Everyone who has ADHD has different symptoms. There is some overlap between these, but the whole range of symptoms varies heavily. I have something called combined ADHD. It means I have symptoms from both inattentive and hyperactive. The symptoms I list are when I am not medicated. They change quite a bit when I am taking meds.
Things that I have struggled with the most are keeping my attention on one task for long periods of time. I will stay focused for a few minutes. I often check my phone, Facebook or Twitter. Sometimes I go to check a word or concept I thought about. Most of the time has nothing to do with what I am doing, except some weird jump of thoughts that make no sense to most people.
If I have instructions with multiple steps or steps that are very complicated, I forget half of it. I have a tendency to remember the last bits, but not the beginning. In school, the instructions were often verbal, and I had no chance. I always ask them written now if it’s possible. I will also forget to follow through with them and miss steps. I am always thinking about what to do next, so I forget what I was supposed to do now.
I feel like I hear everything and they take away my attention. I can hear the train nearby, dog parking, one of my cats just did a tiny eek sound. All this is taking away my attention as I am here writing.
I will put down something, and it will be forever lost if I don’t put my whole focus on it. I wish I was kidding. I also have a habit of leaving stuff in weird places. Again I wish I was kidding.
If I have to focus longer periods of time, I will get tired and cranky. It uses my brain in a way that it’s not meant to. To me, it’s like sprinting when you are supposed to be having a nice walk. I do also tend to walk or run too fast than it’s comfortable.
I have trouble staying seated or still. I will want to move. Even right now, my feet are rubbing against each other in order for me to keep moving while writing. I cannot sit down without having something to do. When I read for uni studies, I tend to have something in my fingers. I have a few fidget toys and they do help.
I have also a tendency to buy things when I don’t need them, just because they are pretty. I am lucky that I have a very strong sense of not buying more than I can afford, but not everyone is as lucky as I am. Dept and money problems are often part of ADHD. It doesn’t help that seeing the big picture over longer periods of time is not easy. We tend to be quite here and now creatures so the end of the month can seem a very long way away.
I hate waiting. I want things to happen here and now. One reason is that I’m impatient, but also because I will forget in the future. When I have medical appointments, I have two reminders. One for the day before, and the other an hour before I need to leave. I would be absolutely lost without my phone.
There are some things that are heavily linked to ADHD that I do struggle with. The first one is emotions. The prefrontal cortex is a big part in control and this is the part that doesn’t work like neuronormal people prefrontal cortex works and it can be measured in fMRI. It controls our behaviour, which stimuli is important, emotional response, thoughts. Some people describe it as a secretary that handles all incoming information and forwards the important to the boss, the brain. With ADHD, this secretary quit. They are not there so everything is coming full force to the brain. Because this control centre is not working full time, emotions can run amok a bit. I often feel that I get very strong emotions. When I feel happy, I am extremely happy. When I feel sad, I feel like I can never be happy. I am on a constant emotional roller-coaster ride. This is not similar to bipolar, where I understand the emotions run for days, weeks or months. For me, I can feel extreme excitement, joy, sadness and go back to the excitement, in one hour. The emotions are also distractable. The right thing can make me feel best again. And I take rejection very personally. Most of the time it is not real rejection. It’s most of the time perceived rejection or something someone says about my work, my appearance, how I talk. It can be an offhand comment, and I will feel like I am not good enough and I am being rejected.
A lot of us feel like we are not good enough. Mine comes from trying to be as good as neuronormal people. I was trying to keep up in school, at work, in life. I have had many burnouts in my life, mainly in school. I was trying to keep up with other students. I put 150% into my work and I didn’t get good grades. I worked harder than most people in my class and I wasn’t good enough. Even with my diagnosis, I still feel like I need to compete with neuronormals but it’s impossible.
If you are reading this and you do not have ADHD, I hope you can understand us a bit better. If you do have ADHD, I hoped you liked reading it. If you do not have ADHD, but a lot of this rang a bell, I’d suggest taking an online ADHD test and taking it to the doctors and asking for a referral.
Katrina writes 