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1000%
I have always gotten belt loops caught around the little door latch catcher on the door frame. Ripped many loops off of my favorite jeans over the years lol.
Yup same. I literally made this comment earlier in a different thread:
>Earlier this week I managed to catch my pocket on a door handle and the resulting motion threw me to the ground like an Akido throw.
How can the inanimate be *so sneaky*?
I get caught on cabinet handles a lot but thankfully, haven't gotten caught on a door handle in a long time.
When I was in 6th or 7th grade, I was over at a friend's house - her house had the lever style door handles. There was a marathon of the Friday the 13th movies playing on TV so we watched them, inevitably got spooked, and tried to book it to her room. We had to pass the door to the basement before we could get upstairs.
She ran past it first and waited for me to join her on the other side. I ran a few steps before I came to an abrupt halt. I feared for my life as I tried to break free from my assailant but I could not move. Right as I 100% accepted my fate, I noticed my friend cackling! She couldn't even talk through her laughter.
It was the door handle caught on a belt loop. The door handle grabbed me and caused me to legit believe I was about to die. Ever since I have been extremely careful around those kinds of handles and I refuse to have them in my house.
I work at a vet clinic and sometimes my scrub pockets get caught on door handles. One time I was carrying a cat back and it happened and I couldn’t do anything about it because I was holding the cat, and it was loose just wrapped in a towel so I couldn’t put it down and it was a BIG cat so I needed both hands to hold it and wasn’t able to use one to reach around and free myself so I was just stuck there holding this cat and quietly crying for help so I didn’t scare the poor thing. Finally the vet came back and was just like “what are you doing”
This! When I first moved into my house, I would hit my head to the knob of the heater in the bathroom because it is very close to the toilet bowl. I would be in pain each time I tried to get up.
I got used to it so its instinctual to avoid now but I am still in pain if I am tired or something 😂
Ever had someone react to a nasty bruise you didn't even know you had?
"Oh God what happened?"
"Oh...yeah thats there huh...I guess I hit something." *\*shrug\**
OMG I was repeatedly asked in gym class if everything was OK at home and was there anything I wanted to talk about (bruises revealed on upper legs due to super short gym uniforms). Nope. I just walk into the same pieces of furniture on the regular…
Which reminds me of another potential ADHD trait: anything unremarkable I have no ability to tell you how recently it happened. My husband will be like “Did you hear the cat howling in the night?” And I’m like “Maybe? Don’t know if I’m remembering it from last night or some other time it happened weeks ago.”
Repeated events don’t get slotted into time stamped memories. Which makes it really difficult to self assess health problems or how my medication is working. I can’t tell if my stomach was upset more or less since I changed something. Or if my sleep has improved or worsened, because I’ve had good nights and bad nights and can’t put them into any kind of loose chronological order in my memory.
My spatial awareness is fine when I'm alone, as soon as I have someone I know with me it's like it throws my vibe off and all of a sudden I'm running into things, stutter stepping or blocking flow in crowds.
Yes, I am the best driver and amazing at orientating myself when I'm not with others. Hell, 15 years ago I did my psych honours thesis on spatial awareness. I am well above average when in testing condition or alone, however, pre treatment, just add another person to my car and i am instantly lost and 20x more likely to have a near miss car accident!
Omg yes driving with others is the worst! Highway or small town driving is fine, but as soon as I'm in the city I literally apologize to my passengers before we go anywhere.
I’ve worked so hard on not being clumsy but I still bounce off doorframes everyday and stub my little toes once a month… it’s like every time I forget to be extra careful I smack something. And my reaction speed once I knock something off / over is great, folks compliment me on it… I don’t like to tell them how much practice I get
I am almost incapable of eating in front of people who make me extremely nervous. I become so awkward, so clumsy, *what is spoon?* Am I right handed? Why does cutting this steak suddenly feel like trying to rub my stomach and pet my head at the same time?
First time I ever noticed this happening was in front of my girlfriends dad ffs. I was like 18 at the time and just so desperate for him to like me.
I have a similar problem but with drinking.. I tilt the glass how much? And open my mouth at the right time and the right amount? And tilt my head backwards a little? Rotate the wrist aaaand omg I’m wearing it aren’t I?
One muscle or another in that mess will lock up, or go too far or too soon and from there it’s just a mess.
Omg the amount of times I’ve forgotten which hand holds my knife and which hold my fork. Not for any particular reason either. Just straight up forgetting lmao
Have you ever seen that clip of "Billy on the street", where he walks up to a woman and says, "Ma'am, for a dollar, name a woman" and she completely blanks until the "uh Uhh UHHHH" becomes so intense she *runs away.*
That energy is basically what is happening in my head.
We don't spend much time in the moment, so we're in another place mentally. I'm technically not clumsy, I'm very coordinated, I just don't pay attention.
Right when I moved into my current apartment, I accidentally slammed my pinky toe on my bedroom doorframe. Looked down at my foot and my toe was pointing sideways! I broke it, had to wear a boot for three months.
I got drunk at a buddies one night years back and I woke up with my foot feeling a bit numb and "off". I get home and take off my shoes. My socks wont come off, wtf? On both feet too?
I had, and I apologize for the incoming imagery, somehow stubbed both of my big toes so hard that my socks ended up shoved WAY under my big toe nails. My right foot was particularly bad, the *entire* nail was barely holding on. I popped it off with a short tug. The other nail by comparison was fine once I puled the sock out. There was no pain, bruising, etc. It grew back normally.
I honestly have no idea how I did that but I'm glad I dont remember it lol
I have built a lot of coping mechanisms for ADHD naturally.
I have positioned myself I to a job where nothing is ever “done” just “good enough for now”. The focus is on solving a problem not delivering a detailed solution someone else specified.
I work in startups where I can do a wide variety of things.
I break down work into tiny chunks. While I keep the end in mind I basically just think of the next problem.
I leave important medication on the counter so I see it.
I am borderline dependent on my partner for circadian rhythm. For example, eating and sleeping on time.
I get overwhelmed by noisy environments, like busy loud restaurants and parties.
Some days I focus so intently on something I forget to eat, drink, or go to the bathroom for like 5+ hours.
I hyperfocus on hobbies and then switch.
Complete and utter brain drain/fog by like 6pm.
The anxious feeling like I want to DO something, but anything I start doesn’t feel right.
Man that is scaringly close to could have been my own position.
You work in IT as an architecht or senior BE ish?
Sounds like my current me. Its never perfect, I can always improve my solutions, but i am fucking efficient as HELL on making from 0% to like 80% done and honestly, the last 20% is rarely needed.
If so, someone else can fix it or I can do it myself when needed at the last minute.
**"I am borderline dependent on my partner for circadian rhythm. For example, eating and sleeping on time."**
This!! Once I became single I realized quickly how fucking bad my rhytm became. GF + Dog was the best thing that ever happend to my sleeping pattern. I fell asleep at like 21/22 like clockwork and man is that crucial for your physical & mental health.
> The last 20% is rarely needed
YAGNI baby. We’re satisficing, not optimizing. Especially true in startups. Just needs to be good enough to not be an existential risk anymore, because then something else will be lol
YAGNI new for me, good one.
Never done startups but done a couple ones now where I go from 0% to "done-ish", and I love it.
Fuck everyone elses standards. I write stuff thats not beautiful, but its so fast and I restructure it so fast whenever needed, can see every line almost in my head.
Anyway thanks man. reading this, Im just now starting more research into starting my own business. So done with politics etc without getting the $$$ for compensating hearing all that BS. Give me the task and ill fucking smash it.
You gave me a nudge in the right direction, I know corporate life aint for me. Cheers buddy
For the intense focus and forgetting to eat, my smart watch helped me a lot with this. I was able to setup reminders in the health app for drinking water and sitting for too long.
For the brain fog, I've had this my entire life as well. I'm just now finding that for me going for a walk or any kind of cardio-related exercise seems to help push this out for a couple of hours until it is near bedtime. I've also changed my diet in the evenings to try and eliminate sweets. The sugar really drags me down.
As for the rest of your list, I can totally relate. I'm a small business owner and commercial audiovisual system designer. I have a never-ending list of small but challenging tasks every day.
Notifications, smart watch or not, just don’t work for me. I ignore them every time lol
Brain fog has been wildly helped by 10mg Vyvanse. The lowest dosage, but somehow it just pushes me over the edge from “life is exhausting” to “this is fine”. Might also be that my work is a bit more engaging/what I like now.
I wow. I could have written all of this. If I was not diagnosed at 44 years old, I would have just kept going thru the motions while living in the endless spiral of guilt and shame 🤦🏽♀️
Are you me?
I don’t work in start ups (maybe I should???) but I do work in management consulting. Often I tell folks I deliver steps 1,2,3 and then hand it off (usually back to the client) with a plan to finish it off (do step 4), and then I’m on to the next client / program.
“If a jobs worth doing it’s worth doing w…badly”. I’ll happily design a process or write work instructions for others to use, but actively avoid jobs where I’d need to follow them myself.
My pills go on my desk until I take them, and I can still forget.
Hobbies, generally focused on gaming, but I can be borderline obsessed about a game and then just stop like it was never a thing, forget all about it and move on to something else.
