[daycruncher]

If you are unable to study at night, and experience a comedown at that time, I would definitely talk to your prescribing doctor about it.  I would probably just say that I have difficulty studying, and it’s a come-down effect and when it hits.  If you are taking the medication dose accurately and on time, as they recommended, then they may prescribe something to be able to cover a little more time in the evening for you for the study.  Just a guess!  I have heard of people taking the extended release type of pill in the morning, and a ritilin at some afternoon hour when they know they typically crash.  This is to help people be able to function in the afternoons better although I think early evening too.

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[daycruncher]

lol I just remembered something else that I have been thinking about in the context of motivation and the need for ADHDers to rest their minds through either meditation or some mindfulness practice, or just chilling out in a quiet and comfortable spot:

I think if you do this, you will find that your mind starts to work better while laying down or resting.  We tend to be global thinkers, as most of our brain activity that flows (the circuits of the mind that do function well) is in the higher brain and the side of the brain, as well as the deep brain I suppose (I don’t know that).    So what will happen to me, is that if I was faithful to keep my work/project in mind, then I will experience “insights” that are very intrinsically rewarding about my current project.

I often experience the frustration that i will forget what I had the “insight” or motivating new idea about.  So I need to get a small tape recorder or something for my bedside.  I do have a journal and pen though, and I have written down a lot of really encouraging new ideas there.

I think that if you keep yourself somewhat more connected to whatever it is you are doing, and if you keep looking for daily “magic moments” such as feelings of AHA about yourself and your life, or just ideas that run through your head, whether practical or not.  Then you can keep at least a sense of a journey and that your experiences are relevant to your progress, even though they may not seem practical at the time.

I’m  not sure if this makes sense to you though!  It totally works in my case just because what I really want to work on is more intellectual based.

 

A forgotten issue: TIME:

Now, for the get up and go thing, pertaining to reluctance to clean up or whatever, you may benefit also from knowing that time is not really real to us.  Deadlines lack reality, and we often don’t even look at the time or manage how much time we spend on the tasks.  Then I know how it goes: You majorly burn out and don’t want to even do those tasks because you know from experience you will enter into a sort of private hell, where you feel trapped doing things for too long.  A lot of people will introduce timers or alarms and also keep calendars and clocks around like crazy.  I hate wearing a wrist watch because my skin is too sensitive for the strap so I will find something else like a pin-style watch.

The idea is that you should work in bursts and not try to spend more than the comfortable amount of time, for YOU, to do that chore.  And you need reminders to go off, to get you back to doing your next session of work.  For me, in 1 hour of time, I should probably work not longer than 20 minutes at a time, following by a 20 minute break, so that means working about 40 minutes per hour!  I’d work 20, then take 20 break, then work 20 and either break for an hour or work another hour like that.  But at some point, I would quit for the day as that would be a LOT for me right now.

When a person gets medicated, they need to plan ahead to work during the day hours for their particular drugs efficacy time.  I understand that some meds wear off quicker, and you re-dose.  Or you would just plan to take 1 extended release, but chill out after 8 pm.  I would not even take medication unless I had a plan in place to work on some basic simple schedule during that time, otherwise it would turn into medicated gaming sessions for me!

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[daycruncher]

Oh by the way, I kind of disagree with the psychologist you mentioned, who said that motivation would come naturally from the medication.  I think it’s possible to feel better in general, and then maybe you enjoy the processes even if they are boring.  But i think that the cognitive deficits are never going away, no matter how much medication you take.  And the experience of remembering what to do, when to do it, and why are all governed by the frontal lobes and the executive processing. Even your sense of self, as a stable self-construct, is damaged through the descreased activity in the frontal lobes (ADHD in a nutshell).   So you tend to lose a sense of yourself in relation to your projects, which to me sounds like a classicly nerdy way of saying “I lost my motivation” (i.e. your sense of self being IN that project, that the project makes you feel more accomplished or whatever).

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[daycruncher]

Hello there!

I’m curious if you have noticed that you are highly motivated with something, even if it’s a serious time waster like online games or chats or something!

I was just answering the post here called “I’m so tired” with a similar response to what I’ll say now, if you want to check that one too (in case I forget something)  but I am seriously influenced by Russell Barkley’s videos I’ve been watching lately online.

He makes the point that ADHD people tend to not even fully mature in the brain until the early 30’s!!!!  We are the prototypical “late bloomers”, are we not?  The good thing, and honestly I can tell this from how you write, is that our gifts can actually be a strength during the worst times. I’m not sure where your particular areas of strength are cognitively, but you have most likely accumulated a lot of information and understanding in your 30-something years.  Now you are frustrated at the continual problem you have with actually doing what you imagine and internally desire to do!

A huge part of our psychology, IMO (and from what I read) is that we take the SUBJECTIVE just as seriously as the OBJECTIVE.  So therefore, your reality is largely geared towards and colored by your inner dialogue which pretty much never stops.

If you can write and express yourself, you have a huge opportunity there to get ideas on paper.   That alone can be a strength to take you forward, but the lack of mental organization is a huge obstacle.

(As you can tell, I want to be a writer and do intellectual work primarilly!)

So what I’m going to say is what I am gathering from all I read, and what I feel makes sense for ME>  this may work for you too!

1- I actually was kind of hyperactive in childhood. I remember trying to teach myself to walk on my hands, during recesses for an entire grade or 2!  I also preferred chasing around a soccer ball on my own than talking to other kids all throughout elementary school.   Being that I am definitely the combined type of ADHD, and knowing I still express hyperactivity through my hands (fidgeting, typing at over 110 word per minutes, needing to wiggle in my chair, etc.)  then I need to recognize my physical urge for action.  Therefore, despite how much I hate exercise as an adult,  exercise daily (probably in the morning and at night) is highly necessary.

