#ADHD #attentiondeficitdisorder #mentalhealth #neurodiversity
Do you ever wonder why you have trouble focusing, staying organized, or managing time efficiently? 🧠What did you think was normal, only to find out it wasn’t? 🤔 People with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) often struggle with societal norms and expectations, unaware that their experiences are different from others. Let’s delve into this common scenario experienced by many individuals with ADHD and explore practical solutions to navigate through it.
## Realizing It’s Not Normal
For many people with ADHD, the realization that their struggles are not just part of being “scatterbrained” or “quirky” can come as a shock. Some common signs that may indicate you have ADHD include:
– Constantly losing things and struggling to stay organized
– Difficulty following through on tasks or maintaining focus
– Impulsivity and difficulty controlling emotions
– Procrastination and time management challenges
These experiences may have been perceived as normal for a long time, until you start noticing the impact on your daily life and relationships.
## Finding out It’s ADHD
The journey to discovering that what you thought was normal is actually ADHD can be filled with mixed emotions. Many individuals describe feelings of relief, validation, and understanding upon receiving a diagnosis. Some common ways people find out they have ADHD include:
– Seeking professional help and undergoing a thorough evaluation
– Researching and connecting with others who share similar experiences
– Reflecting on past behaviors and patterns that align with ADHD symptoms
Once you have clarity on your diagnosis, it’s important to embrace your neurodiversity and explore strategies to manage your ADHD effectively.
## Practical Solutions
– **Educate Yourself:** Learn more about ADHD and how it affects your brain. Understanding the science behind your symptoms can help you develop self-compassion and self-awareness.
– **Seek Support:** Connect with a therapist, coach, or support group to navigate your ADHD journey. Having a supportive community can provide guidance, validation, and encouragement.
– **Explore Treatment Options:** Consider medication, therapy, and lifestyle changes to manage your symptoms. Finding a treatment plan that works for you is key to living a fulfilling life with ADHD.
– **Practice Self-Care:** Prioritize self-care activities that promote mental and emotional well-being. Mindfulness, exercise, healthy eating, and adequate sleep can help regulate your mood and energy levels.
Remember, having ADHD is not a limitation, but a unique way of experiencing the world. Embrace your strengths, celebrate your differences, and thrive in your neurodivergent journey. You are not alone in this. 💪
In conclusion, recognizing that what you thought was normal is actually ADHD can be a transformative moment in your life. Embrace your diagnosis, reach out for support, and explore practical strategies to manage your symptoms effectively. Your ADHD journey is unique, empowering, and worthy of celebration. 🧡
Not feeling hunger if you’re focused on something. When I was younger I used to think that’s just how the human body worked. You eat at certain times because you’re supposed to, and if you forget you simply don’t eat until the next time you’re supposed to.
I was in my late teens when I found out that for most people there are multiple stages between “not hungry” and “about to pass out”.
Mine would have to be the constant movement. I literally can’t sit still and I mean I realize bad it is now I’ve been dealing with it for so long. My best friends tells me that, I burn calories trying to sit still. I thought everyone was like this until I was about 15 years old. I do not even realize I’m moving 99% of the time.
For me, it’s the need for background noise to concentrate. Growing up, I always had the TV on or music playing when I did homework. I thought it was normal, just my way of dialing in. It wasn’t until college that I realized most of my friends studied in silence and were baffled by how I could focus with so much going on. I’ve since learned it’s an ADHD trait to seek sensory stimulation to maintain focus. The quiet is too quiet for my brain, apparently.
I used to think everyone had the same level of difficulty focusing or staying organized until I realized that my struggles were more pronounced than those around me, leading me to seek out a diagnosis and understanding of ADHD.
I need music or a video playing in the background to complete mundane tasks always. But I also can’t completely focus if there’s something playing. However, it is really hard to get into that focus mode in complete silence and takes a LOT of effort and will power. It’s kind of a paradoxical thing and hard to explain.
Well I found out pretty early that apparently I wasn’t really that normal, there were more than enough people that were reminding me of that. So I was constantly curious and wondering to myself if other people also had the same or similar thoughts etc. Tho observing people to understand what‘s normal I came to the conclusion I hold to this day that there’s no one out there that is truly “normal”.
