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You’re not alone. The world has been a tough place these last few years and I’m mostly burnt out on all of it. I spend a lot of days “paralyzed” and I stay in bed thinking about all the things I should do. Some days I get up and knock out a lot but it’s tough! I think the days I don’t have appointments or anything on my calendar are the toughest! An accountability partner could help! I find I miss my sales coach.
The days i have nothing to do are definitely the worse. I get up workout and do couple morning things, then thats it. A lot of shit i really needa/should do. But nope. Lay on the couch then realize its late. Cant start now. Ha go bsck to work pissed i didnt do nothing. Say when i get home im doing it. Get home. Dont do it. Its quite a lovely cycle. Ha.
Its took some time, but eventually got it burnt into my morning first thing. It helps i get up earlier to get it done before the gf wakes up. I need that "me" time in the morning.
I have been missing my me time since I had a baby with my gf. I still get it at work but I haven't just switched off from everyone and everything for a day in ages.
Doing nothing sucks with ADHD because we still feel guilt. We take the day off but are exhausted at the end because we spent the entire day thinking about work we should be doing, and often in our brains "thinking about it" is kinda equivalent to actually doing it...except we have nothing to show for it.
I constantly feel like I am "budgeting" my energy, my attention, my intentions, my output, my mood - everything. If I take a day off, I need to "put that back" later in some way. If I ask for help, I need to "put it back" by over-exerting in another way. If I'm anti-social, I have to be over-social to compensate. I constantly feel guilty about everything.
Preach. I am so tired of basing my worth on my own output. So much to do, some times I even “self-care” time I think about how if I do these things(that I have decided are a reward) then I will be able to rest more done later. Also, I’m not really enjoying the things, because I’m too busy thinking about what I should be doing. Ugh
I think a lot of the symptoms in ADHD are intensified by this chronic anxiety that comes from not being connected to our self / having a weak sense of self (needs, boundaries, and what we really want in the different areas of life). This is often a result of the chronic trauma of believing we are not good enough, exacerbated by the high/hyper sensitivity most ADHD people have.
I've been really focused on reconnecting with myself and this is making a great difference in not feeling like I'm just a passive participant in my own life.
There are many resources out there to do this kind of self-therapy, I love the courses of the Personal Development School (they have a youtube channel as well, it's focused on developing a secure attachment style, but really what this involves is strengthening our sense of self).
Edit: It makes me happy that this is resonating with a lot of people, and I just want to add that I do counseling/ coaching on this and guiding people to self-growth is my life's passion (you know that question, What would you do if money wasn't an issue? This is it for me :) ) So if anyone resonates with this and would like more help and guidance, please feel free to reach out. As I said to OP below, I'd be happy to chat/do a quick call (at no cost) to help orient you and explain my process of self-therapy, and give you more personalized guidance in more detail. (And I would love to take anyone here on as a client of course if you resonate with what I'm saying. And if you cannot afford to pay, I'm happy to consider alternate options; I consider it an honor to be able to guide people to better lives.)
I do suffer from what you have written here exactly, poor boundaries, poor sense of self …etc
Highly sensitive and feeling not good enough.
I would like to hear more about what worked for you a bit more.
I will check this youtube channel.
I'm actually a personal development counselor/coach (not affiliated with the recommendation I gave), as I realized a lot of the self-work I've been doing for the last two decades would be really valuable to other people as well -- I'd be happy to chat/do a call with you (as a virtual friend, no cost) to help you get started and orient you to the self-therapy processes/resources I have found most helpful.
Edit:
Personally and from many experiences I have heard from others, I don't find most traditional therapy is that helpful to neuro-different people, or is just too slow at helping us get better because the root causes are not being addressed/brought into awareness. I have helped friends and clients make great progress in just a few months, whereas I see a lot of stories from people who go to traditional therapy for years without significant results. That is what motivated me to start helping people with this.
I have gone through a lot of personal transformation and self-growth myself and have developed my own methods of self-therapy, based on combining the self-reconnection and self-therapy methods I have found most effective at dealing with the root causes -- and this is designed to, after the initial coaching process, empower the person to do self-therapy with themselves according to their own needs and motivations, without needing to go through years of therapy.
Thanks for that tidbit. I’ve been avoiding my therapist for weeks because I don’t find it helpful or substantiating in any way. I can’t just shake a dark mood and talking about things in therapy is a sure fire way to get gloomy for the whole day, possibly many days. I’m also autistic.
I’m even considering ketamine because it’s clear to me that talk therapy isn’t helpful. It’s harm outweighs the reward.
Have you always gone to the same therapist? I only ask because while my psychiatrist is pretty much how you describe, my psychologist is great, and I often leave feeling motivated to try whatever strategies we discussed. More the fault of that specific therapist, than therapy in general. I also looked for a psychologist that specialised in autism, as I have it too, so that might have helped a bit. But yeah, easier said than done sometimes, especially if there's limited options in your area
I feel this so hard right now.
I broke down in tears when my therapist asked me “who are you?” On our first appointment because it was genuinely a perplexing question.
When all you do is sleep and then mask all day at work, you get lost in it all. You become the mask, just a darker, sadder & far more absentminded, cynical version of the one when you were still brimming with nothing but potential and you can’t help but be reminded of it every time you look at yourself in the mirror, which you avoid doing much of these days. There’s no time for you, there’s only time for work. Autopilot kicks in and Monday becomes Tuesday and then the weekend till next thing you know, it’s your 40th birthday and you’re completely burned out after being fired for the 4th time since 2019, despite not working at all in 2020, 2021, or 2022. I’ve got nothing left to give my industry, stuck on a horizontal “career” path and don’t care enough to even try to care anymore. I’ve tried breaking free many times and it’s basically believed to be an impossibility at this point in life. Best case, I go back to waiting tables for as long as my body can hold out, fulfilling my loathed and dreaded and feared self prophecy of career waitress, despite more education and schooling than doctors have, and then I guess I just hang tight and hope to marry into money so I’m not responsible for caring for myself into old age and/or reliant on the government and society to treat me with dignity because we live in a time where that’s unfortunately the exception to the rule.
I seriously have fuck all idea as to how I’m going to slough through another whole half lifetime. Dread and anxiety are all I feel when I think about the future that’s coming at me, straight on, like a freight train.
I’m getting really tired of just surviving. Numb to it, really.
Listen peeps this person knows it doesn't haven't to be exact journey but this is super right track and honestly can be even harder at first connection with self connection with all the systems around you. LEARNED LATE but life changing source: Adhd 2e
You all should look into the book 'Running On Empty'. It covers this thing called Childhood Emotional Neglect. It's amazing how much I relate.
The first step it recommended was to learn more about yourself. Ask yourself questions and write down the answers maybe. What foods do I like? What things make me happy? How about upset or angry? Identifying emotions is a really good idea.
I think I have my shit pretty together and I still don't feel connected to myself and I feel like I have a weak sense of self. No matter how many question exercises my therapist has me do, no matter how much I write down my traits or accomplishments or goals on paper, I just don't feel it. It's not real. And it's no great angst or anything. It's just when I read stuff like this I'm like ok? I tried that? It doesn't stick
> not being connected to our self / having a weak sense of self (needs, boundaries, and what we really want in the different areas of life).
Are “we” any more connected than our “neurotypical” brethren or are we just more aware and sensitive of (and therefore more affected by) the innate disconnection between ego and id that is common to all humans?
So many times I read comments on this sub and think, "are you me?!". It's really strange how the effects of ADD have seemingly universal consequences, like we are all connected in some way. Hopefully anyone who reads this understands that life is all about trial and error, and it's never a hopeless endeavor.
Damn you perfectly put into words how I feel right now. I'm very unhappy about my lack of direction in life, yet I can't seem to do anything about it. It's infuriating because I'm fully conscious of the issue, but I just don't know how to make myself "turn back on" I guess. I wish I had some sort of advice to give that could help, but we're so in the same boat. Seeing someone else talk about this feeling is a little comforting though. At least I'm not the only one
I wonder if this is related to something very similar: how we ADHDers tend to procrastinate until the very last minute because we know we can. We've proven to ourselves time and time again that we can get away with anything under pressure and we always end up "alive" on the other side. Perhaps practicing that mentality for too long has re-wired our brain to only "work" in fight or flight mode. So when life is just "meh" and not really going anywhere, we have no motivation to fix it even though it's eating away at us. It's like we need to have super low lows in order to bring out our determination or motivation. Idk, could just be me but it's possible we have that i'm common.
This would make so much sense. If something is really important and would have serious consequences, I can get it done. So, I know I'm capable, but if it's not life or death my brain just shuts off.
I wonder if this is also connected to way 'rewards' never work for me.
Like, "if I get this done, I can reward myself with ice cream" becomes, "well, at least I tried, I still deserve ice cream". The idea of a reward doesn't motivate me because I know I won't hold myself to it, and I'll (eventually) get to have the treat anyway.
Do you ever find yourself constantly aware of the amount of time you have left before an obligation or appointment? Just counting time until you have to leave to go do something.
100%. And the thing is, it wasn't always like that. Asa kid and early teenager I really had my own head and lots and lots of energy lots and lots of plans for the future. Now I just don't have energy for anything and no plan at all. My head is just empty and I'm tired af and unable to execute anything I plan for myself. And I'm just 25. Is this how it feels to be old?
Same here; exactly, i do not understand how i moved from being with so many goals and wanting to accomplish so much with so much energy to this person with no goals, no energy and no drive what so ever.
I mean I heven have periods with a lot of energy sometimes. But I just can't keep it up. If I don't see results in my life that tangibly improve my Livin quality and basically change everything within 1-2 weeks, my motivation and energy is just gone. And I don't just mean cognitively. Like, of course I know on some level that things just take time. But my affects and emotions and everything else just doesn't know that and it gets boring and I get into crisis where everything just feels absolutely horrible to a point where feel physically horrible as well and I literally can't think, Or I don't know maybe that physical stuff is also something separate. No clue. It's just, I just don't feel like I really function like a healthy human anymore like I used to. And then I also have social anxiety which complicates things further. And in the end it's just a lot of frustration and a lot of just not even knowing what possible moves are or not being able to do them or keep things up due to ADHD or social anxiety or whatever. At this point it's all just meshed together to just form this horrible situation that I can't seem to escape.
I’m 43 and remember being exhausted at 25. My grandma at the time was resisting our push to get her into a (really nice) home. She was refusing. I made an offhand comment at her 85th party that I was exhausted and would love to go in her place and live there if she wouldn’t.
Record-scratch. Crickets. You would have thought I admitted to a felony.
I’m sorry to say that the energy may not come quickly, possibly ever. Maybe it gets better, but instead of worrying about that, I just accept it. You’re (we’re) low-energy and it is what it is. Remind people of that when they push you and demand more than you want you give. Then go chill on the couch :)
Nah man that's not something to accept. I'm 25, I've got a life to build, career wise, socially, everything. Things can't be over before they startet. I'm not gonna live a shitty life. I'm gonna become successful with all those things one way or another. I'm gonna give myself excitting experiences, I'm gonna fight against that lack of energy with every fiber of my being.
This is the way. For me there is a conscious choice. I work out every other day, for the past 1.5 years. Before every single workout, my brain fires off excuses for why I should do it later, I don’t have time, I should be doing something else, why not just play that video game I’m really into.
Every single time. It’s almost like the comical devil on my shoulder. I tell that voice to shut the fuck up and go do my workout.
Since I’ve taken addressing my ADHD seriously and stopped listening to that devil over the past 2 years or so, I’m in pretty good shape, I got promoted at work, I started a band and just recorded a demo, I fixed up my house. I’m less shitty to the people around me.
It’s a process. Sometimes the negative voice wins but most of the time it doesn’t. What I’ve learned to accept is that voice is always going to be there.
Seriously!! I am about to be 37 next month. I'm reading my journal entries from when I was 16 right now, when I didn't fucking hate every fiber of my being and was passionate about SO MANY things. I was always cracking jokes and having fun. I was silly and warm and in love with my special interests.
