to in the background.. so whether i’m working or cleaning the house or taking a shower or brushing my teeth i have this unquenchable desire to have SOMETHING to listen to in the background
watching the second one i’m honestly surprised how CLEAN and TIDY and ORGANIZED her flat seems.. but yes it is similar to how my mind works:. but we tend to have this out of sight out of mind issue and end up leaving a lot of items out so we can see them which ends up looking messy and cluttered.. honestly with her level of cleanliness and tidiness i would say she’s winning lol
i have to say adhd paralysis and time blindness are the MAIN symptoms i relate to..
This section on ADHD Paralysis has done a better job explaining to me exactly what I am going through and the process to fix it than everything else I have tried or seen. Thank you so much for this video.
This actually made me tear up because I finally after 37 years (diagnosed in 3rd grade) feel like someone finally actually understands me, like actually really understands what I go thru inside my head. This guy explains this so well, I've spent the last 25+ years trying to explain what this guy did in 45 minutes. I want to hug this guy for a good 5 minutes and I hate people touching me or near me or me them.
Bullshit, learn to concentrate and stop looking for excuses
My child is also ADHD. In the middle of his 5th grade semester he was diagnosed. A few weeks later his teacher called me and said she has never been a believer in ADHD/ medicating ADHD. But that after she had watched his complete transformation she is an advocate.
I'm still working on this, so it's improving over time: It really helps to practise discipline every day. Sometimes I get super into my uni work and I have to collect my kid, and it's annoying because I'm in a flow state type thing, and I know I probably won't be like that tomorrow. It's important to remind myself sometimes I need to stop, even though it feels like pain in the soul. Other days the work is boring or topics keep changing and I have a constant urge to do something else for a little while, or go into 'philosophical daydreaming' mode. It helps to say to myself 'no'. Then close my eyes, take a few deep breaths and push on, whether it helps focus or not. Again it's no overnight thing, but like meditation you have to practising sucking at it and you start to get improvement over the months, the years.
Another thing is, useful as to-do lists and schedules are, you're probably not going to keep checking them throughout the day, so use an Alexa device or better yet, a smart watch that vibrates and tells you what to do and when. The downfall is if you fall behind or other problems that need addressing pop up, you feel a ton of pressure and it's hard to re-prioritise as you go along. I hope to find an app where it's easy to change the schedule around for that day only quickly and easily. Otherwise things kinda fall apart and I'm all over the place, getting grouchy. Any time I notice I've got distracted again or spend too long on something I have to aloud say 'no'. Take some deep breaths and go back to the to-do list. It also takes time to realise what you can do in a day, I have a habit of putting 4 days worth of stuff in a day's to-do's.
Another great tip is buy a pocket sized annual diary. Any time you hear about an appointment time, meet-up with friends etc, write it in there immediately! Tell them to shut up while you jot it down, and set a reminder immediately! Otherwise, you'll probably not turn up.
I've only just discovered brown noise and it's great when meditation just isn't up for the task in that moment. It's like a buzzing that massages the brain. Wim Hof breathing works well too, but it rarely appeals in the moment. People have started complimenting me on how organised I am, but it's because I have to be. Take away my schedule, annual diary, reminders or to-do list and I'm neglecting everything because I accidently picked up a guitar, or googled an answer to a random question that popped in my head. Now realising I've been typing a while and it's way past bedtime. Like I said, it's a semi-working progress...
bro you've no idea how helpful this video has been. I'm 20 years old and have been considering getting an ADHD diagnosis but have been very aprehensive. The whole thing about ADHD paralysis resonates with me so much and I thought it was something everyone did. I feel very heard. I think I will get a psychiatric apointment soon. If I don't beat around the bush that is hahaha
The getting diagnosed thing is a problem I've had for years. "yea I'll totally go next week". many months later and still havent gone. Its like one of those things you always remember for like 2min and then forget until next week. But this time, in like maybe 2weeks Ill go for sure
I am also waiting on an appointment, i never wanted to get that ADHD stamp before, but honestly medication is worth it and i quite like my fellow ADHDers, I like our minds
It's update time, I finally have a diagnosis and I have ADHD!!!
