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Comment by xwolfi | Hacker News Reader

But how would you describe to someone who is not diagnosed ? I have a child and would like to know signs: everything I read seems very normal, including that article. Like ofc it's better to transfer idiotic phone calls, block noise when focusing, not multitasking (multitasking is not even a thing, it can't be done, I've never seen it done perfectly, there's always a mistake made at some point even by the highest boss), or working from home in a controlled environment.

Very honestly, I've always believed ADHD was something they told little kids they had so their parents wouldn't constantly scold them for being distracted by normal things and that would then scar them for life with a sickness... everybody has. The only thing that makes me believe it exists is I know I can focus monstruously for something very important, and I feel ADHD would prevent someone to even focus on something important ... but this article seems to say it's also possible, so...

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> how would you describe to someone who is not diagnosed ?

Certain abilities that normal people mature in are stuck at the level of a fifteen-year-old for me and will be perpetually. Some of them are:

Ability to "feel" the nearness of the future, and plan and act accordingly

Ability to choose to do one task over another, and particularly an uninteresting task over an interesting one

Ability to stop an interesting task to change to another important task

Ability to stay on a single topic in thoughts and conversations

Many people with ADHD also have the emotional regulation of a ~15 year old, perpetually.

Most people can approximately remember how difficult those different abilities were when they were fifteen so there can be some level of empathy. When you were fifteen, university most likely "felt" very far away, and preparing for it "felt" not very important compared to your day-to-day. In hindsight, 15 is not far away from 18 and starting university, and there are many things you can do at 15 to make entering a good university easier.

Everything you've listed (and more) have been major pain points for me for the last 14 years or so, but especially this one:

> Ability to "feel" the nearness of the future, and plan and act accordingly

I'm almost incapable of preparing and perceiving the nearness of future events until the panic settles in that I'm late, behind, etc. It is especially exacerbated for things that I'm not good at or have anxiety around, like giving a presentation, working on a large refactor/feature, buying gifts for an occasion, preparing for a trip that involves multiple transitions/transportation, interviews, etc etc.

I'm getting evaluated for ADHD as I've recently been reading the literature and realizing that almost all the things I've been complaining about and trying to fix in myself for the last 10+ years, fall in the description and the features of ADHD.

> Everything you've listed (and more) have been major pain points for me for the last 14 years or so, but especially this one:

>> Ability to "feel" the nearness of the future, and plan and act accordingly

One way of putting it that I have found useful is that while other people have

- now

- in a minute

- in five minutes

- in an hour

- tomorrow

- next week

for most ADHD people there only exist:

- now

- not now

if it doesn't get done right now there is a fair chance it won't get done at all.

This can explain jumping from task to task: the fear of not remembering it later.

Also explains hyperfocus to aome degree: it is a learned trait to protect what little focus exist.

I've never heard that explanation before, but that's spot on.

> I'm almost incapable of preparing and perceiving the nearness of future events until the panic settles in that I'm late, behind, etc.

You're spot on. There's this neuropsychiatrist (I forget the name, he's pretty famous) that says that one major characteristic of ADHD is time blindness. Until a deadline stares at you in the face, you can't see it. Medication is like putting the glasses on.

He then went on saying that normal people plan their life 2 or 3 months in advance, and that's such a mind blowing, alien concept to me. I barely have an idea what I'm going to do tomorrow. The farther I think, the foggier it is.

Also, I've noticed over the years I've developed an effective and unhealthy coping mechanism: anxiety is how I am always on time. The major the event, the earlier my anxiety surges, I can't even sleep the night before, and it dissipates as soon as the time has come.

(Getting evaluated in 2 weeks)

> He then went on saying that normal people plan their life 2 or 3 months in advance, and that's such a mind blowing, alien concept to me. I barely have an idea what I'm going to do tomorrow. The farther I think, the foggier it is.

So true. But do you notice emotional blindness as well? My emotions seem to only attract my attention when they reach a certain threshold, which leaves me missing a huge amount of information about how I am, while occasionally being blind-sided by intense feelings seemingly out of the blue.

Inattentiveness is only a very small part of ADHD (and the name ADHD itself is very outdated and doesn't capture at all what this is about). It's more common in children to be inattentiveness (ADHD-PI) but goes away with adulthood. But ADHD is also a spectrum, so some people have it worse in X but very mild (or not at all) in Y.

