Insert horrified looks when I tell me friends some “funny stories” from my childhood. :D
eye contact? no clue how much or how little is appropriate
why good at school? adhd and being smart do not exclude one another
AuDHD death stare intensifies
When half my concentration in a given conversation goes to behaving “properly” (trying not to fidget, maintaining a hopefully appropriate amount of relaxed eye contact without staring, appearing attentive but relaxed), half goes to figuring out whether, how, when and what to contribute and I also have to listen and process the words because I occasionally struggle with understanding spoken language… yeah, sure, I may seem normal, but something somewhere is gonna drop off the radar.
Whether I say something appropriate or hit the right timing to chime in without either interrupting or being too late becomes (even more of) a gamble, which stresses me out and causes anxiety, further taking away focus and composure. Alternatively, I become quiet and feel more like an observer on the sidelines than a part of the conversation, isolated by my own struggles. Or I blunder and say something wrong and retreat to that isolation in shame. Or I don’t really hear what you’re saying, lose track of the conversation, am caught off-guard by the odd question cast my way, or simply retreat from trying to contribute because I don’t even know what we’re talking about, back into the same isolation.
I’m a chatty person. But I’m scared to chat with most people. Doing so leaves me either mentally or emotionally drained and upset. I hide away, retreat to the internet where I can better regulate my participation, make excuses not to attend company events, let social contacts slip away because maintaining them is too much stress, struggle to make doctor’s appointments or call for a med refill…
If you think I seem normal - thanks for the compliment, I worked really hard on that facade. I’m glad it’s working.
But inside, I die a little each time.
It seems to me that mental health issues, including, but not limited to, ADHD, are being taken more seriously.
Previously, the lazy, slacker, troublemaker kids were just beaten until they did what they were told.
Yeah, I’d say the threat of violence is a pretty good motivator to overcome the symptoms of mental conditions, and at least mask so hard that people can’t tell that you’re a complete fucking mess, right up until the day that your mental health degrades so much that you off yourself.
Thanks.
Ever wonder why so many people break down in their 30’s/40’s?
I thought the mid 30s nervous breakdown was just the next big adult milestone…drive, vote, buy tobacco, gamble, buy alcohol, rent a car, get married, buy a house, have a kid, have a nervous breakdown, get a colonoscopy, and then just wait for the clutches of death.
I don’t, but I’m sure other people are completely mystified.
So what you’re saying is, physical violence against kids works to prevent symptoms of ADHD&autism from being too debilitating? Cause I’m not sure that’s the message you wanna put out there.
“works” is doing some heavy lifting here. ND people having to mask is stressful. It’s not for our primary benefit, it’s for others. It’ “works” the same way that beatings “work” to prevent left-handedness.
Removed by mod
“Everyone is wearing a mask” is papering over the fact that for some that mask weighs way heavier and does damage to their mental health. Masking ND is not the same as having to put on a nice face when you don’t actually feel like it.
You have to remove the ableist slurs
A psychiatrist once told me that while probably hace adhd, i also have cptsd, i left with a script for SNRIs (awesome!)
:(
“Pug, you’re an incredibly smart kid, but you’re lazy.”
Me, unable to remember homework, but acing every test and going above-and-beyond on any project with freeform requirements, leading to solid Bs and Cs despite half my assignments being a flat 0 for not being turned in: “Yeah.”
… kind of wish someone looked a little deeper into the issue at the time.
I feel this comment.
One problem I had though was that some of my teachers were like, “I think he should be tested for ADHD and/or autism,” and my parents going on a tirade about it not being real or some shit.
Of course I only found that out after I got diagnosed with ADHD (still haven’t got the courage to ask my doc about autism though) and told my parents therefore triggering they’re tirade aimed at me where they mentioned my teachers talking about it pretty consistently in school.
Would have loved getting that diagnosis when I was younger than 29.
My mother was actually very open about mental illness, took it very seriously. I was diagnosed bipolar from a young age because she was looking out for me.
Unfortunately, the idea of ‘ADHD’ in the minds of non-specialist observers was tied in with the idea of hyperactivity at the time, and I was anything but a hyperactive kid.
