Adult ADHD - anyone else fed up of the constant battle.and of constantly losing it?

[WhoHasMovedMyBrain]

EVery evening I think that the next day will.be different. That I'll do my work, work when I have to, that I won't stuff my face, that I won't be late, that I'll tick off at least one tiny little.thing on.my.to. do.list. and every day I fail. I'm winging life because I've got a very organised and hard working husband, a very supportive family who have always carried me and because I can sort of.work when I'm.in dire straits..just before a deadline comes crashing down. I'm.so.fed up of the constant stress,.the constant self loathing, constantly underperforming, constantly fighting a losing battle. I feel.as.if..im.wasting my life away.

My psychiatrist is happy to prescribe meds but before.that I need to.make an appointment with my gp to get some blood tests done and I just can't do it. I can't.make the appointment to.do.the blood tests. I mean how stupid can you get?

And now I'm so late to.pick up DC that I can't have a shower. Though I've been looking forward to.it all day.

I know.im.lucky and. I've got it better than most so.i hate complaining but I hate my brain..I don't care if it's ADHD or.if I'm.just lazy, crazy and stupid but i hate being this way.

Can anyone relate?

Oh wow. Hello my people.
Self medicate with coffee.
Accidentally found a job that really suits me. And I have SO MUCH organization in my life so I can accomplish anything at all.

A family desk diary, check lists, bullet journal, shared outlook calendar with DH, Alexa reminders for everything.

And still the house is a disaster and i would forget to pick up DD each day from school. But DH does that thank god.

Anyone else find cooking difficult? I have zero interest, I don't feel hunger, only when I do, then I think of food. Can't be arsed to spend the time to cook any food. And can't think of anything to cook. Food shopping is overwhelming with choice. Just not eating is easier.

My life would fall apart even more than it already has, without Alexa, multiple alarms and apps that yell at me until a thing has been done.

There's a troll in the thread right now, so pay them no attention.

@SleekMamma what’s the job!!!

Mine has to be the worst job out there for someone with ADHD.

I’ve considered getting assessed for ADD as some of the descriptions I’ve heard sounds like me to a tee. However, I’m a bit confused about how it works. If the reason for the condition is issues with dopamine levels in parts of my brain, do they actually directly test for that in some way? What I’ve read about assessments suggests they are based on observed/reported behaviour patterns and I feel a bit weird about getting medication to correct a physical imbalance without someone checking the extent of that physical imbalance - or am I wrong and it is the case that actual levels are tested?

But it is a disability. You can get a Blue Badge with solely an ADHD diagnosis.

I went through the NHS. My area is quite a quick assessment time.
First you have to be referred by your doctor.
Mine thought I would be dead before I got the assessment. It took me 4 months from doctors appointment to prescription.

Then you get a telephone assessment by someone who is more of a box ticker rather than someone who knows about ADHD. (Sometimes you can get someone with their own agenda who thinks if you could just stop doing things that are considered ADHD then you wouldn’t have adhd) If you fail this then you are back to the doctor to start again.
Otherwise you get a form to fill in 18 questions about how adhd affects you as an adult and a further 18 on how it affected you as a child,

Then the assessment is at least an hour long. I think it is meant to be 2 x 1 hour long assessments but my psychiatrist had diagnosed me before I had got into the assessment room. I look at how I have acted all my life and wonder why no one ever suggested I should look at adhd.

It isn’t about measuring dopamine levels and topping them up as some people will have the required dopamine in them, it just doesn’t get to the areas it needs to and other things like hormones can play their part in making the adhd worse or the meds not work as well.
I have been through the menopause without HRT and meds on me don’t work as well as for others but they make a big difference to my life, just don’t quieten the hum of the 10,000 radios playing in my head.
What you have to realise is that the meds they can give you like Elvanse or Vyvanse as it is known in the US is used by NT people as a party drug. Usually the 30mg pills.
To someone like me with with ADHD who takes 70mg of Elvanse, 2x 5mg of dexamphetamine, 3 Lions mane and a can of monster to put me in the mood of emptying the dish washer it doesn’t have the same affect.

Cocaine I have never taken but from the people I know in rl and others I have read about, cocaine doesn’t have the same affect on a person with adhd.
Whilst their friends are partying after doing a line they are cleaning their hosts bathroom.
Dd was speaking to someone who she believed to be adhd. She recognised herself in this girl.
They got talking about ADHD and cocaine.
When this girl had taken it she felt like how she was meant to feel she said. A really normal version of herself. Doing all the things that normal people do. The last time she had taken it she had sat down and applied for 16 jobs and ended up getting a choice of 9 of them
People had mentioned that she maybe had ADHD but her bf didn’t believe in it and no one with adhd had explained it to her why she should get herself an assessment and meds.

I certainly believe in it as a condition but not sure if I have it.

my brain definitely worked better when technology was not needed for every task at work (and life). I really struggle with the constant "learn and use new tech" onslaught. I am not sure what's going on with me but I dither between thnkimg perhaps ADHD, then perhaps just my brain can't cope with all this.

