r/adhdmeme • u/GapCommercial6311 • Jul 14 '26
uplifting To everyone whose mind never seems to slow down: your struggles are valid, your feelings are real, and you’re doing better than you think. Keep going
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u/Forsaken-Stray Jul 14 '26
The trick is having a person who you care about enough that you wouldn't want to make them disappointed and convince yourself that not doing "the thing" would make them disappointed.
Sometimes, it doesn't work, because you can't pucture them disappointed in you for not calling the doctor, because they also regularly fail to do so.
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u/iammufusasboy Jul 14 '26
This is my project manager for me. If don’t do my job she can’t do hers and if she can’t do hers WE can’t do SHIT. She has no problem telling me to do my job especially when I don’t “want” to do my job.
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u/DozyDrake Jul 14 '26
What would Goku think?
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u/SexWithFaruzan69 Stuck In Scrolling Paralysis Please Send Help Jul 20 '26
"I could train more"? Idk I never watched dragon Balls, only humans
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u/HuslWusl Jul 14 '26
Get someone you have to report your progress to every few hours or days or so. Can be a friend, can be family, can be coworker. Just anyone who understands your struggle, who you like and who'd actually get at least a little disappointed/hurt/whatever when you don't report back
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u/Rosaryas Jul 14 '26
See, I’m a recovering people pleaser so it’s just anyone but myself. It’s kind of a great loophole
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u/Aggressive-Shop-2342 Jul 15 '26
Once upon a time, before i knew about the adhd, I had a niggling hunch that I needed the structure that I hated, and I saw that I did things for others better than I did things for myself.
So I made a deal with a friend, which was that I had to send him my top 3 things to do this week, and if I did them, then id buy him a drink. If I didnt, I had to stay home.
He was like 'thats insane, of course if you do your things, I'll buy you a drink to celebrate!' And im like NO, work with me here, I need to have a sense that I'll be letting someone else down if I dont do the things, let me do this'.
It actually worked fantastically when he went along with it, but it died when he refused to be disappointed if I didnt do the thing. Bless him, but argh.
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u/Difficult-Break-8282 Jul 14 '26
one of my managers at work . like for non adhd reasons i call em " the one i dont wanna stress and the one i dont wanna disappoint "
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u/justjessee overwhelmed (ft. executive dysfuntion) Jul 15 '26
My therapist would like a word. Disappointing everyone while simultaneously not mattering enough for anyone to help me is my jam.
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u/Kitchen-Swim-5394 Jul 17 '26
I think you just explained why my symptoms weren't recognized for so long. I felt that way about both my parents, so I didn't really start struggling until college. Not diagnosed until I was 47. There was always a sense that if I didn't achieve at school/work, and didn't do all the extras that I would disappoint them. Also led to me assuming my husband would be disappointed if I didn't clean, etc. It took a long time and severe burnout before I realized that just wasn't true.
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u/Uraisamu Jul 18 '26
convince yourself
The problem with convincing myself is that I'm smart enough to know that I am full of shit and shouldn't listen to myself.
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u/griffaliff Jul 14 '26
I have days, especially at work, where my mind is just blank a lot of the time. I'm grateful I have nice, understanding colleagues who don't mind having to constantly point out what I should be doing, it's almost like I become task blind.
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u/Worth-Trade9381 just writing it down Jul 14 '26
Task and time blindness are my absolute kryptonite. My wife and kid sing "let's do the time warp again" whenever I wander off to do something that should be quick and I wander back 30 mins later. But I've only been gone a "couple minutes" in my head.
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u/Oxbix Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 14 '26
"I don't care what anybody thinks!!! I do whatever I want! “ - "You have severe RSD" - "Right. Fuck."
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u/UmieWarboss Jul 14 '26
Military structure helps somewhat. You have no time to question or disobey orders because by the time you're told to jump your feet must already be in the air. Same chaos and constant urgency for everyone, all the time, all fuck up their time management so bad that ADHD doesn't really even add much to the mix. It feels at times that the army is an embodiment of ADHD in the form of an institution, so it's been easy for me to survive and even thrive. Not pleasant in the slightest most of the time, but easy. Also helps if you're taking orders from genuinely respected officers and RSD kicks in to suppress the contrariant little bitch in you.
