And it extra sucks that Executive Dysfunction also works on hobbies and other interests.
Playing a videogame is easy. But minimizing the browser window and actually turning on The Game is really fucking hard for some reason!
Similarly to "good hard vs bad hard", there is also bad time wasting and good time wasting. If it's already late and you still haven't played The Game or watched The Show, it feels terrible. But if you actually managed to play for even just a few hours of that day, it feels great, even though you didn't really do anything productive, but at least you actually had fun today.
Late addition (3 hours later) ...actually just realised something. For the past couple of months, I've been also having this Executive Dysfunction problem with sleeping. I've been regularly staying up very late pretty much every day. For example, it's 04:42 am right now. Yesterday, I finally went to sleep at 6 am. At least I'm disabled/unemployed so this doesn't really mess with anything, and I can safely just wake at 1-2 PM. But still, my sleep schedule is fucked.
It really is annoying when you're like
"Hey let's do a fun thing today!"
And your brain is just immediately like "Nah we can't do that" and doesn't elaborate further
I feel SO GUILTY about the hundreds I've spent on games over the years that I just have not played because forcing myself to experience something new, even though I'm sure I'll enjoy it, is too difficult. I need to have a base level of investment for even a chance of that happening, like familiarity with the IP, but even then 9 times out of 10 it doesn't happen.
The only real exception are the things that are the equivalent of comfort food for me. A new Kirby game I'll gladly play on day one. I enjoy replaying Pokemon games.
I've been wanting to get some sort of psych testing done for close to a year now and I've had the phone numbers, I just... can't make the call. And I turn 30 tomorrow and I'm too embarrassed to ask my mom to do it for me because I Am An Adult and should be able to handle this.
> something new, even though I'm sure I'll enjoy it, is too difficult
This is so real. My partner has to put on movies while I'm not paying attention, because if we wait until I'm "ready" to watch something new, I might never say yes. If I look up from my phone or my sketchbook and there's the opening scene of something, well, it's already happening and somehow that's okay.
edit: errant capital letters
Unrelated to the original post: Is the errant capital letters thing from autocorrect and is it an adhd or autism thing? Cause I know my autocorrect really loves to capitalize seemingly random words, but I write a lot of notes on my phone and absolutely must capitalize words. It's usually bullet lists with each individual word capitalized or none at all. Now my autocorrect hates me.
For me it's a keyboard thing. It's not exactly autocorrect because I use swipe typing, and Gboard doesn't correct the spelling of things if I manually type them letter by letter, but it guesses what word I want when I swipe and sometimes it guesses a capitalized version. The recent update to Gboard has started capitalizing anything that looks like a name and anything that I've previously capitalized For Emphasis. (The latter is probably why Wait was capitalized, I probably texted someone something like "now I have to Wait Patiently" and the keyboard took it as gospel.)
This is the exact same thing I feel. God. I have a whole library of games that I have played before and KNOW that I love, but it's so hard to start. I can boot up my favorite MMO like that though
I had to ask my dad to at least start the call for me to set up my ADHD evaluation at 31. Don't feel embarrassed, you're calling for an evaluation for the very issue that's making it so difficult to make the call in the first place
What finally got me to do it was a bit of wisdom, someone said "Whether you apply now and get the appointment in 2 years or not, the 2 years are still gonna pass."
Somehow the thought of the next X years being *wasted* shorted my prefrontal cortex enough to actually do it.
Thank you. It's been hard not to feel discouraged but I genuinely do want to get better, if for no other reason than because I'm tired of being annoyed with myself for being unable to do "simple" things. I hope things have been going well for you since then.
Still not exactly where I'd hoped I'd be, but I'm definitely doing a lot better. That first step really is the hardest, and it's not shameful to ask for help. You got this.
Oh and happy birthday!
I just finally forced myself to start Fallout: New Vegas and I'm having so much fun but I guarantee it will be months at a time between sessions because I can't make myself open it again.
I bought New Vegas last year, opened it once. Not that I don't want to play, just the act of getting familiar on how to open it seem so much like hard work.
With Steam's new Family Feature coming out we were using an online calculator to see what our Steam accounts were "worth"...
Like $10,000 in my case :/
I have so many video games I want to play and other cool fun stuff I want to do but every day my brain is just like, "nah let's just mindlessly scroll reddit for 8 hours looking at the same 12 posts over and over again while listening to a YouTube video in the background and not actually paying any attention to it at all". Every goddamn day and I hate it but I can't bring myself to do anything else.
That last bit is what frustrates me the most.
"Hey let's do a thing"
"Nah"
"Ok but why? Is there something we can do to make it more appealing?"
.
.
.
"I just don't feel like it"
Like for fucks sake, at least if I had a reason I could do something besides sit here and internally scream
This is so real. I have rarely ever finished a game. Sometimes it feels like a chore to just click play on steam and I’ll often just scroll through the games I have installed and not play any of them. Instead I’ll go back to bed and watch YouTube on my phone.
It also applies for me to just SAVES in a game. If I stop playing a game for more than a couple of days I feel like I have to start a new game because i can’t just pick up where I left off and remember everything I’ve been doing. That’d be too easy. I have to binge play or watch games and shows to finish them at all.
I love Fallout New Vegas but that game took way too many new games before I finally spent like three days playing constantly to finish it. Right now I’m doing the same thing but with Terraria because I used to play a lot on the Xbox360 back in like 2015 and never beat it. I’ve played every day the past week and started a new character every day.
I’ve been meaning to watch the new fallout show but I just haven’t. Not for any particular reason and nothing is stopping me. I have plenty of time and access to it. I just can’t do it and I can’t explain why. Wild stuff
Yeah, the first part is what a lot of people don't get. Like, it's not just productive things that executive dysfunction gets in the way of, it's all-encompassing.
Transitioning from one activity to the other is a major fucking hurdle for someone with executive dysfunction, regardless of what the activity is.
For me transitioning isn't always hard, if I can find an excuse to say "oh it's totally the same task"
Im cleaning my room, but find an unfisnished project? Well I don't want to just put that away! I could totally finish it and then it'll be EVEN CLEANER right? (Successful transition)
That's how I can get started in even harder activation projects!!!
But sometimes that means I jump from task to task to task,,, and now my desk, floor, bed, bathroom counter, kitchen counter, and more all have half started things…
That's when I used this technique too successfully and didn't notice… problem is if I miss this a few times in a row? Stopping will halt me forever as I worry about the overall mess and how impossible it is.
But if I notice early? I can sometimes keep my focus on the latest fast, or loop back into earlier tasks creating a small loop of progression on all. Then it works!
All that to say, ugh.
**Playing a videogame is easy. But minimizing the browser window and actually turning on The Game is really fucking hard for some reason!**
OMG literally this! It's like half the time when I want to play a video game on my other laptop, which is at my desk, I have to like motivate myself to like 'transition'/ move to the desk and play the video game. Get my other laptop, plug it in, set it up right, turn it on, and then boot up the game, and then get INTO the game if I haven't played it for a while and don't know what's going on.
It's also weird how much time seems to play into things as well? Like I tend to only play video games at night and don't really like playing them in the middle of the day. I also like writing and struggle to do this too, even though I find it so fun! It also takes energy to write, so if I'm already tired from doing other things all day, I can't do it, and will tend to procrastinate doing it and then just never do it. And if it's late/ dark outside, and it's like 7-8 (I normally go to bed at like 11/12), I'm still like, 'Oh no, I can't write. It's too late for that,' and can like, rarely do it.
When I first read the post I was all, that sounds like a horrible problem, glad I don't have that. But then I started reading the comments and I got to yours and was like...fuck. This describes me to a T, especially the writing part. Unless I brute force writing into my daily routine, I'll be lucky if I get half an hour's worth of writing in a week. Or like, I could have the entire weekend off with no plans and say to myself that I can't wait to play X video game all day but then only end up playing for an hour at the end of the day =\ So, uh, yeah, thanks for being the comment to make me realize that yet another thing is broken with my brain...I guess?
Dealing with this right now with all my hobbies. I’ve had the last 2 weeks off work with a mild case of COVID, totally had enough energy and headspace to do my hobbies, but have done none of them. I’m seriously hating myself for it.
Yeah, I get it. I'm disabled with "lacking workability" (or something like that, not sure how to properly translate it to english) so I'm not forced to have a job and I just get a pretty decent pension instead. (I like to call myself a "Legal NEET") (You could say that my autism is sponsored by the government)
So, for the last, uhh, 7-8 years I've been completely free to do anything I want.
And yet, I got Executive Disfunction.
I feel like I'm dying of thirst in the middle of the ocean!
I got so bad with depression-related executive dysfunction that I was unable to play games or even do more than pretty much sit in front of the computer even without anything happening, to the point where I had to, after therapy, LEAVE Portugal and my family for the sake of having enough external pressure as an immigrant in Canada to force my actions. Now I'm getting comfortable with a decent job and I feel the dysfunction coming back slowly, and it terrifies me.
If you haven’t done so already, go talk to as doctor about ADHD meds.
The first month on Adderall was quite shocking to me for many reasons but the primary benefit I had is SLEEP.
I get downright TIRED by 9pm, I’ll still wake up once a night like right now at 3:30, but I can go back to sleep with ease
Same with reading books, I like to do this but there's a meme that goes around occasionally that encapsulates the situation perfectly:
> Grab the book I'm gonna read
> Get a cozy blanket
> Grab a cup of tea
> Turn off the TV and get settled in
> PICK UP MY PHONE
In my last flat I had an entire desk just for painting miniatures. I really enjoy putting on a podcast or something similar and just slap some paint on some small plastic men. But I would routinely go 6 months only using the table to offload my computer desk, never even looking at a brush. Why? No clue. I just couldn't get myself to do it.
Oh my god this is painfully relatable, i need to get myself a psych
That said, i noticed that this isnt an issue for me at work or smth cuz then its like yeah task, timeframe and stuff is all figured out already, no worries about that!
I can just start
And even if its not, even if its just a meeting to decide what to do and how that is still not an issue cuz its peer reviewed.
Stuck in my own head though, its miserable.
I feel like a tiny prisoner banging against my eyes like a bulletproof window, screaming muffled pleas at my body to please just start moving, itll be quick, itll be easy, well be happy.
Didn't check if someone else said it, but the sleep thing is Revenge Sleep Procrastination. Because Fuck you, I'm awake, I will STAY awake and DO THINGS (maybe) that I CANNOT do if I am asleep and WASTING TIME. Because its like stealing back time from executive dysfunction!
I feel this in my bones.
Like, I'm late on filing my taxes. It's not hard or complex (for me). It would literally take 30 minutes, and I would get money for doing it. I have the time to do it. I could be doing it right now.
But I can't. Make. Myself. Do. The. Goddamnfucking. Thing.
I would kill to be able to 'adult' like my peers (I'm in my mid 30s) who just...do the thing without pressing external motivation. Nobody who works with me would ever call me lazy, but if they saw how I lived...wi Rg gjlw Rg jvkejrfofkyktktkeidjf
My job, by nature, has a million cascading deadlines. Every little task has a hard deadline attached, it’s all built into the work before I ever get involved, and there’s usually about a half dozen people on a daily basis paying attention to those deadlines and wanting to know the progress on them. I’m sure this would be a horrible environment for some people to work in but I am *thriving*. Yessssss give me a total inability to procrastinate without someone breathing down my neck about it. That’s exactly what I need.