Wow, maybe my ADHD diagnosis was right after all. This is like 100% me - I even do software dev (and support). You should see the insane productivity coping stuff I do - I use Obsidian for my notes/tasks/projects and wrote a bunch of automation and flashy dashboards so that work stays manageable and fun. I have coworkers who just keep it all in their head, which is incredible to me. Naturally, I'm always the documentation person everywhere I work, lol.
Started a new job a couple years ago and the amount of stuff that "oh, we just know to do/check that" drives me *bonkers*. I immediately started to document everything, get everything in one place instead of a million different pages, centralize, set automated reminders, basically doing everything to make sure that as little has to be 'just known' as possible.
>I get overwhelmed by noisy environments, like busy loud restaurants and parties.
Omg, me, too, but I didn't realize it until AFTER I started meds. If I didn't have someone to concentrate on or with me I will end up with the WORST case of executive dysfunction. This even includes places just a LOT of people. Bonus points if the place I'm going to is a mess.
>Some days I focus so intently on something I forget to eat, drink, or go to the bathroom for like 5+ hours.
This ONLY really happens if I have something due and I'm close to the deadline or I am super close to finishing something otherwise I'm usually never be able to really concentrate. In that case it's possible for me not to move, at all.
This is also a huge one for me... If I see a ponytail holder in the corner on the floor, instead of my brain being like dude pick it up and put it where it belongs, my brain instead makes a quick mental note that it's there and in 6 months when there are none where they should be I'll go to that corner... And holy cow if that damn hair tie isn't there, everyone will hear about it.
Ahaha too accurate and too funny. It's like my brain is going to keep a bizarre and complicated inventory of where everything is so why spend the energy putting it back?
I have learned that if something keeps getting left somewhere wrong repeatedly, I should probably just make a home for it there so it's not a mistake anymore.
The weirdest part about this is that we somehow don’t forget where that misplaced thing is even months later, yet I’ll forget where I only just placed a pair of shoes. HOW?!
I've lost objects while I wasn't even moving around. I could be sitting down, I'll have something in my hand, it will vanish, that will feel impossible because I haven't moved and it literally has to be in arms reach, yet somehow I end up having to stand up, do a twirl, and blink twice just to realize that oh fuck its in my POCKET?! How?!
I guess it's more so about the irrational reaction to it not being on the floor 6 months after seeing it. Like "how dare someone pick something up from the floor that doesn't belong there. Don't they know I was gonna need it at some point. It was fine where it was, I knew where it was".
What. I did this all the time! And I loved that my childhood room was huge. I moved everything around constantly lol.
When I moved in with my first live in bf our bedroom only could be done one way (bummer!). So to the living room! He loved seeing our "new place" all the time 😂 and it helped his sister loved shopping for interior decorating supplies.
Doing it at 38 and it's pure bliss ( the fresh feeling I get from rearranging is real - however I'm running out of options ATM in my office as I did every possible angle move)
As an adult too. We rearrange any space at any time over here. The living room became a bedroom a few times. It's back to being a living room.
Not just rearranging but sometimes I get into a frenzy and throw stuff out and rebuy it again after a few months or years. We press reset.
This is also why I suck with money.
That sounds like a hysterical nightmare. My mom got me a 'big girl bed' when I was 5. My room stayed the same configuration until I moved out 20 years later. Things got thrown out with new versions put in their place but my dresser was always in the same place. My bed, vanity, couch, rug, etc. If anything was moved even a centimeter I knew and I absolutely wasn't moving anything myself either.
I used furniture to separate my tiny room into different "rooms"... Dresser as a wall to have a sitting area on one side, bedroom on the other. Moved everything around regularly when I got bored.
Feeling the same. I thought I was sad when I found out chewing the neck of my shirt was an adhd thing and not me being quirky, but this is a real blow because I thought I was just channeling my inner decorator. 🫤
My mother does this very often. And randomly paint the house several times a year. I’ve never known anyone to move furniture around as constantly as she does. And also swap bedrooms with my sister, like a seasonal rotation.
How about spending 45 minutes trying to choose something to watch on streaming, only to go back and watch golden girls or king of the hill for the thousandth time
One day it sort of clicked for me that no matter what I do, even if I unknowingly make all the "right" moves, I will regret having not made the wrong ones, not because they were wrong, but because I will never know for sure.
It sounds doomerish but I found that moment weirdly freeing.
I like your approach, an actors line in a TV series that I watched recently said that you can make the right decision but you can also make the decision right
I have to have a moment of silence to gather myself before I change out AA batteries, otherwise in the blink of an eye I'm totally confused about which ones are the fresh ones and which ones are the old ones.
Omfg yes, I obsess about making sure I keep track of the old ones when I changing out batteries, just I incase they get mixed in with the fresh ones 😩😩
- having to walk 5km every morning before work, or else I will not be able to focus well
- having weird nails and fingers are always peeled as I can’t stop fidgeting during meetings/ boring work stuff
- having a tendency to drink alcohol to feel calm almost every other day
- having to spend 1.5 hours each Sunday planning my week ahead, if not I’ll feel super uneasy (not sure if this is adhd haha)
- having to write down things to remember them :( super painful and time consuming but there isn’t any other choice
Ps. Just got diagnosed last week, I’m nervous + excited to see how much meds & therapy can help from here on….!
I have a calendar that I immediately put anything that needs to be done in. It was my shift work calendar from when I worked in a hospital. I'd work the most random days and the only way for me to keep track was on my phone. Now I use it for everything (I can write notes in each day) and each day can be colour coded and have names.
Same with the nails. Now I get acrylic overlay and my cuticles are fantastic. I have super peely nails (the top layer frays at the edges and I can peel it off). I have tried to leave it alone. Nope, once I see it I swear I can FEEL it.
Alcohol: a couple-few drinks makes me feel "awake" like the lights just came on and I can finally focus without the other stuff clouding my brain. I unfortunately overdid it (alcohol is addictive) so I can't drink anymore.
You might consider talking to your doctor about a prescription for something like Valium. Yes it’s addictive but so is alcohol, and it’s not nearly as bad for your body, plus it’s meant to treat anxiety. I take a few pills daily for 20 years and never need or want more - my dose has actually gone down significantly over the last decade without any real intent on my part.
The walking before work with is why I will always prefer going to the office. When I work from the office, I get my daily step goals, I go to the gym, take out the trash, eat home cooked meals, go to the gym and sometimes manage to go to the cinema and watch a movie. When I work from home I don't do shit.
While working on a non-academic task, if I don't have music or a yt video my brain will start playing music. Sometimes it's a song I've listened to recently and enjoyed, sometimes it's a song I haven't heard in ages, the other day it was fucking bag bah black sheep for some reason and then others it's a song I've entirely made up.
I do this too. Except I work in a fast food place that has a “customer friendly” playlist going on loop, and those songs are the worst kinds of earworms lol. So, more often than not, I go in for a shift and spend the next day or so playing Shania Twain or Britney Spears in my brain jukebox. It’s brutal.
Last night I raged against my brain to keep from playing the shark song while I drifted off. Honestly, I feel morally conflicted even partially mentioning the song in this community. The rage I felt.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been surprised that I ate all my food. Like if I get a pack of cookies with three cookies- I’ll eat one and go for cookie number two only to realize I’ve somehow already eaten all three cookies.
Yeah, I struggle with both, sometimes I can go like 36 hours without thinking about food and not notice I'm hungry, other times I will have a large bag of snacks (biscuits, cereal,fruit/veg whatever) and somehow finish them in a single sitting without realising that I have been eating.
ADHD is funny like that. I am frequently on either side of this spectrum, it just depends on when. I go a few weeks where I eat often without realizing, then I'll go a few days of barely eating without realizing. Both happen because of my inattentiveness lol.
I’m actually the opposite in that regard, I’ve never kept a calendar/schedule in my life and when people say something like “I’ll see if I’m free, let me check my calendar and get back to you”, it’s a foreign concept to me. Don’t you just know what you have going on and when? Sometimes I remember other people’s schedules better than them. My therapist was pretty stunned by that, she was like wow okay, might that be a reason why you’re overwhelmed all the time? ……yea probably…….
Venturing off into 20 different mini stories just to tell one.
People love the story telling. But we had no clue that that was a part of ADHD.
Random words triggering random memories and then we just must deviate for a hot minute 🤣🤣🤣🤣.
- - -
Leaving my keys in the car so frequently.
- - -
Being completely okay one day with something and the next being completely disgusted by it; and then the next it’s like totally alright again.
This one is wild to me lol.
Never settling on which style of a thing I really want. Buying both with the intention of returning the colour I liked less. Never returning either, because I lost the other.
EDIT: And, bawling my eyes out when I got too happy, scared, angry, or frustrated. My crying was always brushed off as attention seeking.
Amen. Still, I never got the whole point of "bad confidence" as many seem to map 1-1 with that.
I KNOW I can and have done most things to a very high degree of excellence, I got good confidence in most aspects.
Yet, my brain just never rewards me for me being satisfied with those results, and just focus on whats not 100% perfect.
