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Having ADD [or ADHD] makes life paradoxical. You can superfocus sometimes, but also space out when you least mean to. You can radiate confidence and also feel as insecure as a cat in a kennel. You can perform at the highest level, feeling incompetent as you do so. You can be loved by so many, but feel as if no one really likes you. You can absolutely, totally intend to do something, then forget to do it. You can have the greatest ideas in the world, but feel as if you can’t accomplish a thing.

Dr. Edward M. Hallowell  (via 8ierra-kay)
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What It’s Like to Have ADHD As a Grown Woman

What It’s Like to Have ADHD As a Grown Woman

adhd-community:

rebellymotzkugel:

raisedonritalin:

Part of what separates ADHD-havers from the merely forgetful is that for us, to use DSM parlance, the symptoms “have a significant impact on daily life and functioning.” When I was a kid “significant impact” meant being in perpetual trouble: always being late, never hearing the assignment, enduring depressingly frequent teen-magazine “It Happened to Me”–type moments (I was often surprised by my period’s arrival). Teacher’s pet I wasn’t: “Clearly Rae has not been,” snapped my sixth-grade math teacher, flinging an eraser at my desk, “PAYING ATTENTION, so the whole class will have to wait while I go over this again.”

By high school, I had fully internalized the fact that I was a screwup and began acting the part with teenage gusto. “Fuck you, fail me,” I spat at a particularly hateful teacher, middle fingers aloft. “It’s not my first time.”

Then I’d go home and cry. Repeated failure is destructive. It chips away at your self-confidence and eats at your resolve. It makes you hate yourself.

The thing is, ADHD doesn’t care about your gender. A huge part of the different treatments of people with ADHD is rooted in gender role expectations. Your behaviors as a child are interpreted a certain way depending on the gender you’re assigned. 

When I talk to my ADHD friends, we have the same problems, the same difficulties, unrelated to gender.

Girls are less often diagnosed because they are not seen, because girls learn early on to be quiet and hide their faults. While boys get the excuse of ‘being just a wild boy’.

And while the experience of a person who identifies and is read as female with ADHD is valid and exhausting, it is not just because of  ADHD, it is because we fail to fill in the role of the perfect women. It is because society is somewhat okay with the forgetful, chaotic man (to a point) but much less forgiving when it comes to what they think a woman should be. 

Welcome to the patriarchy. 

Yes! Yes! Yesyesyes!!!

Originally posted by yourreactiongifs

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knnobi:

what people think adhd is like: im a little distractable but it’s okay because im creative and spontaneous(:

what it’s actually like: me, making a microwave burrito: how long do i need to microwave it? *checks wrapper* okay *sets wrapper down and puts burrito in the microwave* wait how long do i need to microwave it? this time I’ll focus on remembering *looks at wrapper, stares at the thing that says “1 minute” for a second* okay i got this *goes to put time on the microwave* how long do i need to microwave it? this time i’ll

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Why Dyscalculia awareness is so important

thecashewchronicle:

the-great-trashheap:

lemonsharks:

jeneelestrange:

lynati:

setepenre-set:

thecashewchronicle:

I’d like to take a second to list all the people I wish had known more about dyscalculia growing up:

My first grade teacher, who noticed when on a verbal counting test that I went from 99 to 100 to 200 and told my parents I just needed a little practice

My third grade teacher, who couldn’t understand why I would turn in a timed multiplication table test with absolutely nothing written on it, or burst into tears when asked to bring it home and have it signed by my parents

My school corporation, who placed me in advanced mathematics for two excruciating years based on aptitude tests, apparently unaware that aptitude and ability are not one and the same

My fifth grade teacher, who privately admonished me for “laziness” because I couldn’t stop making “silly mistakes”—like switching multiplication and addition, or flipping numbers like three and eight, or failing to follow every step of a math problem

My sixth grade math teacher, who publicly called me out for writing the formula for the Pythagorean Theorem on my hand, claiming I didn’t study, though I had spent five hours the night before preparing

My parents, who grounded me every time my report card came out, trying their best to discipline what they thought was laziness

