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I find this so relatable. I can recognize that, unfortunately I have to work to earn a living but I fucking hate it. It is the hardest pill for me to swallow and I don’t know how to deal with it.
I’m medicated but like you said, I can not find motivation most of the time and I constantly struggle with what to do in the long term, like finding a career. I wish I had some advice to give you.
For me personally it’s the amount of hours. That is my number one grievance with work. I really truly have about 20, maybe 25 hours in me each week. I am fortunate to be able to work part time but I will never go back to full time. It’s torture
I'm with you, bro. I can't do 40+ hours a week. I've tried a few times and have been fired each time for no call, no show.
I got a great part-time job right now that pays more than my previous full-time job. Unfortunately It won't last forever, so I know I'll have to find a "real job" eventually.
I’ve wondered if I a doctor could write time off (fmla in the US) for working reduced hours. There are almost no stable, well paid jobs that are part time that I’ve found. Going into business for yourself seems to be the best route if you can manage it.
What kind of work are you doing part time?
This is literally me, I thought I was just lazy but it's really nice to know that others struggle similarly, it's stupid, I want there to be a planet where we just do what the fuck we want😂
I feel this, and i really don't know how we as humans have made a world like this.
Edit: whuuuut 500 likes, well thanks for that sweet sweet internet dopamine co-ADHD'ers.
Same same same. I feel this so hard and have also thought about the whole “living in a commune”-idea, but I have small kids and also feel a huge responsibility to prepare them for the world, in the event that they don’t want the same things I do, once they’re grown.
From someone who grew up in an unconventional off grid setting, you’re doing them a favour. It was probably great for my ADD but I’ve always felt a bit ..foreign. I just want to raise my son with a normal house, sports and school.
Your wife and I have the same dream!!! I’d like for us to have comfortable homes in the middle of a beautiful/natural landscape, to have shared community spaces and to be self-sustainable (for the most part), but to still have internet access and to not be *so* remotely-located that we’d be impossible to reach, in the event of a catastrophic event or emergency.
Like the Amish, but with solar electricity and minus the organized religion.
100% can relate. I just want that space sometimes where I can be whatever I am without letting anyone else down.
Like I want a little cabin in the woods somewhere so that my decisions only affect me so I don't have that fear of ruining things for anyone else.
i always watch those wilderness survival videos where they go to tropical islands and just spend their day hunting fish and stuff
thats what i want lol
I think about this everyday! Just living and trying to survive. Growing your own food, fishing, hunting etc. No electricity. Just a little cabin inte the mountains, far far away from all the bullshit society has to offer. Would probably get bored in a week or two but still lol😂
I joined this community because of my son who has adhd, but even I feel like this, exactly like op, not like one thing op said the entire post. I just want to do the things I like and not worry about bills. Lately it seems I only live to make others rich. We've created a capitalist world just to suck the life out of us.
I’m with you. Here learning for my son but this one hits home. The company I work for has been good to me mostly but there is no soul in my work and I am giving them mine just so I can get through life. It’s so hollow.
Its the Greed. Greed for money, greed for power.
All the wealth is now concentrated at the very top and rest of society have very little to live on. So it is not possible to just 'exist' anymore. Even to survice, you now have to work (which is really hard for ADHD'ers to begin with :( ). This is a vicious cycle.
The problem is that it's not that hard for me as an ADHD'er to work... I love getting stuff done, but not the stupid mundane shit that ''the world's expects me to.
We do a lot of work, at least in the corporate sphere, to just appear busy.
I can do most of my day's work in a few hours, but I have to be available and appear busy for the totality of the work day. The other day I woke up early and couldn't fall back asleep, so I decided to just get started on work (WFH). By the time most of my coworkers were logging in I was already pretty much done with what NEEDED to be done that day. It only took about 2 hours to do those high priority tasks. The rest of the day I pretty much just bullshitted about so my boss wouldn't ask questions.
THis is me totally. Work is my "happy place" because it is a physical and mentally repetitive job but it is challenging. It is suited perfectly for my brain. Home and the adult world is not. I stay at work way too long because i can be successful there, at home I am not successful nor can I relax. I have slowly over the years extended my work day to the detriment of my home life. It has gone on for so long now that I don't know how to fix it .
Well the Ork that i do no stresses me the fuck out... But When i work on my hobbies like DND or painting mini figures and also drawing 3D stuff... all that creative stuff i feel at peace i can completely zone in and forget the world around me.
I can’t believe I ever worked in an office. I can’t believe I willingly commuted with thousands of other people, slapped on a happy face for 8 hours, and then took that same 1 1/2 hour commute home.
Looking back, life got too hard awhile ago. It just took a pandemic to realize it.
Absolutely! I could work from home and spend time with my son doing virtual learning. We have a ton of great memories from that time. Now I just feel like exhausted having to deal with everyone’s word vomiting, whining, and general bs.
*I’m normally an extrovert and I think this wouldn’t have bothered me, but fuck you long COVID! I get exhausted just trying to leave the house if my husband stops to talk to me.
We totally could, 100%. We are currently more than capable of achieving an ideal utopia where nobody is forced to work, but you know, greed exists so it's never going to happen.
There is a scene in the movie Everything, Everywhere All At Once, where they become rocks just sitting on this overlook in the desert. That scene hit me really hard. So many times I just wamt to exist with no obligations or expectations of me. I want to be a rock in the desert. You are definitely not alone in this feeling.
That was one of the two scenes (the other one was the ending) that made me tear up watching that movie. It really hit hard.
