My doctor says I don’t have ADHD but this happens to me a lot. Then when I explain things, I explain things overly complex because I assume that since people are so bad at explaining things to me that they’re not going to understand it when I explain things to them.
I would always recommend people get a second opinion from an ADHD&Autism specialist, because unfortunately many medical professionals go through all of their education/training without ever actually being taught any thing about ADHD. Many doctors’ knowledge of mental disorders are also decades out of date.
A decent chunk of doctors just know ADHD (and many other disabilities) off of stereotypes and/or misinformation, it’s a common thing in the medical field sadly.
Many times people are either misdiagnosed (sometimes a person with ADHD might also have another disorder which causes the doctor to not think it’s ADHD causing specific problems) with an anxiety disorder, BPD, a depressive disorder, or even Bipolar, unsurprisingly ASD too. Symptoms often present similarly to those.
Many ADHD symptoms present similarly to a depression and/or BPD, and ASD & ADHD symptoms can overlap a good bit (but they’re not the same despite some people thinking ADHD is part of the ASD spectrum).
Presence of symptoms also causes anxiety (as in when you were in school and you had an assignment due in a few hours, but you can’t force yourself to do it, but you don’t want to do anything else because then you’d feel bad about doing that instead of the assignment, so you sit for hours in a pool of anxiousness and ADHD paralysis while not doing the assignment even though there’s theoretically enough time to)
ADHD also has extremely high comorbidity and link with other disabilities, like the ones named above as well as things like Schizophrenia, Dyspraxia, Dyscalcula/Dyslexia/Dysgraphia.
The biggest problem though is that there’s this massive stigma against ADHD, it’s seen as a bad thing for someone to have ADHD (especially to parents of kids with ADHD, who often deny it vehemently and take it as a personal attack) and there’s this perception of it not being real or serious, plus there’s a whole myth of it being universally overdiagnosed (ADHD is actually extremely undiagnosed, despite some people getting the opposite impression that doctors just say every kid has ADHD these days). It’s just something conflated with this concept of “laziness” or “just normal things everyone experiences”, like a lot of other disorders are (victims of chronic depression and panic attacks can often relate)
Basically always get another opinion if you’re still not sure. Someone with ADHD that only finds out later in life may have to change their entire view & approach on the world/life and learn to come to terms with how current society works against them, and how they can try to minimize the massive disadvantage they’re given in most situations. So knowing is pretty important.
Thank you for your long and detailed response. I have been diagnosed with anxiety and depression. I’m really surprised when you mentioned in the whole paralysis thing. I feel like I can relate to that somewhat because there are days where I’ll be at home and I know that things like chores need to be done and I want to do them but for some reason I just cannot. I will sit there and stare at a wall for an endless amount of time. Trying to convince myself to do it. I need to do it. I want to do it. I cannot do it. I can’t explain it. My anxiety stems from I hate confrontation so I do everything in my power to avoid it. At work I’m always looking for things that someone could complain about that probably no one would even notice but I’m scared that someone will and they’ll be angry and yell at me and so I constantly am looking for things. I change hobbies like people change underwear. I feel like that’s something everyone does though. I’m in my late 30s. I just don’t want to waste the doctor’s time if I really don’t have ADHD. Don’t want to be that person That self diagnosis you know? I can’t play video games anymore. I would love to play video games but for some reason when I try I just can’t get into them. I can’t pay attention to them.
I’ve had to have several conversations with my wife about her not using a bad mental autofill.
So much of the time (especially with important conversations), she’s already decided what I’m saying within the first few words (of an entire conversation) and then the conversation gets way too long because it is very clear she’s not getting what I’m saying because she’s locked into her autofill. She’s gotten better over time, but man is it frustrating.
Yeah i have this problem with my partner. I say something innocuous, he creates a whole cinematic universe about what I meant with the sentence and refuses to adjust once I explain that he misunderstood. It’s absolutely tiring.
I think I might be doing this with my mom. In my defense, she has earned this mental model I have of her. I’ve given her the benefit of the doubt enough times and got burned by it.
My first day back to the office on lisdexamphetamine I found it crazy how much I enjoyed casual conversation and catching up with people. It’s like I could actually focus on someone and enjoy a slow conversation. I’m a really social person in general and didn’t expect this effect from the meds, I’m usually talking really fast and feel like I’m either at 0 or 10 in a conversation, but one-on-one with people is sometimes a challenge as I feel distracted and disconnected vs small groups. Really welcoming effect.
My Dad has a strong tendency to talk in circles, slowly working to his point like one of those penny rolling machines you used to see everywhere, and it drives me round the bend sometimes to the point where I end up having to prompt him to just get to the point
Is he also ADHD/ASD? Sometimes having to tell the whole story is like an OCD trait, you can’t just get to the point. The whole story has to be relayed because that’s how it exists in your brain.
