Congrats, I too have a solid group of ND friends all exploring their condition and we have similar mechanism to acknowledge communication issues and trying to make them more palatable for the group in an honest, fair and kind way that brings us all up and doesn’t shut us down. I am incredibly lucky and I love my bros unconditionally too.
Happy to hear you have a community like that too.
That is a beautiful bit of word play there to show a point succinctly. Love it, well done!
Some/most of the way the ADHD presents itself is that they are things that everyone does, but ADHDers do it much more often to the point it is a problem or deemed socially unacceptable. So yes, ADHD touches a lot of things that neurotypical people do which is why it is such an insidious disability, it hides in plain sight and is dismissed by others as the individual displaying those traits just doesn’t have the mental fortitude and they need to practice better control, which leads to the ADHDer not seeking therapy/meds for their condition as they are made to feel that their condition is a personal failing and not an actual disability due to faulty wiring in their brain. This is why many people with ADHD have a negative self image and are typically treated for depression due to that negative self image. If the person with ADHD gets support, through their community, family, school, job, meds, therapist and etc then that negative self image can be dismantled and the real issue is the ADHD, the depression was just a symptom.
A simple thing I tell people when this is brought up to me is that; “Everyone goes to the bathroom a few times a day but if you are going 60 times a day we can all agree you should see a doctor about that.”
It is a hard thing to treat, especially if you are undiagnosed until later in life, unwinding all the negativity around it in your life and dismantling all the unhealthy coping mechanisms is difficult the longer you live with it.
What we are seeing now with ADHD, and related similar conditions, is not a sudden over diagnosis and prescription to treat it but that it has been vastly under diagnosed and untreated and we as a society are just catching up as we start to understand it more.
Apologies, I didn’t mean to monologue at you as this wasn’t necessarily directed at you but you hit a piece of the much larger iceberg and it didn’t feel right to not expound on the topic holistically.
Excellent write up. I hear people ask about this all the time, why the USA defaulted towards SMS/MMS/iMessage when other parts of the world didn’t. It is not the case of now but the history of the technological development and saturation of the technology within the younger demographics that got us here naturally. We didn’t have to make a choice of which platform to migrate our friend/family groups too because we had enough of the functions we needed built into all of our phones along the last 30 years.
It doesn’t come down to what is the best platform right now, it comes down to what was the best, and easiest, platform to get all my friends and family using when my country/region/friend group/etc got smartphones. There are large swaths of the world population where their technology exposure was landline>TV>Internet cafe>smartphone. Where the beginning of their online presence was through an Internet cafe and then very soon after (within years) they had a smart phone. In that model their first interaction with instant messaging was not phone to phone but computer to computer and they used messenger/instagram/whatsapp/wechat and etc and those social networks of friends migrated with them from the Internet cafe PC as the main point of access to a Smartphone as the main point of access.
That is a well spoken summery of the current issue with our political system. Thank you for taking the time to write that up and share it.
It is sometimes hard to have faith in the future when we are so inundated with our current issues. To cultivate hope in the future it is key to remember that time marches on and the older generations will always be replaced by a younger generation. I believe if we keep our democracy alive for long enough we do have the potential as a society to right many wrongs that the younger generations have lived under for the past 50 years and if we stay on target with our wants and needs and can put empathy and compassion for our neighbors as a core belief then it is only a matter of time before we get elected representatives in power to start affecting change.
I believe we, as a people, can do better for our future generations and that is why we all must do our civic duty and vote, not just for president but in our local elections, no matter how small, and every election above that. We have the power to change all this and I believe we will in time. It won’t be overnight but it can be within our lifetimes. Small steps matter because right now we aren’t capable of making huge steps but when the big steps forward become attainable we are prepared as a society to take those steps.
Thank you again for your post, stay strong and motivated and we can do this. Remember this isn’t just about you and me but us as a country, as a species and our responsibility to the future generations that will come after us. We can right our past mistakes and keep hope for that future alive. We have a greater voice now than we realize and are already electing people into positions of power to affect this change. We are not in this alone but in this together; not me, Us!
Not to put words in the previous posters mouth but my thoughts are that he is riling up his militant base in anticipation of either getting jail time or losing the election so that the most violent individuals in his base of support would maybe protect and fight for him. I think that was what the previous poster was inferring.
Repeat a mantra in your head. The mantra could be anything really. You do not need imagery to meditate. Another trick is to look at your hand and try to feel/sense the inside of your hand, focus on that.
I am on the other end of the phantasia spectrum; I have hyperphantasia. This causes problems with meditation because my ADHD gives me intrusive imagery.
The key with meditation is to just keep trying. Mediation is an incredibly useful tool but it is something you have to constantly practice. It is harder for people with ADHD to accomplish consistently but it is entirely possible to learn to do it well. If you practice enough you may learn how to live most of your life while meditating.
Learning how to meditate was the turning point to gaining control of my life and start on the road to a functional life. I am not saying medication (I’m on Vyvanse) and therapy (once a week for me) aren’t equally important or weren’t major contributors to better understanding and living with my condition but learning how to meditate and doing it consistently was when things started to click for me.
