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Helping others vs. helping yourself
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
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this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
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ADHD memes
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Is this really an ADHD thing? I will go out of my way to help other people, but yeah, I can't be bothered to fold my own laundry so I just throw it all in a clothes basket and stick it in the closet.
It's not exclusively ADHD but a lot of us ADHD folks seem to be like this.
The difference I think is for ADHD it's not "can't be bothered to fold my own laundry" it's "I cannot force myself to fold laundry and if I try I will lose focus on the task and be scrolling my phone within 30 seconds of starting."
more than that, in my experience when i simply cannot do something and try to force myself to do it, it leads to me feeling like i'm going to die.
The phone scrolling is a form of self-defence to distract from that feeling of "i'm useless and god is about to smite me for sucking so hard"
There's just this... dread or uneasiness whenever I'm forced or forcing myself to do something. Like, cleaning is great on the rare occassion I just naturally have the energy and will to do it, but anytime else it's like torture.
Folding laundry is a gargantuan task to me. It takes 10-15 minutes of my life, but it feels like an eternity.
Same, at this point i have decided that it is never going to be worth the effort and it's absolutely fine to just roll it up and toss it in the drawers, that's muuuuuch easier for me and still makes it possible to organize things well enough.
The laundry was just an example. Apply having problems to every activity, even those that you like to do. Helping others serves as an external source of motivation on which ADHD people thrive. Our brains have problems with motivating us/our body to do things that we want to do without some kind of external pressure/motivation. I don't remember the specifics properly although I watched videos on that ~7 days ago for the x damn time. Here are videos explaining what I was trying explain in more detail: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
You just linked over an hours worth of video with only a vague description as to why someone should watch them...to an audience of ADHD people. Would you care to place a wager on many people will watch them? ๐๐๐
Meh, it's split into 3 separate videos and my description is vague because my memory is garbage.
Your memory is garbage you say? Mine too :(
Check other memes/screenshots on the sub and and if you relate to most of them and do stuff in them way more often than average person then you may have an undiagnosed ADHD or other disorder with similar symptoms.
It's not undiagnosed. It's very obvious I have adhd. Didn't figure it out until I was like 25-26 though. College was rough having undiagnosed adhd.
Yeah, obviously laundry isn't my only problem. It seeps into every aspect of my life. Motivation to do stuff is usually not high unless it's new to me.
Why are we people pleasers so much??
humans are inherently social animals, so helping others is programmed to make us feel good
what is a common part of ADHD? that's right, being really sensitive to rewards and easily getting addicted.
I get hyper focused on stuff too, will sit for hours working my computer on video games even though I know I need to sleep.
I have no idea
It isn't just laundry of course. This meme speaks to motivation as other folks commented.
Motivation can come from emotion either from response to external input or ones own thinking.
Motivation can also come from the brain's executive function, where you decide to "Just do it".
So if someone yells angrily at me to do a thing, or if I am freaking because the deadline is early upon me, or there is an emergency, or if a friend asks for help, the emotions can motivate me easily as is the case for anyone.
If I know I need to work on a boring thing today to save myself from panic later, the "just do it" part of my brain doesn't have enough oomph to actually get me to do the thing. Like, no amount of pushing myself, self goading, self talk, nothing. It's like trying to push a car alone with the parking brake on. I just can't budge myself.
When I am on medication, it can still be hard but I actually feel like getting something done, I want to do it, and I am able to just will myself to do the thing. I can just be like "yeah this sucks, it's boring but fuck it let's do this" and then, unlike before, I actually start doing it. Which is still a marvel to me even though I have been on meds for several years. I don't think most people find self motivation to be a novel thing to marvel over. I think most people are more able to convince themselves to do the sucky boring thing if they just set their mind to it. Being able to do that (even if difficult) is taken for granted.
Which is why ADHD people are told they are lazy or told to "just do it already". Normal people don't know what it is like to have a broken "just do it cortex" :)
One of Dr. Barkley's videos explain the motivation issue really well.
And the thing with ADHD is that it is a constant, every minute of every day struggle with motivation if your line of work involves too little excitement and a lot of tedious boring stuff.
It was bad enough with me that the only way to function even close to average was to be in constant fear and panic about forgetting things, missing deadlines, getting in (more) trouble, while failing to avoid those things constantly and gaining a reputation as an unreliable lazy flake, eroding trust, and performing poorly in work, school, in relationships. The result was getting lower grades than I could have without ADHD as well as missing out on career growth, losing friends, etc.