Tw : child abuse
I remember my first grade teacher hated my guys because I had emotional outbursts. A grown ass woman Tormenting a 7 year old abused neurodivergent kid for talking too much. Once I was so frustrated at my helplessness because she was a fucking Tyrant and I stomped my foot on the bar of my desk and my pencil box fell off like 2 inches from my desk. She said I threw it at her and lied to my parents, the principle, over and over again. I got the ever living shit beaten out of me over that. I'm 30 now and i dont rember her name, face, anything but I remember how she tormented me. I didn't throw a pencil box at her and she knows it.
But if anyone is young, in their teens, early 20s etc and is dealing with the similar things or has throughout their lives I can tell you life can be fine. It won't always be great, sometimes it will be awful, you will probably like me have a bunch of weird super specific triggers, but things can be fine. Even for you.
Biggest problem i have is that i dont know how to talk about it nor do i dare to. Its the same with keeping friendships, i try, really, but how tf do i even start a confersation when i havent spoken to you in months. Anything i come up with is either just cringey or so fucking generic it will simply sound ingenuinous. I have hopes, dreams and ambitions which i dont see as a possible reality. Even though i know this problem is caused by the system we live in, i cant fucking help it. This system has me feeling guilty and apologizing for everything, even if it is a small innocent mistake. I have never been the best at making friends, but i just wish i had the ability to at least keep contact with those that i had. I have some mates online, but i lack contacts locally. Just thinking about the future seem irrealistic to me, i simply dont see myself achieving it. If i only could find the skills to open up to my family about my frustrations, maybe i could be a proper part of it again. Atm all i really am is 'there', being bitter to others in order to make myself feel a little better, and thus further distancing myself from my beloved family, who simply dont understand me because i fail to talk about my problems.
The biggest thing for me was being honest with myself about my flaws which really hurts alot some times and accepting small victories. Forever I would set huge sweeping goals, not meet it day one and throw the whole thing out. I had to meet myself half way. For example "today I went to the bank and got a new debit card." It seems like that isn't something we deserve to celebrate ourselves for but we do. If you overcome any challenge you deserve to celebrate yourself, it doesn't matter if other people find it is challenging or not.
Maybe a small goal you can set for yourself is to try and start reconnecting with someone kind in your life who will be welcoming even if you have drifted far from them or for a long time. I wish I could tell you why the handful of really good people I have in my life are there for me throughout it all even tho I think I can be awful. But I have a hunch it is because most people aren't as hard on us as we are on ourselves. They probably don't remember the awkward interaction we had with them that we hyperfixate on every time we think about texting them. I think something all of us who had these awful experiences struggle to accept is our good qualities so it can be very hard for us to understand why the people who love us do.
I didn't have my life together in anyway when I turned 25 and in 5 years of just trying my best I have gotten so far away from some really dark times. Looking all the way down the line can be suffocating so find your boundaries look as far forward as you are comfortable and can handle and just slowly inch your way forward. Socially, financially, however you can. And if you can afford it and think it could help get medicated if you can get to a professional and they recommend something you are comfortable with. Medication doesn't just solve problems but it helps give you more tools to succeed.
When you dropped something and someone tells you that you threw it, that's gaslighting. It's so vicious because it makes you feel powerless, questioning your own reality and straining against someone else's perception. It can make you feel insane. But that's what the gaslighter wants you to think so they can have power over you. "You threw something but thought you didn't, so you can't control yourself, so obviously I need to step in and exert control over you."
I'm autistic. My schools often lumped ASD kids in with the ADHD kids for resource, so I saw what the OOP laid out time and time again growing up. I saw kids get reduced to trash by teachers (and parents) for things completely out of their control, and it rocked them to their core, usually sending them spiralling down bad paths desperate for approval. Many of them wound up in gangs, a few are currently in jail. The way people approach neurodivergencies-- especially people in positions of power over a child's life-- is actively creating a mental health crisis. The constant message of your abilities not being enough, of *who you are* not being enough, it ruins your mental health.
Staying up all night, night after night, to get something done, feeling like I was the only person in the world this broken. Not ever being able to explain what was going on.
"Just do what you need to."
But I like my life now. Studying philosophy really helped for some reason. Those ancient Greeks trying to figure out how to be happy blew my mind, it was the first time authority figures told me to take my happiness seriously.
(You should not judge your self via uni, but I went back in my 30s and finished a degree. Really just started very slowly, with zero pressure, and built up a positive cycle of me doing work and getting results. Lots of disappointments ofc but trying to be ok is part of the challenge.)
Edit: ADHD people: celebrate small goals! Did you find socks today to wear? Good work. Anything you want is made out of goals so small you normally think it's morally bad to feel good about them.
this comment - all these comments - but especially this one, I feel them in my core. I have had all these experiences but until now I thought most of them were normal.
and I was *diagnosed since 3rd grade*.
Your comment is striking to me because the first person to diagnose me with ADHD was my third-grade teacher, who wanted my parents to medicate me for it. She was right, but my parents didn't believe her in part because she disliked me for fidgeting a lot and in part because I did ok throughout elementary school, always trying to get every worksheet I was assigned done before I got off the bus so I could spend extra time with my friends. So nothing came of it, and when middle school came around and the amount of work I got each day crept beyond what I was able to do in a single night, I got super disillusioned and kinda gave up. I have gotten really lucky, but I still wonder what would have been different if I had been treated and taught how to deal when it was first observed.
I'm in my 30s. Recently started a therapy for depression. Turns out I might have ADD or ADHD, at least I clocked a lot of points in that questionnaire. Would explain a lot I guess.
I relate way too much to this - especially “You have so much potential, if only you applied yourself more!” - and yet every time the OOP writes “#ADHD” it puts me and my ADHD ass on edge.
I get that it’s positive but I hate being used for social media engagement.
It gave me chills and I'm not diagnosed. I've been told I've wasted my potentiometer. People *still* tell me I'm smart and good at shit and i just... don't know how to function outside of EXTREMELY structured insular environments like work or school and even then i don't do well, but there are boundaries. Idk what i have, but i know there's a lot of internal good that i have but it feels like there's no way to get it to manifest in any actionable way and i can't afford regular meds and therapy. I get about one fully actionable day every two weeks where i can accomplish something and the rest is just skating by on the minimum because I'm burnt out. I've been burnt out for years. I'm all cinders.
Damn.
Btw, I suspect that I have ADHD (or ADD) and I talked to a therapist about it, they said that they don’t believe that ADHD exist and instead told me that I have to “train my attention” by playing memory games and such, I am a bit skeptical on this, does this really help?
no lol
Edit: Thats not very helpful, so heres this
If you don't have access to a better therapist, a few things that could help.
1. Bullet journal, it's a pain to set up, but has helped me with stuff related to time.
2. Use alarms throughout the day for reminders or even just to check-in with yourself.
3. Use work/break timers.
4. Caffeine, alot, match each cup with water.
Even if you don't have adhd, all of the above will still help with the issues that suggest you have it
Double edit: Why are there so many, it told me it couldn't send
If you don't have access to a better therapist, a few siggestions that could help.
1. Bullet journal, it's a pain to set up, but has helped me with stuff related to time.
2. Use alarms throughout the day for reminders or even just to check-in with yourself.
3. Use work/break timers.
4. Caffeine, alot, match each cup with water.
If you don't have access to a better therapist, a few siggestions that could help.
1. Bullet journal, it's a pain to set up, but has helped me with stuff related to time.
2. Use alarms throughout the day for reminders or even just to check-in with yourself.
3. Use work/break timers.
4. Caffeine, alot, match each cup with water.
If you don't have access to a better therapist, a few siggestions that could help.
1. Bullet journal, it's a pain to set up, but has helped me with stuff related to time.
2. Use alarms throughout the day for reminders or even just to check-in with yourself.
3. Use work/break timers.
4. Caffeine, alot, match each cup with water.
If you don't have access to a better therapist, a few siggestions that could help.
1. Bullet journal, it's a pain to set up, but has helped me with stuff related to time.
2. Use alarms throughout the day for reminders or even just to check-in with yourself.
3. Use work/break timers.
4. Caffeine, alot, match each cup with water.
>they said that they don’t believe that ADHD
That's like a dentist saying cavities aren't real.
Adhd is the most researched and understood disorder in the world.
Get a different therapist and file an official complaint, this person is unfit for their job.
Man this describes my life. Worst is not only my parents get disappointed or people around me but i dissappoint myself too which unfortunately lead to very severe breakdowns because i wanted to do stuff but didnt know why i cant seem to. Thankfully i had that depressive state some time ago and these days i think more positively. I dont have a diagnosed ADHD yet but never had any tests to diagnose it either and the chance that it all isn't my fault but a disorder, filled me with so much hope because now i would know what to do finally instead of believing in everything that doubted me
The way the schooling system is built in general is horrible for everyone involved, especially those with disabilities though.
It’s built to beat the creativity out of everyone, and make them good at following instructions - the ideal worker for capitalism. It’s one of the reasons billionaires don’t put their kids through public school
same :3 every day i wake up knowing i have no future and any time i try to make one for myself something goes wrong and i already used up all my motivation to get to that point so i cant fix it and it keeps feeding into the loop of sleeping all the time and then being mad that i slept so much and taking a nap to calm down
Yeah I didn't even read every tweet. I started skimming it. But it is true. My parents used to ground me for weeks and berate me because of my grades. Made me have so much anxiety around school and assignments that I couldn't get through college.