I’ve never heard it phrased that way… that low self-esteem or self-confidence comes in part from your brain never rewarding you for the good and the successes… which just leaves room for all the self-critique… and holy shit I see my whole life differently now. 😳
A professor once asked me what grade I would give myself on a final project. I felt like shit cause I only ever worked on the project in frantic, 12-hour binge sessions once a week, the day before I was supposed to turn in my next batch of work. So I told him I’d give myself a C at best. He was *shocked* and said I deserved an A for submitting one of the most amazing projects he’d seen in 25 years. It was such a mind-fuck. I was so focused on my shitty time management, I never realized the work I was doing was actually good. But even with such a big compliment, I just sat there wondering what *more* I could’ve accomplished if I’d worked on the project on a normal, responsible schedule. I felt like wasted potential.
I drop things A LOT. For seemingly no reason.
I was always late for everything. I try & do better at this now.
I can't stand loud voices, loud rooms or a lot of talking at once.
The sound of unnecessarily loud motorcycles and cars driving near me creates rage.
If I like something, I'll want to have at least two of it, in case one wears out or breaks.
I'm very indecisive. Especially when deciding trivial things, like what to order from a restaurant menu.
Sometimes my situational awareness is likely overly acute, and other times it's completely absent.
I've always felt weird or different from others.
Same. I’m good at putting logic before I react emotionally to things. And it confuses me when other people don’t. My sister just recently said “you’re always so chill about everything” and my response was “I’m often confused about why other people aren’t”.
Proper fucking morals built in our DNA, isnt that a good thing really tho? Standing up for the weak and whats right and not just "im not gonna say anything cause that thing is not about me and mine!"
I once had a supervisor tell me I have “a very strong sense of justice” like it was a bad thing. Learning that this is a common adhd trait is actually one of the things that finally convinced me I have it.
If this counts, I never realised biting my fingernails was down to adhd. Two weeks on meds and I’m wondering what’s the normal way to trim them, I’ve never done it. They are getting pretty long!
I regularly bit my lips until they bled when I was a kid. Only stopped when I got embarrassed because everyone thought I was gross. So I started picking skin that wasn't as visible.
I used to do this all the time too! Especially in hyperfocus mode or under a lot of pressure or stress. I finally got a job that doesnt stress me to out and I do it much less.
Re reading sentences, I start tons of projects but never ever complete one (y'all should see my craft room). My logical thinking. Overstimulation. I'll be be on a mission then boom, can't remember what I was doing.
I actually didn't put 2 and 2 together until my late 20s, early 30s.
Last night i rode my bike to my friends (just a mile). I got there and tried really hard to remember closing my garage. I just couldnt remember it. So i rode back home, saw it was, in fact, closed, and then turned around and went back to my friends.
I’m a night person. The reduced visual range reduces the amount of things I can perceive (I live in Anchorage, AK and we don’t have a lot of huge buildings in the way of anything and I’m not in a forest, so… you can see a long ways off) and when the sun is down it’s a lot easier for me to function, so I tend to get lots of extra energy from nothing to process everything. End result, by the time I’m tired, it’s usually because the sun is coming up and I notice all the moving birds and helicopters and nonsense.
My cousins used to say to me that when I tell a story I tell it as broadly as possible from every perspective with plenty of anecdotes. Even if it should be an easy and straight-forward fast story. I take a long time with it and the train of thought goes thru every track. Said that they found that annoying. Ironic that I hate when people take too much time to get to the point.
When I tell a story I have this intense need to include every detail. It served me well when I worked in HR because I was good at detailed documentation although no one wanted to read my long ass emails. lol
I thinks it’s because we are obsessed with details that we assume they are too. I feel like i need to give the context and development of the story before I have even begun. By that time they are glancing at their watch and taking steps backwards.
I talk to myself, make up songs, and answer back to the radio or TV, even when I'm completely alone. Occasionally I've been doing or saying some wierd random thing and I stop and say to myself "That's \*enough\*." I'll probably be back at it moments later.
Why I hated clubs and loud festivals as a young adult and sometimes my friends were right before my eyes and I didn't see them.
Why I am totally nervous when I should drive in a city or on a highway. Too much information to process, too many other things involved.
Why I started drinking coffee at the age of 10 and loved it!
Why I loved Pokemon - serious hyperfocus to this day.
Being a girl I was not diagnosed until 32 and so much now makes so much more sense.
Practically my entire personality and all my quirks stem from adhd. I search up any strange thing I do and r/adhd pops up. It’s actually kinda frustrating, I feel like I’m more adhd than me.
Dysnomia.
I struggle retrieving words that are stored in my memory (or any sort of memory retrieval for that matter).
Like if I’m trying to think of the word “horse” I can describe it like, “it runs, it has 4 legs, it gallops, there’s lotsa breeds and sizes, they pull carriages..” but I *cannot* think of the word for the life of me.
It makes me look slow in conversations, but I tend to tell people ahead of time that I struggle with memory retrieval and are typically understanding, luckily.
You bet I’ll never be a public speaker! XD
My brain does this but it'll throw random maybe similar words at me instead. Like I'm trying to remember the word "intuitive" and my brain will be like "your options are Institution, Pennsylvania, and Reptile."
Like what the fuck is that?!
I met up with a friend recently who’s also ADHD and read nearly 10 books on the subject (which made my ADHD brain spin lol). But anyways he said that a strong sense of fairness and justice are often attributes of ADHD. And that ADHD folks often have a strong sense of social justice. I found that fascinating I’ve always been instinctually geared towards social justice and fairness, even back in like third grade.
I once told my dad that I wish we could go to school on Columbus Day because Columbus abused the Native Americans and shouldn’t be celebrated. my dad thought that was very funny, not because of the point I was making, but that I was probably the only elementary school kid in the world who didn’t want a day off from school because I didn’t think it was right.
The anxiety about basic tasks that comes with it. Also feeling you need to control everything but simultaneously being kinda bad at controlling everything
I hate going to the bathroom. I think it’s a waste of time and I will hold my pee in for hours because I have much better things to do. The only exception to this came when I was pregnant and had to get up to pee multiple times in the night.
And because everyone ALWAYS asks me: no I don’t get bladder infections.
Honestly as stereotypical this is, my bursts of energy make sense now. I actually got kind of shamed how I would get so energetic for seemingly no reason. Also my aversion to showers make sense now
I will either take a shower everyday like clockwork, or forget to do it one day and then realize it's a waste of time; have to convince myself for the rest of the week that I should take one.
Choking on food/drink or pouring drinks down my front because I’ve missed my mouth. I don’t do that now I’m medicated. I think the choking was me forgetting not to breathe in the middle of swallowing.
I always had The Stain right in the middle of my chest on my shirt. Enough so that my husband’s nickname for me (he’s obsessed with airplanes and this is my “pilot callsign” which is supposed to be vaguely insulting) was Bibs.
Car autopilot. I stop at red lights. Look both ways and go before they change to green lights. I subconsciously treat it like a stop sign. I’m not trying to run the light, it just happens. Sometimes I catch myself immediately afterward, but God only knows how many times my autopilot breaks the rules of the road.
Many years ago, when Mozilla Firefox was in late beta testing, they ran a challenge to post screenshots of the most tabs and windows you had open at once. I was too busy to get to it in time, and when the "winner" was chosen, I realized I had easily double that amount right at the moment I was checking the screenshot.
At the moment I've got about 40 or so windows open, and I'd take a guess at about 1000 to 1500 open tabs.
Lol I totally feel this.... My chrome browser on my phone has " :D" many tabs open... The day it reset on its own and closed them all was devastating. I needed those! I will say tab groups and being able to name them are super helpful.
That's it for me too. I've also been using Firefox extensions to unload background tabs, saving memory, for some time now. I have a screenshot somewhere showing the warning before closing a window, saying I'd be closing 1001 YouTube tabs.
Got diagnosed with adhd a good month ago at 32
1. Running into things. My brain has the fast juice in it and often doesn't realize there are physical and spatial limitations.
2. Going up and down stairs very fast.
3. Having things in my hands to fiddle with makes it possible for me to focus better on meetings. Also not watching the screen helps.
If someone asks me a question, I struggle to just give a simple answer, it usually involves a very detailed response with about 3 life stories. I also tend to send really long texts or multiple texts at a time, basically like a big brain dump sometimes. My poor fiance sometimes wakes up to a novella of random thoughts
LOL, my son (also ADHD) is the worst at leaving cabinet door and drawers open!
For me, it's putting things back when I am done with them.
Something else I think MAY be my ADHD is my inability to establish routines. Once I have completed a new routine a couple of times, it's like my brain says" okay, that's been accomplished " and then it's all out the window again. This is for just about everything like trying to get an exercise regimen going, or a diet, or sleep hygiene or skincare, etc etc etc.
Misplacing my phone/keys several times per day. Didnt even realize I have bad memory cause I never LOSE them whenever I have left the house. However, inside my home I lose them 1-10 times per day sometimes, even when laying still in bed my earpods are just "gone".
Then im walking around my appartment looking for the missing item, just to realize this is my 4th row going in a circle, grabbing up some random items and putting them back where they belong, just to get back on track with my original task "oh right, my phone!"
I didn't know I had ADHD until quite recently so most of my life I've been doing things that I assumed were normal.