My family doctor, who, once told about my math troubles, prescribed me ADD medication without any running any kind of diagnostic

My Algebra teacher senior year after I was diagnosed, who claimed that giving me extra time on my test would be “unfair to the other students”

Every teacher who ever laughed and pointed at the clock when I asked them what time it was

The boy in my band class that said I was the “stupidest smart person he’d ever met”

My former boss, who when I told I had dyscalculia told me “I probably have it too, I am always mixing things up!” (she was an accounting major and ran the accounting portion of that place of business)

But you know who would have really benefited from knowing about dyscalculia? Me. I wish I had known. I wish I could go back and tell my ten year old self that it wasn’t my fault, that I am extraordinary in the best way. I wish someone, somewhere along the way could have seen what was really going on.

That’s why dyscalculia awareness is so important.

oh my god.

I. had no idea this was a thing. looked up the symptoms and

‘inability to tell, at a glance, how many objects are in a small group’ 

THIS. THIS IS A THING? THAT OTHER PEOPLE HAVE? 

‘struggles with directions, anxious about moving from one location to another’ 

I memorized the route to all my classes in high school and yet if I didn’t have COMPLETE AND UTTER FOCUS I would STILL GET LOST it was so unbelievably stressful

‘is constantly late because struggles with understanding the passage of time’

‘struggles to read analog clocks’

‘moves too fast or too slow’

‘struggles with basic math/memorizing math facts like times tables and formulas’ 

GOD. I spent MONTHS on those times table tests; long after everyone else had gotten theirs done, I was still taking and retaking those awful, awful tests. 

And I still have to turn everything into addition to get it to make sense. 10-7? count up from 7 to 10, on my fingers. do it again to make sure I’ve done it right. 4×6? that’s 6+6+6+6.  keep track of it on my fingers. do it again to be sure. 18/3? start adding threes together, keeping track of how many it takes, on my fingers. do it again to be sure. STILL SOMETIMES GET IT WRONG because even addition is hard. 

just.

dyscalculia. 

is a thing.

thank you for this post.

I see people trash-talk Tumblr all the time but I’ve lost track of how many people have said something JUST LIKE THIS about their mental or physical health, their gender or sexual identity, and their understanding of social issues or world politics during the less-than-18-month I’ve been here than at any other website or classroom I’ve ever had a presence in.

I literally didn’t learn that I might have dyscalculia until I was studying to be a teacher and had to learn what the hell that was. And oh hey, look, I have practically every symptom but I’m about to graduate and there’s really no point in me putting forth the money to diagnose anything. Seeing kids FINALLY get something in math after working really hard at it, only to forget by the next day, JUST like I used to do, but knowing there’s nothing I can do to stop that. All I can do is teach them the little tricks I learned to remember and figure stuff out and get around the fact that I knew only about half the times tables. 

HOLY MOTHER OF PIE. 

@taraljc, look at this IT IS US. 

(Most of my symptoms have been mitigated or alleviated by technology and I would like to tell my third grade teacher: fuck you, I have a calculator with me at all times and I do not need to know my times tables FFFFFFFFF and I am not stupid or lazy for not being able to learn them)

My chemistry teacher used to write me really nasty messages on my chemistry work about how I’d get the problems right if I stopped doodling in my notebook and actually tried harder.  I asked him for help and he refused to help me because I couldn’t point to one single thing I was struggling to understand.  I could do the experiments but I couldn’t do the math.  The only reason why I didn’t fail chemistry was because we started working on organic chemistry at the end of the year, and ochem is all about shapes and drawing the molecules.  At the end of the year he gave me some kind of barely passing slacker award. I took it with a smile and didn’t cry until I got home.  I’m still hurt by it and I still hate that man.

In college, I nonstop struggled with math, I still failed chemistry a couple of times before finally savaging my way through, actually got kicked out of school but begged for them to keep me in… and when I was a second year senior, begging the math counselors to let me into trig so I could just meet my biology requirements, they took a look at my ACT scores and said “Huh, your math score is way lower than your other scores.  Have you been tested for a learning disability?”  But because I’d already been diagnosed with depression I’d have to go to an outside agency to get tested and it was going to cost me $300.