I’m inattentive type ADHD so maybe that was a contributing factor to why my parents felt they way they did about it
They generally take mental health seriously but for somethings they’re pretty damn backwards on
I kinda wonder how the fuck I wasn’t diagnosed as a kid but my siblings were. I remember going to a therapist as a kid and yet nothing was said or done about any problems I had.
Growing up neurodivergent in the 80s and not being disruptive enough to demand said deeper look may lead to:
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Internalization of negative self-worth
- Avoidance of formal higher education
- Early burnout
- Lifelong vague dissatisfaction
- Disillusionment with the world and its systems
- Being terminally online searching frantically for the next dopamine hit
Help lol
It ain’t much but it’s honest work.
Oh hey thanks! I was looking for that!
Who are you and how did you read my diary?
Same. There’s more of us?
… uncle jerry?
Uhhhh oh boy heh…
I only have about half of those, so…yay?
Ha. Rookie! /j
You got the “good” (/s) adhd. There’s the other adhd where you suck at tests because you can’t pay attention and you don’t do the homework or projects either.
Well, I definitely didn’t pay attention in class. I slept through a number of my classes on the regular. But I was a little bookworm desperately short of books, so I gleefully and willingly poured over the textbooks in my free time. Or in math class, which bored me to tears and I was never any good at.
We have starkly different opinions about our textbooks. I found mine achingly uninteresting. Regular fiction/fantasy/sci-fi books? I could devour a novel in a day. “Sailed the ocean blue in 1492”? Couldn’t be bothered.
Our literature textbooks had Asimov and Twain, while history has always been an obsession of mine. Science was good too, until it got into chemistry, at which point it veered too much into math for me to care.
Sounds more interesting than ours, which had snippets of made-up quotes or stories to demonstrate proper form when writing. History is awesome in my current opinion, it’s fascinating. In school it was nothing more than being forced to memorize names, dates, and places. I’ll diverge from your opinion on math here, I hated it in regular school, but I really enjoyed college maths like physics because it had application and real-world results. Not just pointlessly solving versions of a^2 + b^2 = c^2.
Different strokes…
High potential + severe adhd => ticking bomb
My mom used to talk in code a lot for no fucking reason. She’d throw out the weirdest segues and irrelevant stories. When I (barely) graduated from a gifted kids high school, she jumped from telling me she was proud of me, to telling me that when my sister was little, all her teachers told her that she should be “tested” - heavily implying it was for learning disabilities - and added that “none of [her] babies are retarded.”
2 things - that sister had dyscalculia and never got beyond an associates degree because she kept failing math. And it took until my mom died to figure out she was also talking about me - and every one of my siblings.When going through my mom’s things, I found out that she ignored the advice of several teachers and school counselors to get me tested for ADHD. Because she didn’t want a ‘damaged’ kid.
Can’t have ADHD if you don’t get tested! Fucking brilliant.
Now that’s a tough pill to swallow. How’d you cope with that?
It prompted me to begin the process of being evaluated.
Insofar as the emotional aspects?
I had made a choice not to speak with her many years before. She was a badly broken person who refused to change in any way. Her response to having her failings pointed out was defensiveness and accusations against the accuser.
Sometimes you doubt yourself when it comes to cutting off a parent. Was it really that bad? Were they really that harmful?
I don’t think it’s fair to say I ever hated her. I went from mad to sad for her, to just disappointed.
Learning these things about her was more or less met with a bitter chuckle. Rueful, I suppose. It was further validation that she put her ego over my well-being. But I can’t change what is. I can’t undo a life of forgetting, of failing at things because despite accidentally deploying almost every ADHD coping mechanism, I still needed additional help.
I do regret that I didn’t know I had ADHD much earlier in life. It would have made so many things easier. I’m probably delayed about 10-15 years professionally because of struggles in school, as well as poor social skills (which are better in recent years, mind you). My most noticeable symptom is that I have object permanence issues - awareness of ADHD probably would have prevented me from developing some negative self assumptions*, and perhaps empowered me to not harm, or at least mitigate some of that harm for people who just ceased to exist for me when life was tumultuous and my working memory was too small to encompass them.
