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ADHD or just bad habits?
(lemm.ee)
Hi everyone,
I’ve been told by others with ADHD that they think I have it. But I sometimes wonder if it’s not just bad habits / low willpower / low discipline / the internet and it’s short and fast instant gratification.
I have been to a psychiatrist and he said it sounds like I might have ADD/ADHD/something. (I don’t know the exact differences, as I’m new to it.)
Here are some issues (symptoms?) that I struggle with:
- Easily distracted.
- Easily overwhelmed / overstimulated by smells, noise / textures.
- Items in no. 2 make it hard to focus / work
- Mind is almost always running at 100km/hr.
- Been told I’m very random and my thoughts are very much so.
- Feels like a machine of thoughts are going off all the time in my head.
- Hard to relax / shut down.
- Can’t listen to music with any lyrics, gets stuck on repeat in my head for days and wake up at night with the song playing like a recording.
- Always extreme one way or the other, struggle with balance.
- Often jittery, tapping my feet, drumming with my hands on my lap.
- Jaw gets sore from clenching it all the time, even at night.
- Can’t listen to music for longer than 3 songs, and can only be instrumental / ambient.
- White noise is best, but makes me sleepy.
- Can’t listen to the radio or podcasts when walking or driving. Always want silence.
- Get worked up quickly, always an underlying tension in my mind and body.
- Can only spend time in small groups with very close people. Otherwise I want to crawl into a dark hole.
- Our town is too big, not even a city, want to live in the country. All the details and sound and litter and people and visuals drive me up the wall.
- I notice EVERYTHING.
- I can’t sit still for very long.
- I can get lost for hours researching a tooic IF I’m interested in it.
- Procrastination level is “over 9000.”
- Takes a LOT to get me to even START doing something I’m not interested in.
- Crap, I think this list is just going to keep going, so I’m just going to submit it now…
Adhd combined at least with being hypersensory, which is probably why it seems to you like it is presenting different than you might expect. There are many aspects of this that are not only due to adhd. Every individual brings all the rest of them to their presentation too. Even stuff that is learned after birth or cultural can have a dramatic affect on how easy it is to diagnose, since most diagnostic criteria is still not well developed.
Other possible things to look into after the adhd diagnosis would be if autism or borderline personality disorder are also present. If so they don't appear to be your main focus.
And keep in mind, while humans have made all kinds of seemingly separate categories for these things, at their root many of them are largely part the same thing. The categories are mostly about what strengths and weaknesses you ended up with. But you will usually have some overlap with other categories. Start with what is impacting your life the most. And after that is settled, see if anything else is still worth it at that point.