Now as an adult I’m late all the time, I miss deadlines, and people just think I’m a total unreliable flake.  I think my boss hates me.  But I managed to graduate college with a degree in Wildlife Management, become a wildlife biologist, and now an Astronomy teacher, and I still multiply by counting up on my fingers.  But whenever English teachers say shit like “Oh but you’re a science teacher, math and science go together, I can’t do that!” I want to punch them.  I can’t do it either, but I stuck my fist up the ass of the system anyway and had to fight tooth and nail to get where I am now.  Now I’m just afraid of trying to get certified as a high school science generalist and/or get my Master’s degree when I was never officially diagnosed and have never had any kind of support.

since i published this post so long ago i’ve watched it circulate tumblr and heard stories of all kinds. some people were abused by horrible parents and teachers, others had it recognized early and got the help they needed. many people are just hearing about it and suspecting they may have it themselves, which hopefully means they will get the help they need. some people even send me their stories about obstinate school staff, ableism in their homes and work, and sarcastic teachers who think we’re lazy or “slow” (god, the way they treat cognitively disabled kids… holy fuck.) i don’t always reply to all these stories because it can be taxing, but believe me when i say i read every single one. the story above gave me pause because it is one i identify with. i too had a similar struggle with my chemistry teacher.

what all these stories have made clear to me is that a) we need more awareness and testing for learning disabilities in schools and b) we need a complete overhaul of how we treat children with all kinds of learning disabilities and cognitive impairments. when i look back on the way that the “special education” kids were walled off, vilified, ridiculed, and generally ignored by the staff at the public school i attended, i realize that, in my case, no one recognizing my disability was a blessing. if someone had, i would have been treated the same way the other disabled kids were treated in my school district at that time. just like this post says, i still wish i had known, but knowing is only half the battle. we need enormous changes to our public school systems to accommodate and address learning disabilities. we need more access to testing at a lower cost. we need awareness and cooperation from teachers and parents. we need to address ableism in schools. we need to change the way teachers, parents, and students think and act. and we need to make resources for testing and therapy available to adults too, because learning disabilities don’t go away when school ends either.

when i read these stories, i feel a fire in me growing.

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Executive dysfunction life hack

star-anise:

roachpatrol:

jumpingjacktrash:

the-rain-monster:

naamahdarling:

lenyberry:

star-anise:

feathersmoons:

star-anise:

feathersmoons:

star-anise:

lemonsharks:

star-anise:

Instead of telling yourself, “I should get up,” or “I should do this,”

Ask yourself, “When will I get up?” or “When will I be ready to do this?”

Instead of trying to order yourself to feel the signal to do something, which your brain is manifestly bad at, listen to yourself with compassionate curiosity and be ready to receive the signal to move when it comes.

Things I did not actually realize was an option

What’s amazing is what happens when you do this with children.  I hit on it when working at the foster home, where nearly all our kids were on the autism spectrum, and they weren’t “defiant” around me because I said things like, “How long do you need to stand here before we can move?” and “Come into the kitchen when you’re ready” instead of saying, “Stop staring out the window, let’s go,” or “Come eat dinner,” and interpreting hesitation as refusal to obey.

I have also definitely found that doing the “okay when I finish counting down from twenty is getting up time” has been useful.

Yup, that’s way better for toddlers and younger kids.  It helps when they don’t have the self-awareness, attention span, or concept of the passage of time to estimate when they’ll be ready by themselves.

Oh I meant for me. XD Saying it to myself.

WELL OKAY WHOOPS XD I should not have been overspecific, I was just thinking about teaching this stuff to the parents at my job and your reblog made me immediately think of you with Banana and the kidlets.

Another hack: when you want to get up but are stalled by your brain and frustrated – stop. Breathe. Think about what you want to do once you’re up, without thinking about getting up. Treat it like a fantasy, no pressure, just thinking about something you’d like to do in the future. Instead of thinking “I should get up” over and over, think about having a bagel for breakfast, or getting dressed in your soft green sweater. Imagine yourself doing the thing.

I find that exercise often side-steps the block and the next thing I know I’m out of bed and on my way to doing the other thing I thought about.

