I’m going with my inability to think about anything that isn’t currently in range of my senses.
That bill that needs paid, that doctors appointment, the fact that there’s half a gallon of gas in my car, NONE of it exists until I get an email, calendar alert, or I hop in the car and need to be somewhere in 5 minutes.
I have ability to ignore pain, stressful situation and/or things I don’t want , it has helped me immensely but also is a problem when I have to understand people’s nature , what type they are, it also does not help me control my emotions, when I am excited to meet some one, I will just talk truth to them.
I believe it’s kind of like autism, cause I know I should control myself but I really can’t it’s like I am on cliff and falling down but I can’t find the rock to hold onto , I just talk.
Sometimes I feel like I can’t clean up because if I put something away I won’t remember about it anymore. Imagine the chaos.
My desk at work is scattered with sticky notes and scratch paper. If I clear them before they are resolved EVERYTHING would fall apart.
As much as I dislike diagnosing strangers on the internet… this is classic ADHD. The brain doesn’t really form working memory so short-term things just don’t exist unless you see them. Meds help but even still I rely on a lot of those same tools you described. I can’t live without my calendar with everything written down. I have daily alarms for set things in my schedule so I don’t forget. Notes around my workspace that don’t go until the task is 100% resolved. I’ve also learned to organize my house so that as many things as possible are visible. If it’s away in a cabinet then it may as well not be there so I have a ton of nice-looking baskets and things all around for organization. I think the only things in my house that are really tucked away are dishes and cleaning supplies, mostly out of necessity for space/safety. And even those I’ll remember because they a separate task will drive me to need them and seek them out.
I spent years thinking I had a serious memory problem. A partner once said my memory was worse than her ex who had brain damage. I accepted it as just a part of me. Turns out, I have severe ADHD and the Adderall does wonders for my day-to-day functioning.
I think your diagnosis is spot on. A few years ago I decided to learn more about ADHD to help me understand my new stepson, and as I’m reading “Unlike a neurotypical brain, someone with ADHD will…” and I realized that I couldnt relate to the “normal” descriptions at all.
I asked my Doctor about my discovery (nearly 40 years into my life) and he said a lot of people thought they developed mental disorders over the pandemic and since I currently had a job, (he didn’t bother to learn it was my fourth one in the last 6 years) that I seemed “to be doing alright enough”.
Fucking asshole.
Some doctors can be real shitty like that sometimes. The medical community’s understanding of ADHD has really evolved a lot over the past couple decades, but a lot of people are still stuck in the mindset that it’s mostly in kids or that if you’re managing your life then it’s not worth worrying about. The good news is you can bypass them! Typically a good doctor will send you to a therapist for an eval, so you can just find your own to do the test. It usually takes longer to get an appointment, but if you can get with a psychiatrist and not a psychologist you don’t even need to go back to a doc for meds. Psychology today’s website is a pretty good starting point to find someone in your area that focuses on ADHA, and possibly even adults with ADHD. The diagnosis takes some time and often finding the right meds can be a long journey sometimes, but when you find what works it can be life changing.
My immediate problem is I have an extremely hard time asking for help, in any context. I think it stems from trust issues. My immediate thought when something needs to be done is “I will do it, or it won’t be done and I will deal with that outcome”, because I think the chances someone else will actually do it when asked, the way I want it done, are pretty low.
Makes you a rock star at work until you break under that expectation you set. Makes for weird relationship dynamics when you help all the time and never ask/expect that it will be reciprocated. It’s just not a great position for fostering healthy interpersonal dynamics in general. I’d argue that it might also sap energy from working towards some things you want done, and are unhappy, deep down, are left undone.
I think there’s even a name for it - helper syndrome or something. It’s a weird “It actually works pretty well, until it doesn’t” position.
Oh hey you’re me? I am working on this with my therapist right now and we’ve been thinking it’s a trauma response from a mix of my mother being a leech, being constantly abandoned as a kid, and the subsequent need for control with a dozen or two little side dishes in there to flesh out the ‘I will never ask for help’ dinner.
It’s difficult for me too sometimes. I was sick so I was trying to figure out who should I ask to bring me some medicine from pharmacy or whether to not ask anyone. Maybe I could go there myself even though I was very sick or maybe I could be without medicine. Finally I asked a friend. I almost didn’t ask her because I didn’t want to bother her and I would’ve hated it if she said no.
