I started with the most basic guided meditations almost 30 years ago. Next step, learn to focus on a candle or a dot on the wall without thinking about anything else. Increase the time to hold this focus. It should be a “relaxed focus”; when your head turns read or wrinkly, it’s wrong.

From there, it can go to really emptying your head. Thoughts will come up, but think of them like something external that you can observe, you see the thought, you aren’t the thought. Same with feelings, in my case, especially that I have to stop and get up. I see the urge to jump up, but I am not the urge.

Imagination can help at an early stage, like: I’m this scaffold full of gaps where thoughts and emotions just pass through like a smoke cloud without affecting it. But it’s supposed to go to a point where even that is considered a thought that should pass.

Effects are great in many areas of life: Dreaming, sleep, notice needs like sleep or hunger or thirst before they become overwhelming. Studying and retaining the information.

Yet still, I surprisingly manage to drop the habit for a day, weeks, even years at times.

My most stupid reason is: There is a lot to do / I need to get to bed right now, so there is no time for even 5 minutes of meditation. (But there was time to browse Reddit for let’s-not-say-how-many-minutes, “research” the making of for a movie I don’t even like etc.) Yet that argument seems quite compelling in the moment.

If I could get over the problem of over-listening to a song, I could live in eternal bliss.

Odd enough, this is among the things I can only relate to AFTER starting meds. Before that, unthinkable.

My own diagnosis: I had super-ADD, and thanks to meds, I now have normal ADD.

At least in Germany, it’s hopeless. I just paid the whole thing out of picked, in addition to my EUR 1,100 insurance premiums.

I knew memes can save a life! Just need to up the dose and try to scroll 3 % more every day.

Me in executive dysfunction, imagining how sweet it would be to be done with the task:

That is also my understanding: You may or may not a “habit person” almost regardless of ADHD, but starting it is harder, and losing it easier with ADHD.

I hope that was the only problem in my case, and we’ll see in a couple of weeks.

During therapy it might be best to start, so there is someone who supervises it and calls you out. Maybe being active in a community like x-effect. Any kind of accountability entity.

Understandable, and my additional simplification from an already simplified youtube video doesn’t help. He also says that habits don’t work well for some people in a DIFFERENT video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVvYn9jkZYQ

Here is the one I talked about where he says they DO work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rq6K7yxaNaM

That’s always been the curse of TV doctors long before the internet. Simplification & telling what they want to hear wins the biggest audience.

I don’t see how how “neurotransmitters work across the whole brain” disproves this; it’s still neurotransmitter dysfunction in the prefrontal cortex that are mostly responsible for ADHD. (Could be very wrong there, not an expert.)

Here is the context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rq6K7yxaNaM&t=266s

When I suddenly fixate on a food, the shelf is not restocked, and even 2 or 3 days later, I can’t buy it again.

Feel like “Truman Show”, as if the store and other shoppers are just some illusion for me and they can only restock in great numbers what I usually buy.

Edit: Can’t believe it’s happening to so many others here!

Dr. K. put it like this in a video: Habit forming is not in the frontal lobe, and is not directly affected by ADHD.

It has not worked for me yet, but I’m currently trying again. I suspect that, indirectly, ADHD does play a role, and additional tricks are needed, but I have hope.

Oh she might be me.

It is with great grievance that I had to put an end to this and install a plugin that closes the oldest one when I get over 15 (Limit Tabs). (Actually, that is only great, unless I’m in a shopping decision frenzy and actually need this.)

I find that it belongs here, as anxiety and ADHD can play right into each other.

ADHD will very typically lead to missed deadlines, for example: Already getting the 2nd demand note on something you had to file, apartment is a mess but the landlord comes over in a few hours to inspect something, work.

Now anxiety can trigger when there is nothing to be anxious about, that’s what makes it pathological, but it does NOT get better when there really IS something to be anxious about.

And when anxiety peaks, ADHD can make it feel differently. Just like a regular task that becomes an unmanageable tangle of unordered steps and potential escalations and obstacles rather than a clear series of steps, ADHD can also make the perceived consequences of a missed deadline more chaotic and harder to process, reason and think yourself out of.

I agree that it’s not a good answer to the question “What does it feel like to have ADHD?”, but microblogging is all about simplifying and giving one example, from a layman perspective who will not be able to draw a clear line between the related ailments she has.

https://lemmy.ml/post/4902066

Pets are so nice, and I think about them every day. But after the last 8 year period where I took care of them every day, I had to take a break and stopped getting new ones.

It’s this one extra thing. A day has you beat down completely, you feel like you could just pass out on the floor, but the pets need the full program with cage cleaning and everything. Vet appointments that can hit any time. A dying, suffering pet and the vets are closed on weekends and holidays (we have no clinics here, just ONE emergency vet for 250,000 people).

It is very, very likely that there is a better option for you. Just to name one: You could get methylphenidate (or even Vyvanse again) and use it only as needed. A lot can get done in 10 or 20 “power-days” per year, even when you just drag along for the rest of it.

I didn’t love feeling drained at the end of the day when I crashed

That can be eliminated completely: Don’t let the loss of appetite fool you, eat by exact calorie count & clock, against all instincts. Don’t take it in the morning without enough food either. After anything that would require a rest otherwise, such as a long walk, even after lunch when you didn’t have enough sleep at night, certainly after a workout, take as much rest as you’d normally need, even when you don’t feel like it. Even 20 minutes cleaning, 10 minutes rest; don’t go into a cleaning frenzy.

It goes to zero. (Experiences may vary, but I went from crashing after 3 - 4 hours to no crashes at all, being happy and productive after 14 minutes awake, then fall asleep instantly.)

Worst mistake I keep making: I think “I did it 2 days ago, don’t need to today.”

The reality is: Having less than one load of dirty laundry is a theoretical state that is rarely reached.

It’s an illusion, caused by stacks of laundry that “don’t count”, because they are wool and I’m waiting for a full load of wool (in reality, they add up already), or they have some other kind of “special status”.

Or heck, let’s just only ever start when there is nothing to wear, or the laundry bin is overflowing.

That is a method which actually worked out, for years! Just now, with a child, I use a dishwasher.

One big regret: As a single, I should have bought one of those tiny dishwashers that don’t need installing and can just be filled with water on top.

Which ones do you find bad?

Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW08NoTQI1c

(Not that anyone cares)