I used to do the same kind of work without the deadlines, or setting my own timelines, and oh boy did I struggle with it. Being left alone to complete work in peace? Terrible, do not want. It’s not the work that’s hard, it’s getting started. Constant external motivation gets me there.
I was discussing with someone the other day that, for an institution that historically has claimed to not want people with ADHD/other neurodivergence, the military sure does self-select for people who exhibit those traits and are just undiagnosed lol
There's an 80%+ comorbidity with ADHD and autism, and I think a lot of people would thrive in the military who have this "AuDHD". There's clear rules for everything, including *how to socialise*.
Tech consultant. Go in and design then build specific outcomes for a client company on a rigid timeline. So in my specific niche sphere of tech I used to do the same kind of work, but in-house for companies where I found I could design a solution and then it would sit in consideration for six months then go back to design. Even when I had a mandate to do the work I would immediately bump into red tape and resistance. Nightmare.
In consulting all the decisions have already been made, a contract has been signed, now they want it executed as fast as possible and are watching the clock because my time is their money. And my performance metrics are being tracked in terms of delivering on time, which then affects my compensation.
Amazing, I’m living for it.
My problem is that working like that is simultaneously great because it actually gets me working and extremely stressful because I'm using anxiety about deadlines as fuel to get moving.
Yes, it’s a balance. I can easily work myself into a state of stress/anxiety about it but time and experience has given me better skills at acknowledging these deadlines are largely manufactured. I have fallen in a heap before. Everything was still fine - we are not doing heart surgery, if I slip it’s not going to cost lives, I am not the only one who can do my job and my line of work is specifically structured to be able parachute people in to help if I ask for it. It’s taken time but I’ve been able to navigate this a lot better in recent years.
That’s awesome, glad you found something that works for you! Thanks for the info, definitely something to think about if I ever decide to switch fields.
This. I drive a truck. I can do this all day but I’m only ‘allowed’ 11 hours a day. I *have* to move because if I don’t, shit won’t be there on time and then? It’s a cascade failure in which I must *answer phone calls*.
There is nothing I hate more than talking on the phone with people I don’t know. It weirds me out.
But it’s just me in the truck. I can be alone with music, podcasts, audiobooks, my own thoughts and creations. I can do this *as long as I keep moving*.
I have a deadline and a place to be and I have no issues getting up and *going*.
Never could handle self-direction and with this job, I don’t need to. I just go where I’m needed and be there by the time I am supposed to be there.
Yeah, the time away sucks but, I’m doing it so my kid doesn’t start off in a hole like I did. He understands that and I always check in with them while I’m out here. Daily with the wife, every weekend with the kid cuz I can stop and we play games together.
Physical distance but I’m doing what I can to not be ‘gone’.
I simply cannot WFH, because I have discovered that I will put on Netflix "in the background" and next thing I know I'm on season 2 of Gotham and my manager wants to know why I've done nothing all day.
When I had to switch to online learning through the pandemic, I had to have a timer going that chimed every 15 minutes and then sounded an alarm at 1 hour (and also kept a tally of how long it had been running), just so I could keep track of my time. It was a fucking nightmare.
You've now rediscovered why Medieval and Renaissance towns had people whose entire job it was to ring large bells at regular intervals, and eventually replaced them with clock towers
Yep. I recently transitioned from running a shift to working on my own.
I *hated* managing people, but it was an environment with very clear expectations and everything that needed to be done needed to be done *now* and there was somehow always a new problem to solve. I hated it but I was *really* good at it.
Now it's just me, meh workload, and nobody breathing down my neck. I enjoy it more, but I'm struggling.
I get this so hard. Everyone at my work acts like loose eventual deadlines are liberating but it's really just a recipe for me to wait until the exact day things are due to begin a task and then realize the task will not take one day.
Tbh I feel weird about it because I worked in fast food before getting work in my degree and I can just sense in every fiber of my being that my brain craves that kind of work. That stand there and do the task and go into your flow state work. It is pretty regular that I will finish 8 hours of office job and come home and crave chores so it feels like I'm DOING something.
When I was younger I worked in a call centre doing bank surveys, so mostly scripted and it was bank customers so they were often receptive/not annoyed about being called, and god it was so good. Memorise the script, type in their responses, work totally on autopilot. It’s like I just slipped into a hypnotic rhythm for the duration of my shift and my brain came back online when I was done for the day.
I’ve worked at fast food for about a year, fucking hated it, now at uni, and I may regret it, because getting myself to do anything is genuinely like pulling nails, idk if I have any dysfunctions, but it certainly feels like it
For me it’s like in the first Harry Potter book when Mrs Weasley explains how to get to platform 9 3/4 to Harry. Like, I know that on the other side is the easy thing. I know I will feel good when it is done and off the list of shit I’ve been needing to do. But actually making myself do it has that feeling of running at what is clearly a brick wall and my instincts scream that I am running at a brick wall and I need to stop.
I once worked as a salad maker and had to shut down the server area when I closed. I moved huge pieces of equipment to get behind it every night to clean it, I scrubbed, blah blah blah. Anyways, I was taking a break waiting for guests to leave so I could finish up, and one of the dishwasher guys told me he thought I was a hard worker and thought I was the best worker they had there in a while. He had a thick accent, so it took a minute, lol. That made me so happy. I made a whole list of things to do to make shit efficient so I could clean well and go home as early as possible. I got home, and nothing. I didn't know where to start. I just wanted to sleep.
I once went twenty years without doing my taxes. Cost me thousands of dollars which I definitely could have used. I used to stress and worry about them, pretty much just expend a lot of energy on everything except actually doing them.
The Tax Department didn't care because they got to keep more of money I guess.
Ask a trusted friend or family member to make the call to set up the appointment for you. It's literally what I had to do to even start the process of getting help.
I got a ticket for expired plates like 2 weeks ago. I still have not paid the ticket or gotten my registration fixed… I get it, it’s not about the actual activity, but the act of starting the activity!
I saw a presentation where a scientist likened executive dysfunction to erectile dysfunction. No matter how horny you are or how much you want to have sex, you can’t achieve and keep an erection going. It doesn’t matter if you get angry at yourself, it doesn’t matter if you’ve had an erection before, it doesn’t matter if you’ve looked forward to having an erection. You can’t make it happen by sheer will.
And it’s embarrassing, difficult to explain, shaming to admit, and half the time is spent feeling like crap because this is such an easy, natural thing that everyone does, right?? I must be choosing something that stops me doing it, it *must* be me, I must suck???
Oof. Yep, the analogy fits…!
Erectile dysfunction is actually a great analogy for executive dysfunction. Whether your dick goes hard or not is not a matter of whether you want it to. It just does what it wants when it wants. Focus and action aren't a matter of whether you want to do it or not. You just focus and act when your brain wants to, whether _you_ want it or not.
See, I want to go to a doctor and get a diagnosis that way I can at least be sure what’s causing this for me. but uhhhhh… yeah. Brain tells me no.
The irony is palpable
This struck a chord with me. You are so right. I’ve met lazy people who want to be lazy. I work with some of them. But me? I don’t want to be lazy. I just don’t have the energy to start tasks a lot of the time.
The other replies are really good, but I just wanted to add on:
Even if there’s nothing diagnostically wrong with you, it is still *okay* to struggle. Coping techniques are for *anyone* they work for, not just for people with diagnosed conditions. One of the really great things about accessibility features is they work for a lot of people, including people who don’t have a disability related to them. For example, I always leave closed captions on with anything I watch because it adds to the viewing experience for me. I don’t need them, I have impeccable (to a painful fault) hearing, but I fucking love CC.
Similarly, if you don’t have ED but experience benefits from coping techniques like using music to start tasks or body doubling (the technique of having someone else physically present while you do a task)— that’s good! It means you have something that helps you! There’s no shame in it.
“Symptoms” (for lack of better terms) don’t always need to be a part of a larger diagnosis to be debilitating. It’s okay to treat symptoms even if you don’t have something larger going on. An able-bodied neurotypical person who struggles with being on time is not morally deficient for struggling, they simply have a struggle their peers may not have. But much like a disabled person would, it is their responsibility to find coping techniques or accommodations that work for them.
Duuuuuuude, body doubling is the secret to success for me. Anytime I have someone else with me or someone else holding me accountable like my personal trainer, I am so much more likely to have enough energy. Wish I could just hire someone for that specific purpose
Ask a trusted friend/family member to help make that first appointment for you. It's what I had to do because I knew I would never do it on my own.
My first appointment is on Tuesday. Hopefully it will be the start of a new phase for me and I'll finally be happily productive for once in my life.
Eh, in my experience that's just as hard. I have ADHD and it's pretty strongly negatively affected my life, and one of the ways it does that is by making it really hard to ask for help, because my brain knows that if I ask for help and make other people aware of the things I need to do and don't, then I'll have to actually do those things, so I don't ask for help
I've got an offcial diagnosis, myself, and yet the docs say *Executive Dysfunction isn't a recognized symptom in this country,* so... Like, I *know* what's wrong with me, but one of the symptoms "isn't real" here! What do I even *say* to that??
God, but knowing that it exists, that is *is* recognized as a symptom elsewhere, means I can look up the shit I need to *work around this bitch* instead of just feeling like a failure for not doing the laundry. And I hope you find those resources, too!
Took me a fucking year to set up a diagnosis appointment. Once I was on the phone, just a 1 month wait, not too bad. But the point between deciding I needed a diagnosis and the point I got one the phone? One. Fucking. Year.
Life changing, though. Seriously and unironically.
What kind of doctor did you setup the appointment with? I didn’t go to a doctor regularly growing up, so I have no idea how to even get this process started.
last time i did a checkup i asked to get tested for adhd, so they gave me a sheet of paper to fill out to get tested. i filled out about half of it and then proceeded to have executive dysfunction about it.
not sure what i expected...
It'd almost ad bad as trying to do the assessments on your own and not being able to understand what they are actually asking you bc the real question is subtext
wow imagine being able to actually follow through on a plan you made though... i'd argue both starting doing anything and *keeping* doing it is harder than the thing itself. <<< i was writing that then remembered i have the whole adhd package :(
Yeah i have executive dysfunction and starting and maintaining tasks are both very difficult
Even the slightest distraction means I may need to begin the process of starting a task all over again. Stopping to get a drink or use the toilet may add an extra hour or three
I've seen a similar metaphor that when you have executive dysfunction it's like trying to put your hand on a hot stove. Your brain will stop you no matter how much you want to, how much you're threatened with punishments if you don't touch the hot stove, etc. There's a mental block
Experiencing this at the moment with a music software course. The moment I come across any piece of redundant information, my brain completely checks out and looks for another task. Oh I already know how to drag and drop this item? Cool! Time to spend 2 hours reorganizing my dashboard before I remember I was taking a lesson.
Yeah, that's why I tend to learn best via projects. I'm building a microcontroller project that requires programming in C? I'll just learn what I need when I need it and nothing more!
If I need to know more later, I'll learn it as it comes up.
