>I started doing a mundane and repetitive task, not sure I'll make it because of ADHD

>Maybe a podcast or some music would help. I grab my headphones

>My headphones are out of battery, same as the last 6 times I tried to use them, I do not remember to charge them because I have ADHD

>I will use the cable and connect them up to my phone with the 3.5mm jack adapter

>I cannot find the 3.5mm jack adapter for my phone because I lost it because I have ADHD

>I cannot use my headphones because I have ADHD

BRING BACK THE HEADPHONE JACK TO MOBILE PHONES, YOURS SINCERELY AN ADHD SUFFERER

My niece has diagnosed ADHD and is dealing with pretty severe pathological demand avoidance. The tantrums are getting out of control, and my family needs help with learning how to help her self regulate.

Please send me your best book, podcast, and YouTube recs for raising kids with ADHD!

I just cannot do anything. I go to sleep thinking I'm finally going to change for the better but that never happens. It's like chronic under and over stimulation at the same time and Vyvanse does not help a whole lot, just means I am awake instead of sleeping all day. I get up, get dressed, and make myself eat something healthy just to go back to bed.

I try to make tasks as easy as I can. I can do them in bed, but still I just won't. I'm procrastinating a painting I'm working on but the amount of time and effort means I won't even start a little bit on it. I know that I struggle a lot starting and changing what task I'm doing but even trying to make it extremely easy is too much for my defective brain.

I was willing to write this out instead of actually doing something. What is wrong here?

​

Hi, We're a young couple and he has ADHD.

There are some struggles he has and I really want to find a way to help him but I dont really know what to do.

He is super easily distracted, I'll paint up a scenario for you.

We are at a party, we need to leave in 5. He gets ready to get his stuff and put on his shoes. Someone starts talking to him or he sees another task. He forgets about it.

What i usually do in this scenario is to tell him "Hey, go put on your shoes." And in those moments he tells me it just feels like I'm his mom and that it's degrading, I totally get that but what are other ways I can do reminders like this?

Something more he does is fidget with alot of my stuff, he will pick something in my room up and forget where he put it and suddenly I can't find it. He will also fidget and stretch out my hair ties. He says fidget toys aren't as exiting in some ways so what can I do about this?

Please tell me if you have any advice on how to handle this since I really want to find ways to help him. Medication is off the table.

Just wanted to share. I feel like one of the biggest things adderall does for me is it allows me to act without thoughts. For so much of my life I've been a chronic overthinker. I overthink whether I've done things correctly, in what order I need to complete tasks. Im a barista and im constantly doing motor functions. Im grabbing milks, setting up drinks, throwing ice in cups. This is jusy one example, but a lot of days im in constant thought about what i should do next. In what order things need to be done in order for me to be most efficient and move as quickly as possible. Its like im critiquing my every move in my head as it happens. But when im on the adderall I just flow and this flow allows me to be so much quicker and efficient than I was thinking about how I can be quicker and more efficient. Im really anxious and the adderall really helps with that. Im not sure how it really developed, but growing up i lived in a house with a really dirty sink and shower. I really didnt like cleaning them, but would always look at them yearning the time i would be forced to. This has developed in me being anxious and very uncomfortable when seeing dirty sinks or bathrooms wether in real life or on the internet. The thoughts just linger in my head and dont make me feel good. I still think about them when on the addedall, but its like my brain allows the thoughts to just pass and not make me as uncomfortable as I usually am. I do maladaptive daydream a lot and am constantly in my head whenever Im not on the adderall. But on the days im for some reason not in the mood to be in my head as much and daydream as much, even when not on the pill, these anxious thoughts about dirty sinks and showers dont seem to disturb me as much. Again, just wanted to share. I've always been very anxious, anxiety for the most part I've associated with my adhd, and I want to get better. I dont know if its all my adhd, but again I just wanted to share these thoughts I've had this morning. Thank you for reading.

I’m feeling a bit frustrated and looking for some community insight. I recently upped my dose to 50mg and switched manufacturers (Eurofarma to Pharlab here in Brazil) after reporting to my neurologist "weak effects" on 30mg.