But one believe that I mostly hold on to and kept on telling myself, (wich I don’t think has to do with my ADHD necessarily but as a person I am almost to altruistic.) is that to some extent that it is normal that every person at the very least has the desire to help people they care about and that everyone had people they genuinely cared about, that even if in some ways certain evils, even if it’s in a twisted or misguided way was done because those evil people thought it would help someone else…
For the longest time to concept of being purely selfish and egoistic, even the concept of a completely Narcissistic person seemed just plain illogical to me. I was a very naive person if it came to that. Even if I was an Outcast and been bullied and all that… Maybe it was also just an attempt of me to myself to cope and justify the things I had to endure while still trying to cling to the things I believe is the right thing to do.
Constantly hearing every sound and conversation at the same level of intensity, and having to actively focus on the the sounds relevant to you while still having the world screaming around you. Got a pair of quality noise cancelling headphones. Put them on. And started crying, i had never experienced quiet like that before. They’re the kind that still allow close voices to go through though amd had conversations in public for the first time without feeling like throwing up. Told my boyfriend and my mum to try them on, they said they worked well but it wasn’t much different. I asked if they could still here the refrigerator buzzing or the kids in the other room and they said no but they would just block that stuff out normally. What?????
Going all day on nothing but coffee and nicotine because it’s busy today is apparently not normal.
The first thing I noticed is that attention span is
I thought most people could bounce around the house singing along to your favourite songs and then climb into bed and fall asleep
a constant inner-dialogue. i’m always having conversations with myself that never last more than a 10-15 minutes unless it’s something repetitive like a song lyric or piece of a rhyming poem, then i can’t get that out of my head sometimes for days and it drives me insane.
ohhh a lot of things, though the two main ones were 1, people could control their brains. they could stop their internal monologue and concentrate when they want to. the 2nd one was, people don’t get distressed when they don’t have enough stimulation. like at all. if I was to sit in a room with no noise for any more than five minutes, i would start singing, rubbing things between my fingers, or even clawing at my skin just to stimulate myself.
Telling stories with very specific details (but also unnecessary ones) and forking through side stories (using parentheses) while sometimes forgetting the main story itself (it was less interesting anyways).
^ apparently this sort of storytelling is not normal, although I am exaggerating on parentheses for demonstration purposes
I’m curious, have you noticed any other differences in your organizational habits compared to those without ADHD? Maybe there are some clever strategies we can share and learn from each other.
The anger induced by someone turning on the “big light” or that people don’t organically live in organized chaos through endless “pile systems.”
Apparently I also sigh which causes others great concern, but after trying to observe myself it seems the sigh comes at the beginning or end of a task, almost like a transitional thing.
“Dolphining” in conversation is not normal, people in my life have just learned to keep up. Fidgeting constantly, this shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me, but everyone has always purchased me trinkets, and fidgets to tinker with.
My sister saying things like, “I know you aren’t able to make it through a whole episode, but I think you’d really enjoy this show.”
The gosh darned forgetfulness. My long-term memory (thanks to PTSD) is almost eidetic, every tiny detail accounted for; but ADHD effects my short-term memory something awful.
Obsessions & fixations that go on for a month or more and take all my time, money, and interest, just to be dropped like a hot potato on a random Tuesday.
ETA: I was completely surprised when my psychiatrist asked to have me tested for ADHD. When I was diagnosed I called my family and friends like I had just discovered a new species and they would never ever believe me. Turned out not a single person in my life was remotely surprised when I was diagnosed.
(It just goes on………)
Well there’s plenty not normal about me but ADHD specific had to have been my inability to follow a list of things more than 2 items long before forgetting something. If you want me to take something downstairs and feed the dogs, I’m good to go. If you want me to take something down stairs, feed the dogs, and switch laundry loads, I will absolutely forget to do something lol
Is it “normal” to be hyper aware of your ADHDisms?
Work specific:
I’m never late. I get to work at least an hour before I need to be there. Normally more than an hour.
Very organized. I have a to-do list everyday. Do the thing. Check it off the list.
I have a calendar with reminders set.
