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Thanks to my ADHD I came across as random. But it’s not “Lol, Monkey Muffin! See so random1”
It’s one thing will remind me of another, which will remind me of another, and that will remind me of another.
So let’s say someone’s talking about aliens, that makes me think of crop circles and cows, cows! Cow and Chicken, the raunchy 90’s kid’s show that really would have been on Adult Swim if that was a thing back then, oh my god Adult Swim! Aqua Teen Hunger Force, I love Master Shake… Oh God milkshakes! I really am craving some chocolate right now.
So while the other person is talking about aliens, I respond not really having heard what they’re talking about with…
“Did you know that the stereotype that women like chocolate actually has a basis in truth, you see during menstrual ramps the human body burns through its supplies of magnesium, causing the body to seek more, a common foodstuff with magnesium is chocolate. So the body is told to seek out chocolate, but the person in question is not conciously aware of the specifics. It’s rather strange isn’t it? How our random cravings are often just the cure to what’s ailing us?”
And it looks like I’m weird and not paying attention, when I am, but… to a long chain that no one else can see.
I don’t have ADHD, but my trick for introducing these chain-of-thought topics back into conversation is like this:
- One degrees of separation: normal topic, can be added to conversation with no introduction
- Two degrees of separation: “You mentioned ______, which made me think of _______”
- More than two degrees of separation: Either don’t bother, or, if it’s really interesting, then wait for a good time and then hit 'em with "Hey guys, sorry to interrupt, this is kind of random but I just thought of… "
Works pretty well most of the time.
I do have ADHD.
The issue is that the chain-of-thought is always at least 10 long and growing faster than you can speak or consciously keep up with. When you’re that deep in it, you’ve already forgotten what the first link in the chain was and how it relates to the conversation, or what the other person’s talking about entirely.
So it’s always don’t bother, “sorry what did you say?” or “here’s something random but super tangentially related but I can’t really explain why”
How does it work when you’re in a conversation with other ADHD people? Is it just as tough? Or do yalls conversations just go at a faster rate to keep up with a chains of thoughts? Sorry if I"m asking too much, just curious
Sometimes you get multiple simultaneous conversations!
Or do yalls conversations just go at a faster rate to keep up with a chains of thoughts?
Pretty much this + a de facto understanding that this shit happens and it feels less futile explaining the chain (or what you remember of it). And sometimes “how the fuck did we even get on this topic” becomes a fun minigame.
Dang. Good idea. I just need to remember to do that
My brain works a lot like this, too. I’m pretty sure I’ve got ADHD, but I was never diagnosed. Things also improved markedly when I started taking anxiety meds. I still struggle a bit, but it’s much less debilitating now that I don’t have a bunch of intrusive thoughts and other anxieties feeding it.
It’s now actually somewhat helpful because I’ve got it mostly under control, and allows me to connect really unrelated thoughts and evaluate them without going all the way down the rabbit hole.
Just don’t ask me to put the garbage bag in the garbage can after I take it out lol
Anxiety and ADHD have big synergy. How much you overthink something and how many things you have to overthink. It’s multiplicative, not additive.
Remember when My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic became big?
I babysat kids at the time and ended up watching it a lot with them. I couldn’t help relating to the character Pinkie Pie. To most outside observers, she’s random as hell. But if you pay attention, she’s really thinking several steps ahead of the others. There was an episode where she clearly figured out a solution early on, but nobody else is on her level, so although she went about working toward the solution in the background, one could easily assume she was just dicking around. Then near the end, everything comes together. She knew the problem, she knew the solution, and now she’s there to save the day.
She is ADHD incarnate, complete with outside assumptions that underestimate her intelligence and abilities. But if you’ve also got a brain that jumps from topic-to-topic at a rapid pace, it can be easy to understand her “random” (not random at all) trains of thought.
I’ll never forget what it was like to share an officie with 2 other people with adhd. I’d start talking about one topic, jump three topics over because they’re obviously related, and they’d just follow along without needing me to hold their hand. It was amazing
There’s one thing I feel isn’t mentioned too much in relation to ADHD that I feel like is worth sharing, from my personal experience with it’s diagnosis and trying to solve it both through medication and therapy. I’m not saying anyone else has the same situation, but it’s something worth considering since the realization helped me tremendously to deal with it.
While I do probably have a mild case of ADHD, the root of the problem wasn’t as much that, but a totally fucked up attention span and basically an addiction to spending time at a computer, which was literally 90% of what I did for most of my life ever since I started playing at Dreamcast when I was 4. It was what magnified the symptoms and made it so much worse, and it’s something that meds won’t help with. Especially for younger people who grew up with smarthphones and social networks, it may play a huge part in making their life a lot worse, and it’s pretty similar to ADHD as far as symptoms are considered. Once I started dealing with this, limiting my time with instantly gratifying things, making new hobbies outside of a computer (which was insanely hard) and learning some patience, I got way better.
If you’re dealing with ADHD, both diagnosed or undiagnosed, it’s something worth thinking about. I’m not saying your situation is the same, or that everyone’s ADHD is just bullshit and they are addicted to scrolling. Just offering my experience as a food for thought, because it’s something that helped me personally and I haven’t seen it mentioned too much.