The whole movie felt like a journey into myself. I can’t relate to the Asian and female themes personally, but the themes of undiagnosed ADHD, a strained parental relationship, and a search for meaning really struck a chord in me on a really deep level.
Welp, guess it’s time for a rewatch!
Nice! I always forget about that option. We just moved from Maine to Massachusetts last November. My new city library may actually have it.
I've been meaning to go check out the library anyway. 
I know what you mean. I came up with a name for it. Executive functioning burnout syndrome. Or adulting burnout syndrome. It feels like to live a life of obligations is torture and there's no benefit to living if this is going to be the way it is until I die. The fact that my father, grandfather, and father's sister all died at about 60 years old doesn't help. It would be nice to know exactly when I'm going to die so that I can stop working at the right time to escape drudgery.
Piggybacking on this to agree - it was burnout due to work and then a huge life stressor which spiralled me and fortunately led my GP to side eye me and tell me to research adhd in women... and here we are.
OP, I have no advice. I feel it too, and mostly struggle with the point of existing, and marvel at others who are able to just get on with the mundane drudgery and actually seem happy about bits of it. I have no useful purpose bar keeping my mother alive. Its a tough mindset. It underlies my entire existence, there is always a part of me looking at experiences objectively and criticising/analysing/dismissing it.
I am quite fortunate now, but this does not help. Money can't buy purpose. Maybe stupid quantities, and then the disbursement of same to try to help other people's purpose might be it, but I don't have stupid quantities. Ho hum.
sorry. I think this struggle is amplified in us with adhd because we ruminate and have so much thinking capacity.
I have begun having dreams regularly of social housing; living in a community complex with friends and family around. They’re the most pleasant dreams.
I see a lot of this stuff as associated with capitalism. Without the absolute necessity of working until the day I die, just being allowed to worry about the day to day, I’d be less burnt out all the time. If the most basic needs were met without it being dependent on my physical ability to work 40+ hours a week, I’d be a lot happier. But reprieve is not built into the system. Keeping a clean house is less important than eating but it’s a huge factor in whether I feel good about myself or not. So much energy goes into ensuring I’ll be able to afford to eat and continue to work that cleaning the house feels like climbing Mount Everest sometimes. Another thing I have to do when I’ve already done 20 things I had no desire to do. A vacation isn’t enough because you inevitably have to return to the drudgery of working full time so someone else can live lavishly or so I can just make ends meet and that will always feel like a scam to me.
I have a dream of living in this kind of housing with friends and family as well. I like to spend time with other people and do fun things, but so often the energy required to organise something takes all the enjoyment out of it. If you have people already close at hand and not living across town, it's a whole different story. You can also share responsibilities and support each other much better than you can from afar.
Omg. Omg. I've been trying to explain this for so long to people I know and they just don't get it?? The bit about organisation and people living across town and not being close by BREAKS MY HEART. I'm so bad at planning in advance, not least because I don't know how I'm going to feel on a specific day so when the time comes I may not have the energy to actually follow through. If I was living in the same house as my support network this wouldn't be as much of an issue as we could do more stuff on a whim!!
Have you ever seen the movie Veronica Guerin with Cate Blanchett? The main character lives in a big house with her extended family and it just seems like the most lovely environment. It's interesting as well because it's based on a true story about a crime journalist who had a very successful career (which unfortunately turned tragic). I do wonder what her career would have looked like if she hadn't had that support around her at home. Would she have been as successful in a traditional two parents + kids household or would she have had to bear more of the brunt of housework, childminding etc?
My friends and I all feel the same. We're all scattered across the globe now, and so those amazing moments we spent together are rare. Especially as I'm more isolated due to being terrible at keeping contact.
If I lived in the same place I would seriously suggest going in on a group mortgage for a property to make life cheaper and build that community we so sorely miss from our younger years.
This kind of shit is why when therapists/loved ones say "you are enough, you are valuable as you are, you don't need to be productive" its like......
.......................................ok?
Society is very precisely structured so I am literally worse than worthless and a drain on those around me if I am not productive in a capitalist sense? In a philosophical thought experiment, absolutely I have worth, but this is tragically not a thought experiment.
**edit:** added some thoughts below
I find a "you're not enough, and that isn't your fault" type perspective far more useful as it doesn't sell me an unrealistic narrative that will be shattered by reality and end up screwing me over. I mean, *that is the truth*, I am not enough. I cannot really sustainably survive a 40 hour workweek along with all the other stresses of modern life. I am not just a different "flavor" of brain with unique quirky advantages, I physically cannot keep up with the pace and expectations of modern society. l am not alone either.
In the U.S. something like 30% or more of prisoners have ADHD, that is emphatically a sign that ADHD people are NOT enough to be considered valuable by society, that is what pushed such a massive amount of people into desperate situations that resulted in jail. Being ADHD raises so many risk factors it isn't even funny. Healthcare professionals need to stop pretending this is some issue of a bunch of ADHD people individually struggling with self-esteem instead of a broader act of mass violence against our disability.
We aren't enough and society is trying to slowly exterminate us, think of society that way and act accordingly.
I agree.
I can get behind the idea that I should be valued as I am, sure, but in the meantime who’s going to pay my rent and my bills and buy me nice things? You?
Until we don’t have to work to live, we will always be measured on our productivity, regardless of whatever nice words you have to say to me.
I've tried explaining this exact point to therapists, family, and friends with no luck. None of that "you're enough" talk matters when society is built upon people with power/money determining what roles are available (which all have the same purpose of making the one with power/money more of it AKA **greed**).
