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The complete and total inapplicability of most ADHD advice (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 2 days ago by to c/autism@lemmy.world
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Reading the web and watching the YouTube's yields a plethora of little attention hacks that apparently really help people with their ADHD, but leave me feeling completely alienated because absolutely none of them work for me. In fact, I just don't even implement them, just sort of eye them suspisciously from a distance.

It feels a little reminscent of the advice I'd get for depression in that the bulk of advice seems targetted towards people with less severe forms, and both writers and readers can say, "Wow! Thanks! This really worked for me!"

The feeling that I had earlier that, "OK, now I have a diagnosis, I can start treating the problem" is evaporating away I'm left with a despair that comes from having a version of ADHD that is seemingly not treatable and not work-aroundable and is actually and irrevocably debilitating.

Getting an eval in a week

Edit: If anyone has resources for severe ADHD instead of this Stephen Covery organizational bullshit, please drop it in the comments.

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[–] 25 points 2 days ago (10 children)

The feeling that I had earlier that, "OK, now I have a diagnosis, I can start treating the problem" is evaporating away I'm left with a despair that comes from having a version of ADHD that is seemingly not treatable and not work-aroundable and is actually and irrevocably debilitating.

So, sorry to be the one who says this but I think the only path to peace is acceptance. No, I have not achieved it yet.

If these tips and tricks worked for all people all the time, it wouldn't be considered disabling.

Diagnosis has helped me and my spouse be kinder with ourselves and prioritize certain things instead of trying to do it all. We give ourselves more buffer, have more back up plans, and just lean in to what works for us.

It also means being kinder to each other. So maybe if my spouse is stimming super hard and it's driving me nuts I won't snap at him, I'll say "Imma go lay down for a bit" because I'm likely over stimulated at that point and could probably use more than just the stimming stopping. In turn, he recognizes that when I sit with him on the couch with my headphones on I'm not being rude, I'm enjoying his presence while taking care of myself.

I was diagnosed with ADHD in 2023 and medication has been a life saver but didn't fix me. The autism diagnosis was last year and that has helped me give myself permission to take better care of myself in the ways I explained above. I've stopped trying to fix myself and started trying to accommodate.

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  • [–] [S] 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (9 children)

    Yeah, it's hard because all my life I've been telling myself, "If I just do X full bore for a few months I can parlay it into a job/career," and every time the furthest I get is collecting books on the subject and maybe a few weeks or months of sporadic practice. And in the meantime, I feel like what I crave spiritually is exactly just something that I can sink my focus into; so I am left both without income and with nothing to look forward to in my present or my future. So I don't know what kind of peace acceptance would grant me, knowing that I will never have the life I want and I'm just going to be flipping channels until I die.

    I've tried a bunch of meds and they didn't seem to do much for task initiation; instead, I seemed to do the same thing I would have done anyway, I just did a lot more of it. So for instance, instead of doing tasks I should have been doing, I would just be on reddit for 16 hours with no breaks.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 days ago (8 children)

    It's hard and not fair.

    I want to tell you that I have a job that I love but I don't want to suggest that everyone can manage traditional employment and I have also been on leave since June and just recently started a reduced schedule so...

    So I don't know what kind of peace acceptance would grant me, knowing that I will never have the life I want and I'm just going to be flipping channels until I die.

    It's not acceptance if you are not at peace with what you have.

    I don't have any advice on how to get there nor am I trying to suggest that people should just suck it up and be grateful when we are denied full participation and basic needs because of our differences.

    I guess I just want to express empathy. I've been totally hopeless because of the mismatch between my brain and the world, but I've managed to find a bit of acceptance too.

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  • [–] [S] 6 points 2 days ago (7 children)

    Yeah, I don't really care about "traditional employment." I'd love to have some sort of task or trade or skill I could use, even if it's playing bossa novas in Portuguese restaruants or a part-time job fixing woodwind instruments... but I've been staring at a dissassembled clarinet on my table for the past 2 days and I know all I have to do is find the re-assembly instructions on the PDF I downloaded, and it's taking me FOREVER. Like, I can't even handle non-traditional employment because I can't be fucked to learn basic skills.

    And a friend dropped off a bunch of stuff for me to sell on marketplace for commission and I've had it for months and I think I'm just going to return it to her today. Even though I'm broke as fuck and having been eating nothing but beans for a week and been largely housebound to avoid spending money on gasoline, I'm just not motivated by money to bother taking a picture, writing a description, and posting it.

    I mean what the fuck.

    Thanks for your words of support, though, it's at least nice not to be completely alone.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 days ago (6 children)

    Okay I can't help myself: do you think you might be burnt out?

    Every decade or so my life falls apart and I am unable to do anything. Autistic burnout is not the same as the other type and can't be treated the same way. I don't want to hear you say "how can I be burnt out if I don't do anything?"! Maybe have a gander at the concept.

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  • [–] [S] 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (5 children)

    Absolutely! This time around, I am not running to therapy and psychiatrists because I'm depressed because I've been through that before and its never helped. Instead, I'm seeing any depression I have as an outgrowth of this frustrating process I've described, the core reason for my depression all of my life, in retrospect, which has gone almost completely unacknowledged and untreated.

    So, yes, I'm liking the burnout hypothesis much more for myself these days. In addition, I actually DON'T feel depressed most of the time except as a result of a realistic look at my situation (fuck CBT).

    My problem with burnout is that there doesn't seem to be much I can do about it. I spent years on dsability before without getting anywhere until a faint hope of normal life ignited a small enough fire that I could start working again. But maybe things will be better because the whole trying to treat depression was an enormous boondoggle, an enormous waste of effort and cause of shame and failure (not to mention all the meds probably blunted my affect, making it harder to find joy).

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  • [–] 4 points 2 days ago (4 children)

    making it harder to find joy

    Comrade, it sounds like you are treating it like occupational burnout, which is (simplified as) a mismatch between your values and your life/work etc.

    My personal opinion is that a lot of advice for occupational burnout is downright harmful when trying to treat autistic burnout.

    Autistic burnout is a mismatch between demands and abilities, and is more about the nervous system.

    What made my autism "click" for me was polyvagal theory, and framing the relevant challenges with that.

    I don't really have it in me to post resources ATM, but I'll do my best to come back to this post tomorrow 💚

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 2 days ago (3 children)

    I've definitely have had occupational burnout. My trained occupation, social work, was pretty brutally and self-evidently unethical, and my awareness of the harm caused by all of it has only grown over the years; there's also an autistic component of needing to get along with tragically neurotypical co-workers. All the other jobs I've had have been based on taking as much money as possible from people, either directly or as the entire mission of the organization ...

    It's perfectly possible I'm suffering from both autistic and occupational burnout, but recovering from occupational burnout would require me to muster enough attention to pursue skills that grant me better occupational options; I am ensnared and the more I struggle, the worse it gets.

    Re: polyvagal theory. I hear that theory mentioned in The Body Keeps the Score and EMDR, and in both cases it's been criticized as having weak evidence, but if you find the conceptualization helpful, I'd love to hear more about how it's useful for you.

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