An inclusive solution is needed for individuals with severe ADHD and ASD.

[Madyar]

It's quite debatable how differently people experience life. For some people, waking up in the morning and experiencing this dream feels like a much quieter experience inside their own minds. They can focus specifically on one task or topic and try to get it done without their minds jumping around or glitching on them. This description is particularly relatable to people struggling with ADHD and ASD.

On the other hand, life for individuals with these conditions can feel like a burden. Your mind seems to operate independently of you, constantly trying to identify patterns, connect pieces of information, and solve puzzles on its own, almost like a separate entity. At first, you might not consider this a severe or serious issue, but as you grow older, you begin to realize how much this trait consumes your ability to function in everyday life.

A person with these characteristics might not necessarily have trouble doing their work, but interference from autonomous mental activity keeps appearing while they're trying to complete a task. It's really difficult to describe, but I'll try my best: it's almost as if your body is trying to do something while your mind keeps interfering, attempting to find some underlying truth or meaning in whatever you're doing. It's almost impossible to disengage from this process.

If you're experiencing this kind of situation, what have you found to be effective?

I used to smoke weed here and there for a few years, but I feel like it made the situation worse. Currently, I'm taking a few codeine pills every week. I know it's not the best solution, but it helps me sedate myself a little.

[LordFall]

I definitely don't have this problem fully solved but I have a few coping strategies that have worked decently for me. I was diagnosed with ADHD at 16 years old and I tried the meds that they gave me around that time but I found them to be mostly overstimulating and not that effective so I've been dealing with it on my own since then.

Definitely meditate as often as possible, ideally daily. It lets me integrate that neurotic buzzing of information into more quiet and streamlined thoughts. 

Put your thoughts on paper or ideally in a common place book/second brain software like Obsidian. Once you start to organize your goals and ideas then your subconscious has less incentive to keep bombarding you with random thoughts and ideas. I think it does that as an overcompensation for survival. 

Use an LLM to sort through your seemingly unrelated ideas. Other humans have trouble with organizing a stream of consciousness style of conversation and end up confused if you throw your ideas at them but AI is made for it. I like to first write out sudden inspirations in my Obsidian then I I have conversations with Gemini about it to make sense of it. 

This is a good video on it by a famous ADHD researcher Russell Barkley on its main symptom: executive dysfunction.

Here are the 5 main ones that he identifies

1 - Inhibit behaviour
2 - Using visual imagery which bundles Hindsight and having a sense of time
3 - Talk to yourself in the mind, verbal working memory
4 - Emotional control linked to motivation
5 - Planing and problem solving

Basically we have a tendency to overthink and have trouble taking consistent action. That can lead to starting projects and leaving them unfinished over and over. It's definitely one of my symptoms but that's also the work style of a polymath that seeks to master life and reality as a whole as opposed to one specific domain.

Which is why I find that plotting my life and analyzing my ideas in a long term fashion in Obsidian and with the assistance of AI helps massively to figure out the parts of my workflow are dysfunctional and harming my goals and the part that's just naturally how I enjoy to explore ideas and the world. 

Hope that helps. 

Edited 8 hours ago by LordFall

[Vynce]

Yeah living with adhd can be immensely miserable. Especially when you start to be in your „productive“ years and see how extra-hard you have to be on yourself to be on par with anyone else. 
 

Ofcourse stimulants help somewhat. But I have not found a way to be the same kind of effortless adult most people my age are. And society doesn’t really care either. 
 

Just don’t make it worse is my strategy. Extra focus on good sleep. Not to much dopamine BS in the morning. And actually knowing the ins and outs of ADHD, makes navigating with it easier. 

[Madyar]

31 minutes ago, LordFall said:

Put your thoughts on paper or ideally in a common place book/second brain software like Obsidian. Once you start to organize your goals and ideas then your subconscious has less incentive to keep bombarding you with random thoughts and ideas. I think it does that as an overcompensation for survival. 

I used to keep a journal. I need to do it more often. You're right, staying organized plays an important role, and tools can help overcome this hurdle. Thank you for sharing your resources.