I believe Dr. Russell Barkley, a leading ADHD researcher over the last 4-5 decades who is now mostly retired, has a statistic that if you have undiagnosed ADHD and are over the age of 30 then you have an almost 100% chance of developing an anxiety disorder as a comorbidity to your ADHD.
I was diagnosed at a young age with depression and battled that my entire life, prescribed depression meds off and on for 30 years until I decided to explore my ADHD/Autism/synesthesia suspicions and a few other sensory things. When I was diagnosed with ADHD and went on meds for that it completely eliminated my need for depression meds. Turns out the issue wasn’t a chemical imbalance in my brain causing depression but it was my internal negative self messaging that was causing me to be depressed. Who knew that struggling with AdHD and autism my whole life that caused me to try really hard to the point I would burn myself out and fail, a symptom of ADHD, was causing a negative self image of me being a failure. The ADHD meds helped me overcome my executive dysfunction issues and the therapy helped me unwind that negative self image I had, which took care of the depression.
I can honestly say I am now living my best life and I am the most happy/joyous/content I have ever been. It took a lot of work over the last 5 years and YMMV as it is not an easy road to address these issues later in life but the journey is worth it. You owe it to your current and future self to explore ADHD/Autism suspicions.
I realized I could never be happy without first finding out who I am and how my brain works because I couldn’t play this game of life without knowing my strengths, weaknesses or pitfalls to avoid until I learned who I was and how I worked. Once I learned that info I started building my life routines around those symptoms in a healthy and structured way and I feel more real as a person. Not a shell trying to pretend to be normal. Once I was able to unmask and be openly honest with the people and world around me so much of the anxiety, doubt and pain just evaporated. I was using way too many brain processing cycles masking that it was draining the life out of me.
Explore who you are and you may find peace and balance.
Good luck, I’m rooting for you!
There are many different types of synesthesia, misophonia being just one of them. Another is called mirror-touch, which has some symptoms related to seeing something, either IRL or on tv etc, and feeling the effects even though you shouldn’t be feeling them. Getting the effect of misophonia from just observing the use of something or an action could be an indication that you may have some form of mirror touch synesthesia as well.
Interesting about sand paper is one of your triggers. I have misophonia too, some sounds more severe than others. I have a lot of sensory triggers but sand paper is not one of them. Hearing someone chew on food makes me want to instantly punch a wall or throw a chair through a window. I go into fight mode instantly. Also that squeaking noise that happens when you crush a cotton ball in your fingers and rub it against itself… ugh just thinking about it…
When the symptoms developed in my early teens there wasn’t even a word for the condition and it wasn’t u til the early-mid aughts that I found out what the name was and had an idea of what I was experiencing. Definitely made me feel less alone that at least one of my conditions had some info. It was very lonely before that since my sensory issues are very much present with me at every moment and they take an extraordinary amount of willpower and determination to keep them in check and I’ve only learned those coping mechanisms in the last few years when I dove deep into therapy and trying to understand my condition.
It helps now that I can point to documentation about my sensory issues and not feel like I am sounding like a crazy person. My friends and family know, I talk about it all openly now and can explain to people how it affects me. It is amazing the level of understanding and compassion people now have around stuff like this. That understanding of course isn’t universal and there is so much further society has to go in the mental health realm but for someone in their 40s to finally get some answers over the last 10-15 years about these things that affect how I experience the world. I have only been seeking therapy for it over the past 5 years but I can honestly say I am the happiest o have ever been, I am no longer this gloomy person trying to keep my emotions in check all the time to control my conditions but I live openly with them now, redirecting and using the condition to help me. Learning how to control my mind better and thinking patterns. It feels like aikido but for thoughts and emotions.
There is so much more to learn about our senses and we have made such amazing headway during my lifetime that I am hopeful for the future.
Take care and good luck!
I can tell you are a person of refined quality and sophistication; you didn’t forget to add Gunter!
Well done!
My first thought upon seeing the picture;
“Why is Ice King not wearing his crown?”
It took me a few seconds to realize it wasn’t him… the similarity has to be intentional.
Just discovered this community and researching more about my autism, didn’t even know Montropism was a thing or what the term meant until reading this post and the responses.
Thank you for sharing, I now have a new topic to explore!
~ faint, emotionally mixed “yay!” ~
Yes, no doubt, it is such a wide spectrum with many co-morbidities, generalizing anything is really doing it a disservice. Many, but not all, use therapy as a way to gain an understanding of their condition and to acknowledge how their triggers work to develop mental fortitude to address those triggers. It is definitely not the same for everyone and there is work being done by thousands of people daily to understand ADHD, and other related or unrelated mental disabilities, to develop better tools. For now, predominantly, the focus is on meds and therapy because those are the tools we have right now that have the highest probability of alleviating some of the suffering related to those conditions.
Sorry, I did not think I was implying that chemical assistance or therapy were not valid treatment paths for those who have ADHD. They saved my life, I slogged through decades of not knowing; with meds and therapy to address my ADHD, and various other issues/co-morbidities, I can honestly say I am by far the happiest I have ever been. It is a long and difficult journey and my path, like everyone else’s, is unique. For people who suspect they may have it but don’t know where to begin then exploring therapy and meds is an excellent place to start. It may not be what you need to get to where you want to be but bringing your issues to trained professionals to grow your support team is not a bad move to make, they can help you get the help you need.