Sorry for the negative post but this disorder is genuinely terrible. I was diagnosed a few months ago and from the report I received it seems like I have an extremely bad case of it.
I lost 8 percent of my final grade in an operating system class because I submitted the wrong file.
Fine, I have syncthing setup between my desktop and laptop so I’ll just check if the assignment is on my shared folder in my desktop. It’s not.
Ok, I’ll turn on my laptop and grab the file itself. Oh, I have a boot error and now I need to open up the recovery environment to see if the hard drive is even being recognized.
It’s not. Now I have to open up the laptop and reconnect it.
At this point it’s been 30 minutes of me scrambling to get my laptop up and working again and I found the damn assignment there. I emailed my professor and I’m praying that he reevaluates the assignment because the earlier submission had nothing on it. It was just the default assignment.
None of this shit would have happened had I taken just one second to check over what I submitted a month earlier.
I hate reading articles pertaining to ADHD as if it’s some quirky condition that just takes a little bit of time and medication to work through. Its not. I have to constantly remind myself that I’m even conscious in order to function at all, and now I have to sustain extra mental effort to do a relatively hard task.
The only thing that keeps me going is my boss saying “nice work” when I diagnose an issue successfully. It feels infantilizing, as if he knows there’s something going on with me that’s making it hard to cope with the demands of life but “atleast he’s trying his best, atleast he shows up to work, this customer said he had a friendly attitude”.
My therapist recommended a book about how ADHD can be a “superpower,” but as I read the book I noticed that nearly every single example they gave of some famous person that “leveraged their ADHD into success” was rich to start with.
Like, it obviously wasn’t ADHD that made them successful, it was generational wealth - classic “pull yourself by your bootstraps” BS. I couldn’t even finish the book, because it was just making me angry.
Out of curiosity, what was the book?
The ADHD Advantage
Disclaimer: I only made it like 2 chapters in, so it might not be fair of me to discredit the book.
For me the worst part of ADHD is letting my emotions stifle momentum. If you have chronic depression, you will rarely feel the upsides of ADHD. So you get deadlocked - you’re a fuckup because you’re depressed, and you’re depressed because you’re a fuckup. Somehow you gotta break the cycle.
Are you me?
ADHD is neither a flaw nor a superpower IMO, (in most, non severe cases)- most ‘ADHD’ is a normal neural varient. Some people are starved of dopamine due to desensitization/lack of rewarding tasks in life, and some people have a clinical lack of neurotransmitters that need to be supplemented.
I struggled for years through highschool and most of college with my ADHD, and it wasn’t until I (somewhat accidently) found myself working in emergency medicine that I could see it as positive at all.
In a hunter gather society, most of what we term ‘ADHD’ would be a huge benefit- the ability to rapidly learn, rapidly switch tasks, and do a little of everything. The issue is our current society doesn’t reward these traits- we are physically sedentary, and ask ever increasing concentration on ever more abstract tasks of our workers. It’s not that you are broken; it’s that society doesn’t play to your strengths- AT ALL.
In the ER, I’m very happy, because most of my work consists on hyperfocusing for super short stents, then moving on to the next thing. Additionally, I actually calm down somewhat and can self regulate much, much better than I can in ordinary life. As you may know, one of the hallmarks of ADHD is a lack of dopamine- part of what makes concentration so difficult for us and why we seek constant stimulation. In the high pressure, high stimulus enviroment of the ER, it’s almost feels like time slows down for me- I feel calm and super focused, which is very rare for me in daily life.
I’m not saying all this to convince you to work in emergency medicine, only to provide a contrast- I used to want to be an engineer, and frankly I would be (even nore) dependent on stimulants if I tried to do a job like that.
I was a paramedic for years. Same situation. Bouncing around from job to job was the best part. After leaving being a medic I’ve had a bunch of jobs. So many. I just can’t stay interested.
There are only a few symptoms of ADHD that Id consider useful:
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Novelty seeking. If you are able to explore and experiment i.e you are financially secure and/or well connected, this can make someone a great scientist/artist etc. But as other people noted, a lot of this is the result of having the freedom to do more things. If you cant explore or experiment, it’ll just make you feel trapped.
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Greater capacity for creativity. Creativity comes from allowing your mind to wander and jump from one thing to another and thats basically pure ADHD.
That said, ADHD is classified as a disorder for a reason. It can theoretically have positive traits but no one jumps through the hoops to get diagnosed, goes through therapy and takes medication to treat it because things are going better for them because of it. ADHD can be, and often is, debilitating. It can cripple your social life and cause you to either jump from job to job because you are bored to the point of physical suffering or be fired if it isnt controlled. And because emotional dysregulation is common, you are probably going to be emotionally exhausted or even outright traumatized. And of course, school is going to be harder for you than everyone else at some point.
The one thing that is super handy for me about ADHD is that I tend to fall into fits of hyper focus, and I like learning, so contrary to what many people have said, ADHD makes me potentially a better student.