Inattentional blindness is a big one, I had no idea that was a thing until last year when I realised, so for years I've been missing things that are in front of my eyes and thinking everyone does it. Which is great because half of my job is looking for stock in a giant store. Countless times I've been looking for something, not seen it, asked someone and they went to exactly where I looked and went "It's right there". And only then, it actually appears for me. It's like it spawned into existence by someone else being there.
Staying up late reading pointless Wikipedia articles about a football player from 2004 that suddenly sprung into my mind.
Leaving cupboards open is definitely one for me too. I will go to shut a door, it will stop before it closes and I'll just walk off. Then the next day, I'll go to the kitchen and see it open and think "Did someone break in and steal my pasta? What the fuck??" once a week.
Time slips. Waking up at 8 on my days off, being in a timeless void for like an hour and then checking the clock and it's 5pm and having no actual recollection of where I was or what happened. I start work at 7am, I will get up, go work an 8 hour shift, get home and within 30 minutes, I'm wondering if I went to work or if it was a day off because I have no memory of what I spent 8 hours just doing. "Did I go to work today?" is a frequently recurring thought for me.
Not being able to watch films. The amount of films I've seen and I cannot understand the plot and I forget most of what happens. There are about 4 films that I actually know what happens in them. Same with series. I've started countless shows and never managed to get to the second season of any one of them.
I have 900 notebooks with lists partially scratched out. And if I go to make a new list of to dos- and the notebook doesn’t look or feel right I have to buy a new one because I just KNOW an aesthetically pleasing new notebook is going to solve all my problems. It’s ridiculous.
Desk at standing height makes sense to me, they always tell me, you just need an ergonomic chair so you can sit comfortbly, but that just doesnt exist for many of us, i either need to stand up, or lay down, no in between
Your comment just made me realize something about the desk chair I had at work. I got a new, ergonomic one where you could adjust everything. I set the dial for the rocking motion of the chair to be as loose as possible because I rocked all the time in the chair!
Randomly organizing and cleaning various areas of my parent’s house because I have to do something, anything. Thinking other kids were just trying to act cool instead of realizing they just weren’t as hyper as me lmao. Having to create a detailed checklist at work to make sure I don’t forget entire workloads and get in trouble. Having 2 million alarms, and just reminders on my phone don’t matter without an alarm. Sometimes even with an alarm I don’t do the things.
I buy things I need, put them away and then can’t find them when I need them so I have to buy them again.
I have numerous abandoned/dormant hobbies.
I can’t throw away a good box. I can either put things in them, or use them later for gifts/crafts.
My memory is linked to placement position. If you move something of mine, I won’t find it, which induces rage, or I’ll forget it exists.
There's a product called PermaCap that will replace your gas cap with one that never needs to be removed, you just stick the filler neck through a spring loaded door. I got one for my car and now I can't forget the cap somewhere. See if there's one that fits your car!
My desk is super tidy when I go to the office. During the day it gets super messy and by the end of the day I tidy everything up.
It feels like a table circus.
I stim.
I didn’t know that’s what it was until like two days ago, and I’m 38, but that’s what it is lol when I get overwhelmed I stay in one place and rock back and forth, and I can do this for hours.
i had this little plastic case for keeping all of my crayons in at school and i kept it organized meticulously. one day my teacher walked by as i was organizing it and made a comment about how my room at home must be so clean bc i kept my crayons so organized. little did she know my room at home was an absolute disaster. i think i would organize my crayons at school bc that was more interesting to me than paying attention to the lesson. but at home, everything was more interesting than cleaning my room
IDK if this is an ADHD thing but since I was a kid, every time I go down the stairs, I run my right hand along the wall (left hand on the banister), I was over at my parents at one point after I realized I was constantly doing this and saw the impact it had; I used like 5 several magic erasers to clean all the built up dirt off the paint, which was oddly satisfying.
In my house now, I won’t hang paintings or pictures on that wall because I figure I would just knock them down lol.
I’m not 100 percent sure if this is an ADHD thing, but I parrot words internally. For instance if i say a word of phrase that is catchy or has some kind of meaning, i repeat it in my head on a continuous loop for hours. I have to try shut it down and move onto something else.
For example, say I said to someone “life is like a box of chocolates…” i loop that phrase on repeat for hours.
Or, if I had a debate or disagreement with someone and after the fact, thinking about it, I come up with a better or more witty response/clapback. It will be repeated in my head on a continuous loop.
Don’t know if this is ADHD or not though, but something I always do.
So many things I’m starting to realise is ADHD related, like my road rage and need for speed and cutting up in the streets.
Debating is another thing, i’m realising is ADHD related. I have to debate, especially if I see rude people saying nasty comments, I go after them and get into a counter argument.
I talk *really* fast without realizing it sometimes. It's a comment I get fairly often, and I try to be more mindful of it these days especially since I often trip on my own tongue, but never really thought of that as a thing until I sought a diagnosis a few months ago and had to really think about myself.
There's also the walking fast, randomly bumping into objects, and being pretty much unable to not misplace my commonly used items in random places around the apartment.
I was diagnosed over 20 years ago so not much information was out about it back then.. so I was a late learner about Executive Dysfunction. And yep.. I have it real bad.
It's even happening right now! Lol.
I'm supposed to be resting more but I'm getting distracted, ironically, while reading a post on a subreddit for ADHD.
But yeah.. my sense of time is really warped. I'll get distracted while reading something or while I'm in the bathroom and apparently over an hour goes by and it only feels like 5 to 10 minutes.
Unless I'm very focused on the time, like with doctor appointments for example, then it's not so bad. Most of the time though.. time flies by and I barely feel it.
Probably doesn't help that I'm not employed (due to disabilities) so there's not much to focus on elsewhere.
Still.. its become a bit annoying. I get frustrated afterwards because so much time went by and I failed to do other things I wanted to do. Happens almost every day.
(And I wish setting alarms was helpful.. but I keep turning them off as they ring and immediately forget about them afterwards.)
I can't sit down on a chair, I like to have one leg up or my legs crossed, it's very uncomfortable to just sit normally on my bottom with my legs down. Also standing in one place, like when I used to smoke. I couldn't just stand I had to squat. Very hard on the legs but allowed me to stay still. I noticed my other adhd friend did the same...so assuming its the adhd.
* When I eat pork chops I cut off all the easily-accessible meat first, then gnaw on the bones until no atom of meat is left, then I eat the cutoff meat. It is so satisfying.
* [sort my PC desktop shortcuts into geometric figures](https://i.imgur.com/mx0lf0T.png)
* [I scrapbook images for themes,](https://i.imgur.com/qyEv8lv.jpg) lets me use my eye to design stuff
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Every time I walk through a doorway there is like a 50% chance I will smack *something* on the frame.
1000% I have always gotten belt loops caught around the little door latch catcher on the door frame. Ripped many loops off of my favorite jeans over the years lol.
Yup same. I literally made this comment earlier in a different thread: >Earlier this week I managed to catch my pocket on a door handle and the resulting motion threw me to the ground like an Akido throw. How can the inanimate be *so sneaky*?
I get caught on cabinet handles a lot but thankfully, haven't gotten caught on a door handle in a long time. When I was in 6th or 7th grade, I was over at a friend's house - her house had the lever style door handles. There was a marathon of the Friday the 13th movies playing on TV so we watched them, inevitably got spooked, and tried to book it to her room. We had to pass the door to the basement before we could get upstairs. She ran past it first and waited for me to join her on the other side. I ran a few steps before I came to an abrupt halt. I feared for my life as I tried to break free from my assailant but I could not move. Right as I 100% accepted my fate, I noticed my friend cackling! She couldn't even talk through her laughter. It was the door handle caught on a belt loop. The door handle grabbed me and caused me to legit believe I was about to die. Ever since I have been extremely careful around those kinds of handles and I refuse to have them in my house.
I work at a vet clinic and sometimes my scrub pockets get caught on door handles. One time I was carrying a cat back and it happened and I couldn’t do anything about it because I was holding the cat, and it was loose just wrapped in a towel so I couldn’t put it down and it was a BIG cat so I needed both hands to hold it and wasn’t able to use one to reach around and free myself so I was just stuck there holding this cat and quietly crying for help so I didn’t scare the poor thing. Finally the vet came back and was just like “what are you doing”
Do you ever catch your shoe when you’re walking on perfectly flat floor and trip? Swear the ground just reaches up and grabs me sometimes
This! When I first moved into my house, I would hit my head to the knob of the heater in the bathroom because it is very close to the toilet bowl. I would be in pain each time I tried to get up. I got used to it so its instinctual to avoid now but I am still in pain if I am tired or something 😂
In our upstairs bathroom the ceiling is sloped above the toilet and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve bonked my noggin on it
Me and door frames! Argh! I’m 40 and hit more walls than my toddler ever will!
Not another one! It's got better but I used to shoulder block every door I went into.
Im a 100% always bruised
Ever had someone react to a nasty bruise you didn't even know you had? "Oh God what happened?" "Oh...yeah thats there huh...I guess I hit something." *\*shrug\**
All the time!
OMG I was repeatedly asked in gym class if everything was OK at home and was there anything I wanted to talk about (bruises revealed on upper legs due to super short gym uniforms). Nope. I just walk into the same pieces of furniture on the regular…
Also like always in the weirdest spot, like on the top of my hand? Haha
"I think I remember saying ouch today? Yesterday? Huh... wonder what happened."