The flip side is just giving someone the punch line or answer to a situation and getting frustrated that people haven’t reached the same conclusions as quickly as you have.
Higgly suspected ASD, but he's never been formally diagnosed for various reasons - and your first evaluation is more or less what I assume is going on in his head, as he also has the tendency to hyperfocus on things
My Mother is the first type, my Fiancee is the second. “Cobbler, stick to your last” as we say in Germany. Though I’m much better with asking questions than telling someone to get to the point.
I dunno’, I also find a lot of people in technical/detail driven fields will often circle their thoughts. Not that they meander stories around over superfluous detail, but they literally repeat and refine specific statements or messages multiple times, sometimes even verbally.
This can easily appear as, “talking in circles” when all they’re doing is refining their statements for better accuracy. Sometimes, it’s literally circling back to clarify points that might not matter outside of doing the thing when people might simply be curious.
I realize a lot of these are mental disorders when they’re bad enough, but that’s my point: Talking in circles can mean many things. Maybe they just often talk about nuanced topics that need circling back to fully discuss and OP doesn’t like nuance.
Well, yes…that’s why I used conditional language “sometimes”. For some people this is normal to verbally rehash and refine an idea, and I’d think a prompt to get to the point would be successful and not problematic. For someone not neurotypical, this might create frustration or break up their ability to complete the story.
Like walking a path, but someone throws a branch across it. Now you’ve lost the path and maybe focus on that loss of direction, the branch, why is there a branch, did they really need to put the branch there, people are looking at me and I can’t deal with the branch…wait, I have to walk back down the path, pick it up, and try to find my way forward without this continuity I have in my head…
Indeed, following those stories that circle and break is quite annoying, especially when attention is scarce. Regardless of why the conversation is meandering. lol
Ironically, if they’re good at story telling, the picture painting can even sometimes give enough on-topic targets to keep a wandering mind in the conversation. Though that’s more of an ideal situation where the speaker isn’t circling back randomly. ha
My dad and my wife begin telling their anecdote and it finally involves me in having a mental and emotional breakdown trying to figure put their point.
I used to fight them initially into telling the point in the few seconds to no avail. These days, I just tune in enough to listen every 10th word.
I've learned to be patient because sometimes I might not have gotten it.
But still accurate when they ramble about completely unrelated crap that has nothing to do with the point because I can only handle so much at once and the pointless details are making it harder for me to stay on track with the actual point. Like I don't care if Julia was married three times and her first name was Bob and her second was Mark and she has three children and drives a Subaru when being told that she needs help with something that doesn't involve any of those things.
My mom: “So you know Maryland, right? Maryland? It’s Finley’s mom. So her mom, Mary Lou, you know her, right? She had the Cat House. Madeline remembers the Cat House, the across from the stairs down to the beach. Well, she sold that, so she’s actually living at another place, on the same property as Maryland. And Alex, you know Alex, right? She’s Mary Lou’s partner. So anyway, she wasn’t answering calls, and so they went out to check on her and she was unconscious, so they rushed her to the hospital. It was really fortunate that she was on the same property, otherwise it could have been really bad.
So I have to go get Finley and watch him for the next few hours.”
Me, after she’s gone: “I have no idea who any of these people are, and I have no idea who is in the hospital.”
Note: Alex was in the hospital, Alex is a woman, and Finley is a dog. Everything except Alex being the one in the hospital was included in the monologue, so as you can imagine it was even longer than what I wrote.
My mom is the opposite of that. She’ll reduce entire sentences to one or two words that are utterly incomprehensible without the larger context. Also, and this is more of a regional thing where i’m from rather than something specific about her, but when talking about other people she’ll often just use a generic slang in my language that just means “person” to refer to them, as if assuming i know who she’s talking about. So picture your story, broken up in 50 two word sentences, with all the names replaced with “that guy/girl”, except starting from the end, with me trying to work my way back enough to understand it.
With a perspective on both sides, I have come to realize that while I hate waiting for others to finish what they say, I even more so hate being wrongfully summarized.
It is a very large part of my current relationship that we constantly work on, both being ADHD, and it has taught me how impatient I have been myself in regards to my own ADHD. When we try to “cut to the chase”, we take away agency from the other person. It’s quite hard to explain because it is context sensitive, but just try to be patient with people. Make it a personal mental game to guess what they are saying, but at least let them have the independence to say it themselves
Only time I make people “Cut to the chase” is when they want to order me to do something or want a favour.
I don’t need a life story or context. Just tell me what you need and I’ll give you a yes or no on if it can be done. The faster I have the relevant information, the quicker I can get starting on the request
It doesn’t matter. I’m going to ask a question to see if I understand. I’m paying way more attention than you think and trying to assemble a puzzle. If we do it interactively it’ll stick. If you just wanna talk, tho, tell me to stfu and I’ll let you go off.