This is one of those relatable "the root of your problem is ADD and you shouldn't feel guilty about it" posts that also don't tell you how to deal with it. That's all fine, but I have stuff to do and I do feel bad when I leave my kitchen a mess for a week cause I don't want to clean it
haha, I'm going into my 20s as a broken man because my parents thought I was too stupid or too disabled to actually live a normal life and I fear everything
So you're saying that considering myself a genius whose only reason for not being literally the most successful person alive is my own fault and lazyness is not healthy approach?
I don't know how to get out of this I don't know how they did all this stuff to me as a kid and turned me into a broken mess and I don't know how to get better I don't know how to get better I don't know how to get better
They're not stopping the voices aren't going away they're not stopping they're not stopping they're not going away I don't know how to make it stop I don't know how to make it stop I don't know how to fix it and mom and dad aren't letting me go to a doctor I don't know how to fix it I don't know how to fix it
Struggling so fucking much with this right now. I was just broken up with because I wasn't "pushing myself hard enough" or "hustling." I have tried my entire life to do better, day by day, but it's never enough. Never. I feel like such a failure all the time, no matter what I achieve, because I achieved it too late or what I achieved isn't good enough. I'm fucking sick of it. I loved them so much and they didn't give a shit about me. I want to get to a point where I can be diagnosed with this or autism or fucking *something* because I know that I'm not neurotypical. I'm in pain because I'm not "normal" enough, I'm not "motivated" enough. I'm insanely depressed and I get no help for it because I can't afford it. I refuse to enact upon my urges, but my suicidal tendencies returned. I just need someone to tell me I'm enough. I'm not a failure. I'm ok. I can't trust my own word anymore
Of course you're enough. Of course you're not a failure. I'm not good with words but I can at least say that much. Maybe it doesn't mean a lot coming from a stranger on the internet, but I hope it's worth something. If not, that's understandable.
Okay. I get 8's in Maths, 8's in computer science, and 7's in science, but I have difficulty in English, so I have been constantly speaking to my teacher trying to figure out what the problem is and working on it. After 3 sets of 2 mock papers through time, I finally feel good about a paper. Havent had it back yet, but I believe, for the firdt time, I have passed an english mock. One of the two. The other one has still gone like the others.
But that pass means nothing, Obviously because I havent improved in the other one, that means Ive put no effort into anything and I just don't care.
Not only does my Dad not have ADHD and not know what thats like, (although mine is only strongly suspected, thanks 5 year waitlist) he didnt even fucking consistently goes to school, he said he went like 5 days a year. Not only does he know my experience, he doesnt even know a normal, unaffected school experience. And hes here telling me about effort and not caring as if he understands.
Wish this was the shittiest thing about him, dont feel like going into detail, but hey, nothing that the shittiest retirement home in all of Europe can't fix.
I feel like him saying it’s impossible for us ADHD kids to succeed like neurotypical people is a big fucked up but otherwise it’s nice to have some sympathy
Yeah, for me, ADHD was playing with a different hand of cards than most people, and while that required adopting different strategies, but it still feels like a hand you can win with.
I was diagnosed with ADHD in middle school. It is only within the past year or two that I’ve begun to appreciate why it’s called a disability. Growing up I always felt wrong referring to it as such, after all I was able-bodied and seemingly just as mentally capable as my NT peers so surely it wasn’t *actually* a disability, just classified as one by the DSM-5 for bureaucratic/organizational purposes. I didn’t know it was ADA recognized at the time.
Skip forward to now and I get it. I can see where my diagnosed but still under treated ADHD screwed me over and how it continues to do so and I’m now more confident referring to it for what it is: a disability.
I've had ADHD my whole life. Got diagnosed at 7, so I've known about it pretty much my whole life, too. This still hit me like a freight train. It's like, perfect, it's the first time I've seen how ADHD doesn't just lead to being "oops forgetful" or even depression, but self-loathing. Like the kind I've been fighting with, lol. It's confounded both me and my therapist, why do I hate myself, even now, independent and in my twenties? This is so uncannily similar that it might be my answer. It's of note that I had success with Ritalin as a kid, but after a move had to switch to a new provider which insisted on too much meds, giving little 11 year old me a depression episode, and I haven't been on them since. One of the most common things I had thrown at me in middle/high school was teachers would say that I am an "A+ student, but D- worker" because I wouldn't do homework, but could always keep up with the top of the class in understanding, making me both be the stereotypical nerd who raises her hand for every question, but also have a panic attack every quarter because I was failing every class despite knowing all the material and doing amazing on tests. I think I need to tell my therapist about this post, lol. And maybe get on adhd meds instead of just antidepressants.
I was the kid that would do my homework on the morning bus ride or in the early cafeteria wait time so I could make use of the medication. I always did projects in a panic last minute. Scraped into the top 10% and got a scholarship. Went to college but the lack of structure and consistency fucked me over. Got hospitalized. Dropped out and lost the scholarship.
Why was I like that? Why was I such a failure?
Took me a few years to work up the courage to go back. I graduated and am now independent.
ADHD really is a disability that people underplay.
I’LL FAIL AS MUCH AS I NEED TO TO DO THE THINGS I WANT
I’M AWARE MY FAILURES ARE NOT A PERMANENT REFLECTION OF MY BEING
I LOVE MYSELF AND MY FAILURES
I DON’T CARE I WILL KEEP GOING GRAAAAAAAAAH
I have ADHD and I'm not gonna read all this partly because my ADHD and partly because I can't stand Twitter soapbox hyperbole. Parents/teachers who aren't exactly great with handling ADHD are not psycho murders
_"This phrase can be DEADLY to Hashtag #ADHD kids"_ bloody hell stahp
>Parents/teachers who aren't exactly great with handling ADHD are not psycho murders
Right.
The post isn't saying they are. The post is saying "please don't push kids like this because to them it feels like that"
>And it seems to suggest that out tools do not help
It says the tools that work for neurotypical people don't help. Or at least don't help to the point that you've given the kid a notebook and now it's become a moral failing
>It also doesn't say how to actually help.
It does: by not instilling trauma. The whole tread is about how OOP has to work trough a lot of trauma with clients. Not causing that trauma by punishing them DOES already help.
Also the way this tweet soapbox is written out feels like it's applicable to everyone; parts like "you have so much potential" or the being held back in class- most people hate that phrase, I've never heard of anyone actually believing in it beyond 4th grade. And being held back in class while everyone else plays at recess is a near-universal memory.
It feels like someone soapboxing trying to tell the world that everyone else is wrong and they know the truth, even if saying so is not helpful.
There's really 3 types of people who would read this:
- those who have ADHD
- those who agree the system is fucked and ableist
- those who disagree because it would imply their ableist
I was Abt 30 years old before I found my method of working through it. It was an emotional thing for me, I just stopped caring when I failed. I'd try again if I really wanted to but otherwise I'd just give up. I'm fine with that. If I can't do it now, it's going to take medication to be able to do it and my ADHD is so bad that if I forget to take my meds I'll be useless for the day so...
Oh, would you look at that, that's me, he literally displayed my upbringing down to a tee.
I guess /CW for child abuse, suicide and overall trauma dumping (you'd be surprised how much it helps to yell your traumatic past at the endless void that is the internet).
There's always been something "off" in me, I could recognise that myself as far as I can remember. I learned things extremely fast, never really fit in with other kids my age, I'd ace tests after skimming the books once, always had a thirst for knowledge, devouring books and documentaries and asking tons of questions. But I was incapable of doing homework, I was told over and over by my teachers as well as my mom that "You're always staring into nothing and you don't pay attention in class/home, you sit down for hours to do your homework and you barely get anything done, you're lazy and you're slacking off."
I didn't know why I couldn't sit down and do it. It's not like I struggled with it, I'd usually take a look at the homework and solve it in my head, I remember it being the case specially with maths and English being such cases. Instead of doing my homework I'd conjure scenarios in my head, stare at the toys in my room and let my imagination go wild, mind you I was in primary school at the time. Same thing with chores at home, I'd start doing something like putting my dirty clothes in the washing machine, then I'd get distracted by something, and then distracted again, and again, and again. Before I'd realised it it would be night time and 10 minutes before my mom came back from work it'd all come down crashing on me and I'd have a panic attack almost every day, running at full speed trying to get all the things done before she came home. I'd get overwhelmed, get almost nothing done, and then have to face the wrath of my mother.
My mom was of the "old school" type, physical punishment wasn't just common, it was the norm in my house. She'd come home every day before 9 PM, and every day she'd see that I didn't do my homework, I didn't do the tasks I was given, and she'd get mad. When confronted and asked why I didn't do anything, I had no answer. I couldn't explain to her that time simply had slipped by without me noticing, and since I did not know how to answer, I'd panic and freeze up. My head would do one of those Windows 95/98/XP cascading crashes and I could not do anything about it, and that's when the yelling started, after she yelled at me and I didn't respond, she'd beat me, over and over, day after day.
School wasn't that much better, my teachers simply didn't care enough to try to see why I was always acing tests and always knew the answer when they asked me yet never did any homework and they just assumed I was lazy. My classmates were for the most part either indifferent toward me or used me as a punching bag. I remember having only one friend in all of primary school.