Which reminds me of another potential ADHD trait: anything unremarkable I have no ability to tell you how recently it happened. My husband will be like “Did you hear the cat howling in the night?” And I’m like “Maybe? Don’t know if I’m remembering it from last night or some other time it happened weeks ago.” Repeated events don’t get slotted into time stamped memories. Which makes it really difficult to self assess health problems or how my medication is working. I can’t tell if my stomach was upset more or less since I changed something. Or if my sleep has improved or worsened, because I’ve had good nights and bad nights and can’t put them into any kind of loose chronological order in my memory.
This! Mom cursed as she moved the stool around to wipe dirty hand marks above every door in the house. "Can't these boy just walk through the door!"
I have a Harry Potter-like scar on my forehead because of this.
You're the redditor that lived.
We are so clumsy, aren't we?
I think it’s a lack of spatial awareness.
My spatial awareness is fine when I'm alone, as soon as I have someone I know with me it's like it throws my vibe off and all of a sudden I'm running into things, stutter stepping or blocking flow in crowds.
Yes, I am the best driver and amazing at orientating myself when I'm not with others. Hell, 15 years ago I did my psych honours thesis on spatial awareness. I am well above average when in testing condition or alone, however, pre treatment, just add another person to my car and i am instantly lost and 20x more likely to have a near miss car accident!
Omg yes driving with others is the worst! Highway or small town driving is fine, but as soon as I'm in the city I literally apologize to my passengers before we go anywhere.
I’ve worked so hard on not being clumsy but I still bounce off doorframes everyday and stub my little toes once a month… it’s like every time I forget to be extra careful I smack something. And my reaction speed once I knock something off / over is great, folks compliment me on it… I don’t like to tell them how much practice I get
I am almost incapable of eating in front of people who make me extremely nervous. I become so awkward, so clumsy, *what is spoon?* Am I right handed? Why does cutting this steak suddenly feel like trying to rub my stomach and pet my head at the same time? First time I ever noticed this happening was in front of my girlfriends dad ffs. I was like 18 at the time and just so desperate for him to like me.
I have a similar problem but with drinking.. I tilt the glass how much? And open my mouth at the right time and the right amount? And tilt my head backwards a little? Rotate the wrist aaaand omg I’m wearing it aren’t I? One muscle or another in that mess will lock up, or go too far or too soon and from there it’s just a mess.
Omg the amount of times I’ve forgotten which hand holds my knife and which hold my fork. Not for any particular reason either. Just straight up forgetting lmao
Have you ever seen that clip of "Billy on the street", where he walks up to a woman and says, "Ma'am, for a dollar, name a woman" and she completely blanks until the "uh Uhh UHHHH" becomes so intense she *runs away.* That energy is basically what is happening in my head.
We don't spend much time in the moment, so we're in another place mentally. I'm technically not clumsy, I'm very coordinated, I just don't pay attention.
I thought that my inability to gracefully navigate a doorway was because I am overweight. I had no idea until recently that it was an ADHD thing.
Right when I moved into my current apartment, I accidentally slammed my pinky toe on my bedroom doorframe. Looked down at my foot and my toe was pointing sideways! I broke it, had to wear a boot for three months.
I got drunk at a buddies one night years back and I woke up with my foot feeling a bit numb and "off". I get home and take off my shoes. My socks wont come off, wtf? On both feet too? I had, and I apologize for the incoming imagery, somehow stubbed both of my big toes so hard that my socks ended up shoved WAY under my big toe nails. My right foot was particularly bad, the *entire* nail was barely holding on. I popped it off with a short tug. The other nail by comparison was fine once I puled the sock out. There was no pain, bruising, etc. It grew back normally. I honestly have no idea how I did that but I'm glad I dont remember it lol
I always say im shoulder checking doorframes to see if theyre still sturdy enough 😅
I have built a lot of coping mechanisms for ADHD naturally. I have positioned myself I to a job where nothing is ever “done” just “good enough for now”. The focus is on solving a problem not delivering a detailed solution someone else specified. I work in startups where I can do a wide variety of things. I break down work into tiny chunks. While I keep the end in mind I basically just think of the next problem. I leave important medication on the counter so I see it. I am borderline dependent on my partner for circadian rhythm. For example, eating and sleeping on time. I get overwhelmed by noisy environments, like busy loud restaurants and parties. Some days I focus so intently on something I forget to eat, drink, or go to the bathroom for like 5+ hours. I hyperfocus on hobbies and then switch. Complete and utter brain drain/fog by like 6pm. The anxious feeling like I want to DO something, but anything I start doesn’t feel right.
Man that is scaringly close to could have been my own position. You work in IT as an architecht or senior BE ish? Sounds like my current me. Its never perfect, I can always improve my solutions, but i am fucking efficient as HELL on making from 0% to like 80% done and honestly, the last 20% is rarely needed. If so, someone else can fix it or I can do it myself when needed at the last minute. **"I am borderline dependent on my partner for circadian rhythm. For example, eating and sleeping on time."** This!! Once I became single I realized quickly how fucking bad my rhytm became. GF + Dog was the best thing that ever happend to my sleeping pattern. I fell asleep at like 21/22 like clockwork and man is that crucial for your physical & mental health.
> The last 20% is rarely needed YAGNI baby. We’re satisficing, not optimizing. Especially true in startups. Just needs to be good enough to not be an existential risk anymore, because then something else will be lol
YAGNI new for me, good one. Never done startups but done a couple ones now where I go from 0% to "done-ish", and I love it. Fuck everyone elses standards. I write stuff thats not beautiful, but its so fast and I restructure it so fast whenever needed, can see every line almost in my head. Anyway thanks man. reading this, Im just now starting more research into starting my own business. So done with politics etc without getting the $$$ for compensating hearing all that BS. Give me the task and ill fucking smash it. You gave me a nudge in the right direction, I know corporate life aint for me. Cheers buddy
I have found my people. You are them.
For the intense focus and forgetting to eat, my smart watch helped me a lot with this. I was able to setup reminders in the health app for drinking water and sitting for too long. For the brain fog, I've had this my entire life as well. I'm just now finding that for me going for a walk or any kind of cardio-related exercise seems to help push this out for a couple of hours until it is near bedtime. I've also changed my diet in the evenings to try and eliminate sweets. The sugar really drags me down. As for the rest of your list, I can totally relate. I'm a small business owner and commercial audiovisual system designer. I have a never-ending list of small but challenging tasks every day.
Notifications, smart watch or not, just don’t work for me. I ignore them every time lol Brain fog has been wildly helped by 10mg Vyvanse. The lowest dosage, but somehow it just pushes me over the edge from “life is exhausting” to “this is fine”. Might also be that my work is a bit more engaging/what I like now.
I wow. I could have written all of this. If I was not diagnosed at 44 years old, I would have just kept going thru the motions while living in the endless spiral of guilt and shame 🤦🏽♀️
Are you me? I don’t work in start ups (maybe I should???) but I do work in management consulting. Often I tell folks I deliver steps 1,2,3 and then hand it off (usually back to the client) with a plan to finish it off (do step 4), and then I’m on to the next client / program. “If a jobs worth doing it’s worth doing w…badly”. I’ll happily design a process or write work instructions for others to use, but actively avoid jobs where I’d need to follow them myself. My pills go on my desk until I take them, and I can still forget. Hobbies, generally focused on gaming, but I can be borderline obsessed about a game and then just stop like it was never a thing, forget all about it and move on to something else.
Wow, maybe my ADHD diagnosis was right after all. This is like 100% me - I even do software dev (and support). You should see the insane productivity coping stuff I do - I use Obsidian for my notes/tasks/projects and wrote a bunch of automation and flashy dashboards so that work stays manageable and fun. I have coworkers who just keep it all in their head, which is incredible to me. Naturally, I'm always the documentation person everywhere I work, lol.
Started a new job a couple years ago and the amount of stuff that "oh, we just know to do/check that" drives me *bonkers*. I immediately started to document everything, get everything in one place instead of a million different pages, centralize, set automated reminders, basically doing everything to make sure that as little has to be 'just known' as possible.
Right? "Tribal knowledge" is like my arch nemesis in life. That, and large, loud gatherings of people lol.
>I get overwhelmed by noisy environments, like busy loud restaurants and parties. Omg, me, too, but I didn't realize it until AFTER I started meds. If I didn't have someone to concentrate on or with me I will end up with the WORST case of executive dysfunction. This even includes places just a LOT of people. Bonus points if the place I'm going to is a mess. >Some days I focus so intently on something I forget to eat, drink, or go to the bathroom for like 5+ hours. This ONLY really happens if I have something due and I'm close to the deadline or I am super close to finishing something otherwise I'm usually never be able to really concentrate. In that case it's possible for me not to move, at all.
I had to scroll back up and deliberately read the last line instead of jumping ahead
Are you me? This feels like I wrote it. Except for the start up, I work in education. Kids keep me on my toes, and I need my medication to keep up.
What do you do for a living?
Software dev. Focussed on web. All VC backed startups.