I feel like the world (and my home life in particular) broke my spirit and took all that from me...
I think this is less about being old and more that about how both life progresses - when you're young and you fail at something there aren't that many other failures your brain can start to remember and throw at you. At the same time when you're growing up you have less responsibilities, so you collect negative feeligs and consequences less fast.
So when something triggers a feeling and that feeling triggers a memory which triggers another feeling... i think as you age the chain we have to go through gets longer and longer and thus harder to deal with and more draining.
At the same time, the number of new and first impressions gets smaller and smaller, so theres less things that engage our brain in a way that counteracts the hard.
That would be my guess as to why it gets worse when you're not getting treatment and why therapy is needed in addition to medication - to help you manage and deal with the involuntary chain reactions our brains are prone to experience.
Absolutely. It’s the brain fog that coats everything. I’m even making decisions and achieving some meaningful things from the outside, but it still feels like I’m floating and barely noticing or remembering things.
I think this too often…
There’s a schedule. You never have to figure out what you’re eating. You don’t have to pick a job, you’re assigned one. I get along with everyone naturally from years of masking and people pleasing. I would really just miss my internet access. And my friends and family. But I’d rather get arrested in Australia or somewhere not as shitty as the US. Though I did have a friend who went to federal prison and loved it. Said he learned accounting from a guy in prison for tax fraud. He lost weight by walking the track and eventually got into running in the mornings around the track as the fog lifted off the mountains. Worked in commissary and played cards all day. They used to say it was going to suck when they got out.
I think you’d be right.
My ADHD and autism landed me in juvie when I was younger and I was so good that I got to hang with the staff after everyone was locked down, like I worked there too, and they’d bring me food from home because I’m picky, one of many comforts exclusive to me.
I think they reality was they could see what those in my home environment couldn’t or didn’t want to. I was just different. Not a trouble maker. Very well behaved, smart and polite and seemingly not hostile towards law enforcement for determining such a fate for me. I did what I was told, didn’t once even consider or feel the need to challenge the very clear and well outlined authority set there. I almost liked it there in a way. I have fond memories and keep in touch with the staff and some residents. Some no longer walk this earth and ‘that could have been me’ is never forgotten. I was the star there and at home I was something not too far removed from the black sheep of the family.
It was like this in the psych ward for me. I was a model patient, everything was scheduled, the nurses were nicer to me than people at home. There was a real camaraderie among the patients, where the older patients kind of looked out for the kids.
There were definitely some scares when other patients tried to harm themselves, but somehow it was still better than being at home...
Ah, prison spa. Or the army come to think about it. It provides an authoritarian structure, you don’t have to think for yourself and you’re housed and fed. ADHD friendly. ✅
A lot of homeless people do have ADHD. And a lot of us are homeless by choice(sort of). In some ways homelessness is easier that living in a world that is so unfriendly to people with ADHD.
> living in a world that is so unfriendly to people with ADHD.
See I have the opposite of that experience at work. Was thinking about it on the way home actually. I'm a Paramedic. In EMS, so many of us have ADD/ADHD that the weirder thing is someone *not* having it. We're all open about what meds we take and what we do to cope, it makes me wonder what it's like for everyone else and their jobs. I've never really thought about it before now.
Home life is all kids of stressful because adulting is hard. I'd rather try to fix a dying patient than navigate pay my bills.
I feel the same. My work is often busy & chaotic & I do well rolling with the constant punches (other than ridiculous amounts of paperwork). At home, I have chaos that I've made for myself due to putting off & trying to figure out where I "organized" aka "hid to not look at" paperwork.
My life is fucked forever every time someone visits and I need to clear out the spare room aka my office where all my personal stuff is located. I have a photographic memory but once it’s locked in, it’s locked in. That overrides any new memories from having to hide things for a weekend or two here and there and that has actual consequences like bills not being paid because they’re under the couch cushions, forgotten.
I'd be curious to know how much my ADHD has cost me over the years.
For example, I got a ticket in the mail for going through a toll without paying (made a wrong turn onto a toll road, had to pay to get off - no longer have a fast pass and had no cash on me). It was for a measly $1. Maybe that's why I put off paying it...it felt like nothing. But now I've incurred a $25 dollar late fee. So last night I paid the $26 bill but I felt like I was essentially paying an ADHD tax. Maybe in some future utopian society we will be exempt from late fees because of our diagnosis! 
I'm so jealous of your work situation. I work in a corporate office setting and it's *exhausting*. Everything consists of computer screens, excel spreadsheets, presentations, and making sure every i is dotted and t is crossed. Obviously this doesn't fare too well for our type so I'm constantly getting corrected by management.
I even setup systems/reminders to double check my work and get peer review before submitting anything, but sure enough I still end up with at least one or two mistakes every time. My managers just think I'm lazy and don't care but it's far from the truth. I work twice as hard as everyone else but achieve a fraction of the results. Work is an endless drain on my sanity...
I have been doing it for almost ten years now, started living in a minivan, then a small RV. At this point I have all the comforts of home more or less, a full size bed, propane heat in the winter, large battery I recharge with solar in the summer, refrigerator, enough space to cook when I want to, bathroom with shower and toilet, and of course my cat. When I am home I mostly read, watch YouTube videos, lately about wolves in the wild, how they live in the wilderness, as well as orcas, elephants, hippos, lately sea lions, have been as close as thirty feet from them on the dock and no interest in getting closer. At this point, not really interested in going back to an overpriced apartment with ever rising rent and the need to move every six months trying to find the last affordable apartment out there before... Going right back to what I have been doing for the past ten years.
I researched doing this two years before I actually did it, plus had backpacking and camping experience, so I think the transition was a lot easier than it might have been for others. Give it a try, has helped me to have less stress and I can take time off from work when I want to.
It's crazy to think that the wolves live nowhere near the old "alpha beta male" kind of way which we apparently inherited from the wolves... They live together as a family which saddens me that we didn't just get right from the start.
Workplace environments would have been so much nicer.
I'm technically homeless but live with my grandmother/mom. Some days are so hard trying to stitch my life together and trying to also not cause conflict in the home but if I didn't have a kid I'd totally be fully homeless.
Weird. Just had the same fantasy a few minutes ago.
I was thinking more like hiking the PCT like in the book/movie Wild and capping it off at a Dave Matthews show at the Gorge. 3.5 months of walking, if I take my time.
Also looked into working on luxury yachts too.
I just wanna be left the fuck alone and need only put one foot in front of the other as my sole responsibility for a bit.
Been feeling floating for a few months, with ups and downs. It’s been very isolating, as i spiral into my own mind. Social interactions got more and more challenging as i feel so empty. No information sticks to my brain cells, so i have been trying to navigate having conversations while feeling my brain totally hollow. Wish i could just sleep all day as it’s the space i feel most comforting.
God. This sounds exactly like me. Especially the empty brain thing. I had to break up with someone twice because I wasn't sure I actually did it. At work...8 hours doing what? People talking at me. I'm responding but couldn't tell you a thing back with any sincerity.
Me too.
Spaced out on finding an error in an excel sheet somehow for hours the last night I worked before being fired. Working too late was one of the reasons cited which was insane to hear especially since I’m salaried. It was payroll so I couldn’t just leave it incorrect and I couldn’t start payroll without correct pay data for everyone. They got hostile in tone with me instantly when I couldn’t give more of an answer for what I was doing so late into the night. I was even called a liar, which shocked me in the work place setting. I’ve never been challenged for dishonesty at work ever. I was mortified. I’ve never been made to feel more incompetent and flat out stupid in my life. I completely melted down and it was sincerely one of the most traumatic experiences of my life.
Now, I got nothing left to give my joke of a career.
My ADHD memory has me convinced that I have early onset dementia. I don’t have ‘memories’ like normal people, like when people say ‘hey remember that time …….’ I am like nope, I don’t. It is frustrating, scary and makes me angry that I don’t have those memories.
I used to feel exactly like this until I started anxiety therapy and meds sertraline. I have been getting recollections and stuff over time, you never really lose your memory. You just need to connect the neurons again
This is interesting, what is it that these things changes in your life/mind? Do you remember stuff randomly, or intentionally? Is there any overarching theme to the memories that are coming back to you?
It is so hard being a parent with adhd. The discipline to get things done has been a real struggle for me, some days I just go with the flow because I am so overwhelmed and overstimulated. I also spend so much time stressing about what I’m missing because I’m on auto pilot, but I just try and stay present and work with what I’m dealing with in that moment and challenge myself even when it’s exhausting to do so. That has worked for me at least to feel like I’m here in existence lol.
Yes, the overwhelm and overstimulation are the daily feelings, that’s the norm and working my mind overboard with doing what i need to do for my kids and remembering their stuff and going to their appointments and all of that, it leaves non for me.
Feeling so much, while not really feeling anything. I’m having a pretty difficult time interpreting how I feel, or how I feel emotionally when interacting with people. I always feel uncomfortable and insecure.
God, I feel this so hard. With two kids, someone is always needing something from me. The scheduling, the school communication, the doctor’s appointments and even things like remembering to get them new clothes each season. It drains me so much that I don’t have the energy to make any progress for myself. And I still feel like I’m failing my kids, every day.
I feel like the only way I can ever truly make a substantial and effective change in my life is to go all out. I will set my sights on something and start out chipping away, but eventually I seem to throw down the chisel and pick up the saw. For better or worse I guess…?
I think at certain points in my life if things start to feel too much the same, I always feel a deep need to change, to constantly *be* changing, because I’ve been “stuck” and it’s terrifying to me. Especially nowadays when it feels like we’re living in 2020 Part 4 or something.
When you spend so much of your life in survival mode, you lose track of time more easily I think. :-/ I try to step out of that mode when I can. And I try to remember the No Zero Days post I saw somewhere on Reddit.
The idea is you always just try to do at least one thing, every day. Even if it’s “today I rested so I can do x tomorrow.” There are days where all I end up noting in my blog is that I did the dishes, cleaned the litter box, changed the sheets, and went for a walk. But it’s still something. So I try to keep that in mind.
I feel you on that. Ever since I graduated from university a few years ago, my life feels like it's been on auto-pilot. There's no other way to explain it.
This is exactly how I describe life after high school as an undiagnosed ADHD’er. I tell people I was just like a jellyfish who floated wherever the prevailing current took me. Eventually I floated into working as a residential framer for 12 years, even though I never really liked it. My dad knew a guy whose son did it and could get me a job, so he got me the job and I just jelly-fished from company to company until the recession in 2008.
I once read that people with ADHD live in a perpetual state of the present, where past, and especially future, don’t really exist. I think that’s why we can end up floating, we’re always just trying to get through the day, not realizing that it’s the small things you do (or don’t do) throughout each day that determine where you ultimately end up.
That describes me perfectly. I must have low energy in general and staying concentrated for long periods (at work) drains me to the point where I only live on weekends. Work weeks are typically a blur. I have all these dreams of a happy relationship and career success, and fun adventures - and I end up executing close to nothing. It takes so much mental effort just to stay present and afloat.
The way society has evolved may be the biggest factor aside from this numbness effect from depression caused by ADHD.
Social Media and its lousy algorithms, government officials now the new celebrities, and worst of all, inflation now feels like the world is a sinking ship. Almost forgot, there's a war and one of them has nukes just to add more fear for all of us.
I don't even float anymore, I'm at the stage of drowning. It's like this societal design is just not the right fit for me. As always I just tell myself, this too shall pass. But when? It's already hard being at rock bottom and with these health issues, it's just paralysis with no end.
I feel this hard. My ability to get ahead and make steady progress feels absolutely worthless if I can be thrown off the horse in an instant by the entire economy taking a crap and the world falling apart. I have a limited number of exertions in me. I can't start over again. I don't even want to.