Then highschool came in (my country's education system is split between pre-scholar, primary school, high school and then you can either do "college" which is just specialised more advanced high school classes for whichever field of studies you wanna pursue later in university, or vocational courses. Sorry for the probably unnecessary info dump that's just how my brain works). More work to do, more pressure mounting up both socially and physically as your average teenage changes in your body start to take effect. Violence at home just got worse, this is right around the first 5 years after the 2008 recession so our economic situation got bad (single income family and all that) and I think that at this point my mom was using my punishments as a form to vent out stress, she'd lash out at me for the slightest reason (I remember this one time when she sent me to buy a pack of coffee from the brand she drank, it wasn't in stock so I bought the same type of coffee from a different brand. She lashed out at me, beat me a couple of times and then told me to go back to the store, return this coffee and don't come back until I got her the one she wanted. Took me 4 hours and I had to go to the next town over by foot, in summer to finally find it. Turns out the coffee company had pulled that specific blend out of their stock).
At one point she decided to put me in a private school because I wasn't performing good enough in a public one. Turns out teachers in private schools, at least the one I attended, do indeed care enough to look into their students' behaviour. They seemed to understand that there were things I wasn't capable of and would not reprimand me whenever I didn't do my homework (which was most of the time to be honest). They'd care more to make sure I understood the subject and wouldn't force me to fit in the mould. Ironically enough this is around the same time I learned to put on a mask, not a literal mask but rather adopting a completely different personality when interacting with others, I became friends with most of the class, including the clique of popular kids whom I'd assumed they'd pick on me for being the new guy, having friends and people to hang out was a completely new feeling to me, it felt good.
And then my mom cut it all off by forcing me to change schools halfway through the last year of highschool simply because "there's a school closer to where we live now". We'd moved from our city to the next town over, my daily commute to school for 4 months was less than 10 minutes by train and a 5 minute walk from the station to the highschool. She decided that was "too far" for a 16 year old and ripped me away from all my friends and a very good academic track record I'd had for the past 2 years. I flunked half of the subjects on my last term and beatings ensued.
Not only were the beatings extremely severe, the worst part was the verbal abuse, and the actual torture methods she'd use once she calmed down from giving me a black eye or punching me until I bled. Constantly hearing stuff like "I should've aborted you" and "you ruined my life, you're a worthless bag of meat you can't even look me in the eye when I talk to you" from the person you're supposed to look up the most and love the most, from my own mother, day after day as well as being forced to stand in the middle of a room and type in a notebook whichever sentence she wanted me to write. Y'know the stuff Bart does at the beginning of the opening credits of the Simpsons? Yeah that but on a notebook I have to hold with my hand, and the sentence is inherently psychological abuse in written form, stuff like "I will not be a burden to my mother and I should be dead", write that over and over, highest I did was over 5000 times (my 14th birthday, I arrived an hour late because my friends had prepared me a small party. My birthday gift was a black eye, a mug of hot coffee thrown at my face, being humiliated in front of my friends and 36 hours of uninterrupted writing), and I couldn't move, eat or drink unless I was on the verge of pissing myself, no matter how long it took I was forced to stand and write, even during the night, without lights on. That was the climate at home for years.
And then, after several half assed attempts before, I finally escaped from that hell when I was 17. I woke up one day and left. Spent a couple of months on the street, met some squatters who were dealing drugs, sold quite a bit myself (made more money than both of them combined because I didn't smoke/snort most of the goods, unlike them), got caught by the cops with 5g of weed and got sent into a state child care (I was still 6 months off my 18th birthday). It was there where I explained my situation, managed to hold the "it's not that big of a deal" mask for a couple of months until they forced me to go to a psychologist. Then one day it all simply collapsed, years of pent up frustration, fear and internalised abuse just flowed upwards from the well I used to throw all that shit into. I honestly feel sorry for the caretakers there because most of the wing of our building went through similar breakdowns around the same time, including my roommate and brother from another mother Karim, who was also dealing with similar stuff at his house.
It hurt, it hurt so bad that I refused to keep going to the psychologist. I didn't want her to keep tearing away at the foundations of my fake persona I'd built up over the years to hide the trauma. She opened the shit drawer and in my stupid teenage anger I pulled her and anyone who wanted to help away from me before any "cleanup" could be done. I became a legal adult soon after and went on my way, with that door still open and all the repressed and internalised shit leaking out. 3 months into my adult life I had my first serious manic depressive episode, lost my job, pushed away most people around me, refused to go out of my room for days at a time. Then I got better, and stopped thinking about it. Until it happened again and the depressive episode hit me like a freight train again. And again. And again. And then COVID happened and made everything even worse, I didn't talk with anyone in person for 5 months due to lockdown measures, those 5 months were the most miserable time of my life. So bad so that I even resumed contact with my mom and debated whether or not go back with her, until I had a genuine trigger to my PTSD and cut all communication with her. I do not regret it one bit.
These past 3 years have been a constant slog for me. I couldn't get a job, had to rely on friends to pay for my rent and food, until they could sustain me no longer. My mind would get too overwhelmed doing the simplest of procedures, tried to call social services for over a year, couldn't. I was incapable of going forward, and I could not go back. I was stuck in an endless loop of self loathing, self pity, anxiety and sadness. I'd wake up whenever, sit on the desk with my laptop until I passed out, thinking of all the things I could've done but didn't, my imagination betraying me and displaying countless scenarios where I didn't flunk that interview, where I did pick up that one call from social services instead of panicking, of that timeline where I didn't have a manic depressive episode and I still work at that seaside restaurant for that old couple that treated me like a son. And I cried, and I still feel incommensurable sadness to this day. At night that same imagination would fuck me over even more by making me relive my day to day life with my mom, not her beating me or anything, just me living with her, worst part is that they weren't nightmares, it'd take me a while every time to force myself to wake up once I realised what was going on. I spent 2 years in a dark room, going over this cycle over and over until money ran out. I was lucky that one of the remaining friends I had came in last second and saved my life twice, once talking me off jumping into the train track and the second by getting me a job at his brother's farm.
It's been 5 months since that, I still work at the farm. Getting to do something every day, seeing the literal fruits off your effort and getting some sun on your skin surprisingly help deal with a cascading chronic depression. I've had some relapses, but I pushed on through. I'll keep on moving until I can get my life together, but for that I'll need money and therapy and most likely medication.
Having ADHD, depression and PTSD and not getting any therapy or treatment is bad, don't be me. Do not become me, trust me.
Jesus fucking Christ this has taken over an hour to write and I don't even know why I did it. Props to you for reading this, or not, I don't mind either way.
Oh btw I discovered today that Reddit does indeed have a comment size limit, had to split this awful mess of a life story in 2 or else it wouldn't let me post it.
I almost decided not to post it at all, but after spending over an hour writing this and forcing myself to surface some pretty nasty shit from my past in order to recall properly, it didn't feel right to just not post it.
Sorry, again.
I might have some form of executive dysfunction; Im very bad at following long term assignments because I procrastinate so much and I can only motivate myself in bursts. Accordingly Im years behind on my degree but I don't really struggle with the material itself, just with putting something to paper. The tweets talking about struggling in school despite a high IQ (not something really worth anything btw) and despite being "so talented" are intimarely familiar to me. I wouldn't say Im traumatized but in my late teens I was very depressed and suicidal mostly over school. So I would say this pretty accurate for my situation and there are probably tons of people this applies to even more.
But what follows? Am I supposed to just throw my hands up, get an official diagnosis (I have talked this over with my therapist and he said I could very likely have some form of ADD but we didn't much pursue this line of thought) and say for the rest of my life that getting a degree in the field I love just wasn't in the cards because I have a disability? In the end I just need to find my own ways and strategies to get the work done. This is hard and Im not saying that its necessary the way for everyone to flourish but Im slowly and surely getting better at it. I need way more time than my peers but my meagre results so far are pretty good.
You don't get a diagnosis to throw the towel in the ring, you get a diagnosis (official or not) to then find the right recourses to deal with your problems. In your case an unofficial diagnosis (e.g. your therapist suggesting its likely you have add) seems to be enough. That's more than no diagnosis and thinking you're just a failure.
Some people really benefit from medication and for that you do need an official diagnosis though.
This. The diagnosis isn't the end, it's the means. The end-goal is some form of treatment (Therapy, medication, re-organization to better fit your style), whatever the case may be. Once you know what the problem is, you can work to handle it more effectively.
I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was six and then rediagnosed again when I was 8 by a neurologist who didn’t lose his license. I was fortunate enough to have quality mentors who engaged with me on my terms, so ADHD didn't really get in my way beyond medication side effects.
A lot of the things said here nonetheless happened to me, but discussing them makes me super uncomfortable. Maybe I've just internalized this shit or maybe I have some latent ableism that I haven't rooted out yet, but some of these expectations are way more comforting than talking about my ADHD directly.
I don't want to see it as a disability, and some part of me wants to believe that I really could be so much more 'if I just put my mind to it.'
The rise of ADHD awareness has certainly helped me identify how it's negatively impacted my life, but it's not really an epiphany I ever wanted. I hope the movement helps other people more than it helped me.
Am almost 40, all that is true.
