ADHD Awareness Month is observed each October. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a mental health condition that can cause unusual levels of hyperactivity and impulsive behaviors. People with ADHD may also have trouble focusing their attention on a single task or sitting still for long periods of time. Below is a description of trying to do the laundry by a person with ADHD. Can you relate? Let’s talk about it..
Mandalyne Gonzalez: “It’s like every time you touch something a little unrelated to whatever you’re doing, you start doing the unrelated thing.”
Denise: “I wondered for years and years why other people could understand school subjects and I couldn’t, why others could organize and I couldn’t, why others could clean house and I still can’t. However a man came to my church and spoke about ADHD and I was astounded; he was describing me to a T. I asked my dad about it (my mom is dead), and he said, they knew something was wrong with me, but back then(born 1950)there was no name for it. I haven’t talked about it to anyone, but at least I know I’m not just backward and there are others. I feel so much better.”
LongJohnGolds: “For me, it was I learned through being afraid of mistakes and second guessing everything. I’d second guess myself but wouldn’t tell anyone my mistake at the risk of making them even more angry so I just silently had a panic attack to myself. I learned to deal with it until about a year to a year and a half ago when I was diagnosed with ADHD and manic depression which the doctor said “isn’t unheard of but is not very common.” They also said that when I have a manic episode and I’m off my medication my mind will start spinning like a top. Indeed it does and it frustrates people around me who aren’t ADHD so they don’t understand why I’m transitioning to 5 different thoughts in a few moments.”
Popoki97: “When I think about what to do when I wake up, my thoughts race through one thing to the next, I get overwhelmed and accomplish nothing.”
Kelly Locke: “This honestly makes me sad because this battle is ongoing all day everyday and never ceases. It’s exhausting and has had so many negative impacts in my life with failed relationships, job loss, negative judgements by others that I should be able to control this etc. I was just diagnosed officially last year and I’m 40 and now having the veil lifted and realizing that all my areas of trouble my whole life do have reason is both good and bad. I just want to be stable, productive, organized in my head, and able to function so I can be as great as I know I have the potential of being. Can anyone relate?”
David Little: “I began self medicating in my early teens. It led to a life of substance abuse. When I first discovered alcohol as a young teen, I experienced peace for the first time. This became extremely destructive fairly quickly, but I never realized why alcohol seemed to react so differently for me than my peers. I suspect vaccine injury as an infant as a possible culprit.”
T. Terez: : “It’s a state of mind, it’s not a disease. Knowing this will give you some sort of control. One of the reasons why you are given a diagnosis is because that allows for a pharmaceutical prescription to be written out to you, with the intention to treat the symptoms, but creates other problems in the long term. My suggestion is to just use that as a term to express to others how your brain works. But if you look at it as a superpower, you can notice it as an attention surplus and not a deficit. If you have the H in there then see it as an abundance of energy. These things can become positive and then you can find personal ways to control it and use it as an asset with proper planning. You can have this and be successful in your own way everyday, with custom fit to your own needs type of planning and imposing onto yourself impulse control.”
LINDA A: “And that’s probably just 1 hour in your day. Multiply this time 24 hours and you might start to see how it can be overwhelming.”
Bucky Hoover: “Yes. Especially when what you were supposed to do was really important. And it keeps happening and has consequences on life. While your whole world is falling apart because of it and instead of taking action, you’re doing everything listed on the initial post. It’s very overwhelming because it’s adding up.”
Susan Elliott: “OMGOSH!!! Currently, I just got up off the floor looking at old photos! Your description sounds like me too! It is not fun!”
Ian Brock: “Super accurate portrayal. Set an alarm so you can shut down the autopilot and get back to the first task.”
Brenda Harrison: “Me too! My family often tells me something starts a half hour earlier than it really does so I might get there on time. And I’ll do something that could be done later but I’m doing it when I should be getting out the door. I think I’m a master at self-sabotage. And I hate the term hoarding, but I can not manage to live in an organized manner, no matter how hard I try. I’ve also said I should be a TeleTubby but instead of a television on my belly, I need a dry/erase board so I can remember what I’m supposed to be doing. I’d just need to find a mirror to read it! Yes that’s ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) and ADHD is that with a hyperactivity element. I often wish I had the H but some in my family do and it can be very annoying and they have few friends because of it. It’s a frustrating, stressful disorder with many layers of life complications that stem from it. Medication helps and when I think it isn’t and stop taking it, I realize pretty quickly how much it was helping. I want a cure for it, not just a medication bandaid. I’ve not found a medicine that lets me function as a person who doesn’t have it.”
Gary Sutcliff: “No matter what you want to do, you have to do something else first.