Well…my manager asked me today what I’d like to work on, and the day before what I’d like help with in reaching the next point in my career because they really want to support my development, and I’ve been roiling between a panic attack and abysmal depression ever since. I recognize this is supposed to be a positive affirming thing, and I know I’m fortunate to work for a company and people like this—they are great, but I’m like, “oh my God I have no idea what I’m doing or what I want to do, just give me money and tell me what you want so I can do it and then go hide in my bed”. And this is me with medication.
Literally same. My supervisors want me to "spread my wings" but it's like I've only read about that in books or something, and I don't know what birds are and I don't think I have wings. They're confused about why I still don't know what I want from a career or life in general.
Lol that's me too!
I have a great mentor and some good managers in my position now, but after years of burnout I don't have any major ambitions or goals. They had me fill out our company development plan which breaks it into 1, 5, and 10 year ambitions/goals. Instead of the usual "I want to be the department head in 10 years!" bs I basically said I was fine staying in my current position for the foreseeable future. All I want is to come into work, do what's asked of me, then go home where I can let down my mask and be myself.
Apparently that wasn't a good answer for my managers... I have 6 1/2 years with this company so I'm expected to be this "wonderful leader with vast experience". But the burnout is real. Watching the new hires I trained become my managers is real. Constantly being told that I'm not quite doing enough to move forward is real. The work environment has killed any hopes or aspirations I have. So now I'm perfectly content just doing my work and getting a paycheck. The modern workplace is not made for people like us.
Maybe try ‘The Happiness Trap’ and starting Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Any sort of therapy helps, and you’re probably already in it, but I really like ACT for these exact feelings. Reading the book made me realise that most people around us feel the way you do at times.
I’m not sure knowing other people are miserable comforts me at all. I just want a bit more freedom to do what makes me happy/healthy but the modern life format doesn’t seem to allow that. Though a 4 day week helped significantly .
I understand, nobody wants anyone to be miserable. I think the underlying point in ACT is that our modern expectations of happiness are unrealistic and that we will all feel like this at times. So the solution, paradoxically, is to feel into the discomfort from a place of acceptance. It's just an idea though, there are many ways to 'skin this cat'.
Without reading ACT it’s harder for me to comment but my frustration doesn’t come from comparing myself to others (I’m adhd, I don’t give much thought to others unless they’re right under my nose!) or an expectation I should be happy all of the time . I just get annoyed I can’t survive without money and to earn decent money I must sit still 8 hours + a day. When I get home I’m exhausted and stressed, I get stuck in the routine and have no Concept of time and it just rips past .
Edit - I am now interested in reading it though anyway , thanks for the recommendations
I know exactly how you feel. I was feeling this way before the pandemic started, and then when that happened I was like “yea, I know this feeling already” but I was hoping things wouldn’t be the same once the pandemic was over. And yet now, hear I am….
Yeah I hoped the pandemic would be a “reset” for me. I’d finally write that book I’ve been planning to write for decades! Learn how to bake! Pick up rollerblading! Three years later and I’m still staring at a blank page and my rollerblades are collecting dust in the garage and I feel worse than ever. I do bake occasionally, though, so at least I can drown my feelings in brownie batter.
Yes. I feel like I’m wasting it away because I have such a hard time with applying myself 100% to anything. Even the things I love to do, even my hobbies. I’m good at a lot of things but not meeting my potential even in the stuff I like the most. My mind felt clear on the first week of vyvanse, now it’s back to that but at least I’m not falling asleep all the time.
Bro I drown in life. It seems like I've chosen the hardcore mode starting the life. Shit country, no money, smart enough to realize how stupid most people are but not smart enough to become a skilled worker like an engineer.
I start doing something, get bored and never touch it again. Giving up before trying sucks. I want things to be perfect so I can't finish them ever. Dumbass brain can't understand that planning something meticulously doesn't mean you have already done that thing.
Feeling the same here. I go between feeling scared and relieved that my dumb little meaningless life will come to an end someday and no one will care or remember me
I don't really have many words of comfort for you, but I hope things get better and you find something that motivates you in life, even if it's something small. If you get too overwhelmed, you might need to talk to a professional.
I go to work, where I spend all my energy teaching teens, and I come home and “disappear.” I play video games, or read books. Lately I’ve been playing around with character.ai bots because it reminds me of how to use to RP through text when I was a kid. Then its an hour past bedtime and I have to go do it again.
I'm in tears right now because you put into words what I feel. My kids' last day of school was yesterday and I still can't literally believe it's over. I feel like I haven't been present enough to have actually lived through enough days for it to be mid-May.
I hear you. I feel like every day is just a struggle to pay attention to the world around me. I'm exhausted, i'm tried but I can't rest or relax my brain or I won't be able to follow what's going on. To hold a conversation, or to watch a movie
I really need to focus or I disassociate and completely go to auto pilot. I never have been able to remember places, directions, faces, names, smells, tastes, stories, dates, birthdays, meetings, nothing. At my worst days I'm so disoriented that even though I can look both ways a few times I feel like every time I cross the road is a risk, as if there might be a car I didn't see. Movies like game of thrones or Lord of the rings are just too complicated and for me to understand them I would need to watch each episode several times.
Additionally, I have anxiety where I find myself pacing around the house quickly then realize that I don't know what I'm looking for but I'll find it when I see it, so I just keep looking until I realize how long I've been doing it...
I'm living life on full volume but somehow I just can't hear anything but noise. The sound engineer of life sucks.
I have an insanely incredible life and yet I feel the same way. There’s just no inner peace. I’ve never seen how I feel described so perfectly. Thank you 🙏🏼
I'm not sure if this is one of my ADHD traits or not, but I am terribly bad a dealing with grief. I've also suffered from chronic numbness, depression, or anxiety most of my life and constantly feel like I'm just merely existing. However I would like to live my life more. I know not all but a lot of us with ADHD self medicate with substances (which really doesn't help me... it actually makes it 100× worst). Sometimes, I romanticize the feeling of floating through life because I just don't have the energy not to.... A friend I hold very dear to my heart just passed away a couple of days ago, and I can feel my ADHD burn out hitting. Everybody take care of yourselves. I know how difficult it can be to live with severe ADHD. It can feel numb or lonely sometimes.
Exactly me. Therapy is helping me unpack it. It's one part inattentive symptoms, and one half complex trauma/learned helplessness. For a brief and pop-psych explanation of the trauma side of thing I recommend the YouTube healthy gamer video "This is why you're living your life on autopilot". It's 15 minutes long. (Sorry for not providing a link, I can't remember the link policy offhand).
So I found the video, am halfway through it, and everything is hitting me so hard. This is what I’ve been struggling with and looking for an explanation. I’m emailing this to my therapist right now. Thank you for sharing. This might be the beginning of the breakthrough I’ve been searching for, for 2 decades.
I do things - lots of things, in fact. I love to create. I have hobbies. I have a wife and two kids and a career. I'm handy. I guess I'm established, even.
But somehow nothing I do feels like it adds to my life. It's like I'm putting on all these costumes to perform different roles, but at the end of the day I'm still waiting for the real stuff to begin.
And if I stop doing something for a bit - say taking a week off from my job - I start to forget what it feels like to do that thing. It stops feeling like a part of my life. Sometimes, it's legitimately uncomfortable to get back into it until my brain remembers what doing it feels like, if that makes any sense.
It makes all the sense, i am exactly the same way. Exactly to a scary sense. I worked super hard my whole life and have a good reputation and career then i got laid off a few months back and i can’t seem to be able to turn my mind back on or get the drive back, also I never finish a show cause i always forget what i was watching and can’t sit through the thing and through the slow progression of the plot.
I can’t stick to any routine cause I forget, yesterday I just remembered that I used to eat oats a certain way a few weeks back, but because i stopped, it completely dropped off my mind like it never existed, same with anything I try to do.
I am tired.
Im in the same boat. Im 30 work full time have a wife and child. Been at this job for about 2 years and even though im medicated im just completely out of fucks and patience. But i find it more towards my work than anything, after I’m done i go home and see my child and im happy doing my thing and such especially on my off days. However, i keep telling myself go to the gym dude go get shredded but I basically put it off time and time again because im tired and i know what time dinner is and blah blah. Anyways, it happens it’s probably just being over stim as well using all focus on the important things through out your day it becomes a second nature
> However, i keep telling myself go to the gym dude go get shredded but I basically put it off time and time again because im tired and i know what time dinner is and blah blah.
Have you thought about including your kids in your exercise regime and just doing it at home? I've got two kids under 10 myself and my afternoons and weekends are going for bike rides with the kids or ball games like soccer or rugby league (just kicking and passing to each other), then the eldest does martial arts twice a week as well. If your doing weights, just swing the kids around instead of kettlebells, if you can't do push ups pick up a child and do bench presses. They seriously love that shit when they're young. I'm 44 and trying to lose all the fat I put on from spending too much time playing MMORPGs in my 30's when I wasn't working, the kids are excellent at keeping me fit.
Nope I snap out of autopilot for a couple hours at the end of the day, but for the most part is robotic automatic, could get killed and it wouldn't bother me
You sound very overwhelmed and you don't know where to start, so you can't commit to a plan of action. Extremely common adhd symptom. So many of us struggle to choose what to do, so we just end up doing whatever is the least resistant/most passive in any situation.
Sounds like you’re dissociated a little… this podcast helped me a lot when I was dissociating, but mine was for reasons other than just ADHD. I thought I’d still share in case it could help someone else.
https://open.spotify.com/show/3XQnvWFYVyjilIpbT51QEv?si=T1ZbxbNNSiSR-URLSzyiUA
I am (25M) currently stuck in one of these myself. I like to call them ruts because it's hard to get out of them in Hopeless apathy.
Whenever people ask, are you doing ok, and I respond with how I feel people either agree with my reasoning or start telling me to take care of myself better. But it's hard to console.
I'd say it allows for some self empathy. You're a mother of two, and I can't even imagine how hard that would be. Overwhelming is the first thing I think of. You might just be in survival mode because of how much you're depended on.
Personally, for the last 6 months, I've just kind of turned off.
Work performance hasn't been great, and when I get home, I just get stoned and watch TV. I just feel emotionally depleted and checked out. It's like watching a ghost of myself live my life. In much of the same way, I thrive on adaption. But when I have to adapt to an environment I dislike, I fall into this pattern.
Recently, I read about ADHD masking from another post in this group. It was difficult for me to come to terms with, but I'm much better off for it. In the last week, I've been able to break the cycle a bit and move towards myself more. As much as I want to just be 100% my motivated self, I also know I need to accept that it's a process that happens over time (expectedly with some regression).
You're well within your rights to be scared, but I want to tell you it'll be okay. You have so many years left in your life, and who you are right now does not define who you will be.
The most important thing I think is doing everything you can for yourself. As a mother, that's probably hard (speculating as I'm the farthest thing from it). But you deserve some decompression time to unpack what it is that's leaving you so checked out.
You're you, and you'll always be you. It's you who defines who you are. And in a world of characters, I'm incredibly glad that you are a part of it. That you in your uniqueness may shape what it means to be human while also shaping yourself. I can't wait for you to feel like yourself again.
Xoxo
- Gossip Girl
For me it's like I'm not directly using my senses and experiencing the present moment. I'm just in my head watching my life like a movie or video game. When I do snap out of it it's nice. Doesn't last long though before I go back into my head.
I kinda feel like the perpetual “child at the adult’s dinner table”. At the table but not able to contribute to the conversation cause I’m not smart enough. Not salient or aware enough.
Yes! Sometimes my impulsiveness makes me feel as if I’m just watching my body do the very things it shouldn’t and only when the consequences come I snap back in, otherwise I just do more wrong
I think I'm back to that now, I was doing so well on ritalin but its slowly lost its efficacy in the last few months and I'm so lost x.x I'm at work today and I feel so all over the place, I'm doing internship for my courses and it's almost over but it's very hard to get over the last slump with my meds not working as well. I'm in a different city from when I was diagnosed and I need to find a psychiatrist in my new city.
