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ADHD or just bad habits?
(lemm.ee)
Hi everyone,
I’ve been told by others with ADHD that they think I have it. But I sometimes wonder if it’s not just bad habits / low willpower / low discipline / the internet and it’s short and fast instant gratification.
I have been to a psychiatrist and he said it sounds like I might have ADD/ADHD/something. (I don’t know the exact differences, as I’m new to it.)
Here are some issues (symptoms?) that I struggle with:
- Easily distracted.
- Easily overwhelmed / overstimulated by smells, noise / textures.
- Items in no. 2 make it hard to focus / work
- Mind is almost always running at 100km/hr.
- Been told I’m very random and my thoughts are very much so.
- Feels like a machine of thoughts are going off all the time in my head.
- Hard to relax / shut down.
- Can’t listen to music with any lyrics, gets stuck on repeat in my head for days and wake up at night with the song playing like a recording.
- Always extreme one way or the other, struggle with balance.
- Often jittery, tapping my feet, drumming with my hands on my lap.
- Jaw gets sore from clenching it all the time, even at night.
- Can’t listen to music for longer than 3 songs, and can only be instrumental / ambient.
- White noise is best, but makes me sleepy.
- Can’t listen to the radio or podcasts when walking or driving. Always want silence.
- Get worked up quickly, always an underlying tension in my mind and body.
- Can only spend time in small groups with very close people. Otherwise I want to crawl into a dark hole.
- Our town is too big, not even a city, want to live in the country. All the details and sound and litter and people and visuals drive me up the wall.
- I notice EVERYTHING.
- I can’t sit still for very long.
- I can get lost for hours researching a tooic IF I’m interested in it.
- Procrastination level is “over 9000.”
- Takes a LOT to get me to even START doing something I’m not interested in.
- Crap, I think this list is just going to keep going, so I’m just going to submit it now…
Hi everyone, thanks so much for all the comments and feedback. I will try my best to answer all your questions:
I’m late 30’s male and been finding these “traits” becoming more prominent in my life as i get older.
Not sure if I could be on some autistic spectrum, as I’ve been told to be an “empath / hyper sensitive personality.” (Once again, I am not a psychiatrist, so I'm making massive assumptions about emotional IQ and autism.)
The audio / texture / visual over-stimulation might also link to the HSP element in no.2.
I have been to a psychiatrist and taken a generic of ritallin for a few months, but to me it didnt help, as it was like taking 12 espressos or strapping a jet engine to a bicycle and trying to steer that. :-(
Was put on Attencit for about 2 weeks and nothing happened there either. (I assume it takes weeks before you have any evidence of it working?)
Not on any meds apart from the meds for anxiety / depression.
I am autistic and empathic, which did indeed make it tough to get diagnosed. I had to go to the hospitals school for a year for them to figure out my diagnosis at the time(this was 30 years ago). I personally also don't really have my own emotions, and despite having high empathy it took me a long time to figure out what other peoples emotions were even though they impacted me quite notably.
I am hypersensory which is the term for how strongly your sensory input is perceived by your brain. I need significantly less input to feel comfortable than what is common/average. And anything above that starts to bother me, or can even cause a sensation similar to pain. Just a strong "please stop doing this" message from the nervous system. It sounds like you are on this side of that particular spectrum as well from your main post.
From your list, I would say adhd is likely what is affecting you most. You may indeed also have autism, but if so I would leave it to second and go for an adhd diagnosis first. They diagnose one at a time generally. And there also isn't really any kind of official diagnosis or support for being hypersensory that I know of, just having the knowledge to help yourself really.
Want to add that my ADD is the "hyperfocus" kind that doesn't respond as well to Ritalin. Sometimes seizure medications help. It depends on the brain region affected. So keep trying. I recommend the book Healing ADHD by Daniel Amen for its excellent explanation of the different types and therapies that have been effective for each.
Vyvanse gave me so much anxiety that just missing the bus on a quiet day made me feel like I was suffocating. It's crazy that these medications affect us all so differently.
I will have a look at the reading, thanks so much for the tip!