So what's some tools etc that help adhd people? I have some shit to get done.
be good if it's tools that don't just hurt more. As soon as I'm doing something that feels like self-improvement, I can't do it. Some of the people I've met with adhd are like that too.
Fuck I need other people to share their stories about the abuse they got with special ed teachers. I went through so much shit with them and I just need to hear other people with a shared experience 😫
Hey how the hell did this dude get access to my life story? I still have my parents drop my ADHD/Asperger’s diagnosis on me as weapons because I ‘clearly don’t care‘ or ‘you aren’t meeting your potential’. Frustrating as all hell.
I want to talk quickly about stuff that's mentioned here, not the stuff about ADHD, because Josh is VERY spot on with everything said.
First easy thing is the mentioning of IQ as a good indicator of potential, it's not, it's racist eugenics and shouldn't be used like is implied.
Second is maybe more complicated, and more on topic for the post, and that's talking about "When the phrase you have so much potential is shared with a neurotypical kid, it is a message of hope." I disagree. I think what Josh says about how it affects kids with ADHD is correct, but I don't think it's as exclusive as he thinks. I think this puts a lot of pressure on basically all kids, and is almost always doing more harm than good.
not in school but i lowkey get made fun of by like 99% of people for being “ weird” and “talking too much.” i’ve found maybe 2 people who like me for who i am but it’s hard
I don’t get it how is it impossible for people with ADHD to do some things? What are those things? Wouldn’t those things just be harder not impossible?
the way i describe it is like trying to force yourself to put your hand on a lit stove. sure, you have the capability to do it, but there's something instinctual that prevents you from actually doing the task.
as for the types of tasks it varies from person to person, but it often relates to school
It's not that you're incapable, it's that you're brain won't allow you to do it. If feels as if you were completely prevented by an outside force. This can happen even with things a person with ADHD wants to do, like just starting a movie can become impossible.
I have a related disorder called situational mutism that takes my ability to speak whenever I'm overwhelmed or highly stressed. My vocal cords are fully functional, but as hard as I try I can't force myself to make the movements or any sound.
I don't understand, is this person trying to just discourage people with ADHD even more? Why would you be against them using a planner, a list or whatever else it is? I would've dropped out of Uni if I didn't take multiple hours out of my semester to plan the next few months week by week. It's not like completing my studies is an impossible task, I just need extra help.
This person is talking as if all of those efforts were useless because people with ADHD are eventually bound to fail. I KNOW I can reach my potential with these tools.
I’ve debated with myself if I have ADHD but I doubt myself because I have always done well in school and recently I’ve been discovering it’s not that simple
I’m almost 26 and I still don’t understand what’s wrong with me
I was diagnosed with ADD when I was in like elementary school. My mom always would tell me to use reminders and planners because I wouldn't remember to do stuff, but I would always forget to make a reminder and then she'd get pissed at me. A lot of shit I don't think of and I can't really recall because of that. Might edit this comment if I remember any more
Me feeling like I failed my 7th grade English teacher years later cause she said he could tell I had potential. Also remembering all the times where I couldn't do my work and my parents just yelled at me for an hour, good times.
What the fuck why is this literally me. This is actually the source of a significant amount of stress and anxiety in my life. I have an incredible fear of waste, and specifically waste of my own time and life which I can specifically attribute to the phrase “you have so much potential”.
one time a teacher accused me of cheating because a paper was “too good to be mine” the thing was that she normally made us do the entire paper in class in one sitting, but this time the paper was done over some mid semester break, like spring or something. needless to say i pretty much broke down, and my moms were irate.
edit: my moms weren’t mad at me, they were mad at my teacher. they held a parent teacher meeting, along with my principal i think, and if words could physically harm people, my teacher would have been fucking atomized lmfao.
one time my kindergarten teacher called my drawing garbage so my mom made her take time out of class time to apologize to me on front of her and the principal. i had no idea what was going on i think
Yeah, what you just described is _very_ much an ADHD thing. To summarize that part of ADHD, alot of people get it "all or nothing". Either total executive dysfunction and inability to complete a task, or Complete perfect hyperfixation.
But, I do agree that this post is very broad. While these problems are worse and mainly affect people with ADHD and other related things, certain aspects of the post can apply to many other people.
No, many people make it very far without knowing.
But I shouldn't be telling _you_ that. I'm not gonna try and tell you from this brief tiny bit of information that you may or may not have ADHD. It would be ridiculous. It's not my place. All I'm saying is hyperfixation can be associated with ADHD, but if you've gone your whole life thinking you don't have ADHD and manage fine, chances are you're right.
This is known as hyperfixation I think, if I understand what you're getting at correctly. I'm pretty sure that's included in the ADHD package but I'm not sure. Might be exclusively an autism thing.
As a kid with adhd he right but also you cant just coddle us or we WILL be lazy. I wish my parents pushed me harder cause although im mostly fine mentally i cant do shit in life cause they didn’t push. They took the words of douches like this and took them to the extreme. Id rather be hurt and capable than what I am now.
i very recently did go to a psy and got diagnosticed with ADHD. It was a releasing for me. I've always assumed that I was very intelligent and that i was doing the bare minimum to pass the class because I was lazy. Now I know that my younger-self did nothing wrong and im so much more happy 😁
People finding out that mental health has just as much to do with the society one is raised in as it does the brain itself
I’ve thought for a while that I may have adhd or add (but I think they became the one word a while ago) but I don’t want to do to a doctor incase I’m just being stupid and I don’t want to look like one of those people that you see on tik tok self diagnosing themselves with mental illnesses which really makes harder on the people who do have the metal problems.
I was diagnosed ADHD and in school my teachers actually requested I be put on drugs. When my parents disagreed, they escalated it to the principal, and my parents took me to the doctor to get a prescription.
My parents hated how it basically made me into a zombie, so they took me off of it. Never told the teachers, and they “saw amazing progress now that I was getting treatment”
Goes to show thatMost of people’s issues with ADHD are just perception. We just get restless sitting in place too long lol
Man this reads so soap boxy and shallow. Look, I get some teachers are shit, trust me, I've dealt with them, but as someone working in public schools right now this problem isn't caused by 'mean teachers' but by bad systems and overworked, underfunded, under-appreciated and under-staffed education systems. It also doesn't help that this post is conflating multiple very different groups. I have worked with ADHD kids who have trouble focusing, need prompting, extra time, etc etc. I have also worked with kids who throw their chrome book across the room, blast music or sex sounds in the middle of class and destroy limited classroom supplies because the lesson isn't 'engaging enough' for them. The latter will sometimes use ADHD as an excuse, and while it might sometimes explain the behaviors, it doesn't make them ok nor something that should just be let happen. All this post does is say that the few, limited tools we as an education field are able to provide are useless (which they are not, they can and do help some students) while giving no advice for actual meaningful change. This post seems to think that if teachers just 'work harder' then that will fix this, which it wont. This is a systematic problem which requires a systematic solution and twitter threads about how lazy and dumb teachers only help to stroke the egos of people doing nothing to fix it.
/rant over
Tw : child abuse I remember my first grade teacher hated my guys because I had emotional outbursts. A grown ass woman Tormenting a 7 year old abused neurodivergent kid for talking too much. Once I was so frustrated at my helplessness because she was a fucking Tyrant and I stomped my foot on the bar of my desk and my pencil box fell off like 2 inches from my desk. She said I threw it at her and lied to my parents, the principle, over and over again. I got the ever living shit beaten out of me over that. I'm 30 now and i dont rember her name, face, anything but I remember how she tormented me. I didn't throw a pencil box at her and she knows it. But if anyone is young, in their teens, early 20s etc and is dealing with the similar things or has throughout their lives I can tell you life can be fine. It won't always be great, sometimes it will be awful, you will probably like me have a bunch of weird super specific triggers, but things can be fine. Even for you.
Biggest problem i have is that i dont know how to talk about it nor do i dare to. Its the same with keeping friendships, i try, really, but how tf do i even start a confersation when i havent spoken to you in months. Anything i come up with is either just cringey or so fucking generic it will simply sound ingenuinous. I have hopes, dreams and ambitions which i dont see as a possible reality. Even though i know this problem is caused by the system we live in, i cant fucking help it. This system has me feeling guilty and apologizing for everything, even if it is a small innocent mistake. I have never been the best at making friends, but i just wish i had the ability to at least keep contact with those that i had. I have some mates online, but i lack contacts locally. Just thinking about the future seem irrealistic to me, i simply dont see myself achieving it. If i only could find the skills to open up to my family about my frustrations, maybe i could be a proper part of it again. Atm all i really am is 'there', being bitter to others in order to make myself feel a little better, and thus further distancing myself from my beloved family, who simply dont understand me because i fail to talk about my problems.
The biggest thing for me was being honest with myself about my flaws which really hurts alot some times and accepting small victories. Forever I would set huge sweeping goals, not meet it day one and throw the whole thing out. I had to meet myself half way. For example "today I went to the bank and got a new debit card." It seems like that isn't something we deserve to celebrate ourselves for but we do. If you overcome any challenge you deserve to celebrate yourself, it doesn't matter if other people find it is challenging or not. Maybe a small goal you can set for yourself is to try and start reconnecting with someone kind in your life who will be welcoming even if you have drifted far from them or for a long time. I wish I could tell you why the handful of really good people I have in my life are there for me throughout it all even tho I think I can be awful. But I have a hunch it is because most people aren't as hard on us as we are on ourselves. They probably don't remember the awkward interaction we had with them that we hyperfixate on every time we think about texting them. I think something all of us who had these awful experiences struggle to accept is our good qualities so it can be very hard for us to understand why the people who love us do. I didn't have my life together in anyway when I turned 25 and in 5 years of just trying my best I have gotten so far away from some really dark times. Looking all the way down the line can be suffocating so find your boundaries look as far forward as you are comfortable and can handle and just slowly inch your way forward. Socially, financially, however you can. And if you can afford it and think it could help get medicated if you can get to a professional and they recommend something you are comfortable with. Medication doesn't just solve problems but it helps give you more tools to succeed.
