Adult ADHD.

[Owlmoonstar]

Would anyone be up for describing their day to day life?

Their struggles?

Or anything in-between.

Many thanks.

I think some of the issues are that - because life has always been this way - we don't recognise things as issues. Don't realise that X or Y isn't something everyone does, or everyone experiences.

Well worth listening to Alex Partridge on social media. He also interviews lots of experts on Tik Tok. He's written some books and one called 'Now it all makes sense' might be a good place to start if you like to read, but the tik tok clips are short and easier to watch than reading a whole book for some people.

Thanktou for the reply.

Sorry for the delayed response. I didn't get a notification!

A daily fight with myself, usually ending in frustration!

Here are the first few things that come to mind, but there is much much more. I started medication in the summer and it really helped.

• impulsive eating and shopping (I ended up with a BMI of 40 and a debt management plan.)
• Unfocused so make mistakes (including car crash many years ago)
• overly hasty - which also causes me to make mistakes
• regularly forget appointments
• forget to return library books so always end up with massive fines
• feel like people hate me whenever I make a small mistake
• constant fidgeting - people get annoyed
• self harm

I second the recommendation for Alex Partridge. Just listening to him and feeling that there is someone who actually gets it is a massive help for my mental health. It gives me a break between the constant bouts of self-criticism/dislike.

Very true and of course most of us have at least one parent and probably a sibling with ADHD so as we are surrounded by people who are just like us, it reinforces the idea that our struggles are normality.

I can be stood in my bedroom in my dressing gown in the morning and know I have to do something, panic rising but the sheer noise in my head drowns out any thoughts

I can then get the idea of having to get ready for work but still have absolutely no idea what that entails.

Now imagine living your life with the roar of a crowded stadium filling your brain with every person shouting what you should do whilst trying to sit in a class room and learn or trying to sit behind a desk, trying to concentrate on conversations and everything you do goes wrong and no matter how hard you have worked you are called lazy, unfocused, if you only just got on with things you could go far.
Add in blurting out the truth that you then realise people don’t want to hear.

It leads to a very very hard and very very exhausting life.

Meds have helped but need probably double the safe prescribed amount.

Very occasionally (last time was about 2 years ago) I get a few hours where my brain goes quiet. I know I have to do certain things but they quietly queue up in my brain leaving me with full concentration to get on with one job at a time.
The amount I get done in those few hours makes me think if I had a NT brain how different my life could have been

The cost of my ADHD runs into hundreds each month.
Apart from self medicating with Saffron, Lions Mane, L Carnitane on top of my prescribed meds during the day and then Melatonin and Ashwagandha to knock me out at night , it’s the list of fines I get, the opportunities lost, the sheer cost of forgetting to get coffee from Big Tesco 99p per jar and having to buy at the corner shop £3.50 for the same size and all the other extras I end up paying more for because I just forgot.
Even when someone has made me a list and I have been careful to not lose it I either lose the list or just don’t read both sides of the paper
I can be heading to the freezer to get frozen peas then see something else I think we need and be so busy congratulating myself on remembering one forgotten item that I miss 3 or 4 other items that were on the list

It’s expensive having ADHD and sometimes I wonder whether to just go full blown ADHD and sod the consequences because I am so exhausted having to try to mask what I really am feeling