I’ve made all the recommended adjustments: I completely cut out caffeine to manage side effects, and I take my dose with a high-protein breakfast/whey to support neurotransmitter synthesis. Despite this, it feels like I’m getting all the "alertness" (it’s killing my sleep) but almost none of the "focus".

I’m still task-switching constantly, forgetting everything, and getting distracted by the smallest things. I know meds aren’t a magic pill, but I didn’t expect them to feel this ineffective at managing my executive dysfunction.

For context, I’m AuDHD (ADHD + Level 1 ASD). My neuropsychological report shows a massive gap between my logic and my working memory (14th percentile). I often feel like the "cognitive cost" of masking my autistic traits just drains the stimulant effect almost immediately, leaving me exhausted and wired at the same time.

Has anyone with a similar AuDHD/2e profile experienced stimulants hitting a "plateau" where they help with wakefulness but fail to bridge the operational "bottleneck"? Is it possible my brain just processes this molecule differently?

So I (53m) was just (yesterday) told that I am ADHD, no surprise really, negative on being autistic. I am off work now because of LongCovid & have already applied for my disability.
What exactly does this diagnosis mean for me? What will having this information do for me? What is my next step. I have an appointment with my Dr today & my psychiatrist appointment is not till next week.
Any and all input would be greatly appreciated.
My symptoms are mainly paying attention to instructional videos or any kind of classroom setting. Also struggle with being told what to do. I love people telling me what they have done when they were in my spot. But “You should…” really gets under my skin. I like everything to have a home & be in it. I am a bit of a germaphobe & neat freak. Gotta shower everyday, again if I cut my hair, again if I cut the yard.
Thank you all so much!

So my parents won't take me to a psyschiatrist or psychologist to see if I have ADHD or if I'm just being lazy or bored. My dad just says it's all about will power and that if I had discipline or a strong willpower, I'd be able to do anything. I'd like to know what assessments are done for a person to be diagnosed with ADHD. I'm not looking to diagnose myself with it or use it as an excuse for me not doing my work. I just want some insight into it.

I've always struggled with deadlines, to do lists and all that stuff. I cannot remember the last time I did something on time or didn't procrastinate till it was due in a few days. I've been a good student I'd say in my childhood. Most of the time I was in the top three in my classes and never really 'struggled' but ever since Covid, starting from 8th grade, I've always felt like and am honestly falling behind HARD. I'm in my final year of high school and I still have not got so much of my basics down so I'm struggling struggling with my studies. But instead of studying, I'm always procrastinating, then my work piles and then I get overwhelmed so I procrastinate even more. I have tried to keep a routine and to do lists more times than I can count and there hasn't been a single time I've gotten more than two things done in a list of 10 things. I have a very bad habit of fidgeting with my legs and my mom scolds me about it but I've continued doing it. Don't know if that counts for anything. I have to be playing with my hands or looking out the window when I'm in class. I cannot concentrate most days honestly.

I would really appreciate some advice for me to start catching up with my studies and how to keep a routine. Not asking for a super rigid, you cannot be even a minute late kind of routine and I hate monotonous days the most. I hate it when my days are the same everyday ( this especially becomes true on school days. It just feels like I'm going through the notion of my day without really being present) I just want to start catching up with my work and not wallowing in self pity while the amount of work I have to do keeps piling up. Thank you for spending your time reading my rant 🫶

I recently seen a doctor to get my diagnosis, I suspect that I may have ocd and ADHD, and he said that they need to speak with my parents to know more about my symptoms, any of you guys have similar experience?

Is Japan ADHD friendly? As someone who has ADHD.