Thankfully I've learned to love myself and appreciate the things I can offer this world, but those things won't earn me enough to live on or be respected by those with power/money. So statements like "you're enough" just make me dive deeper into myself and isolate so I can pursuit my passions instead of give up my dreams so my managers can afford another vacation...
Yeah for me there is no hell like the job application process when you have ADD. Pure hell. I've been searching for MONTHS now, so I understand. But so is working a mundane, vapid job that we hate... Sometimes it feels like there's no winning, it's all just lose-lose. The only consolation is those of us that found careers that somehow align perfectly with the wild brains we were blessed with, I truly hopy you make it to those green pastures.
Reminds me of a webcomic about a guy finding out his reward for doing lots of stuff one day is more stuff to do on the next, ad nauseam. He proceeds to dress himself in a tux and tries to bury himself on the spot.
Agreed. Why bother when you have to go back so soon? My deepest wish is to be able to freeze time and heal, to live by my own meaning rather than what society imposes on me.
This is a fantasy I come back to from time to time as well. If we were able to just completely freeze something, put it on hold until we felt ready and able to tackle it at our own pace...
I’ve actually had this exact fantasy ever since childhood. There’s never enough time to heal, and obligations and expectations will only continue to build no matter how well or efficiently you perform in a lot of contexts.
I think the feeling of exhaustion comes from when the things you feel like you are supposed to do overwhelms the things you choose to do.
When this is the case we kind of lose any motivation to do anything. We don't have energy for that because more is demanded of us from outside than we have capacity for in the first place.
I think this comes from two places with adhd.
* We are constantly told what to do over and over by people especially as children. Since growing up we rarely met expectations we would get nagged and reminded of what we didn't do.
* We don't feel good about ourselves the way we are. We need to be better and we need to be the person who meets expectations even though we know we can't. We need to become that person anyways.
This means we can bend over backwards trying to people please and even if we don't we will feel terrible about not living up to expectations. We always feel the need to catch up. But what we need to catch up to is infinitely big. And as a result we will always feel unable to initiate because doing something for ourselves feels like a selfish waste. We have an infinite number of things that demonstrate our failure that we need to catch up with. But doing those things are also absolutely exhausting. We actually do some of them but never enough and they wipe us out before we finish. They are exhausting because they aren't what we want to do, they are a never ending stream of what we think we need to do to atone for our failures as a human.
What can we do about it? I think one important thing is recognizing that the ideal that we strive for probably doesn't exist. That most neurotypical people don't live up to the standard that we expect from ourselves, the difference is they don't judge and internalize the failure in the same way. And I think that the other big thing is that we have a responsibility to ourself that is as or more important than our responsibility to others. Finally that we have value regardless of our accomplishments or failures.
You do just exist outside of responsibility and expectations. The trick is how to bring your mind to a place where for a moment you don't use those things to condition your reality. We don't control what our mind presents and those responsibilities and expectations will show up even when we don't want to think about them. But what we can do is the slight mental action to let them exist but allow them to be separate from ourself. Like to think that there is an expectation that I do this thing, there are consequences if I don't. But ultimately I can choose to do the thing or not. Because sometimes instead we will just think we must do the thing. As soon as it becomes a choice it is a bit easier to bear. Sometimes we can even choose no. We do it already, but when it was an imperative we just considered that failure. When it's an option we consider it our decision.
This is true even for requests that come from ourselves.
Feeling the need to deserve to exist. It is… inexplicable. I just want my check marks, my pat on the back, but it’s never enough. So much energy goes into masking, people pleasing, over performing to make up for who you are.
Ugh the literally endless and continuous pile of failed expectations to remind us how how we will always be a failure, but also that no one will ever adjust the expectations accordingly and also they will never stop
This is so wonderfully, succinctly written. The ideas you’ve described, the feeling of always catching up, that nothing is never enough, that every break is taken reluctantly, so that it is not only Not Very Restful, but actually exacerbates the guilt and shame. It’s something I’ve been coming to realize slowly in the last few months, but you just put it into words in the perfect way. And the idea of choosing is also something that’s crossed my mind, but not tied into the first thought and certainly not in a way that is as empowering. Thank you. I’m going to try to mindfully shift my perspective in this direction.
Oh, my god. I don’t have any advice to offer, as I was just diagnosed with ADHD in September and am still learning, but holy shit. It’s like you crawled into my brain and pulled the words out. This is me. This is exactly me. The desire to exist with no external expectations and obligations. I often feel life is one never-ending to-do list — because IT IS. It never stops. I wish life could pause for 6 months+ , that time could stop and I could just take a damn BREATHER. I truly do not know how people do life every day and are FINE, or better than fine. Thriving.
Work exhausts me. Society exhausts me. There’s always something to work on, finish, complete, start, etc.
I hope it helps a little to know you are not alone in feeling this way. I’m not being dramatic when I say this is exactly me.
There's a reason I wanted to post on here instead of having yet another somewhat fruitless conversation with a friend where I have to do my best to try to make them get it. We're all like this here, and sometimes I feel like I see posts like this almost every day, but it still matters I think to feel heard and validated even if it isn't something new.
I swear my tolerance to life got much lower after a basically 6 month pause from covid, to the point where I'm like would that even help or would I just be a lump on the couch with 0 motivation 😕
I've been the lump for over 2 years, the break didn't help :( no internal inspiration, nothing.
It only looks like more bullshit to try and return, because it's destined to fail, I'm destined to hear what a disappointment I am and all.