Works for other things too, if you’re stuck on one step and having a hard time doing it, think about the step after that. Need to do laundry and you can’t get yourself to gather up your dirty clothes in the hamper? Think instead about carrying the hamper full of dirty clothes to the laundry room. And when you get to that next step, if you get stuck again, think about the step after it – you have a hamper of dirty clothes that needs to be put in the wash, let your subconscious handle the “carry hamper to laundry room” step while you’re thinking about the “putting them in the wash” part.

YMMV of course, and this doesn’t even always work for me (particularly not when I need to do a collection of tasks in no particular order, like packing for a trip… “pack socks, pack underwear, pack toothbrush, pack pants, pack shirts” is the kind of non-linear task list where this trick doesn’t help at all), but it’s something I’ve found helpful often enough.

This is one of the most beautiful threads I’ve seen on Tumblr simply because it deals so compassionately with an issue so many of us have and can barely even articulate to ourselves, let alone to anyone else. <3

I think I get overwhelmed from the thought of all of the consequent steps, so maybe I’ll do the reverse of the advice above and try to focus on the first one.

@the-rain-monster i was just about to say something similar. that can work too sometimes. instead of going “ugh i need to eat something” for four hours, i try to focus on each step in turn.

and i mean each TINY step. just getting out of my chair has this many steps:

  1. pause music
  2. remove headphones
  3. hang headphones on laptop screen
  4. pick up laptop
  5. leg-bend recliner footrest shut
  6. set laptop aside
  7. stand

and i reckon that’s why i get stuck on it; because i’m trying to treat it as one thing, while executive dysfunction is treating it as seven things, and choking on trying to skip to step seven.

concurrent with this is a method i call ‘junebugging’. which is where i go to the location of the thing i want to do, and just sort of bump around the region like a big stupid beetle until the thing somehow accidentally magically gets done. this is an attempt to leverage ADHD into an advantage; i may not have the executive function to make myself a sandwich on purpose, but if i fidget in the kitchen long enough, some kind of food is going to end up in my mouth eventually. and hell, even if i fail on that front, i will probably have achieved something, even if it’s only pouring all my loose leaf tea into decorative jars.*

@star-anise please may i give you an internet hug *hug!* because god how i wish anyone had known to do that for me when i was a kid. my childhood was one big overload, and like 99% of the huge dramatic meltdowns that made me the scapegoat/laughingstock/target of my entire elementary school were simply due to people not giving me time to process the next step, and interpreting a bluescreen as defiance/insult.

*this happened when i was trying to do dishes actually but the principle is sound

yeah i absolutely echo what j’s saying about the steps, it’s a lot like that for me too. i get overwhelmed at the prospect of something that should be simple, and have to slow down and sort out how many steps it’s actually going to take, and what a complicated endeavor it actually is, even if no one else thinks so. 

also, i thought i should put in: try to honestly figure out what you’re averse to, that makes things so tough. making a whole bunch of decisions really fast? the potential of things to make a horrible noise? the shame of failure? having to put down what you’re doing now? having to clean up whatever it is you might go do when you’re done?

for instance, for me, the difficulty rating on anything goes waaaay up when a step of a task is ‘go somewhere people will look at you,’ which is for me about the unpleasantness equivalent of ‘jump into a very cold swimming pool right now’. you know you’ll be fine and even have fun once you’ve settled into it, but it still takes a lot of shuffling around and bracing yourself first to go for it. and some days you just don’t fucking want to go swimming.

i discounted this factor for years because i wouldn’t admit that i was so daunted by something so silly as as people looking at me. but, now i know what i’m so aversive about, i can factor it in to plans, and work around it, and be kind to myself. for instance, i was never able to get fit since highschool PE, because i couldn’t make myself go to a gym, or even out jogging. once i figured out the big problem wasn’t avoidance pain or difficulty, it was avoidance of doing a New Thing that i was Bad At in front of Unknown Quantities Of Strangers, which is like a triple threat of stressors, i started working out quietly and safely in my room at night, and i’ve been doing really good on it! 