I’ve started wondering if there’s something wrong with my personality because I can’t seem to stick to one thing for very long.
Looking back, my interests have changed almost every year:
18: Bitcoin, stocks
19: Chess, music, exploring random things, cartoons
20: Music, Reddit, cricket, basketball, self-help books
21: Coding, cricket, photography, photo/video editing, gym, solo trips
22: LeetCode, web development, chess
23: Gym again, music, badminton, swimming, trekking, self-help books
Self-improvement has also been a recurring thing. I was reading self-help books at 20, and now at 23 I’m back to reading them again.
The pattern is always kind of the same. I get extremely interested in something, spend a lot of time on it, and feel like “this is my thing.” Then after some time, the excitement fades and something completely different catches my attention.
The weird part is that I actually enjoy music more than I ever have right now. At the same time, chess, which I was once really into, doesn’t feel fun anymore. My craze for cricket is also slowly disappearing.
And now I’m trying swimming and badminton while still going to the gym, listening to music, trekking, reading self-help books, etc.
I don’t necessarily hate the things I leave behind. I just seem to constantly move between interests.
Sometimes I wonder if I’m simply a curious person who enjoys exploring different things, or if there’s something wrong with me because I can’t maintain the same level of interest in one thing for years.
Does anyone else experience this? Is this just normal as you grow and change, or should I actually try to force myself to stick with one thing?

Oh god why am I on reddit right now? I have so much paper to do.

I feel like there's a lot of characters in media with adhd, or who are heavily suspected of having adhd and whatnot, but gun to my head I can't name a single time a show or movie mentioned ADHD or when tackleing the subject of stuggles with ADHD explicitly stated that.

Are there any examples at all?

Does anyone have any valuable insight or knowledge to share on this?

I’m currently prescribed 50mg Vyvanse daily. Every time I meet with my psychiatrist, she recommends skipping doses to prevent tolerance (And even the one before said something similar). For a long time, I believed this, and would skip days (and become exhausted, still experiencing adhd symptoms- they don’t just go away, and we know it’s not just about focus!!)

-
After doing some digging (and this is just me, not a doc), but to my understanding, tolerance is somewhat of a “myth”- or at least misunderstood, if meds are taken properly. For example, my 50mg dose does what it’s supposed to do. I don’t have to think about it.

What I don’t experience is euphoria, high energy, those effects. That does wear off, and the medication does what it’s SUPPOSED to do. I want to bust through a metaphorical adhd wall and complete a task, so I do it.

I think people confuse these side effects lessening with actual tolerance.

[EDIT: It is a pain, feeling like I have to ‘convince’ docs that I’m not completely dependent on these meds- it’s just that my functionality greatly improves on them.]

[EDIT 2]: I also understand that everyone responds differently to things.

Do these suggestions warrant me going ahead with finding a new doc?

You won’t remember it anyway
All youtube videos are ‘new’ videos and keep going back since you missed something…
I have severe adhd, my prescriber was like: we don’t even need to do the last test. I felt really wierd giving him all the answers, but you end up talking about a story instead of answering…

School was not easy, bullied for how I was, now I see the strength with a mind open towards all knowledge. They also said I was very intelligent, good with emotion, but the issue is not being able to focus. So math and I hate
eachother.
I just looked outside the window in class and dreaming about how the planet was in early stages of universe, when learning about planets and stars- asking how spin affects the sun, how a black hole implodes to an infinite point or is it different for different masses? If there is an infinity+ then it’s a infinity-, would spinn affect gravity or is it just weight and and therefor mass that rules everything?
If a black hole is an infinite point from our point of view could the point be expanding infinite from a point we cannot see? how the solar system is aligned, but what is it connected to, is there a bigger system we are a part of that we don’t know? And always beliving: if something is impossible, that’s just because no one has found the answer, but there could be an answer that we just don’t know yet. So working on something advanced could be seen as impossible to another.

Sorry for this truth bomb. Mabye someone had the same ideas as children, but also adults

Been dealing with ADHD my whole life but only diagnosed last year at 31. Tried all those hyped up productivity systems and failed miserably every time. Made me feel even worse about myself tbh.