2-  ADHD tendency to not feel the reality of future rewards or punishments!  I tend to not be motivated at all by thinking of the future.  If anything, I get a feeling of dread and a sense of not wanting to think about it.  Therefore, I need to create an artificial system of rewards/punishments (aka consquences) for my DAILY life.  I will do this probably with a point system or gold star system, where I can easily add and remove points to see how I am doing, and compare to my past lows and highs of points.  I can get special bonus points for completing key points on a projects.  The points can be spent at night for small online purchases I suppose, but it could also be kept and stored for a later planned reward.  Rewards do not have to be money but they should be honored to yourself at some point, in some way that registers emotionally.   Sometimes speaking the words aloud makes things feel more real too.

3- Learning how to recharge.   I kind of picture the Star Trek character “Seven of Nine” (ooh la la) when I think of the ADHD need to recharge during the day.  If you get to know your own feelings, you can take yourself OUT of a noisy situation or escape to your private space to meditate or just chill out with your eyes closed.  You need to rest your brain because executive function type of thinking will drain you must faster than a normal person.  But you can easily recharge your mind too, by just taking those time outs for yourself.  This means, nobody can be talking to you during this time, and you are not reading or planning in any way. Not even worries, although I understand the problem of rumination.

4- Definitely you need to get some basic health checks too, and make sure your vision is still OK (you may need reading glasses) and that you don’t have an undiagnosed sleep problem or vitamin deficiency (more common than people think!) or anything that is zapping your limited mental energy more.  A stressful living situation can do that to us too!

5- Living spaces can be totally de-cluttered and have signs posted that visually help you connect with your projects or chores!  I never knew this before, but we are not able to keep much in our working memory.  Actually I think I lack a working memory totally!  I have a feeling like I am approaching life like it’s needing a “RECIPE” for every activity, to remind myself constantly of the procedures and processes and the necessary items (which I can NEVER locate when I need them for my current chore or project).   So you can study online about how to streamline your personal space for ADHD.  You may need to finally make DECISIONS about what to keep and what to get rid of….

6-  Decision making is very difficult, and this is why the environment and also our minds get cluttered.  Speaking more about the psychic clutter, I have become aware that for every interpersonal situation, I am forced to develop at least TWO and sometimes up to FOUR or SIX possible explanations for things.   Carrying around conflicting ideas about people is just driving me insane.  It’s too confusing and even painful, when you just don’t know where you stand with anyone.  The people closest to you will often take on a role of the critic, the judge, the parent, when it’s not appropriate anymore due to your age.  Instead of carrying  around so many conflicting and hurtful views, I am feeling that some good psychotherapy could help me sort all this cognitive confusion out.  I am making huge progress in simply understanding my relationships in the light of how ADHD has affected them.  But i think therapy is going to help more with this.  because…

7- Learning personal boundaries and how to shield ourselves psychologically does not come natural for us.  If you are like me, you have a hard time seperating yourself from any stress that is occuring around you, and also, you tend to endure far too long without speaking up.  Then you may find yourself at times getting confrontational, as a way to try to manage relationships that are already way out of balance and are not comfortable to you.  Or your frustrations and irritations build, leading to adult temper tantrums.  I am majorly affected by the mood dysregulation of ADHD now, whereas when I was a child, I didn’t think I was as upset or hurt.  I was just internalizing for years.  Now I must deal with all the emotions that were never processed right, and all the life events and interpersonal situations that were not resolved because of my confusion and avoidance at times.

 

I think when I take more care, in my own unique way, over these areas, I will experience much relief and also personal comfort on a daily level.  This is my hope!

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[daycruncher]

Hello!

I just joined and I’m definitely not experienced with ADHD, nor am I any kind of expert.  I just figured out that I have ADHD about 3 months ago and I’m still waiting on my evaluation.  But I do read a ton, and what I wanted to mention is that I think you simply need to make sure that you spend time right now doing nothing, and just rest to let your limited energy for “executive function” type of thinking to recharge and replenish.  I keep hearing that it’s important to make sure you take time out doing nothing, such as some simple meditation or lay down and just chill out with eyes closed, in quiet, etc.  It’s really personal what you would do, but it must be something that doesn’t tax your executive function type of thinking at all.

Also, I have heard that ADHD is really more of a problem of motivation than attention (since as you know, we can hyperfocus and zone out into our interests for hours, at times).   So maybe you can, when you feel UP to this study again, try to brainstorm and learn of techniques to motivate and keep an ADHD person more organized and on track in a project or activity.   I have heard, for example, that we tend to forget things that are not in our line of vision, so then creating visual reminders such as posters, notes, etc can help keep us more on track and knowing what comes next.  Then also, since we have a major problem remembering how we feel positive about a project, we can instill some artificial system of rewards and consequences.   We need to experience the feeling of reward (by setting up artificial rewards, in some system, and this can even be gold stars or points!) and consequences (subtract points or remove gold stars or whatever?)  in the DAILY experience of the project or else we tend to not perceive the real life consequences as real.  All real life consquences and rewards come much later!  So then we just don’t care, because we feel no reality to those far distant rewards and consequences.

Hope something I said might ring a bell, and help you to accept your feelings as normal for what you experience, cognitively speaking.  And the great hope in this is that you actually have the capacity to work hard and be much more motivated, but only through a strategy geared towards your ADHD situation, in particular.

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