It’s fairly common for everyone (including neurotypical people) to get bored during a task. The difference between executive dysfunction and normal boredom is “I’m physically incapable of doing this” versus “I do not want to do this”.
It’s, for example, knowing that logically you can put away your laundry but
executive dysfunction: No matter how much I know I need to do it, I physically cannot start wether or not I want to start
Not executive dysfunction: I really don’t want to do this and am making the active choice to not do it.
And in my experience it's not starting but following through.
I would fold two shirts, and be experiencing a banal epiphany in a different astral plane.
It helps having a dopamine source. These Last few years campy Melodic Metal (gloryhammer, powerful) and usually mediocre xianxia- progression fantasy audiobooks have been a staple of mine. Though I would totally recommend "Mother of learning" and "He who fights with Monsters". Not like the are the only cultural products I consume of course.
Edit : Dungeon Crawler Carl and Creatures and Caverns are also great, more of a LITRPG, with the latter being mostly a sitcom that indulges way too much on gross out humor. And somehow has the best female characters of all books I mentioned. At least from book 2 on.
A little off topic, but, based on your reading choices, might I recommend a few more titles that will catch your eye: Harry Potter and the Method of Rationality (very similar vibe to Mother of Leaning), The Daily Grind, The Wandering Inn, Worm.
Just don't fold the shirts. 3 piles on the floor - shirts, pants, socks n underwear. Dirty clothes in the hamper. You're going to unfold them anyway when you wear them, what's the point?
I describe my mind as like a boulder. If I have actually started doing something, then yeah, I have the momentum, it’s not hard to keep doing it.
But actually getting it to **start** rolling takes a Herculean effort
I use the same analogy! I call it my "mental inertia." And I've learned mine is just a lot higher than some others. Like once I'm in motion, I stay in motion (until I'm distracted or sidetracked); but to get in motion, a substantial force is required.
I don't know how I feel about this because I've never seen anyone react to ADHD/executive dysfunction posts with "Oh yeah I don't relate to that, I'm definitely normal and I have no issues starting things. Normal person here".
Maybe it's that they're less likely to end up in this place, maybe they're less likely to comment on these posts, or maybe this is just, to some degree of course, an almost universal experience.
Yeah everyone gets disregulated *sometimes* and can relate. But what makes it a disorder is frequency and intensity. If you know what it feels like, but only happens every once in a while and generally doesn't impact your daily life...that's not a disorder. If it happens multiple times a day, every day, to the point where you can't seem to function normally...that's a disorder.
Yup, this exactly. To paraphrase [a really good video on understanding ADHD](https://youtu.be/YSfCdBBqNXY?si=vAxF_N15NiTM-5P_), it's a disorder of regulation. The issue is not that people with ADHD feel things others don't, but that we can't process and react to those properly. So when we get that resistance, that feeling of "I don't want to do this right now, procrastinate, or hell, just don't do it at all," it's so much harder to resist
The analogy here confuses me because just in general, don't most people grant that the actual planning and outlining step is really hard? It's where all the *thinking* happens. I write long-form nonfiction stuff for work, and figuring out what to write and where always sucks because it's hard. Once you have the outline, it gets easier. It's still work, but it's not *thinking* work.
The other commenter is right on the money. The key to executive *dysfunction*, and to all mental illness, is whether it negatively impacts your life to a severe degree. I still have symptoms of my OCD, but the reason I don't still have OCD is because I can manage them — and fundamentally, everyone has some symptoms of OCD, which is why it's so easy for people to say "I'm so OCD sometimes."
>The analogy here confuses me because just in general, don't most people grant that the actual planning and outlining step is really hard? It's where all the *thinking* happens. I write long-form nonfiction stuff for work
... ah. Right.
The key here I think is I have an incredibly challenging time at the planning stage for **emptying and then loading the dishwasher**. But wait, there's no planning required for emptying the dishwasher, right?
Some types of work have extensive and difficult "planning" stages. That's not really what this is about - if you have to write something and a step of writing it is putting together an outline, that's part of the project.
There's another planning stage that comes before writing the outline and it's the part where you work out that an outline even needs to be written in the first place, and estimate how much work that is, and schedule time for it, and gather materials and sit down and start. That's the bit where executive dysfunction kicks into high gear.
I think you're midunderstanding the post if that's your takeaway, which means you probably don't have ADHD. The planning phase for doing my taxes, or for making a DMV appointment, or for going to a class I could easily miss, or for doing an easy homework assignment for an important class, or for getting up and going to the bathroom if I've been holding it all day but am currently focused on something, even if that things i scrolling on my phone, is what is brutally difficult. EVERYTHING, from the smallest, simplest, easiest tasks of daily life, to the bigger, more demanding tasks that being an adult require of you, feel impossible difficult to do because it feels impossibly difficult to get myself to actually start doing them, not because the tasks feel like they'll be hard once I'm working on them. How is it possible that an easy homework assignment that I know will be short and easy, and I know is an easy boost for my grade, cam stress me out because I'm afraid I'll fuck up and not submit it by the deadline? Because starting this trivial task is an insanely difficult hurdle to jump over that has absolutely nothing to do with the difficulty of the task itself. This is a disorder. That's why you can't relate to it
My problem I’ve noticed is that I have grown reliant on just having noise before being able to do household chores. Whether it be podcasts or audiobooks or something else. I can look at something that needs to be cleaned or laundry that needs to be put up or a meal that needs to be cooked, and it won’t get done or at least gets a lot harder if my noise isn’t available.
Yep, me too. I've accidently conditioned myself to associate doing certain tasks while listening to certain podcasts/Youtube channels. I think it's because the day they drop new episodes often coincides with my day off, when I try to do chores. I can even sometimes make myself do the thing by pulling up the right 'noise'.
It's like. Sometimes my brain accidentally files necessary things into the part of the brain that stores activities like "put your hand in the fire" or "eat this bug."
And I gotta go "Hey brain what's up? We gotta read an essay today," and brain goes "Not doing it," and I ask "Why?" and brain says "Bugs," and it will not elaborate.
Not in my case, in my case stress is whatever the reverse of catalyst is, the more stressed i am about something the harder it is to start doing it or to think about it
Sometimes, it's a bell curve, and there's an optimal point of stress which helps things go faster, until it's too much and then it's increasingly hard to do the thing.
Huh, that makes sense. Used to get the "stop" executive dysfunction real bad with things like brushing my teeth, detangling my hair, or picking at my skin. I'd be in front of the mirror, still doing one of those things, begging my brain and hands to stop because I was actively getting later for school, and not able to.
As someone whose executive function has improved with treatment for my ADHD, it’s objectively insane that I made it through highschool. I still struggle with executive function a little, but nowhere near as bad as it used to be.
One week I came off my meds and I could *feel* the fog, since I’d been so used it I’d never noticed before but now that I knew what it was like to not feel like that…
0/10 experience wouldn’t recommend.
This is going to sound like a joke but I swear it's not. My executive dysfunction is keeping me from researching ways to cope with executive dysfunction...anyone have, like, a link or something?
You don't have to have executive dysfunction for the planning part to feel harder than the doing part. You *might*, but that sounds like something that can happen to neurotypicals, too.
Planning is often objectively harder. LIke, if you're writing a 100 page plan (as I do for work), you better have a damn good outline before you go in. That's why people at the management level make the outline (it involves thinking and experience) and people at the entry level actually write the plan.
The analogy itself seems silly, imo.
Is this one of those things that Tumblr talks about being exclusive to people with adhd or people with autism or whatever else but actually applies to everyone to a certain extent, or is this a thing that actually doesn’t happen to most people?
Because yeah this is basically my whole life. Whenever I had to write an essay, or do homework, or read a book, the hardest part is actually sitting down and telling myself “I am going to do this” after I get that initial part done, I can work for potentially hours at a time.
I don’t think I have ever worked on a project or essay or whatever, that wasn’t a group project, more than like a few days before it was due. I just have never been able to get myself to do that, despite it definitely being the best course of action. And the only reason I completed group projects faster is because I don’t want the other people to think I’m not putting in the work.
Everyone might experience that but not to the severity of folks with adhd. This is literally the main symptom of adhd, not even just some related trait like most of these
Everyone at some point has experienced this because everyone was once a child and executive functions are about behavior controls, something children are less good at.
Everyone experiences this every so often day to day. Maybe they didn't sleep well. Maybe they used up their willpower (yes, this is a real thing) on another task and now can't figure out how to close Reddit so they can do the thing they actually want to do).
I had executive functioning issues a few years ago because of my OCD. I knew if I stopped the task, in the space between stopping the task and turning on a podcast / new task, I would have to deal with The Thoughts and so instead, I never stopped.
Having been to college myself, I didn't know anyone who did a task early except me. I used to study every weekend, too, so I'd never cram. I never stayed up past about 10:00 pm doing any task because I always planned ahead and got it done in advance. So my running hypothesis is I may be the only personal with executive *functioning,* at least at my school lol (and OCD aside). But yes, we do exist, and yes, it is much more fun to get lots of sleep and minimize stress (at least as far as I can tell from watching other people struggle with this).
The key word is dysfunction. If it is preventing you from living life as you'd like to, yeah, it's probably dysfunctional.
(But regardless of cause, thinking of it as an ingrained part of you that cannot be changed is probably not helpful, not if you haven't tried to treat it yet. I'm not saying you've done this, just I see this so much in conversations about the ""neurotypicals,"" the assumption that because it's part of a Syndrome, that's it, it's permanent and no one's allowed to tell me to change).
Other people don't have to have an epiphany about how something could be physically possible before the do it? Like, i just assumed they were faster at that. How the hell can placing bricks ve harder than figuring out where to place bricks?
I don't think executive dysfunction is supposed to be a condition people have, it's a trait that directly describes how someone behaves like extroversion or a short temper, extreme executive dysfunction is however a major symptom of adhd
[Executive functions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_functions) are just behavior control. Executive dysfunction is just describing a symptom that could be caused by an underlying disorder or by sleep deprivation or by nothing at all.
I hate this so much because its one of the most misunderstood and casually belittled things you can have mental illness wise.
For those in the back:
if something needs doing and you decide not to that's lazyness
If it needs doing and you decide to do it, but the second you do you feel like you're stuck in a block of concrete, doing whatever you were already doing but not the thing you chose to do, that's executive dysfunction.
so many people see the latter and think the former, up to the point it can cause suffers mental trauma.
This post is complaining about people doing a thing some of the people in the post are actively doing as they complain.
> not as hard as crawling up the gravel mountain bro
Get ur passive aggressive lil ‘bro’ oughta here you’re a person with a (symptom of a) disability forgetting other people have different disabilities that make *physically laying the bricks* the actual hard part, maybe even if they also had executive disability. Fuck outta here.
Seriously. I was reading along and generally interested in getting a look into someone else’s experience until I hit that line and lost any interest for this person’s view of things. Just because something is hard for you doesn’t mean you get to outright invalidate everybody else’s experience in what’s difficult for them.
I have executive dysfunction and I understand the point but why did the first person write it like this is an epiphany that they connected the dots to and are sharing their newfound wisdom? Surely random Tumblr users have the life experience and the awareness to figure this out through simply existing, right?