For me it's more emotional restless-ness, overthinking (esp. what people think about me and self-criticism), oversharing of whatever I am currently focused on (like writing this comment), being late because I constantly forget to account for something obvious like walking time, and a strong "mental barrier" of doing things that I don't want to do, or don't have consequences for not doing. Kind of like a self-drive that only exists when

a) I really really want to do it, but then I have to do it right now because I can't focus on anything else. I want to drop everything I'm doing and only do that instead.

b) there is some external consequence like a deadline driving me to do it.

For example: My apartment has a stack of unopened amazon boxes that I only open when I need the item inside (no consequence of not doing it). But when a task has a deadline, or when I feel that my not-doing something would start to get people angry at me, I'll hyperfocus and rush it out in no time. Or dishes starting to get smelly (consequence), but a pile of washed clothes stays untouched (no consequence) until I need a shirt from that pile.

When I was a child (untreated) I barely ever did my homework or studied, copied all the time from classmates, "daydreamed" and was in my head most of the time instead of listening to the teacher, or talking to my classmates.

ADHD people (from my experience) are also very chatty, jump seemingly random from topic to topic and have a high energy way of writing text messages back and forth, like chopping a longer topic up into many small messages instead of writing longer sentences. We just want to share what we have in our head with someone right now

I'd recommend watching this playlist by Dr. Berkley, even if just the first 1-2 videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg6cfsnmqyg&list=PLzBixSjmbc...

Could you kindly comment, if this resonates, or else set me straight if you can?

Apologies in advance if I’m off beam. I’m really struggling to navigate this.

When my ADHD colleague’s tasks were overdue and dragging the critical path, her response was not what I expected, which would have been to slash the scope just to get completion of core functions in the deliverable. Instead, she’d start new extraneous tasks, and insist on getting my feedback, which I think required praise.

I declined to comment, fearing making things worse by unveiling criticism instead of the desired praise. I just said sorry, I can’t put my attention to that at this point; I must focus on the one thing I’m doing myself now so I can make my own deadline.

She was furious, and withdrew, then abandoned the project.

Another friend who has an ADHD diagnosis and an education about useful clinical responses, told me that what I saw was common. She said it’s “the cycle of shame”, which she herself had repeated in the past ad nauseum before she’d obtained assistance from new clinical approaches.

What is the cycle of shame? I took it to mean that the ADHD colleague knew the task overrun was deliterious to the project, but was powerless to respond other than to start a fresh (extraneous) task, which only made matters worse for the team, but apparently more tolerable for herself in the short term, but ultimately she had to live with the shame?

???

> When my ADHD colleague’s tasks were overdue and dragging the critical path, her response was not what I expected, which would have been to slash the scope just to get completion of core functions in the deliverable. Instead, she’d start new extraneous tasks, and insist on getting my feedback, which I think required praise.

The ADHD brain can't break down tasks into bite sized chunks in some situations. You should have given the praise. Possibly also of taken over and assisted in, one-on-one, breaking those tasks down. my reasoning for this is that the ADHD brain needs reassurance and dopamine hits. She wasn't getting ANY from herself and the only way she saw to get something, even if it was negative, was to make the scope larger and make it more novel or interesting. dont even ask if she wants help in breaking down a project. just do it. do it before hand. if you're all on a team at work or whatever then help eachother out actively.

EDIT: do you know what is the most fun for people on the ADHD spectrum (and i think just engineers in general but there is a critical difference)? planning out a thing. making that list. coming up with ideas. sketching it out. everything up until DOING THE ACTUAL THING. there is no reward in that. nothing. no one is going to see us struggling and working and doing the repetitive task or coding or whatever the thing is. but hell, our brain lit up like a christmas tree when we were together with everyone talking about ideas for the thing. that was awesome!

> I declined to comment, fearing making things worse by unveiling criticism instead of the desired praise. I just said sorry, I can’t put my attention to that at this point; I must focus on the one thing I’m doing myself now so I can make my own deadline. > She was furious, and withdrew, then abandoned the project.

i would have been PISSED off if you did that to me. oh, so you're so fucking good at things that you just DECIDED that you can't pay attention to the thing i'm struggling with. mister/miss no struggles? oh you gotta fuckin' focus? great cool, guess you only care about yourself and your deadline even though we're fucking collegues and not rivals! I QUIT!

that's... what i'd say...

