Nice going! Those are some great steps for anyone, whether they have ADHD or not.
I am an extensive note taker. My colleagues accommodate this, but I think they’re a little amused by it also. I have a little blue notebook that I carry into all my meetings, they call it my spellbook. Well, I guess I used to take it into meetings, I haven’t been in the office since March. I wonder where my spellbook is.
I find it helpful to block the most common distracting/time-wasting sites on a fixed schedule. Typically something resembling a normal working day, including a break in the middle for lunch.
It’s trivial to turn off the blocking but more often than not I pull up a site almost by reflex, and simply seeing the error message injects just enough awareness of my actions that I think oh yeah, this is the part of the day I do other things, I should get back to that.
It’s especially helpful at home, kind of taking the place of other co-workers around who are a constant reminder of what you should be doing. (Working from home is still a challenge though).
Also if I really want to watch an hour of TV right in the middle of when I should be working, I allow it, but I do it on an exercise bike with a laptop as a display.
Ha. We’ll see how amused they are when you conjure their doom from deep within the earth during next Tuesday’s all hands status update.
Thumbs up on simplifying and limiting stimuli. Heavy exposure to the fit-inducing strobe light of social media is unhealthy at the best of times, and these are not they.
I’ve never been able to do well taking notes. Back in high school it was an actual detriment, as I focused too much on the words I was writing and not enough on the meaning behind them. My memory was good enough to power through.
I’m pretty sure my notes are terrible, and I try to straddle the line of not writing what people are saying but writing my interpretation of what people are saying. Tbh, looking back at some of my notes I’m not totally sure how useful they are outside of forcing me to pay a bit more attention.
I definitely get this. Another example for me is car rides. Usually my wife drives, if we have to go somewhere. If it’s a trip on the highway, she has to have something like audiobooks, or conversation, or music. Me, I just want to look out the window in silence.
I’ve tried audiobooks while driving, but I don’t feel safe doing it. It’s distracting because reading/listening to literature is not an entirely passive activity. There’s some thinking involved.
I can’t do audiobooks either, though I’m not sure why. I love reading, Kindle or dead tree, but listening to someone read a book doesn’t do it for me.
I can’t do audio books because it’s usually a single person talking, which causes me to zone out (like a lecture). That’s in contrast to most podcasts I used to listen to which are discussions among different people that seems to make it more engaging to me.
I went to get checked for adhd after both of my daughters were diagnosed in the Fall. After talking to him for about 20 minutes his conclusion was that at 50 if I have it I’ve learned to cope with it having done well in school and being successful in my job.
I saw someone else a couple weeks ago, spending probably an hour and a half with them and they diagnosed me with adhd. Amazing and scary what a difference it can make. They are still trying figure out the best dose to use. I wish they would’ve figure this out 40 years ago, but better late than never.
Welcome to the club. I got diagnosed with ADHD, GAD, and essentially mild autism when I was about 50. The meds (Vyvanse in my case) make a HUGE difference.
That is what they put me on as well.
I’m sure I’m ADD, but I am terrified of going on the meds. Are they addictive? If you don’t have them is it hard to function? Do they make you gain weight?
My daughters medicine actually cautioned about depressed appetite.
I believe Vyvanse is used in some cases to treat binge eating disorders. I’ve noticed a somewhat lower appetite since starting meds, which probably isn’t the worst thing since I reversed most of the weight I lost over the pandemic stress eating earlier this year.
I don’t know how much of an addiction issue there is. I know that there are abuse issues of people trying to use them that don’t have add thinking it will help with school. I’ve only been on it for 2 weeks now.
Vyvanse is sort of the best of the lot, in that it is time-release and not suitable for the sort of misuse like Ritalin and the like. The way it is formulated or something; all I know is Cigna won’t cover it without a yearly waiver I have to get, and even then it’s expensive as hell until the deductible and out of pocket limits are hit.
It functions amazingly well though, all things considered. My focus and attentivity isn’t 100%, and never will be, but it is much better, and anxiety is much reduced. Days when I forget to take it are not terrible, though I do notice its absence. It also does mildly suppress appetite a bit.
I am very cautious about meds, and take absolutely as few as possible, including over the counter stuff. But I 100% recommend ADHD meds if that’s your diagnosis. For myself, my family, my students–I see such a huge benefit every single day. If your mental health professional recommends them, do it I would say. It is without exaggeration life changing.
Thanks for that. I was diagnosed a few years ago* only a short time after I had a case of paroxysmal afib. Consequently the doctor was leery about prescribing me amphetamines to combat the ADHD. My heart’s been fine since, but covid blah blah blah never got round to going back for treatment.
Partly because I’m weird about taking meds for this and I probably shouldn’t be. I have a weird, stupid and hypocritical fear of replacing/destroying ‘me’ with another version… it’s hard to put into words. I like to pretend my ADHD is like a super power and my habit of getting nearly instantly bored with things, breaking them, putting them back together, moving on rapidly to the new shiny… actually really makes me kinda good at a lot of stuff. Sometimes. Maybe. Does that make… any sense at all? (; ⇀‸⇀)
So, uh, do you feel you’ve lost anything with this treatment?
* Well, more re-diagnosed - I was originally diagnosed when I was little but didn’t get treated for reasons too stupid and upsetting to repeat. I do wonder how different things would’ve been, whether I’d have been actually happier (maybe not?).
Those are all perfectly normal, common feelings I think, among spectrum folks. The meds don’t remove anything, really. They make it easier to manage, and to channel the good stuff we have, while mitigating the not so good. We don’t stop being on the spectrum just because we have meds, we simply become in most cases better able to leverage our unique take on things.
I want to emphasize as well the importance of mental health professionals, not just for prescribing stuff but for therapy and mindfulness in general. That’s a big component of living with these things, and making the most of them.
That helps, thank you.