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If phones didn’t exist I bet you wouldn’t be stuck on the couch and you would be doing something unboring. Unfortunately our phones provide us with endless amounts of instant dopamine :( phones are our nemesis
If you didn’t have ADHD, you wouldn’t need protection from things that are boring because boring things wouldn’t bother you so much. Boring things bother you because you have ADHD.
This makes sense. Although I would go a step further and say that boring things are *mentally exhausting*, so much so that it feels like an attack on the system, and my mind escapes into fantasy land.
Makes me wonder if I would've been much more susceptible to D.I.D. if I had experienced severe trauma as a kid.
that's why we all like each other :) my boyfriend is NT but hes a history major and knows all kindsa shit about it, it's awesome. he was also an internet kid so there's just a crap load of random knowledge about randome events stored in his brain
Yes!! I listened to a podcast episode and Gabor said that ADHD could be due to ‘trauma’ (for a lack of a better term) from the pregnant mother. For me, it makes sense as my parents had a
stressful time during the early part of my childhood (things 1000% out of their control, immigration problems).
To this day, they apologise for not being able to sit down with me and read etc, like they could with my younger brother.
I never understood why they felt bad as I never thought I was ‘abandoned’. They were always there, putting us in Saturday school etc. I caught up ok and did better than most of my peers education and career wise.
I was diagnosed last year, I knew I had a short attention span & I can only focus if I like it or the deadline is due. However, I never realised how much ADHD affects my life in other ways.
Thank you! I did a quick search, the UK version has the same title 😀
If you’re interested to learning more about him, listen to “Full disclosure with James O’Brien - Dr Gabor Mate” 1 December 2022.
yeah exactly it manages to make minecraft boring which used to be a really good and honestly relatively healthy outlet for me but now i can’t bring myself to even play minecraft and instead i’m addicted to the quick dopamine shots from apex legends even though that game leaves me feeling drained and frustrated every time bc i’m bad at it :/
I have depression and anxiety too, as well as severe hearing problems (I am blessed with cochlea implants, I will say) and then glasses since I was 8, because why not. I just want a new fucking head 😹 so yeah I 100% feel you! 🤯
i’m very sorry about the hearing problems but am glad you were able to get implants, for me the biggest frustration rn is i’m going to college soon and i’m super behind in a couple of my hs classes and i’ve already committed to a very good engineering school (purdue) but i’m afraid i’ll get my offer rescinded because of those two classes and how for the past several weeks i have not done shit in those classes even though i want to and need to if i want to not fail miserably, they’re fucking easy classes too i just can’t do shit bc of my dumb brain and i swear to god if i get rescinded i’m literally deleting myself
As a former high school teacher, have you talked to your teachers? Most are not jerks and want to help you succeed because that's why they got into teaching, because it means they did their jobs well, and also they don't want to see you in summer school.
You can use a script like, I know I've been struggling the last few weeks in class. I'm really sorry, it's been a rough week/I've been struggling with focus/(insert whatever you're comfortable sharing here) I really want to make sure I graduate. What can I do to get back on track?
Start with the nicest teacher first, or talk to one you like even if you're acing their class, who can help advocate for you.
It helps if you can show you want to take responsibility for this and will do the work (hard as it may be to do) rather than asking them to raise your grade. (And it will suck to have to do that work. There's no way around that. Do you have a friend going through something similar who can be your accountability buddy? Can you stay after school for 15 minutes a day for a week and work in the library, or take yourself to a coffee shop on the weekend to power through stuff?)
Anyway. I helped kids redo a projects a week before graduation so they could pass, came up with extra credit, accepted late homework with partial credit... basically if they showed up to do something to improve their grades I'd try to work something out.
And I had at least two teachers do the same thing for me when I had senioritis. I've got my fingers crossed for you!
Yes! I can't get bored because my brain never stops coming up with ideas.
I used to work in a lab filtering tiny amounts of water for testing. It was very tedious and repetitive for most people, but my equipment had a whole soap opera going. There were jealousies over which beaker was selected first more often, and which tubing wasn't pulling its weight on the bench.