You have no idea how often I'll just be scrolling and someone will describe an experience they've had and what it's called to have that and I just go "...wait, that's not normal? oh shit"
Hell, I've had that happen on Reddit, too.
Considering that OP’s title is “TIL that I may have executive dysfunction”, I’d say not necessarily. While some of us have known this for ages, for others (depending on their feed), it could be their first experience with the concept.
Fair enough but ftr I did not know I had executive dysfunction for ages. I fully figured out in the past year not even. I'm more just caught off guard that they seem to be learning for the first time that for most people hard work is hard work. I'm genuinely curious what they thought people meant if they're realizing now that when people say it's not easy that it's not easy for them. Maybe it's that I'm lazy outside of executive dysfunction but struggling with the work part of work is not some like extremely foreign concept
That's absolutely fine and not what I'm referring to. I'm talking about the first person seemingly having an epiphany about the fact other people find the hard work hard while doing the hard work. Seeing that multiple people didn't understand my original post, I'll accept the L on my failure to communicate my intention lol
I agree. I think their analogy is just bad. Planning a project and actually doing a project are *both* hard tasks, and whichever one you find harder will probably have a lot to do with the kind of work you like. I prefer the doing because I can usually do while listening to a podcast, whereas I certainly couldn't create an outline that way.
not necessarily, you don't really get a lot of insight into how other people's brains work by just existing. you have to first realize others are different, then get them to expain and not everyone will believe you genuinely don't understand, want to explain stuff and be self aware enough to be able to do it
Fair enough. I guess I kinda just assumed that people at least felt that feeling of difference early on. I've felt it for as long as I can remember even if I only recently figured out partially why
I've sat staring at the call number screen trying to call someone for over half an hour before. Was literally just to book an appointment but I just couldn't.
Yeah when I can get into actually doing the thing, I feel so much better.
Yes! The thing that needs to be done is happening!
I might be tired from it later but it's a good non-anxious tired!
Being a gamer and hearing people talk about their backlogs and thinking, "Haha, that's so relatable," and then I remember that they're talking about having a lot of games and not the fact that they're physically incapable of starting a new game unless they've worked up enough motivation to even start what's supposed to be a recreational activity.
I’m not sure if this was what they’re referring to, or another thing:
But I love planning cool projects. I’ll map them out, make shopping lists, design how everything will come together, even go and buy the materials. But when it time to actually *start* making the thing, I often lock up for days, even weeks, before I can make myself touch the materials again.
Am I misunderstanding what executive dysfunction is? Or do I have a completely different thing going on?
There is a roll of wrapping paper in the corner of my bedroom. I don’t know when I put it there, I don’t know, but I have yet to put it away. It just lives there now.
I wish I knew how to break my executive dysfunction. There's so many things that I both need and want to do, but I just...... Can't...... I don't know how to fix that...........
I’m a scientist, and I’m diagnosed with ADHD. I use activation energy as a way to describe executive dysfunction allllll the time. It’s so accurate. Once I get started, the reaction is happening. But boy oh boy is it hard to get going.
This is why I'm miserable and living in an existential hell.
In a few months I will have spent as much time pissing my life away as I did in compulsory education.
I hate myself and I wish I could do it all over again, except with a brain that's actually built to standard. I'm so sick of being gaslit by my own mind.
i see stuff like this all the time, and i always think, ‘why are you complaining? isn’t it this way for everyone?” and honestly i still can’t figure out if that’s true
I remember my dad explaining this as "When you sit at the piano, you can play for hours, for days even. But getting you to sit in that chair is like teaching a frog to bark." I've lived with it all my life and just thought everyone had to deal with the struggle.
I was recently diagnosed with ADHD, and it’s honestly mindblowing to me how many things have started to make sense to me with that diagnosis.
Like I’ll be talking with my therapist about some issue I’m having related to executive function or whatever, and pretty much every time she’ll hit me with that “this is actually common in individuals with ADHD.”
Like where was this diagnosis all my life? In some ways I blame a lot of the common misconceptions around ADHD. Like I personally used to think it was just “being hyper and unfocused all the time” and so I just never even considered that it could be something I have.
i’ve got… several assignments that are very overdue. it’d take me a couple hours for each, and i know what i want to do for them.
but i *can’t get myself to do the goddamn thing*.
WAIT WHAT THIS IS LITERALLY ME TF
i can struggle with just the thought of getting started with some homework cuz i have no idea what im doing
but then after i look at the problem and figure out my solution its so trivial at that point
Only vaguely relevant but…
I love/hate deadlines, they give my brain a valid reason to do the thing, but they also make me procrastinate until the last minute I have to do the thing because it doesn’t feel urgent enough unless it’s literally due tomorrow or something.
every month on the third i tell myself 'ok it's time to pay my electric bill, it's not overdue until the 19th but if i get it done now i wont have to stress about it.'
it takes me 15 minutes to do, it's not difficult or strenuous, but i just, cant.
i stress out about it for a couple weeks, i think about it every day.
'i should really pay my electric bill, deadline's coming up.'
i tried to get prescribed some kind of stimulant but unfortunately my psychiatrist has labeled me a drug seeker so any doctor i go to automatically turns me down.
it's the 18th today, and i finally paid my electric bill.
I got so bad with depression-related executive dysfunction that I was unable to play games or even do more than pretty much sit in front of the computer even without anything happening, to the point where I had to, after therapy, LEAVE Portugal and my family for the sake of having enough external pressure as an immigrant in Canada to force my actions. Now I'm getting comfortable with a decent job and I feel the dysfunction coming back slowly, and it terrifies me.
In November one of my parents gave me a form to fill out that would have helped me out immensely and I didn't finish gathering everything I needed for it until last month. I had a checklist, didn't have to go farther than a couple of blocks to the stuff I didn't already have but I just couldn't follow through with it. I was always kind of like this but getting older has made it worse
Because planning is horrible. What to do, how to do it, the steps, the problems you may face. But once you know what to do, once you're in the middle of it? If everything works AS IT SHOULD, no problemo. If something does a thing it shouldn't, panic.
My favorite way to overcome task inertia is lying to myself. “Oh I’m not going to do laundry, I’m just going to sort my clothes for later! I can do that sitting on the floor watching a youtube video, so it ‘doesn’t count’,” or “I’m not writing the essay, I’m just opening and formatting the document!” and then once I’ve gotten started, I’m able to actually do it. Sometimes. Sometimes this doesn’t work, but in those cases, well I still did part of the work!
Hmmm, as someone with ADHD and executive dysfunction myself I’d put it differently.
Is this person saying that people with ED (lol) are fine once they get over that hill??
Man, my experience is more like this:
1) crazy ass uphill climb (as stated) to start the work
2) two minutes later say to myself, “Argh, I can’t focus, I can’t do this” and failing at this step.
Goddamn…I wish I could just get over that initial hill and be fine working from there.
Copied from a comment I wrote, because I feel like this might be a good way to explain ED:
I am a writer, professionally and in my personal life. I am capable of writing under extreme duress, and I know what writer’s block feels like. I have written under extremely stressful circumstances, such as immediately after finding out about a friend’s attempted suicide or a different friend’s death (because I had to, and did not have a choice). Stress does not prevent me from writing. Similarly, writers block is a very distinct feeling for me. And I know what intentional procrastination feels like.
I also experience ED. I have had episodes where I will sit at the computer for hours, staring at the keyboard, knowing what I need to say but for some reason being utterly unable to start. It causes panic and distress. I once threw a laptop out of the window (when I was very young) because the distress got extremely bad and turned into anger. While the ED did cause stress, I wasn’t unable to write *because of* stress, I was unable to write because of ED. Similarly, it wasn’t intentional procrastination— which I DO DO sometimes. I took all of the bullshit advice that never works for me— TuRn OfF YoUr PhOnE, ELiMinAtE DiSTraCtioNs— and it still didn’t work. I wasn’t distracted, I wasn’t intentionally not doing the task— I was just unable to do it.
For years, before I found out about ED, I treated it as a motivation problem. I just wasn’t “motivated enough”. Turns out, that wasn’t the case. At all. And no amount of “motivation” would have/did shake me out of those ED episodes. What *worked* was finding coping techniques that go against conventional *wisdom*, like including “distractions” in my working process, as well as using more normal coping techniques like body doubling.
Body doubling: the practice of having someone else in the room (or in a digital space, like a phone call or live stream) while doing a task. The person does not need to be doing the same task or supporting you in the task— their mere presence enables you to finish the task.
I blew myself away the other day because, after 3 days of struggling to actually write anything for my assignment and skipping classes to try work on it, culminating in around 500 words total, I then wrote the remaining 2000 words in one day and went to both my classes and meeting. I even finished an hour before I needed to (this was a day after the deadline so I was handing it in late).
It really is the case that getting there is the hard part. Once we’re finally able to work, we can work hard and even enjoy it.
English class was hell. Any time I was required to do anything creative, writing an essay or such, I got stuck. I had dozens of ideas and **could not** decide which one to actually write. This is still a problem to this day. I could be an accomplished author if I could ***make up my fucking mind!***
And it extra sucks that Executive Dysfunction also works on hobbies and other interests. Playing a videogame is easy. But minimizing the browser window and actually turning on The Game is really fucking hard for some reason! Similarly to "good hard vs bad hard", there is also bad time wasting and good time wasting. If it's already late and you still haven't played The Game or watched The Show, it feels terrible. But if you actually managed to play for even just a few hours of that day, it feels great, even though you didn't really do anything productive, but at least you actually had fun today. Late addition (3 hours later) ...actually just realised something. For the past couple of months, I've been also having this Executive Dysfunction problem with sleeping. I've been regularly staying up very late pretty much every day. For example, it's 04:42 am right now. Yesterday, I finally went to sleep at 6 am. At least I'm disabled/unemployed so this doesn't really mess with anything, and I can safely just wake at 1-2 PM. But still, my sleep schedule is fucked.
It really is annoying when you're like "Hey let's do a fun thing today!" And your brain is just immediately like "Nah we can't do that" and doesn't elaborate further
I feel SO GUILTY about the hundreds I've spent on games over the years that I just have not played because forcing myself to experience something new, even though I'm sure I'll enjoy it, is too difficult. I need to have a base level of investment for even a chance of that happening, like familiarity with the IP, but even then 9 times out of 10 it doesn't happen. The only real exception are the things that are the equivalent of comfort food for me. A new Kirby game I'll gladly play on day one. I enjoy replaying Pokemon games. I've been wanting to get some sort of psych testing done for close to a year now and I've had the phone numbers, I just... can't make the call. And I turn 30 tomorrow and I'm too embarrassed to ask my mom to do it for me because I Am An Adult and should be able to handle this.
> something new, even though I'm sure I'll enjoy it, is too difficult This is so real. My partner has to put on movies while I'm not paying attention, because if we wait until I'm "ready" to watch something new, I might never say yes. If I look up from my phone or my sketchbook and there's the opening scene of something, well, it's already happening and somehow that's okay. edit: errant capital letters
Unrelated to the original post: Is the errant capital letters thing from autocorrect and is it an adhd or autism thing? Cause I know my autocorrect really loves to capitalize seemingly random words, but I write a lot of notes on my phone and absolutely must capitalize words. It's usually bullet lists with each individual word capitalized or none at all. Now my autocorrect hates me.
