Why does no one talk about the more extreme traits of ADHD?

[Cantfinishanything]

My credit score is in hell. Multiple CCJs due to just forgetting parking tickets or not being able to cope.
Obese.
Problems with addiction and overspending.
Fixations I can’t move on from. Even though I know it’s boring to those around me.
Cant discipline my children as I can’t stick to rules even ones I’ve set myself.
In trouble at work due to not being able to do the parts of the job I find boring.
Constant interrupting even though I know I do it and I try really hard not to.
Lateness, being eternally bloody late even with waking up at 5 and feeling ready to go about an hour before I need to. Yes I know it’s rude.
Terrible at relationships as everything feels like it’s controlling and claustrophobic.
Poor physical health, cant stick to things even taking vitamins or exercise classes.
I spend so long just hating and feeling frustrated at myself.
Yet everyone thinks they have ADHD these days so why do I find it so hard to talk to people about these things? How can we have the same condition and yet you have a mortgage, successful marriage, beautiful well behaved children, stick to a routine, go to the gym and run marathons?

I'm going to choose that you mean on the fence about if YOU have ADHD, and not about if it exists at all, which is one way your post could be interpreted!

I'm late diagnosed. I beat myself up for years - still find myself doing it now - for not "just being more organised" and "just" doing the thing that needs doing.

I think it's a really difficult disability to wrap your own head around, so it's no wonder family and friends often don't get it. Executive functioning tasks seem so simple and so easy. And yet...

You need to make one small change @Cantfinishanything . Just one. Even if it is 'I'll set myself 3 alarms in the morning.' Yes, I know, you can ignore the alarms and it feels like a demand...but if you want it you have to accept that it will be painful somehow.

DH has (yet to be diagnosed but clear) ADHD. He has alarms for everything he does at work. Different alarms for different things, with different sound effects. It would drive me crazy but the variety is what allows him to attend to them. If it was the same noise each time, he would just filter it out. He incorporates new activities into his routine, but if the day changes due to a bank holiday, he'll forget.

Do you have friends or relatives? You could say 'The kids have a play at this time on this day. I always forget and they're really sad about it. Could you possibly phone me an hour before the play to remind me to go?'

There are coping strategies. Not easy ones, but they are there. You have to decide if it's worth the struggle of using them.

Take me & my boss for example. She is hyper organised, Im not. But hyper organised takes a lot of effort, it energy, it’s boring. She can manage it and I can’t seem to or not consistently anyways. So what’s the difference between us?

I let things pile up, and then anxiety kicks in and stuff starts going wrong.

I know the things other people use to stay on top of things - lists, prep the night before and yet I almost never seem to do any of it, not to mind consistently.

Today, I’m WFH, distracted all day, no one has any clean underwear, I forgot my son’s after school club wasn’t on. I haven’t eaten a proper dinner in weeks.

My boss who is ten years older has clearly been productive all day as she is everyday as far as I can see, and doing an extreme sport. She snapped at me once that I needed to make a list.

I want to send solidarity to you OP and sympathy.

I strongly suspect I'm on the less severe end of the ADHD spectrum. I pick my skin constantly, find everything boring, am horrendously disorganised. I don't have a good job and I'm only good at the 'firefighting' bits of it. The boring admin (like as you say mileage claims) I simply can't do in the way I'm expected to - always behind deadline. I excelled academically but lost my interesting job after having children (and due to DH's career - long story) and ever since have been bored to tears (literally, I cry a lot at times).

I agree with what you say. Whilst I may well be ADHD I'm not at the point I can't cope at all - I struggle to cope, yes, and feel like I'm only just keeping my head above water all the time which I guess is 'masking'. I have small to medium things I fail at, but I don't have loads of debt (other than mortgage which I do have) or serious problems from it.

If I told anyone other than on here I think I'm ADHD then I'd probably be in that group you describe of people who appear to be coping. I forget to take my medication sometimes,(not ADHD meds), despite alarms and reminders (and it's important I take it so not good this happens) but I'm just about coping. I'm on HRT which has not helped at all and I do think peri / menopause made it all worse but I've always been like this to a certain extent and there's huge ND in my family. As a girl and compared to the more obvious struggles of the boys, growing up, it was all dismissed and jokes made like 'Ginny's always late' 'Ginny's messy' etc.

