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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…
Thanks so much, will have a look. Just so careful nowadays with so many self-diagnosed people labelling themselves as ADHD / autistic / AuDHD (new??) and wearing it like a badge or personality upgrade. I don’t want the labels or anything, just find the source of my problems. :-(
Yeah I get your point of view, I'm diagnosed for ADHD and my psychiatrist told me I might be asperger, and after looking into it both those things basically explain everything I do, and I'm understanding more of my behavior almost everyday since.
I also think it's not necessarily bad to wear it as a badge, as it can be a big part of who you are (just like many other minorities which are very vocal about it) and it normalizes the fact of talking about it and shows what autistic people might look like, which can be far from the stereotype.
I hope you can find the answers you're looking for, whether it's in those topics or something completely different, it just feels great when you finally understand why you're a bit weird and discover that the way others think is just so far from how you think, it's a good tool and very validating :)
EDIT: just to add on AuDHD, over the years we are discovering that there is a huge overlap between Autism and ADHD, but the symptoms of those conditions can mask each other which leads to a late or no diagnosis. On my end I can really see how ADHD makes me comfortable to start talking to a stranger while they don't see that I'm doing a lot of the interaction in "manual" mode, very self consciously. On the other hand, autism makes me enjoy being calm and chilling which hides the hyperactivity... It's... interesting. There are much less resources on that but the few ones I found really really match my experience.