Body doubling is very underrated and is the main non pharmacological way to bring focus for most
https://bodydoubling.com/
Overall, I find I usually get better non-interactive work done when not in such close proximity that social behaviors are activating. (Interactive real-time collaboration is a different matter, and that has its moments.)
Someone sitting across right across from me, or right next to me, when we're not collaborating, for example? I'll be lucky if I can mindlessly tweak UI visual details, or spit out design or code that I've thought about only superficially. There's no way I could fairly rigorous thinking-through and creative connection-making, in that context, like I can in some other contexts.
Working from home has posted its own distraction challenges, but I do not miss that "nonfunctionally distracted" feeling I often got in the office.
Conversely, switching into an office where everybody is chatting away will hurt focus for the same reasons.
This is why it’s important to have good working context whether you’re in the office or at home.
Do those symptoms match with ADHD? Or is it simply the mundanity of solitude around 40, when one has a few extremely bad experienced that tend to not get forgotten easily? I avoid alcohol, but do normal people’s use of alcohol helps with deleting those memories? Do normal people have a nagging girlfriend that plays the role of keeping the mind busy with something else? Or would anyone suggest another diagnosis that I should investigate?
I find myself in quite unhealthy mental health because of that. I’ve always thought it’s just solitude turning me crazy, but it would be sad to not be aware that it’s a specific condition.
> I use this to sleep. General-knowledge videos on Youtube, generally, constant voice, interesting facts. > I use this method to suppress my internal dialogue. classic, pretty normal
What's weird is the underspecified > develop stories in my mind and become angry (to the point of breaking stuff, relationships, and probably suicide if I let it run unchecked)
I mean, If people have no distraction at night, it's not uncommon for many to be too mentally excited to fall asleep. But your other symptoms means you have something else going on. It doesn't need to be catalogued as a mental disorder, it could just be you have e.g. bad/cringe memories of the past or minor emotional traumas. You should attempt to reconciliate those memories, relativize their importance or plain forget them. You should attempt to have a meaningful lifestyle routine by doing meaningful activities/virtues. e.g. I encourage you to maintain a hapiness scale journal, where you note and rank what makes you the most happy when you experience it. Note relevant metadata such as how much is this specific activity reconsummable (recyclable pleasure) this accounts for sports, arts in all mediums, etc Loneliness in excess can be like a disease and must be fighted as a priority. It's not that hard to socialize, humans are generally quite welcoming in the right contexts. But like a muscle it needs practice. You could e.g easily contact again an old friend and see him while doing a cool activity (e.g. laser tag or karaoke) or you could start a new passion like being taught dancing, and meet new people there like a highschool 2.0
as for pharmacological "solutions" to pathological excessive anger, I don't know if specifics exist for this emotion but I assume e.g an NMDA antagonist could help during a crisis (magnesium lthreonate) or more potently memantine, memantine induce brain fog though at least at first. This reduce a neural excitatory overload. You could also calm yourself with l-theanine, ashwaganda and/or glycine (very underatted, help to sleep too). I would also recommend taking an antioxidant like ALCAR for general health. While what I suggested is benign and can be combined, that is not the case for memantine. it is a potent medication with side effects and tradeoffs, although trying doesn't cost anything. But it is essential to understand that generally pharmacology is not a proper solutions and is generally a slippery slope with side effects and tolerance mechanisms (except for the benign things I mentionned) and you will get much more in life through meaningful lifestyle changes than with pharmacology. And while durable lifestyle changes are hard to instill, again body doubling comes to the rescue, e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/GetMotivatedBuddies/ Alcohol should be strongly avoided, it can destroy lifes. Alternative to podcasts at night and glycine for sleep would be calm ambient music, meditation and ASMR. You might also wanna check your blood pressure (unlikely). Indeed you might benefit from therapy/paid coaching.
also.. any youtube podcasts to recommend?
> Missing part
Yeah, the missing part is the dark mundanities of living. I’ve been late in dating (started at 23), I have weak negociating stance (I don’t like supermanly men who step upon others, so I don’t do it), so, many people profit from it and step onto me, especially girls unfortunately, so I became misogynistic. But you know what they say at kindergarten, if you didn’t kiss at girl at 8 that means you are gay, and my psychiatrists keep fixating on the gay part, and I don’t mind being gay (but I’m not sure I am, really) I’ve had the gay life and dated men and did my coming out, but that’s not the problem, the problem is being misogynistic. Living at a period where women have priority for everything “for fairness” doesn’t help - which it isn’t, if you work more you should be the one promoted - So I took my revenge, slammed the door at every company that only promoted women, founded my own and became millionaire in ~7 years - I’m not ungifted, it’s just people who are assholes with me, because I leave room for others and they take it as an opportunity to step upon me. So now I’m the cliché of a white misogynistic male CEO 39 years old with a big house and a big car who eats meat, and it’s sad both for me and for my opponents, because the loop has reproduced itself, and I, like my opponents, wish it hadn’t. I’d have been perfectly happy with a 2BR flat with a loving girl with whom I’d share the housework equally, but every time I dated, the girl played games, and the world helped her win.
But psychologists fixate on me being gay, that’s the only explanation they have for me being misogynistic. It’s tiring, and I’m clearly not getting the mental health response I need. For mental health, one needs to live in an intelligible world. I’ve tried living the gay life recommended by the various psychiatrists, and it didn’t solve my misogyny (obviously). My problem is I’d like to live an equal life with women, and society keeps giving women priority for everything, the discrepancy between society’s wording and society’s actions is unreconciliable for me, and the degree we have to battle to obtain the normal things is exhausting. I’ve tried to move from programmer to a more talkative job because I knew I’d get bitter if i didn’t, and companies kept promoting women only, and moving to a talkative job is something my mental health required. But they kept promoting the women. That’s unfair to me. I didn’t get the basic things I needed in life, and really, being a CEO is an unhealthy revenge.
(On the plus side, I’ve increased all my employees 30% this year, I’ve donated a dozen thousands along the years, I was the one accompanying the friend who got cancer in the group, I’ve helped in many charities in my life until I discovered that people would never help the white male back, I’ve done my share in this world).
I have many ADHD symptoms and I personally cannot concentrate on anything unless I have absolute silence and no distractions. Any background videos playing would ruin my ability to focus. Even being able to hear someone in the next room is too distracting for me.
Developing stories in your mind that make you angry sounds like some other issue. I have never experienced that. I would genuinely recommend talking to some sort of mental health professional because that is not healthy.
Having the window open and listening to nature/neighbor noise and birds works sometimes.
https://behavioralscientist.org/how-to-channel-your-minds-in...
Wish you all the best
But, being around people does not help me focus at all, I have an anxiety about them interrupting me, maybe I need to pay attention to something going on in the environment because there are people.
Open offices are a nightmare, and I talk about it openly.
Strangely, this issue does not exist in coffee shops. I think it’s something to do with the fact that people are extremely unlikely to interact with me in a coffee shop. So, take that for whatever it’s worth. Body doubling certainly isn’t universal among people with ADHD markers.
Maybe it's different for people with a "primarily hyperactive" diagnosis, where the doubling is more an aspect of keeping them in their seat than anything.
There’s lots of guff in the media and lots of speculation in the discussion section of papers about what they might be important for in broad hand-wavy terms, but really we don’t have a good understanding of them.
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C10&q=mir...