Thank you for offering this perspective!
I’ve realized there are a lot of things that seem to exacerbate ADHD, or even trigger someone to lose focus. I remember when Twitter was new, and I slowly came to realize that people were inadvertently being trained to pay attention in smaller and smaller snippets. Then a decade later, we get TikTok, which is basically Twitter for videos.
A scroll of hundreds of small bits of novelty are being consumed and immediately discarded by millions of people a day. Writing more than a paragraph in some places leads to someone remarking, TL;DR. I understand having trouble focusing - almost every time I write a comment on here, it takes forever, at the least because whatever song is stuck repeating in my head is playing “louder” than the words I’m consciously trying to think of. I suppose I’m lucky to have grown up before the internet became an information-selling dopamine train.
The good news for those of us on Lemmy is, at least we’re in a “slower” environment here (at least, right now.) It’s a good step for someone trying to wean themselves off more rapid-fire social media. (Also, there are several ADHD communities here where people get it.)
One more thing that I realized through introspection - having a parent that instilled anxiety in you can absolutely increase ADHD behaviors. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be as hyper vigilant if it weren’t for my mom filling me with her own anxieties as a child. That hyper-vigilance means that no matter what I’m doing, I still have a strong awareness of my surroundings, and every little sound or light (or other stimulus) that stands out will distract me even further. I have friends that can truly zone out despite such things, and I remember being able to do that when I was little, but now I can barely relax enough to fall asleep. Ah well.
Bro where are all these hot neurodivergent women that just want to talk at me for 2 hours straight ?(I can’t carry a conversation and like listening)
Tinder, bro…
I have a pretty good csee of ADHD and was diagnosed in 1991 when it was relatively new and didn’t have the stigma. If a date told me that, I’d walk right out. I don’t need someone who denies my illness in my life. What an insufferable prick.
Doctors be out there medicalizing people
One of the very few advantages of being neurodivergent is it is unbelievably easy to make sure someone will never want to talk to you again. Just stop making efforts to act “normal”.
Meh what the fuck is “normal” anyway? There is no such thing.
I actually love my (diagnosed) ADHD friends who talk for hours and jump from topic to topic. I love listening to people and at least they keep it entertaining.
I like the non diagnosed friends, I just wanted to make it a point, just cause people talk a lot doesn’t mean they have ADHD.
I don’t remember how to unmask. 😶
Sorry for the hyperfocus rant.
tl;dr: analyze other peoples personalities to see what you notice and care about in a personality, then ask people who know you well to score you and compare the results with your own self-score. This shows you how people actually see you and how far that is from your self perception. Then you can look at the degree to which that’s a result of masking and see what your mask actually covers. Going forward, when you notice thoughts or impulses that don’t fit with others’ impression of you, you can make a conscious choice about whether to embrace them or not.
My therapist told me to make a list of things that make up a personality in others, because I couldn’t figure out what my personality was, though other people assured me, I had one. I looked at coworkers to make the list, because my coworkers are all wildly different from each other, but you could also do it with fictional characters or your family or friends.
My list is roughly as follows:
Optimism
Honesty
Helpfulness (whether you’re willing to go out of your way, lose face, or give something up for others)
Chillness (how much do you work yourself up unnecessarily, basically. Do you go with the flow or worry about things and/or let them eat at you)
Jokiness
Reaction to authority
Bravery
Thoughtfulness/curiosity(do they think about the things they and others do and form theories as to why or do they leave emotions and motives unexplored
Then, I asked my sister, my best friend, and my husband to put me on a 1-5 scale for each of those categories and did it for myself, so I could compare them.
Be aware: people who love you love your personality and it might be very overwhelming or otherwise difficult for you to accept a bunch of good things about yourself.
My husband said the closest fictional analog he could find was a mix of Kes and Lwaxanna Troi from Star Trek and Amy Santiago from Brooklyn 99, which made me cry and feels like I’m bragging. I thought of myself as unempathetic, impatient, and disorganized, so it was also difficult to accept. I also think of myself as really chill and relaxed, but alas, nobody around me does.
My therapist pointed out that only I get to see my inner thoughts, so I get a “sausage-getting-made” perspective of myself, whereas others get the finished product. It’s kind of the inverse of the fallacy (I cannot for the life of me search for the right combination of words to name this) where you attribute your own lateness to traffic or an unpredictable laundry issue or something out of your control, but when others are late, you think it’s because they dropped the ball.
I’m now realizing that this is maybe not actually breaking down the mask, but recognizing (and to a degree, appreciating) it. I do think there’s a difference between a mask and a normal politeness filter though, and I also think those people have seen behind my mask enough during meltdowns etc. to know who I am regardless.
Internal vs external locus of control!
Thank you for the hyperfocus rant.
That’s a good one. I think my categories are not the most succinct (but they work for me), and that would be partially covered by chillness, optimism, and bravery, but not entirely. I don’t know if I can observe the locus of control in coworkers especially well, but I’ll definitely be thinking about it on my next shift.
