It hasn't been that much longer of a break for me (4 and a half day weekend), but new years doesn't usually have me going to several dinners like Christmas or Thanksgiving and I actually got some really good rest, but I'm extremely upset at the idea of going back to work, it doesn't help that I don't like my job, but I'm too the point that I want to breakdown and/or quit. I've had similar experiences in school, and I'm curious to see if others have this or just me

I thought I'd make a list of all the useful dopamine maxxing tricks Lemmy shared with me in one place. I have actually tried some of them, and I detail what worked for me below the list.

Original Post: https://literature.cafe/post/27067980

I also made a list of all the awesome Music People shared.

Top Voted Tricks

• Distract yourself with trauma and emotional stress
  • (not recommended by user)
• High BPM Music (Beats Per Minute)
• Pharmacological Balance
• /u/garlicandonions@lemmy.world's List
  • Good Sleep (Set a routine)
  • Hard Workout (Preferably in the morning)
  • Protein Focused Diet
  • Therapy, journaling, applying emotional regulation skills
  • Nature walks in the day
  • Mindfulness Meditation
  • Avoid Sugar/caffeine/+ crashes
  • Give your brain a break
  • Avoid distractions
  • Fidget Toys
  • Prescribed stimulants
  • One habit at a time
• Motorcycle spin, the air, noise, traffic, vibrations, complex smells.
• Smoke some weed to initiate stuff
  • (not recommended by user)
• Create a Distraction Free Environment meant only for Work.
• Save ADHD Tips Post
• Some Drugs

I did not list the drugs mentioned, because I don't understand them and would not recommend anything I don't understand. I am not a doctor. Check with your Doctor what works best for you.

Things that have definitely worked for me:

• High BPM music
  • Music in general gets me pumping, especially electronic high BPM music with drops.
  • Some music that makes me feel good, gives me more "energy"
  • I think I actually get a small rush with certain music.
  • One of the users said that it should be something that "scratches" your adhd brain.
  • Downside: You can associate music with work.
• Therapy, Journaling, Applying emotional regulation skills
  • Writing down what I feel, and when I feel dysregulated and need to procrastinate has helped me identify a lot of my triggers.
  • Downside: You have to spend energy journaling.
• Morning Exercise
  • Exercising feels good.
  • Downside: Very high energy demand (mental).
• Clearing distractions
  • Close door
  • Getting rid of phone, and other distractions is very helpful. I highly recommend it.
  • Downside: I don't see any.

Mixed Bag:

• Creating an Environment to just work
  • Ehh, I think, this can backfire, especially if you are also an anxious sort. You'd hate the place where you "just work".
  • But It helps having an environment where others are working and not actively disturbing you.
• Meditation/Mindfulness
  • have tried for months, it hasn't been very helpful with ADHD.
  • But is good for stress relief, maybe that's how it helps. But it isn't significant.
• Regular breaks
  • Your brain needs them, but you can lose track or time and you will have starting troubles again.
• Gamified Pomodoro
  • Spent way too much time creating these or searching for these. Always gave them up, because they were just more "work".
  • But a simple pomodoro is actually helpful.
• Nature walks
  • Requires you to get out, and requires you to have nature near you.
  • But It is good for stress relief and clearing up your mind.

Extras - My own tips and things I have heard elsewhere:

• No Zero Days
  • Just do whatever you can do. This can sometimes jumpstart a hyperfocus session because it makes you feel like you didn't completely waste the day or you figured something out that you didn't before.
• Start your day by cleaning up your room
  • Helps you feel decluttered and frees you of possible distractions.
• Write down any distracting thoughts into a Diary
  • It helps getting back into your flow.

List of music people suggested:

• Darude - Sandstorm: https://youtu.be/y6120QOlsfU
• Super Touhou Eurobeat Mix: https://youtu.be/nbsYoYZWhhs
• Mars Volta
  • Meccamputechture: https://youtu.be/4B76mnzf4Wo
  • Drunkship of lanterns: https://youtu.be/crknkUbmKac
• Typhoon Devil - Chainsawman: https://youtu.be/uItMM3v4RTo
• Gamelan Music - Indonesia: https://youtu.be/UEWCCSuHsuQ
• Chipzel - Spectar: https://youtu.be/9TTnTu3ql_g
• Parliament - Flashlight: https://youtu.be/bWurqD68u70

Other Artists

• Yanni
• Tool
• Coheed
• Bach
• Vocaloid
• phonk

Does anyone else experience variation in what the effect of their meds feels like?