I think it would have been nice if a bottle of clothes washing detergent was found at the bottom of the pantry.”
Meredith Frame: “Whatever I’m doing I feel I should be doing something else and basically never get anything much done after hours of trying. Is that what ADHD is? I thought it was something to do with hyperactivity.I constantly feel guilty, tired and frustrated with myself for being unable to get on with something without a bunch of stupid obstacles appearing.”
Jeannie Thompson: “I don’t have an official diagnosis, but this describes how my brain and I struggle every minute.”
Claire O’Sullivan: “ The frontal part of the brain houses the executive functions. When a person lacks the chemical normally there, they are unable to parse out what is important: that fan noise, the dog slurping, the radio, their homework/business work, a spouse on the phone in another room. Everything is there and everything has to be addressed. This is why adderall has worked so well for so long- it stimulates the brain’s executive function. My son is 38 and still has ADHD. He prefers not to be on his medication because he thinks he’s ‘funny.’ He’s not, he’s simply obnoxious. But with the medication he is able to exert his brain and learn diverse things others cannot.”
Michael Murphy: “I am reading this as my number five or six distraction from the thing I set out to do, which I now can’t remember what that was. This is only a problem for me if life is busy, otherwise I just go with it. If the distraction didn’t interest me I wouldn’t do them. Everything will get done eventually.”
Mel Fenn: “ADD is now listed under the same umbrella topic as ADHD. ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) is a similar type of distraction disorder; we just move slower through the mire. Add to that aging (69) with a mild dementia, and three times victim of COVID variants causing severe damage. It’s a struggle to concentrate long enough to get anything useful accomplished in a day.”
Diane Bilacho: “THAT’S why I keep a list of things to do with me at all times, and I have alarms set up for tasks throughout the day, it helps keep me on track.”
Kay Kay Duplichan: “Man wow, I do this every single day and nothing gets done.”
Sean Williams: “Major Kudos! This is, at least for me, an absolutely spot on description of how the mental train goes off the rails when you have ADHD! And thank you because I can now simply show this to people who, “I just can’t understand why” I can’t act/function like everyone else. This is such an excellent snapshot of the inside of my head!”
Shelley Stewart: “Oh yeah! When I wrote this comment, I was contemplating a title for a new space I want to make while thinking about making coffee and wondering what I’ll make for dinner tonight and if my dessert last night was any good while rummaging through pictures of myself for a redhead space I just discovered!!! Eeeek. I need to take my ADHD med stat!!!!”
Bad Influence: “I have not officially been diagnosed with ADD but most of my friends have been pointing it out to me for years, which I have just ignored until I saw this and realized that yes this is my day everyday. I finally realized that I need help and seeing this convinced me to call Mental Health and make an appointment. I found out that the soonest available is November which is really stressful for me so I’m going to continue calling other facilities and just wanted to say thank you for posting this it opened my eyes.”
Charles Haines: “That describes it, on days I was motivated. Usually, however, the whole ordeal wasn’t worth it, and it would depress me. There’s more. People, especially parents, would conclude I was lazy. Definitely it looked like that. The inattention wall would interfere with friendships and would make interactions disastrous and even traumatic. I missed years of socialization because of it.”
Denise White: “Life is just one distraction after another. So frustrating. How I would love to be able to think linear for just a few weeks.”
Gabe G: “Holy crap! This is literally it. I’m speechless. As someone who’s pretty conscious of most of my ADHD challenges, I can’t believe I never put 2 and 2 together…Oh well, at least it’s more fun than doing laundry lol!”
Debra Maldonado: “After reading this out loud to my boyfriend, he stated I was the poster child. It’s great knowing I’m not alone.”
G Hodge: “From what I can tell me neither one of us are in this alone. From this post I see, they need to fix this s***. I would, but I need to go wash dishes. No wait, I want to wash the dog. I mean walk the dog. But first I gotta get my boots out of the closet. lol.”
Tameka Jarmon Hildreth: “I feel so understood I could cry.”
Winter: “That’s exactly how I felt the last few weeks. I never thought I would find people who I could relate to or who could relate with me. I never understood why things that were so easy for everyone else were impossible for me. How I could be an intelligent person yet so “spacey” and flakey etc. I never realized that my 32 years of life have been dominated by something nobody even knew I had. Sure people would joke about it but most people I know still think ADHD is something for hyper little boys. People are probably getting tired of me bringing up all the new things I’m learning about myself and ADHD but they do not understand what it’s like finally feeling like there’s maybe hope and you’re not just a total hopeless “adult” who just drifts through life being “selfish and lazy” and maybe if I cared about anything I would be normal.”