[Madyar]

22 minutes ago, Vynce said:

Yeah living with adhd can be immensely miserable. Especially when you start to be in your „productive“ years and see how extra-hard you have to be on yourself to be on par with anyone else. 
 

Ofcourse stimulants help somewhat. But I have not found a way to be the same kind of effortless adult most people my age are. And society doesn’t really care either. 
 

Just don’t make it worse is my strategy. Extra focus on good sleep. Not to much dopamine BS in the morning. And actually knowing the ins and outs of ADHD, makes navigating with it easier. 

Maybe, in the end, some sort of value can be extracted from it. At least, some people are able to do something with it, while others simply need to accept it and learn to live with it.

[Basman]

Just let go and yrust the process 🙇‍♂️🙇‍♂️🙇‍♂️👌👌✨️✨️✨️👏👏👏

[Someone here]

I don’t suffer from this particular condition but I can relate to the description a little bit.  I suffer from OCD , perfectionism, overthinking, multitasking and similar symptoms. 
I suggest meditation, journaling, less thinking about doing the right things and more doing whatever you feel is necessary at this point in time. Ignore your distracting racy thoughts. Pick your routine early in the morning and stick to it.

Edited 4 hours ago by Someone here

[something_else]

4 hours ago, LordFall said:

I tried the meds that they gave me around that time but I found them to be mostly overstimulating and not that effective so I've been dealing with it on my own since then.

What meds did they prescribe you at the time?

A couple of my friends who tried the classic ADHD meds like Ritalin and adderal found them too intense, but had excellent experiences with Vyvanse (lisdexamphetamine). It’s a slow release pro-drug that essentially converts into stimulants slowly in your bloodstream over 14hrs, so it doesn’t have that intense hit feeling.

For first week or so it can have that, but once you settle down into it it’s a very subtle feeling you barely even notice, yet the benefits remain.

I also cannot speak highly enough of it. I would go as far as to say it has changed my life in the past 5 months.

[something_else]

4 hours ago, LordFall said:

have trouble taking consistent action. That can lead to starting projects and leaving them unfinished over and over. It's definitely one of my symptoms

Same. The analogy I’d use is that for most of my life, I’d choose to dig six oddly shaped 1ft-deep holes instead of one perfectly rectangular 6ft-deep hole. The gravedigger analogy, lol.

Maybe occasionally I’d manage to dig an almost rectangular 3ft hole, but I’d never quite follow through enough to produce that neat, solid 6ft hole that so many other people seem capable of digging.

And that becomes a huge problem when life requires you to do one specific thing, do it well, and see it through to completion. Like, you know, an actual gravedigger would be expected to do.

It feels good to tell yourself, “Well, being a generalist with a wide range of knowledge is valuable too.” And to a degree, it absolutely is, depending on the field you’re in. But it comes with sooo many downsides.

Most notably, you end up coming across as a smart person who knows a lot about a lot of things, but has relatively little to show for it. Everyone assumes you should be successful because you seem knowledgeable and capable, but in practice, that knowledge is often spread so thinly across so many things that you struggle to turn it into anything that provides sustainable long term value to others.

On meds, I can actually get things done to completion, for the most part. I can consistently dig a 5 or 6ft hole and make it pretty neat and tidy.

And the nice thing is, I haven’t lost the ability to dig a few random 1ft holes along the way, just for the fun of exploring. I can still indulge that curiosity, but it no longer has to come at the expense of actually finishing the thing I set out to do.

On another note, I suspect the polymaths of old still had massive follow through. I’ve met people with this polymath kind of mindset today, and they’re as far from ADHD as possible. They start one project, see it through to completion, then start the next and see it through to completion. And they never stop. Over time they build up such a wide array of deep knowledge, but it’s not done in this “jumping around” manner we get from ADHD. It’s built through consistency, follow through, focus, and execution applied to a wide variety of fields. And somehow they maintain the energy and consistency over time. It’s insane to me. The two people I have met like this seem borderline superhuman to me. Everything they touch turns to gold.