I've gradually increased my dose to 2 x 30 mg of slow release methylphenidat and have had a couple of days where I felt fantastic. Very focused but also calm and balanced. I had this very strong feeling of "really being myself" as in being able to use my full potential as a person.

Then I have some days where I barely notice anything and today I've mostly just felt jittery and a bit anxious. I can feel the stimulating effect on my body (higher heart rate) but without the mentally calming effect.

Happy New Year ADHDers!

As promised, here are the results of our scientifically rigorous poll about which things are the worst for taking over your dopamine system:

1. Scrolling
2. Someone is wrong on the Internet
3. Phone notifications
4. Video games
5. Maladaptive daydreaming
6. Unfinished projects that should be quick to finish
7. Sleep-deprivation-induced mania
8. Alcohol
9. Reading internet to drown out own thoughts
10. Expensive hobbies

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/36396518

no rules

transcription: was i productive this week? no. as i able to relax? also no. but was i at least gentle with myself about all of this no.

ADHD stimulants appear to work less by sharpening focus and more by waking up the brain. Brain scans revealed that these medications activate reward and alertness systems, helping children stay interested in tasks they would normally avoid. The drugs even reversed brain patterns linked to sleep deprivation. Researchers say this could complicate ADHD diagnoses if poor sleep is the real underlying problem.

edit here is another article

https://medicine.washu.edu/news/stimulant-adhd-medications-work-differently-than-thought/

i tend to be a bit of a yapper, very loud (theres an interesting reverse-masking thing going on there, which if anyones interested, lmk and ill explain) and tend to be quite rude.

really inside, im a quiet person, but i tend to impulsively speak and be loud, and say things i dont really want to say, e.g. being rude.

these are things i really want to deal with. when i talk less, and be quieter like i am inside, i tend to be much happier. does anyone have any tips?

Comment with one of your worst dopamine hijackers; something which takes over and hogs your dopamine system, and on New Years Day I'll go through the comments and rank the top ten on how many upvotes they get and edit this post with the results as well as make a new post. Maybe even make a New Years Resolution based on it!

If there are any duplicates only the one with the most upvotes will be counted. Any comments/replies which are chat or reactions will obviously be disregarded from the final count.

Results:

1. Scrolling
2. Someone is wrong on the Internet
3. Phone notifications
4. Video games
5. Maladaptive daydreaming
6. Unfinished projects that should be quick to finish
7. Sleep-deprivation-induced mania
8. Alcohol
9. Reading internet to drown out own thoughts
10. Expensive hobbies

I have been trying to get into writing short stories as a hobby. I have a couple of good ideas. But I tend to struggle when actually putting my thoughts to words.

Some issues I struggle with are as follows:

• Inability to settle on the right words: I'll write something and think that what I wrote could be written better or differently and then I keep on writing and deleting and rephrasing with different words. Thus making very slow progress.

• Problems with continuity: I might think up a somewhat long plot line. But I have to write the whole thing in one go because if I don't then my brain will splinter the story into multiple possible story branches when I stop and I am unable to choose the path to follow.

• Lose interest in continuing if I take a break: If I stop writing mid way and take a break from writing for an extended period of time, I am unable to find the motivation to resume. Mostly because trying to catchup with the story up to that point feels hard. I have this same tendency with video games as well where I don't feel like picking up a game after an extended period of absence.

So is anyone here who does writing as either a hobby or professionally? If so how do you cope with your condition?

What I've found that works for me is to just make up the story as I go without much planning. The issue with this is approach I've found is that it's hard to find a conclusion to end the story.

I was just diagnosed with ADHD this summer so I'm still figuring out what helps with areas I struggle in. One of them has always been active listening. I did okay in school as long as I had a notebook--better if I had written lecture notes--but I was never great at languages and the times where I had tests with only a listening section to rely on were consistently my worst ever in school.

I've picked up Japanese study again in earnest last year, and now, of course, I'm looking at this through a different lens. At this point, my listening comprehension is a full proficiency tier (or more) behind my reading. I tried some structured listening for a couple of months but mostly just ended up frustrated. One thing I'm noticing is if there's slow-paced talk, or if there's a single word I don't know, I'll completely lose focus. With reading, my brain automatically "plays" the passage at 1.5x speed or whatever it needs to stay focused, whereas that's a lot harder with listening (when it's an option at all).