I think mine is external, but I also think there’s no point in doing anything if one thinks that, so I pretend it’s not. I don’t know if that makes sense, but it feels like: even if I can’t really make a difference in how things go, I have to try. If I don’t, it feels like surrendering to entropy, which is going to happen at some point (death), but I should at least put up a good fight first.
I mask fine sober but throw in a little weed and you’re getting a six hour lesson on black hole holography.
Pm me next time you are high, I want to listen.
In that case, what time are you coming over? I just got a new e-vape and you would fit right in at our party.
“Hang on a sec! I have a power point!”
Seems like you just need to find the right people then, because I’m certain that there are tons who would love to discuss that shit with you all night.
Never heard of black hole holography. What is that?
Black hole, son. Don’t you come.
I’m gonna come.
deleted by creator
How do I subscribe?
I think I would like to hear this six hour lesson, Radioactive Butthole.
Does it involve trains in any way, shape or form?
You know it really bothers me that Train obsession is such a hallmark trait of Autism because I was (and still am a little bit) completely obsessed with trains. I had a model train layout, I had train wallpaper, I asked for train things for my birthday, all I ever talked about was all train all the time and not one single adult was ever like “hey maybe this kid who is struggling in school and has no friends and is obsessed with trains is a bit on the spectrum?”.
I turned out more or less fine but I often wonder how much pain and suffering could have been avoided, or at least contextualized, if even one adult in my life was like, “hey wait this isn’t normal for a 10 year old”.
Trains are fuckin awesome man, and I don’t know why, but goddamn do I love watching them, and hearing them and riding them.
Edit: also I am down for your dissertation on black holes, but I get to talk at you about terrible music and all the production with WAT too much enthusiasm.
Anyone who wants this kind of combo should read Peter Hamilton’s Commonwealth Saga (Pandora’s Star and Judas Unchained). Literally a society built around a train network connected with wormholes between planets.
I want to hang out with you.
But I’d rather be sober so I can take notes
I just talk to them like I talk with my cats, albeit with a few fewer queries about if they’ve been cleaning their ass.
You say that, but I remember getting into it with people in college and going back and forth straight into the AM because we couldn’t stop fueling one another.
Couldn’t get enough of that level of socialization. It’s one of the things I miss most about the university experience. Made a lot of really good long term friendships during that time, too.
Horrible for hooking up, though.
Check if you have a local makerspace or hackspace. They tend to attract a similar crowd. My local one is definitely majority neurospicy.
Oh definitely. My local DSA group has quite a few of them as well.
But it’s a different game when you’re not on campus, surrounded by people your age, spending hours a day in class surrounded by collaborative peers. If I could quit my job and spend all my time on hobbies (and everyone else could, too) I’m sure my dance card would be fuller.
Are you saying college isn’t a good place to hook up?
I will now proceed to spend the next three hours reciting a sample of the vast amount of useless information I have absorbed from Wikipedia.
yay. (TT_TT)
Is… Is this a win? Wasting 2 hours of your life in an attempt to teach a lesson to some rando you’ll never see again?
hello!
time you enjoyed wasting is not wasted time.
Time is never wasted when you’re wasted all the time?
If you enjoy it - it’s never wasted time
Time is unwasted if you enjoyed spending waste!
Are we just saying the same thing?
Time’s fun when you’re having flies!
Cant stop giggling. Stealing this.
I stole it from somewhere myself 😁
think it was Kermit but I’m not sure 🤷
Fruit flies like a yeast
I don’t think the 2 hour ramble was an intentional attempt at teaching a lesson.
Feels more like a failure on the part of her date. A big part of active listening is keying in on things you’re interested in and leading the conversation in that direction.
People with ADHD rambling at me for an hour was what I did before podcasts.
Yeah and based on what the dude said, I don’t really peg him as big on “active listening”.
If it was fun for you then yes (nothing wasted in that case).
She was going to be talking anyway
Isn’t the point that her actual neurological condition made it harder for her to control herself from going on a long rant, simultaneously explaining and demonstrating how his diagnosis isn’t as bad as he thinks it is?
sorry for the guy
Bringing that up in a conversation about struggles for neurodivergent people, not strictly true but might be appropriate as there’s something to be said there. Bringing that up when a ND person tells you their diagnosis is not ok and denying the person’s experience.
Why?
As in “I feel sorry for the guy” or "I’m sorry for the guys behavior?
I meant “I feel sorry for the guy”, which turned out to be an unpopular opinion.
well they deserve each other.
Both these people suck.
Yeah! Having ADHD makes you suck just as much as someone who says ignorant shit about mental health!
It’s fascinating to me how some people seem to be interpreting her ADHD behavior, which she specifically warned the date about, was somehow a punishment that she did voluntarily and not, you know, the literal thing she warned him about.
I have ADHD. He’s ignorant about mental disorders and she handled his response like a child. They both suck.
She went on the date, and did date-like things. He was warned how she be.
I’m okay with being belligerent to people who are condescending.
Um. A gold star for her, I guess.Childish behavior, but you do you I guess.
Nah
