‘I Thought I Was Lazy’: The Invisible Struggle for Autistic Women (2017)
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(I'm autistic myself; and with proper support and environment I have very little executive functioning problems. Without them, I struggle with the most basic planning & tasks.)
This 1000 times over! Took me ages to realize that once you get "down" enough (either depressive or overwork-burnout or scared-to-death-by-social-anxieties), you can't think and plan right anymore so you just sink lower and lower down a spiral unless you get some outside help, stimuli and feedback.
EF-malfunction is insidiuous because you just don't realize "how broken your mind really is", you just make bad decision after bad decision on all planes of life, health, finance, business, social etc. thinking you're one step away from "finding what works for you".
But you can't successfully find "what works for you" with a broken-EF-brain, because you're mainly randomly sampling the possible space of behaviors and attitudes and your chance to find a 'right' set of such things is practically zero! Most things in the world don't 'work for you' and without planning and discipline you can't navigate your life and mind to what works!
You try, but it ends badly repeatedly, sometimes unobtrusively, sometimes suddenly and catastrophically and in public, until the memories of those times plus fears of everyone's second-guessed reactions put you off doing anything; you go so long without succeeding at planning and discipline that even trying seems alien and scary; add the two together and you're well into "learned helplessness" territory.
As you say, sampling the space of behaviours and getting apparently random, mostly negative results back and wondering why your mental map of cause/effect and effort/outcome makes no sense whatsoever.
So... what does one do, when in broken-EF state for so long?
Seek help from other humans. Get medication (because at this point it's usually an untreated depression & anxiety), get therapy, but most importantly: have support in your life, sometimes with the most basic things like cooking, keeping your sleep schedule healthy, cleaning your apartment, job seeking, etc. Removing the biggest stressors (usually related to school, work, family, relationships, etc.) is also essential, and sometimes very hard to accomplish.
And yes, it's easier said than done, especially if you didn't have a good support network to begin with - which is usually the case for both autistic people and people with mental health problems.
Even if the puzzle-solving-logical-thinking can still work with a broken socio-emotional brain, the part of your mind that does planning, execution and motivation/energy for action needs well balanced social and emotional parts aside to work properly.
Oh, and do it fast... one can recover later too, as long as there's a will there's a way etc., but... you never recover that lost time when you could've been productively solving important problems and positively connecting with others!
>studies show that between 30 and 50% of individuals with ASD manifest ADHD symptoms (particularly at pre-school age), and similarly, estimates suggest two-thirds of individuals with ADHD show features of ASD (Davis and Kollins, 2012). [0]
Perhaps looking into treatments for ADHD could help?
It's even worse when masked by high-IQ and good coping behaviors, because when life hits you hard with trouble, it flares up and gets amplified a zillion time, and you go from 'genius' to 'retarded' instantly!
(Couple the frustration of this with some testosterone and some bad habits and you can get pretty close to "stupid and violent criminal" levels and at that point society loses all sympathy for you. I got close to this but stopped, but I imagine that most of the clever-and-ultra-violent-criminals that fill up the prisons worldwide are mostly "my kind of people" but they just lacked some special "stabilizing component" that my brain happened to have and theirs didn't.)
There's still so much we don't yet know about mental health!
To be honest, in a different society (one that isn't focused on on-line communication, extreme productivity, and always on connections), executive functioning becomes a much less valued trait.
What you're witnessing isn't fear of change, it's people questioning the idea that "progress" is necessarily good.
Which predecessors? We can't really tell how a medieval peasant felt, as they didn't leave any articulate accounts. The accounts left later are generally non-representative, as people who left them were privileged (they were not illiterate). As for the more modern times, not more than 100 years ago alcoholism (strongly correlated with depression) was so rampant that the US banned alcohol sales altogether.
2. Culture changed. In the past, people were told by society to not complain about their mental state, whereas now people are opened up almost to the point of being exhibitionistic. So, you cannot really compare reports from 50 years ago with today's numbers.
The way I've heard/seen it described in ADHD research is more that without executive functioning, putting together events in the past, applying them to the present, with a thought to the future outcome is the main issue. When your executive functioning is poor, your decision making is severely impacted because the ability to chain together past experiences with the current situation to chart a good outcome fails to come together.