I do feel that there are so many people claiming ADHD and ASD that it actually makes it harder for people who can't cope because of the severity of their conditions and for whom there are serious consequences. And also much harder to access support too because there's only so much to go around, and this is the real unfairness.

So on the one hand I sympathise and empathise but on the other I'm clearly not as badly affected as you are OP, I'm on the milder end of the spectrum. I don't think it's the same thing at all and honestly it's really sort of unhelpful that different ends of the spectrum are called the same thing.

Your example of that is a good one - it's like if 'rich', 'middle-income' and 'poor' were all called the same thing and it was just a question of degree of amount of money - a 'spectrum'. But obviously the outcomes and lives of people who are very rich, middling or poor are entirely different. There's a big difference between being able to feed your family or not, or pay your bills or not.

I hear you OP. My son has autism and severe adhd. The type of ADHD that makes his life incredibly difficult and very obvious. I am fed up with people self diagnosing it because they meet a couple of things the saw on a video online and parents who insist there child has ADHD because they struggle to focus after spending hours gaming. Thats not ADHD its poor parenting. The other one is I think my child has ADHD whilst ignoring and refusing to install any type od boundaries, discipline or rules on there child who just punched another kid because they didn't get there own way. Thats not ADHD its poor parenting.

I think you’ve also touched on something there which is important. “Being hyper organised is boring”. I think that’s one of the ways some people look like they have it together, that their hyperfixations/special interests are considered “useful” by society.

I get a weird dopamine rush when I reach the bottom of washing basket, I look up all the differences in detergents and the science behind each type, Ive read my washing manual and tried to discuss it with my husband like it’s some sort of intellectual treatise, I’ve been known to try and take parts out of my washing machine to methodically clean and to see how they work. And you know what? The washing gets done but I’m under no illusion that’s how NT people approach it. Also any other job where I don’t get that buzz just doesn’t get done. It’s odd but I’m not going to think about it too hard incase it goes away and I’m stuck with no clean clothes for my kids.

I hear you and also get tired of watching people on social media misplace their car keys and think they are in the trenches. I have ADHD and it’s debilitating. I’m on meds and can just about function but I’m heavily supported by my husband day to day. I’d be living in a cardboard box surrounded by my latest hobby purchases if left unchecked. I ruin lots of things, including jobs and relationships. It’s grim at times but like others have said it’s a cycle and right now I’m just about coping. Strength to you all.

@Cantfinishanything

Thanks to you and your thread, and to everyone who's posted, I got such a rush from talking about this and reading everyone's struggles, that I managed to clear and clean my kitchen table. Things had been piling up and falling off and been repiled up for weeks and weeks!

Thank you!!! ♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️

This is an interesting point of view.

But of course depending on your hyperfixation you may get penalised by society or not and need help or not.

So for people whose hyperfixation/special interest is making money then they're not going to need as much help around debt as OP who's in debt.

Does anybody have any ideas for rebuilding bad credit?

When my ex left he quoted the house always being a mess as one of the main factors. Plus me failing to execute on collaborative plans. It felt very personal. I'd really try to the organise and tidy to the point of me having intense anxiety whenever he would come home and then it would all fail and crash from the exhaustion of trying to keep it up.

It also depends on who you have around you I suspect. The idea of having a DH who understands and helps is... well, I wish that were my life.

I don't think he'd help any more (or criticise less) if I had a diagnosis though. Surely either people are kind about these things and recognise everyone is different in what they can cope with or not.

I’m ADHD and autistic. Much of what you have described I have although I do find I need a routine eg listslists lists. I have a ADHD planner and it follows me everywhere

@janietreemoreyes I would hate it but it would work. However the MCA would state that as soon as your SD said she wasn’t happy with the arrangement, you would have to let her have her money, and for me, that would be at the exact point where I was jones-ing to get the dopamine hit of spending money, which would be exactly when I shouldn’t have the money!
I have queried whether I actually have the capacity to manage my finances. However I do understand the implications of being shit with money, i just feel nihilistic about my future and so the consequences don’t stop me.