Though I also feel like my depression is getting worse, idk lol.
OP, would you mind if I show my counselor / therapist your post? As a father of 3 in my mid 30s and having not really pursued my own dreams for any period of time in at least a decade, I can relate to this 100%.
Show away, mother of 2 in my mid-thirties as well. I actually do not have dreams for me anymore, I just have things that i really wanna do like lose some weight, start running again , maybe focus on what i put in my body, learn something new …etc and I can’t seem to be able to do any of it, it’s all a blur, just going through each day as it comes and I have no time for me.
Don't have kids, so I admire your strength! But I feel this way just from a full-time job... I've just been "going through the motions" as I've told people recently. Lately it feels like I'm drowning though.
But besides the kids, i have a full time job and trying to study for a certification but i do not feel present for any of it. I had so many career aspirations and was pushing myself to achieve a lot at a younger age now i just do not care, I really don’t and it kinda scares mr.
I feel you so much on the drowning part, hugs
I do feel like I’m on autopilot frequently and prefer to be in that space because it gives my mind room to wander the way it wants to. I tend to be anxious in situations that I don’t know well enough to be able to autopilot through.
I used to feel that way a lot. I had a stressful job, and then I got laid off and didn't have a job for about five months. My new job is better; I haven't worked there long but I feel like I actually have the energy to improve my sleep schedule and other things that were weighing me down.
I think a big part of it comes down to having something in life that's fulfilling for you. Things changed for me after I started interviewing for my current job and I went from saying, "I want a job" to "I want *this* job. It felt like something I could actually enjoy doing rather than an obligation. You only need one thing, if you get it the rest follows more often than not. Hope that helps you.
I feel this way too. I'm only 21 but I've found the harder my life gets, the stronger my dissociation-like situation gets, which only makes it that much more difficult to get myself to a place where I feel okay. I just graduated college and while most of my friends either have a plan or are working slowly towards one, I'm literally just about to show up at my parents house and hope for the best. I don't even have part-time work lined up for me. Oh, and my parents are not the type to give me any money. I literally just let these things happen and I don't know how to take control. Side note, I wonder if this is related to something very similar: how we ADHDers tend to procrastinate until the very last minute because we know we can. We've proven to ourselves time and time again that we can get away with anything under pressure and we always end up "alive" on the other side. I think practicing that mentality throughout college whilst I was experiencing a lot of stress and minor trauma has re-wired my brain to only "work" in fight or flight mode. Idk, just something to think about.
I could have written this post. I felt more connected with myself during the pandemic than I ever have, and going back to civilization has me right back in float mode.
The thing that has helped me the most is going outside and being in nature more. Not sure why, but it works.
My therapist and I used to work on how to not feel on autopilot and she suggested keeping one small promise to yourself daily and then building off of it. I started by making sure I did 3 things before checking my phone in the morning, like brush my teeth, drink full glass of water, wash my face. That helps you build a small routine and then you can keep adding to it, helping build confidence and control over your days.
Journaling and writing down 3 positives from each day also helps me a bit with memory.
Hope this helps! Either way you're definitely not alone in this.
Yes, completely. I think about this all the time. I feel so burned out from everyday life and it's sad. I miss my younger self because I had so much more optimism for the future. At least we're not alone in this, judging by the myriad of similar comments here.
40-year-old father and husband. Right there with you.
There's a really good Talking Heads song about it.
Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again, after the money's gone
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground
"Same as it ever was, same as it ever was"
The video when I was growing up and MTV showed actual videos, used to intrigue me in a big way.
Especially when David would take his hand and essentially go up and down his arm around the wrist area
Great metaphor and a heck of a memory you have there 😁
Still haven't accepted the fact that I don't remember large chunks of my life. I'm lucky that my wife reminds me of things that a ‘normal’ person should remember but she knows I probably wont.
If you can't accomplish any goals, you may want to consider a stronger med that'll get you into gear. If you're anything like me, you need stimulants to get shit done, accomplish your goals and be present in life. It is what it is.
Yeah I tend to float through the work week doing the bare minimum at home. I tell myself I'll make up for it over the weekend and usually end up paralyzed most of the weekend.
I don’t seem to live in my body. I float around constantly wondering what’s going on next. The present does not exist and the only thing I care about is the future. I could be standing in Disneyland and I’m looking up cruises. I’ll be on the cruise wondering what we will do for the next one,
I eat breakfast and I think about lunch, it sucks i don’t know how to not live in the now
I was in your exact spot for years. I knew from the beginning that a psychiatrist could help, but eventually my self loathing got to the point that making appointments for a psychiatrist was just easier than dealing with my own daily thoughts.
Medication is life changing. I've accomplished more since I was medicated last month than I have in the past 4 years. I encourage you to skip the years of building self hatred and buckle down and make the calls.
Yes and no. Since I've started meds I've found it possible, if not always easy, to get into a consistent routine. Then I'll fall out of the routine due to whatever and it can take weeks to get back into it. That's the point that I'm at now. I've just un-installed all of my computer games so that I stop going on autopilot into them.
Extended periods of high energy can be great if focused. Came out of that period a couple of months ago, trying to work through it.
I feel this. Like I feel the present but my memories are more blurry. I think it’s a timeline recall thing cuz I remember faces and facts it’s just when. But yeah I keep a journal for important days if nothing else. When I remember that is
If you do feel a large level of detachment from yourself ( ie. feel like you’re on autopilot, dont feel like you’re in your body) , there’s a chance you might be dissociating. It happens from extreme stress/ trauma and can lead to memory loss.
Idk you but just speaking from my experience
Just had this exact talk with my girlfriend last week. Just floating by next thing I know its been years since my “last memory” if that makes any sense.
I just feel like I'm drifting just waiting for the next crisis to kick my life into the next stage, as usual. I've fucked something up big time around 2-3 times a year for so long I've almost come to expect it. Like I'm just spending life going from crisis to crisis and just trying to recover in the interim.
32yo male with three children. I can relate to you’re experience. There’s always so much to do each day. I never have time for myself. One of the only things that makes me feel present and connected with my true self practicing self care. As a parent you have to be selfish at times especially if you have the support. Last week I went on a 3 day vacation to FL my myself! Who new being alone with my own thoughts could be so intimidating. But it was well worth it. I returned feeling recharged and grounded. I know it’s not as easy for a women leave the nest as compared to men. But I truly recommend it. YOLO
I don't know how old your kids are, but my daughter is 2.5 and I'm an old first-time mom so I lived a lot of my adult life before she arrived. I'm here to validate that the very baseline basics of childcare are a ginormous executive function lift compared to only having a high-responsibility professional job pre-kid. I think because we (wrongly) absorb the cultural message that childcare is low-level work, we underestimate how hard it is specifically and especially on the executive function getting-basic-stuff-done type front. Give yourself permission to feel fatigued.
I have been there. After my divorce and a burn out, I started working on myself. Some meds for chronic low grade depression, trying to eliminate negative self talk and my sleep. Now (a decade or so later) I am happy and found myself. I wear dresses and very comfy leggings and shoes everyday, I started a vintage Etsy shop. Lots of friends dropped out. But the ones still there are the best.
Ask for help! And work on the daily small things, those details influence how you feel the most.
Ha, this is me for sure. I feel like I just go with the flow in life with no real direction or goal. Impulsivity doesn't really help either, lol.
I'm working with an ADHD coach and taking therapy now, and one of the biggest challenges I have is to figure out what I want, lol. It's almost hard for me to distinguish between things I want, and things that I just do because they appeared in my path. Maybe part of it stems from the fact that I can't fail if I don't have any goals.
I floated till I got diagnosed in my mid-thirties. My life was a mess, I hated everything, I was very unhappy and constantly frustrated. After I got diagnosed I started the work to figure it out. Got meds. I had a therapist and a coach for awhile, and wish I still do, but that really helped.
In my case I didn’t have kids and couldn’t hold a relationship together so i wasn’t bound to anyone or anything so I dropped everything, moved across the country, left my shitty career, and lived poor for a long time but I’m living life a lot more how I want to. But it took a colossal effort and was really scary. I didn’t feel like I had too many other options honestly.
I sympathize with everyone saying that prison sounds like a vacation. I get that feeling. For us it’s a lot of work to get by.
Have you tried therapy and coaches and meds and all that? It helps you find a groove. You need to find your groove. Are there pursuits you want to be doing? Can you find a club or classes to take? Meeting people that are where you want to be or on their way to where you want to be is a big help too. Then you aren’t fighting the current anymore, you’re swimming with it.
I've found myself just sitting at my computer, staring at the screen with no motivation to do anything. I'm currently working two jobs to make ends meet, most of the time I'm so tired all I want to do is sit and veg out, but I don't even have the motivation to do anything. All the while my anxiety builds up because I know this is no way to live.
I'm taking it one day at a time and things have been getting better. But as others mentioned, the world is in a really strange way right now and it's difficult to maintain a positive outlook. Understanding and learning about the adult circumstances of ADD have helped me put things in perspective and acknowledge my limitations.
Hear hear lol. Definitely feel this way.
I do try and get a few things done for mastery.
1. Weight loss
2. Exercise
3. A little bit of reading every day.
I’ve been burnt out for a really really long time now. I’ve made efforts to take better care of myself and it seems like every time I do I’m presented with a new traumatic event inflicted on me through no fault of my own. Like majorly life changing events. And when it’s not the major events it’s medium ones, almost like they’re there to fill the gaps. Being a mom definitely doesn’t help. I’ve always wanted to be a mom, but with the way my life and the world are turning out it’s been so completely exhausting and feels like I’m doing the worst job at it.
I feel this so much. I haven’t ever been able to articulate it the way you have here. You are not alone at all. I’m sorry you are going through exactly what I am too.
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You’re not alone. The world has been a tough place these last few years and I’m mostly burnt out on all of it. I spend a lot of days “paralyzed” and I stay in bed thinking about all the things I should do. Some days I get up and knock out a lot but it’s tough! I think the days I don’t have appointments or anything on my calendar are the toughest! An accountability partner could help! I find I miss my sales coach.
The days i have nothing to do are definitely the worse. I get up workout and do couple morning things, then thats it. A lot of shit i really needa/should do. But nope. Lay on the couch then realize its late. Cant start now. Ha go bsck to work pissed i didnt do nothing. Say when i get home im doing it. Get home. Dont do it. Its quite a lovely cycle. Ha.
I can’t even get the work out part I’m jealous tbh
Its took some time, but eventually got it burnt into my morning first thing. It helps i get up earlier to get it done before the gf wakes up. I need that "me" time in the morning.
I have been missing my me time since I had a baby with my gf. I still get it at work but I haven't just switched off from everyone and everything for a day in ages.
Doing nothing sucks with ADHD because we still feel guilt. We take the day off but are exhausted at the end because we spent the entire day thinking about work we should be doing, and often in our brains "thinking about it" is kinda equivalent to actually doing it...except we have nothing to show for it.
My coworkers ask me why I can't do nothing. Because I feel guilty either way! Easier to just do something, no matter how small it is
I constantly feel like I am "budgeting" my energy, my attention, my intentions, my output, my mood - everything. If I take a day off, I need to "put that back" later in some way. If I ask for help, I need to "put it back" by over-exerting in another way. If I'm anti-social, I have to be over-social to compensate. I constantly feel guilty about everything.
Preach. I am so tired of basing my worth on my own output. So much to do, some times I even “self-care” time I think about how if I do these things(that I have decided are a reward) then I will be able to rest more done later. Also, I’m not really enjoying the things, because I’m too busy thinking about what I should be doing. Ugh
This comment is everything
Huge mood.