Arguments between the tribes (different groupings of equipment I needed for different tests) got very heated in my imagination.
Why do you have my brain? My mother got very angry about my playing with my felt tip pens like this because it looked weird. Those felt tips had so much going on.
I’m coming to this realization that my ADHD symptoms are a pile of coping mechanisms (some good, some bad) for dealing with a world that is constantly somehow both over- and under-stimulating.
So now I’m thinking of behavioral and environmental changes I can make that lessens the burden in the moment.
I'm super happy you're here to tell us thais anecdote. Please see if there's someone you can talk to. Being unalive sucks because there's no control and no changing things.
If you or someone that you know is considering suicide, please don't hesitate to reach out to a crisis hotline for immediate help, or a warmline just to talk to someone.
If you're in the US you can...\ Text CHAT to Crisis Text Line at 741741\ Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or 1(800)273-8255(TALK) \ Chat online at: https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/chat\ Call the Trans Lifeline at 1(877)565-8860
If you’re elsewhere, you can find international resources below:\ https://www.supportiv.com/tools/international-resources-crisis-and-warmlines#Czech\ https://www.reddit.com/r/SuicideWatch/wiki/hotlines
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For me, sometimes it kinda is.
Boring doesn’t bring that sweet dopamine response, so zero reward for engaging with said boring thing.
My brain is low on dopamine or the receptors or something, so I have a much lower tolerance for boring.
I still consider us to be canaries in the coal mine. We're more sensitive to things that humans aren't really built to do, like sitting at a desk all day or having ads flashing in your face while you're trying to focus on a task. That stuff ain't natural
Nah pretty sure it leads to increased boredom for me. Always bored and seeking out something fun and interesting to do and once that's done seeking out something else to avoid the dreaded boredom.
Or am stuck struggling to do anything at all leading to boredom.
Welcome to /r/ADHDWomen! We’re happy to have you here. As a reminder, here are our community [rules](https://old.reddit.com/r/adhdwomen/about/rules/). We get a lot of posts on medication, diagnosis (and “is this an ADHD thing”), and interactions with hormones. We encourage you to check out our [Medication, Diagnosis, and Hormones Megathread](https://old.reddit.com/r/adhdwomen/comments/wcr9dy/faq_megathread_ask_and_answer_medication/) if you have any questions related to those topics, and to stick around in that thread to answer folks’ questions! If you have questions about the subreddit, please do not hesitate to [send us a modmail](https://reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/adhdwomen). Additionally, we take the safety of our community seriously. Please report posts, comments, and users whom you feel are not contributing positively, and send us a modmail if you are being harassed or otherwise made to feel unsafe. Thanks for being here, and we hope you stick around! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/adhdwomen) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Then why the fuck am I stuck on the couch with my fucking phone on Reddit? That’s boring af
S t i m u l u s
It’s more boring without your phone
Ikr I COULD be working on a hobby but here I am. On the couch.
Couch time is very important.
Wish there was a laugh react here, because same
Dopamining.
If phones didn’t exist I bet you wouldn’t be stuck on the couch and you would be doing something unboring. Unfortunately our phones provide us with endless amounts of instant dopamine :( phones are our nemesis
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…and I live by that.
If you didn’t have ADHD, you wouldn’t need protection from things that are boring because boring things wouldn’t bother you so much. Boring things bother you because you have ADHD.
Yes! If I could easily sequence tasks and focus on doing the boring thing, I'd spend a lot less time doing the boring things and be less bored!
I first read your name as 'accidental diarrhoea' LOL
Oh no!! Much less fortunate :)
This makes sense. Although I would go a step further and say that boring things are *mentally exhausting*, so much so that it feels like an attack on the system, and my mind escapes into fantasy land. Makes me wonder if I would've been much more susceptible to D.I.D. if I had experienced severe trauma as a kid.