I can be insufferably insistent at times. If someone says they’ll do X with me, or for me, I will pester them until they do, “playfully” jabbing at them the longer they don’t do whatever they said.
Honestly doesn’t sound too bad. If I had a friend who both reached out, and then pestered me, I might actually feel valued lol
I’ve recently noticed how often I say “Part of me thinks,” and now it bothers me. I don’t even know when it started, or where it came from.
For example, I’ll say something like: “Part of me thinks I should put a plant on that shelf.”
I noticed this with myself saying things are “concerning” when they’re really just amusing. I also say “Oh, really?” superfluously, way too often. I really should stop noticing these things, for my own good, but at least the initial noticing of them was somewhat fun and interesting.
God, where would I even begin? I hate almost everything about myself.
One big thing I cannot stand is how emotionally overreactive I am. When I get upset about something, I get so deeply and incredibly upset to the point where it doesn’t even make sense. I feel things way too incredibly deeply and I hate it.
Another is that I endlessly frustrate myself by being lonely, but at the same time never putting myself out there to try to meet new people. But I hate new people and getting to know them. I only like people that I already know well.
And to top it all off, I made the mistake of letting someone get too close to my heart only for them to leave me. It’s not even their fault because they are literally just my coworker…we weren’t even friends outside of work. But I made the mistake of liking them and getting close to them. And if I can’t even handle that with just a coworker, I don’t know how I could ever put myself out there to be vulnerable for a relationship more than that knowing that they might leave me.
My insurance changes Jan 1st and I’m going to really try to give therapy a go this time around when I get my updated insurance info. I tried months back but quit after one session after seeing the price. Honestly I wonder if I need pills or something because I am just so incredibly frustrated with life and everything and I can’t stop crying like an idiot.
Good luck on your journey! Therapy is expensive and it can take a while until you find the right therapist. But it will be worth it, trust me.
Good luck buddy! Therapy really helped me, although it might take a few tries to find a therapist you like.
Shy bladder syndrome - I can only take go on a toilet and do my business at my own home while no one else is nearby, and this makes it very hard whenever I get hospitalized, have to stay somewhere overnight (thankfully never happened), or being in school/work as I can never use the toilet once the need arises - gotta wait until I’m back home for that.
The worst it had affected me was at a hospital once where it took me around 2-3 days to be able to finally start urinating there after countless attempts over the time period, and 2 weeks to be able to take a shit. It’s no fun.
My anxiety and inability to handle bad results and criticism. I’m getting better about it, year after year, but it still hurts when I make judgement calls and people are upset.
I’m too self aware that I’m paralyzed by most aspects of daily life. I’m frustrating to myself.
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For me it’s gotta be my shaky hands. I don’t know why they’re so shaky but it makes typing hard and I have to take pictures multiple times to get one not blurry. Super frustrating!
I had a coworker who had this. She is young, in her 30s, and she had (and still has, but I don’t see her anymore) what’s called an essential tremor. It’s totally benign and harmless with no known cause, but it’s mostly seen in old people. Young people can definitely have it, but it just seems to be significantly less common.
It was never super obvious that she had it as hers was pretty mild. But if you watched her work closely, you would notice it. Or when she would try to show me something under the microscope, I would notice because she couldn’t keep the slide still and everything would be wiggling.
She was absolutely more than capable of doing her job with it though. It just made it seem like she had a bit too much coffee lol. Maybe there might be people out there with a tremor that have tips for some of the tasks that frustrate you like picture taking.
Maybe you need to lay off the pancakes. Too much sugar!
I believe that’s a symptom of thyroid problems.
I believe I have something to ask my doctor lol
Whats the drinking situation?
I’ll have a cider or two most nights, but that’s more of a recent thing. It doesn’t go away with alcohol either 😞
Any stimulants?
Nope, don’t think so. If you’re really curious, I take a couple antidepressants - aripiprazole and desipramine - lithium, and I’ll often have weed and alcohol. That’s about it for substances.
I would look into the Abillify/aripiprazole
What do you take that for? Antipsychotics (particularly atypical) are terrifyingly overprescrived and often inappropriately in my conjecture.