I've seen a couple of strategies in articles I dug up recently, such as having a fidget toy at your desk while listening, or counting specific words while listening. If there are any language learners out there, has anything worked for you on this? Or perhaps something to help you with active listening as an adult in general?

I realised today that I cannot actually remember the last time I felt relaxed. I'm so fucking tired.

I wrote this as a long comment in reply to this thread and I was proud of it, so wanted to share it further (Shout-out to the OP of the meme, @LadyButterfly@piefed.blahaj.zone , who is a wonderful presence wherever she goes)

Step 1: throw away self help books that are aimed at neurotypicals. The advice in them is probably not helpful for us, and will just exacerbate internalised ableism. Not only will it take different strategies to get there, but "composed and focussed" will look different for you than it will for neurotypical people.

For example, a friend I had found that she was only able to complete her university essays when she engaged in an odd sort of task circuit-training, where she had multiple different tasks that she could cycle between as soon as she found herself losing focus. To an external, neurotypical observer, this looked like absurd chaos, but that was how she found her focus.

Step 2: try your best to work against the aforementioned internalised ableism. This, unfortunately, is an ongoing task, because even once we throw away unhelpful frameworks, we can't escape from the unreasonable expectations that the world places upon us. That is not your fault, and you are not broken just because you can't fit into the pre built mould that society offers you. It is possible to build new frameworks that will comfortably fit and support you, but we're going to have to do a lot of that work ourselves. This is a task that will be an ongoing one, so proceed to step 3 whenever you feel ready.

Step 3: find neurodivergent community. This is the most important step, because it can do wonders for helping with step 2; it gets tiring to have to constantly remind ourselves that we're not broken, so it's helpful to have other people help remind us of this sometimes. Plus ADHD folk often find it's easier to care for other people than for themselves, so you might find it easier to affirm other people than yourself. That can be a good starting point for learning how to extend that same grace to yourself.

It doesn't matter whether it's online or irl, a space specifically dedicated to discussing ADHD/autism or just a hobby community with lots of neurospicy folk — just find your people. It's daunting to feel like you have to build an entire mode of living from scratch, but you're not doing it alone. Ask people what strategies they have found useful for coping, and if you find anything, share that with others too. We're not a monolith, so not everything will work for every person, but having these conversations about what works and what doesn't is super useful.

Step 4: Remember that there is no silver bullet here, no single strategy that will fix everything. I'm sorry to have to emphasise this, but the best tool is the one you use. Try not to fixate on the next shiny thing, because that's a false comfort. I know that actually using the tools and strategies is the hard part, but that's why we need to keep working at it. You will struggle with this, but that's not failure, it's part of the process. Refer back to Step 2 if you need to.

Step 5: Remember the big picture. What we're building here is social and informational infrastructure. My own experience has been improved by having access to resources and communities online that are made by and for neurodivergent people; if I were born 100 years ago, I might've ended up in an asylum. It often doesn't feel like it, but things are getting better. It's overwhelming and scary to be building something new on the margins of society, but we have the ability to improve things both for ourselves, and the people who come after us.

We're trying to do something radical here, and that will take time and a lot of work. Most of us were only taught how to be successful neurotypicals, which is something that we can never be. We are having to learn from scratch how to be successful neurodivergent people, but there isn't a simple guidebook for that. We have to muddle along as best we can and write that guidebook ourselves. In this way, learning how to live as ourselves is a powerful form of political praxis[1] (which may be a helpful thing to remember if you tend to beat yourself up about being too burnt out to engage in as much activism as you'd like).

[1] : Praxis can be generally defined as the process of putting theory or ideas into practice. In this case, we can say "we deserve better than to live believing that we are no more than failed neurotypicals", but then there's the tricky question of how do we put that ideal into practice? That's the ongoing quest. Praxis in this context also draws from how it's used in Marxist thought, which is that praxis is about actions that are oriented towards changing society.

Edit: formatting

Recently, by accident, I set the subtitles of some anime to Spanish, and to my surprise, for the first time in who knows how long, I could focus fully on an episode. Tested over the days, and indeed it was helping.

After that, it got me wondering why.

Being able to understand some Japanese, the impression I get is that it's in a weird position where it's too straight to the point and too verbose at the same time. Meanwhile, in languages like Portuguese and English, it seems to me as if the speaker needs to walk around ideas a lot to explain them. And almost like they'd be in the other side of the spectrum, languages like Spanish (oddly enough despite being Portuguese's sister language) and the Scandinavian ones feel very straight to the point.