The ADHD paralysis section: I've never felt so seen in my entire life. I actually almost want to cry. I was a super high IQ kid who wasn't diagnosed until 31 (due to being a woman, uneducated parents, and now realizing my high IQ helping me mask more efficiently). I definitely hit that wall around when I started college and could never understand why I struggled SO HARD despite being as smart as I am. Since learning about my ADHD, it's like taking off really dark sunglasses you had no idea you had on all your life. Everything suddenly is clear and makes SO much sense. It's really sad that I went so long and struggled as hard as I did simply because we don't have any proper education about spotting those of us that mask so well.
Exactly! I got to college and flunked most of my classes because I could not write essays for the life of me. I got so anxious whenever I tried to sit down and write one that I would end up crying. But I excelled in classes that weren't essay based (like, thankfully, my psychology courses).
Just by the way, I've watched hundreds if not thousands of hours of videos on ADHD and Asperger's. This was by far and away the most useful and informative video I've ever watched! Please keep up the good work! And thank you!
Task paralysis is actually how I did so well in college. I was extremely dysfunctional in elementary and middle school, then progressively got better when I moved into high school, then in college I excelled. It’s because I now had almost no homework and only exams, so my brain would get stuck on an upcoming exam and I would literally do nothing but study for that exam until I took it and then I would move on to the next exam. My college had little homework and lots of tests (like 20+ per semester), so I did really well. Now I’m in the real world and struggling a lot again.
I’d say I was very similar. Especially with the tests, but even with the assignments in uni. I could hyper focus on each one and then move on the the next.
But I can’t function in the “real” world haha 😂
I got stuck with tutoring job, because it's the very system that I got used to: focusing on the exam 🤦
So true - Never realized that
The High IQ in children hit me hard. It for me showed by never learning, thus not learning how to learn. I hard crashed when i reached 11th grade, didnt manage to keep up with classes (as learning on your own became required) Due to not Understanding classes i dreaded em, started dropping school, ruined my Last degrees, fell into a pit for 8 years, no motivation, didnt do anything outside of Video games and alike, slowly managed to crawl out of thanks to friends and a psychiatrist and now for the first time managed to want, find and hold a job and am aiming to get further Education now that i manage to do BASIC neseccities to go further.
omg :O same here, but still strugle to go to a psychiatris :x so still stuck at just functioning, bu not living
I managed to get through two bachelor's degrees without really studying, no idea how but I started to hit the wall on my second degree.
It was also 11th grade for me (or the Dutch equivalent). Luckily for me, repeating a year isn’t as looked down upon here (since we have a levels system in high school), so I just repeated the year, barely made it to my last year, and aced my exams and graduated with pretty good grades without really studying lol. I started treating classes as though they were optional my last year yet apparently that worked better for me🤷♀️
I got distracted so much as a child without technology, back in my days. I would just doodle, or stare and daydream, browse through the material I have to learn, I could spend hours being distracted. Now I have the internet, and at work I'm listening to podcasts, audiobooks, or just focus on some imperfection and be entertained by it for half an hour. I think having internet/ access to distraction is more educative for me.
Technology has been great for my adhd, if I need to get anything done like you I play podcasts etc. And have it as my background stim while I work.
Doodling during class helped alot with paying attention sometimes. As weird as that sounds.
The Samsung Note series was the best tool I got to merge that. Doodle and work on the same device, erase the doodles when they get in the way.
Great video. I wish I had listened to it, but I was too busy cleaning dishes, cooking dinner, learning new piano piece, cleaning my home and sketching a painting... replay it is then
Tip I learned during my pregnancy. If I am working on a project that requires long hours of focus I write on 2 sticky notes what I am supposed to be doing. 1 with the higher level list for the day, and the other a break down of the one I'm working on for the next hour. I even set a timer for 2minutes for writing down what I'm working on for the next hour. Then as I complete each granular task I mark it off. That way if I get distracted I know pretty close to where I left off.