Treatment resistant depression, they’ve tried a whole mess of drugs on me over the years lol. This prompted me to message my doctor though, so thanks! Maybe I won’t just have to suck it up and deal with this
What antis have you tried? The other thing I was going to mention was what’s your sleep deal?
Do you go to sleep roughly and get up at the same time everyday and expose your eyes to bright light? Avoid bright + blue light in the evening? That was a big thing for me that I think a lot of people are doing incorrectly but obviously depression is a multi-headed beast more often than not.
Circadian rhythm and sleep are criminally underexamined areas
Procrastination. Seriously, I’m meant to be in bed right now!
That there must be something fundamentally unlikable about me but I don’t know what it is and nobody seems to want to tell me so that I can change it.
I’m not one to default to “counselor!”, but I don’t know how else you get an honest opinion.
I don’t see how a counselor is going to give me an objective answer when they only know my perception of things. They don’t know how I interact with people in real life, no matter how self aware and honest I try to be.
It’s worth trying. They can breakdown situations and tell you how it looks from an outside perspective be it something you did or something you said.
Without knowing much, if you’re closed off to this idea, maybe you’re closed off to the people you’re interacting with also?
I went to the local counselor last year and I ready don’t like her and do not trust her opinion. It’s not a counselor thing in general, but I genuinely don’t see how someone with such a limited perspective of my personality could tell me why I cant get people to be my friend or where I’m going wrong when interacting with people. Am I supposed to recall past social interactions so they can critique it based on how I remember it? That doesn’t make any sense to me.
You don’t have to stick with the same person. Ask for a consult and if you aren’t vibing with them just move on.
Social workers, counsellors, therapists are trained to talk through these things and understand your thought process. There are basic needs every human has, and you’d be surprised how they can help you with your own introspection.
It can be mock conversations or real ones, you can talk about how you would typically act or respond to people, and they will help you understand others possible perspectives.
There’s a lot a therapist can offer you.
Mental health services in my area are severely limited, unfortunately. We literally have a counselor and an emergency psychiatrist that you have to end up in the psych ward to see. I’d do something about my shortcomings if I had options that were not Better Help, trust me. It’s pretty shitty being aware of your problems and having no means of fixing them and I certainly wouldn’t choose this path.
Sorry to hear your options are so limited. That’s quite unfortunate (seems to be the case for too many people).
Are there any online services in your area? It’s not ideal but you could do virtual sessions?
Interacting with a counselor is interacting with a person in real life. That’s kinda the point.
no matter how self aware and honest I try to be
Unless you’re not actually doing that?
You’re free to interact with me, anyway you like. Hell, you can call me. I’ll be open and honest with my reactions, nothing to lose. For what it’s worth, I’m old, maybe I got some perspective for you. Don’t mean I’m wise! DM me though. Post responses keep getting lost. Maybe you can help me with that?
And keep working on being self-aware and honest. That never hurt anyone.
At very least I try to be to honest with myself, I’m sure that doesn’t always work because I’m human, but as far as I know I am pretty aware of my faults.
But the way I interact with a counselor is not how I interact with anyone else that I come across. The setting is very awkward and I am very bad at communicating how I feel or do things. It would be very inaccurate.
I am not wealthy enough to sit on the couch all day
I lament that fact myself every morning before work
Very high libido.
Unless you are using it like an addiction, you just need a good match. This will be an asset to the right partner. Good luck to you.
Thanks. This is the mother of my two children and the woman I intend to be with for the rest of my life. We have a very open conversation about it and are working on it. Currently on the same page and on the right track. 😊
Thanks for your words! ❤️
PS: not an addiction, thankfully!
Good, that is good. If your kids are small, it may keep getting better - I run pretty hot, once a day lady at least and nursing kids knocked my libido down below zero. It was unsettling. The combination of stress and hormones (and coming after the high of pregnancy sex drive) was so depressing, sex was scary and uncomfortable just awful time. It does pass but feels like it won’t.
Sorry probably TMI but if you can stay connected and especially if this is a change she has gone through it will come around. Little kids are such an enormous stressful job but they do grow.
No no, not TMI. Thank you for sharing, every bit of info that helps us understand the situation is helpful.