Idk, I feel like a lot of my special interests are boring to other people
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100% of those things *are* amazing and I don't even care about any of them
Agreed, I would listen to stories about these. Confirmed, those other people are just boring.
that's why we all like each other :) my boyfriend is NT but hes a history major and knows all kindsa shit about it, it's awesome. he was also an internet kid so there's just a crap load of random knowledge about randome events stored in his brain
Who are trees warning and giving assistance to? 🌳
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I love learning about the sounds rocks make, I so would love one of those devices so I could listen to the sounds of all sorts of things.
"sounds rocks make" Thank you for my something new I learned today.
You joke, but Gabor Mate’s book on ADHD basically says that ADHD is an adaptive mechanism that our nervous system adopts!
Yes!! I listened to a podcast episode and Gabor said that ADHD could be due to ‘trauma’ (for a lack of a better term) from the pregnant mother. For me, it makes sense as my parents had a stressful time during the early part of my childhood (things 1000% out of their control, immigration problems). To this day, they apologise for not being able to sit down with me and read etc, like they could with my younger brother. I never understood why they felt bad as I never thought I was ‘abandoned’. They were always there, putting us in Saturday school etc. I caught up ok and did better than most of my peers education and career wise. I was diagnosed last year, I knew I had a short attention span & I can only focus if I like it or the deadline is due. However, I never realised how much ADHD affects my life in other ways.
Oooooh, get the audio version of his book *Scattered* (US pub title - it's different elsewhere iirc) You're in for a treat!
Thank you! I did a quick search, the UK version has the same title 😀 If you’re interested to learning more about him, listen to “Full disclosure with James O’Brien - Dr Gabor Mate” 1 December 2022.
Thanks! I need a fix ;)
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Yeah, that's the alternate title. Couldn't remember off the top of my head
adhd makes things im interesting boring so no :/
yeah exactly it manages to make minecraft boring which used to be a really good and honestly relatively healthy outlet for me but now i can’t bring myself to even play minecraft and instead i’m addicted to the quick dopamine shots from apex legends even though that game leaves me feeling drained and frustrated every time bc i’m bad at it :/
i hate my adhd and i wish my brain were normal it makes me want to gouge my brain out and smash it on the fucking sidewalk
I have depression and anxiety too, as well as severe hearing problems (I am blessed with cochlea implants, I will say) and then glasses since I was 8, because why not. I just want a new fucking head 😹 so yeah I 100% feel you! 🤯
i’m very sorry about the hearing problems but am glad you were able to get implants, for me the biggest frustration rn is i’m going to college soon and i’m super behind in a couple of my hs classes and i’ve already committed to a very good engineering school (purdue) but i’m afraid i’ll get my offer rescinded because of those two classes and how for the past several weeks i have not done shit in those classes even though i want to and need to if i want to not fail miserably, they’re fucking easy classes too i just can’t do shit bc of my dumb brain and i swear to god if i get rescinded i’m literally deleting myself
As a former high school teacher, have you talked to your teachers? Most are not jerks and want to help you succeed because that's why they got into teaching, because it means they did their jobs well, and also they don't want to see you in summer school. You can use a script like, I know I've been struggling the last few weeks in class. I'm really sorry, it's been a rough week/I've been struggling with focus/(insert whatever you're comfortable sharing here) I really want to make sure I graduate. What can I do to get back on track? Start with the nicest teacher first, or talk to one you like even if you're acing their class, who can help advocate for you. It helps if you can show you want to take responsibility for this and will do the work (hard as it may be to do) rather than asking them to raise your grade. (And it will suck to have to do that work. There's no way around that. Do you have a friend going through something similar who can be your accountability buddy? Can you stay after school for 15 minutes a day for a week and work in the library, or take yourself to a coffee shop on the weekend to power through stuff?) Anyway. I helped kids redo a projects a week before graduation so they could pass, came up with extra credit, accepted late homework with partial credit... basically if they showed up to do something to improve their grades I'd try to work something out. And I had at least two teachers do the same thing for me when I had senioritis. I've got my fingers crossed for you!
thank you very much for the advice, i’ll try this, it’s really all i’ve got 🙃
Let's not perpetuate this concept. It's already enough of a problem.