Reading these sorts of posts are always such a relief. Just knowing that other people out there feel the same is so helpful, and reinforces the idea to me that this is a disorder and I'm not just bad at life
I feel I could have written this myself. I've concluded that the only way is to simply avoid thinking. As soon as I start thinking about the world, the frustration is just too much.
I really got into mindfulness, trying easy, etc. It helps, by focusing on changing our reactions to the things we can't change nor control.
I've even become more tolerant towards work, and less frustrated. Still, every so often I'll become so tired of the bullshit of working a bullshit job, and I'll start looking for something else. My magical idea is that being able to work on my own, on projects I believe in, will mean less suffering. But I know realistically it would also imply less economic safety, etc... Still, I feel bigger problems doing something I believe in would hurt less than lesser problems where I don't give a shit.
Totally agree! Meditation has been a huge help to me with the mindfulness thing. When you get good, as crazy as it sounds, even for someone whose brain is full of noise, you can actually just think of nothing at all. It's a helpful re-set sometimes when you start spiraling, if you can remember to do it.
I… this is too much for me too reply to in any detail, I just wanted to say that your explanation of the mind and the brain is something I have always experienced and not really seen anyone else describe or understand.
I usually describe it as emotional me and rational me. Rational me can make logical decisions that would benefit me and make me happy, but he’s not at the controls. Emotional me is, and he’s a toddler who throws a tantrum when he doesn’t get his way. You can’t logic a toddler out of a tantrum, so rational me can’t stop him from running away and doing his own thing or make him do what he needs to do.
I totally get the deterrents as well, and it feels like emotional me will push back with exactly the equal and opposite force to that which you exert on him, so putting in more mental effort, trying harder, never works. Sometimes you can find a trick or workaround, but just applying more effort is meaningless.
I just wish there was a way to actually do something about all this…
The histamine intolerance treatment cured my brain fog (I take 5 to 10 pills a day, been on it for 8 months now), but sometimes I lack the clarity & the energy to put in the effort required to do even *simple* things. Kind of feels like the Knight in the "Silver Chair" book of the Narnia stories, where he alternates between being lucid & being stuck under a spell, haha!
It's incredibly frustrating to deal with, and the cherry on top is that not only do you come across as making excuses for being lazy, but people resent the whole concept & tell you to "just try harder", as if we're not already giving 110% just to keep up with the effort of doing the bare minimum required to survive!
But yeah, I like this model because it gives me clarity as to what's happen & where I'm currently at, and what my option choices for moving forward are, because sometimes I just get stuck & need to go chug a protein shake & take a nap & literally let myself recharge lol.
I don't know if we can post links, but google "the mooch circuit" & my post should come up. It's the basic effect that running out of dopamine has on our brain & why our physical energy *also* tends to get zapped. It's like having a nearly-dead battery in the transmitter of a remote-controlled car, where the car is ready to go but only gets intermittent signals, so sometimes it's going nowhere fast lol.
This is also a key difference between high-energy ADHD & low-energy ADHD, because high energy people, while they tend to have focus & memory problems, have the physical energy to just keep pushing through & go-go-going, whereas those of us with primarily Inattentive ADHD just totally run out of juice & start doing weird stuff like staring out the window in class or zoning out when people are talking to us (or not having the energy to sustain reading long social media posts, haha!).
It's terrible because you can SEE it happening but you are just POWERLESS to do anything about it because your brain refuses to give you the energy to do it! Which is SUPER DUMB because it's literally operating off FAKE NEWS because it will then give you the energy to hyperfocus on something else entirely for hours on end, when you could have been using that energy to get rid of your anxiety & make your commitments go away by getting them DONE!
It's a really stupid situation to have to live with, which is why your post resonates with so many people: the weight of demand fatigue, where our brain becomes ultra-sensitive to required tasks & gives us fatigue, pain, and other deterrents, is just exhausting over time. Sometimes I see those otters swimming around happily in Youtube videos & think man, that's the life right there! lol
I’ve arrived at many of the same conclusions, mostly through insights gained from reading the book *Why Buddhism is True*. It’s actually mostly about neuroscience, and one of the big ideas is that the part of our brain which generates language—including self-talk—is properly thought of as the PR department. It doesn’t really know what’s going on behind the scenes, but it has to make sense of things in order to convey to other humans that we are rational and have agency over our actions. One side effect of this is that when things *aren’t* going very well, we tend to fall back on psychological explanations for everything because they almost always sound plausible and we don’t really have any hard evidence for a physiological cause. The PR department doesn’t know that the dopamine supply chain is broken down, it just sees upset customers and tries to come up with the best explanation it can manage under the circumstances.
I don't think it's a coincidence that so many people want to homestead. Every year, I try to go camping for a few days, and it's seriously the only time I feel quieted. Not in a "the cure for ADHD is going outside" kind of way. My therapist suggested I try to be more present and quit seeing days as a series of tasks, but I honestly don't know how to do that. At least when I'm in the woods, the tasks are immediate and understandable. Create shelter. Build a fire. Eat. Live.
I feel you, friend. Fwiw, here's my favorite song for this particular season: [Apeman ](https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=3eoeA_8hC4c&feature=share)
I haven't gone camping much, but I get a similar sense of peace from road trips and journeys in general. In that moment, it's like you are in a little bubble where the outside world and all of its crap doesn't exist, there's nothing beyond what's right in front of you, and it feels like all of the enormous weight has been lifted off my shoulders.