> Another friend who has an ADHD diagnosis and an education about useful clinical responses, told me that what I saw was common. She said it’s “the cycle of shame”, which she herself had repeated in the past ad nauseum before she’d obtained assistance from new clinical approaches. > What is the cycle of shame? I took it to mean that the ADHD colleague knew the task overrun was deliterious to the project, but was powerless to respond other than to start a fresh (extraneous) task, which only made matters worse for the team, but apparently more tolerable for herself in the short term, but ultimately she had to live with the shame?

cycle of shame is REALLY hard to describe because its per individual. but everyone pretty much with ADHD is a failure in their head. no matter how successful we are. no matter how many little wins we structure for ourselves. at the end of the day we are broken, physiologically, our brains aren't giving us what we need from the tasks we do. even in a perfect situation where we dont need to work and only find our own joy in life there just is a general "ugh i know i have all these fun hobbies and projects that i myself have set up for myself to do but i cant do anything. no i'm not depressed. i have absolutely zero in the tank for even enjoyable things. i have no volition left." every hit of dopamine that matters is exogenous or from extremes but not from the everyday monotony.

Thank you. None of what you say is intuitive or obvious to me. I have no way of working out what goes on without these candid insights you shared. Thank you so much. What you say seems to fit with what I witnessed in my colleague so at last I have something to go on.

> the ADHD brain needs reassurance and dopamine hits. She wasn't getting ANY from herself

That sounds like the core deficit.

> but everyone pretty much with ADHD is a failure in their head. no matter how successful we are. no matter how many little wins we structure for ourselves. at the end of the day we are broken, physiologically, our brains aren't giving us what we need from the tasks we do.

I see. OK. I would not have dared assume that. At last I have a model to work with, of the voice in my colleague's head.

> "ugh i know i have all these fun hobbies and projects that i myself have set up for myself to do but i cant do anything. no i'm not depressed. i have absolutely zero in the tank for even enjoyable things. i have no volition left."

Zero in the tank, OK. So, if that's the case, I can't expect her to bootstrap or therapy herself. I need something else. At the time, I couldn't do as much for her as you suggest - giving her praise, stepping in to organise and structure her tasks. I wasn't available for that. But what you're saying, is that without the external assistance, the result will be failure.

> do you know what is the most fun for people on the ADHD spectrum (and i think just engineers in general but there is a critical difference)? planning out a thing. making that list. coming up with ideas. sketching it out.

Yeah, she loves that. So do a lot of people.

> everything up until DOING THE ACTUAL THING.

This seems to be where we fork. Other people learn how to get rewards from the doing and the completion of tasks. The rewards take time to manifest, so nobody learns straight away. It takes time and repetition and faith. Before we can learn, we have to learn how to learn. But most people learn eventually, because the rewards for KPI manifestation are the biggest of all. But it sounds like you are saying ADHD people can't go through this process.

> […] most people learn eventually, because the rewards for KPI manifestation are the biggest of all.

I don’t feel that way at all.

My greatest reward, by far, is the moment when the all the pieces “click into place” - the moment of understanding a process or system. I feel absolutely no positive reward at all for getting things done. At best, I feel a bit of relief from the rapidly increasing pressure of a looming deadline.

I was thinking of the concept of getting paid for completing a job! For example, mowing a lawn and getting paid. Serving a table and earning a tip.

Have you ever had a job that works like that?

A design or engineering job doesn't have such an immediate connection with the completion/reward nexus. I wonder if experience with the earlier mentioned type of work could help to build an expectation circuit that reinforces completion.

A friend of mine has ADHD and is a street performer in Covent Garden in London, and it fits him to a tee - 15 minutes of hyper-focus on doing the show and interacting with the audience then an immediate reward of gratification and money, which he has to do two or three times a day. It wouldn't fit my ADHD but it fits his perfectly.

What you're missing is the basic fact that the ADD is a disorder of the reward system. That's why you can use a drug that increases dopamine activity (amphetamines) and thereby fix the ADD.