These lists literally start with "Get Glasses, Get a cup of Water, Get a cup of coffee, Go Pee, Open X File, Read Paragraph 1, Make Y changes" Those two minutes changed my life.
Once I get to "Make Y changes" I spend another 2minutes writing down a break down of that and doing that. I do this on a regular sized post-it so it is self limiting.
Thanks for the tip. I’ll try to remember I can do that next time I try to get something done😅
15:25 - What I hear is "I will forget this other task at 3pm if I do anything else in the meantime, so I built a coping mechanism where I fixate on that 3pm task and prevent myself from forgetting it." So I've started changing my coping mechanism to set alarms that read the alarm name out loud and the name of the alarm tells me what I was supposed to remember (or just a regular alarm and I sometimes forget what the alarm was for). Lists don't help me when I forget about the list.
I was diagnosed with ADHD at age 25, and it was a life changing thing for me. No one ever saw ADHD tendencies in me growing up, and I definitely see it now (your "smart kid with ADHD" explanation mid-video makes sense for me). Once my husband learned all about having an ADHD spouse and looked at the things I do day-to-day, he one day said out loud, "I see why you like Vine/TikTok videos so much. The length of the videos and the content (I watch funny ones) are perfect for people like you". He was way too on the nose. Vine compilations stimulate my brain in a way not much else does. I appreciate this video so much, it's helping me understand things about my brain that other books and videos don't
Also diagnosed with adhd at 25 and damn life makes sense now! Gifted child with adhd tendencies that got overlooked because my grades were good (until they weren’t). After I got my diagnosis my dad said "that actually makes sense" 😂
25 now, talked with a colleague that has ADHD diagnosed and I was like "well - this is definitely me as well". Trying to find a therapist right now and I feel like there's definitely more going on with me than just (possibly) ADHD. But yeah.. reading about it, seeing TikToks etc., always thinking "I'm pretty sure that's what I got as well" is kind of.. relieving for me - just seeing a clear tendency when before I always was like.. Depression? Anxiety? something more rare? I don't f*ing know.
@@marshadirocca2550 Yes! My previous provider, who I sought the diagnosis with and eventually got it, told me that I was an honor student as a kid/teen and therefore she didn't feel she could diagnose me with it. Masking is a thing, even if you don't know you have ADHD or autism. Also, school was my getaway from my home life so I poured all my efforts into it. My family also kinda gets it with my ADHD too, and I know for a fact my dad has it, but he hasn't sought a diagnosis or treatment and he's doing fine anyway. Glad you got your diagnosis!
@@D4mnis There often can be more than ADHD going on. I have other disorders on top of it and it makes things harder. But I hope you can seek the answers you need! The internet has been a huge beacon of comfort and also information with this stuff, and I'm glad it's led to people feeling less alone and also understanding themselves better. I'm still on a journey of understanding my brain 5 years post-diagnosis and I get it so much more now
36:07 me currently on my 5th hour of playing minecraft, forgetting to eat, drink or go to the bathroom: "wait... is this f*cking play about us?"
Been diagnosed with adhd my whole life, never really did any reading into it before so finding more about it at 21 is pretty interesting, when you noted that TikTok and other social media platforms put all sorts of stimuli right in your face I realized I was watching this video in windowed mode so I can look around at other things 😮💨😂
Me reading your comment while watching this
I cannot watch a whole video without reading a few comments…even when i know its distracting me, i still do it😂
Man that thing with relief instead of accomplishment really hit home with me, i have ADD and when i heard you talk about this i started to look back and from what i can remember, i am not sure i have actually felt accomplishment or at least not from what i remember, but i can recount countless times when ive finished something and felt relief.
