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Mobius pussy?I’d like to pick continuinpuss please
Trying to get my head round this... so the person with ADHD knows they would day-dream but have been prompted by social cues/upbringing that they need to focus and be motivated?Ooo, ooo, can I weigh in?
Psych grad here! (Who also happens to have ADHD!)
You will not meet someone with ADHD who does not "mask," or more accurately, engage in chronic self-negating/-controlling/-inhibiting behaviors. That said, masking in people with ADHD is not quite the same as it is with those who "mask" something like a mood disorder, eating disorder, or PTSD. With these, there is a connotation of feigned wellness and/or of deliberate, self-protective concealment. But for people with ADHD, the "mask" they wear in public is almost always a genuine part of themselves, and a sophisticated one at that.
With ADHD, because of the potential hazards of entering flow-state or tumbling down a daydreamy rabbit hole in public (esp. at work or school), people instead overdevelop their capacity for performance and people-pleasing. This performative part works on overdrive whenever they are at work, school, out in public, etc., so that when they come home (or to wherever they feel like they can be themselves) they are often desperately and understandably eager to "unmask." I've had clients tell me it's like kicking off a pair of shoes after a long hard shift where you never once got to sit down. A full day spent proving one's competence, people-pleasing, and refraining from daydreaming is taxing in the extreme for people with ADHD. And so they often overcorrect and succumb to compulsive, self-indulgent behaviors.
This is why they, in turn, may struggle with homework and procrastination, household chores, extracurricular responsibilities. They may be detached or unruly if they're at home but for whatever reason still unable to indulge their (legitimate, human) needs for pleasure and independence. They may be irritable or combative if they have already unmasked and begun to self-indulge but then been asked to "clock back in" and attend to some external demand. They often lose track of time while they're "off the clock," and so may run late, forget appointments, lose track of deadlines, etc., unless they have a routine they can stick to, a supportive loved one they can count on, or even just a "prosthetic" aid like a smart watch.
EDIT: Just wanted to add something, in case you're interested! When I call the performative part of someone with ADHD "genuine," I mean not just that it is an authentic facet of the person's personality, but that it too has needs that must be met for that person to feel well. Someone with ADHD who does not have external obligations and so never gets to flex their performative muscle will, after too long a time spent languishing like this, often report chronic low-level feelings of worthlessness and shame. The pandemic was a case study in this. Plenty (I daresay most) introverts with ADHD flourished during the first several months of the covid pandemic. It was a time of blissful, oasis-like respite for them. But then, at some point, many of them also began to feel insecure in their bliss, listless to a fault, a kind of Stockholm-Syndrome-like longing for the gone-away discomforts and tedium and bullshit of the outside world. They may not have "missed" work or school, per se, but they missed being the impressive, hardworking versions of themselves that these places forced them to be.
Bingo! Your head seems successfully to have gotten around this! I might only add that this self-knowledge tends to come about the hard way. So it's not typically that people "teach themselves" to have ADHD. Rather, what tends to happen is that as a child with ADHD's brain develops, certain peculiarities of their executive functioning start to lead them consistently into certain kinds of crises that, as it turns out, are best avoided, negotiated, and/or resolved by strategies of, e.g., self-negation, diplomacy, and restraint. As the particulars of which strategies to use, when, and why will differ greatly from context to context, so too do the presentations of any one client with ADHD differ from another. What remains consistent, however, across all the wildly different life stories, is a throughline of lessons in self-control learned the hard way. We all struggle with self-control issues, but for ADHD clients, this is their Big Bad, their nemesis, their recurring nightmare. Lapses in self-control have caused their worst life experiences. And so they learn to suppress their basic psychological need for autonomy, i.e., their appetite for things like pleasure, self-examination, self-expression, etc., whenever they are "on the clock," whenever they are not safe to be themselves, as it is a hunger they cannot otherwise control. Social cues and upbringing account for a lot, but so do more universal factors like the basic human need to feel relatable and competent.Trying to get my head round this... so the person with ADHD knows they would day-dream but have been prompted by social cues/upbringing that they need to focus and be motivated?
Or is the motivation the other side of the coin, so one moment they're day-dreaming then they switch into hyperactivity because they're unable to regulate their attention?
Fellow psych grad with ADHD here (!) and: hot dang. You're the real deal. You nailed how it feels to live with this monkey on my back. Even down to the recurring nightmares, which to this day consistently fool me into thinking I'm back in undergrad, I haven't been to class since the first day of the semester, and it's exam day but I don't remember where the classroom is.Ooo, ooo, can I weigh in?