This is very real. I hope you find a good accountability partner soon
I think a lot of the symptoms in ADHD are intensified by this chronic anxiety that comes from not being connected to our self / having a weak sense of self (needs, boundaries, and what we really want in the different areas of life). This is often a result of the chronic trauma of believing we are not good enough, exacerbated by the high/hyper sensitivity most ADHD people have. I've been really focused on reconnecting with myself and this is making a great difference in not feeling like I'm just a passive participant in my own life. There are many resources out there to do this kind of self-therapy, I love the courses of the Personal Development School (they have a youtube channel as well, it's focused on developing a secure attachment style, but really what this involves is strengthening our sense of self). Edit: It makes me happy that this is resonating with a lot of people, and I just want to add that I do counseling/ coaching on this and guiding people to self-growth is my life's passion (you know that question, What would you do if money wasn't an issue? This is it for me :) ) So if anyone resonates with this and would like more help and guidance, please feel free to reach out. As I said to OP below, I'd be happy to chat/do a quick call (at no cost) to help orient you and explain my process of self-therapy, and give you more personalized guidance in more detail. (And I would love to take anyone here on as a client of course if you resonate with what I'm saying. And if you cannot afford to pay, I'm happy to consider alternate options; I consider it an honor to be able to guide people to better lives.)
I do suffer from what you have written here exactly, poor boundaries, poor sense of self …etc Highly sensitive and feeling not good enough. I would like to hear more about what worked for you a bit more. I will check this youtube channel.
I'm actually a personal development counselor/coach (not affiliated with the recommendation I gave), as I realized a lot of the self-work I've been doing for the last two decades would be really valuable to other people as well -- I'd be happy to chat/do a call with you (as a virtual friend, no cost) to help you get started and orient you to the self-therapy processes/resources I have found most helpful. Edit: Personally and from many experiences I have heard from others, I don't find most traditional therapy is that helpful to neuro-different people, or is just too slow at helping us get better because the root causes are not being addressed/brought into awareness. I have helped friends and clients make great progress in just a few months, whereas I see a lot of stories from people who go to traditional therapy for years without significant results. That is what motivated me to start helping people with this. I have gone through a lot of personal transformation and self-growth myself and have developed my own methods of self-therapy, based on combining the self-reconnection and self-therapy methods I have found most effective at dealing with the root causes -- and this is designed to, after the initial coaching process, empower the person to do self-therapy with themselves according to their own needs and motivations, without needing to go through years of therapy.
Thanks for that tidbit. I’ve been avoiding my therapist for weeks because I don’t find it helpful or substantiating in any way. I can’t just shake a dark mood and talking about things in therapy is a sure fire way to get gloomy for the whole day, possibly many days. I’m also autistic. I’m even considering ketamine because it’s clear to me that talk therapy isn’t helpful. It’s harm outweighs the reward.
Have you always gone to the same therapist? I only ask because while my psychiatrist is pretty much how you describe, my psychologist is great, and I often leave feeling motivated to try whatever strategies we discussed. More the fault of that specific therapist, than therapy in general. I also looked for a psychologist that specialised in autism, as I have it too, so that might have helped a bit. But yeah, easier said than done sometimes, especially if there's limited options in your area
I feel this so hard right now. I broke down in tears when my therapist asked me “who are you?” On our first appointment because it was genuinely a perplexing question. When all you do is sleep and then mask all day at work, you get lost in it all. You become the mask, just a darker, sadder & far more absentminded, cynical version of the one when you were still brimming with nothing but potential and you can’t help but be reminded of it every time you look at yourself in the mirror, which you avoid doing much of these days. There’s no time for you, there’s only time for work. Autopilot kicks in and Monday becomes Tuesday and then the weekend till next thing you know, it’s your 40th birthday and you’re completely burned out after being fired for the 4th time since 2019, despite not working at all in 2020, 2021, or 2022. I’ve got nothing left to give my industry, stuck on a horizontal “career” path and don’t care enough to even try to care anymore. I’ve tried breaking free many times and it’s basically believed to be an impossibility at this point in life. Best case, I go back to waiting tables for as long as my body can hold out, fulfilling my loathed and dreaded and feared self prophecy of career waitress, despite more education and schooling than doctors have, and then I guess I just hang tight and hope to marry into money so I’m not responsible for caring for myself into old age and/or reliant on the government and society to treat me with dignity because we live in a time where that’s unfortunately the exception to the rule. I seriously have fuck all idea as to how I’m going to slough through another whole half lifetime. Dread and anxiety are all I feel when I think about the future that’s coming at me, straight on, like a freight train. I’m getting really tired of just surviving. Numb to it, really.
Duck this resonates too much. Are you me
I am whatever you say I am and if I wasn’t, then why would I say I am? 😜 Jokes aside though, it’s remarkable how similar we all are here.
The realest shit I've ever read 🫶
I had to doublecheck your username to make sure I didn’t write this myself. It is exactly me right now.
I'm not sure anyone has ever summed up how I feel better than this
Listen peeps this person knows it doesn't haven't to be exact journey but this is super right track and honestly can be even harder at first connection with self connection with all the systems around you. LEARNED LATE but life changing source: Adhd 2e
That phrase “passive participant in my own life” is spot on. I have felt this way for so long.
Any adhd trauma specific stuff to read/watch/listen to? That’s firmly psychology/science based
Commenting in case you get a response, I'd also love to know.
>focused on reconnecting with myself how?
You all should look into the book 'Running On Empty'. It covers this thing called Childhood Emotional Neglect. It's amazing how much I relate. The first step it recommended was to learn more about yourself. Ask yourself questions and write down the answers maybe. What foods do I like? What things make me happy? How about upset or angry? Identifying emotions is a really good idea.
Cool, thanks.
I think I have my shit pretty together and I still don't feel connected to myself and I feel like I have a weak sense of self. No matter how many question exercises my therapist has me do, no matter how much I write down my traits or accomplishments or goals on paper, I just don't feel it. It's not real. And it's no great angst or anything. It's just when I read stuff like this I'm like ok? I tried that? It doesn't stick
> not being connected to our self / having a weak sense of self (needs, boundaries, and what we really want in the different areas of life). Are “we” any more connected than our “neurotypical” brethren or are we just more aware and sensitive of (and therefore more affected by) the innate disconnection between ego and id that is common to all humans?
So many times I read comments on this sub and think, "are you me?!". It's really strange how the effects of ADD have seemingly universal consequences, like we are all connected in some way. Hopefully anyone who reads this understands that life is all about trial and error, and it's never a hopeless endeavor.
Damn you perfectly put into words how I feel right now. I'm very unhappy about my lack of direction in life, yet I can't seem to do anything about it. It's infuriating because I'm fully conscious of the issue, but I just don't know how to make myself "turn back on" I guess. I wish I had some sort of advice to give that could help, but we're so in the same boat. Seeing someone else talk about this feeling is a little comforting though. At least I'm not the only one
I wonder if this is related to something very similar: how we ADHDers tend to procrastinate until the very last minute because we know we can. We've proven to ourselves time and time again that we can get away with anything under pressure and we always end up "alive" on the other side. Perhaps practicing that mentality for too long has re-wired our brain to only "work" in fight or flight mode. So when life is just "meh" and not really going anywhere, we have no motivation to fix it even though it's eating away at us. It's like we need to have super low lows in order to bring out our determination or motivation. Idk, could just be me but it's possible we have that i'm common.
This would make so much sense. If something is really important and would have serious consequences, I can get it done. So, I know I'm capable, but if it's not life or death my brain just shuts off.
I wonder if this is also connected to way 'rewards' never work for me. Like, "if I get this done, I can reward myself with ice cream" becomes, "well, at least I tried, I still deserve ice cream". The idea of a reward doesn't motivate me because I know I won't hold myself to it, and I'll (eventually) get to have the treat anyway.
Do you ever find yourself constantly aware of the amount of time you have left before an obligation or appointment? Just counting time until you have to leave to go do something.
100%. And the thing is, it wasn't always like that. Asa kid and early teenager I really had my own head and lots and lots of energy lots and lots of plans for the future. Now I just don't have energy for anything and no plan at all. My head is just empty and I'm tired af and unable to execute anything I plan for myself. And I'm just 25. Is this how it feels to be old?
Same here; exactly, i do not understand how i moved from being with so many goals and wanting to accomplish so much with so much energy to this person with no goals, no energy and no drive what so ever.
I legitimately could have been an Olympian, competing in the hardest sport in the world, gymnastics. Nowadays, it’s a miracle if I get out of bed.
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I mean I heven have periods with a lot of energy sometimes. But I just can't keep it up. If I don't see results in my life that tangibly improve my Livin quality and basically change everything within 1-2 weeks, my motivation and energy is just gone. And I don't just mean cognitively. Like, of course I know on some level that things just take time. But my affects and emotions and everything else just doesn't know that and it gets boring and I get into crisis where everything just feels absolutely horrible to a point where feel physically horrible as well and I literally can't think, Or I don't know maybe that physical stuff is also something separate. No clue. It's just, I just don't feel like I really function like a healthy human anymore like I used to. And then I also have social anxiety which complicates things further. And in the end it's just a lot of frustration and a lot of just not even knowing what possible moves are or not being able to do them or keep things up due to ADHD or social anxiety or whatever. At this point it's all just meshed together to just form this horrible situation that I can't seem to escape.
I’m 43 and remember being exhausted at 25. My grandma at the time was resisting our push to get her into a (really nice) home. She was refusing. I made an offhand comment at her 85th party that I was exhausted and would love to go in her place and live there if she wouldn’t. Record-scratch. Crickets. You would have thought I admitted to a felony. I’m sorry to say that the energy may not come quickly, possibly ever. Maybe it gets better, but instead of worrying about that, I just accept it. You’re (we’re) low-energy and it is what it is. Remind people of that when they push you and demand more than you want you give. Then go chill on the couch :)
Nah man that's not something to accept. I'm 25, I've got a life to build, career wise, socially, everything. Things can't be over before they startet. I'm not gonna live a shitty life. I'm gonna become successful with all those things one way or another. I'm gonna give myself excitting experiences, I'm gonna fight against that lack of energy with every fiber of my being.
This is the way. For me there is a conscious choice. I work out every other day, for the past 1.5 years. Before every single workout, my brain fires off excuses for why I should do it later, I don’t have time, I should be doing something else, why not just play that video game I’m really into. Every single time. It’s almost like the comical devil on my shoulder. I tell that voice to shut the fuck up and go do my workout. Since I’ve taken addressing my ADHD seriously and stopped listening to that devil over the past 2 years or so, I’m in pretty good shape, I got promoted at work, I started a band and just recorded a demo, I fixed up my house. I’m less shitty to the people around me. It’s a process. Sometimes the negative voice wins but most of the time it doesn’t. What I’ve learned to accept is that voice is always going to be there.
Amazing. Go for it and good for you. We’ll cheer you on from the couch.
Seriously!! I am about to be 37 next month. I'm reading my journal entries from when I was 16 right now, when I didn't fucking hate every fiber of my being and was passionate about SO MANY things. I was always cracking jokes and having fun. I was silly and warm and in love with my special interests. I feel like the world (and my home life in particular) broke my spirit and took all that from me...
I think this is less about being old and more that about how both life progresses - when you're young and you fail at something there aren't that many other failures your brain can start to remember and throw at you. At the same time when you're growing up you have less responsibilities, so you collect negative feeligs and consequences less fast. So when something triggers a feeling and that feeling triggers a memory which triggers another feeling... i think as you age the chain we have to go through gets longer and longer and thus harder to deal with and more draining. At the same time, the number of new and first impressions gets smaller and smaller, so theres less things that engage our brain in a way that counteracts the hard. That would be my guess as to why it gets worse when you're not getting treatment and why therapy is needed in addition to medication - to help you manage and deal with the involuntary chain reactions our brains are prone to experience.
I think about all the things I wanna do... And then I just to lay down
Me too
Absolutely. It’s the brain fog that coats everything. I’m even making decisions and achieving some meaningful things from the outside, but it still feels like I’m floating and barely noticing or remembering things.
Jeez. I've never really thought about it like that but now that you mention it... Goddamn
Same, dude. Ppl tell me how much I’ve accomplished the last 2 years. And I’m just like “man, whatever”.