I don’t have another me without ADHD to cross compare it with but the fact that I can easily sit down and read a 400 page textbook from cover to cover in a couple of hours and retain the majority of what I’ve read has been incredibly helpful.
I’ve always thought I don’t have ADHD because I love learning new things and didn’t have problems in school. I was lucky enough to like most subjects. For the few I didn’t like, such as geography and economics, I got OK grades if I just briefly skimmed the textbook before the exam. More recently, the fact that sticking with a topic is hard, that I simply could not concentrate at all on a live video instruction that I was supposed to do with my colleagues (it just went too slowly) and that I keep “overtalking” even when I know people are not interested, started to add up. Also household chores. Really realy difficult, much worse than actually difficult problems such as physics or debugging.
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I saw a great response to that on this community (or on Reddit, can’t remember). Sure, ADHD is like a superpower. It’s like being able to fly, except you can’t choose when you start flying, how fast you fly, which direction you fly in, or when you stop flying.
Some people have made their ADHD (or “neurodivergence” more broadly) a core facet of their identity and worthy of pride and praise instead of an issue to be managed like diabetes or something.
It’s a coping strategy in reaction to all the negativity they’ve endured. So they go a step past acceptance into “actually no, it’s a good thing!”
Sorry bro, it isn’t. And the more severe it is, the more clear this becomes. Life demands certain things of all of us that require executive function and the side effects of ADHD like creativity and hyper-focus, are not worth being unable to remember to pay your bills, hand in your homework, or complete basic household tasks in a timely manner.
We give ourselves grace, we love ourselves as we are sure, but we just can’t start pretending our farts smell great or we lose all touch with reality.
I don’t disagree but thinking of the disorder in purely negative terms is not helpful. It feels like there are some things we are better at. Listening to comedy podcasts I discover many comedians are ADHD and adjacent types e.g. autism. It wouldn’t be a surprise to learn that many creative people are classified as ‘disordered’. I think the key to managing this condition are
- medication
- good routines (sleep, work, diet, exercise)
- self awareness and acceptance
If you take one or more of these away, life among neurotypical people becomes untenable. It’s in comparison to neurotypical people that we can feel inadequate and anything we can do to address those issues will improve the situation for everyone.
When I’m sending emails with files attached. I check the file like 10 times before clicking send.
hahaha superpower.
more like monkeys paw wish.
I wish I could understand many complex things. Granted, but you don’t get to choose them, and their relevance is rare.
I wish I could notice small details no one else could. Granted, but you can’t analyze them, and each thing triggers your anxiety, hundreds of times a day.
I wish I could specialize in something. Granted, at least until the dopamine kick ends.
I wish I had motivation to do things. Granted, but it’s anything other than what you need to do.
I wish I had super hearing? Granted, but the doctors will grow concerned because your ADHD meds can cause psychosis.
I wish I had great memory. Granted, but you only recall images and never a conversation or video.
This is beautiful and just a perfect description. Even though this sucks day to day I will say very rarely but sometimes, this can spin to our benefit. I recently had an electrical contractor fuck up some work I needed done…well, that’s an understatement my entire home needed to be rewired, and I wanted wiring so I didn’t have to keep charging my doorbell camera.
Now my mind goes thought everything as it normally would, I pay large amounts of money and I’m told everything is done. Well my doorbell camera isn’t charging. Out of the entire house that’s all I can focus on. I have an endless list of stuff that needs to get done but I want my doorbell camera to have power. The guy adds the wire for the doorbell and I’m happy. Until I see it isn’t charging. Trace the wire and it isn’t connected to anything, talk to the guy and he gives me some excuse, it’ll be done soon. Wait when I followed the wire for the doorbell I didn’t see anything connected to my roof above my bathroom. Okay they also didn’t install the exhaust fan correctly.
Now my house still needs 80% of a total renovation but he didn’t fix the doorbell and I just don’t want to keep charging it. So I’m scared of messing with any electricity, which is why I paid someone to do my electrical work. But maybe I can just hook up a doorbell. Well a weekend of researching and I still am not sure how to do it, but I found a copy of the national electric code because I think the exhaust fan is supposed to be going up through my roof.
Long story short the guy didn’t do half the work I paid for. I now have a log of every wire that was run, every junction box that was placed, every switch, every outlet, everything, including if it is up the code of the exact code that it is violating. Along with a note about the expected electrical load, that should be on each circuit, how much is can candle and how much more I can add to still be within code for continuous load. I also have the manufacture date of every wire that was placed and found a bit of damage to an exterior and a door wall that wasn’t there and found it caused by the contractor that are both is areas I said do not touch.
So now, I have all this information and if I am successful in suing him I will have gotten a great deal on having the house rewired considering I now know how to rewire an entire house and have improved a few circuits in my house, but I’m not an electrician so I can’t actually do anything with this information. But here I am on lemmy writing about this instead of doing what I planned on doing today with no idea how to actually sue someone and an existential dread of trying to figure out how to or if I should hire an attorney.
