ADHD memes

what they mean by that is, "thank god they learned to mask the problem so they stop inconveniencing us"

Of course it got worse, I have to work now

Turns out that people don't "grow out of" physiological differences in how their prefrontal cortex forms. Who would have thought?! /s

I don’t have the ADHD. I am the ADHD.

I don't think the ADHD necessarily gets worse, it's more often that the consequences get worse.

I.e. the intensity of the disorder relative to a given set of stimuli doesn't increase, but the average significance of the stimuli (and consequently the outcome of one's reaction to them) does increase.

You could argue that's a meaningless distinction, but perhaps it's a helpful change in perspective for someone.

It can get worse after school because not having a schedule imposed on you means you're left to your own devices and will often focus too much energy towards the wrong endeavors. Building a routine of healthy habits and sticking to it can make a world of difference.

I visited my first psychiatrist this year and told him I have concerns that I was adhd.

I shit you not a fucking Dr of psychiatry told me that was very unlikely because they would've caught it when I was a child.

Fucking moron.

The officially changed it in my country to be an syndrome diagnosable in adults as well the very year I turned 18. I'm not saying it HAS to be because of me, but yeah.

You want me to pay bills? On time? Best I can do is rack up late fees.

Yeah. I feel like it never bothered me when younger (he's "gifted and mature") but you get screwed later on when you have a 8-5 office job where you sit and stare for 9 hours. I can't focus on boring useless stuff like that. Unfortunately, the alternative is destroy your body doing manual labor to keep moving around. Plus. You make a lot more money sitting and staring at a screen. So just keep it bottled up and pretend you know what you're doing and don't feel like going nuts!

Man it got worse in ways i didn't think possible.

So convinced i understood myself and i actually masterminded my soul into stagnation...

..but a hand come out of the mud

…because if it got better, you don’t know about it?

Well, there is partial truth to this. Diagnosing especially preteens with mental health conditions almost always needs an asterisk, their brains are still heavily developing.

Remember that we know of no reliable genetic / physiological markers for ADHD, so when doctors diagnose it, they're really just saying that the amount of symptoms seems to be severe enough. Some kids are just naturally more energetic, intelligent, etc. and may appear like they have ADHD, but when they develop into adults that might not actually be the case.

If anything, it's more like 1/3 of kids were misdiagnosed as having ADHD, so they "grew" out of it because they didn't really have it. It's a lot less likely for an adult to be misdiagnosed because their brains aren't changing.

It definitely got less hyperactive and more fogbrain, as I like to call it.

Which psychologists are those? A lot of the people I know that have only gone to apsychologist as an adult have been told, "wow did you know you've had ADHD you're whole life," and they're like "omg no but that makes so much sense."

Like I think it's more common to be an adult who doesn't know they have ADHD because they don't go to a psychologist, rather than having been a kid who was told they'd grow out of it by a psychologist, yah know?

I guess my point is this meme creates unnecessary stigma around seeing a psychologist, and you should see one if you think you should.

It bothers me that no one acknowledged that this can still be logically true. Of course if most people's ADHD goes away in childhood then it doesn't really logically mean anything to ask "most people you know with ADHD" because by definition, you will only be asking the subset of people for whom that isn't true.

You can't really survey the people for whom ADHD went away in childhood by asking all the people you know with ADHD because the people who would confirm the psychologist's claim are not going to be included in that survey.