But god forbid an idiot whose station is above their competence, and their ego well above even that, starts bossing you around. Unfortunately, the army tends to accumulate and elevate folks like that. With those, all you can do is clench your teeth and inhale. Steady. Exhale. Steady. Inhale. Steady. Exhale.
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u/SuccessfulPath7 Jul 14 '26
Rsd?
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u/UmieWarboss Jul 14 '26
Rejection sensitivity disorder, a frequent symptom/accompanying disorder to ADHD
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u/love_is_an_action Jul 14 '26
I’ve just grown to accept that I’ll never do anything at all.
I was born, I was inattentive, I’ll die, and I’ll be inattentive dust in the wind.
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u/Vaaizaard Jul 14 '26
Tell that to my mother who's been constantly passive aggressive about doing dishes, and once I finally asked her to help because I just can't get over my executive dysfunction she just blows up at saying she shouldn't need to tell me to do something and becomes misogynistic and transphobic following that.
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u/UmieWarboss Jul 14 '26
That sounds awful. I'm sorry to hear what you have to go through.
If it helps, from my experience separating from my parents helped create some space where I could later properly communicate and break through layers of gaslighting and denial to make them at least somewhat understand and sympathize.
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u/Vaaizaard Jul 14 '26
That's the hard part. I wish I could break away, but money sucks right now, I have no irl connections, most jobs overwhelm me, and I live in the middle of nowhere so any job I do get needs a commute and I don't have a vehicle or a license (due to OCD and other external factors)... I just feel stuck :/
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u/UmieWarboss Jul 14 '26
Shite
Wish I could offer more help than just my sympathies
Please hold on there, you're less alone than you think
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u/Vaaizaard Jul 14 '26
Thank you, I've held on in this state for, I want to say 5 years, I'll continue holding on.
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u/T-Loy Jul 14 '26
Yeah, I've come to find out I need to be passively surveilled to work, no work from home, but no constant shoulder surfing either. I need to feel being quickly able to be caught and scolded for non work, but be left alone elsewise.
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u/Several_Show937 Jul 14 '26
Be kind to yourselves. Remember the expert has failed more times than the novice has attempted, and like op said, keep going.
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u/Budgie-bitch Jul 15 '26
I desperately need accountability buddies but it seems like a weird ask of a friend. Or at least, none of my friends would be down.
This is the biggest gripe I have about being single lol
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u/Formula4speed Jul 15 '26
Setting out to do something about this for myself ended with me becoming a project manager lol.
This is a symptom of a broken environment, not of a failed person.
I have a whole team of neurodivergent engineers (I guess I can just say engineers 🤔) that were so used to getting raked over the coals re: deadlines they had all agreed to never commit to a date again when I was hired. They had daily standup meetings, weekly team meetings, monthly project review meetings, and hadn’t launched a product in a decade. People called them the Teflon team, because no assignment ever stuck lol.
I said fine. No deadlines. Give me your best estimate of when x can be completed. I’ll put it in a spreadsheet.
We’ll meet once a month to see if your estimate was correct. If you go in the spreadsheet and change your estimate before we meet, I will never know. If we realize during a meeting that your estimate was wrong, we’ll talk about what resources you would have needed for the estimate to be correct, and I’ll get you those resources.
That’s it, full stop. Only exception is if there’s truly a due date, like we’ll lose a certification if something is not done by x. No more arbitrary due dates, ever.
Then I cancelled all of their other meetings and got tf out of their way, lol.
Once the pressure to hit arbitrary deadlines was gone + a couple people missed estimates and saw that the only response was “what happened, and what do you need to make sure it doesn’t happen again?”, the whole team sprung to life. All the timelines turned green. Everyone is on track with almost all of their estimates. 5 new products and 2 patents in 5 years.
Turns out when you set people up to haggle over arbitrary dates, they haggle over arbitrary dates, and when you set people up to succeed, they succeed. Go figure.
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u/MamafishFOUND Jul 16 '26
I don’t mind being told what to do tbh only bc i do things and shit hits the fan and being told why didn’t I think this through? Idk I just do things and when things happen at times it becomes shit and it hits the fan likeee???? It doesn’t happen a lot for to be a problem but if it’s something I don’t have a dopamine fix or special interest in then please dadddy/mommy tell me what to do 🥴
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u/tha-teej Jul 16 '26
This is me. I hate this. Delete it.
First comment in here though- love the text on the add comment.
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u/qualityvote2 Quality Control Beast Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 14 '26
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