It’s great. I mean awful… well actually both, but also neither.
man I followed that entire story like it happened in my own head. maybe neurodivergent isn’t the right term. maybe we’re neurocohesive and everything sticks together
Superpower is a stretch. It’s more that if you can understand your ADHD you can maybe find jobs/pursuits that match up better with it.
My gf has ADHD and has found that the only way for her to stay engaged is to be in a situation of high impact/high complexity/high urgency. ADHD isnt always inability to concentrate, its switching back between that and hyper-concentration, often involuntarily, so finding an environment that fits that has helped her.
She works at the same company as me in medical software (im a dev were pretty opposite) and basically puts out customer fires. Its highly urgent and impactful (medical issues need to be fixed ASAP) to keep her engaged and complex enough that it doesn’t get boring or monotonous. She’s really fucking good at it and makes good money, but it does come at a cost. Its pretty stressful but she acknowledges this is the type of thing she can best excel at. And in other areas that arent like this - like in her personal life - she’s always slipping and needs other people to help her out (I’m pretty organized and can assist there).
I’d recommend the book ADHD 2.0. The authors, who also have ADHD, kind of echo what we’ve seen. One of them calls it a curse as the only careers that keep him engaged are stressful and relentless. But its what he does.
They had a pretty good analogy - ADHD is like a car with a super powerful engine but no breaks. You can do some things better than other people but its incredibly easy to get way off track faster than you can blink, so its important to understand how yours works and have the right guardrails in place in your professional and personal lives. And of course meds help a lot too.
That’s the problem though. I’m really good at emergency dispatch and I can do a lot of multitasking but I’m at a point where at almost 40 I need a long break if not retirement. Unless I can do my job 4 hours a day and sleep a lot more lol.
Damn can’t imagine. Hope you can find a way to get that break
People who claim having ADHD has benefits or is a super power are just saying it to make it sound less bad. The reality is that ADHD sucks. It’s not impossible to deal with most of the time once you learn more about yourself and how your ADHD impacts you and what can help you manage the symptoms. Every individual is different. And sometimes we just have to accept that we mess up and that, although we are responsible for those mess ups and we have to work extra hard to blend in and try not to mess up too badly, it’s also a handicap that we didn’t ask for.
I don’t get why people say they have certain positive traits thanks to their ADHD. Why can’t it be because they themselves, as people, are good at something? Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses and every individual is unique. ADHD makes things more difficult, but not impossible. We just have to work with what we have and all we can do is try to find ways to get what we want in a way that works for us.
I’ve had moments where I genuinely felt like ADHD has benefited me, like when went into hyperfocus mode and launched some new project I would have never started otherwise. I feel like I’m a bit more creative and enthusiastic at times. But 99% of the time ADHD is just a condition that sucks for me.
I think the people who have mild ADHD symptoms are just trying to find a positive, but for those of us who have deeper issues it can seem like an insult when people talk about it in a positive way.
ADHD makes you work 2-3x as hard all the time about everything you care about so when compared to a regular person we are fucking superstars at working our asses off just to get along.
Unfortunately nothing is measured in effort and caring alone. So until you also get good at whatever it is you’re doing, you don’t get any notice. So we appear from the outside to go from okay to amazing at things pretty quickly and faster than other people, but it’s really because we’re either working 200% or not at all.
Don’t sweat the grade. You’ve now burned into your memory this failure and you will have an easier time remembering to stop and check your files for that kind of error before submitting. I’ve been in the workplace 20 years now and I have 1000 past disasters whispering in my ear every time I do something so my work is exemplary compared to my coworkers and I look like I have a superpower. I just have a lot of experience failing first.
The book ADHD 2.0 calls this out. It’s like “you may hear that ADHD is a superpower. It is not. Anything that you can do with ADHD can also be done by neurotypical people. Thinking like this makes it harder for people with ADHD to accommodate their limitations.”
I mean I wouldn’t call it a super power. but I’m working as a AV tech guy and the more stressful an event gets and there’s hundreds of things going on at the same time, the more I’m becoming calm and tackle it waaay better than all of my colleagues. so I made (at least in this regard) peace with it, to know that I choose the perfect job for it/ me.
Why does this happen? I feel like the stupidest person in the world 90% of the time. Log into work and our PostgreSQL server is about to fall over. I don’t know PostgreSQL, I didn’t setup the server and I generally don’t have anyone on to help me, but I manage to execute a complicated fix before it implodes. Then I go back to forgetting where I put my phone down every thirty seconds.
I just got diagnosed a year and a half ago or so. Reading other peoples stories has really helped me reflect on the past and put every thing in context.
I think part of the challenge we face is a larger hurdle to get engaged with a task. So we either need something very interesting or stressful enough to capture our attention. But once it has our attention, it tends to have our full attention. Also we so frequently have to solve problems in a rush because we put it off until the last minute we are familiar with that mode of operation.
I was diagnosed a few years ago. I disagree with you. Yes, there are some things that are harder for me to do. But, I’m really good at my EMS job, and a significant portion of the most competent individuals I work with are also ADHD. I would not be as good as I am without being ADHD. Though, it would have been easier to get through the class to get my license without it.