Finally found some weird approaches that actually work with my brain instead of against it. Nothing groundbreaking, just stuff that stuck:

• so weird but it works. some days showering feels impossible, the sensory stuff, the undressing, all of it. i keep my fav shower gel next to my bed and when im stuck i just rub some on my body... with my clothes still on. i know how that sounds lol. but then i cant stand sitting there with soap on me so i just go shower. its been working for weeks now which is saying something honestly.
• okay so this is gonna sound unhinged but stick with me... the "capsule cupboard" for dishes. basically we only keep two days worth of dishes out, everything else is hidden away. me and my husband would let dishes pile up for a whole week before panicking, and by then it was way too overwhelming. now the panic comes every two days but its a tiny fire, like 15 mins to fix. sounds counterproductive but it genuinely changed things for us.
• start the robot vacuum and suddenly im sprinting around picking stuff off the floor lmao. knowing its coming and will get stuck on everything just makes me actually move. its a little robot and somehow thats more motivating than any real deadline ive ever had. no notes, just works.
• The "ugly first draft" approach for work projects. I tell myself I'm TRYING to make it terrible on purpose, which somehow bypasses my perfectionism paralysis.
• I will do a lot of things for “future me” (which my brain assumes is someone else xD) and that includes the other wild thing: that is like preparing things, to reduce the number of steps I have to take when actually doing the thing. So for example, last night me left out and measured all of the ingredients for today me that needs to cook.

I've been taking Antidepressants for 2+ years and have recently started taking Ritalin (I was diagnosed with Inattentive ADHD four days ago), the effects I get from all mentioned medication thus far except for very few have given me not a huge effect over control of my motivation, anxiety, depression and ADHD symptoms.

I have this fear that the medication I am so desperately trying to find to help treat me and allow me to deal with life better doesn't exist and the problem really is stemming from my lack of being able to push myself to do things such as driving a car or going to university.

Is the medication you take supposed to give you that surge of energy and boost in brain power that allows you to push yourself to overcome similar experiences, is it just meant to numb your emotions a little so you can pretend you don't feel until you get used to said experiences or is it something completely different?

Genuinely just scared that my inability to do things is a ME problem and not a problem that stems from any of the issues I've been diagnosed with.

22M, ADHD. Something I noticed and can't tell if it generalizes.

I get almost nothing done alone at my desk. But in a library, or a café, or on a call with a friend who's also working, I'll do the exact thing I've been avoiding for a week. Nobody is checking on me. They're not even looking. I got the hunch that it's probably because of the pressure to perform well when others are around.

Curious about two things:
1. Has anyone else noticed this? Cafés, libraries, study-with-me videos, a friend on call, anything like that.

1. If it works for you, do you actually do it on purpose, or only by accident?

Mostly wondering whether the thing that helps is being watched, or just being near people
who are also working. Those feel different to me but I can't tell if that's real.

I’m 24, and I was recently diagnosed with ADHD, primarily inattentive presentation. The journey of obtaining this diagnosis was a long and somewhat tumultuous one.

I struggled in school a lot ever since I was young. In elementary school, I never finished timed tests and would have homework assignments that I didn’t complete on time, but it didn’t become enough of an issue to raise concern until middle school. In middle, I really struggled. I’d procrastinate and turn homework assignments in weeks or even months late. I one time did an entire unit’s worth of math homework the night before the unit test. I was the kid who never used binders and would often stick papers directly into my backpack. I had a planner that my school provided, and I basically just used it as storage for papers I received in class. I would often feel paralyzed by the idea of doing my assignments, so I simply wouldn’t. This continued all the way through high school and into college, but I had accommodations in college, so my grades didn’t suffer as much. I would be in danger of failing classes many times, and I wasn’t certain I was going to graduate high school. Around 8th grade, I also became quite depressed.

I’ve also always struggled with tasks pertaining to cleaning and self care. I struggled to do things like make myself shower and brush my teeth. To this day, I still really struggle to maintain a tidy space, and my bedroom is extremely cluttered and chaotic. In high school, my mom got me tested as per my guidance counselor’s request, since my guidance counselor suspected I had ADHD. Upon evaluation, I was found to not meet diagnostic criteria.

So, I push on. I finish high school by the skin of my teeth. I go to college. While in college, I saw a psychiatric nurse practitioner who fully believed I had ADHD despite my lack of diagnosis. She wanted to try me on a stimulant, but I declined.