I email myself other things to not forget
I complete tasks before they need to be completed.
And so on and so on and so on….
When I get home I’m so freaking tired. My brain is mush. The idea of making any sort of decision is paralyzing.
The thing that finally put two and two together for me was when a therapist suggested I could have sensory processing issues after talking about how the radio at work was going to make me have a breakdown. Apparently it isn’t “normal” to become irrationally angry and shut down when there’s an inconvenient noise around me that others can just ignore completely.
Only now am I realizing that a lot of people can also just simply answer a question with a vague response and apparently convey everything they want to convey, whereas I need a full paragraph because every detail makes a difference.
Apparently most people don’t want to move their furniture around every few months
I had no idea other people could just get up and do things. Like it doesn’t take them days or weeks to build up to making a phone call (or any other task)?! Lucky…
Okay, my wife is ADHD, so I will be listing things she found to be strange about normal people… Most found by, well, living with me. A completely normal and average person, I pinky swear.
* **hyper-focus** – most normal people can’t just focus their energy on the topic they are passionate about to learn it in short time. My wife managed job change by learning advanced programming in three languages and theory alongside it within half a year, it was scary watching my cute ditz do this. On the other hand she is loosing focus rapidly when faced with something that bores her, which bites her in the ass during long corporate meetings.
* **loosing stuff** – if my wife is holding something, and you distract her for a second, that object will vanish from her hands and she will be completely unable to find it for several days. I’m the opposite – can locate any item I have seen in the last three days. Possibly neither of us is normal in this…
* **thought decay** – if my wife has an idea or a thought during discussion or work, she will not be able to remember it till the end of that activity. Thought will be gone faster than candy given to sugar-starved kid. Making notes helps, but notepad often vanishes quickly and is never found again…
* **interruptions** – she wants to share her thoughts before they are gone, often interrupting another person in discussion. She thought constantly interrupting one another is normal in discussion.
For lack of a better term, I call it the “ADHD stutter step.” I’ll be walking through the house with the intention of doing X, then I remember I might as well do Y on the way, so I abruptly start walking towards Y, only to realize it makes more sense to do X first, so I juke back again, but then I remember Z, in the other direction, makes the *most* sense to do…
Sometimes I’ll even forget what X was to begin with, but at least half the dishes are put away, the hallway mirror is spotless, and my phone is in the fridge.
The constant need to talk. There are times I have to tell myself to shut up because I get excited in conversations. For no reason. I jump from topic to topic without realizing it and we go from talking about final fantasy to the assassination of archduke Franz Ferdinand due to the taxes being so high in the US right now. If you are wondering how they all connect, trust me, they do.
If I am talking to people and playing a video game, I tend to run around aimlessly or jump from object to object to see if I can make it.
I would sit around needing to use the bathroom or grab something to eat and mentally talk or “hype” myself into doing it for long lengths of time … sometimes hours, I specifically remember one instance where it was over three hours of just mentally sitting there needing to use the restroom and I just COULDN’T make myself get up and go. Thought everyone did this!
I thought everything about it was normal until my brother was diagnosed with severe adhd and I asked him what made them think that and everything he described was also just me.Â
Getting anxious when waiting. Not the normal impatience you might feel when waiting in line, but physical discomfort and worrying when there’s not an assured time for something to happen. Feeling like you need to escape.
Oh boy don’t get me started.
I always thought that other people had a running commentary in their head at all times too. The best way to describe it is a room filled with several radios all on different stations, some just static. You can turn one down or off but not all of them. It’s sometimes so easy to just become overwhelmed by them or get distracted by one of them that you zone out from reality and get lost for a bit.
Also I thought everyone else struggled doing supposedly basic things like chores or things that aren’t necessarily fun or enjoyable. Sometimes my body will not physically let me do things. A YouTuber, I can’t remember her name, did a skit comparing it to putting your hand on the burner on a stove. You can physically put your hand on a hot burner but something tells you not to. Past experience, survival instinct, whatever it is, it stops you from doing it. Now imagine that for other things, like showering, taxes, dishes, etc. There sometimes is just something preventing my body from completing things. It’s a daily struggle.