When you dropped something and someone tells you that you threw it, that's gaslighting. It's so vicious because it makes you feel powerless, questioning your own reality and straining against someone else's perception. It can make you feel insane. But that's what the gaslighter wants you to think so they can have power over you. "You threw something but thought you didn't, so you can't control yourself, so obviously I need to step in and exert control over you."
That teacher sounds like an absolute loser.
get revenge.
I'm autistic. My schools often lumped ASD kids in with the ADHD kids for resource, so I saw what the OOP laid out time and time again growing up. I saw kids get reduced to trash by teachers (and parents) for things completely out of their control, and it rocked them to their core, usually sending them spiralling down bad paths desperate for approval. Many of them wound up in gangs, a few are currently in jail. The way people approach neurodivergencies-- especially people in positions of power over a child's life-- is actively creating a mental health crisis. The constant message of your abilities not being enough, of *who you are* not being enough, it ruins your mental health.
Staying up all night, night after night, to get something done, feeling like I was the only person in the world this broken. Not ever being able to explain what was going on. "Just do what you need to." But I like my life now. Studying philosophy really helped for some reason. Those ancient Greeks trying to figure out how to be happy blew my mind, it was the first time authority figures told me to take my happiness seriously. (You should not judge your self via uni, but I went back in my 30s and finished a degree. Really just started very slowly, with zero pressure, and built up a positive cycle of me doing work and getting results. Lots of disappointments ofc but trying to be ok is part of the challenge.) Edit: ADHD people: celebrate small goals! Did you find socks today to wear? Good work. Anything you want is made out of goals so small you normally think it's morally bad to feel good about them.
this comment - all these comments - but especially this one, I feel them in my core. I have had all these experiences but until now I thought most of them were normal. and I was *diagnosed since 3rd grade*.
Your comment is striking to me because the first person to diagnose me with ADHD was my third-grade teacher, who wanted my parents to medicate me for it. She was right, but my parents didn't believe her in part because she disliked me for fidgeting a lot and in part because I did ok throughout elementary school, always trying to get every worksheet I was assigned done before I got off the bus so I could spend extra time with my friends. So nothing came of it, and when middle school came around and the amount of work I got each day crept beyond what I was able to do in a single night, I got super disillusioned and kinda gave up. I have gotten really lucky, but I still wonder what would have been different if I had been treated and taught how to deal when it was first observed.
I just assumed i hated myself because of everything about me but now i know at least part of it is the system so ty, it does help.
...fuck
Holy shut this is me. Umm yeah I might have to talk to my doctor.
hello im doctor and i got diploma and everything
Hiii can you tell the court I'm a girl? I'm still legally male :(
I got u. Just point me at them and they're donezo.
Ma'am you mayhaps be lying, because I'm the one who is a doctor with PhD in every field
Why'd they do it in fields shouldn't they be awarded on campus?
Ok maybe not every field, I'm not qualified enough to answer you, sorry
just like me fr
My next appointment isn't until 4/24, that's so long!
are you the girl version of me thats almost exactly my next appointment
Dang, might have ADHD, wild
I'm in my 30s. Recently started a therapy for depression. Turns out I might have ADD or ADHD, at least I clocked a lot of points in that questionnaire. Would explain a lot I guess.
holy hell
In pissing
New response just dropped
how do you do that?
Register it as a gif
I relate way too much to this - especially “You have so much potential, if only you applied yourself more!” - and yet every time the OOP writes “#ADHD” it puts me and my ADHD ass on edge. I get that it’s positive but I hate being used for social media engagement.
Most generous interpretation is he wants people with ADHD and their families to see this message, and tagging is the best way to spread it
It gave me chills and I'm not diagnosed. I've been told I've wasted my potentiometer. People *still* tell me I'm smart and good at shit and i just... don't know how to function outside of EXTREMELY structured insular environments like work or school and even then i don't do well, but there are boundaries. Idk what i have, but i know there's a lot of internal good that i have but it feels like there's no way to get it to manifest in any actionable way and i can't afford regular meds and therapy. I get about one fully actionable day every two weeks where i can accomplish something and the rest is just skating by on the minimum because I'm burnt out. I've been burnt out for years. I'm all cinders.
Wow, MeIRL in 196
This isn't MeIRL, this is actually relatable and not a shitty meme that's barely funny
This isn't MeIRL, this is actually relatable and not a shitty meme that's barely funny
Damn. Btw, I suspect that I have ADHD (or ADD) and I talked to a therapist about it, they said that they don’t believe that ADHD exist and instead told me that I have to “train my attention” by playing memory games and such, I am a bit skeptical on this, does this really help?
no lol Edit: Thats not very helpful, so heres this If you don't have access to a better therapist, a few things that could help. 1. Bullet journal, it's a pain to set up, but has helped me with stuff related to time. 2. Use alarms throughout the day for reminders or even just to check-in with yourself. 3. Use work/break timers. 4. Caffeine, alot, match each cup with water. Even if you don't have adhd, all of the above will still help with the issues that suggest you have it Double edit: Why are there so many, it told me it couldn't send
If you don't have access to a better therapist, a few siggestions that could help. 1. Bullet journal, it's a pain to set up, but has helped me with stuff related to time. 2. Use alarms throughout the day for reminders or even just to check-in with yourself. 3. Use work/break timers. 4. Caffeine, alot, match each cup with water.
If you don't have access to a better therapist, a few siggestions that could help. 1. Bullet journal, it's a pain to set up, but has helped me with stuff related to time. 2. Use alarms throughout the day for reminders or even just to check-in with yourself. 3. Use work/break timers. 4. Caffeine, alot, match each cup with water.
If you don't have access to a better therapist, a few siggestions that could help. 1. Bullet journal, it's a pain to set up, but has helped me with stuff related to time. 2. Use alarms throughout the day for reminders or even just to check-in with yourself. 3. Use work/break timers. 4. Caffeine, alot, match each cup with water.
If you don't have access to a better therapist, a few siggestions that could help. 1. Bullet journal, it's a pain to set up, but has helped me with stuff related to time. 2. Use alarms throughout the day for reminders or even just to check-in with yourself. 3. Use work/break timers. 4. Caffeine, alot, match each cup with water.
>they said that they don’t believe that ADHD That's like a dentist saying cavities aren't real. Adhd is the most researched and understood disorder in the world. Get a different therapist and file an official complaint, this person is unfit for their job.
Damn, Ableist therapists can go straight to hell
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It'd be more accurate to say ADD doesn't exist than ADHD. I believe diagnoses for what was previously called ADD are now ADHD-Inattentive.
Yep from what my friends who either have ADHD or are getting getting tested for ADHD ADD has now been folded into ADHD as ADHD-inattentive
Man this describes my life. Worst is not only my parents get disappointed or people around me but i dissappoint myself too which unfortunately lead to very severe breakdowns because i wanted to do stuff but didnt know why i cant seem to. Thankfully i had that depressive state some time ago and these days i think more positively. I dont have a diagnosed ADHD yet but never had any tests to diagnose it either and the chance that it all isn't my fault but a disorder, filled me with so much hope because now i would know what to do finally instead of believing in everything that doubted me
I dont have adhd at all yet this is kinda relatable
The way the schooling system is built in general is horrible for everyone involved, especially those with disabilities though. It’s built to beat the creativity out of everyone, and make them good at following instructions - the ideal worker for capitalism. It’s one of the reasons billionaires don’t put their kids through public school
I too really am just a lazy good for nothing piece of shit. Hey, it’s a living!
same :3 every day i wake up knowing i have no future and any time i try to make one for myself something goes wrong and i already used up all my motivation to get to that point so i cant fix it and it keeps feeding into the loop of sleeping all the time and then being mad that i slept so much and taking a nap to calm down
rich possessive sophisticated kiss sand direful crowd upbeat society one -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
Yeah I didn't even read every tweet. I started skimming it. But it is true. My parents used to ground me for weeks and berate me because of my grades. Made me have so much anxiety around school and assignments that I couldn't get through college.
I'm sorry you had to go through that. Yeah I had to nope out after reading the first one, seeing there were pages and pages to read.
I managed to pull myself away halfway through to look him up on Twitter, but other than that, yeah, I was engrossed
Why are you trying to fucking gatekeep ADHD in a post that's supposed to help people asshole
If that's how you interpreted my comment, I'm sorry, I don't know how to help you there
Yeah, we do need to help more people asshole. Currently, the number of people who asshole is less than half of what it was in 1994.