Stress is definitely a big factor in our case. Lots of stressful circumstances. But intimacy for me is a stress reliever, whereas it seems like the opposite to her. So that’s been a big issue for a while.
I’ve lurked a lot in r/deadbedrooms in the past year. A lot of advice there can sometimes make you lose hope. “Just leave him/her. You’re not compatible.” I’ve not posted there myself, and probably for the best. But it has been somewhat insightful.
It has come to a head for me a few times in the past year, where I’ve broken down and told her intimacy has to escalate soon. We need to do something here. I need to know what she wants and she needs to know what I want so we can rebuild and increase the intimacy frequency and quality.
So we have sort of a plan now and it’s working pretty well so far. Wheels are turning. I just hope we can stay the course.
Good. I guess I should say there are actually two conditions under which my sex drive has failed completely, the other time was when I was working 4 jobs, and sex began to feel like just one more thing I had to do, instead of a source of relief. You guys don’t have a fundamental mismatch, right? r/deadbedrooms is sort of a cesspool.
They are right that you cannot reconcile a once a week person with a twice a day person though - someone is going to be unsatisfied in that situation. So unhappy it wrecks their life? Maybe not, I made 20 years with a once a week guy, was frustrated but that wasn’t really what broke us. Could have gone on like that, without it being a huge issue, I have hands and that’s still regular connection, understand? If everything else was good it was plenty good enough. But for sure it’s much less of an issue with my husband, as we wake up and do it every day before starting our day, to make sure we get off at least once with each other. Like, maybe I run slightly hotter than him but it’s close, very close.
Late, long reply…
I was working 4 jobs, and sex began to feel like just one more thing I had to do, instead of a source of relief.
4 jobs, holy… Yeah, I think that’s exactly what had happened to us/her. She has even said so, that it feels like one more thing that needs doing. Also she has a history of burning out once or twice, so things are easily triggered as stress, unfortunately.
You guys don’t have a fundamental mismatch, right? r/deadbedrooms is sort of a cesspool.
I honestly don’t know. I don’t think so, from what she tells me. Depends on what you mean I guess, but in my mind we are meant for each other, and we have told each other we want to be with each other for the rest of our lives. We are engaged, two kids.
Sounds to me like you are living the relationship dream, being with someone that is such a great libido match, whether low or high.
Update on our situation: in my mind we had a big setback. She said there’s a lot right now. Our original plan was too stressful, and it just felt like implicit nagging rather than explicit, but still stressful.
I agreed to one month of not even mentioning sex at all. She felt very relaxed during that month, and she seemed much happier.
Now more than a week after that month, and I finally suggested we could maybe do something saucy. Nope. Too tired, early morning for work, etc… Same excuses as always.
I’m not too hopeful anymore. Feel like I’m back to square one. I don’t want to start up our sex life again in 15 years when our kids are adults… While we’re young, and whatnot. 😑
I know at least two times when I was definitely hallucinating in my adult life, which makes me uncertain how many other times I was hallucinating that I don’t know about.
Sure your memory of events wasn’t scrambled? That’s common with our brains. Seeing Yoda sitting on the TV is a different deal.
When I did meth 20-years ago, I had a banger after 3-days. Sat on the phone with my mom, soberly discussing what was happening at my apartment, no idea it wasn’t real. People were walking in and out, chatting with me.
We talking that kinda hallucination? A whole story that played out? Or you just see something for a flash, something that couldn’t be real?
The first one was a “what I’m seeing can’t be real, trucks don’t grow lips” and then having to look back on a weird few days and wonder how much of it happened as it appeared.
The more recent one could be a scrambled memory thing, I suppose. It was very “Mandela Effect”, the world was one way for a long time and then suddenly it wasnt. I rode past this mural every day on my commute, some basketballer shilling cognac, and the ad read “Never let them see your next move”. Then, one day and forever after, it read “Make moves that make movements.” There was one specific day I noticed it was different than I remembered, very unsettling.
In effect, if one was a true hallucination (stress, fatigue, now-discontinued energy drink) and the other was an overwritten memory, the result is the same: I can’t trust my own brain and the inputs it gives me.
Were you really sleep deprived, by chance? Because it’s actually not overly unusual in that case. Sleep deprivation wreak havoc on the body and brain.
