The Forums › Forums › What is it? › The Neurology › If ADHD describes the symptoms, are we all suffering from the same thing? › Re: If ADHD describes the symptoms, are we all suffering from the same thing?
Anonymous
Pretty interesting lecture and I took a few important things away from it. and I got through the whole thing!! while organizing papers, but I still feel like I got the main points.
most interesting to me:
how those with ADHD use emotional parts of our brains to compensate for the lack of executive function.
(I see myself in this as I have a lot of trouble doing things in which I am unmotivated ie. cleaning, organizing, cooking, other daily activities. I had a lot of trouble with being unable to tolerate menial repetitive work. I survive my current work because it fires me up on a daily basis. I have never understood how people could tolerate working 10+ years doing retail jobs. Maybe now I get it. I survived school because I have always been very passionate about doing well in school. When I was a child, it was my source of self-esteem. As an adult, it was my life direction when everything else in my life was a chaotic mess. Passion is the common thread.
how many of those with ADHD have trouble with arousal. I cannot drive longer than one hour without needing to stop and take a nap and I am not a sleepy type of person. I get what I call “narco-driver”. I head bob and pull over because it freaks me out. I try so hard to focus on the road and understand its importance, but my brain fails me. I need to caffeinate myself to twitches to make a two hour highway drive. With the meds, I could do it pretty seamlessly. I also had trouble staying awake while shadowing other professionals to learn from them. If I were not directly involved, keeping myself awake was hell. I don’t remember falling asleep like this in school, but it may have been due to pretty intense anxiety problems and the constant school interruptions. Also taking notes saves me from mental coma. I fall asleep reading textbooks. I didn’t do this as a kid, but perhaps because we never needed to read 100 pages of textbook at a time like in college.
I have always hated the “just do it” slogan. well.. I don’t need a slogan if it is something I care about or want to do..i just did it. however…… i want to throw a brick at people who tell me to just clean my house.
hmm trying to sum up other things. I find it really helpful when I contemplate after watching something educational “what did I learn today?”
trouble with rigid boundaries and rule-following. I am usually a people pleaser, but have little tolerance for bureaucracy or stupid rules. I know no one likes that stuff, but I get myself in trouble..ie written up for that type of lack of tolerance. I find that my brain explodes and it is too painful just to roll with. However, I get extremely overwhelmed and just feel free floating and lost if there are no clear expectations of what I am supposed to do. In addition, I will procrastinate to the point of not doing something without a set deadline.
on the other topic, I agree with you about the great variation of executive dysfunction. We all definitely do not have the same illness. We have the same experience dealing with deficits, but different ones. Some people on here talk about superior ability to multitask and finish work rapidly. or to work in fast-paced adrenaline fueled situations. Not me at all. I am the opposite. I am slow like a slug, I get lost in thought, I linger on tasks, I lose track of time, I have a lot of cognitive noise in which I have trouble making decisions, I get seriously overwhelmed in crisis situations. My mind just goes a million places at once and I feel paralyzed to do anything at all. I somehow found myself in a fast paced, decision now, chaotic environment of occasional crisis because the type of work is my passion. huge conflict between passion and attention deficits sent me to seek help.. so here I am! I’m sure that there is some interesting variations of brain chemistry and mechanism between me and the others I mentioned.
good topic! thank you!
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