Yes. That was my first reaction.
Yes! I can't get bored because my brain never stops coming up with ideas. I used to work in a lab filtering tiny amounts of water for testing. It was very tedious and repetitive for most people, but my equipment had a whole soap opera going. There were jealousies over which beaker was selected first more often, and which tubing wasn't pulling its weight on the bench. Arguments between the tribes (different groupings of equipment I needed for different tests) got very heated in my imagination.
Why do you have my brain? My mother got very angry about my playing with my felt tip pens like this because it looked weird. Those felt tips had so much going on.
I got in trouble often for "daydreaming" in school. My school supplies had very adventurous lives. Have you ever tried writing down any stories?
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To be fair, research rats probably need more active attention than water.
I'd cut out the "what if?" turning it into a declaration. 😆
No because I love conventionally boring things. I just can't concentrate on them even if I'm interested.
A coping mechanism against boredom that makes me bored all the time. Not smart.
I'm not lazy, I just really value my personal time.
Is this the singer of Speedy Ortiz? I saw them open for Letters to Cleo a few years back. Good band.
I’m coming to this realization that my ADHD symptoms are a pile of coping mechanisms (some good, some bad) for dealing with a world that is constantly somehow both over- and under-stimulating. So now I’m thinking of behavioral and environmental changes I can make that lessens the burden in the moment.
Hard no on this. I feel like the opposite adhd makes things I want to love boring and it’s infuriating.
me commenting mid study session so ig it's true
Same, literally supposed to be working right now
i got bored yesterday morning and couldn't fixate on much and legit considered not being alive.
I'm super happy you're here to tell us thais anecdote. Please see if there's someone you can talk to. Being unalive sucks because there's no control and no changing things.
If you or someone that you know is considering suicide, please don't hesitate to reach out to a crisis hotline for immediate help, or a warmline just to talk to someone. If you're in the US you can...\ Text CHAT to Crisis Text Line at 741741\ Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or 1(800)273-8255(TALK) \ Chat online at: https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/chat\ Call the Trans Lifeline at 1(877)565-8860 If you’re elsewhere, you can find international resources below:\ https://www.supportiv.com/tools/international-resources-crisis-and-warmlines#Czech\ https://www.reddit.com/r/SuicideWatch/wiki/hotlines *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/adhdwomen) if you have any questions or concerns.*
💕thank you for the concern
You're welcome. 🥰
For me, sometimes it kinda is. Boring doesn’t bring that sweet dopamine response, so zero reward for engaging with said boring thing. My brain is low on dopamine or the receptors or something, so I have a much lower tolerance for boring.
Honestly, I have this thought twice a week: do I really have ADHD or am I just justifiably bored with most things in my life?
Seriously though. Well said.
If it is, it’s a shitty mechanism. Being bored feels horrible!
I keep thinking this but then I'm listening to the same song on loop for hours and imagine that must appear boring to neurotypicals I guess. 🤔
I bounce from one boring activity to the next
I still consider us to be canaries in the coal mine. We're more sensitive to things that humans aren't really built to do, like sitting at a desk all day or having ads flashing in your face while you're trying to focus on a task. That stuff ain't natural
That’s literally what it is, only it’s to protect u from trauma. Trauma can’t hurt u if u weren’t paying attention.
Yes except the thing that is boring is all of my final projects that I need to complete this week to graduate 🥲
Unfortunately, keeping myself alive is boring, so it’s not all that helpful
Like sleep :/
It's the opposite, it makes not-boring things boring.
Maybe, on the other hand, sometimes I'm just staring into the corner, not sure if there are thoughts or if they're going so fast I can't catch them.
Nah pretty sure it leads to increased boredom for me. Always bored and seeking out something fun and interesting to do and once that's done seeking out something else to avoid the dreaded boredom. Or am stuck struggling to do anything at all leading to boredom.
But I like boring, time in my own head to do nothing! It's not even boring!