Perhaps then, less information added in helps at not straining one's focus, specially when the person's focus is already on the weaker side?

And going by that, it makes me think, if the person is struggling at focusing at something, despite the medium, maybe changing to a less verbose language (when possible and the person knows the language) could help?

Anything that helps increase your will power and dopamine levels.

I'm not really sure if I have adhd or not at the moment and I just realised this. I'm not sure if this is related to adhd at all but I just find it weird looking into peoples eyes, when I listen to people I usually look out a window or something and sometimes people ask me weather I am listening and I didn't even realise I was looking out a window I kind of just assumed they knew I was listening.

Also as a side note, I have a lot of symptoms of adhd but I'm not sure if to enough of an extent, since I see a lot that everyone has the symptoms of adhd just not to the extent of someone that actually has adhd has.

Do you also have that one comment in the bottom of your lemmy inbox that you've been meaning to respond to for the last several weeks or months but you keep putting it off?

Do you also sit on your couch or bed and just stair out the window for like 30 minutes or longer at a time?

I also have struggle focusing on school work, this hasn't always been the case but it's a lot more now. Once the coffee from the morning wears off I can't focus for long enough to finish a small portion of a single Maths question before I'm staring out the window thinking about something completely unrelated, then about 5-10 minutes later I realised I'm distracted.

You've probably also noticed a pattern at this point, I love staring out windows!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/59778774

I told my friend I was learning music. She asked what I was trying to learn, so I said music. She asked what in specific, so I gave her the current list. She thinks I'm kidding.

• Guitar
• Ukulele
• Piano
• Music theory
• Reading music
• Finger drumming
• Abelton
• Renoise
• Bitwig
• Maschine
• Pigments
• Buttersynth
• Deluge
• Minifreak
• Polyend Play
• Polyend Tracker
• Dirtywave M8
• Chompi
• Abelton Note
• Koala
• Loopy Pro

Those are the things I'm actively working on with a laundry list of other things for later. The moment I get a little bored with one thing, I jump to another.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/51387855

Offering screening for neurodivergence to people detained by the police could help ensure access to appropriate support and fairer treatment in the criminal justice system, say Cambridge researchers. A study from the team suggests that one in two individuals arrested and detained in London may have undiagnosed attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and one in 20 may have undiagnosed autism.

Hi everyone! This will be a bit long sorry.

First, Thank god for lemmy, I can finally share this. f**k reddit.

So... I'm an extremely introverted person, i don't have friends irl nor online. I've been fighting with ADHD since ever and didn't even know! I discovered that I have this disorder just a year ago. I knew that i have IBS aka irritable bowel syndrome. I can’t feel hungry becuz of it at all but It makes me very emotional and depressed. Adding ibs to adhd to loneliness is something only people who are dealing with knows how it feels, lately after falling in college and dropping out and feeling that my life is destroyed. My condition worsened, im fought to save myself and I managed to gain a skill and I'm working as freelancer. But loneliness is still there. I try to be patient i try to stop the tears but i can't take it anymore i cry a lot and i feel sometimes like my chest is crashing. Pls people like me what do you guys do in this situation? Plz help with whatever you know is helpful. I'll very appreciate it.

I would give anything to move abroad, but im into little to no things it takes to actually do so. And when I read about it, it seems a bit reasonable, but I lose all interest and motivation right there. Doubt myself and the usual.

I hate being american so much to where I want to do. I don't feel like writing much cause I feel pretty tired right now, but still Its become some sort of dysphoria for me. I feel inferior and I even hope to die in my sleep. I just wish that I were born European.

I do learn languages and I'm well aware of the issues over there.

I wonder to god why I was born here, but I know god doesn't really work like that or see things that way. So I probably pray.

I feel inferior literally

I don't relate to the history or culture (as if there is any) at all.

And some other stuff.

And I apologize if this seems very excessive. Its just really how I feel.

For those of you who use meds, in particular methylphenidate:

Do you consume caffeine? What's your experience been with it?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/56362702

I am trying to get back into watching hockey again, but the digital rink board ads are making it surprisingly difficult. When they slide or flicker my eyes snap to them instead of the play, and I end up losing sight of the puck, especially when it goes behind the net.

I cannot tell if this is an attention or sensory issue on my end or if the broadcasts have simply become more visually aggressive.

For people who watch regularly: Do the shifting digital ads distract you too, or do you barely notice them anymore?

I am genuinely trying to enjoy hockey again but my focus gets pulled away every few seconds and I am wondering how others experience this.