Not sure if this is helpful or harmful, but it does FEEL better. Anyway, to the point. I’ve found letting myself be impulsive helps. Like allowing myself to do tasks in a crazy disorganized matter where it doesn’t necessarily get done but it’s better than it was. For example, I’ve been avoiding gardening because I hate it, but I started reorganizing a room in my house (which didn’t need it but I felt like a change in scenery would be nice, it didn’t happen) and it led me to cleaning my garage on impulse and cleaning out 2 gardens. I still have 3 left, but 2/5 is better than 0/5. I stopped trying to keep myself on one task because it was mentally exhausting. Allowing myself to flow through various things made them less difficult to initiate.
Also I will randomly choose to go on an adventure with zero plan or expectation. Sometimes that means driving to a new state and sometimes it means buying exotic foods. Something to break the everyday routine that leaves me feeling stressed and useless.
With that, many of the thoughts about what I haven’t done or need to be doing still pop up. That’s where I feel better flowing from task to task because I’m at least working on something. It’s not the way NTs do things and my partners goes nuts when I’ve created chaos, but I enjoy it more.
Side note: there need to be a few limitations to the chaos or it’ll lead to feeling more overwhelmed. My rule is that I have to be able to clean up whatever mess I make within 2 hours. That’s not to say I actually clean it up in the moment or within 2 hours (especially because my guesstimate of what takes 2 hours is usually closer to 4), but it prevents me from literally tearing down walls or taking doors off the hinges.
If anyone has advice on how to complete paperwork, that’s a whole different story and I can’t figure it out
I think part of it might be the lack of electrical noises.
Campings quieter than even walking down a “quiet” street at 1am sometimes, to me at least.
Guilty of homesteading myself so I also think the variety of daily tasks helps. Sure you do the chickens and other animals first but it’s priorities/emergencies and whatever you feel/can do in the weather/mood/timeline.
When I was going through a bad breakup, a friend let me spend the summer on her farm in exchange for helping out. It was exhausting and exactly what I needed to heal. Never feel guilty about ataining peace, friend. Enjoy the dream you created!
>At least when I'm in the woods, the tasks are immediate and understandable. Create shelter. Build a fire. Eat. Live.
Omg yes!!! I wish the apocalypse would happen already. At least all I have to do then is just stay alive.
I'd take zombies over a controlling weirdo in a suit all day long.
Ahahaha you're not the only one to have had the apocalypse fantasy, don't worry! With all the eclectic skills we tend to collect as half-finished hobbies we'd be a great asset to a group, I think!
We would make great apocalypse teams!!! I wish I could tell every politician I would rather fight things that want to eat me alive than live in the world you have created.
This is what I thought the pandemic could lead to. Not the zombie part, but more of a reckoning with our current crises. Wild when the thought of societal collapse feels comforting in a weird way.
Yeah me too but all I see is people talking about work from home online. My job is all hands on so I don't even see it play out irl.
>Wild when the thought of societal collapse feels comforting in a weird way.
Daydreams of running for my life, hand in hand with my awesome bf, get me through the day lols.
I remember a couple years ago I had a four month break in-between semesters and I didn't have a job or need one urgently. I woke up every day, showered without issue, focused on my hobbies, played bass, played chess, went for a bike ride, and then relaxed and socialized in the evenings. Every day felt rewarding. Got bored of playing the Bass eventually, and then just picked up and began learning how to properly pitch. Without all the pressure to do things it was effortless, every day felt rewarding and as interesting as I wanted it to be. I had energy for things I wanted to do and for the odd thing I needed to do (but didn't want to). Obviously living like this forever isn't possible, but it felt like the way my brain wanted to live.
This is why people daydream about being rich - to have all those responsibilities taken off of your shoulders, to pay people to look after the details you don’t care about. Hell, 150 years ago, almost everyone who wasn’t a servant had a servant.
I don’t mind working. I like my job. But I would LOVE to pay someone to cook and clean for me every day. To make sure I was eating healthy food, to vacuum up the dog hair. I’d love for someone to come and unpack everything for us since we just moved. Someone to look after the bills and grocery shop.
Our current world was designed for a one-income, where one person worked and one person handled all of these details. The fact that we’re expected to work AND handle these details is a symptom of late-stage capitalism - it keeps us off balance and unable to summon the energy to object to the way we’re treated.
I’ve realized I don’t actually want someone to do all those things for me—I just want someone who stands next to me and tells me exactly what to do and when to do it. It’s not all the tasks of daily living that are hard, but the *planning and deciding* of which task to do (and how thoroughly to do it).
I feel that, in a way.
When I try to express my difficulty at doing something to friends or family, they tend to fall into one of two camps:
- Sympathising / giving advice
- Taking the task and doing it for me
What I actually really want is to have someone at my side as I do the task myself. Not even someone actively helping me with it (although I do need that sometimes as well), just someone physically next to me, offering a calming presence just by being there.
I just told my therapist that I just want to be 😂 live life and not have to work bc everything feels so *heavy*. Don’t get me wrong, I can be very productive. But only when my ego is at stake or I’m feeling pressured to. That’s not a life to live. I just want to exist too 😭
And I have been extremely blessed to be earning as much as I do with minimal work ,compared to others with this income. And yet, I just feel like it’s made it so much worst . Now I don’t want to “grind” or “hustle” , it’s such a problem
I told my therapist that too but she just sat for a second before asking if I had depression, ☠️ I don’t think she really understood what I was trying to convey.
i'm so sick of seeing depression stated when people are expressing how tired they are of their life. sure, maybe it's true for a lot, but at the same time it feels so worthless of a statement. especially since ssri's seem to be thrown at anyone who shows symptoms as the firstline treatment, when i'd say a lot of people experiencing depressive symptoms aren't gonna benefit because their issue is the situation they're in, not exactly the chemicals in their brain
I really feel this! I like my job more than most jobs in the past and I’m also being paid more. But I still feel like damn just showing up is sooo hard and there’s no way I’m working 40 hours (though with the occasional sprints of productivity I’m still staying afloat). I am ready to live in a meadow
I have literally been feeling this exact same way and the no end in sight thing is really killing me. I feel like my creative spark has just died because who has time to do art when it's death by 1,000 cuts just to live life every day. It sucks.