Without the exogenous dopamine source, the dopamine synapses in the brain do not fire. Without those synapses firing, the causal emotional chain is broken. The feeling is absent. The very same feeling that would be there in other people JUST IS NOT THERE.

Nobody "learns" how to fire their dopamine synapses. They either fire or do not fire. You either have a feeling or not.

The reward system is functioning in ADHD subjects in some circumstances, just not in others. If that were not the case, ADHD subjects could never learn anything, and that clearly isn't the case.

My friend gets excited about conceiving projects and beginning tasks. She has problems with completing them.

My friend is perfectly able to learn new procedures, including complex procedures. On occasion, she performs them with hurricane enthusiasm, such as the time she whipped up a dog carrier backpack for my small dog with her sewing machine in 15 minutes flat. She was amazing on that occasion. And then, for 3 weeks, she couldn't bring herself to hem a curtain - the simplest and most mundane application of a sewing machine. From what other people are saying in this discussion, those are the clues: too simple, too mundane, and the problem is the lack of drive in particular circumstances, not learning the task.

I'm just wondering what the limits are to learning and then what those limits might tell us about the disease mechanism. Since ADHD people are capable of learning, might there be processes they could learn which could alter the application of their disregulated reward system so as to facilitate self-drive in more circumstances?

If not, why not? Or how not? What is the dysfunctional component of neuroanatomy responsible for the condition?

> The reward system is functioning in ADHD subjects in some circumstances, just not in others.

It's functioning differently, regardless of circumstances. It's not "In some circumstances."

> If that were not the case, ADHD subjects could never learn anything, and that clearly isn't the case.

Your reasoning is bad here.

> I'm just wondering what the limits are to learning

You keep using phrases like "limits to learning" that are question-begging and wrong.

> might there be processes they could learn which could alter the application of their disregulated reward system so as to facilitate self-drive in more circumstances?

I don't know what you're talking about.

What you suggested earlier is that ordinary people "learn" to have the emotional reactions to task accomplishments while ADD people do not "learn" to have these same emotional reactions.

That is incorrect: you did not learn to have any such emotional reactions. You are falsely attributing agency to yourself. This is something called Fundamental Attribution Error.

> Have you ever had a job that works like that?

Yes, for many years. I do drone work on the side even today.

> help to build an expectation circuit that reinforces completion

It’s not a function of what I “expect” of myself - if anything, if I expect to complete something and fail to do so, I could enter a rapid self-reinforcing failure cycle that is extremely emotionally taxing and difficult to break out of.

> Other people learn how to get rewards from the doing and the completion of tasks.

No, they absolutely don't LEARN HOW.

> but everyone pretty much with ADHD is a failure in their head.

> planning out a thing. making that list. coming up with ideas. sketching it out. everything up until DOING THE ACTUAL THING.

This post hit me right on the head. I have infuriated colleagues with this type of behaviour. At an old job I got bored with a mildly interesting task that I just could not focus on and the progress fell behind. My boss moved me on to the most boring job on the project thinking I could better handle it and boy did I pull out a 6 hour focused task into 6 weeks of depression and anxiety. I would stare at the same 2 windows for an entire day sinking deeper into unproductive spirals.

Ironically HNews might have kept me sane in providing interesting things to read. It’s probably why there are so many ADHD types here.

I have discovered now that a “normal” job just doesn’t work for me. I’m going to get weird with it.

When I was in school in the 80s and 90s, there was a lot of stigma around ADD/ADHD. Kids taking ritalin were ostracized for it. It was common for parents to refuse the possibility and instead punish their children. A lot of kids grew up and went on to adulthood on hard mode thinking they were just bad at life, never realizing there was a diagnosis and _treatment_ they'd been denied.

Even people with ADHD like myself thought it was bullshit. One day I got an Adderall pill from a friend, found myself in a deep state of calm and concentration (a bit too much) for hours and thought to myself "heh, that's why they give it to kids to study, it's so unnatural".

Fast forward 15 years, and I learn that the inability to sit down and complete a task or having to force myself to do pretty much anything isn't normal, and I've been living my life in hard more all this years, berating myself for my laziness when I know I can be pretty fucking smart sometimes.

I’ll recommend watching this video to understand more about it. https://youtu.be/jhcn1_qsYmg

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