The question you have to ask is did you have the same issues as a child?

From the perspective of the wife supporting husband with ADHD it can be exhausting. I'm on medication now too just to help me cope. I think people need to be careful saying 'can your husband sort this and that..' the fact is we are / he is probably already doing as much as possible.

I don't think so but I was a very anxious, depressed child. When I hit teens I was fine. I was always academic, but that got lost in working life. Now I've been treated for A&D most of my adult life and my brain is just a big muddle. But in terms of work and achievements, the more tech is involved, the more I can't cope.

pompom I agree that asking others to help more is not good. I haven't got anyone to help me, but still dithering - for ages now - about getting a cleaner.

Not formally diagnosed (and actually a little relieved hear so many others are in the same position), but I am 99.9% certain that I have ADHD. I feel like such a fraud though - about 6 years ago now (wow, how time flies when you’re easily distracted) I asked my go to refer me to a psychologist specialising in ADHD. The pitfall was when they handed me a bunch of forms to fill out explaining my symptoms - I kept losing focus and putting it off and then all of a sudden it was 6 months later and I felt ashamed that I hadn’t filled them out, and then life got in the way and suddenly it’s years later, and I so wish I had filled out those forms, because I now have to go through the whole ordeal of working up the courage to mention it to my GP again. 🙄

I Conor I should get a professionals opionion but I’ve learnt so much about myself and ADHD through memes. Lol Stuff like object permanence. I could drop a sock on the floor and think “I should pick that up” -> sock came from washing machine -> I should wash that old dress -> I wonder where that old dress is - > rummages in cupboard for dress -> finds old phone instead -> forgets about dress and now going through old photos -> I should back up the photos on my phone -> turns on laptop -> ooh, I should look up that actors name. Meanwhile that poor sad sock remains on the floor, and could potentially remain in that spot on the floor for a week or more whilst I step over it, as it has now become part of the furniture. Lol

Yes, the sock, dress, phone thing is familiar to me.

I'm going to hazard a guess that there's a connection between being a night owl and being ND. Total guess though.

does anyone else get totally fascinated by things and then forget them a short time later?

Wow. This entire thread makes me feel like I have 40 clones. While I don't have anxiety nor depression, I do have severe self-loathing for not accomplishing what I know I can do well once I get started and if I have no distractions. My oldest DD, my nieces and a sister are just like me and while we drive others around us batty, we've always liked our meandering ways when we're together ...when I clean house it's never structured but I just do what's in front of me and often get distracted by some project or random object. Like I start to dust but then find a book, read parts, then set it down, find three unrelated items and walk around the house trying to find a place for them but then end up matching half of my earrings which are in a jumble in a box. I can read for hours on end (I've been know to read a book for 20 hours at a stretch) which meant in school and later getting my bachelors and master's, I was really good at learning (long attention span) and taking tests (stress of time) but could not for the life of me get started on papers or projects. The jobs I felt most competent at were waitressing and bartending but eventually quit because was told it was beneath me... but then corporate jobs were so dull and spreadsheets so mind numbing I'd procrastinate until I feared I'd be fired. I can't tell you how many Fridays I'd be at the office trying to catch up what I could have accomplished during the week if I'd only DONE THE WORK. I feel like I've disappointed a lot of managers and others who felt I'd had great potential. I'm socially and emotionally intelligent so I think others assume I'm more capable than I really am.

I fear getting meds, tho, as I know my symptoms have gotten worse as I've gone through peri and WFH...not sure if I can handle the symptoms of trying to find the right meds.

And then, I wonder if it's not a disease as much as some of us have brains which don't work in modern times...I asked my doctor if we could do a brain scan to see if I had ADHD and she said that's not how it works. So, I get skeptical again and the cycle continues...

Thanks Kennykenkencat. I don’t have anything like the “thousand radios” and I while I recognise some of the behaviours I think my issues are more to do with stressful situations in childhood/PTSD. A friend told me the other day she is having an assessment for autism and it got me thinking again.

I've learnt so much from Instagram. The algorithms show you more of what you 'like' and if you watch a video the whole way through.
There's a lovely doctor man that I've learnt lots from. Mostly on being kind to oneself as we really cannot change. We have to put things in place to mitigate our disasters.

So we have a cleaner, guess when the tidying up gets done? Yep the evening before she arrives. So lucky we can afford a cleaner. The years we couldn't were an awful chaos of embarrassment.

I found fly lady then. But it wasn't til quite recently I learnt she has ADHD, all her systems are her ways if coping. And she is really popular. So maybe there really are so many of us around.

I think as little girls at school at home she just had to sit down and shut up. Because we weren't the noisy dustruptive boys we literally had no time spent on us. We learnt to cope and to mask. Studying suits as there's time deadlines and hyoerfocus required.

But then the works of work!
Omg I have really struggled. I. Exactly the wrong type of job, looking back. Operations needing lots of memory. Which I just don't have.

