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My ADHD founder toolbox

hypatia.ca

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Re: My ADHD founder toolbox

#111

Post by anshumankmr »

As someone who is also battling ADHD, I feel super anxious reading the comments here all talking about X and Y medicine, which I am super not wanting to do.

I used to do therapy but I found my therapist was making videos on Facebook about a few things I told him (though I was never named but I felt this was a huge breach of trust).

I exercise quite a bit. (lots of cardio and core exercises, I particularly enjoy barbell squats and sledgehammer workouts ). But since I have had an injury on my foot for the past couple of days I have been taking it easy by not going to the gym and I feel really low cause of this.This is one kind of super positive thing I do. I don't like the gym I go to cause the instructors mostly pay attention to the girls and only ever paid attention to me to sell me some protein powder or when the tim comes for me to renew my subscription. (But that's only a specific issue for my gym, as I am shifting to a new city in a couple of months, I think I can try out a bunch of places before choosing one)

The other thing I do occasionally journal, most of the times,which I use it to vent out my thoughts. I also even more rarely do a workbook for CBT (which is for perfectionism which is another trait I found myself to have)

Anyway, what I wanted to know was has anyone tried not using any fancy 100$ subscription based apps OR meds to do their work and found success? What did you do and how did you cope with life in general?

Background info: I am 25, working in the IT field, I feel kind of directionless in life as I am still working on a plan to get into an MS degree abroad (though my parents really encourage me to do an MBA).

/end vent

Re: My ADHD founder toolbox

#112

Post by elcritch »

throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #51

I diagnosed when I was like... 8 years old. From then to 17 I was on various meds, finally gave them all up. So for about 22 years I've coped with ADHD without meds. I am a Staff Engineer and make a good living, respected in my field. Regardless of anything else, I think the key thing to remember about ADHD is that you do not need to be a high-performing human being, at all, in life. You will forget things and get di…

> Regardless of anything else, I think the key thing to remember about ADHD is that you do not need to be a high-performing human being, at all, in life. You will forget things and get distracted and not get as much done. So what. You are still intelligent and caring and dedicated and responsible and a hard worker.

Exactly! I was diagnosed later in life by which time I had experienced a significant amount of trauma expecting myself to be normal. Learning to embrace limitations and the "workarounds" needed to function helped me tremendously. Learning to "ride the waves" so to speak and working with your brain changes things day and night.

The other part is learning to stand up for oneself. There's often a lot of undue criticism from others because you need to do things differently. Being constantly criticized because you forget what often amounts to trivial things is one of the worse "symptoms". Many people also associate "togetherness" on unrelated items with competence or ability. Of course there's basic tasks that need to be handled, but many folks view even "struggling" with such things as evidence of incompetence.

For example, adhd'ers often pay a "tax" because they occasionally forget things at the grocery store, but at work they also tend to foresee certain problems long before others do. However many managers see or here about the former and ignore the latter and are too narrow in their mental models to comprehend the differences.

It's also acceptable to ask for help for those weird things your brain refuses todo. I've asked people to "hit enter" for me just to short circuit a procrastination loop. Now I can actually do it "in my head" as a sorta role playing game. :)

> Do not put pressure on yourself to live up to what someone else can do. Only do what you can do, in your time, and be at peace.

Right on. Ironically doing this also lets your brain work better!

Unfortunately this requires understanding from those around you too. Sometimes family members with undiagnosed adhd can be some of the worse due to internalizing all the normal criticisms.

Its great seeing so many adhd'ers sharing actually helpful advice nowadays.

Re: My ADHD founder toolbox

#113

Post by TeMPOraL »

rtpg wrote: post #108
adamwk wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also on Concerta, taking 45mg. I started at 27 which was too low for me and went up to 54 which was too high; so we came down to 45 which seems to be a Goldie locks for me (they don't make a 45mg pill so I take an 18 and a 27). I also take 150mg Wellbutrin for depression and balance it all off with a nightly 300mg of Gabapentin to help me sleep (coincidentally my cat is prescribed the same amount of gaba to take…

TBH given that part of my ADHD treatment is about social aspects, break days have never really seemed like a good idea to me. Everyone is different of course but executive function is nice to have off the clock as well IMO.

Yeah, while I get the idea of break days, I honestly prefer to take them during work week instead of weekends, because it kind of makes no sense to shortcharge yourself on the time you have for your family and for actually moving your life forward.

I imagine the "weekend break", like a lot of ADHD advice, comes from treatment of children and teenagers, which - for better or worse - tends to focus on school performance, to the exclusion of all else. I mean, every now and then I see an adult ADHD article talking about med breaks and mentioning both weekend breaks and summer vacation breaks. It's kind of a tell.