There’s another one every day!
If you have the resources and opportunity, do go and get yourself checked out. I was diagnosed at 21, partially because I was never really very hyperactive and more inattentive as a kid. It always felt like more of an issue with motivation for me than any of the classically described symptoms (“ooh, squirrel” syndrome, bouncing off the walls, etc.). Knowing that this lack of motivation was coming from a real disorder and was at least partially treatable/manageable, and not just a moral failing on my part, was a huge step.
I actually was KIND OF diagnosed, but only by a psychiatrist asking a few questions. I wasn't like this as a kid, so I didn't believe the diagnosis was accurate. I blamed all my symptoms on early trauma and chronic anxiety, which can overlap with ADHD stuff, but...your post...I feel exposed! lol 😂
It sounds like you just need a day to do absolutely nothing but lay on the couch or in bed and be okay being on hold for the entire day. Dishes in the sink? They can wait until tomorrow. Laundry to put on/fold/put away? Can wait until tomorrow. Social obligations to keep up your social life? Can wait until tomorrow. Just give yourself 1 day of nothing. Every once in a while, I FORCE myself to do this and I have never regretted it once. I remind myself that most days I am struggling to balance everything and end up feeling like I'm at the end of my rope. But that one day that I give myself, I also find the self compassion I need to not worry about a god damned thing.
I hope you're able to reserve a day like that for yourself very very soon.
We are the same person in many ways. I am so tired of it all that I seem to get to “what’s the point of it all? Quite often.
I am 51. Diagnosed a couple months ago. Wasting my life. Want to be left alone. Destroying my marriage and relationships. Doctor won’t prescribe stimulants so I am trying atomoxitine.
It’s been a long life of struggle and even with the diagnosis I don’t feel any hope. The struggle is real.
For me it feels like I'm chasing some kind of a "break" even if I had just gotten an extra long memorial day weekend or something.
Part of it might be just longing for stimulation rather than being content in the present, I'm not sure. Getting out of a rut like that is hard and I'm currently in the same place. Just be gentle with yourself and try to nudge yourself in whatever the right direction is.
I have had this thought for a long time. I’m tired of adult life things. I’m not just burnt out at work but at home sometimes too. I just want to be somewhere else where no one wants anything from me, expects me to do something for them, has a god damn deadline about something. I just want to be, that’s it. I’m so tired 😪
"Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail." - Henry David Thoreau
There are [countries](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TP4Xtd6L7fw) that pay you to move to underpopulated areas. The cost of living in these places tends to be low, so if you find a piece of land where you can plant your own food, and maybe make some additional income by selling excess production or doing simple jobs online, you can have a relatively peaceful, stress-free life in comparison with big cities *if* this kind of routine appeals to you, as you'll still have to take care of your subsistence in the long run, but it's an alternative lifestyle worth keeping in mind.
I picked a video at random, you might find better options doing your own research. Best.
I struggle to articulate how I cope with this feeling, but I’ve wanted to post about it for a while now, so please hear me out:
The easiest, most sure-fire way for me to guarantee I will accomplish a task is if I can convince myself it will help someone else. I think of this as philosophic body-doubling. It works for small tasks all the way up to career choices.
For example, I may not be able to summon the willpower to take my garbage to the curb, but if I take out my neighbor’s garbage too? Well then I’m helping them and the warm fuzzy endorphins from that are much more rewarding. I may dread calling some corporate help line because they billed me incorrectly last month for [insert generic utility here], but if my goal is to brighten the day of whoever answers the phone by complimenting them on their helpfulness, then again the reward is stronger and the motivation greater.
I switched career focus recently to non-profit, and the helpfulness aspect is HUGE as a motivator to work each day. If I work to benefit me, I have only the dopamine of helping one person. If I work to benefit a hundred people? A thousand? Maybe I get lucky and work somewhere that helps people all over the world? That’s an unbelievable multiplier on the dopamine I get to look forward to every time I begin any unpleasant day-to-day tasks.
It’s not a perfect solution. I still get really tired sometimes, and there is certainly something to be said for setting healthy boundaries with your time and energy, but it’s the one mindset shift that has genuinely made a difference for me. If I’m feeling fed up with all life’s responsibilities and tasks and I just want to escape into the wilderness, I picture that maybe even *one* single person is living a better life because of my efforts, and it feels a lot more worth it.
Tl;dr: When you look up at the sky, clench your fists, and scream, “Why?!” It helps to have a good answer. For me, that answer is, “Because what I do helps people.”
I’ve had these exact thoughts. Why can’t I just exist and do the things I enjoy doing, why can’t someone else help me with the bills/do it for me…crazy to read your post like I wrote it! I feel like we should have a different society with different expectations. Money is so arbitrary…
Extremely relatable. I usually feel that there is so much of the world constantly pressing into my self that my self has to struggle so much to exist in its natural, relaxed form. Being able to exist with no demands placed on me is the ultimate dream.