So if you wanted to make up a situation in the past that isn't a 'school or workplace', imagine someone on the hunt, failing to correctly interpret signs of a dangerous animal nearby and take appropriate precautions, and therefore dies. That would be a failure of good executive function.
The traits identified in ADHD materials like these (below) are effectively a different way of phrasing the same outcome but those with ADHD may be lacking more in one of these distinct areas: https://www.understood.org/en/learning-attention-issues/chil...
I don't think so.
I mean, I see what you're saying, that many of these demands on our attention are extraneous—bordering on useless. But, and I speak from personal experience as someone who struggles with executive function, that as a problem is disconnected from executive function. To me, what executive function means is that I have projects that I am interested in, that I would like to work on, that I would be happier for having completed, that I am unable to complete. That, like the subject of the article, I want to go and meet my friends for lunch, but have to cancel. Eradicating the 'productivity culture' might, as a side effect, reduce the level of executive function required, but they are not tied to one another. Having executive function means being able to do the things that I want to do, when I want to do them.
What you are interested and what you like to work on (and how you should go about this) is in part informed by said 'productivity culture'. The same goes for meeting friends. I've lived in environments/cultures where the need for 'executive functioning' to pull this off was almost zero, because it'd just be part of the rhythm of life rather than some planned activity.
Just to provide a bit of counterpoint; not saying you're all wrong.
>I have projects that I am interested in, that I would like to work on, that I would be happier for having completed, that I am unable to complete.
That sounds a lot like how depression treats me. I have these "impossible tasks" that sit there undone. And the "lazy procrastinator" in me (thanks, mom) does them at the last possible second.
I think a lot of the "time management" self-help books out there is an honest effort at casting around at ANY way that can help a person become more productive. Whether it's values-based, or workflow-based, or something that just reduces the friction. Sadly, like most of the self-help genre, if you don't "become more productive," you're a bad person.
Asking Neurodivergent people to compensate for executive functioning skills that don't come easy is bound to fail.
I am probably also going to avoid actively going out and getting myself diagnosed, since as this article suggests, public and professional perception is such that it is extremely difficult to get someone to diagnose you, and that once diagnosed, people might not take the diagnosis seriously anyway.
I think that simply being aware that my brain runs on a different set of batteries--ones that make it easy for me to get hyperfocused on a task, and also ones that make me prone to overthinking--is one of the more useful outcomes of a formal diagnosis. Thankfully I can do that part by myself and with my close friends and family.
Unfortunately I feel that autism presenting in the way described in the article is simply too "loose" of a set of symptoms to have a formal diagnostic criterion which doesn't create a great number of false positives. Perhaps better time would be spent promoting awareness of the issue, as well as finding ways to thrive with a neuro-atypical brain (this is kind of in line with the article's message).
While we are making shit up, why not make up an ASD diagnosis that actually fits the symptoms I'm reporting...
It's ironic because it's an autism thing to consult websites, books, etc., but not other people.
False positives are rare and inconsequential; false negatives destroy lives. It's as simple as that.
2) You can see how other people with similar problems deal with them.
3) You can talk to other people and they get it, they understand. For some people it’s like they suddenly find their people, like when someone who’s been reading HN for years goes to Silicon Valley and realises this is what it’s like to be surrounded by people who care about your interests or when you go from being the guy at your gym who’s trying to lift heavy to joining a powerlifting gym. Suddenly people understand.
(Sometimes not directly in this antagonistic way; just telling you have a particular diagnosed condition can make the annoying people in your life suddenly very compassionate.)
-That guy is so abrupt and rude to people, I can’t stand him -Oh but he has ADHD -I see, then it’s ok
I don’t really see why flaws should become more acceptable if you give them a scientific sounding name. In the end life is not easy for anyone, we all need to struggle to remember everything, not lose our temper, stay positive etc. Sure it is especially hard for some people but Up to a point that is just a fact of life, it just means they need to work a bit harder.
Perhaps beyond a certain point you need to give people some slack, if they have amnesia or something, but I’m not sure it makes sense to accept that people “with ADHD” behave badly for example.
> I don’t really see why flaws should become more acceptable if you give them a scientific sounding name.
