There are up sides and down sides to everything. I’m not going to pretend what makes me different doesn’t give me challenges, but it also gives me benefits. I like who I am, wouldn’t change it because a lot of WHO I am is intertwined with HOW I am.
Like I might be able to better accomplish tasks and whatnot without ADHD, but if that means the frequency of unique thoughts takes me to fewer topics and areas of learning, my entire body of knowledge would fundamentally change too, as would the interconnectedness of those topics, and whatever unique thoughts arise from the combination of those topics. You can’t pick and choose what areas of the mind to keep and get rid of, the mind is a complex house of cards.
In this comic, it’s obvious somebody is telling someone else their value - and that is messed up.
But the nuances around this topic are worth addressing. I’ve been dogpiled before for admitting that AuDHD doesn’t bring my life 100% doom & gloom. I recognize the issues that my AuDHD brings, yet some people seem to think it’s a mortal sin to say the things I like about myself that are related to these conditions.
A lot of things suck about navigating the world as someone neurodivergent. It also sucks when someone who doesn’t know your situation tries to tell you how you’re supposed to feel about it. Which is why it’s baffling that, for some reason, some people take any positive interpretation of one’s own ADHD/autism symptoms as some sort of, “sO YOU sHoULd bE hApPy aBoUt iT!”
Bruh, I never said a damn thing about you. I can only speak for myself, and personally I like my creative abilities. I don’t like that I need to keep projects limited to things I can complete within a day (or else I lose focus forever), but it’s still really useful to me.
Is it okay to say that? Because sometimes I think people look for messages that aren’t there. It’s ridiculous to me that being comfortable with yourself, as someone with disabilities, is seen as somehow “wrong” even in a disability-centered space. Am I not allowed to speak unless I’m bitching about my conditions? Sounds like ableist tone policing, but after that dogpile, I really don’t know what’s going on anymore.
The superpower of stumbling through life always feeling behind your peers (except for stuff that actually hooks your attention), getting addicted to self medication without realizing you’re self medicating, failing out of college twice, getting diagnosed as an adult and then mourning for all the time and struggle wasted pre diagnosis, working with the Dr to find the right aid for you, feeling fucking amazing for the first week on drugs doing all the things, then your body gets used to them and things slow down again and you realize you still need to do hella work on your self discipline because just the prescription isn’t all that’s needed to get things done.
Congrats, you’re now in your 30’s and functioning like neurotypicals were a decade ago. Such a cool superpower.
Yeah in the US, at least on employment forms, ADHD is classified as a disability.
Not that it’s wise to admit to it or that you’d get accommodations anyway but still. “Differently abled” my ass. /rant
It’s a disability for now. Trump is trying to ruin that.
I’d say “differently abled” applies.
It can be a nightmare at times.
Hell before I got medicated it took me literally like 4.5 to 5 hours to get ready for work in the mornings and I’d still have nothing to show for it.
Nowadays I’m down to 1 hour for the entire routine.
A couple of my coworkers are still trying to find something that works for them and they’re struggling pretty hard.
“Being paraplegic is your superpower”
Just shut the fuck up.
I’ve been teaching a class on this (strengths based pedagogy) as well as other conditions in education interventions and I use a diagnosed friend of mine as an example.
Cons of ADHD: he’s got mad impulsivity to the point that he’ll show up on my doorstep on random weekends with minimal notification (he lives in another state).
Pros of ADHD: mother fucker’s hyper focus put him as lead of a student team that sent a robot to the moon.
He still takes meds now, though, cause the cons to get in the way. There are only so many times I’m willing to give him my hoodie just because he gave his only one to a homeless person out of impulsive charity and got cold.
I leverage hyperfixation at work. To me, it feels like a superpower. To everyone else, it’s just really hard to get my attention.
It helps my wife get super pissed off at me when I break her hyperfocus. Yay!
It’s pretty rare to be able to decide what to hyperfocus on. Without meds, work puts me to sleep.
I’m either invested in the project, or my unhealthy fear of failure fuels the anxiety that forces hyperfocus. I don’t recommend the latter if you can avoid it. It’s exhausting.
I don’t recommend the latter if you can avoid it.
Yeah, kind of like how adrenaline can let a person ignore a serious injury for a little while, there’s always a brick wall on that road.
Great analogy.
That wall hits like sleep deprivation or dehydration, just a clueless and careless fog that falls over me after running for too long on anxiety.
I can hyperfocus when others have expectations of me (work), but in context of my own life and what I want to do with it, I can’t put the mental burden of managing me on someone else, and whenever anyone has tried I get become defiant against… my own self interests? FML.
I found a way to reframe that defiance issue that might work for you.
I believe we get defiant because we already know the task needs doing. However, instead of treating being told to do something as a reminder to do something you already know you need to do, you treat the reminder as a request for re-prioritization.
Our executive dysfunction seems to me to be a problem of prioritization. We have an infinitely long To Do List, it’s not that we need help knowing what to do. We need help knowing what’s supposed to be the top item on that list at any given moment in present time.
So, when someone tells you to do something, try parsing their meaning as, “Hey, could you bump this item up to current?” And THEN respond accordingly.
Know thyself, know your deficiencies, and then embrace them. Welcome the assistance with the prioritization, let go of the resentment of being reminded to do something you already are aware of.
We have time blindness, so don’t resent clocks, use them as the tool they are right? So don’t resent people when they mean well, they just don’t have the vocabulary to speak ADHD, so we build our own internal translators.
Ah yes, the superhuman ability to make my living space a mess
Oh, you didn’t get a side of OCD with your ADHD? It’s a blessing and a curse.
And that doesn’t go there.
Back to the me/wife ADHD super combo: I want everything to be ultra organized and visibly and physically accessible. It’s how I cope with my disorganized brain.
My wife organizes by letting things slip from her hands, seemingly at random, leaving them where they fall. When things start to pile up, she’ll neatly arrange them in a tight stack somewhere, regardless of the fact nothing in the stack is related nor does it all even belong in that room. I lovingly refer to these as her nests. She typically has no recollection of even making them.
I’m looking at a new one in our closet rack: a travel pillow, some clothes, a gun cleaning kit, one shoe, an empty lockbox, and a small roll of bubble wrap.
ADHD sucks.
Well, it’s been well established that taking drugs is a superpower
Gonna have to remember that line for the next time I’m at a party
ADHD sucks, i don’t understand the people who want to act like they have it or are proud of having it, it’s like people who think autism is a super power, as the dad of an autistic kid, no it isn’t, it sucks and it’s hard and it’s not something you should be proud of having
I’m sure you mean well, but it feels really inconsiderate to tell autistic people their feelings towards their own self aren’t valid.
In my experience, the most uniting autistic experience is feeling like a burden, because that’s what autistic people are treated as. Pride of who you are is a direct response to being told there’s something fundamentally wrong with you.
People are just overcompensating for their shortcomings :-/
I mean, I don’t think everyone experiences it the same way and there is an interplay with your personality type that can be adapated to be beneficial
This is entirely based on my own experience watching my adhd change throughout the years.
Now all those random interested have started to accumulate and I’ve changed my relationship with adhd too.
Agreed. I very much like who I am on Adderall.
Meanwhile NTs out here with freaking telepathy. “What no, that’s just normal”.
Benoit Blanc is such a gem.
