Waking up? Inertia. Takes five alarms.
Getting up from bed? Inertia. Takes half an hour.
Making the bed? Inertia. 2 days out of 7.
And on and on it goes.
How do I become one of them “up and at em” types? A real go getter bucko?
supposedly it's more hospitable to bedbugs if you make it neatly than leave all the blankets in a pile, making the bed is actively bad.
I have ADHD and depression. I woke up at 5:30 today against my will and have just been spiraling for 11 hours accomplishing absolutely nothing and hating myself for it
So yes
yes
How do I become one of them “up and at em” types? A real go getter bucko?
for me, be in a manic episode lmao
I'm the exact same way and here's some of the things that have helped me.
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I use a planner and listed times ahead of time, and the rules is no excuses. If my alarm goes off and I'm in the middle of a show, too bad I pause. If I'm playing a game, oh well just leave it on.
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Get good sleep and exercise. I know this gets said a lot but it really does work, and the evidence for them is strong. Ain't gonna be magic but it helps.
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Get over the guilt and just do it some other time anyway. Failure now doesn't need to be failure later. Don't use this logic as an excuse though, like I said no excuses for the present. It's just a good tool for self forgiveness.
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Pick and choose tasks. I don't make my bed, I leave my clothes in my laundry basket and just use a second for dirty clothes and rotate them around because putting into drawers is too much. Prioritize your energy into useful shit.
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Sometimes it really is helpful to just say to yourself "It's gotta be done, I don't have the energy but I'm gonna do it regardless" and the energy will just come somehow anyway. Sure, not guaranteed to work but the times it does is pretty great. I don't want to say "JUST DO IT" but honestly it can work sometimes. Getting over the initial hurdle is much harder for a lot of tasks than doing them.
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Executive dysfunction sucks. Mine was half autistic burnout and half ADHD. The burnout has been better since working on finding accommodations for my sensory issues. The ADHD has been better since I started Vyvanse. It all makes me feel like a person with a basic sense of autonomy which is a novel and recent feeling for me.
Same, but I'm not diagnosed ADHD so no meds for me.
I tried to start the process of getting a diagnosis but the psych thinks if I just manage my depression better my focus will get better. So he gave me some add-on depression medicine that he was clearly bribed to push by the manufacturer.
Doesn't help that I'm not good at articulating my symptoms.
Some doctors are better than others and it was only recently they were trained to diagnosis adhd in adults. So I'd say this is 2nd opinion time. However it could be depression. The easiest way to test is to eat half a buddies adhd pill and see if it makes you calm or gives you a panic attack.
Yeah, I’m gonna do the trial month of this dumb add-on depression med (Rexulti), then I have another appointment with him. If he still doesn’t want to diagnose I’ll go somewhere else.
only recently they were trained to diagnosis adhd in adults
Does that mean a younger doctor would be better?
The easiest way to test is to eat half a buddies adhd pill and see if it makes you calm or gives you a panic attack.
That requires having a buddy :sadness:
But really I’m already pretty certain that adhd meds will help.
I mean, technically it is appropriate to work down the tree of differential diagnoses before you hand out controlled substances.
You never can tell. Cause a young doc is fresh out of med school being taught by old docs. My doc is a proper Dr feelgood. He will hand out any pill you ask for pretty much but he is old and burnt out.
If you wanna do some reading there are some more actually informative and definitive ways to identify if you might. If you Google Ologies ADHD you find a podcast that has a bunch of the stuff all neatly organized that is easy to listen to.
Depends on the reason. If you're like me, and have fatigue through illness that is not ADHD, then I suggest 3 things
- get more sleep
- stand in the sun for a bit
- accept that you might not be able to do as much as you want that day, and that's okay.
Seriously, letting go of the guilt of not getting stuff done is a game changer. It happens, accept and move on. Don't just say 'oh I've got to do this or that' and then not do anything.
stand in the sun for a bit
The sun is magic and always makes me feel better, especially when it's a nice day. Do not underestimate the power of the sun. :praise-it:
That's actually probably the power of your skin. If the sun hits that hard you are probably vitamin D defficent. Supplements help a little, not that much though, mostly you just need to let your body cook
related:
"a job worth doing, is a job worth doing half-assed" has really helped me be reasonably functional
everyones lives are that don't have the money to pay for all the services they can take off their plate so their lives are manageable
If it's available for you, seeing a psychiatrist might help. Medication to break the "inertia" accumulation and build habits was a life saver for me.
what kind of medication, if you don't mind?
the stimulants i've been on just spike anxiety for me
A -very controlled- combination of SNRIs and anti-depressant focused benzos. The SNRIs break the despondence and lack of energy of being clinically depressed, and the benzos help me deal with the anxiety-induced "paralysis by analysis" sort of feeling. I still kind of struggle keeping the house clean and so on, but at least i have more energy, and manage to do more than before.