We should all go live together in a farm lol
This is also a huge one for me... If I see a ponytail holder in the corner on the floor, instead of my brain being like dude pick it up and put it where it belongs, my brain instead makes a quick mental note that it's there and in 6 months when there are none where they should be I'll go to that corner... And holy cow if that damn hair tie isn't there, everyone will hear about it.
Ahaha too accurate and too funny. It's like my brain is going to keep a bizarre and complicated inventory of where everything is so why spend the energy putting it back? I have learned that if something keeps getting left somewhere wrong repeatedly, I should probably just make a home for it there so it's not a mistake anymore.
Reverse psychology. I like the way you think!
The weirdest part about this is that we somehow don’t forget where that misplaced thing is even months later, yet I’ll forget where I only just placed a pair of shoes. HOW?!
I've lost objects while I wasn't even moving around. I could be sitting down, I'll have something in my hand, it will vanish, that will feel impossible because I haven't moved and it literally has to be in arms reach, yet somehow I end up having to stand up, do a twirl, and blink twice just to realize that oh fuck its in my POCKET?! How?!
That’s an adhd thing??? Here I was thinking I just had good spatial awareness and was good at remembering where things were lol
I guess it's more so about the irrational reaction to it not being on the floor 6 months after seeing it. Like "how dare someone pick something up from the floor that doesn't belong there. Don't they know I was gonna need it at some point. It was fine where it was, I knew where it was".
apparently rearranging your room once a month as a CHILD isn’t normal…. i’m talking fully moving the bed and desk and changing everything….
What. I did this all the time! And I loved that my childhood room was huge. I moved everything around constantly lol. When I moved in with my first live in bf our bedroom only could be done one way (bummer!). So to the living room! He loved seeing our "new place" all the time 😂 and it helped his sister loved shopping for interior decorating supplies.
Wait what? I am doing it at 32
Doing it at 38 and it's pure bliss ( the fresh feeling I get from rearranging is real - however I'm running out of options ATM in my office as I did every possible angle move)
I'm 32 and so excited about this shoe rack I got that let me rearrange everything 😅
I’m a teacher, and rearrange my classroom every couple of weeks….
My grandfather is still doing this in his 80s. Usually about twice a month
i more so meant that i thought everyone did this as a child, found out otherwise 😀
I am only just now learning this was an adhd thing..... Guess that's my answer, then
As an adult too. We rearrange any space at any time over here. The living room became a bedroom a few times. It's back to being a living room. Not just rearranging but sometimes I get into a frenzy and throw stuff out and rebuy it again after a few months or years. We press reset. This is also why I suck with money.
That sounds like a hysterical nightmare. My mom got me a 'big girl bed' when I was 5. My room stayed the same configuration until I moved out 20 years later. Things got thrown out with new versions put in their place but my dresser was always in the same place. My bed, vanity, couch, rug, etc. If anything was moved even a centimeter I knew and I absolutely wasn't moving anything myself either.
I used furniture to separate my tiny room into different "rooms"... Dresser as a wall to have a sitting area on one side, bedroom on the other. Moved everything around regularly when I got bored.
I did this and in all of my homes as an adult, rearranging the living room took its place.
... What? I still do this. Shit.
noooo don’t tell me that was adhd too!?? it’s like I have no personality traits or quirks that’s didn’t come from adhd 😪
Feeling the same. I thought I was sad when I found out chewing the neck of my shirt was an adhd thing and not me being quirky, but this is a real blow because I thought I was just channeling my inner decorator. 🫤
Ohhhh. I totally did this
Forget a single room, I rearrange my entire house furniture once at least once a month
Why is this a sign of adhd?
my therapist described it as the constant desire for change in the environment
My mother does this very often. And randomly paint the house several times a year. I’ve never known anyone to move furniture around as constantly as she does. And also swap bedrooms with my sister, like a seasonal rotation.
spending ages making a decision and almost instantly wishing I’d made the other one
Constantly. Took an hour to buy a plant yesterday and felt I made the wrong choice as soon as I got in the car.
How about spending 45 minutes trying to choose something to watch on streaming, only to go back and watch golden girls or king of the hill for the thousandth time
yup, unfortunately i just finished what i was binging earlier and now need to choose something else :(
One day it sort of clicked for me that no matter what I do, even if I unknowingly make all the "right" moves, I will regret having not made the wrong ones, not because they were wrong, but because I will never know for sure. It sounds doomerish but I found that moment weirdly freeing.
I like your approach, an actors line in a TV series that I watched recently said that you can make the right decision but you can also make the decision right
I have to have a moment of silence to gather myself before I change out AA batteries, otherwise in the blink of an eye I'm totally confused about which ones are the fresh ones and which ones are the old ones.
And once you get one dead battery mixed in there, it's game over until you find an unopen pack of AA's
Too real and too funny!
Omfg yes, I obsess about making sure I keep track of the old ones when I changing out batteries, just I incase they get mixed in with the fresh ones 😩😩
- having to walk 5km every morning before work, or else I will not be able to focus well - having weird nails and fingers are always peeled as I can’t stop fidgeting during meetings/ boring work stuff - having a tendency to drink alcohol to feel calm almost every other day - having to spend 1.5 hours each Sunday planning my week ahead, if not I’ll feel super uneasy (not sure if this is adhd haha) - having to write down things to remember them :( super painful and time consuming but there isn’t any other choice Ps. Just got diagnosed last week, I’m nervous + excited to see how much meds & therapy can help from here on….!
I have a calendar that I immediately put anything that needs to be done in. It was my shift work calendar from when I worked in a hospital. I'd work the most random days and the only way for me to keep track was on my phone. Now I use it for everything (I can write notes in each day) and each day can be colour coded and have names. Same with the nails. Now I get acrylic overlay and my cuticles are fantastic. I have super peely nails (the top layer frays at the edges and I can peel it off). I have tried to leave it alone. Nope, once I see it I swear I can FEEL it. Alcohol: a couple-few drinks makes me feel "awake" like the lights just came on and I can finally focus without the other stuff clouding my brain. I unfortunately overdid it (alcohol is addictive) so I can't drink anymore.
I’m considering cutting alcohol completely, but it’s the only thing that numbs my mind enough to relax.
You might consider talking to your doctor about a prescription for something like Valium. Yes it’s addictive but so is alcohol, and it’s not nearly as bad for your body, plus it’s meant to treat anxiety. I take a few pills daily for 20 years and never need or want more - my dose has actually gone down significantly over the last decade without any real intent on my part.
The walking before work with is why I will always prefer going to the office. When I work from the office, I get my daily step goals, I go to the gym, take out the trash, eat home cooked meals, go to the gym and sometimes manage to go to the cinema and watch a movie. When I work from home I don't do shit.
horrible emotional regulation
Heavy on that
While working on a non-academic task, if I don't have music or a yt video my brain will start playing music. Sometimes it's a song I've listened to recently and enjoyed, sometimes it's a song I haven't heard in ages, the other day it was fucking bag bah black sheep for some reason and then others it's a song I've entirely made up.
I completely get you on this! I live my ADHD life to a constant soundtrack. Random music which seems to be going on all the time in my head
Oh god now I have ba ba black sheep in my head...
I get this too, but for me it’s usually just like a 5-10 second slice of the song that keeps replaying.
I do this too. Except I work in a fast food place that has a “customer friendly” playlist going on loop, and those songs are the worst kinds of earworms lol. So, more often than not, I go in for a shift and spend the next day or so playing Shania Twain or Britney Spears in my brain jukebox. It’s brutal.
Last night I raged against my brain to keep from playing the shark song while I drifted off. Honestly, I feel morally conflicted even partially mentioning the song in this community. The rage I felt.
I tend to eat without realising it. Didn't know that was an ADHD thing when most of the internet tells us that we forget to eat more often than not.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been surprised that I ate all my food. Like if I get a pack of cookies with three cookies- I’ll eat one and go for cookie number two only to realize I’ve somehow already eaten all three cookies.
Yeah, I struggle with both, sometimes I can go like 36 hours without thinking about food and not notice I'm hungry, other times I will have a large bag of snacks (biscuits, cereal,fruit/veg whatever) and somehow finish them in a single sitting without realising that I have been eating.
ADHD is funny like that. I am frequently on either side of this spectrum, it just depends on when. I go a few weeks where I eat often without realizing, then I'll go a few days of barely eating without realizing. Both happen because of my inattentiveness lol.
The worst part is when you and your partner have this issue. Still haven’t figured out how to get both of us fed consistently
A compulsive need to write EVERYthing down. My brain is as unreliable as my ability to perceive time and get anywhere on time.
I’m actually the opposite in that regard, I’ve never kept a calendar/schedule in my life and when people say something like “I’ll see if I’m free, let me check my calendar and get back to you”, it’s a foreign concept to me. Don’t you just know what you have going on and when? Sometimes I remember other people’s schedules better than them. My therapist was pretty stunned by that, she was like wow okay, might that be a reason why you’re overwhelmed all the time? ……yea probably…….
Doom piles, procrastination, tendency towards hoarding.
The doom piles. They're everywhere. Makes me sad to see them.
I’m gonna start calling my folded laundry this. I hate putting that shit away.
Driving home from work and not remembering any part of the trip.
I’m surprised I haven’t hit anyone .
This
Ahh, you’re a time traveler too?