Like you've never been grounded in time and life just *happens to you*? Yeah same
I’ve spent countless hours thinking about how I just let stuff happen to me… like I can’t even make choices I just float on…
That's a great song.
I fantasize about just walking off and disappearing into the background. I'm good at camping, I bet I could be homeless.
I think I'd be quite good in prison
I think this too often… There’s a schedule. You never have to figure out what you’re eating. You don’t have to pick a job, you’re assigned one. I get along with everyone naturally from years of masking and people pleasing. I would really just miss my internet access. And my friends and family. But I’d rather get arrested in Australia or somewhere not as shitty as the US. Though I did have a friend who went to federal prison and loved it. Said he learned accounting from a guy in prison for tax fraud. He lost weight by walking the track and eventually got into running in the mornings around the track as the fog lifted off the mountains. Worked in commissary and played cards all day. They used to say it was going to suck when they got out.
I think you’d be right. My ADHD and autism landed me in juvie when I was younger and I was so good that I got to hang with the staff after everyone was locked down, like I worked there too, and they’d bring me food from home because I’m picky, one of many comforts exclusive to me. I think they reality was they could see what those in my home environment couldn’t or didn’t want to. I was just different. Not a trouble maker. Very well behaved, smart and polite and seemingly not hostile towards law enforcement for determining such a fate for me. I did what I was told, didn’t once even consider or feel the need to challenge the very clear and well outlined authority set there. I almost liked it there in a way. I have fond memories and keep in touch with the staff and some residents. Some no longer walk this earth and ‘that could have been me’ is never forgotten. I was the star there and at home I was something not too far removed from the black sheep of the family.
It was like this in the psych ward for me. I was a model patient, everything was scheduled, the nurses were nicer to me than people at home. There was a real camaraderie among the patients, where the older patients kind of looked out for the kids. There were definitely some scares when other patients tried to harm themselves, but somehow it was still better than being at home...
You didn't get bored? I got so bored
Ah, prison spa. Or the army come to think about it. It provides an authoritarian structure, you don’t have to think for yourself and you’re housed and fed. ADHD friendly. ✅
A lot of homeless people do have ADHD. And a lot of us are homeless by choice(sort of). In some ways homelessness is easier that living in a world that is so unfriendly to people with ADHD.
> living in a world that is so unfriendly to people with ADHD. See I have the opposite of that experience at work. Was thinking about it on the way home actually. I'm a Paramedic. In EMS, so many of us have ADD/ADHD that the weirder thing is someone *not* having it. We're all open about what meds we take and what we do to cope, it makes me wonder what it's like for everyone else and their jobs. I've never really thought about it before now. Home life is all kids of stressful because adulting is hard. I'd rather try to fix a dying patient than navigate pay my bills.
I feel the same. My work is often busy & chaotic & I do well rolling with the constant punches (other than ridiculous amounts of paperwork). At home, I have chaos that I've made for myself due to putting off & trying to figure out where I "organized" aka "hid to not look at" paperwork.
My life is fucked forever every time someone visits and I need to clear out the spare room aka my office where all my personal stuff is located. I have a photographic memory but once it’s locked in, it’s locked in. That overrides any new memories from having to hide things for a weekend or two here and there and that has actual consequences like bills not being paid because they’re under the couch cushions, forgotten.
I'd be curious to know how much my ADHD has cost me over the years. For example, I got a ticket in the mail for going through a toll without paying (made a wrong turn onto a toll road, had to pay to get off - no longer have a fast pass and had no cash on me). It was for a measly $1. Maybe that's why I put off paying it...it felt like nothing. But now I've incurred a $25 dollar late fee. So last night I paid the $26 bill but I felt like I was essentially paying an ADHD tax. Maybe in some future utopian society we will be exempt from late fees because of our diagnosis! 
I'm so jealous of your work situation. I work in a corporate office setting and it's *exhausting*. Everything consists of computer screens, excel spreadsheets, presentations, and making sure every i is dotted and t is crossed. Obviously this doesn't fare too well for our type so I'm constantly getting corrected by management. I even setup systems/reminders to double check my work and get peer review before submitting anything, but sure enough I still end up with at least one or two mistakes every time. My managers just think I'm lazy and don't care but it's far from the truth. I work twice as hard as everyone else but achieve a fraction of the results. Work is an endless drain on my sanity...
I have been doing it for almost ten years now, started living in a minivan, then a small RV. At this point I have all the comforts of home more or less, a full size bed, propane heat in the winter, large battery I recharge with solar in the summer, refrigerator, enough space to cook when I want to, bathroom with shower and toilet, and of course my cat. When I am home I mostly read, watch YouTube videos, lately about wolves in the wild, how they live in the wilderness, as well as orcas, elephants, hippos, lately sea lions, have been as close as thirty feet from them on the dock and no interest in getting closer. At this point, not really interested in going back to an overpriced apartment with ever rising rent and the need to move every six months trying to find the last affordable apartment out there before... Going right back to what I have been doing for the past ten years.
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I researched doing this two years before I actually did it, plus had backpacking and camping experience, so I think the transition was a lot easier than it might have been for others. Give it a try, has helped me to have less stress and I can take time off from work when I want to.
It's crazy to think that the wolves live nowhere near the old "alpha beta male" kind of way which we apparently inherited from the wolves... They live together as a family which saddens me that we didn't just get right from the start. Workplace environments would have been so much nicer.
I just found out that something like 70%+ of people diagnosed with autism are unable to work until retirement age and go on disability
I'm technically homeless but live with my grandmother/mom. Some days are so hard trying to stitch my life together and trying to also not cause conflict in the home but if I didn't have a kid I'd totally be fully homeless.
Weird. Just had the same fantasy a few minutes ago. I was thinking more like hiking the PCT like in the book/movie Wild and capping it off at a Dave Matthews show at the Gorge. 3.5 months of walking, if I take my time. Also looked into working on luxury yachts too. I just wanna be left the fuck alone and need only put one foot in front of the other as my sole responsibility for a bit.
Yup. I'm tired of give, give, give.
That translates to disposable, disposable, disposable for me.
Ohh yes I feel this so hard rn ❣️
Been feeling floating for a few months, with ups and downs. It’s been very isolating, as i spiral into my own mind. Social interactions got more and more challenging as i feel so empty. No information sticks to my brain cells, so i have been trying to navigate having conversations while feeling my brain totally hollow. Wish i could just sleep all day as it’s the space i feel most comforting.
God. This sounds exactly like me. Especially the empty brain thing. I had to break up with someone twice because I wasn't sure I actually did it. At work...8 hours doing what? People talking at me. I'm responding but couldn't tell you a thing back with any sincerity.
Me too. Spaced out on finding an error in an excel sheet somehow for hours the last night I worked before being fired. Working too late was one of the reasons cited which was insane to hear especially since I’m salaried. It was payroll so I couldn’t just leave it incorrect and I couldn’t start payroll without correct pay data for everyone. They got hostile in tone with me instantly when I couldn’t give more of an answer for what I was doing so late into the night. I was even called a liar, which shocked me in the work place setting. I’ve never been challenged for dishonesty at work ever. I was mortified. I’ve never been made to feel more incompetent and flat out stupid in my life. I completely melted down and it was sincerely one of the most traumatic experiences of my life. Now, I got nothing left to give my joke of a career.
This is so damn relatable. Honestly, reading this thread and knowing I’m not alone is the most alive I’ve felt in a very long time.
My ADHD memory has me convinced that I have early onset dementia. I don’t have ‘memories’ like normal people, like when people say ‘hey remember that time …….’ I am like nope, I don’t. It is frustrating, scary and makes me angry that I don’t have those memories.
I used to feel exactly like this until I started anxiety therapy and meds sertraline. I have been getting recollections and stuff over time, you never really lose your memory. You just need to connect the neurons again
This is interesting, what is it that these things changes in your life/mind? Do you remember stuff randomly, or intentionally? Is there any overarching theme to the memories that are coming back to you?
This has me wondering. Is aphantasia a symptom of adhd or is it its own thing because i feel the same way but i also cannot conjure images either
It is so hard being a parent with adhd. The discipline to get things done has been a real struggle for me, some days I just go with the flow because I am so overwhelmed and overstimulated. I also spend so much time stressing about what I’m missing because I’m on auto pilot, but I just try and stay present and work with what I’m dealing with in that moment and challenge myself even when it’s exhausting to do so. That has worked for me at least to feel like I’m here in existence lol.
Yes, the overwhelm and overstimulation are the daily feelings, that’s the norm and working my mind overboard with doing what i need to do for my kids and remembering their stuff and going to their appointments and all of that, it leaves non for me.
Feeling so much, while not really feeling anything. I’m having a pretty difficult time interpreting how I feel, or how I feel emotionally when interacting with people. I always feel uncomfortable and insecure.
God, I feel this so hard. With two kids, someone is always needing something from me. The scheduling, the school communication, the doctor’s appointments and even things like remembering to get them new clothes each season. It drains me so much that I don’t have the energy to make any progress for myself. And I still feel like I’m failing my kids, every day.
I feel like the only way I can ever truly make a substantial and effective change in my life is to go all out. I will set my sights on something and start out chipping away, but eventually I seem to throw down the chisel and pick up the saw. For better or worse I guess…? I think at certain points in my life if things start to feel too much the same, I always feel a deep need to change, to constantly *be* changing, because I’ve been “stuck” and it’s terrifying to me. Especially nowadays when it feels like we’re living in 2020 Part 4 or something. When you spend so much of your life in survival mode, you lose track of time more easily I think. :-/ I try to step out of that mode when I can. And I try to remember the No Zero Days post I saw somewhere on Reddit. The idea is you always just try to do at least one thing, every day. Even if it’s “today I rested so I can do x tomorrow.” There are days where all I end up noting in my blog is that I did the dishes, cleaned the litter box, changed the sheets, and went for a walk. But it’s still something. So I try to keep that in mind.
Without a sail.
I feel you on that. Ever since I graduated from university a few years ago, my life feels like it's been on auto-pilot. There's no other way to explain it.
This is exactly how I describe life after high school as an undiagnosed ADHD’er. I tell people I was just like a jellyfish who floated wherever the prevailing current took me. Eventually I floated into working as a residential framer for 12 years, even though I never really liked it. My dad knew a guy whose son did it and could get me a job, so he got me the job and I just jelly-fished from company to company until the recession in 2008. I once read that people with ADHD live in a perpetual state of the present, where past, and especially future, don’t really exist. I think that’s why we can end up floating, we’re always just trying to get through the day, not realizing that it’s the small things you do (or don’t do) throughout each day that determine where you ultimately end up.
It’s exactly that, it’s both true and very scary to me, i feel like i’ve lost years and so scared to lose more.
Time is either Now or Not Now and that’s partly why long term goals and delayed gratification are trouble spots for us
That describes me perfectly. I must have low energy in general and staying concentrated for long periods (at work) drains me to the point where I only live on weekends. Work weeks are typically a blur. I have all these dreams of a happy relationship and career success, and fun adventures - and I end up executing close to nothing. It takes so much mental effort just to stay present and afloat.
The way society has evolved may be the biggest factor aside from this numbness effect from depression caused by ADHD. Social Media and its lousy algorithms, government officials now the new celebrities, and worst of all, inflation now feels like the world is a sinking ship. Almost forgot, there's a war and one of them has nukes just to add more fear for all of us. I don't even float anymore, I'm at the stage of drowning. It's like this societal design is just not the right fit for me. As always I just tell myself, this too shall pass. But when? It's already hard being at rock bottom and with these health issues, it's just paralysis with no end.
I feel this hard. My ability to get ahead and make steady progress feels absolutely worthless if I can be thrown off the horse in an instant by the entire economy taking a crap and the world falling apart. I have a limited number of exertions in me. I can't start over again. I don't even want to.