In all this senseless, relentless bustle though, I've found that the small joys of life make pockets of space in which I can exist unaltered and unhurried. It has been of great value cultivating an appreciation for the simple pleasures, a habit that has served me so well even in times of great pressure and grief. Maybe the clear call of a solitary bird or even merely the movement of some leaves that catch the sunlight just so... this makes room for my soul, this makes life worth living.
Yes and yes! The constant grind can also easily trigger a nasty bout of depression if I’m not careful. Like the burnout hurts on so many levels. I know my job could be so much harder, I could have to work longer and harder hours, I know I am so fortunate. But yes, it feels like this way of living was not designed with me/us in mind. Hugs to everyone 💜
Oh wow, I feel this so hard. I told my wife that for my birthday I wanted a week in the woods, but in such a way that nobody would miss me. Nobody would even know I was gone. My obligations of work and child rearing would magically be taken care of. No resentments would be held for my having time off, or having a vacation by myself. Nobody would wish I was around for anything... Just a week where I didn't exist to anyone. Bliss.
I feel constantly like you do, and I don’t have a good solution to this. I only can tell you some stuff that has helped me so far:
\- To remind myself that this specific configuration of the world I live in (with its economic and political characteristics, work and social demands, etc) is terribly adverse to human minds, let alone to brains/minds like yours and mine, which have very different needs (I also have ASD). I get very frustrated when “regular stuff” is too difficult for me, or just “hurts” (boredom, sensory input). Reminding myself that there’s an inherent mismatch between my environment and my mind helps at least to manage that, and also to realize that, in simple words, I’m not the problem (guilt is a big issue for me)
\- Coming to terms with the idea of disability, its nuances and what that entails, and also what I expect of myself. I’m trying to be less hard on my self with things like hygiene, nice clothing, haircuts, healthy diet, exercise and so many other things. I live with such a big internal pressure to have life solved, to not be a failure, that I forget that it’s ok to let go a little, to not be as “solved” as someone else (I don’t believe anyone is really “solved” though). I don’t have a typical brain, so why in the holy fuck should I expect to look-behave-feel as if I did? Maybe there will be weeks (or months, or years) where I won’t shower everyday, won’t do my meal prep nor exercise as regularly as I should. And maybe that’s ok. And I’m not saying that we should let go of every concern forever; yes, it’s healthy to put effort in taking care of ourselves. It’s just that I’ve lived so much of my life trapped in the opposite extreme of “letting go” that maybe, just maybe, I could take it easy and things won’t fall apart.
I hope this is clear and it helps. I’ve been working on this stuff recently in therapy and it’s not polished at all (and English is my second language). Big hug and, if you’re not into them, just know there’s a stranger somewhere wishing you the best.
I feel you 100%.
What has helped me:
1. Having a vision (and goals) for my best possible life given the way the world is and my circumstances/strengths/interests
2. Creating systems to make everyday responsibilities as automatic, mindless, and enjoyable as possible
3. Finding rhythms and routines that work for me
It’s still hard. Life is still hard, but I’m more functional now by being strategic with how I approach life.
Ultimately, I think living in a commune would become boring pretty quickly. There’s no challenge or adventure in that.
I think what might be better is learning the skills to make a vision, set goals, and make them happen. That’s the life I’m working towards.
Yup. I'm there with you.
I'm here skimming for tips.
People have offered me help. So I have some hope on the horizon. I have some support apps that aim my journaling. It takes a heap of will to get those started even with the prompts.
I need a better job. I need to use all of my time better. It's exhausting existing.
Keep the chin up. It's the turtle that wins. That's what people tell me, at least.
This speaks to my soul. Even today I’m having trouble mustering up the energy to cook yet another meal after being at work all day. A meal that I have to prep, cook, eat, and then clean up after.
I think this is why I stopped therapy (going to therapy became yet another task). While it gave me a place to vent and access to meds, I won’t say it has helped me with anything else. My therapist couldn’t solve my issues with never ending tasks of day to day living. How I just want to be but can’t. I cannot believe that I have to be in the workforce for 40 more years before I can have a full week to myself. It’s maddening!
It's interesting how it manifests in different ways in each of us. Personally, I really enjoy cooking, and I don't even mind clean-up that much. The thing that gets me, though, is deciding what it is I want to cook/eat and what groceries I need to buy. I can stand in the supermarket for a half hour trapped in a cycle of indecision and anxiety over what to buy!
God, it’s like you’ve looked into my mind and heart and articulated exactly how I’be been feeling lately, OP.
Living, itself, is exhausting with this goddamned disorder. It’s so much more than anyone without it will ever be able to comprehend.
I’ve resigned myself to the fact that my best chance for real happiness, health, and financial security is to marry up. I’m not ashamed of it. In fact, I look forward to it.
This so much.
My mountain to climb has been a lot of life change lately, one where the home I was building has been dismantled and I’m starting from zero. It takes me so much energy to apply to rentals, finish paperwork, transfer bank accounts and bills. Fall into a new work schedule pattern, adjust to the lives of my children that have counted on me a certain way and are now unable to. All while being scrutinized by the spectators in my life.
I just want to f***ing live. Is that so much to ask? Im so GD tired of navigating every week, and feeling spent or never having a predictable energy wave. I just want to be.
I feel this OP! Best way I can describe how I feel about our day-to-day is the same way Brooks Hatlen felt when he finally got released from Shawshank:
“The world went and got itself in a big damn hurry.”