*And the assumptions are, if not valid, then reasonable to understand - when I am not interacting with someone, they just crystallize in my head into the person they last were. I have crushes on people I haven’t seen in years because they haven’t changed in my head. Conversely, I have a friendship with another object permanence person that is fantastic. We see each other once or twice a year and it’s like we never stopped talking. But for most people I atrophy and attenuate. I fade. People forget me. They get upset because I don’t reach out. I don’t remember they exist. And so when I see someone I haven’t seen in years and I remember them and want to give them a big hug and treat them like they are exactly as close as we were the last time we saw each other, they (rightfully) treat me like a stranger, and it hurts in a way that I … am going to talk to my therapist about, because I’m off the rails. But I feel that I don’t have a social home, because there’s no place my social self lives. I am a ghost.
That’s why I picked this username, actually. Because it means I’m still here.That is a beautiful but tragic story. I’m in a similar situation, ADHD/autism - got diagnosed way too late literally after high school and after trying desperately to begin college and struggling ridiculously hard. I am basically 30 now I struggle with the same things you mentioned. “People permanence” is a problem for me too. I struggle with socializing and relationships too in so many ways I can’t possibly keep up. I often feel very lonely no matter who is there talking with me.
I want to give you a virtual hug as I could had written the exact same things for me. I struggle with the same stuff and now being close to my 40s it is exhausting. I got diagnosed with ADHD before almost 5 years but as I look deeper into I tend to believe it must be more like a childhood trauma result than just genetics. Lookup C-PTSD and the overlapping symptoms are way too much for this would be just a coincidence. But every step towards a better situation is a good step.
Fuck, man, the stigmatization of neurodivergence has done so much damage to so many people :(
It really, really has.
I got this but my parents did know I had ADHD. My mom didn’t want to put me on mods though, so I mostly just got weird stuff done to manage it. Like making me sit in the bathroom with no distractions, not allowed to leave until homework was done, among other things.
ADHD still affects me in the workplace, but I’m fortunately in a position where it’s not too detrimental and my bosses both like me and understand my challenges.
I did all my homework in the next claas, so at the end of the day I had one thing left, which I’d do in the first class the next morning. Didn’t carry books home.
How’d that turn out? How’d college and/or employment go?
Poorly, on both. I took longer than normal to complete my degree’s credits, and spiraling depression and anxiety closed off most of the ‘usual’ avenues of employment. I eventually managed to scrape out a living in a field which didn’t require my degree. C’est la vie.
Damn. We are so similar. At 50 and having my kids diagnosed I am finally realizing why.
I feel like that’s a common outcome, unfortunately.
Same here. I didn’t get diagnosed until a couple of years ago but the signs were always there…
Now I’m just biding my time until my youngest two get the diagnosis (my husband and I both are ADHD, and our other kids have already been diagnosed).
And now these horribly abused children are adults with their own children.
Thankfully a lot of them are learning to break the cycle of parental mental abuse
You don’t have to die alone!
You can get sterilized then start (or join) an anarcho-communist polyamorous commune. If you find the right mix of traumas, it can function really well! Or end in fire. But it will be exciting, and you won’t be alone!
Oh good, find a whole group of people to disappoint instead of one at a time.
I agree, my anarcho-communist polycule is fun. And very queer.
That’s what we need, more good old sex cults.
"They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself. "
"Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself. "
I did not get out early, but my eventual spouse and I were on the same page: the crazy stops with me.
My sister had different plans and now has two neurodivergent kids. ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ
I’m pretty sure that one of my parents and their siblings are all ND. I don’t think it’s terrible, but the unawareness certainly is.
Agreed. At least one of them has been in for assessment, not sure about the other but the signs are there.
And I should probably clarify. There’s other (undiagnosed) mental illness that runs in my family, and one side in particular is rife with substance abuse. Whether the root of those issues can be traced to “benign” forms of neurodivergence is moot outside of genetics: the learned behavioral patterns of abuse and violence were pretty deeply ingrained. I only got to see some of it growing up, but it was enough. I wanted nothing to do with any of it. My brother fell into the drug trap in early adulthood. My sister was the youngest, and was thankfully shielded from the worst of the family bullshit. She still did the same thing my mom did though: had kids way too young with a meathead, and not enough money.