Fast forward a few years post college, and I start seeing my current psychiatrist. Upon meeting me, she was also convinced that I have ADHD. She had me get an updated psych eval. No ADHD. That didn’t surprise me, but it left me with more questions. It’s not ADHD, sure, what the hell is it? I couldn’t let it go, so I decided to get a neuropsych eval hoping to gain diagnostic clarity and figure out what the hell was going on.

Through that evaluation, I was officially diagnosed with inattentive ADHD and unofficially diagnosed with Nonverbal Learning Disability. Upon reading about NVLD, I never related to anything more in my life. I read about life stages for people with NVLD, and I started crying as it literally felt like someone wrote down my life story. One thing I also noticed is that NVLD has a lot of overlap with ADHD, enough that it actually sometimes gets misdiagnosed as such.

While I relate to the actual diagnostic criteria of ADHD, I don’t relate to a lot of the things I see in the subreddits for it. For example, coffee doesn’t make me sleepy. If I have too much of it, I actually get really anxious. I don’t really experience hyper focus. I miss my loved ones when I haven’t seen them for a long time. I don’t really hyperfixate on people, nor do I get bored of them when the novelty has worn off. I also don’t experience time blindness. I’m honestly wondering if I even have ADHD, or if my NVLD is what caused me to technically meet diagnostic criteria despite not actually being an ADHDer.

Obviously, I know no one here can tell me if I have ADHD or not. I honestly don’t even know what I’m hoping to get out of posting this. I do plan to continue with my medication journey since I’ve found Vyvanse more helpful than any antidepressant I’ve ever taken.

As long as I can remember, fun parties have always ended with me falling into a deep depressive state for the next few days. I’m aware that this is my brain adapting to changes in dopamine levels. It’s somewhat similar to the cycle of addiction to drugs... you’re high, and at some point the dose wears off and you’re left going through withdrawal. I feel terrible because I know that if I have a great time at a party on Saturday, I’ll be holding back tears until Wednesday. It’s incredible how drastic an emotional shift can happen in such a short amount of time.

At the party: “Wow, this is amazing. People like me. Life is great.”

The next day: “I’m so lonely. Am I even worthy of being loved?”

How soon do you feel you need a break from dishwashing after just starting? I start needing a break after 10 mins. I realized long ago just having my partner next to me helps a lot, but many times he doesnt want to body double. Out of curiosity, do you need breaks after starting your chores? If you lose motivation, how can you bring it back? I'm a big music fan, but even that doesnt help too much, only for a little bit. Just know I'm undiagnosed, but I bring a lot of burdens with chores. I want to get a therapist to help, but that's expensive. I can't even bring myself to read 3 pages of a book before wanting to walk away😅 I also do things last minute and procrastinate a lot😬 Idk why I love to do this things in the evening, or until I feel a sense of adrenaline rushing through..

Hey, folks. Recently diagnosed ADHD guy here. 44 y/o. TL/DR - I went my whole life without treating it, but my son also has it. After seeing how negatively it impacted his self esteem, I took the initiative to get diagnosed and medicated myself. Now we're both medicated and he's much happier knowing that he's not the only one. My home life is better and I'm actually able to run a team at work. Writing code on my own was easy to focus on, but running a team was impossible without finally getting medicated.

Okay, all that to say that I noticed something very different when I started treatment - people's conversations were interesting. It actually felt like I could listen to their thoughts, stay focused, engage, and feel like I was in the conversation instead of having my head race around and start hopping from one topic to the next. It felt good.

I also had somewhat of a euphoric effect? Even the most mundane tasks felt like they were rewarding.

Now that I've been on medication for a few months, I've noticed that effect has gone away. I'm still able to lock in and focus on the work that need to be done (both at work and home), but the interest has subsided.

Is this normal? Have I just adjusted / become tolerant to the dosage, or was this just a temporary thing as my brain got used to the new normal?

I started on Methylphenidate ER, but swapped to Dexymethylphenidate ER as its release pattern fits better to my morning schedule.

Any and all insight or advice would be appreciated.