Now I have a strategy and project manager job, in a fast moving company. I mostly work from home in complete silence. It is amazing.

I use the app on my Mac Session to help me focus. I've made my own goals excel thing to keep me on track. For the first time in my career I am actually enjoying work.

But it's because I have a job and a company that suits me. I nearly destroyed myself in 2 previous jobs trying to fit in. But I will never fit in, as lonely as that sounds. I just need a best fit.

I'm now wondering if I should try speed to see if the meds would help!

Sorry on my phone and didn't spell check, so many typos argh

Anyone struggling and curious on my system?

I'm trying to replicate the system I have for work, at home.

Shared outlook email and calendar with my (NT) husband.
We both add stuff to it.
The reminders get spoken out by Alexa in every room.

Also a family desk diary on the kitchen table. From mums office or the Blox big diary. Really great with columns and different views of the year.

Cleaner weekly.

And I'm now setting up a bullet journal for 2023. My husband joked so is everything going to be sorted for January 1st? Well Jan 1st 2024 yes!

I’ve heard cocaine is great at helping you to get things done🤣🤣🤣

I have never taken anything but prescribed by a doctor drugs and I think I really should have.
Although if coke worked well I think I would have spent £thousands snorting white powder but probably made £tens of thousands in business.

You cannot be tested for levels of dopamine or how it’s accessed in the brain, AFAIK.
Assessment is by means of self report plus input from a psychiatrist. I didn’t feel it was particularly thorough and am still unsure that I really have it.

The dopamine imbalance thing is just a theory. There's no definitive test for ADHD. We know that it's real because if you take the brain scans of people with ADHD and people without and overlay them, there's a clear difference but there's not enough difference in individual brains to use that as a diagnostic. But it's similar to people who have certain types of brain damage. Likewise that brain corridor thing, that isn't something that can be tested for. And I once had an EEG done in public as part of a neurofeedback demonstration, I didn't mention that I had ADHD and the person doing the demo said that my brainwave pattern was typical of somebody with an attention disorder. I found it fascinating because surely this stuff should/could be used in diagnosis but basically it's too foggy right now. There's just not enough information. It would be like trying to guess if somebody is male or female when you only know their height. If you find out they are 5 foot 8 then you've got no clue at all. If they're six foot then you'd probably guess it's a man, but it's not unheard of for a woman to be that height.

Nobody really knows why ADHD medication works or what the mechanism is for it, that's why it's a bit of a case of try this, if it doesn't work we'll try it stronger, if it still doesn't work try this other option etc. It's thought that stimulants cause more dopamine to be produced, but I've heard another explanation which is that people with ADHD are always trying to seek stimulation and the medication helps provide that so they can calm down and focus. Another explanation is that the pre frontal cortex is less active than it should be, allowing the "primitive" parts of our brain focusing on sensory stuff like food, movement, hunting, reacting to danger etc to be overactive. The stimulant stimulates the evolved part of our brain to kick in and tell the primitive part to stop reacting to everything that is just part of modern life.

And that's just stimulants, there are ADHD medications which aren't stimulants at all.

If you want info on the different medications and the most to to date theories then you want to watch or listen to everything Russell Barkley has put out. But in general, no, it's not like a vitamin deficiency where you can have a test and find out how much neurotransmitter you're lacking and top it up.

A good psychiatrist should be able to discuss this with you and share their reasoning as well.

Weirdly, I don't know if you know the comedian Rhod Gilbert, but he did a programme called stand up to shyness, he had an EEG on that and the doctor also said he looked like he had ADHD and recommended he look into it. He later mentioned it on another programme so perhaps he did get a diagnosis.

I’m newly diagnosed and medicated and it has made a HUGE difference to my life. I’m like “me on a really good day” all the time.

Another explanation is that the pre frontal cortex is less active than it should be, allowing the "primitive" parts of our brain focusing on sensory stuff like food, movement, hunting, reacting to danger etc to be overactive. The stimulant stimulates the evolved part of our brain to kick in and tell the primitive part to stop reacting to everything that is just part of modern life.

This is fascinating. I'm one of those people who is excellent in an emergency - completely calm, hyper aware of everything and can make smart split second decisions. I've always been like this. My DH relies on me in times of high stress because he can rarely deal. But I suck at daily life.

Delphinium same here. Running a massive complicated project no problem. Calling the GP to make an appointment impossible

Omg I totally get the sock - dress - phone - laptop thing. This is me on a daily basis.

I’m not diagnosed but another one 99% sure I have ADHD (exacerbated by peri-menopause).

I got a diary and family calendar for Xmas which helps with organisation.

I’m a teacher and that really helps me as I HAVE to be in school at a certain time; although lesson planning is interesting this year as we have a new curriculum in some areas so I can’t just drag out last years plans! My best lesson ideas tend to be the last minute ones 😳 I’m a nightmare in the holidays though due to lack of routine/deadlines and online learning, before we did live lessons, was a total nightmare.

To whoever started this thread - thank you. Off to do some research now (due to having screen shots to remind me where to look).