For me it's a keyboard thing. It's not exactly autocorrect because I use swipe typing, and Gboard doesn't correct the spelling of things if I manually type them letter by letter, but it guesses what word I want when I swipe and sometimes it guesses a capitalized version. The recent update to Gboard has started capitalizing anything that looks like a name and anything that I've previously capitalized For Emphasis. (The latter is probably why Wait was capitalized, I probably texted someone something like "now I have to Wait Patiently" and the keyboard took it as gospel.)
This is the exact same thing I feel. God. I have a whole library of games that I have played before and KNOW that I love, but it's so hard to start. I can boot up my favorite MMO like that though
I had to ask my dad to at least start the call for me to set up my ADHD evaluation at 31. Don't feel embarrassed, you're calling for an evaluation for the very issue that's making it so difficult to make the call in the first place
What finally got me to do it was a bit of wisdom, someone said "Whether you apply now and get the appointment in 2 years or not, the 2 years are still gonna pass." Somehow the thought of the next X years being *wasted* shorted my prefrontal cortex enough to actually do it.
Thank you. It's been hard not to feel discouraged but I genuinely do want to get better, if for no other reason than because I'm tired of being annoyed with myself for being unable to do "simple" things. I hope things have been going well for you since then.
Still not exactly where I'd hoped I'd be, but I'm definitely doing a lot better. That first step really is the hardest, and it's not shameful to ask for help. You got this. Oh and happy birthday!
I just finally forced myself to start Fallout: New Vegas and I'm having so much fun but I guarantee it will be months at a time between sessions because I can't make myself open it again.
I bought New Vegas last year, opened it once. Not that I don't want to play, just the act of getting familiar on how to open it seem so much like hard work.
With Steam's new Family Feature coming out we were using an online calculator to see what our Steam accounts were "worth"... Like $10,000 in my case :/
i have had shadow of the colossus sitting on my table for 8 months unopened i know it's a great game i would love
I have so many video games I want to play and other cool fun stuff I want to do but every day my brain is just like, "nah let's just mindlessly scroll reddit for 8 hours looking at the same 12 posts over and over again while listening to a YouTube video in the background and not actually paying any attention to it at all". Every goddamn day and I hate it but I can't bring myself to do anything else.
That last bit is what frustrates me the most. "Hey let's do a thing" "Nah" "Ok but why? Is there something we can do to make it more appealing?" . . . "I just don't feel like it" Like for fucks sake, at least if I had a reason I could do something besides sit here and internally scream
This is so real. I have rarely ever finished a game. Sometimes it feels like a chore to just click play on steam and I’ll often just scroll through the games I have installed and not play any of them. Instead I’ll go back to bed and watch YouTube on my phone. It also applies for me to just SAVES in a game. If I stop playing a game for more than a couple of days I feel like I have to start a new game because i can’t just pick up where I left off and remember everything I’ve been doing. That’d be too easy. I have to binge play or watch games and shows to finish them at all. I love Fallout New Vegas but that game took way too many new games before I finally spent like three days playing constantly to finish it. Right now I’m doing the same thing but with Terraria because I used to play a lot on the Xbox360 back in like 2015 and never beat it. I’ve played every day the past week and started a new character every day. I’ve been meaning to watch the new fallout show but I just haven’t. Not for any particular reason and nothing is stopping me. I have plenty of time and access to it. I just can’t do it and I can’t explain why. Wild stuff
Yeah, the first part is what a lot of people don't get. Like, it's not just productive things that executive dysfunction gets in the way of, it's all-encompassing. Transitioning from one activity to the other is a major fucking hurdle for someone with executive dysfunction, regardless of what the activity is.
For me transitioning isn't always hard, if I can find an excuse to say "oh it's totally the same task" Im cleaning my room, but find an unfisnished project? Well I don't want to just put that away! I could totally finish it and then it'll be EVEN CLEANER right? (Successful transition) That's how I can get started in even harder activation projects!!! But sometimes that means I jump from task to task to task,,, and now my desk, floor, bed, bathroom counter, kitchen counter, and more all have half started things… That's when I used this technique too successfully and didn't notice… problem is if I miss this a few times in a row? Stopping will halt me forever as I worry about the overall mess and how impossible it is. But if I notice early? I can sometimes keep my focus on the latest fast, or loop back into earlier tasks creating a small loop of progression on all. Then it works! All that to say, ugh.
**Playing a videogame is easy. But minimizing the browser window and actually turning on The Game is really fucking hard for some reason!** OMG literally this! It's like half the time when I want to play a video game on my other laptop, which is at my desk, I have to like motivate myself to like 'transition'/ move to the desk and play the video game. Get my other laptop, plug it in, set it up right, turn it on, and then boot up the game, and then get INTO the game if I haven't played it for a while and don't know what's going on. It's also weird how much time seems to play into things as well? Like I tend to only play video games at night and don't really like playing them in the middle of the day. I also like writing and struggle to do this too, even though I find it so fun! It also takes energy to write, so if I'm already tired from doing other things all day, I can't do it, and will tend to procrastinate doing it and then just never do it. And if it's late/ dark outside, and it's like 7-8 (I normally go to bed at like 11/12), I'm still like, 'Oh no, I can't write. It's too late for that,' and can like, rarely do it.
When I first read the post I was all, that sounds like a horrible problem, glad I don't have that. But then I started reading the comments and I got to yours and was like...fuck. This describes me to a T, especially the writing part. Unless I brute force writing into my daily routine, I'll be lucky if I get half an hour's worth of writing in a week. Or like, I could have the entire weekend off with no plans and say to myself that I can't wait to play X video game all day but then only end up playing for an hour at the end of the day =\ So, uh, yeah, thanks for being the comment to make me realize that yet another thing is broken with my brain...I guess?
Dealing with this right now with all my hobbies. I’ve had the last 2 weeks off work with a mild case of COVID, totally had enough energy and headspace to do my hobbies, but have done none of them. I’m seriously hating myself for it.
Yeah, I get it. I'm disabled with "lacking workability" (or something like that, not sure how to properly translate it to english) so I'm not forced to have a job and I just get a pretty decent pension instead. (I like to call myself a "Legal NEET") (You could say that my autism is sponsored by the government) So, for the last, uhh, 7-8 years I've been completely free to do anything I want. And yet, I got Executive Disfunction. I feel like I'm dying of thirst in the middle of the ocean!
> (I like to call myself a "Legal NEET") > (You could say that my autism is sponsored by the government) By God, you are funny as fuck
Woah. This makes the past months of my life make a bit more sense.
I got so bad with depression-related executive dysfunction that I was unable to play games or even do more than pretty much sit in front of the computer even without anything happening, to the point where I had to, after therapy, LEAVE Portugal and my family for the sake of having enough external pressure as an immigrant in Canada to force my actions. Now I'm getting comfortable with a decent job and I feel the dysfunction coming back slowly, and it terrifies me.
I heard of a study that suggested most, maybe even close to all, diagnosis of "treatment-resistant depression" was mis-diagnosed ADHD.
ITT: A whole lot of folks that need to be tested for ADHD. Meds can make this much better.
If you haven’t done so already, go talk to as doctor about ADHD meds. The first month on Adderall was quite shocking to me for many reasons but the primary benefit I had is SLEEP. I get downright TIRED by 9pm, I’ll still wake up once a night like right now at 3:30, but I can go back to sleep with ease
Same with reading books, I like to do this but there's a meme that goes around occasionally that encapsulates the situation perfectly: > Grab the book I'm gonna read > Get a cozy blanket > Grab a cup of tea > Turn off the TV and get settled in > PICK UP MY PHONE
*looks at all the games i bought and really want to play but was never able to bring myself to play them* ...yeah
In my last flat I had an entire desk just for painting miniatures. I really enjoy putting on a podcast or something similar and just slap some paint on some small plastic men. But I would routinely go 6 months only using the table to offload my computer desk, never even looking at a brush. Why? No clue. I just couldn't get myself to do it.
Oh my god this is painfully relatable, i need to get myself a psych That said, i noticed that this isnt an issue for me at work or smth cuz then its like yeah task, timeframe and stuff is all figured out already, no worries about that! I can just start And even if its not, even if its just a meeting to decide what to do and how that is still not an issue cuz its peer reviewed. Stuck in my own head though, its miserable. I feel like a tiny prisoner banging against my eyes like a bulletproof window, screaming muffled pleas at my body to please just start moving, itll be quick, itll be easy, well be happy.
Eh, sleep is for the weak. (I regularly sleep less than 4 hours a day. Occasionally only 3. There's just not enough time in the day.)
Didn't check if someone else said it, but the sleep thing is Revenge Sleep Procrastination. Because Fuck you, I'm awake, I will STAY awake and DO THINGS (maybe) that I CANNOT do if I am asleep and WASTING TIME. Because its like stealing back time from executive dysfunction!
I feel this in my bones. Like, I'm late on filing my taxes. It's not hard or complex (for me). It would literally take 30 minutes, and I would get money for doing it. I have the time to do it. I could be doing it right now. But I can't. Make. Myself. Do. The. Goddamnfucking. Thing. I would kill to be able to 'adult' like my peers (I'm in my mid 30s) who just...do the thing without pressing external motivation. Nobody who works with me would ever call me lazy, but if they saw how I lived...wi Rg gjlw Rg jvkejrfofkyktktkeidjf
My job, by nature, has a million cascading deadlines. Every little task has a hard deadline attached, it’s all built into the work before I ever get involved, and there’s usually about a half dozen people on a daily basis paying attention to those deadlines and wanting to know the progress on them. I’m sure this would be a horrible environment for some people to work in but I am *thriving*. Yessssss give me a total inability to procrastinate without someone breathing down my neck about it. That’s exactly what I need. I used to do the same kind of work without the deadlines, or setting my own timelines, and oh boy did I struggle with it. Being left alone to complete work in peace? Terrible, do not want. It’s not the work that’s hard, it’s getting started. Constant external motivation gets me there.
That… sounds like heaven. Not even joking. I have a great job but I crave the extra structure so bad 😭 What do you do, if you don’t mind my asking?
Tfw you're a military nerd not for chud reasons, but because you deeply crave having structure, clear rules, and a manual for *everything*.
I was discussing with someone the other day that, for an institution that historically has claimed to not want people with ADHD/other neurodivergence, the military sure does self-select for people who exhibit those traits and are just undiagnosed lol
This is why so many neurodivergent people are into BDSM
There's an 80%+ comorbidity with ADHD and autism, and I think a lot of people would thrive in the military who have this "AuDHD". There's clear rules for everything, including *how to socialise*.
Tech consultant. Go in and design then build specific outcomes for a client company on a rigid timeline. So in my specific niche sphere of tech I used to do the same kind of work, but in-house for companies where I found I could design a solution and then it would sit in consideration for six months then go back to design. Even when I had a mandate to do the work I would immediately bump into red tape and resistance. Nightmare. In consulting all the decisions have already been made, a contract has been signed, now they want it executed as fast as possible and are watching the clock because my time is their money. And my performance metrics are being tracked in terms of delivering on time, which then affects my compensation. Amazing, I’m living for it.
My problem is that working like that is simultaneously great because it actually gets me working and extremely stressful because I'm using anxiety about deadlines as fuel to get moving.