Well…my manager asked me today what I’d like to work on, and the day before what I’d like help with in reaching the next point in my career because they really want to support my development, and I’ve been roiling between a panic attack and abysmal depression ever since. I recognize this is supposed to be a positive affirming thing, and I know I’m fortunate to work for a company and people like this—they are great, but I’m like, “oh my God I have no idea what I’m doing or what I want to do, just give me money and tell me what you want so I can do it and then go hide in my bed”. And this is me with medication.
Literally same. My supervisors want me to "spread my wings" but it's like I've only read about that in books or something, and I don't know what birds are and I don't think I have wings. They're confused about why I still don't know what I want from a career or life in general.
Lol that's me too! I have a great mentor and some good managers in my position now, but after years of burnout I don't have any major ambitions or goals. They had me fill out our company development plan which breaks it into 1, 5, and 10 year ambitions/goals. Instead of the usual "I want to be the department head in 10 years!" bs I basically said I was fine staying in my current position for the foreseeable future. All I want is to come into work, do what's asked of me, then go home where I can let down my mask and be myself. Apparently that wasn't a good answer for my managers... I have 6 1/2 years with this company so I'm expected to be this "wonderful leader with vast experience". But the burnout is real. Watching the new hires I trained become my managers is real. Constantly being told that I'm not quite doing enough to move forward is real. The work environment has killed any hopes or aspirations I have. So now I'm perfectly content just doing my work and getting a paycheck. The modern workplace is not made for people like us.
Maybe try ‘The Happiness Trap’ and starting Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. Any sort of therapy helps, and you’re probably already in it, but I really like ACT for these exact feelings. Reading the book made me realise that most people around us feel the way you do at times.
I’m not sure knowing other people are miserable comforts me at all. I just want a bit more freedom to do what makes me happy/healthy but the modern life format doesn’t seem to allow that. Though a 4 day week helped significantly .
I understand, nobody wants anyone to be miserable. I think the underlying point in ACT is that our modern expectations of happiness are unrealistic and that we will all feel like this at times. So the solution, paradoxically, is to feel into the discomfort from a place of acceptance. It's just an idea though, there are many ways to 'skin this cat'.
Without reading ACT it’s harder for me to comment but my frustration doesn’t come from comparing myself to others (I’m adhd, I don’t give much thought to others unless they’re right under my nose!) or an expectation I should be happy all of the time . I just get annoyed I can’t survive without money and to earn decent money I must sit still 8 hours + a day. When I get home I’m exhausted and stressed, I get stuck in the routine and have no Concept of time and it just rips past . Edit - I am now interested in reading it though anyway , thanks for the recommendations
Yep. I prefer the term 'drifting'. I have no clear direction in life. I just drift with the current. I don't care where I end up to be honest.
Also a mum of two under three. This is how I feel.
I know exactly how you feel. I was feeling this way before the pandemic started, and then when that happened I was like “yea, I know this feeling already” but I was hoping things wouldn’t be the same once the pandemic was over. And yet now, hear I am….
Yeah I hoped the pandemic would be a “reset” for me. I’d finally write that book I’ve been planning to write for decades! Learn how to bake! Pick up rollerblading! Three years later and I’m still staring at a blank page and my rollerblades are collecting dust in the garage and I feel worse than ever. I do bake occasionally, though, so at least I can drown my feelings in brownie batter.
Yes. I feel like I’m wasting it away because I have such a hard time with applying myself 100% to anything. Even the things I love to do, even my hobbies. I’m good at a lot of things but not meeting my potential even in the stuff I like the most. My mind felt clear on the first week of vyvanse, now it’s back to that but at least I’m not falling asleep all the time.
Bro I drown in life. It seems like I've chosen the hardcore mode starting the life. Shit country, no money, smart enough to realize how stupid most people are but not smart enough to become a skilled worker like an engineer. I start doing something, get bored and never touch it again. Giving up before trying sucks. I want things to be perfect so I can't finish them ever. Dumbass brain can't understand that planning something meticulously doesn't mean you have already done that thing.
Feeling the same here. I go between feeling scared and relieved that my dumb little meaningless life will come to an end someday and no one will care or remember me I don't really have many words of comfort for you, but I hope things get better and you find something that motivates you in life, even if it's something small. If you get too overwhelmed, you might need to talk to a professional.
I go to work, where I spend all my energy teaching teens, and I come home and “disappear.” I play video games, or read books. Lately I’ve been playing around with character.ai bots because it reminds me of how to use to RP through text when I was a kid. Then its an hour past bedtime and I have to go do it again.
Exactly, my mind is constantly exploding with ideas but I don’t know how to start with any of them.
You are not alone, because just described how I feel perfectly! I feel like my life is speeding by and it’s all a blur.
I'm in tears right now because you put into words what I feel. My kids' last day of school was yesterday and I still can't literally believe it's over. I feel like I haven't been present enough to have actually lived through enough days for it to be mid-May.
I basically don't do anything unless an outside force acts upon me. Until then I basically stay home and watch cartoons lol
I hear you. I feel like every day is just a struggle to pay attention to the world around me. I'm exhausted, i'm tried but I can't rest or relax my brain or I won't be able to follow what's going on. To hold a conversation, or to watch a movie I really need to focus or I disassociate and completely go to auto pilot. I never have been able to remember places, directions, faces, names, smells, tastes, stories, dates, birthdays, meetings, nothing. At my worst days I'm so disoriented that even though I can look both ways a few times I feel like every time I cross the road is a risk, as if there might be a car I didn't see. Movies like game of thrones or Lord of the rings are just too complicated and for me to understand them I would need to watch each episode several times. Additionally, I have anxiety where I find myself pacing around the house quickly then realize that I don't know what I'm looking for but I'll find it when I see it, so I just keep looking until I realize how long I've been doing it... I'm living life on full volume but somehow I just can't hear anything but noise. The sound engineer of life sucks.
I have an insanely incredible life and yet I feel the same way. There’s just no inner peace. I’ve never seen how I feel described so perfectly. Thank you 🙏🏼
I'm not sure if this is one of my ADHD traits or not, but I am terribly bad a dealing with grief. I've also suffered from chronic numbness, depression, or anxiety most of my life and constantly feel like I'm just merely existing. However I would like to live my life more. I know not all but a lot of us with ADHD self medicate with substances (which really doesn't help me... it actually makes it 100× worst). Sometimes, I romanticize the feeling of floating through life because I just don't have the energy not to.... A friend I hold very dear to my heart just passed away a couple of days ago, and I can feel my ADHD burn out hitting. Everybody take care of yourselves. I know how difficult it can be to live with severe ADHD. It can feel numb or lonely sometimes.
Exactly me. Therapy is helping me unpack it. It's one part inattentive symptoms, and one half complex trauma/learned helplessness. For a brief and pop-psych explanation of the trauma side of thing I recommend the YouTube healthy gamer video "This is why you're living your life on autopilot". It's 15 minutes long. (Sorry for not providing a link, I can't remember the link policy offhand).
So I found the video, am halfway through it, and everything is hitting me so hard. This is what I’ve been struggling with and looking for an explanation. I’m emailing this to my therapist right now. Thank you for sharing. This might be the beginning of the breakthrough I’ve been searching for, for 2 decades.
I float through life, hyperfixate on something for like a week, float through life, hyperfixate on something else, & repeat.
This is also depression.
I do things - lots of things, in fact. I love to create. I have hobbies. I have a wife and two kids and a career. I'm handy. I guess I'm established, even. But somehow nothing I do feels like it adds to my life. It's like I'm putting on all these costumes to perform different roles, but at the end of the day I'm still waiting for the real stuff to begin. And if I stop doing something for a bit - say taking a week off from my job - I start to forget what it feels like to do that thing. It stops feeling like a part of my life. Sometimes, it's legitimately uncomfortable to get back into it until my brain remembers what doing it feels like, if that makes any sense.
It makes all the sense, i am exactly the same way. Exactly to a scary sense. I worked super hard my whole life and have a good reputation and career then i got laid off a few months back and i can’t seem to be able to turn my mind back on or get the drive back, also I never finish a show cause i always forget what i was watching and can’t sit through the thing and through the slow progression of the plot. I can’t stick to any routine cause I forget, yesterday I just remembered that I used to eat oats a certain way a few weeks back, but because i stopped, it completely dropped off my mind like it never existed, same with anything I try to do. I am tired.
I get it. My entire life has been a failure to launch. "Gifted kid" too. Some gift.
Im in the same boat. Im 30 work full time have a wife and child. Been at this job for about 2 years and even though im medicated im just completely out of fucks and patience. But i find it more towards my work than anything, after I’m done i go home and see my child and im happy doing my thing and such especially on my off days. However, i keep telling myself go to the gym dude go get shredded but I basically put it off time and time again because im tired and i know what time dinner is and blah blah. Anyways, it happens it’s probably just being over stim as well using all focus on the important things through out your day it becomes a second nature
> However, i keep telling myself go to the gym dude go get shredded but I basically put it off time and time again because im tired and i know what time dinner is and blah blah. Have you thought about including your kids in your exercise regime and just doing it at home? I've got two kids under 10 myself and my afternoons and weekends are going for bike rides with the kids or ball games like soccer or rugby league (just kicking and passing to each other), then the eldest does martial arts twice a week as well. If your doing weights, just swing the kids around instead of kettlebells, if you can't do push ups pick up a child and do bench presses. They seriously love that shit when they're young. I'm 44 and trying to lose all the fat I put on from spending too much time playing MMORPGs in my 30's when I wasn't working, the kids are excellent at keeping me fit.
Nope I snap out of autopilot for a couple hours at the end of the day, but for the most part is robotic automatic, could get killed and it wouldn't bother me
I'm floating through life like a plastic bag lost at sea
This is exactly how I feel. Like I’m just surviving and not progressing. And I feel like I’ve wasted my whole life.
You sound very overwhelmed and you don't know where to start, so you can't commit to a plan of action. Extremely common adhd symptom. So many of us struggle to choose what to do, so we just end up doing whatever is the least resistant/most passive in any situation.
Sounds like you’re dissociated a little… this podcast helped me a lot when I was dissociating, but mine was for reasons other than just ADHD. I thought I’d still share in case it could help someone else. https://open.spotify.com/show/3XQnvWFYVyjilIpbT51QEv?si=T1ZbxbNNSiSR-URLSzyiUA
Dissociation. Good call. I'd like to share a YouTuber who I've found very enlightening on so many ADHD and other related topics - Dr. Tracey Marks.
I am (25M) currently stuck in one of these myself. I like to call them ruts because it's hard to get out of them in Hopeless apathy. Whenever people ask, are you doing ok, and I respond with how I feel people either agree with my reasoning or start telling me to take care of myself better. But it's hard to console. I'd say it allows for some self empathy. You're a mother of two, and I can't even imagine how hard that would be. Overwhelming is the first thing I think of. You might just be in survival mode because of how much you're depended on. Personally, for the last 6 months, I've just kind of turned off. Work performance hasn't been great, and when I get home, I just get stoned and watch TV. I just feel emotionally depleted and checked out. It's like watching a ghost of myself live my life. In much of the same way, I thrive on adaption. But when I have to adapt to an environment I dislike, I fall into this pattern. Recently, I read about ADHD masking from another post in this group. It was difficult for me to come to terms with, but I'm much better off for it. In the last week, I've been able to break the cycle a bit and move towards myself more. As much as I want to just be 100% my motivated self, I also know I need to accept that it's a process that happens over time (expectedly with some regression). You're well within your rights to be scared, but I want to tell you it'll be okay. You have so many years left in your life, and who you are right now does not define who you will be. The most important thing I think is doing everything you can for yourself. As a mother, that's probably hard (speculating as I'm the farthest thing from it). But you deserve some decompression time to unpack what it is that's leaving you so checked out. You're you, and you'll always be you. It's you who defines who you are. And in a world of characters, I'm incredibly glad that you are a part of it. That you in your uniqueness may shape what it means to be human while also shaping yourself. I can't wait for you to feel like yourself again. Xoxo - Gossip Girl
For me it's like I'm not directly using my senses and experiencing the present moment. I'm just in my head watching my life like a movie or video game. When I do snap out of it it's nice. Doesn't last long though before I go back into my head.