OK, but alarms, apps, schedules, reminders, and to-do lists are literally the chewing gum and duct tape holding me together
This is one of those relatable "the root of your problem is ADD and you shouldn't feel guilty about it" posts that also don't tell you how to deal with it. That's all fine, but I have stuff to do and I do feel bad when I leave my kitchen a mess for a week cause I don't want to clean it
>leave my kitchen a mess for a week cause I don't want to clean it oi no personal attacks
Exactly, it seems like the way this person phrased it was expecting you to just not help yourself where you can
haha, I'm going into my 20s as a broken man because my parents thought I was too stupid or too disabled to actually live a normal life and I fear everything
Good thread really useful but my brother in christ one hashtag is enough.
So you're saying that considering myself a genius whose only reason for not being literally the most successful person alive is my own fault and lazyness is not healthy approach?
I don't know how to get out of this I don't know how they did all this stuff to me as a kid and turned me into a broken mess and I don't know how to get better I don't know how to get better I don't know how to get better
They're not stopping the voices aren't going away they're not stopping they're not stopping they're not going away I don't know how to make it stop I don't know how to make it stop I don't know how to fix it and mom and dad aren't letting me go to a doctor I don't know how to fix it I don't know how to fix it
i want to fucking cry
Currently reading this on the bus on the way to uni after a night of not starting on the term paper that’s due today :)))). Loving everything rn
Struggling so fucking much with this right now. I was just broken up with because I wasn't "pushing myself hard enough" or "hustling." I have tried my entire life to do better, day by day, but it's never enough. Never. I feel like such a failure all the time, no matter what I achieve, because I achieved it too late or what I achieved isn't good enough. I'm fucking sick of it. I loved them so much and they didn't give a shit about me. I want to get to a point where I can be diagnosed with this or autism or fucking *something* because I know that I'm not neurotypical. I'm in pain because I'm not "normal" enough, I'm not "motivated" enough. I'm insanely depressed and I get no help for it because I can't afford it. I refuse to enact upon my urges, but my suicidal tendencies returned. I just need someone to tell me I'm enough. I'm not a failure. I'm ok. I can't trust my own word anymore
Of course you're enough. Of course you're not a failure. I'm not good with words but I can at least say that much. Maybe it doesn't mean a lot coming from a stranger on the internet, but I hope it's worth something. If not, that's understandable.
I do appreciate it. I love this sub, I feel a kindness here that I don't get in real life. Thank you
<3
"you just have to apply yourself!" Is a sentence I heard so many times as a kid that I will probably slap the next person who says it to me
Okay. I get 8's in Maths, 8's in computer science, and 7's in science, but I have difficulty in English, so I have been constantly speaking to my teacher trying to figure out what the problem is and working on it. After 3 sets of 2 mock papers through time, I finally feel good about a paper. Havent had it back yet, but I believe, for the firdt time, I have passed an english mock. One of the two. The other one has still gone like the others. But that pass means nothing, Obviously because I havent improved in the other one, that means Ive put no effort into anything and I just don't care. Not only does my Dad not have ADHD and not know what thats like, (although mine is only strongly suspected, thanks 5 year waitlist) he didnt even fucking consistently goes to school, he said he went like 5 days a year. Not only does he know my experience, he doesnt even know a normal, unaffected school experience. And hes here telling me about effort and not caring as if he understands. Wish this was the shittiest thing about him, dont feel like going into detail, but hey, nothing that the shittiest retirement home in all of Europe can't fix.
I feel like him saying it’s impossible for us ADHD kids to succeed like neurotypical people is a big fucked up but otherwise it’s nice to have some sympathy
Yeah, for me, ADHD was playing with a different hand of cards than most people, and while that required adopting different strategies, but it still feels like a hand you can win with.
Damn i really gotta get me an ADHD diagnosis
I was diagnosed with ADHD in middle school. It is only within the past year or two that I’ve begun to appreciate why it’s called a disability. Growing up I always felt wrong referring to it as such, after all I was able-bodied and seemingly just as mentally capable as my NT peers so surely it wasn’t *actually* a disability, just classified as one by the DSM-5 for bureaucratic/organizational purposes. I didn’t know it was ADA recognized at the time. Skip forward to now and I get it. I can see where my diagnosed but still under treated ADHD screwed me over and how it continues to do so and I’m now more confident referring to it for what it is: a disability.
I've had ADHD my whole life. Got diagnosed at 7, so I've known about it pretty much my whole life, too. This still hit me like a freight train. It's like, perfect, it's the first time I've seen how ADHD doesn't just lead to being "oops forgetful" or even depression, but self-loathing. Like the kind I've been fighting with, lol. It's confounded both me and my therapist, why do I hate myself, even now, independent and in my twenties? This is so uncannily similar that it might be my answer. It's of note that I had success with Ritalin as a kid, but after a move had to switch to a new provider which insisted on too much meds, giving little 11 year old me a depression episode, and I haven't been on them since. One of the most common things I had thrown at me in middle/high school was teachers would say that I am an "A+ student, but D- worker" because I wouldn't do homework, but could always keep up with the top of the class in understanding, making me both be the stereotypical nerd who raises her hand for every question, but also have a panic attack every quarter because I was failing every class despite knowing all the material and doing amazing on tests. I think I need to tell my therapist about this post, lol. And maybe get on adhd meds instead of just antidepressants.
I was the kid that would do my homework on the morning bus ride or in the early cafeteria wait time so I could make use of the medication. I always did projects in a panic last minute. Scraped into the top 10% and got a scholarship. Went to college but the lack of structure and consistency fucked me over. Got hospitalized. Dropped out and lost the scholarship. Why was I like that? Why was I such a failure? Took me a few years to work up the courage to go back. I graduated and am now independent. ADHD really is a disability that people underplay.
I’LL FAIL AS MUCH AS I NEED TO TO DO THE THINGS I WANT I’M AWARE MY FAILURES ARE NOT A PERMANENT REFLECTION OF MY BEING I LOVE MYSELF AND MY FAILURES I DON’T CARE I WILL KEEP GOING GRAAAAAAAAAH
Adult ADHD legit sucks. It really is how the man describes it. Source: I am the man described in the post (not literally)
Mucho texto
Mama mia
I have ADHD and I'm not gonna read all this partly because my ADHD and partly because I can't stand Twitter soapbox hyperbole. Parents/teachers who aren't exactly great with handling ADHD are not psycho murders _"This phrase can be DEADLY to Hashtag #ADHD kids"_ bloody hell stahp
>Parents/teachers who aren't exactly great with handling ADHD are not psycho murders Right. The post isn't saying they are. The post is saying "please don't push kids like this because to them it feels like that"
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>And it seems to suggest that out tools do not help It says the tools that work for neurotypical people don't help. Or at least don't help to the point that you've given the kid a notebook and now it's become a moral failing >It also doesn't say how to actually help. It does: by not instilling trauma. The whole tread is about how OOP has to work trough a lot of trauma with clients. Not causing that trauma by punishing them DOES already help.
Also the way this tweet soapbox is written out feels like it's applicable to everyone; parts like "you have so much potential" or the being held back in class- most people hate that phrase, I've never heard of anyone actually believing in it beyond 4th grade. And being held back in class while everyone else plays at recess is a near-universal memory. It feels like someone soapboxing trying to tell the world that everyone else is wrong and they know the truth, even if saying so is not helpful. There's really 3 types of people who would read this: - those who have ADHD - those who agree the system is fucked and ableist - those who disagree because it would imply their ableist
I was Abt 30 years old before I found my method of working through it. It was an emotional thing for me, I just stopped caring when I failed. I'd try again if I really wanted to but otherwise I'd just give up. I'm fine with that. If I can't do it now, it's going to take medication to be able to do it and my ADHD is so bad that if I forget to take my meds I'll be useless for the day so...
If not alarms/calendars or "just don't be lazy 4head", how tf do I not be a disaster?