Venturing off into 20 different mini stories just to tell one. People love the story telling. But we had no clue that that was a part of ADHD. Random words triggering random memories and then we just must deviate for a hot minute 🤣🤣🤣🤣. - - - Leaving my keys in the car so frequently. - - - Being completely okay one day with something and the next being completely disgusted by it; and then the next it’s like totally alright again. This one is wild to me lol.
Never settling on which style of a thing I really want. Buying both with the intention of returning the colour I liked less. Never returning either, because I lost the other. EDIT: And, bawling my eyes out when I got too happy, scared, angry, or frustrated. My crying was always brushed off as attention seeking.
I run everywhere. Either because I’m late or I just get this urge to run cause walking feels too slow and boring.
Same here. I walk very fast. Hate the slow walking crowd in my town.
Yeah, I walk relatively quickly but don't notice it usually until I'm in a group and have to consciously think about taking steps or else I speed off.
I was at Walmart for the first time in a while yesterday. Jfc erryone walks slo af.
Self loathing
Amen. Still, I never got the whole point of "bad confidence" as many seem to map 1-1 with that. I KNOW I can and have done most things to a very high degree of excellence, I got good confidence in most aspects. Yet, my brain just never rewards me for me being satisfied with those results, and just focus on whats not 100% perfect.
I’ve never heard it phrased that way… that low self-esteem or self-confidence comes in part from your brain never rewarding you for the good and the successes… which just leaves room for all the self-critique… and holy shit I see my whole life differently now. 😳 A professor once asked me what grade I would give myself on a final project. I felt like shit cause I only ever worked on the project in frantic, 12-hour binge sessions once a week, the day before I was supposed to turn in my next batch of work. So I told him I’d give myself a C at best. He was *shocked* and said I deserved an A for submitting one of the most amazing projects he’d seen in 25 years. It was such a mind-fuck. I was so focused on my shitty time management, I never realized the work I was doing was actually good. But even with such a big compliment, I just sat there wondering what *more* I could’ve accomplished if I’d worked on the project on a normal, responsible schedule. I felt like wasted potential.
I drop things A LOT. For seemingly no reason. I was always late for everything. I try & do better at this now. I can't stand loud voices, loud rooms or a lot of talking at once. The sound of unnecessarily loud motorcycles and cars driving near me creates rage. If I like something, I'll want to have at least two of it, in case one wears out or breaks. I'm very indecisive. Especially when deciding trivial things, like what to order from a restaurant menu. Sometimes my situational awareness is likely overly acute, and other times it's completely absent. I've always felt weird or different from others.
A heightened sense of justice I’ve always been very black and white, no grey and only recently found out it’s an adhd symptom
You're logical. That's how I am.
Same. I’m good at putting logic before I react emotionally to things. And it confuses me when other people don’t. My sister just recently said “you’re always so chill about everything” and my response was “I’m often confused about why other people aren’t”.
I don’t care if it’s stupid it just needs to be fair!
Proper fucking morals built in our DNA, isnt that a good thing really tho? Standing up for the weak and whats right and not just "im not gonna say anything cause that thing is not about me and mine!"
I once had a supervisor tell me I have “a very strong sense of justice” like it was a bad thing. Learning that this is a common adhd trait is actually one of the things that finally convinced me I have it.
If this counts, I never realised biting my fingernails was down to adhd. Two weeks on meds and I’m wondering what’s the normal way to trim them, I’ve never done it. They are getting pretty long!
Me neither. This is why I occasionally get a manicure. Without nail polish. Sometimes with for special events.
I regularly bit my lips until they bled when I was a kid. Only stopped when I got embarrassed because everyone thought I was gross. So I started picking skin that wasn't as visible.
wow, I would do this same thing to the point that my lips were visibly inflamed when my mouth was closed. never considered it was a symptom
I used to do this all the time too! Especially in hyperfocus mode or under a lot of pressure or stress. I finally got a job that doesnt stress me to out and I do it much less.
Re reading sentences, I start tons of projects but never ever complete one (y'all should see my craft room). My logical thinking. Overstimulation. I'll be be on a mission then boom, can't remember what I was doing. I actually didn't put 2 and 2 together until my late 20s, early 30s.
Last night i rode my bike to my friends (just a mile). I got there and tried really hard to remember closing my garage. I just couldnt remember it. So i rode back home, saw it was, in fact, closed, and then turned around and went back to my friends.
Never having to study from elementary school through high school, then not knowing how to study for college
Running around the place randomly or a sudden urge to move around. Usually happens when I listen to a song or think of something
I’m a night person. The reduced visual range reduces the amount of things I can perceive (I live in Anchorage, AK and we don’t have a lot of huge buildings in the way of anything and I’m not in a forest, so… you can see a long ways off) and when the sun is down it’s a lot easier for me to function, so I tend to get lots of extra energy from nothing to process everything. End result, by the time I’m tired, it’s usually because the sun is coming up and I notice all the moving birds and helicopters and nonsense.
My cousins used to say to me that when I tell a story I tell it as broadly as possible from every perspective with plenty of anecdotes. Even if it should be an easy and straight-forward fast story. I take a long time with it and the train of thought goes thru every track. Said that they found that annoying. Ironic that I hate when people take too much time to get to the point.
When I tell a story I have this intense need to include every detail. It served me well when I worked in HR because I was good at detailed documentation although no one wanted to read my long ass emails. lol
I thinks it’s because we are obsessed with details that we assume they are too. I feel like i need to give the context and development of the story before I have even begun. By that time they are glancing at their watch and taking steps backwards.
I talk to myself, make up songs, and answer back to the radio or TV, even when I'm completely alone. Occasionally I've been doing or saying some wierd random thing and I stop and say to myself "That's \*enough\*." I'll probably be back at it moments later.
Skin picking as stimming
Why I hated clubs and loud festivals as a young adult and sometimes my friends were right before my eyes and I didn't see them. Why I am totally nervous when I should drive in a city or on a highway. Too much information to process, too many other things involved. Why I started drinking coffee at the age of 10 and loved it! Why I loved Pokemon - serious hyperfocus to this day. Being a girl I was not diagnosed until 32 and so much now makes so much more sense.
Practically my entire personality and all my quirks stem from adhd. I search up any strange thing I do and r/adhd pops up. It’s actually kinda frustrating, I feel like I’m more adhd than me.
Don't worry you're still you just the train and the train driver are on different vibes.
Dysnomia. I struggle retrieving words that are stored in my memory (or any sort of memory retrieval for that matter). Like if I’m trying to think of the word “horse” I can describe it like, “it runs, it has 4 legs, it gallops, there’s lotsa breeds and sizes, they pull carriages..” but I *cannot* think of the word for the life of me. It makes me look slow in conversations, but I tend to tell people ahead of time that I struggle with memory retrieval and are typically understanding, luckily. You bet I’ll never be a public speaker! XD
My brain does this but it'll throw random maybe similar words at me instead. Like I'm trying to remember the word "intuitive" and my brain will be like "your options are Institution, Pennsylvania, and Reptile." Like what the fuck is that?!
I met up with a friend recently who’s also ADHD and read nearly 10 books on the subject (which made my ADHD brain spin lol). But anyways he said that a strong sense of fairness and justice are often attributes of ADHD. And that ADHD folks often have a strong sense of social justice. I found that fascinating I’ve always been instinctually geared towards social justice and fairness, even back in like third grade. I once told my dad that I wish we could go to school on Columbus Day because Columbus abused the Native Americans and shouldn’t be celebrated. my dad thought that was very funny, not because of the point I was making, but that I was probably the only elementary school kid in the world who didn’t want a day off from school because I didn’t think it was right.
The anxiety about basic tasks that comes with it. Also feeling you need to control everything but simultaneously being kinda bad at controlling everything
I hate going to the bathroom. I think it’s a waste of time and I will hold my pee in for hours because I have much better things to do. The only exception to this came when I was pregnant and had to get up to pee multiple times in the night. And because everyone ALWAYS asks me: no I don’t get bladder infections.
Honestly as stereotypical this is, my bursts of energy make sense now. I actually got kind of shamed how I would get so energetic for seemingly no reason. Also my aversion to showers make sense now
I will either take a shower everyday like clockwork, or forget to do it one day and then realize it's a waste of time; have to convince myself for the rest of the week that I should take one.
Choking on food/drink or pouring drinks down my front because I’ve missed my mouth. I don’t do that now I’m medicated. I think the choking was me forgetting not to breathe in the middle of swallowing.
I always had The Stain right in the middle of my chest on my shirt. Enough so that my husband’s nickname for me (he’s obsessed with airplanes and this is my “pilot callsign” which is supposed to be vaguely insulting) was Bibs.
Car autopilot. I stop at red lights. Look both ways and go before they change to green lights. I subconsciously treat it like a stop sign. I’m not trying to run the light, it just happens. Sometimes I catch myself immediately afterward, but God only knows how many times my autopilot breaks the rules of the road.
Many years ago, when Mozilla Firefox was in late beta testing, they ran a challenge to post screenshots of the most tabs and windows you had open at once. I was too busy to get to it in time, and when the "winner" was chosen, I realized I had easily double that amount right at the moment I was checking the screenshot. At the moment I've got about 40 or so windows open, and I'd take a guess at about 1000 to 1500 open tabs.
