“I’ll remember” is the ADHD demon talking. You won’t remember. Write it down.
bold of you to assume i’ll remember where i wrote it, or even that i wrote it
Visual exhaustion is another symptom of ADHD, which means that if we see something enough times (or we see enough instances of something), it fades into background noise and we fail to notice it.
This is why a lot of ADHD people can stand living surrounded by mess/clutter, because it’s just visual background noise to us. We don’t even notice it anymore.
So if we write something down and see the note stuck up somewhere a lot – or if we write a LOT of somethings down and have a lot of notes hanging around – then we’re even less likely to think of/remember the thing because it’s just part of the scenery now.
ADHD is the Catch-22 of brains.
A very good thing to know about ADHD. Don’t fall into the trap.
A lot of folks in the comments are talking about writing on themselves or setting phone/calendar reminders. Your mileage may vary on those. You may also want to consider ways to set a habit of referring back to a planner or similar every day/hour.
To get those brain juices flowing, check out this Buzzfeed article on different ways folks with ADHD stay on top of things.
Readers, let us know if you have specific advice for this situation!
This is why sticky note reminders don’t work??
SKLJDGBKJEDSBBV
VISUAL BACKGROUND NOISE?!
THERE’S A WORD FOR IT?
Always reblog “THAT’S WHAT THAT IS???” posts. Chances are someone hasn’t seen it that needs to.
Tag: adhd shit
2 important articles:
1) People with ADHD don’t process verbal warnings correctly, which might be why we wind up in the ER more often. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/altered-cingulate-and-amygdala-response-towards-threat-and-safe-cues-in-attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder/807E6076D09DE1BA7C1B27EF3E918400#
This abstract was REALLY hard to understand, but I think this is what they did: They took a bunch of adults, some with ADHD and some without. The authors conditioned (taught) the subjects that one sound was dangerous by causing them mild pain when they heard it, repeatedly. They also warned them verbally that they might feel pain from a different sound. Then, they exposed the subjects to each sound. The non-ADHD adults displayed similar levels of fear with both sounds, but the ADHD adults showed much more fear of the sound that they were conditioned to fear.
This one, I think, is particularly useful for parents, trying to reduce the risk of injuries. Sure, you warned your kid that it was dangerous, but he didn’t really GET IT the way a non-ADHD kid would, which means they may need to be protected in certain ways longer.
2) Stimulant medication in childhood appears to change the structure of ADHD-affected brain regions, making them appear more like those of non-ADHD youth. https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/abs/10.1176/appi.ajp.2010.09091259?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori%3Arid%3Acrossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%3Dpubmed&
It’s not clear how strong or reliable these findings are, but the article suggests that, far from causing dependency, ADHD medications, over time, can actually help us overcome the developmental delay of ADHD. Also good for parents, but this one is for medication-hesitant parents, especially when non-drug treatments have been tried already.
The first one seems like it unintentionally might have hit on something to do with how we’re seemingly more prone to lasting effects from traumatic events, as described here. Will read when I’m properly awake, that’s fascinating!
my experience with adhd
- I don’t even remember putting that thing down but now it’s not in my hand and I don’t know where it went
- ‘what do you mean you can just think about nothing? what’s that like? I don’t understand’
- *tuning out of a conversation halfway through somebody else’s sentence because I just thought of something interesting*
- carrying my psychiatrist’s business card with me at all times because I see her once a month and every time I go I forget what floor her office is on. I’ve been there 8 times
- ‘Between A & B, A would be the right thing to do’ *a cascading thought process that takes a few seconds tops, justifying option B* ‘actually B would be the right thing to do’
- somebody else, later: why did you think B was the right thing to do??
- me: …. it’s not important, I’ll know better next time
- (spoiler: I won’t know better next time)
- I know you already told me this thing like 12 times but can you tell me again just one more time because I forgot
- it’s not that I forgot that I wasn’t supposed to do this thing. it’s just that in that particular moment i thought it was okay to do it anyway for reasons that would take 48 minutes to explain even though it only took me 3 seconds to justify it in my thoughts, so it’s easier for me to just say ‘I forgot’
- ‘I already told you that’ ‘really? I must have forgotten, i’m sorry’ ‘it was FIVE MINUTES AGO. in this SAME CONVERSATION’
- this internal conversation:
- me: I feel motivated to do this responsible thing
- me: if I don’t do this responsible thing right now I will get distracted and forget to do it for another 5 hours
- me: so I should do this thing right this second, there is nothing stopping me
- me: after I finish this one cell phone game
- me, 5 hours later: I KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN
- almost flunking a class because I straight up didn’t know any homework had been assigned despite loving the class and always attending
- trusting the memory of literally anyone else over my own memory
- intending to do something for days. sometimes months. never doing it
- *cuddling somebody* mm this is nice … *2 seconds later* bored now
- somebody is mad at me. I might as well fucking d i e
- the options in company are: overshare about the one thing I care about or not talk at all
- insensitive or inattentive? YOU decide (and when you tell me that i hurt your feelings and I didn’t notice I’ll rejection sensitive dysphoria into fantasies of disappearing forever)
- being excellent at my job for months on end, doing everything right and everything well, and then suddenly & without explanation being t h e w o r s t at it for several weeks, making dumb mistakes everywhere for no discernible reason
- when asked to explain something: well it all started when I was a baby
- ‘they don’t need that much explanation’ well YOU tell ME where to start b/c I have no fucking clue tbh
- i can’t throw away anything b/c when I look at it I remember all the sentimental reasons I keep it around and they seem just as important as actually needing it and when I close the storage box back up I forget I had it in the first place until the next time I try to get rid of my clutter and repeat this process
- i wasnt’ idle for a second all day and yet I didn’t accomplish a n y t h i n g
- am i a speed-reader or was I so impatient for what came next that I read only half a page and then skipped to the next one?
- getting excited about a project, starting it, then racing to finish it as fast as I can because when I get bored I’ll abandon it and never go back. must beat the boredom
- edit my fics? working twice on the same idea? /uproarious laughter
- well I fucked that up. too bad I can never rework it because I no longer have passionate energy for it
- me, opening a bottle of adhd meds: I don’t have adhd. I’m just a lazy bum who doesn’t try hard enough
“I’ll remember” is the ADHD demon talking. You won’t remember. Write it down.
bold of you to assume i’ll remember where i wrote it, or even that i wrote it
Visual exhaustion is another symptom of ADHD, which means that if we see something enough times (or we see enough instances of something), it fades into background noise and we fail to notice it.
This is why a lot of ADHD people can stand living surrounded by mess/clutter, because it’s just visual background noise to us. We don’t even notice it anymore.
So if we write something down and see the note stuck up somewhere a lot – or if we write a LOT of somethings down and have a lot of notes hanging around – then we’re even less likely to think of/remember the thing because it’s just part of the scenery now.
ADHD is the Catch-22 of brains.
A very good thing to know about ADHD. Don’t fall into the trap.
A lot of folks in the comments are talking about writing on themselves or setting phone/calendar reminders. Your mileage may vary on those. You may also want to consider ways to set a habit of referring back to a planner or similar every day/hour.
To get those brain juices flowing, check out this Buzzfeed article on different ways folks with ADHD stay on top of things.
Readers, let us know if you have specific advice for this situation!
This is why sticky note reminders don’t work??
screaming into the void since '89 