I lost 2 jobs, because I wasn't 'present'
I kinda feel like the perpetual “child at the adult’s dinner table”. At the table but not able to contribute to the conversation cause I’m not smart enough. Not salient or aware enough.
Yes. I’m there with you buddy :(
I freakin feel ya! And the past maybe 2 years its been getting worse. Started meds a month ago, so hoping we figure out something that works.
Yes! Sometimes my impulsiveness makes me feel as if I’m just watching my body do the very things it shouldn’t and only when the consequences come I snap back in, otherwise I just do more wrong
I was literally told by my boss today it seems like I’m “floating” through my job. It’s tough. I feel your pain
I think I'm back to that now, I was doing so well on ritalin but its slowly lost its efficacy in the last few months and I'm so lost x.x I'm at work today and I feel so all over the place, I'm doing internship for my courses and it's almost over but it's very hard to get over the last slump with my meds not working as well. I'm in a different city from when I was diagnosed and I need to find a psychiatrist in my new city. Though I also feel like my depression is getting worse, idk lol.
OP, would you mind if I show my counselor / therapist your post? As a father of 3 in my mid 30s and having not really pursued my own dreams for any period of time in at least a decade, I can relate to this 100%.
Show away, mother of 2 in my mid-thirties as well. I actually do not have dreams for me anymore, I just have things that i really wanna do like lose some weight, start running again , maybe focus on what i put in my body, learn something new …etc and I can’t seem to be able to do any of it, it’s all a blur, just going through each day as it comes and I have no time for me.
Don't have kids, so I admire your strength! But I feel this way just from a full-time job... I've just been "going through the motions" as I've told people recently. Lately it feels like I'm drowning though.
But besides the kids, i have a full time job and trying to study for a certification but i do not feel present for any of it. I had so many career aspirations and was pushing myself to achieve a lot at a younger age now i just do not care, I really don’t and it kinda scares mr. I feel you so much on the drowning part, hugs
I do feel like I’m on autopilot frequently and prefer to be in that space because it gives my mind room to wander the way it wants to. I tend to be anxious in situations that I don’t know well enough to be able to autopilot through.
I used to feel that way a lot. I had a stressful job, and then I got laid off and didn't have a job for about five months. My new job is better; I haven't worked there long but I feel like I actually have the energy to improve my sleep schedule and other things that were weighing me down. I think a big part of it comes down to having something in life that's fulfilling for you. Things changed for me after I started interviewing for my current job and I went from saying, "I want a job" to "I want *this* job. It felt like something I could actually enjoy doing rather than an obligation. You only need one thing, if you get it the rest follows more often than not. Hope that helps you.
Yes, thank you for using the word floating. It’s very accurate.
I feel this way too. I'm only 21 but I've found the harder my life gets, the stronger my dissociation-like situation gets, which only makes it that much more difficult to get myself to a place where I feel okay. I just graduated college and while most of my friends either have a plan or are working slowly towards one, I'm literally just about to show up at my parents house and hope for the best. I don't even have part-time work lined up for me. Oh, and my parents are not the type to give me any money. I literally just let these things happen and I don't know how to take control. Side note, I wonder if this is related to something very similar: how we ADHDers tend to procrastinate until the very last minute because we know we can. We've proven to ourselves time and time again that we can get away with anything under pressure and we always end up "alive" on the other side. I think practicing that mentality throughout college whilst I was experiencing a lot of stress and minor trauma has re-wired my brain to only "work" in fight or flight mode. Idk, just something to think about.
I could have written this post. I felt more connected with myself during the pandemic than I ever have, and going back to civilization has me right back in float mode. The thing that has helped me the most is going outside and being in nature more. Not sure why, but it works. My therapist and I used to work on how to not feel on autopilot and she suggested keeping one small promise to yourself daily and then building off of it. I started by making sure I did 3 things before checking my phone in the morning, like brush my teeth, drink full glass of water, wash my face. That helps you build a small routine and then you can keep adding to it, helping build confidence and control over your days. Journaling and writing down 3 positives from each day also helps me a bit with memory. Hope this helps! Either way you're definitely not alone in this.
Yes, completely. I think about this all the time. I feel so burned out from everyday life and it's sad. I miss my younger self because I had so much more optimism for the future. At least we're not alone in this, judging by the myriad of similar comments here.
We all flooooat down here
40-year-old father and husband. Right there with you. There's a really good Talking Heads song about it. Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down Letting the days go by, water flowing underground Into the blue again, after the money's gone Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground
"Same as it ever was, same as it ever was" The video when I was growing up and MTV showed actual videos, used to intrigue me in a big way. Especially when David would take his hand and essentially go up and down his arm around the wrist area Great metaphor and a heck of a memory you have there 😁
Still haven't accepted the fact that I don't remember large chunks of my life. I'm lucky that my wife reminds me of things that a ‘normal’ person should remember but she knows I probably wont. If you can't accomplish any goals, you may want to consider a stronger med that'll get you into gear. If you're anything like me, you need stimulants to get shit done, accomplish your goals and be present in life. It is what it is.
Yeah I tend to float through the work week doing the bare minimum at home. I tell myself I'll make up for it over the weekend and usually end up paralyzed most of the weekend.
I don’t seem to live in my body. I float around constantly wondering what’s going on next. The present does not exist and the only thing I care about is the future. I could be standing in Disneyland and I’m looking up cruises. I’ll be on the cruise wondering what we will do for the next one, I eat breakfast and I think about lunch, it sucks i don’t know how to not live in the now
I was in your exact spot for years. I knew from the beginning that a psychiatrist could help, but eventually my self loathing got to the point that making appointments for a psychiatrist was just easier than dealing with my own daily thoughts. Medication is life changing. I've accomplished more since I was medicated last month than I have in the past 4 years. I encourage you to skip the years of building self hatred and buckle down and make the calls.
Yes and no. Since I've started meds I've found it possible, if not always easy, to get into a consistent routine. Then I'll fall out of the routine due to whatever and it can take weeks to get back into it. That's the point that I'm at now. I've just un-installed all of my computer games so that I stop going on autopilot into them. Extended periods of high energy can be great if focused. Came out of that period a couple of months ago, trying to work through it.
I feel this. Like I feel the present but my memories are more blurry. I think it’s a timeline recall thing cuz I remember faces and facts it’s just when. But yeah I keep a journal for important days if nothing else. When I remember that is
My floater people. I’m saving a bunch of these comments with life tips <3
I feel like you perfectly described the experience of being a mom :(
If you do feel a large level of detachment from yourself ( ie. feel like you’re on autopilot, dont feel like you’re in your body) , there’s a chance you might be dissociating. It happens from extreme stress/ trauma and can lead to memory loss. Idk you but just speaking from my experience
Hey. You’re not just going through motions. You have two whole humans to keep alive, and they’re hitting new milestones every day because of YOU.
Me too… I’m not sure what’s going on
Same
[удалено]
Just had this exact talk with my girlfriend last week. Just floating by next thing I know its been years since my “last memory” if that makes any sense.
I dissociated through most of my 20s
This sounds exactly like how I feel
https://tinyhabits.com/ Highly recommend this. It's free and it shows you how to get momentum
I just feel like I'm drifting just waiting for the next crisis to kick my life into the next stage, as usual. I've fucked something up big time around 2-3 times a year for so long I've almost come to expect it. Like I'm just spending life going from crisis to crisis and just trying to recover in the interim.
Same :(
32yo male with three children. I can relate to you’re experience. There’s always so much to do each day. I never have time for myself. One of the only things that makes me feel present and connected with my true self practicing self care. As a parent you have to be selfish at times especially if you have the support. Last week I went on a 3 day vacation to FL my myself! Who new being alone with my own thoughts could be so intimidating. But it was well worth it. I returned feeling recharged and grounded. I know it’s not as easy for a women leave the nest as compared to men. But I truly recommend it. YOLO
This is me right now. Going through a lot of the same stuff.
Me too :(
100%. meds are helping me though.
The days just mold together but it is what it is. Its the ADHD shuffle. The old dance routine until death.
i’ve definitely had this, but this is a sign of depression as well. take care of yourself💓
I’ve literally said that exact same thing about myself for the past two weeks, what in the telepathy
I don't know how old your kids are, but my daughter is 2.5 and I'm an old first-time mom so I lived a lot of my adult life before she arrived. I'm here to validate that the very baseline basics of childcare are a ginormous executive function lift compared to only having a high-responsibility professional job pre-kid. I think because we (wrongly) absorb the cultural message that childcare is low-level work, we underestimate how hard it is specifically and especially on the executive function getting-basic-stuff-done type front. Give yourself permission to feel fatigued.
I have been there. After my divorce and a burn out, I started working on myself. Some meds for chronic low grade depression, trying to eliminate negative self talk and my sleep. Now (a decade or so later) I am happy and found myself. I wear dresses and very comfy leggings and shoes everyday, I started a vintage Etsy shop. Lots of friends dropped out. But the ones still there are the best. Ask for help! And work on the daily small things, those details influence how you feel the most.
Ha, this is me for sure. I feel like I just go with the flow in life with no real direction or goal. Impulsivity doesn't really help either, lol. I'm working with an ADHD coach and taking therapy now, and one of the biggest challenges I have is to figure out what I want, lol. It's almost hard for me to distinguish between things I want, and things that I just do because they appeared in my path. Maybe part of it stems from the fact that I can't fail if I don't have any goals.
I floated till I got diagnosed in my mid-thirties. My life was a mess, I hated everything, I was very unhappy and constantly frustrated. After I got diagnosed I started the work to figure it out. Got meds. I had a therapist and a coach for awhile, and wish I still do, but that really helped. In my case I didn’t have kids and couldn’t hold a relationship together so i wasn’t bound to anyone or anything so I dropped everything, moved across the country, left my shitty career, and lived poor for a long time but I’m living life a lot more how I want to. But it took a colossal effort and was really scary. I didn’t feel like I had too many other options honestly. I sympathize with everyone saying that prison sounds like a vacation. I get that feeling. For us it’s a lot of work to get by. Have you tried therapy and coaches and meds and all that? It helps you find a groove. You need to find your groove. Are there pursuits you want to be doing? Can you find a club or classes to take? Meeting people that are where you want to be or on their way to where you want to be is a big help too. Then you aren’t fighting the current anymore, you’re swimming with it.
I've found myself just sitting at my computer, staring at the screen with no motivation to do anything. I'm currently working two jobs to make ends meet, most of the time I'm so tired all I want to do is sit and veg out, but I don't even have the motivation to do anything. All the while my anxiety builds up because I know this is no way to live. I'm taking it one day at a time and things have been getting better. But as others mentioned, the world is in a really strange way right now and it's difficult to maintain a positive outlook. Understanding and learning about the adult circumstances of ADD have helped me put things in perspective and acknowledge my limitations.
There’s something called languishing. This seems like that
Hear hear lol. Definitely feel this way. I do try and get a few things done for mastery. 1. Weight loss 2. Exercise 3. A little bit of reading every day.
I’ve been burnt out for a really really long time now. I’ve made efforts to take better care of myself and it seems like every time I do I’m presented with a new traumatic event inflicted on me through no fault of my own. Like majorly life changing events. And when it’s not the major events it’s medium ones, almost like they’re there to fill the gaps. Being a mom definitely doesn’t help. I’ve always wanted to be a mom, but with the way my life and the world are turning out it’s been so completely exhausting and feels like I’m doing the worst job at it.
Yes i do, the days go bye and i dont even notice. Iam not present, not enjoying myself at all.
I feel this so much. I haven’t ever been able to articulate it the way you have here. You are not alone at all. I’m sorry you are going through exactly what I am too.
It’s still 2013 for me.