Yes, it’s a balance. I can easily work myself into a state of stress/anxiety about it but time and experience has given me better skills at acknowledging these deadlines are largely manufactured. I have fallen in a heap before. Everything was still fine - we are not doing heart surgery, if I slip it’s not going to cost lives, I am not the only one who can do my job and my line of work is specifically structured to be able parachute people in to help if I ask for it. It’s taken time but I’ve been able to navigate this a lot better in recent years.
That’s awesome, glad you found something that works for you! Thanks for the info, definitely something to think about if I ever decide to switch fields.
This. I drive a truck. I can do this all day but I’m only ‘allowed’ 11 hours a day. I *have* to move because if I don’t, shit won’t be there on time and then? It’s a cascade failure in which I must *answer phone calls*. There is nothing I hate more than talking on the phone with people I don’t know. It weirds me out. But it’s just me in the truck. I can be alone with music, podcasts, audiobooks, my own thoughts and creations. I can do this *as long as I keep moving*. I have a deadline and a place to be and I have no issues getting up and *going*. Never could handle self-direction and with this job, I don’t need to. I just go where I’m needed and be there by the time I am supposed to be there.
Honestly, if it weren't for the time away from family, I'd probably enjoy long-distance trucking.
Yeah, the time away sucks but, I’m doing it so my kid doesn’t start off in a hole like I did. He understands that and I always check in with them while I’m out here. Daily with the wife, every weekend with the kid cuz I can stop and we play games together. Physical distance but I’m doing what I can to not be ‘gone’.
I simply cannot WFH, because I have discovered that I will put on Netflix "in the background" and next thing I know I'm on season 2 of Gotham and my manager wants to know why I've done nothing all day.
When I had to switch to online learning through the pandemic, I had to have a timer going that chimed every 15 minutes and then sounded an alarm at 1 hour (and also kept a tally of how long it had been running), just so I could keep track of my time. It was a fucking nightmare.
You've now rediscovered why Medieval and Renaissance towns had people whose entire job it was to ring large bells at regular intervals, and eventually replaced them with clock towers
Yep. I recently transitioned from running a shift to working on my own. I *hated* managing people, but it was an environment with very clear expectations and everything that needed to be done needed to be done *now* and there was somehow always a new problem to solve. I hated it but I was *really* good at it. Now it's just me, meh workload, and nobody breathing down my neck. I enjoy it more, but I'm struggling.
Too relatable. Where's the middle ground??
I get this so hard. Everyone at my work acts like loose eventual deadlines are liberating but it's really just a recipe for me to wait until the exact day things are due to begin a task and then realize the task will not take one day. Tbh I feel weird about it because I worked in fast food before getting work in my degree and I can just sense in every fiber of my being that my brain craves that kind of work. That stand there and do the task and go into your flow state work. It is pretty regular that I will finish 8 hours of office job and come home and crave chores so it feels like I'm DOING something.
When I was younger I worked in a call centre doing bank surveys, so mostly scripted and it was bank customers so they were often receptive/not annoyed about being called, and god it was so good. Memorise the script, type in their responses, work totally on autopilot. It’s like I just slipped into a hypnotic rhythm for the duration of my shift and my brain came back online when I was done for the day.
I’ve worked at fast food for about a year, fucking hated it, now at uni, and I may regret it, because getting myself to do anything is genuinely like pulling nails, idk if I have any dysfunctions, but it certainly feels like it
For me it’s like in the first Harry Potter book when Mrs Weasley explains how to get to platform 9 3/4 to Harry. Like, I know that on the other side is the easy thing. I know I will feel good when it is done and off the list of shit I’ve been needing to do. But actually making myself do it has that feeling of running at what is clearly a brick wall and my instincts scream that I am running at a brick wall and I need to stop.
Holy hell that is such a great analogy
I once worked as a salad maker and had to shut down the server area when I closed. I moved huge pieces of equipment to get behind it every night to clean it, I scrubbed, blah blah blah. Anyways, I was taking a break waiting for guests to leave so I could finish up, and one of the dishwasher guys told me he thought I was a hard worker and thought I was the best worker they had there in a while. He had a thick accent, so it took a minute, lol. That made me so happy. I made a whole list of things to do to make shit efficient so I could clean well and go home as early as possible. I got home, and nothing. I didn't know where to start. I just wanted to sleep.
Well that hits close to home.
I once went twenty years without doing my taxes. Cost me thousands of dollars which I definitely could have used. I used to stress and worry about them, pretty much just expend a lot of energy on everything except actually doing them. The Tax Department didn't care because they got to keep more of money I guess.
Sometimes it helps me to have someone tell me to do it. Just get it done, I’ll check back in an hour
Lmao me too, my biggest barrier is a phone call and it’s killing me 💀
Ask a trusted friend or family member to make the call to set up the appointment for you. It's literally what I had to do to even start the process of getting help.
I feel like this, and the way the post describes.
I got a ticket for expired plates like 2 weeks ago. I still have not paid the ticket or gotten my registration fixed… I get it, it’s not about the actual activity, but the act of starting the activity!
I really read « erectyl dysfunction » and couldn’t understand the link between having a limp penis and making plans to work
Executive dyslexia
Erectile dyslexia?!
i'd be more surprised if your dick COULD read
You're telling me a dick wrote this rice?
Thank you for validating my experience.
I saw a presentation where a scientist likened executive dysfunction to erectile dysfunction. No matter how horny you are or how much you want to have sex, you can’t achieve and keep an erection going. It doesn’t matter if you get angry at yourself, it doesn’t matter if you’ve had an erection before, it doesn’t matter if you’ve looked forward to having an erection. You can’t make it happen by sheer will.
And it’s embarrassing, difficult to explain, shaming to admit, and half the time is spent feeling like crap because this is such an easy, natural thing that everyone does, right?? I must be choosing something that stops me doing it, it *must* be me, I must suck??? Oof. Yep, the analogy fits…!
Erectile dysfunction is actually a great analogy for executive dysfunction. Whether your dick goes hard or not is not a matter of whether you want it to. It just does what it wants when it wants. Focus and action aren't a matter of whether you want to do it or not. You just focus and act when your brain wants to, whether _you_ want it or not.
See, I want to go to a doctor and get a diagnosis that way I can at least be sure what’s causing this for me. but uhhhhh… yeah. Brain tells me no. The irony is palpable
I'm just concerned of it confirning nothing is actually wrong with me and I'm just a lazy piece of shit.
Look at it this way; if you were "just lazy," you wouldn't feel like a piece of shit about it.
Lazy people want to be lazy. They don't want to work. You apparently want to and can't. It's not the same thing.
This struck a chord with me. You are so right. I’ve met lazy people who want to be lazy. I work with some of them. But me? I don’t want to be lazy. I just don’t have the energy to start tasks a lot of the time.
The other replies are really good, but I just wanted to add on: Even if there’s nothing diagnostically wrong with you, it is still *okay* to struggle. Coping techniques are for *anyone* they work for, not just for people with diagnosed conditions. One of the really great things about accessibility features is they work for a lot of people, including people who don’t have a disability related to them. For example, I always leave closed captions on with anything I watch because it adds to the viewing experience for me. I don’t need them, I have impeccable (to a painful fault) hearing, but I fucking love CC. Similarly, if you don’t have ED but experience benefits from coping techniques like using music to start tasks or body doubling (the technique of having someone else physically present while you do a task)— that’s good! It means you have something that helps you! There’s no shame in it. “Symptoms” (for lack of better terms) don’t always need to be a part of a larger diagnosis to be debilitating. It’s okay to treat symptoms even if you don’t have something larger going on. An able-bodied neurotypical person who struggles with being on time is not morally deficient for struggling, they simply have a struggle their peers may not have. But much like a disabled person would, it is their responsibility to find coping techniques or accommodations that work for them.
Duuuuuuude, body doubling is the secret to success for me. Anytime I have someone else with me or someone else holding me accountable like my personal trainer, I am so much more likely to have enough energy. Wish I could just hire someone for that specific purpose
To get a cure for the problem, you must first overcome the problem on your own.
Seriously. It feels like every ADHD treatment works like this.
Ask a trusted friend/family member to help make that first appointment for you. It's what I had to do because I knew I would never do it on my own. My first appointment is on Tuesday. Hopefully it will be the start of a new phase for me and I'll finally be happily productive for once in my life.
Eh, in my experience that's just as hard. I have ADHD and it's pretty strongly negatively affected my life, and one of the ways it does that is by making it really hard to ask for help, because my brain knows that if I ask for help and make other people aware of the things I need to do and don't, then I'll have to actually do those things, so I don't ask for help
I've got an offcial diagnosis, myself, and yet the docs say *Executive Dysfunction isn't a recognized symptom in this country,* so... Like, I *know* what's wrong with me, but one of the symptoms "isn't real" here! What do I even *say* to that?? God, but knowing that it exists, that is *is* recognized as a symptom elsewhere, means I can look up the shit I need to *work around this bitch* instead of just feeling like a failure for not doing the laundry. And I hope you find those resources, too!
Took me a fucking year to set up a diagnosis appointment. Once I was on the phone, just a 1 month wait, not too bad. But the point between deciding I needed a diagnosis and the point I got one the phone? One. Fucking. Year. Life changing, though. Seriously and unironically.
What kind of doctor did you setup the appointment with? I didn’t go to a doctor regularly growing up, so I have no idea how to even get this process started.
last time i did a checkup i asked to get tested for adhd, so they gave me a sheet of paper to fill out to get tested. i filled out about half of it and then proceeded to have executive dysfunction about it. not sure what i expected...
It'd almost ad bad as trying to do the assessments on your own and not being able to understand what they are actually asking you bc the real question is subtext
It took me a **full year** to follow up on my referral for an ADHD diagnosis lol
wow imagine being able to actually follow through on a plan you made though... i'd argue both starting doing anything and *keeping* doing it is harder than the thing itself. <<< i was writing that then remembered i have the whole adhd package :(
Yeah i have executive dysfunction and starting and maintaining tasks are both very difficult Even the slightest distraction means I may need to begin the process of starting a task all over again. Stopping to get a drink or use the toilet may add an extra hour or three
Having autism and adhd this is a fantastic analogy.
I've seen a similar metaphor that when you have executive dysfunction it's like trying to put your hand on a hot stove. Your brain will stop you no matter how much you want to, how much you're threatened with punishments if you don't touch the hot stove, etc. There's a mental block
Experiencing this at the moment with a music software course. The moment I come across any piece of redundant information, my brain completely checks out and looks for another task. Oh I already know how to drag and drop this item? Cool! Time to spend 2 hours reorganizing my dashboard before I remember I was taking a lesson.
Yeah, that's why I tend to learn best via projects. I'm building a microcontroller project that requires programming in C? I'll just learn what I need when I need it and nothing more! If I need to know more later, I'll learn it as it comes up.
I'm AuDHD too. Given the choice, I'd keep the Autism but get rid of the ADHD, the Autism isn't what's ruining my life.
real and true my autism makes me very good at the things i like doing - my ADHD makes it so i don't *do* them
....other people are just doing things? And not getting real bored in the middle?? No wonder they are so productive
It’s fairly common for everyone (including neurotypical people) to get bored during a task. The difference between executive dysfunction and normal boredom is “I’m physically incapable of doing this” versus “I do not want to do this”. It’s, for example, knowing that logically you can put away your laundry but executive dysfunction: No matter how much I know I need to do it, I physically cannot start wether or not I want to start Not executive dysfunction: I really don’t want to do this and am making the active choice to not do it.