Psych grad here! (Who also happens to have ADHD!)
You will not meet someone with ADHD who does not "mask," or more accurately, engage in chronic self-negating/-controlling/-inhibiting behaviors. That said, masking in people with ADHD is not quite the same as it is with those who "mask" something like a mood disorder, eating disorder, or PTSD. With these, there is a connotation of feigned wellness and/or of deliberate, self-protective concealment. But for people with ADHD, the "mask" they wear in public is almost always a genuine part of themselves, and a sophisticated one at that.
With ADHD, because of the potential hazards of entering flow-state or tumbling down a daydreamy rabbit hole in public (esp. at work or school), people instead overdevelop their capacity for performance and people-pleasing. This performative part works on overdrive whenever they are at work, school, out in public, etc., so that when they come home (or to wherever they feel like they can be themselves) they are often desperately and understandably eager to "unmask." I've had clients tell me it's like kicking off a pair of shoes after a long hard shift where you never once got to sit down. A full day spent proving one's competence, people-pleasing, and refraining from daydreaming is taxing in the extreme for people with ADHD. And so they often overcorrect and succumb to compulsive, self-indulgent behaviors.
This is why they, in turn, may struggle with homework and procrastination, household chores, extracurricular responsibilities. They may be detached or unruly if they're at home but for whatever reason still unable to indulge their (legitimate, human) needs for pleasure and independence. They may be irritable or combative if they have already unmasked and begun to self-indulge but then been asked to "clock back in" and attend to some external demand. They often lose track of time while they're "off the clock," and so may run late, forget appointments, lose track of deadlines, etc., unless they have a routine they can stick to, a supportive loved one they can count on, or even just a "prosthetic" aid like a smart watch.
EDIT: Just wanted to add something, in case you're interested! When I call the performative part of someone with ADHD "genuine," I mean not just that it is an authentic facet of the person's personality, but that it too has needs that must be met for that person to feel well. Someone with ADHD who does not have external obligations and so never gets to flex their performative muscle will, after too long a time spent languishing like this, often report chronic low-level feelings of worthlessness and shame. The pandemic was a case study in this. Plenty (I daresay most) introverts with ADHD flourished during the first several months of the covid pandemic. It was a time of blissful, oasis-like respite for them. But then, at some point, many of them also began to feel insecure in their bliss, listless to a fault, a kind of Stockholm-Syndrome-like longing for the gone-away discomforts and tedium and bullshit of the outside world. They may not have "missed" work or school, per se, but they missed being the impressive, hardworking versions of themselves that these places forced them to be.
No! Not nevermind, burgwad! I'm supposed to be here learning how to write erotica! Instead, so far I've spent more time talking about ADHD and the dance scene from Netflix's Wednesday than I have erotica. I'm happy to make you feel less lonely, if that's what I can do for you (and okay I admit I too "(!)" at the coincidence of meeting another psych gradhd here) but please, in the meantime, hold me to account dude. Push me to write something, anything, asap. Tell me to quit stalling for time here on the forums instead of actually following my dreams of becoming a halfway decent smut writer.Nevermind that you haven't posted any stories here yet, newcomer. It's just so great to have another psych geek around.
Ooo, ooo, can I weigh in?
Psych grad here! (Who also happens to have ADHD!)
You will not meet someone with ADHD who does not "mask," or more accurately, engage in chronic self-negating/-controlling/-inhibiting behaviors. That said, masking in people with ADHD is not quite the same as it is with those who "mask" something like a mood disorder, eating disorder, or PTSD. With these, there is a connotation of feigned wellness and/or of deliberate, self-protective concealment. But for people with ADHD, the "mask" they wear in public is almost always a genuine part of themselves, and a sophisticated one at that.
I was thinking of starting a thread about ADHD but never got round to it, which is typical of a person suffering from acute ADHD who has dozens of ideas spinning round his head at any one time and rarely gets to see any of them through to fruition.
There are so many types of ADHD, but I just want to start by saying that "Attention Deficit" is the wrong label to give to this condition. It's more a case of "Attention Overload" because you are hyper-aware of so many things going on around you.
Amelia turned to Captain Hunter.
"Did you really want the introduction," Amelia asked, "or was this all a pretext to speak with me?"
"No such thing as a pretext," she said. Perhaps he could see the hesitation she felt writ across her face because he leaned in and lowered his voice. "Don't worry. His name is Waterman. He lives by water and he is a man, remember?"
...
He gave her a little smile. "If you forget his name again, I'll remind you."