Absolutely loving the tag #you don’t make a broken car work by yelling ALL THE OTHER CARS WORK FINE

This is also why I find nowdothis to be helpful, because i can put each and every item into it and then I only see one at a time, so I’m not overwhelmed by having 10 things to do, I only see what needs to be done now. ˆBut I am definitely going to try this with myself

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sunshinedaisieswindmills:

fragilecrushed:

after-crisis:

lumos-vs-nox:

The problem with suicidal thoughts is that they’re not just there when your sad. You’ll be there, chillin, reading a book or talking to a friend and you’ll think ‘This is nice. But do you know what would be better? Death.’

@lumos-vs-nox   This is referred to as “mild suicidal ideation“ or the desire for suicide without substantial action behind it. It often happens when someone deals with prolonged mental health issues and suicidality at a young age. When you’re young, we go through a period where our neural pathways completely rearrange- the things that happen to us at that time will influence these changes. In a way, suicidal ideation becomes an ingrained coping mechanism. A sort of “well at least suicide is always there for me”. Your brain is part-muscle, it remembers things, it learns, it’s super great at adapting, this is just a reflex. It doesn’t mean you are weak, it doesn’t mean you aren’t in recovery.

thank you for posting this, you turned a feeling many people have into words!

this is what healthy people don’t get

this is so important SO IMPORTANT

and i didn’t know this until right now and it like changed my whole outlook on my illness and recovery 

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thatoneqprblog:

merelyimmortal:

zetsubonna:

dapperpea:

glampersand:

heroscafe:

emmmpty:

autistictesla:

pneggy:

Pretend ur invasive self hating thoughts r being said to u by a 13 y/o boy on xbox live trying to get a rise out of you like
“Your girlfriend dumped you because you’re ugly”
that’s nice tim isn’t it past ur bedtime

also, if you have intrusive violent thoughts, pretend they’re being said to u by an annoying backseat driver

“drive into that pole”
thanks karen or i could not do that

Perfect

you can also pretend that the Super Paranoid thoughts are being said by that conspiracy theorist in your history class

“maybe they poisoned you”
maybe you should fuck off, geoffrey-with-a-g

OHH MAN I DO THIS SHIT EVERY DAY

My favorite for intrusive anxious thoughts is to pretend Spock’s behind you with an answer.

“did I lock the door-”

captain you have locked the door every day for over ten years, and it is very hard for most people to break even subconscious habits, so you most definitely locked the door

I told my new psychiatrist about how I learned this from y’all and his eyes lit up. He didn’t smile but he did nod a whole bunch of times, it was great.

I like to pretend that my intrusive thoughts are being said to me by a super uptight religious white lady

“god hates you because you don’t believe in him”
“your failures are too great to be forgiven by anyone”
“everything you do is wrong and you are going to burn in hell”

thanks for the input brenda but fuck right off

I would just like to say that I love you all for this idea.

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darkestelemental616:

mutisija:

the one adhd symtom that goes widely unknown is the “all or nothing” thing.

like if i am interested in something, i can devote my entire day for it without getting bored at all and if im not interested in it, paying attention to it even for short time is like torture

like i struggle with watching 5 minutes long video because im not that interested in it but i can watch all extended lotr movies on one sitting without getting even slightly bored (been there, done that) just because i love the lotr lore

That is hyperfocus (this is a link, yay)! And definitely one of the common traits of ADHD/ADD people that goes ignored, because people who aren’t properly educated about this think we can’t focus at all. It’s definitely ruined a good few diagnoses hey, if you can focus on one single thing clearly you’re not ADHD! 

“Children and adults with ADD have difficulty shifting attention from one thing to another,” says Russell Barkley, Ph.D., a research professor of psychiatry at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York. “If they’re doing something they enjoy or find psychologically rewarding, they’ll tend to persist in this behavior after others would normally move on to other things. The brains of people with ADD are drawn to activities that give instant feedback.”

This is why one of my biggest pet peeves is someone talking to me without giving me a moment to change gears (looking at you hubby). If i’m reading or otherwise preoccupied and you just start talking to me, I’m going to miss the first few things you say because I need to shift my focus.