Re: My ADHD founder toolbox

#114

Post by tonyarkles »

dboreham wrote: post #110
tonyarkles wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and a NT wife. Partner and I have been together for 13 years now. She’s almost certainly on the ADHD spectrum but less severe than me. Things are great besides the fact that we both neglect a lot of stuff that NT folks don’t really struggle with. But retrospectively, that’s one of the most interesting things for me. I think back to a lot of the previous relationships I had, and the vast majority of them failed due…

Meh. Lathe is small potatoes. Get a pdp-11/70.

Thanks for the yak shave! I’m out of empty slots in the breaker panel, and, well, a couple of the rooms have two-prong outlets with no ground… guess I need to rewire the whole house and install a new panel! And since we’ll have to cut into the drywall, may as well upgrade the insulation and vapour barrier while we’re in there.

Re: My ADHD founder toolbox

#115

Post by BandOfBots »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #71
terribleperson wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While meds can definitely help, one month in is way too early to know if the change is long-term positive. This is especially true with stimulant medications.

> one month in is way too early to know if the change is long-term positive. This is especially true with stimulant medications. Agree. It's important to remind people that the effects of the first few weeks aren't like the effects for the next 10-50 years. It's especially concerning when people say the meds give them "more energy to do things" because that's more of a side effect that goes away after a while. The fo…

“more energy to do things” is directly correlated to the level of dopamine ADHD medication augments in our brains

Re: My ADHD founder toolbox

#116

Post by bitexploder »

tonyarkles wrote: post #99
bitexploder wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank goodness for auto pay on bills and a NT wife. I don’t know how she puts up with where my brain has ended up some years, but we have done great together as a family :) Also, I totally get that picking up random links thing. I always found I could sort of link together certain kinds of concepts together really quickly. Never super deeply, but like, learning new programming languages, I could just dive in, look at…

> and a NT wife. Partner and I have been together for 13 years now. She’s almost certainly on the ADHD spectrum but less severe than me. Things are great besides the fact that we both neglect a lot of stuff that NT folks don’t really struggle with. But retrospectively, that’s one of the most interesting things for me. I think back to a lot of the previous relationships I had, and the vast majority of them failed due…

Good luck with the mill, heh. My wife is an almost perfect opposite to me. She is very patient, calm. I got super lucky. The only person I ever dated. She has an innate capacity for tolerating me. And my son, who is also deep with ADHD. She never judged me for all my bullshit over the years either. I think having kids younger was both terrible and great for me. It forces me to focus and take career seriously, but it was also really hard.

Re: My ADHD founder toolbox

#117

Post by bitexploder »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #70
resonious wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not GP but I also stopped taking meds (actually recently for me, and I'm 27). I'm sure GP's reason is different. My reason was that I had realized that a lot of my old ADHD symptoms were actually still happening. I was still procrastinating, still getting stressed when forced to focus on stuff I don't care about, still forgetting stuff. As an experiment, I decided to keep lowering my dose to see what happens. I k…

> My reason was that I had realized that a lot of my old ADHD symptoms were actually still happening. I was still procrastinating, still getting stressed when forced to focus on stuff I don't care about, still forgetting stuff. Anecdotally, I've watched a lot of friends and colleagues go through this exact cycle: Going on meds and then just focusing more intensely on their distractions. I really think we're doing a d…

Similar for me. It is like shooting a bullet. If I was pointed at a distraction by god I did the shit out of that thing. Maybe I was supposed to be reversing an app for a project but instead I made the most beautiful CSS thing I had ever created. Or some other highly unrelated tangent O_o

Re: My ADHD founder toolbox

#118

Post by [deleted] »

hericium wrote: post #105
throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #51

I diagnosed when I was like... 8 years old. From then to 17 I was on various meds, finally gave them all up. So for about 22 years I've coped with ADHD without meds. I am a Staff Engineer and make a good living, respected in my field. Regardless of anything else, I think the key thing to remember about ADHD is that you do not need to be a high-performing human being, at all, in life. You will forget things and get di…

ADHD can be partially treated during childhood. The problem is when it goes undiagnosed for years. Your adult life may have looked much differently, would you not have been medicated earlier.

[deleted]

Re: My ADHD founder toolbox

#120

Post by technocratius »

rtpg wrote: post #52

Regarding meds, are people willing to share what kind of doses they are on? I take 27mg of Concerta, and I remember talking to someone taking like... 5x that? And being quite shocked, but there's always that curiosity about what dosages makes sense.

I'm on 36 mg of Concerta. I've spent a lot of time trying to find the right dose in the beginning, now have settled for this dose. Tbh it has been a huge positive change in my ability to get things done professionally without having to cope by spending my nights/weekends working as well. It's also remarkable how it curbs impulsive behavior for me.
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