Her mother would scoff at that. If I keep telling you, you'll never learn on your own. You can't expect people to make your life easy for you, Amelia. How is it that you can remember the most obscure Chinese characters, but you can't remember someone's name?
...
She turned back to the man at the desk because at least she remembered his name. She'd told it to herself three times just now. His name was something man? Something about what he did or where he was. Harborman? Her head was full of answers, every one of them completely wrong.
The captain strode forward. "Captain Grayson Hunter," he said, "of Lord Traders, Incorporated, out of Maine. You must be Mr. Waterman."
Oh thank God.
...
Captain Something and Mr. Whatever Man were still conversing. Amelia had no idea what they were talking about. She pasted an interested smile on her face and tried to mind their words. She lasted half a sentence. Import duties? Bleah. There was only so much attention she could pay to that.
What she needed was a pocket watch, except instead of sounding the hour, it would poke her in the thigh every minute to remind her to notice whatever was happening around her. An excellent idea, but then she would have to invent a pocket watch that stopped her other pocket watch from poking her in the thigh because being continually prodded would drive her into madness.
[Another page or so in which Amelia completely fails to follow the conversation, and thinks instead about whether her foster-parents' plans to marry her off, a woman in Fuzhou who makes flower out of tea leaves, and her foster-mother's disapproval.]
"Well," Mr. Whatever stood, and Captain Something rose alongside him. The conversation was coming to an end; Amelia scrambled to her feet.
"A pleasure speaking with you," Captain Something said, holding out his hand. "I'll be in touch, Mr. Waterman."
...
"Of course, of course. My best to your mother, Mrs. Smith."
"My best to your wife." She did not add Mr. Waterman to the end of the speech because while Captain Question Mark had used the name, she was only fairly certain that was his name, not extremely certain. It would be extraordinarily awkward if she were wrong.
"As your liaison, can I suggest that we have everyone in the office put name cards at their desks?"
She blinked at him. "How?"
Benedict shrugged. "I'll just go down and say, 'Hullo everyone, Mrs. Smith is bad at remembering names, and so we'll all make her feel better if we just use name cards with profligate abandon.'"
"You can't just tell people that!"
"Why not?" He looked at her. "It's nothing to be ashamed of. Not everyone is good at names."
She was sputtering. "But—that—if we just tell them outright..."
"They they'll know?" He seemed puzzled. "And will understand... why make you feel bad about not knowing names when we could just use cards to help you out? And if we're not in the office and I'm around, I can just whisper names to you when someone approaches."
Thanks
I am absolutely wearing a mask when I'm in public - or at least, I am very very very very conscious of the image I am portraying, whether it be to a complete stranger I pass walking to the bank, or those in the line when I get there, and the teller who serves me... The people I meet for lunch (ha, I'd need friends for that), etc etc.Ooo, ooo, can I weigh in?
Why are we speaking German all of a sardine?!Why am I here? Who am I anymore?
After diagnosis I binge-read dozens of books, watched videos etc all to understand the condition, but more importantly to find coping techniques. What works for someone with a diagnosis badge might be appropriate for you as well - pick and choose what works. Learn to be kind to yourself but if you find yourself desperate, reach out for help.How can you differentiate between the two?
I literally just put up a story about masking and I think I fall under the PTSD/eating disorder side of masking... but I've had a bunch of people ask me if I might be autistic or have ADHD and after reading through this thread... I'm kinda wondering if I should maybe talk to my doctor about the possibility of this.
But, I'm not the type to co-opt a diagnosis based only on circumstantial links. So, my answer when people ask remains, "I've not been diagnosed with either of those, so I'm going to say no because that's not my battle as far as I'm aware."
I manage, so even if it is a proper diagnosis for me I don't feel like it impacts my life as much as other things I've dealt with.
How can you differentiate between the two?
I literally just put up a story about masking and I think I fall under the PTSD/eating disorder side of masking... but I've had a bunch of people ask me if I might be autistic or have ADHD and after reading through this thread... I'm kinda wondering if I should maybe talk to my doctor about the possibility of this.
But, I'm not the type to co-opt a diagnosis based only on circumstantial links. So, my answer when people ask remains, "I've not been diagnosed with either of those, so I'm going to say no because that's not my battle as far as I'm aware."
I manage, so even if it is a proper diagnosis for me I don't feel like it impacts my life as much as other things I've dealt with.
How can you differentiate between the two?
Sorry I'm late but there was a dog playing in the park.What I was going to say on the subject, oh, look at the pretty butterfly.
Why are the hugging people so cold? Unless
I agree maybe orange and brown?Why are the hugging people so cold? Unless