This morning I’m mostly grumpy about my ADHD.

Firstly, I didn’t get around to taking my pill until an hour after I got up, because I straight up forgot, despite remembering as I was pouring my coffee.

Then I just realised that I missed a Dr appointment yesterday, because it was made two fucking weeks ago, and despite being in the fucking calendar I can’t be trusted to fucking remember anything.

I’m particularly angry about that, because it was to review (and hopefully increase) my meds…

I’m angry about that because it could have been a sodding phone appointment, but every drs surgery is run by old guys who are massively averse to anything beyond sitting in front of their patients so they can chastise them for being fat.

And I really want to practice the mindfulness I’ve been taught, to consider that this is a spiral, and that ultimately no harm has been done, I’ll just be increasing (hopefully) my dosage a couple of weeks later.

But I’m frustrated that there’s so much stuff I have to remember that I just can’t. Other people manage to juggle all the needs on them, but I feel like I always fail, or at the very least that I can’t be trusted to be consistent.

  •  DJDarren   ( @DJDarren@beehaw.org ) OP
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    161 year ago

    I was diagnosed in 2019, at the age of 39. So I have a lot of work to do to unravel all the ‘coping’ mechanisms I’ve taught myself over the years. But what’s been most eye-opening is my shift in perception of what ADHD is from something that naughty boys at school are told they have, to this thing that afflicts my brain which causes me to forget everything all the damn time.

    And the best part is when I complain about this, and some well-meaning person will say “Have you tried using X.app?” and I’ll go to download X.app ONLY TO FIND I ALREADY FUCKING HAVE IT, THAT I USED IT THREE TIMES THEN FORGOT IT EXISTED.

    And it’s all just so fucking exhausting.

    • Yeah, diagnosed at 31 here. So many coping mechanisms that do or don’t work.

      Unfortunately during the summer I have to choose. My meds or decongestants to at least reduce the misery from bad seasonal allergies.

      Can’t make doctor appointments, can’t remember to call a contractor to fix the porch, forget to call people on their birthdays, forget to cancel subscriptions, can’t remember to do simple task, or return things under warranty…etc I always remember things in the middle of the night, when you can’t call any of the businesses or people you need to call, or drop anything off.

      Work is my hyperfocus time, so all the other tasks and todos I have vanish from my brain till after, even with meds.

      It’s frustrating man, I feel ya, shit sucks.

      • I always remember things in the middle of the night, when you can’t call any of the businesses or people you need to call, or drop anything off.

        At the risk of being the “But have you tried this app” Guy, for the problem you’ve outlined here, I use Brain Toss. Literally all it does is email your own ramblings back at you, so if you remember something in the night, tap out a message on Brain Toss, then when you check your emails the next day there will be a reminder.

        When I remember I have it, it’s a brilliant little app.

    • I find that most of my ‘coping’ mechanisms are actually ‘tools’ that could have been developed with a therapist to help fit into society… So they’re usually a good thing, as long as it’s not just ignoring problem 🫣

      When things go bad, it usually help to take a short vacation from work, take some rest and take care of my personal life.

      Mistakes happen, but such it live for everybody in some way or another!

      • to help fit into society

        While I absolutely understand what you’re saying here, part of our trouble is that we don’t easily fit into society, so we have to work twice as hard to just appear ‘normal’, by which time we’re exhausted and lose control of our cooping mechanisms.

    • That does sound exhausting, sorry you are going through that OP.

      One possible option is physical lists like taping a list to your desk. Especially for things like a daily routine. You can also tape a list to your bathroom mirror for morning and night routines.

      • I am (slowly) developing techniques to help myself.

        While I’m not good at list keeping (for a number of reasons), one thing I am experimenting with is automations. In short, I’ve set my work Mac to automatically open a daily schedule in Numbers, and a daily reminders/affirmation document in Pages. These open up when an automation triggers a Shortcut at 7am every work day. As time goes on, I’ll fine tune these documents to contain information I need, while hopefully not just tuning them out as they become a constant on my desktop.

        • Automations are a good idea 🤔

          How do you get around the problem of having too many places for them? I appear to have installed and tried every Todo/reminder app in existence, and have tasks scattered between them.

          Do you have a way to sync things to your work device? That’s probably the biggest loss of memory for me.

          • The automations I’m talking about here pretty much only relate to work, so they’re set up to run on my work Mac, meaning no need to worry about syncing across devices.

            That said, the calendar event I use to trigger them is on an iCloud calendar I’ve set up just for them, which is available on my other things, so I could set them up to work on my personal MacBook too.

            In terms of remembering stuff when I’m not at my work Mac, I use an app called Brain Toss which just takes something you say to it, transcribes it, and emails it to you. So if I suddenly remember something I need to do at work, I can yell at my watch, then it’ll email it to me for me to pick up when I’m at my desk.

            I don’t really use many reminders / to do apps, because I know that they’ll eventually just become white noise to me, or go completely forgotten about.

      • I’ve tried sticky notes on my monitor.

        Know what I found the other day? A sticky node that’s hiding the start menu on my work monitor, with a task from a YEAR AGO (That was never done).

        Turns out I just stopped using the start menu and just haven’t noticed till now, a bloody year later. How, really, how TF did I not notice it for that long.

        It’s really weird how various tools and mechanism can break down in seemingly asinine ways. From OPs replies, they suffer quite similarly 🤔