@shiri
Hi, newbie who saw the ADHD post. I’m 65 and recently diagnosed, don’t know that the video helped much, this has been my ‘normal’ for too long, but thanks for posting. Perhaps I’ll make some sense of this ADHD thing eventually.
@jed this really isn't for you to understand better but to try and communicate what you're dealing with to those who don't have it.
As far as you understanding better, I like to describe it like this:
The fundamental problem of ADHD is Executive Dysfunction (there's other effects, but this is like 70% - 80% of it).
Your brain when it receives input, be it just things happening around you, information you're being told... or even just you trying to remind yourself of something goes through two passes of sorting things: The first is a real fast, low power, process based on how engaging things are (ie. you're not thinking about what kind of fruit is on the tree when there's a tiger in front of it staring at you), the second pass is where we consciously reorder the list (ie. you remind yourself that the tiger is tame and harmless, but you really needed to check out the fruit), that second pass is Executive Functioning.
With Executive Dysfunction our brains struggle to do that manual conscious re-order, it takes a lot of additional effort to re-order that list when for those without Executive Dysfunction struggle to even notice the effort.
This affects everything from paying attention to someone talking to you, to just trying to decide where to start on a task. For instance if everything is equally engaging then the first pass doesn't surface a single choice and leaves it to the second pass... and then the second pass just doesn't fire... so you're left staring at a list of tasks unable to do any of them, this is why someone just suggesting a place to start can often jar you from this because it suddenly pushes one of them to the front via the first pass.
It's also good though to note the other part of it which is us not processing dopamine correctly. A crude idea of what it does for us is basically dopamine is your willpower to push through things (which of course is what we're using when we're forcing our executive function in the first part). If you have no dopamine then nothing is getting done unless it's an engaging zero-effort activity (ie. doomscrolling).
In a normal person, thinking about their end-goal of a task gives them a small hit of dopamine (allowing them to motivate themselves towards long term goals better) and then upon completing the task they get a massive surge of dopamine that slowly tapers off (giving them momentum to work on other tasks).
In someone with ADHD we get pretty much nothing from envisioning the end-goal, and upon achieving the goal we get the surge... but it goes away as quickly as it came.... which basically means we are always struggling to push ourselves through anything not engaging.
And of course both of the above affect memory retention...
Most of us develop some awful maladaptive coping mechanisms because of lack of support. One of the most common is putting off tasks until the last minute so the adrenaline spike of starting last minute overrides the lack of dopamine.
@shiri@jed Hi my adhd is so bad I can get milk put of the fridge and go back and wonder where the milk Is in the fridge if that helps people to understand better then we are winning .
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