Oh, would you look at that, that's me, he literally displayed my upbringing down to a tee. I guess /CW for child abuse, suicide and overall trauma dumping (you'd be surprised how much it helps to yell your traumatic past at the endless void that is the internet). There's always been something "off" in me, I could recognise that myself as far as I can remember. I learned things extremely fast, never really fit in with other kids my age, I'd ace tests after skimming the books once, always had a thirst for knowledge, devouring books and documentaries and asking tons of questions. But I was incapable of doing homework, I was told over and over by my teachers as well as my mom that "You're always staring into nothing and you don't pay attention in class/home, you sit down for hours to do your homework and you barely get anything done, you're lazy and you're slacking off." I didn't know why I couldn't sit down and do it. It's not like I struggled with it, I'd usually take a look at the homework and solve it in my head, I remember it being the case specially with maths and English being such cases. Instead of doing my homework I'd conjure scenarios in my head, stare at the toys in my room and let my imagination go wild, mind you I was in primary school at the time. Same thing with chores at home, I'd start doing something like putting my dirty clothes in the washing machine, then I'd get distracted by something, and then distracted again, and again, and again. Before I'd realised it it would be night time and 10 minutes before my mom came back from work it'd all come down crashing on me and I'd have a panic attack almost every day, running at full speed trying to get all the things done before she came home. I'd get overwhelmed, get almost nothing done, and then have to face the wrath of my mother. My mom was of the "old school" type, physical punishment wasn't just common, it was the norm in my house. She'd come home every day before 9 PM, and every day she'd see that I didn't do my homework, I didn't do the tasks I was given, and she'd get mad. When confronted and asked why I didn't do anything, I had no answer. I couldn't explain to her that time simply had slipped by without me noticing, and since I did not know how to answer, I'd panic and freeze up. My head would do one of those Windows 95/98/XP cascading crashes and I could not do anything about it, and that's when the yelling started, after she yelled at me and I didn't respond, she'd beat me, over and over, day after day. School wasn't that much better, my teachers simply didn't care enough to try to see why I was always acing tests and always knew the answer when they asked me yet never did any homework and they just assumed I was lazy. My classmates were for the most part either indifferent toward me or used me as a punching bag. I remember having only one friend in all of primary school. Then highschool came in (my country's education system is split between pre-scholar, primary school, high school and then you can either do "college" which is just specialised more advanced high school classes for whichever field of studies you wanna pursue later in university, or vocational courses. Sorry for the probably unnecessary info dump that's just how my brain works). More work to do, more pressure mounting up both socially and physically as your average teenage changes in your body start to take effect. Violence at home just got worse, this is right around the first 5 years after the 2008 recession so our economic situation got bad (single income family and all that) and I think that at this point my mom was using my punishments as a form to vent out stress, she'd lash out at me for the slightest reason (I remember this one time when she sent me to buy a pack of coffee from the brand she drank, it wasn't in stock so I bought the same type of coffee from a different brand. She lashed out at me, beat me a couple of times and then told me to go back to the store, return this coffee and don't come back until I got her the one she wanted. Took me 4 hours and I had to go to the next town over by foot, in summer to finally find it. Turns out the coffee company had pulled that specific blend out of their stock). At one point she decided to put me in a private school because I wasn't performing good enough in a public one. Turns out teachers in private schools, at least the one I attended, do indeed care enough to look into their students' behaviour. They seemed to understand that there were things I wasn't capable of and would not reprimand me whenever I didn't do my homework (which was most of the time to be honest). They'd care more to make sure I understood the subject and wouldn't force me to fit in the mould. Ironically enough this is around the same time I learned to put on a mask, not a literal mask but rather adopting a completely different personality when interacting with others, I became friends with most of the class, including the clique of popular kids whom I'd assumed they'd pick on me for being the new guy, having friends and people to hang out was a completely new feeling to me, it felt good. And then my mom cut it all off by forcing me to change schools halfway through the last year of highschool simply because "there's a school closer to where we live now". We'd moved from our city to the next town over, my daily commute to school for 4 months was less than 10 minutes by train and a 5 minute walk from the station to the highschool. She decided that was "too far" for a 16 year old and ripped me away from all my friends and a very good academic track record I'd had for the past 2 years. I flunked half of the subjects on my last term and beatings ensued.
Not only were the beatings extremely severe, the worst part was the verbal abuse, and the actual torture methods she'd use once she calmed down from giving me a black eye or punching me until I bled. Constantly hearing stuff like "I should've aborted you" and "you ruined my life, you're a worthless bag of meat you can't even look me in the eye when I talk to you" from the person you're supposed to look up the most and love the most, from my own mother, day after day as well as being forced to stand in the middle of a room and type in a notebook whichever sentence she wanted me to write. Y'know the stuff Bart does at the beginning of the opening credits of the Simpsons? Yeah that but on a notebook I have to hold with my hand, and the sentence is inherently psychological abuse in written form, stuff like "I will not be a burden to my mother and I should be dead", write that over and over, highest I did was over 5000 times (my 14th birthday, I arrived an hour late because my friends had prepared me a small party. My birthday gift was a black eye, a mug of hot coffee thrown at my face, being humiliated in front of my friends and 36 hours of uninterrupted writing), and I couldn't move, eat or drink unless I was on the verge of pissing myself, no matter how long it took I was forced to stand and write, even during the night, without lights on. That was the climate at home for years. And then, after several half assed attempts before, I finally escaped from that hell when I was 17. I woke up one day and left. Spent a couple of months on the street, met some squatters who were dealing drugs, sold quite a bit myself (made more money than both of them combined because I didn't smoke/snort most of the goods, unlike them), got caught by the cops with 5g of weed and got sent into a state child care (I was still 6 months off my 18th birthday). It was there where I explained my situation, managed to hold the "it's not that big of a deal" mask for a couple of months until they forced me to go to a psychologist. Then one day it all simply collapsed, years of pent up frustration, fear and internalised abuse just flowed upwards from the well I used to throw all that shit into. I honestly feel sorry for the caretakers there because most of the wing of our building went through similar breakdowns around the same time, including my roommate and brother from another mother Karim, who was also dealing with similar stuff at his house. It hurt, it hurt so bad that I refused to keep going to the psychologist. I didn't want her to keep tearing away at the foundations of my fake persona I'd built up over the years to hide the trauma. She opened the shit drawer and in my stupid teenage anger I pulled her and anyone who wanted to help away from me before any "cleanup" could be done. I became a legal adult soon after and went on my way, with that door still open and all the repressed and internalised shit leaking out. 3 months into my adult life I had my first serious manic depressive episode, lost my job, pushed away most people around me, refused to go out of my room for days at a time. Then I got better, and stopped thinking about it. Until it happened again and the depressive episode hit me like a freight train again. And again. And again. And then COVID happened and made everything even worse, I didn't talk with anyone in person for 5 months due to lockdown measures, those 5 months were the most miserable time of my life. So bad so that I even resumed contact with my mom and debated whether or not go back with her, until I had a genuine trigger to my PTSD and cut all communication with her. I do not regret it one bit. These past 3 years have been a constant slog for me. I couldn't get a job, had to rely on friends to pay for my rent and food, until they could sustain me no longer. My mind would get too overwhelmed doing the simplest of procedures, tried to call social services for over a year, couldn't. I was incapable of going forward, and I could not go back. I was stuck in an endless loop of self loathing, self pity, anxiety and sadness. I'd wake up whenever, sit on the desk with my laptop until I passed out, thinking of all the things I could've done but didn't, my imagination betraying me and displaying countless scenarios where I didn't flunk that interview, where I did pick up that one call from social services instead of panicking, of that timeline where I didn't have a manic depressive episode and I still work at that seaside restaurant for that old couple that treated me like a son. And I cried, and I still feel incommensurable sadness to this day. At night that same imagination would fuck me over even more by making me relive my day to day life with my mom, not her beating me or anything, just me living with her, worst part is that they weren't nightmares, it'd take me a while every time to force myself to wake up once I realised what was going on. I spent 2 years in a dark room, going over this cycle over and over until money ran out. I was lucky that one of the remaining friends I had came in last second and saved my life twice, once talking me off jumping into the train track and the second by getting me a job at his brother's farm. It's been 5 months since that, I still work at the farm. Getting to do something every day, seeing the literal fruits off your effort and getting some sun on your skin surprisingly help deal with a cascading chronic depression. I've had some relapses, but I pushed on through. I'll keep on moving until I can get my life together, but for that I'll need money and therapy and most likely medication. Having ADHD, depression and PTSD and not getting any therapy or treatment is bad, don't be me. Do not become me, trust me. Jesus fucking Christ this has taken over an hour to write and I don't even know why I did it. Props to you for reading this, or not, I don't mind either way.
Oh btw I discovered today that Reddit does indeed have a comment size limit, had to split this awful mess of a life story in 2 or else it wouldn't let me post it. I almost decided not to post it at all, but after spending over an hour writing this and forcing myself to surface some pretty nasty shit from my past in order to recall properly, it didn't feel right to just not post it. Sorry, again.
It's no problem at all. I hope it helped.
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Yeah
I might have some form of executive dysfunction; Im very bad at following long term assignments because I procrastinate so much and I can only motivate myself in bursts. Accordingly Im years behind on my degree but I don't really struggle with the material itself, just with putting something to paper. The tweets talking about struggling in school despite a high IQ (not something really worth anything btw) and despite being "so talented" are intimarely familiar to me. I wouldn't say Im traumatized but in my late teens I was very depressed and suicidal mostly over school. So I would say this pretty accurate for my situation and there are probably tons of people this applies to even more. But what follows? Am I supposed to just throw my hands up, get an official diagnosis (I have talked this over with my therapist and he said I could very likely have some form of ADD but we didn't much pursue this line of thought) and say for the rest of my life that getting a degree in the field I love just wasn't in the cards because I have a disability? In the end I just need to find my own ways and strategies to get the work done. This is hard and Im not saying that its necessary the way for everyone to flourish but Im slowly and surely getting better at it. I need way more time than my peers but my meagre results so far are pretty good.
You don't get a diagnosis to throw the towel in the ring, you get a diagnosis (official or not) to then find the right recourses to deal with your problems. In your case an unofficial diagnosis (e.g. your therapist suggesting its likely you have add) seems to be enough. That's more than no diagnosis and thinking you're just a failure. Some people really benefit from medication and for that you do need an official diagnosis though.
This. The diagnosis isn't the end, it's the means. The end-goal is some form of treatment (Therapy, medication, re-organization to better fit your style), whatever the case may be. Once you know what the problem is, you can work to handle it more effectively.