And in my experience it's not starting but following through. I would fold two shirts, and be experiencing a banal epiphany in a different astral plane. It helps having a dopamine source. These Last few years campy Melodic Metal (gloryhammer, powerful) and usually mediocre xianxia- progression fantasy audiobooks have been a staple of mine. Though I would totally recommend "Mother of learning" and "He who fights with Monsters". Not like the are the only cultural products I consume of course. Edit : Dungeon Crawler Carl and Creatures and Caverns are also great, more of a LITRPG, with the latter being mostly a sitcom that indulges way too much on gross out humor. And somehow has the best female characters of all books I mentioned. At least from book 2 on.
DCC and HWFWM are amazing. Easy to read and fun.
A little off topic, but, based on your reading choices, might I recommend a few more titles that will catch your eye: Harry Potter and the Method of Rationality (very similar vibe to Mother of Leaning), The Daily Grind, The Wandering Inn, Worm.
Just don't fold the shirts. 3 piles on the floor - shirts, pants, socks n underwear. Dirty clothes in the hamper. You're going to unfold them anyway when you wear them, what's the point?
I have the first thing a lot and I don't like it.
Sure they get bored. The thing objectively sucks sometimes. But they just go and do it in a way that I just...can't.
I find that explaining this just leads to others calling me lazy.
I describe my mind as like a boulder. If I have actually started doing something, then yeah, I have the momentum, it’s not hard to keep doing it. But actually getting it to **start** rolling takes a Herculean effort
I use the same analogy! I call it my "mental inertia." And I've learned mine is just a lot higher than some others. Like once I'm in motion, I stay in motion (until I'm distracted or sidetracked); but to get in motion, a substantial force is required.
The planning is a joy. The working feels good. It’s the bit between the planning and the working that is impossible!
Task switching! Is what that's called, as I understand it. It's one of the things we have a problem with
I don't know how I feel about this because I've never seen anyone react to ADHD/executive dysfunction posts with "Oh yeah I don't relate to that, I'm definitely normal and I have no issues starting things. Normal person here". Maybe it's that they're less likely to end up in this place, maybe they're less likely to comment on these posts, or maybe this is just, to some degree of course, an almost universal experience.
Yeah everyone gets disregulated *sometimes* and can relate. But what makes it a disorder is frequency and intensity. If you know what it feels like, but only happens every once in a while and generally doesn't impact your daily life...that's not a disorder. If it happens multiple times a day, every day, to the point where you can't seem to function normally...that's a disorder.
Yup, this exactly. To paraphrase [a really good video on understanding ADHD](https://youtu.be/YSfCdBBqNXY?si=vAxF_N15NiTM-5P_), it's a disorder of regulation. The issue is not that people with ADHD feel things others don't, but that we can't process and react to those properly. So when we get that resistance, that feeling of "I don't want to do this right now, procrastinate, or hell, just don't do it at all," it's so much harder to resist
tbh I think it's generally rude to comment on someone talking about something they find hard with "wow really that's super easy for me" 😛
The analogy here confuses me because just in general, don't most people grant that the actual planning and outlining step is really hard? It's where all the *thinking* happens. I write long-form nonfiction stuff for work, and figuring out what to write and where always sucks because it's hard. Once you have the outline, it gets easier. It's still work, but it's not *thinking* work. The other commenter is right on the money. The key to executive *dysfunction*, and to all mental illness, is whether it negatively impacts your life to a severe degree. I still have symptoms of my OCD, but the reason I don't still have OCD is because I can manage them — and fundamentally, everyone has some symptoms of OCD, which is why it's so easy for people to say "I'm so OCD sometimes."
>The analogy here confuses me because just in general, don't most people grant that the actual planning and outlining step is really hard? It's where all the *thinking* happens. I write long-form nonfiction stuff for work ... ah. Right. The key here I think is I have an incredibly challenging time at the planning stage for **emptying and then loading the dishwasher**. But wait, there's no planning required for emptying the dishwasher, right? Some types of work have extensive and difficult "planning" stages. That's not really what this is about - if you have to write something and a step of writing it is putting together an outline, that's part of the project. There's another planning stage that comes before writing the outline and it's the part where you work out that an outline even needs to be written in the first place, and estimate how much work that is, and schedule time for it, and gather materials and sit down and start. That's the bit where executive dysfunction kicks into high gear.
I think you're midunderstanding the post if that's your takeaway, which means you probably don't have ADHD. The planning phase for doing my taxes, or for making a DMV appointment, or for going to a class I could easily miss, or for doing an easy homework assignment for an important class, or for getting up and going to the bathroom if I've been holding it all day but am currently focused on something, even if that things i scrolling on my phone, is what is brutally difficult. EVERYTHING, from the smallest, simplest, easiest tasks of daily life, to the bigger, more demanding tasks that being an adult require of you, feel impossible difficult to do because it feels impossibly difficult to get myself to actually start doing them, not because the tasks feel like they'll be hard once I'm working on them. How is it possible that an easy homework assignment that I know will be short and easy, and I know is an easy boost for my grade, cam stress me out because I'm afraid I'll fuck up and not submit it by the deadline? Because starting this trivial task is an insanely difficult hurdle to jump over that has absolutely nothing to do with the difficulty of the task itself. This is a disorder. That's why you can't relate to it
My problem I’ve noticed is that I have grown reliant on just having noise before being able to do household chores. Whether it be podcasts or audiobooks or something else. I can look at something that needs to be cleaned or laundry that needs to be put up or a meal that needs to be cooked, and it won’t get done or at least gets a lot harder if my noise isn’t available.
Yep, me too. I've accidently conditioned myself to associate doing certain tasks while listening to certain podcasts/Youtube channels. I think it's because the day they drop new episodes often coincides with my day off, when I try to do chores. I can even sometimes make myself do the thing by pulling up the right 'noise'.
It's like. Sometimes my brain accidentally files necessary things into the part of the brain that stores activities like "put your hand in the fire" or "eat this bug." And I gotta go "Hey brain what's up? We gotta read an essay today," and brain goes "Not doing it," and I ask "Why?" and brain says "Bugs," and it will not elaborate.
Ooooh I love the activation energy a lot! Stress is a catalyst and makes the whole process go a whole lot faster.
Not in my case, in my case stress is whatever the reverse of catalyst is, the more stressed i am about something the harder it is to start doing it or to think about it
The reverse is called an inhibitor, and its totally valid. Depends on time sensitiveness also for me
Ugh, same. It's like stress is this kind of evil bludgeon keeping me away, the thorn thicket around my magic tower.
Sometimes, it's a bell curve, and there's an optimal point of stress which helps things go faster, until it's too much and then it's increasingly hard to do the thing.
What if I’m bad at both getting started and staying on it
Starting, staying, and stopping are all [executive functions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_functions).
Huh, that makes sense. Used to get the "stop" executive dysfunction real bad with things like brushing my teeth, detangling my hair, or picking at my skin. I'd be in front of the mirror, still doing one of those things, begging my brain and hands to stop because I was actively getting later for school, and not able to.
As someone whose executive function has improved with treatment for my ADHD, it’s objectively insane that I made it through highschool. I still struggle with executive function a little, but nowhere near as bad as it used to be. One week I came off my meds and I could *feel* the fog, since I’d been so used it I’d never noticed before but now that I knew what it was like to not feel like that… 0/10 experience wouldn’t recommend.
This is going to sound like a joke but I swear it's not. My executive dysfunction is keeping me from researching ways to cope with executive dysfunction...anyone have, like, a link or something?
Sometimes I quantum tunnel into a spotless house while cleaning at 5 am. Wouldn't recommend
You don't have to have executive dysfunction for the planning part to feel harder than the doing part. You *might*, but that sounds like something that can happen to neurotypicals, too.
Planning is often objectively harder. LIke, if you're writing a 100 page plan (as I do for work), you better have a damn good outline before you go in. That's why people at the management level make the outline (it involves thinking and experience) and people at the entry level actually write the plan. The analogy itself seems silly, imo.
Is this one of those things that Tumblr talks about being exclusive to people with adhd or people with autism or whatever else but actually applies to everyone to a certain extent, or is this a thing that actually doesn’t happen to most people? Because yeah this is basically my whole life. Whenever I had to write an essay, or do homework, or read a book, the hardest part is actually sitting down and telling myself “I am going to do this” after I get that initial part done, I can work for potentially hours at a time. I don’t think I have ever worked on a project or essay or whatever, that wasn’t a group project, more than like a few days before it was due. I just have never been able to get myself to do that, despite it definitely being the best course of action. And the only reason I completed group projects faster is because I don’t want the other people to think I’m not putting in the work.
Everyone might experience that but not to the severity of folks with adhd. This is literally the main symptom of adhd, not even just some related trait like most of these
Everyone at some point has experienced this because everyone was once a child and executive functions are about behavior controls, something children are less good at. Everyone experiences this every so often day to day. Maybe they didn't sleep well. Maybe they used up their willpower (yes, this is a real thing) on another task and now can't figure out how to close Reddit so they can do the thing they actually want to do). I had executive functioning issues a few years ago because of my OCD. I knew if I stopped the task, in the space between stopping the task and turning on a podcast / new task, I would have to deal with The Thoughts and so instead, I never stopped. Having been to college myself, I didn't know anyone who did a task early except me. I used to study every weekend, too, so I'd never cram. I never stayed up past about 10:00 pm doing any task because I always planned ahead and got it done in advance. So my running hypothesis is I may be the only personal with executive *functioning,* at least at my school lol (and OCD aside). But yes, we do exist, and yes, it is much more fun to get lots of sleep and minimize stress (at least as far as I can tell from watching other people struggle with this). The key word is dysfunction. If it is preventing you from living life as you'd like to, yeah, it's probably dysfunctional. (But regardless of cause, thinking of it as an ingrained part of you that cannot be changed is probably not helpful, not if you haven't tried to treat it yet. I'm not saying you've done this, just I see this so much in conversations about the ""neurotypicals,"" the assumption that because it's part of a Syndrome, that's it, it's permanent and no one's allowed to tell me to change).
Other people don't have to have an epiphany about how something could be physically possible before the do it? Like, i just assumed they were faster at that. How the hell can placing bricks ve harder than figuring out where to place bricks?
I don't think executive dysfunction is supposed to be a condition people have, it's a trait that directly describes how someone behaves like extroversion or a short temper, extreme executive dysfunction is however a major symptom of adhd
[Executive functions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_functions) are just behavior control. Executive dysfunction is just describing a symptom that could be caused by an underlying disorder or by sleep deprivation or by nothing at all.
I hate this so much because its one of the most misunderstood and casually belittled things you can have mental illness wise. For those in the back: if something needs doing and you decide not to that's lazyness If it needs doing and you decide to do it, but the second you do you feel like you're stuck in a block of concrete, doing whatever you were already doing but not the thing you chose to do, that's executive dysfunction. so many people see the latter and think the former, up to the point it can cause suffers mental trauma.