Statistically this is either ADHD or depression. So, yes :deeper-sadness:
Especially someone with executive dysfunction. My favorite adjustment of the last six months has been getting rid of my dresser. I was getting dressed in my laundry room because that’s where my unfolded baskets of clean clothes are. Now, I have a shelf full of clear bins that I can reach from a sitting position. It goes right next to the dryer. When the clothes are dry, I pull them out and toss them in the bins based on clothing type. Boom. Within a month my lifetime struggle with laundry was done. I’d go downstairs to get dressed. Dirty clothes went directly next to the washer. Clean clothes were ready for me.
Very nice.
It sounds like you might also subscribe to my theory that every item of clothing you own, beyond what you’re currently wearing, exists exclusively for the purpose of postponing laundry day.
This all follows me actually getting invested in my clothing for the first time in my life. So I have a bunch of stuff that delays laundry day. And then I have a couple cute little outfits
You mean I'm not supposed to cycle through somewhere between three and five pairs of pants like a cartoon character with the same clothes every episode?
Because dust falls on it. So if you dont cover your sheets you will have to wash them that much more.
I saw a dr for issues VERY similar to what you described, and they put me on Wellbutrin. 2 weeks later, at this small dose, I am noticing an improvement.
Ya gotta motivate yourself. Which sounds simple, but it's not, because we're all motivated by different things. Maybe getting up in the morning requires a pep talk, or maybe it requires a well thought out fantasy in which the CIA is at your door and you've gotta literally roll out of bed onto the floor, get dressed, and sneak out the back door while humming Bella Ciao to yourself. Don't be afraid to use your senses with music, scents, colored lights, etc.
Build habits, one a month. Figure out the sort of person you want to be, the life you want to live, and determine the habits that person would need to live that life. Then make that person real by motivating yourself one habit at a time.
I have very similar issues and the biggest motivator for me is literally just the simple concept of "I want to feel better"
If all these things bothering you make you feel unwell then taking care of them is now taking care of yourself.
If there's too much on your plate though, see what you can unload.
Edit: also yeah the planner is mandatory for when things are busy or stressful for me.
Build habits, one a month. Figure out the sort of person you want to be, the life you want to live, and determine the habits that person would need to live that life. Then make that person real by motivating yourself one habit at a time.
Really good advice. I'm someone who has gotten mostly out of my bad despression and can motivate myself to do things to a limited extent (I can clean for like2 hours before I quit and need to build up the energy), but building the good habits is exactly what helped. Making it eventually feel weird not to do something. I feel shitty if I don't workout, run or walk for a couple days because it feels abnormal. I clean my bed every saturday because I am now addicted to the clean bed feeling on saturday nights. it's har work to get there, and I still need to be better in many ways (sitting to read more instead of scrolling through news and hexbear, clean more than just the necessities before it becomes visibly bad) but it's helped me a lot
I got treated for sleep apnea with cpap and it’s not as hard to get out of bed.
Constantly hitting snooze is miserable so I have two alarms set an hour apart. So either I wake my self all the way up or let myself get some more actual rest.
Nightmare cycle of hearing a grating alarm hitting snooze being unable to wake up drifting asleep and hearing the grating alarm and hitting snooze again to only wake up an hour after when u could have woken up if u just set the alarm later w no snooze
Yea. Started microdosing mushrooms 3/4 days on and 2 days off. Been like 4 weeks now and I'm strangely more motivated to do random shit. Especially when the weather is nice I just have a stronger urge to go outside to do some shit. But I still gotta psyche myself out to get out of bed. I'm not even really depressed, just don't care sometimes lol
Sounds like those shrooms that make you go outside, so you would get eaten by a predator. Hope you don't live near a zoo...
r/unclebens is a good start. it's way easier than you think. Just need an area where you can keep it sterile. buy some big clear tubs, a plant incubation heating mat, a fan and the spores and uncle bens and you pretty much will grow some eventually. i also watched quite a few youtube videos just to see it visually. But uncle bens sub has a very good stickied post how to guide with a ton of info. good luck, it's worth it!
Also if you live in the bay area you can join the mushroom church. Zide Door. they sell them there, it's decriminalized in Oakland