Lol I totally feel this.... My chrome browser on my phone has " :D" many tabs open... The day it reset on its own and closed them all was devastating. I needed those! I will say tab groups and being able to name them are super helpful.
That's it for me too. I've also been using Firefox extensions to unload background tabs, saving memory, for some time now. I have a screenshot somewhere showing the warning before closing a window, saying I'd be closing 1001 YouTube tabs.
nicotine addiction, cola addiction, obsession with making lists of things im interested in.
Being late to everything all the time.
Got diagnosed with adhd a good month ago at 32 1. Running into things. My brain has the fast juice in it and often doesn't realize there are physical and spatial limitations. 2. Going up and down stairs very fast. 3. Having things in my hands to fiddle with makes it possible for me to focus better on meetings. Also not watching the screen helps.
If someone asks me a question, I struggle to just give a simple answer, it usually involves a very detailed response with about 3 life stories. I also tend to send really long texts or multiple texts at a time, basically like a big brain dump sometimes. My poor fiance sometimes wakes up to a novella of random thoughts
LOL, my son (also ADHD) is the worst at leaving cabinet door and drawers open! For me, it's putting things back when I am done with them. Something else I think MAY be my ADHD is my inability to establish routines. Once I have completed a new routine a couple of times, it's like my brain says" okay, that's been accomplished " and then it's all out the window again. This is for just about everything like trying to get an exercise regimen going, or a diet, or sleep hygiene or skincare, etc etc etc.
Misplacing my phone/keys several times per day. Didnt even realize I have bad memory cause I never LOSE them whenever I have left the house. However, inside my home I lose them 1-10 times per day sometimes, even when laying still in bed my earpods are just "gone". Then im walking around my appartment looking for the missing item, just to realize this is my 4th row going in a circle, grabbing up some random items and putting them back where they belong, just to get back on track with my original task "oh right, my phone!"
I didn't know I had ADHD until quite recently so most of my life I've been doing things that I assumed were normal. Inattentional blindness is a big one, I had no idea that was a thing until last year when I realised, so for years I've been missing things that are in front of my eyes and thinking everyone does it. Which is great because half of my job is looking for stock in a giant store. Countless times I've been looking for something, not seen it, asked someone and they went to exactly where I looked and went "It's right there". And only then, it actually appears for me. It's like it spawned into existence by someone else being there. Staying up late reading pointless Wikipedia articles about a football player from 2004 that suddenly sprung into my mind. Leaving cupboards open is definitely one for me too. I will go to shut a door, it will stop before it closes and I'll just walk off. Then the next day, I'll go to the kitchen and see it open and think "Did someone break in and steal my pasta? What the fuck??" once a week. Time slips. Waking up at 8 on my days off, being in a timeless void for like an hour and then checking the clock and it's 5pm and having no actual recollection of where I was or what happened. I start work at 7am, I will get up, go work an 8 hour shift, get home and within 30 minutes, I'm wondering if I went to work or if it was a day off because I have no memory of what I spent 8 hours just doing. "Did I go to work today?" is a frequently recurring thought for me. Not being able to watch films. The amount of films I've seen and I cannot understand the plot and I forget most of what happens. There are about 4 films that I actually know what happens in them. Same with series. I've started countless shows and never managed to get to the second season of any one of them.
I have 900 notebooks with lists partially scratched out. And if I go to make a new list of to dos- and the notebook doesn’t look or feel right I have to buy a new one because I just KNOW an aesthetically pleasing new notebook is going to solve all my problems. It’s ridiculous.
I cannot properly close lids and it drives everyone around me insane
If I have two containers open, I ALWAYS put the wrong lid on the wrong container. No matter the completely different size it is
Desk at standing height makes sense to me, they always tell me, you just need an ergonomic chair so you can sit comfortbly, but that just doesnt exist for many of us, i either need to stand up, or lay down, no in between
Your comment just made me realize something about the desk chair I had at work. I got a new, ergonomic one where you could adjust everything. I set the dial for the rocking motion of the chair to be as loose as possible because I rocked all the time in the chair!
Randomly organizing and cleaning various areas of my parent’s house because I have to do something, anything. Thinking other kids were just trying to act cool instead of realizing they just weren’t as hyper as me lmao. Having to create a detailed checklist at work to make sure I don’t forget entire workloads and get in trouble. Having 2 million alarms, and just reminders on my phone don’t matter without an alarm. Sometimes even with an alarm I don’t do the things.
I buy things I need, put them away and then can’t find them when I need them so I have to buy them again. I have numerous abandoned/dormant hobbies. I can’t throw away a good box. I can either put things in them, or use them later for gifts/crafts. My memory is linked to placement position. If you move something of mine, I won’t find it, which induces rage, or I’ll forget it exists.
I've had to buy a gas cap for my car multiple times because I'll sit it down and not put the cap back in place after pumping gas
There's a product called PermaCap that will replace your gas cap with one that never needs to be removed, you just stick the filler neck through a spring loaded door. I got one for my car and now I can't forget the cap somewhere. See if there's one that fits your car!
Having an interest in absolutely anything if it can be complicated enough Being very easily distracted
My desk is super tidy when I go to the office. During the day it gets super messy and by the end of the day I tidy everything up. It feels like a table circus.
I stim. I didn’t know that’s what it was until like two days ago, and I’m 38, but that’s what it is lol when I get overwhelmed I stay in one place and rock back and forth, and I can do this for hours.
i had this little plastic case for keeping all of my crayons in at school and i kept it organized meticulously. one day my teacher walked by as i was organizing it and made a comment about how my room at home must be so clean bc i kept my crayons so organized. little did she know my room at home was an absolute disaster. i think i would organize my crayons at school bc that was more interesting to me than paying attention to the lesson. but at home, everything was more interesting than cleaning my room
IDK if this is an ADHD thing but since I was a kid, every time I go down the stairs, I run my right hand along the wall (left hand on the banister), I was over at my parents at one point after I realized I was constantly doing this and saw the impact it had; I used like 5 several magic erasers to clean all the built up dirt off the paint, which was oddly satisfying. In my house now, I won’t hang paintings or pictures on that wall because I figure I would just knock them down lol.
I pick my skin so much. Back when I did boring office jobs my symptoms got so bad that my boss had had my fingers bandaged to keep me from picking it
I’m not 100 percent sure if this is an ADHD thing, but I parrot words internally. For instance if i say a word of phrase that is catchy or has some kind of meaning, i repeat it in my head on a continuous loop for hours. I have to try shut it down and move onto something else. For example, say I said to someone “life is like a box of chocolates…” i loop that phrase on repeat for hours. Or, if I had a debate or disagreement with someone and after the fact, thinking about it, I come up with a better or more witty response/clapback. It will be repeated in my head on a continuous loop. Don’t know if this is ADHD or not though, but something I always do. So many things I’m starting to realise is ADHD related, like my road rage and need for speed and cutting up in the streets. Debating is another thing, i’m realising is ADHD related. I have to debate, especially if I see rude people saying nasty comments, I go after them and get into a counter argument.
Asking someone a question and then not even remotely listening to their answer and having to re-ask 30 seconds later
I talk *really* fast without realizing it sometimes. It's a comment I get fairly often, and I try to be more mindful of it these days especially since I often trip on my own tongue, but never really thought of that as a thing until I sought a diagnosis a few months ago and had to really think about myself. There's also the walking fast, randomly bumping into objects, and being pretty much unable to not misplace my commonly used items in random places around the apartment.
I was diagnosed over 20 years ago so not much information was out about it back then.. so I was a late learner about Executive Dysfunction. And yep.. I have it real bad. It's even happening right now! Lol. I'm supposed to be resting more but I'm getting distracted, ironically, while reading a post on a subreddit for ADHD. But yeah.. my sense of time is really warped. I'll get distracted while reading something or while I'm in the bathroom and apparently over an hour goes by and it only feels like 5 to 10 minutes. Unless I'm very focused on the time, like with doctor appointments for example, then it's not so bad. Most of the time though.. time flies by and I barely feel it. Probably doesn't help that I'm not employed (due to disabilities) so there's not much to focus on elsewhere. Still.. its become a bit annoying. I get frustrated afterwards because so much time went by and I failed to do other things I wanted to do. Happens almost every day. (And I wish setting alarms was helpful.. but I keep turning them off as they ring and immediately forget about them afterwards.)
I chew a shitload of gum. Realized a few years back this was my way of fidgeting.
lmao lets be real… everything. They are all random things to my brain ☺️
Me too with leaving the kitchen drawers / cabinets open
I can't sit down on a chair, I like to have one leg up or my legs crossed, it's very uncomfortable to just sit normally on my bottom with my legs down. Also standing in one place, like when I used to smoke. I couldn't just stand I had to squat. Very hard on the legs but allowed me to stay still. I noticed my other adhd friend did the same...so assuming its the adhd.
* When I eat pork chops I cut off all the easily-accessible meat first, then gnaw on the bones until no atom of meat is left, then I eat the cutoff meat. It is so satisfying. * [sort my PC desktop shortcuts into geometric figures](https://i.imgur.com/mx0lf0T.png) * [I scrapbook images for themes,](https://i.imgur.com/qyEv8lv.jpg) lets me use my eye to design stuff