man that really helped me put some thing into perspective
Wow the description of “RAM” In kids with ADHD was totally my experience. Could not focus or pay attention to save my life but I was really smart so I skated by got iq tested and placed into gifted programs and accelerated learning classes and could not keep up to save my life. Never was able to get anything done or turned in on time but tested out of everything and now I’m an adult ADHD burn out 💁🏻♀️
I don’t remember the last time I just sat down and watched a 40 minute video like this and actually resonated with it, everything is so true I’m just speechless.
the RAM analogy really hit home for me…I was just diagnosed with ADD (predominantly inattentive) yesterday. For most of my life, I’ve been engaging in this perpetual, exhausting game of catch-up. The only reason I wouldn’t fall miles behind was because I would keep using my intellect to close the distance at the very last minute (almost like a speed booster of sorts).
And you might ask “well what’s the problem if you’re ultimately able to deliver?” The problem is that using that speed booster tears you apart and conceals the fact that 99% of the time, you’re not running properly. I have spent the vast majority of my life in a state of panic, exhaustion, and distress, but because I was able to produce results, nobody considered that I could be dealing with a disability. Instead, people just assumed I had a poor work ethic, poor time management skills, or just didn’t care. And eventually, since this was the only narrative I’d ever heard, I internalized it and started believing it was true. I have spent my whole life fully convinced that my inability to function “normally” was a moral failing.
Eventually, I started my first semester at an Ivy League institution and my terrain became rougher than ever before. Too rough. Due to the rigor of my environment, my speed booster was no longer effective. I broke down and fell flat on my face, which is what finally led to my diagnosis.
I’m 18 years old and feel such an immense sense of grief. Due to being undiagnosed, I grappled with severe depression and anxiety throughout my adolescence. Still, 18 is young in the grand scheme of things. I can only imagine the grief that people diagnosed in late adulthood must feel…
Thank you for this comment!! You don't know how much it reasonates with my current experience
I feel you so much man! Im 17 and about to graduate.Throughout my time is school, guilt played a huge part in my day to day life. I felt like a loser cause I couldnt get my self to do anything school related as soon as I was home and the only reason Im still good in school is because of my intellect. Its awful being good, but never being able to reach your full potential cause youre "lazy". I wouldnt be me without ADHD, but it takes a heavy toll on me sometimes
Heyo, just described what I went through 9 years ago, well done figuring this out sooner rather than later (perceptive, right?).
Two cents, glad you count your blessings as you didn't go through your 20's figuring this out in your 30's (or even later). It's hard to say ADHD when you're not 'bouncing off the walls' like you typically hear people describe it. So it is tough, in my opinion, to find help and be diagnosed early on with ADD. To be honest, the silver lining in being diagnosed after my teen years would be knowing the difference between my emotions vs emotions on medication (sometimes made me feel a little isolated). Over all, much happier because I feel more like myself and a sense that I have a fighting chance with new tools. Personally, meds are not magic drugs that make you do your work for you or make you want to study harder, they only HELP you focus on what you want to focus on. I could just as easily focus on games or RUclips comments rather than studying (case in point).
I am in my fourth year of getting my phD, dyslexia included, so what I want to say is - fight on, really glad you posted this for others to read!
This was me too. I managed somehow to finish university but I had so many moments like with my final project wherever was staying up all night to get it done after having had paralysis for weeks. I’m in my early 30s and starting to think marine I have adhd because I’m noticing more of the difficulties I’m dealing with and why it’s probably happening. I figured since I got a degree and did “fine” that I was just lazy with no work ethic.
something fun to known is that add doesnt actually exist its just adhd. ADD was used before for people like myself who have adhd but arent hyperactive but later studies shows that people with adhd have diffrent periods where they experience diffrent types of adhd. Or i might just be that u were tired or something like it while getting diagnosed but the basic stay. Just a fun thought because i was also diagnosed with add and I just recently found it the term doesnt exist anymore
i remember dr K saying once "ADHD is the most overdiagnosed and the most underdiagnosed disorder" which is the truest shit ever said