Well, especially if it’s someone you know well… say… your wife… you definitely can know quite often. It won’t be 100% but it can be a high enough percent that you’d rather the sentence be over w a ~10% chance of misunderstanding than to have to keep listening to a sentence that you’ve already assumed the end of and are thinking of a reply to.
Assuming she has adhd, maybe she just could use some meds to help her tame her mind and just listen. But even off meds, if I was demonstrably wrong at a high frequency, that fact would at least leave me reserving my speculations on your point until I was more sure, or till you fully explained it.
Not a problem, I didn't take any offense or perceive any ill will or anything. I don't know you, you don't know me, in the context of the conversation, your comment was completely appropriate. I should have been clearer in the first comment I made, but I am still waiting for coffee to catch up with me.
I think the larger point I was thinking of was that "finishing someone else's thought" is not only a ADHD or ND thing. I know that when my wife either finishes my thought directly, or interrupts to respond to what she predicted my thought for me, and she's wrong, it is extremely frustrating, causing me much consternation. I know she's only trying to be helpful, but in the moment, my expressions are obvious. Then she feels like "we were just having a conversation, and now you're angry and I didn't do anything." The fact that she is able to put together cogent thoughts into spoken words much more quickly than I can escalates the pace, too, to a point where I can feel like I'm barely able to keep up as the train crests a hill, I'm trying to keep up and put on the brakes at the same time, and I don't know how steep the other side is. It can feel like I'm about to fall off a cliff, and the lizard brain reacts in fight/flight/freeze mode.
Wow. That kind of makes more sense of all that than I've ever really been able to put together before. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
But also, I’d be careful when bringing up the whole “X isn’t just an ADHD thing” thing… because it’s true for almost every single aspect, the whole point is that we have issues X,Y,Z to the degree that it has significant negative effects on our lives. Dismissing issues as “not just adhd” undermines the seriousness of ADHD which is already chronically underrated as a disability. (I’ll take suggestions for alternative wordings to “underrated as a disability”)
Oh sure sure - I did not intend to minimize ADHD in any way. I was just thinking about my situation where the "finishing thoughts" effect was related to a different kind of neurodivergency. My aim was to be more inclusive, not less.
Especially when they drag their point out for dramatic effect but the point was so glaringly obvious that it comes off as smug on top of the tonguebiting you have to do to not just torpedo their pathetic attempt at tension-building.
I LOVE spoiling speeches like this with one-word spoilers, or as close to it as possible. At least when it’s a negative speech or otherwise childish/blatantly obvious one.
Like if they’re going on and on describing the definition of a technical term and haven’t said the term, I’ll just blurt it out in hopes they stfu about the definition. Or similar things with philosophical topics.
It is conversationally abnormal and can be rude, but if you do it in an excited, engaged way like you want to talk to them and just want to get past those little moments faster, then I find only the true assholes who demand a conversation operate a certain way will get upset… and FUCK people who are rude to atypical people simply for being atypical.
Though that’s the way I’ve settled on “finishing other’s sentences.”: I just say something very short that should prompt them they can skip some details if I’m on the right track, not assume the details for them.
Hey, this is about ADHD and having a less painful conversation.
It’s not my fault you can only imagine that going a smug direction. That sounds like a you problem. I explicitly said it can come off rude if you do it wrong. Pay attention next time you read something.
I sometimes finish the sentence for them to speed things along. It's a bad habit of mine and I try not to be rude about it. Hopefully it just comes across as understanding and supportive rather than usurping the conversation.
I really hate when people interrupt what i’m saying before i finish my train of thought, so i try not to do that to others. Instead i just suffer in silence as they meander for what feels like forever and get increasingly annoyed at them
This only makes it a million times more frustrating when i wait for them to completely finish their points, and then get interrupted as soon as i start speaking.
It’s the second one, definitely the second one. I do it to though, so don’t feel bad. We just have to try to catch ourselves when we do it, and apologies and let them finish.
Surprise! My mom does this too, and the frustrating part is that she’s wrong about the second half of my sentence a LOT of the time. It ends up being rude and makes the conversation even longer because I have to waste additional time going, “No, I was going to say…” instead of simply finishing the sentence and continuing on.
So congratulations. You’re playing yourself. (I also have ADHD.)
Personally I do it by my brain always being like thirty seconds in front of my mouth. Sometimes I wish I could open my mouth and just yell in white noise that somehow conveys the totality of what I’m thinking.
I’m usually right about 60% of the time with strangers, though I’m intentionally not finishing the sentence aloud.
With friends and coworkers it’s usually that we’ve forgotten a common word somehow and just appreciate the other person remembering it for us.
it’s literal torture working in retail and having this happen. I just have to sit there with a fake smile plastered on my face, mind running a mile a minute and watching the line behind this person grow as they explain to me what I already figured out. On the plus side, outwardly I appear really patient to others!
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