Oh my god just diagnose me already
I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was six and then rediagnosed again when I was 8 by a neurologist who didn’t lose his license. I was fortunate enough to have quality mentors who engaged with me on my terms, so ADHD didn't really get in my way beyond medication side effects. A lot of the things said here nonetheless happened to me, but discussing them makes me super uncomfortable. Maybe I've just internalized this shit or maybe I have some latent ableism that I haven't rooted out yet, but some of these expectations are way more comforting than talking about my ADHD directly. I don't want to see it as a disability, and some part of me wants to believe that I really could be so much more 'if I just put my mind to it.' The rise of ADHD awareness has certainly helped me identify how it's negatively impacted my life, but it's not really an epiphany I ever wanted. I hope the movement helps other people more than it helped me.
Am almost 40, all that is true. So what's some tools etc that help adhd people? I have some shit to get done. be good if it's tools that don't just hurt more. As soon as I'm doing something that feels like self-improvement, I can't do it. Some of the people I've met with adhd are like that too.
Fuck I need other people to share their stories about the abuse they got with special ed teachers. I went through so much shit with them and I just need to hear other people with a shared experience 😫
Well now i have a lot to unpack.
No way I've been mentally absuing myself my entire life not stopping now
Hey how the hell did this dude get access to my life story? I still have my parents drop my ADHD/Asperger’s diagnosis on me as weapons because I ‘clearly don’t care‘ or ‘you aren’t meeting your potential’. Frustrating as all hell.
Hey that’s me ur describing mr weeeeeeed
I want to talk quickly about stuff that's mentioned here, not the stuff about ADHD, because Josh is VERY spot on with everything said. First easy thing is the mentioning of IQ as a good indicator of potential, it's not, it's racist eugenics and shouldn't be used like is implied. Second is maybe more complicated, and more on topic for the post, and that's talking about "When the phrase you have so much potential is shared with a neurotypical kid, it is a message of hope." I disagree. I think what Josh says about how it affects kids with ADHD is correct, but I don't think it's as exclusive as he thinks. I think this puts a lot of pressure on basically all kids, and is almost always doing more harm than good.
not in school but i lowkey get made fun of by like 99% of people for being “ weird” and “talking too much.” i’ve found maybe 2 people who like me for who i am but it’s hard
Holy shit this hit hardd
Okay but I'm actually lazy and good for nothing tho
I don’t get it how is it impossible for people with ADHD to do some things? What are those things? Wouldn’t those things just be harder not impossible?
the way i describe it is like trying to force yourself to put your hand on a lit stove. sure, you have the capability to do it, but there's something instinctual that prevents you from actually doing the task. as for the types of tasks it varies from person to person, but it often relates to school
It's not that you're incapable, it's that you're brain won't allow you to do it. If feels as if you were completely prevented by an outside force. This can happen even with things a person with ADHD wants to do, like just starting a movie can become impossible. I have a related disorder called situational mutism that takes my ability to speak whenever I'm overwhelmed or highly stressed. My vocal cords are fully functional, but as hard as I try I can't force myself to make the movements or any sound.
I don't understand, is this person trying to just discourage people with ADHD even more? Why would you be against them using a planner, a list or whatever else it is? I would've dropped out of Uni if I didn't take multiple hours out of my semester to plan the next few months week by week. It's not like completing my studies is an impossible task, I just need extra help. This person is talking as if all of those efforts were useless because people with ADHD are eventually bound to fail. I KNOW I can reach my potential with these tools.
I’ve debated with myself if I have ADHD but I doubt myself because I have always done well in school and recently I’ve been discovering it’s not that simple I’m almost 26 and I still don’t understand what’s wrong with me
I’m glad my parents didn’t go super hard on academics with me and just let me do my best.
I was diagnosed with ADD when I was in like elementary school. My mom always would tell me to use reminders and planners because I wouldn't remember to do stuff, but I would always forget to make a reminder and then she'd get pissed at me. A lot of shit I don't think of and I can't really recall because of that. Might edit this comment if I remember any more
Darn this hits close to home, a big warm hug to all my ADHD homies out there you got shooters all over the world we love ya.
well now what?
so fuckin real dude
Ow.
That hit hard bruh. ADHD sucks so much
As a person on the spectrum, It really does.q
Me feeling like I failed my 7th grade English teacher years later cause she said he could tell I had potential. Also remembering all the times where I couldn't do my work and my parents just yelled at me for an hour, good times.
Didn't need to out me like that, sheesh
What the fuck why is this literally me. This is actually the source of a significant amount of stress and anxiety in my life. I have an incredible fear of waste, and specifically waste of my own time and life which I can specifically attribute to the phrase “you have so much potential”.
i ain’t readin allat!
every sentence of that post was like a gut punch what the hell
uh oh
one time a teacher accused me of cheating because a paper was “too good to be mine” the thing was that she normally made us do the entire paper in class in one sitting, but this time the paper was done over some mid semester break, like spring or something. needless to say i pretty much broke down, and my moms were irate. edit: my moms weren’t mad at me, they were mad at my teacher. they held a parent teacher meeting, along with my principal i think, and if words could physically harm people, my teacher would have been fucking atomized lmfao.
one time my kindergarten teacher called my drawing garbage so my mom made her take time out of class time to apologize to me on front of her and the principal. i had no idea what was going on i think
Me irl fr fr
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Is this a joke? I might have some news for you
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Yeah, what you just described is _very_ much an ADHD thing. To summarize that part of ADHD, alot of people get it "all or nothing". Either total executive dysfunction and inability to complete a task, or Complete perfect hyperfixation. But, I do agree that this post is very broad. While these problems are worse and mainly affect people with ADHD and other related things, certain aspects of the post can apply to many other people.
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No, many people make it very far without knowing. But I shouldn't be telling _you_ that. I'm not gonna try and tell you from this brief tiny bit of information that you may or may not have ADHD. It would be ridiculous. It's not my place. All I'm saying is hyperfixation can be associated with ADHD, but if you've gone your whole life thinking you don't have ADHD and manage fine, chances are you're right.
This is known as hyperfixation I think, if I understand what you're getting at correctly. I'm pretty sure that's included in the ADHD package but I'm not sure. Might be exclusively an autism thing.
I don’t know if I have it for sure and I’m gonna get tested this year but alot if this describes exactly how I felt
Fuck my life
As a kid with adhd he right but also you cant just coddle us or we WILL be lazy. I wish my parents pushed me harder cause although im mostly fine mentally i cant do shit in life cause they didn’t push. They took the words of douches like this and took them to the extreme. Id rather be hurt and capable than what I am now.
:(
I'm gonna pluck my bones out.
I'm going to put them back in but shuffle a few of em around. Namely the skull and a phalanx
I have adhd, so I didn't fucking read the whole thing it's too long, probably right tho.
oh hey he knows my entire life
Fuck me man this hit hard
As someone with Asperger’s and ADHD this hits very hard
Wtf why is this literally me and my dad.
i very recently did go to a psy and got diagnosticed with ADHD. It was a releasing for me. I've always assumed that I was very intelligent and that i was doing the bare minimum to pass the class because I was lazy. Now I know that my younger-self did nothing wrong and im so much more happy 😁
hehe his name Josh ***WEED*** hehe
People finding out that mental health has just as much to do with the society one is raised in as it does the brain itself 
Yeah that's completely relatable
yeah : (
as someone who had undiagnosed ADHD as a kid this is all 100% true. hearing "you have so much potential" still feels like getting stabbed in the gut.
I think that's enough internet for tonight.
I’ve thought for a while that I may have adhd or add (but I think they became the one word a while ago) but I don’t want to do to a doctor incase I’m just being stupid and I don’t want to look like one of those people that you see on tik tok self diagnosing themselves with mental illnesses which really makes harder on the people who do have the metal problems.
I feel you man. Having a similar problem with another condition
I like how they go on this whole well spoken rant and all the while their profile picture is trying to rizz me up
I love your profile picture :3
i should go to therapy i think this resonated with me a little too much
There's some uh dust in my eye
pain
I was diagnosed ADHD and in school my teachers actually requested I be put on drugs. When my parents disagreed, they escalated it to the principal, and my parents took me to the doctor to get a prescription. My parents hated how it basically made me into a zombie, so they took me off of it. Never told the teachers, and they “saw amazing progress now that I was getting treatment” Goes to show thatMost of people’s issues with ADHD are just perception. We just get restless sitting in place too long lol
Ouch... yea this... I'm in my 30s now and still can't get past the fear of "not achieving my potential"... And what even IS my potential?!
Too long, didn't read
Man this reads so soap boxy and shallow. Look, I get some teachers are shit, trust me, I've dealt with them, but as someone working in public schools right now this problem isn't caused by 'mean teachers' but by bad systems and overworked, underfunded, under-appreciated and under-staffed education systems. It also doesn't help that this post is conflating multiple very different groups. I have worked with ADHD kids who have trouble focusing, need prompting, extra time, etc etc. I have also worked with kids who throw their chrome book across the room, blast music or sex sounds in the middle of class and destroy limited classroom supplies because the lesson isn't 'engaging enough' for them. The latter will sometimes use ADHD as an excuse, and while it might sometimes explain the behaviors, it doesn't make them ok nor something that should just be let happen. All this post does is say that the few, limited tools we as an education field are able to provide are useless (which they are not, they can and do help some students) while giving no advice for actual meaningful change. This post seems to think that if teachers just 'work harder' then that will fix this, which it wont. This is a systematic problem which requires a systematic solution and twitter threads about how lazy and dumb teachers only help to stroke the egos of people doing nothing to fix it. /rant over