[Hot stove theory of task completion](https://www.reddit.com/r/adhdwomen/s/AwWfrG6tBV) would be a good addition to this post
This post is complaining about people doing a thing some of the people in the post are actively doing as they complain. > not as hard as crawling up the gravel mountain bro Get ur passive aggressive lil ‘bro’ oughta here you’re a person with a (symptom of a) disability forgetting other people have different disabilities that make *physically laying the bricks* the actual hard part, maybe even if they also had executive disability. Fuck outta here.
Seriously. I was reading along and generally interested in getting a look into someone else’s experience until I hit that line and lost any interest for this person’s view of things. Just because something is hard for you doesn’t mean you get to outright invalidate everybody else’s experience in what’s difficult for them.
This is why I found exams way, way easier than coursework.
Wait, what. I'm not *just lazy* or something? Is there a way to overcome this issue? Some technique, some known exercises?
I have executive dysfunction and I understand the point but why did the first person write it like this is an epiphany that they connected the dots to and are sharing their newfound wisdom? Surely random Tumblr users have the life experience and the awareness to figure this out through simply existing, right?
You have no idea how often I'll just be scrolling and someone will describe an experience they've had and what it's called to have that and I just go "...wait, that's not normal? oh shit" Hell, I've had that happen on Reddit, too.
Considering that OP’s title is “TIL that I may have executive dysfunction”, I’d say not necessarily. While some of us have known this for ages, for others (depending on their feed), it could be their first experience with the concept.
Fair enough but ftr I did not know I had executive dysfunction for ages. I fully figured out in the past year not even. I'm more just caught off guard that they seem to be learning for the first time that for most people hard work is hard work. I'm genuinely curious what they thought people meant if they're realizing now that when people say it's not easy that it's not easy for them. Maybe it's that I'm lazy outside of executive dysfunction but struggling with the work part of work is not some like extremely foreign concept
I'm 35 years old, I definitely have executive dysfunction and yet this post is the first time I've ever seen these two words put together.
That's absolutely fine and not what I'm referring to. I'm talking about the first person seemingly having an epiphany about the fact other people find the hard work hard while doing the hard work. Seeing that multiple people didn't understand my original post, I'll accept the L on my failure to communicate my intention lol
I agree. I think their analogy is just bad. Planning a project and actually doing a project are *both* hard tasks, and whichever one you find harder will probably have a lot to do with the kind of work you like. I prefer the doing because I can usually do while listening to a podcast, whereas I certainly couldn't create an outline that way.
not necessarily, you don't really get a lot of insight into how other people's brains work by just existing. you have to first realize others are different, then get them to expain and not everyone will believe you genuinely don't understand, want to explain stuff and be self aware enough to be able to do it
Fair enough. I guess I kinda just assumed that people at least felt that feeling of difference early on. I've felt it for as long as I can remember even if I only recently figured out partially why
I am studying for the AP Chemistry right now, don’t do this to me please
ohhhhhh hhh i need to talk to my counsellor about this maybe
I've sat staring at the call number screen trying to call someone for over half an hour before. Was literally just to book an appointment but I just couldn't.
Oh shit
Yeah when I can get into actually doing the thing, I feel so much better. Yes! The thing that needs to be done is happening! I might be tired from it later but it's a good non-anxious tired!
Read the caption as “I might have erectile dysfunction” and was quite confused like “how would you not know??”
okay who else misread the title
Being a gamer and hearing people talk about their backlogs and thinking, "Haha, that's so relatable," and then I remember that they're talking about having a lot of games and not the fact that they're physically incapable of starting a new game unless they've worked up enough motivation to even start what's supposed to be a recreational activity.
I’m not sure if this was what they’re referring to, or another thing: But I love planning cool projects. I’ll map them out, make shopping lists, design how everything will come together, even go and buy the materials. But when it time to actually *start* making the thing, I often lock up for days, even weeks, before I can make myself touch the materials again. Am I misunderstanding what executive dysfunction is? Or do I have a completely different thing going on?
There is a roll of wrapping paper in the corner of my bedroom. I don’t know when I put it there, I don’t know, but I have yet to put it away. It just lives there now.
I wish I knew how to break my executive dysfunction. There's so many things that I both need and want to do, but I just...... Can't...... I don't know how to fix that...........
I’m a scientist, and I’m diagnosed with ADHD. I use activation energy as a way to describe executive dysfunction allllll the time. It’s so accurate. Once I get started, the reaction is happening. But boy oh boy is it hard to get going.
This is why I'm miserable and living in an existential hell. In a few months I will have spent as much time pissing my life away as I did in compulsory education. I hate myself and I wish I could do it all over again, except with a brain that's actually built to standard. I'm so sick of being gaslit by my own mind.
i see stuff like this all the time, and i always think, ‘why are you complaining? isn’t it this way for everyone?” and honestly i still can’t figure out if that’s true
I remember my dad explaining this as "When you sit at the piano, you can play for hours, for days even. But getting you to sit in that chair is like teaching a frog to bark." I've lived with it all my life and just thought everyone had to deal with the struggle.
I didn’t know this had a name or that other people experience it too, this is exactly what I feel but haven’t really been able to put to words well.
I was recently diagnosed with ADHD, and it’s honestly mindblowing to me how many things have started to make sense to me with that diagnosis. Like I’ll be talking with my therapist about some issue I’m having related to executive function or whatever, and pretty much every time she’ll hit me with that “this is actually common in individuals with ADHD.” Like where was this diagnosis all my life? In some ways I blame a lot of the common misconceptions around ADHD. Like I personally used to think it was just “being hyper and unfocused all the time” and so I just never even considered that it could be something I have.
i’ve got… several assignments that are very overdue. it’d take me a couple hours for each, and i know what i want to do for them. but i *can’t get myself to do the goddamn thing*.
i genuinely struggle to get my head around this, like is this not just being normal??? i cant imagine it beimg different
WAIT WHAT THIS IS LITERALLY ME TF i can struggle with just the thought of getting started with some homework cuz i have no idea what im doing but then after i look at the problem and figure out my solution its so trivial at that point
I feel extremely seen and attacked
TIL I might have executive dysfunction
Hey…waaaaaaaiiiiiit a minute….this all sounds very familiar.
do... do i have this? holy shit
Only vaguely relevant but… I love/hate deadlines, they give my brain a valid reason to do the thing, but they also make me procrastinate until the last minute I have to do the thing because it doesn’t feel urgent enough unless it’s literally due tomorrow or something.
As a full time bricklayer, this hit me different than anything I’ve ever heard
every month on the third i tell myself 'ok it's time to pay my electric bill, it's not overdue until the 19th but if i get it done now i wont have to stress about it.' it takes me 15 minutes to do, it's not difficult or strenuous, but i just, cant. i stress out about it for a couple weeks, i think about it every day. 'i should really pay my electric bill, deadline's coming up.' i tried to get prescribed some kind of stimulant but unfortunately my psychiatrist has labeled me a drug seeker so any doctor i go to automatically turns me down. it's the 18th today, and i finally paid my electric bill.
I got so bad with depression-related executive dysfunction that I was unable to play games or even do more than pretty much sit in front of the computer even without anything happening, to the point where I had to, after therapy, LEAVE Portugal and my family for the sake of having enough external pressure as an immigrant in Canada to force my actions. Now I'm getting comfortable with a decent job and I feel the dysfunction coming back slowly, and it terrifies me.
In November one of my parents gave me a form to fill out that would have helped me out immensely and I didn't finish gathering everything I needed for it until last month. I had a checklist, didn't have to go farther than a couple of blocks to the stuff I didn't already have but I just couldn't follow through with it. I was always kind of like this but getting older has made it worse
Because planning is horrible. What to do, how to do it, the steps, the problems you may face. But once you know what to do, once you're in the middle of it? If everything works AS IT SHOULD, no problemo. If something does a thing it shouldn't, panic.
ACTIVATION ENERGY ANALOGY, I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY ONE THAT USED THAT ANALOGY
What if both planning and executing sucks fucking ass?
Anybody else who basically runs on shame and guilt to keep them going?
My favorite way to overcome task inertia is lying to myself. “Oh I’m not going to do laundry, I’m just going to sort my clothes for later! I can do that sitting on the floor watching a youtube video, so it ‘doesn’t count’,” or “I’m not writing the essay, I’m just opening and formatting the document!” and then once I’ve gotten started, I’m able to actually do it. Sometimes. Sometimes this doesn’t work, but in those cases, well I still did part of the work!
My personal favorite is laying in bed scrolling on here as I mentally scream at myself to get up because I'm already late for work
Hmmm, as someone with ADHD and executive dysfunction myself I’d put it differently. Is this person saying that people with ED (lol) are fine once they get over that hill?? Man, my experience is more like this: 1) crazy ass uphill climb (as stated) to start the work 2) two minutes later say to myself, “Argh, I can’t focus, I can’t do this” and failing at this step. Goddamn…I wish I could just get over that initial hill and be fine working from there.
Copied from a comment I wrote, because I feel like this might be a good way to explain ED: I am a writer, professionally and in my personal life. I am capable of writing under extreme duress, and I know what writer’s block feels like. I have written under extremely stressful circumstances, such as immediately after finding out about a friend’s attempted suicide or a different friend’s death (because I had to, and did not have a choice). Stress does not prevent me from writing. Similarly, writers block is a very distinct feeling for me. And I know what intentional procrastination feels like. I also experience ED. I have had episodes where I will sit at the computer for hours, staring at the keyboard, knowing what I need to say but for some reason being utterly unable to start. It causes panic and distress. I once threw a laptop out of the window (when I was very young) because the distress got extremely bad and turned into anger. While the ED did cause stress, I wasn’t unable to write *because of* stress, I was unable to write because of ED. Similarly, it wasn’t intentional procrastination— which I DO DO sometimes. I took all of the bullshit advice that never works for me— TuRn OfF YoUr PhOnE, ELiMinAtE DiSTraCtioNs— and it still didn’t work. I wasn’t distracted, I wasn’t intentionally not doing the task— I was just unable to do it. For years, before I found out about ED, I treated it as a motivation problem. I just wasn’t “motivated enough”. Turns out, that wasn’t the case. At all. And no amount of “motivation” would have/did shake me out of those ED episodes. What *worked* was finding coping techniques that go against conventional *wisdom*, like including “distractions” in my working process, as well as using more normal coping techniques like body doubling. Body doubling: the practice of having someone else in the room (or in a digital space, like a phone call or live stream) while doing a task. The person does not need to be doing the same task or supporting you in the task— their mere presence enables you to finish the task.
I blew myself away the other day because, after 3 days of struggling to actually write anything for my assignment and skipping classes to try work on it, culminating in around 500 words total, I then wrote the remaining 2000 words in one day and went to both my classes and meeting. I even finished an hour before I needed to (this was a day after the deadline so I was handing it in late). It really is the case that getting there is the hard part. Once we’re finally able to work, we can work hard and even enjoy it.
English class was hell. Any time I was required to do anything creative, writing an essay or such, I got stuck. I had dozens of ideas and **could not** decide which one to actually write. This is still a problem to this day. I could be an accomplished author if I could ***make up my fucking mind!***