Oh yeah, this is completely useless for helping @Cantfinishanything with her struggles with ADHD. I’m just saying that sometimes it might look like people aren’t dealing with the traits of ADHD when they are but society has deemed it acceptable. But having spoken to some other ND mine isn’t considered “real” because it’s not old car, Pokémon or what ever. Mostly, I think gamerfication is really powerful. But I don’t have have combined type or hyperactivity, but the attention deficit so what’s useful for me is probably fucking useless for most people with ADHD

I've just failed to execute my bit of a collaborative plan with DH. I tried to do it, but I had loads of problems - largely because everything involved an app some kind of long winded computer process with no humans involved to speak to when I hit a problem, and then at one point my phone randomly stopped accepting text messages so I didn't get important alerts and I gave up for (checks notes) over a month now because I just feel I can't cope. Still need to do it.

That last point. Is that ADHD or it depression? I don’t think it hugely matters in terms of the language used, but maybe what’s key is trying to figure out if you could do certain things if you felt more optimistic. If that were the case, maybe working on how you feel about the future and why would help?

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I think ‘being organised is boring’ is at the crux of a lot of it. I feel myself tense up when I hear about things I should do. Again it’s a demand right? I don’t even do a weekly or monthly shop even though it would make a huge difference to my life and stress level, but I’m just ‘not a person who does a monthly or weekly shop’ there’s an element of wanting the chaos I guess, or feeling non conformist?? I’m not sure but it’s something very annoying about myself.

That’s exactly how I feel. I really identify with the way you’ve described the emotion. Especially when you say is there an element of wanting the chaos/non conformity.

I have been on my phone too much today. So I haven’t gotten work done. I now have to do homework etc. And make a World Book Day Costume. I have left myself in a situation where I have too little time for what I need to do.

Part of it is we had a really busy weekend with one of the kid’s birthdays. I find it really hard to adjust again after an event. Party was on Sat. I needed to do a proper clean up on Sun but I felt exhausted. So Monday morning was digging the lunchboxes from Friday out of bags (fairly BAU in my house). But at some point yesterday I though “I need to get organised for tomorrow” and then I just…didn’t

@the7Vabobut when you get all that done by the skin of your teeth, thats a rush right? I run off those feelings, succeeding, taking too much on and not crumbling. It’s the only thing that motivates me to do anything.

I’m not sure tbh, I don’t know it always is. I often feel I could have done it better etc, or it doesn’t get done. Or I ruminate on having left it until the last minute. Again!

A therapist once said to me I’m not getting the reward from doing tasks, so essentially it continues the procrastination cycle.

I hear you. It’s a spectrum like autism…. There are autistic people who can’t/don’t speak and there are autistic people who are high functioning.
ADHD is basically a developmental issue with executive functioning. The level of maturity of your EF determines how much you struggle.
i have learned all this to help my husband. Happy to give more info if it’s useful to anyone.

Please do!

My DH knows exactly what I am like, and after 20 years of trying to manage my time, finances and staying on top of the general life admin, his health is starting to take a bit of a hit. My health has been terrible over the past decade (head injury and post concussion syndrome before being injured permanently by an off label antipsychotic that gave me a movement disorder), so my poor old brain used up whatever spare capacity it once had.

I yearn to be efficient, organised, less impulsive, and try not to comfort purchase things then feel terrible and guilty for it.

My DM is a polar opposite of me and just doesn't get it sometimes. She seems to have some sympathy at times but is of the "get on with it" type, which squashes my self esteem even lower when she makes the occasional OTT criticism remark. She just won't ever get what it is like to have poor executive functions. It's all good being efficient and organised but not everyone can be, and that shouldn’t be a bad thing.

A friend put off asking about meds. Eventually he was persuaded to and pretty quickly he was shocked at how his brain settled/quietened (his words). He still found it difficult for that focus initailly and basically had to train himself because it just wasn't in his experience .
He feels some guilt about himself and what he could have been doing if he had done it sooner.
BTW its nit 100% but is definitely so much better for him.

I think this is the kind of thing my SD would be saying if she was more self-aware. She gets a lot of fun out of life at times, but also feels nihilistic about the future.
And yes, she would probably revoke the arrangement and take back control of her money as soon as she started feeling frustrated or anxious.
For yourself, is there anything at all that someone else could do that genuinely would help you? What you are saying makes the whole situation sound very bleak.