It's not that they should be, they just in practice are to most people, and this can be a lifeline, especially if depression is involved.
Personally, I believe some "flaws" (aspects that make it problematic for one to function) absolutely should be cut a lot of slack and approached from another angle. Social pressure - the kind of telling you to stop having a problem and get your shit together - works only for some things, and can make the issue worse in others (e.g. in depression, it not only won't help, it can drive patients to suicide).
> I’m not sure it makes sense to accept that people “with ADHD” behave badly for example
Beyond the point that most don't "behave badly" but rather "behave inconsistently if at all", it's a matter of what you mean by "accept". If "accept to your social circle"? You can do whatever. But if you want to help that person, you'll accept that these aspects are not effectively corrected by social pressure because they're beyond the person's control.
See also, Scott Alexander's old post:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/895quRDaK6gR2rM82/diseased-t...
Quoting the Summary section:
"People commonly debate whether social and mental conditions are real diseases. This masquerades as a medical question, but its implications are mainly social and ethical. We use the concept of disease to decide who gets sympathy, who gets blame, and who gets treatment.
Instead of continuing the fruitless "disease" argument, we should address these questions directly. Taking a determinist consequentialist position allows us to do so more effectively. We should blame and stigmatize people for conditions where blame and stigma are the most useful methods for curing or preventing the condition, and we should allow patients to seek treatment whenever it is available and effective."
My point is that many people, especially parents, tend to accept a lot of bad behaviour from people as soon as they mention some magical acronym.
If you accept that human neurology is a spectrum, then you realise that we all have different starting points. The question then becomes how much should society accommodate people with worse starting points, and I firmly believe that we are too accepting, and a lot of that is because people put scientific sounding names on their shortcomings.
Btw I don't even agree with the last paragraph. Stigma is not just about curing or punishing the stigmatised person, it is also about sending a message to others. I would say that it is its primary function.
My coping strategies to reduce stress mainly revolve around reducing commitments and things to track.
1) I dont keep any friends, my wife manages all social engagements, including with my friends. The problem with friends is they require commitments and I have no capability to meet them consistently.
2) I rarely read email, listen to voice messages, read slack messages, or read/open mail. For whatever reason I get very stressed reading email and listening to voice messages. This is quite frustrating to people around me but they have accepted it. When my wife met me I had months of unopened mail. I would typically pay each bill once every 3 months. I have about 6000 unread messages between 3 email accounts. When I go on vacation and come back I delete all my email. I havent listened to a voice message for a few years, though they are accumulating.
I have adopted a philosophy that just because someone tries to contact me, that it does not create an obligation for me to respond.
3) I make as few commitments as possible. I want to help people but I will only do it in the moment. I make no promises about future ability to take on tasks. I tend to work on only one thing at a time so I dont have to worry about accidentally forgetting about something that is not what Im focused on. I have whatever work project Im working on, whatever home project Im working on, and then I attend meetings where I participate but dont take any action items unless they are related to my project.
Ill often times buy some stuff for a project, my wife will put the items away, and Ill totally forget that I needed to do that project until I accidentally find the stuff in a cabinet.
4) I live from my calendar, but I still miss about 80% of non routine appointments. If I have a non routine appointment I pretty much have to think about it all day to avoid missing it so I try to schedule them in the morning to reduce the amount of time I have to worry about them.
5) people have bad dreams about showing up to a class not knowing about a test or final. I had this happen multiple times in school, including a class that I failed because I thought I dropped it (I was able to get it changed to incomplete so it didnt impact my GPA).
6) Most recently I have had a lot of stress worrying about properties that I might own that I have forgotten about, so over the last few years I have been selling all my real estate.
7) at work I have no capability to hold people accountable for more than one or two things. I have adopted a strategy of only hiring people that I dont have to micromanage. Over time the people I can work with demonstrate that we can make an agreement to get certain things done and I can rely on them to do it. I minimize the number of things that I have to track. On the plus side I stay focused on the top priorities and dont sweat the small stuff.
8) I have accepted how I am. Every strength is a weakness and vice versa. I apparently have very high self esteem so have never let it bother me that I am so incompetent in this area. Every time I miss an appointment/commitment, it reminds me to make less commitments.