I am trying to be a role model for my nephew in particular, but as my shit isn’t exactly together it’s an uphill battle. There’s a whole world of toxic influencers out there taking in the bucks by telling him who and what to blame his problems on, all available at the tap of a screen. And then there’s… gestures vaguely at the world at large …yeah.
Awe, she had one to make up for you! How sweet of her!
Read Neurotribes by Steve Silberman
One asshole at Hopkins, leo kanner, sat on neuridiversity info all through most boomer childhoods.
Their parents got blamed for it by their own depression-era parents.
There was only one way to be, only certain foods, everything else was either a sin or a personal failure. Those kids could not answer questions honestly, just repeat back the same approved cultural pablum that maga wants to go back to.
Simple has several meanings.
The only light was Dr. Spock, but too subtle for many readers, he had to couch things carefully in his time and the culture was deafening.
Only after Lorna Wing released her work in the 70s did it start to normalise for some Gen Xers.
*Mr. Spock 🖖
Him too. Leonard Nimoy’s character was a pretty good template for the “cool nerd”
I related to him strongly, but talking that way was outrageous at the time, when I did it I felt more at ease but people got angry.
I’ve wondered if Spock was a nod to Dr. Spock by Roddenberry, because he was a cultural icon at the time, including being roasted by comedians and newspaper columnists.
All this current environment happened in steps and leaps and with people building on previous work.
Bill W was going around with bottles of LSD to try to break addiction at 12 step meetings, beatniks led to hippies, the culture was cracking open at the seams, meanwhile all boomers are the same and never dealt with any personal or cultural struggles, since there were no protests about the war in Vietnam or musicians dying of overdoses or people shot at Kent State or the president then his brother being shot to death. No struggles at all.
In contrast, at that time neurodiversity was a small issue, it rarely made the papers in a time when even plain old gayness was shocking enough. When it did it was just filler about weird intractable kids in Dear Abby, no mention of leaded gas fumes and cigarette smoke everywhere people went, no thought of Agent Orange factories or burning rivers having anything to do with it…why can’t these kids act normal?
A ND kid in the 60s was just laughable and weird and hopeless, nerd was not a nice word at all, no love in its usage.
Unless they shrugged resignedly and masked. People who were kids from that time still reflexively use NT behaviors as reference points, that’s how one got through.
It wasn’t a joke: I still have a chip missing from a front tooth from having my face rammed into the rail of a schoollbus seat.
lol i know, no reason to downvote 😅
I loved how mental healthcare was treated like satanism in the '90s. Especially by the religious.
That’s because mental health care threatens to dismantle the carefully crafted delusions the church has worked for millennia to establish.
With certain very rare exceptions to specific individuals…
Fuck the Boomers.
And their parents.
Signed “You’ll never be able to function in normal civilized society with that attitude!”
Dick parfaits for the lot of em.
I was told that I was under the influence of demons! Which, to a child raised in a deeply religious household, will absolutely destroy any sense self-worth you have. Especially when the goal is to make you act like the complete opposite of who / what you simply are at your core.
Too bad for my parents, because now I both don’t like people and have a burning hatred for religious establishments!
I was forced to adapt for survival but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a struggle. Also I didn’t do “fine” in school, though that’s the front I put up. In reality I barely graduated high school and scraped by with like a 1.8 GPA, couldn’t get into college, and got kicked out of community college. And I hurt a lot of people I cared deeply about along the way too.
So similar.
She knew your parents well.
Kids are getting diagnosed with mental health issues, and I’m hearing a lot less about kids killing their parents…
Imagine how they treated Grandma as a child, then.
Grandma gets a lot of leeway from me, as she grew in WW1, lived through WW2 and was tortured during the civil war. She has hard as steel. For me it’s still a funny story, especially since at the time I was hiding under a desk scream-crying “iiiiiiiiii” like a goddamn bombing alarm and she just wanted me to shut up :D
