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The textbook symptoms of ADD — inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity — fail to reflect several of its most powerful characteristics; the ones that shape your perceptions, emotions, and motivation. Here, Dr. William Dodson explains how to recognize and manage ADHD's true defining features.
The DSM-V – the bible of psychiatric diagnosis – lists 18 diagnostic criteria for attention deficit disorder (ADHD or ADD). Clinicians use this to identify symptoms, insurance companies use it to determine coverage, and researchers use it to determine areas of worthwhile study.
The problem: These criteria only describe how ADHD affects children ages 6-12, and that has led to misdiagnosis, misunderstanding, and failed treatment for teens, adults, and the elderly.
Most people, clinicians included, have only a vague understanding of what ADHD means. They assume it equates to hyperactivity and poor focus, mostly in children. They are wrong.
When we step back and ask, "What does everyone with ADHD have in common, that people without ADHD don't experience?" a different set of symptoms take shape.
From this perspective, three defining features of ADHD emerge that explain every aspect of the condition:
1. an interest-based nervous system
2. emotional hyperarousal
3. rejection sensitivity
Not precisely news but damned if it's not an interesting read if it has any relevance in your life.
Source: https://www.additudemag.com/symptoms-of-add-hyperarousal-rejection-sensitivity/
(Score: 5, Informative) by cocaine overdose on Thursday March 15 2018, @04:20PM (12 children)
Looking back with a medicated mind, it seems so simple. "You fucked up here, here, and here. All you had to do is do X. It wasn't even complex or hard, you just somehow didn't fucking put the dots together." It's like standing on the highway at night and some car's going 80 mph (35 celsius for all of you savages) at you and all that comes to your mind is: "hey, asshole turn off your brights." And then stimulants come in with: "Woah, what the hell am I doing on the highway?" It really is an executive function disorder, where one of the main deficits is being unable to understand consequences. The other parts are the inattentivity/no-focus, whose labels is misleading. It's not poor focus, it's a complete lack of focus. You've got a 360 degree (6.28 radians for the 3rd worlders) understanding of your entire environment. All the people and the little movements and noises they make. The soft buzzing of the fluorescent bulbs. The guy with an obviously bad hip walking down the hallway, 500 feet somewhere else. Then you go look at a piece of paper and your "attention" is everywhere else but the paper. So you bombard it with a bunch of eye movements hoping your brain registers something. Usually it's something retarded like: "Oh hey, these guys aren't using an Oxford comma -> Why is English so fractured -> Was Humpty Dumpty really a story about a canon?" Then you completely forget about the paper, go sit down, and entertain yourself with another train of thought that's doing multi-track drifting and wheelies.
And nobody understands because: 1). You're met with the "suck it up, buttercup" pep-talk for every complaint -- which do seem like complete whining in medicated retrospect, but seem unbearable in first-person. Experiencing this, you can start understanding the assumptions people make about each other. Ones that usually never hold true for you. 2). You usually don't understand something's wrong. I'm aware of quite a few stories of people only going to get a diagnosis after reading through some posts about people complaining about their ADD/ADHD. It just seems like life is fucking unnecessarily difficult. And you see everyone else doing fine and the litany of comments you get from them for not being able to keep up. So you just accept you're a fuck up. Time to binge eat, masturbate 8 times a day, and marathon video games. Bank account's empty and rent's due? "Alright." Back to hedony.
The interesting thing is that, like most mental illnesses, the effects can drastically be minimized with the right social support networks and good coping skills. For example, take Richard Branson and David Neeleman. The posterboys for the "ADHD is a superpower" spiel. Both had relatively good upbringings and hearing them talk about their families and childhoods, you can infer that they did have good social support systems. (As an aside, ADHD is "good" for entrepreneurship, because you rarely think about "what if this happens? We're on the brink of collapse!" And more on "hmm, yeah looks like we owe more in interest this month than we can generate in 10 years, how about we do X?" Call it what you will, delusion, stoicism, brain-damage.) Usually you don't hear about those with subpar upbringings, because they're either hoping from service job to service job, or already, or on their way, to being dead from all sorts of reasons.
I don't know what else to write, because some guy's driving down the street, who likely hasn't had an oil change ever. Oh hey, look at that he also needs to replace his clear coat ASAP or driving that shitbrick around in this weather will dissolve it faster than a peppermint in an SJW's mouth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 15 2018, @06:55PM (11 children)
hey man stay high! you're at your peak when you are!
but your description of a fuck-up is wrong. binge eating, masturbating 8 times a day, and marathon video games seems like a succesful life to me.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday March 15 2018, @07:24PM (10 children)
Is it even possible for a guy to go 8 times in one day? I'm not even sure a woman could do that. Don't you run out or something?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday March 15 2018, @07:58PM (1 child)
Man, you haven't lived til you've done it 3 times in a row as fast as you can: it gets you down to expelling nothing but the intensity goes waaay up.
Then you do it later.
That was my big problem in school: the girls. Oh, the girls.
My head went like I was watching a tennis match. I think I would have been better off at an all boys school, lol.
Can't understand guys today: they don't see all the girls due to all the fecking Facebooking and texting. We were the epitome of "standing on the corner watching all the girls go by".
Good times, but I kinda wish I had been in a boys school. Might have been able to focus better.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Funny) by Snotnose on Thursday March 15 2018, @11:17PM
Man, you haven't lived til you've had everyone ask about the scabs on your peener for a week; it gets you down to staying in your room. Where, with nothing better to do, peeny comes out to play. Gently of course, don't want those scabs to last a whole week!
/ um, a guy I knew in high school had that problem
// I swear, wasn't me
/// not 60 y/o me, at least....
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday March 15 2018, @08:11PM (3 children)
Young guys can. They lose stamina the older they get.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday March 15 2018, @11:05PM (1 child)
Try weekly
Try, weakly
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Funny) by Snotnose on Friday March 16 2018, @12:18AM
Anxiety is the first time you can't do it a second time
Panic is the second time you can't do it the first time.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 15 2018, @11:12PM
I've hit 40. It would be 3 or 4 times a day if I didn't exercise self control. When I can exercise self control.
Fine. If I didn't work in a place where getting time and privacy is rare.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 15 2018, @10:07PM
When I was younger and masturbation was my only hobby, I achieved 15 in ~10 hours before I had to stop due to bleeding and pain.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 15 2018, @11:07PM (1 child)
Yes.
Taking zinc tablets the day before helps. Can help make lots more gunk to eject.
Have to be careful with zinc though. Can't take too much.
I used to get myself off 4 or 5 times a day. 8 or more on bad/good days.
Strangely, a good roll in the sack with a girl could set me right for two or three days. Much calmer after sex with a girl. Not sure why.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday March 16 2018, @02:08AM
If it works anything like it does for women: oxytocin. It's so so different doing it yourself with a vibrator compared to actually making love. I'd guess the same thing applies for f/m pairs too. The brain's the biggest sex organ after all :)
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday March 16 2018, @01:01AM
Depends on your age mostly. At fifteen a guy'd be pretty sore after eight times but it'd absolutely be doable. Not so much at thirty.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.