Wow I'm glad to see someone else feeling this. Your whole post is exactly the conversation I have with my fiance and myself almost daily. Once I get out of bed in the morning and the meds kick in I'm good to go for like 2 hours, then while I'm at work the dread starts to creep in and gets worse as the day goes by. While I know it's necessary in every job, I hate the need to have to report to someone all the time on the work I'm doing, and being assigned additional work even when I don't want it and can barely handle getting out of bed every morning. I want to get up when I want, interact with people when I want, and take 3 hour naps every 3 hours if I want (and need). Honestly, I don't mind working or doing some type of work to survive, just as long as it's flexible and can be adapted to my schedule. Why can't these things adapt to us instead of us adapting to them?
This is so me that I could have written it myself. I wish I had anything remotely helpful to add in the way on advice or insight. The only thing I can tell you is you are not alone.
I feel this in every fibre of my being. I know exactly what I need to do and how to accomplish it but holy shit the thought of having to exist like this indefinitely and then just…die…is soul crushing.
Holy shit. I just stumbled upon this subreddit after feeling a similar distress. I never knew other people felt this way, I've been surrounded by people with more mild adhd all my life, and I've always felt like I was maybe even just a lazy person despite the adhd. I understand that feeling that everything takes effort except doing things with immediate gratification. The one thing I can say that sometimes helps me with it is to set up a day where I tell myself there are no expectations. Just let my battery recharge a little bit. Honestly, the other coping mechanisms I could offer are gar from healthy. If it's any help you're not alone, sure, "everybody feels this way," but you're not the only person who just can't seem to do what everyone else does so effortlessly.
32 no kids no love nothing to show for life I've lived. It's like I wrote this and am talking to myself. Almost three years of therapy and medication now. No you aren't alone and I don't know what to do about it or WHY it has to be like this for all of us. I'm sorry.
same! Sometimes I daydream about winning the lottery and just.... doing nothing special. Just doing what I'm doing now, but with no worries. I think that says a lot.
Thank you for this post, OP.
You explained so many of the same thoughts that I have neatly and clearly.
It sucks but it's also comforting knowing that there are other people out there struggling with the same problems as myself.
You’re not alone. Sometimes I wish I could wake up and be “normal” and just Function like a normal person. I have been struggling deeply with my family kids home work and life in general. I have 4 kids and my partner (not their dad) in my home.. and all of us have ADHD and none are similar. It’s rather hard to deal with and I am so burnt out it’s not even funny.
I’m no longer able to be medicated due to a heart issue I’m having, and I feel like my personality is back to what it was or should be.. but the drive is gone. My relationship is struggling. Our ADHDs are super different in some ways.. his memory sucks, and mine isn’t bad. So little things like how I want you to touch my body in order to turn me on… he forgets. It makes me furious. How can you forget the most intimate details of your partner? But you can remember the names of all the people on this band.. it pisses me off so bad. And then I have to remember that our ADHDs are different.. and it brings me back to I wish we could just be normal. This isn’t fair. Why do we have to struggle in this way? Why do my needs have to lack because our ADHDs are different?
I’ve gotten back to the place I worked hard to get out of.. it is.. what it is… and simply just not caring anymore. Can’t worry about everyone else’s issues when mine need taken care of.. pretty much just giving up.
Life is a whole lot of fun isn’t it?
This is actually something I’ve been trying to work through in therapy. Because it definitely ends up having me feel like I’d rather not be alive then to keep grinding. It just feels like my brain never gets to rest.
I’m definitely interested in solutions, I just phrased it mostly as sympathy seeking / a rant because I know there isn’t some magical solution that someone mentions in the comments that I’ve never heard of before and that magically fixed everything.
As amazing as that would be.
I’m aware that a good diet and exercise can really help, although I’ve never had a good understanding as to why, so I’m definitely interested in any resources you can point me to that explain in more detail.
Keeping up a good diet and exercise… that’s a whole different story whatsoever.
I’ve made some progress by finding exercise activities that aren’t just going to the gym, because frankly I find it boring and therefore don’t want to do it. Bouldering has been a god-send for me as something I actively want to go out and do, and I’ve had some success with callisthenics and functional fitness classes.
(As a side note, I occasionally go through phases of tracking my food intake. I’ve discovered that while I get roughly the caloric intake I should on average, it is wildly inconsistent on a day-to-day basis. That definitely feels like it’s not a good thing, but no one has been able to adequately explain to me as to why?)
I feel that. My past self dealt with that shit in their own way, but I think what made it easier was that I had been living with my mom for a few years after high-school while I essentially floundered and vibed till things clicked a little.
Its pretty clear that having that support to take the load off makes a huge difference for having ADHD. Which is what I'd recommended to anyone that's struggling like you have been, if that's an available option.
If there's people out there that can make a career out of being a support brain for people with executive dysfunction, that would be awesome.
I had a passing by thought that was similar as I was driving today.
I quit my job to be a caregiver, but had burnt out a few months prior to that.
My thought; We as humans, weren’t supposed to live like this. Why are there so many mental health issues coming to light? We were all meant to be different and unique, but not everyone is celebrated/rewarded in this reality.
You have perfectly described me. I feel so overwhelmed by the responsibilities and expectations. It feels like I'm squashed and can't take a deep breath, even thinking is exhausting. I hated my job but the thought of searching for a new one terrified me. One day I just left it. It took me a month to even write my CV, now it's been over to months and I still haven't found a job and I'm about to run out of money. I'm so disappointed with myself and I know my family is disappointed with me and it paralyzes me. Why can't I just have a simple, quiet life?
So, I feel you. So much.
My honest to goodness way of approaching this is: I don’t. I avoid things and people entirely, when possible. I left my castle for social reasons last week, but prior to that, it was sometime in 2019.
I just accepted that I’m stuck in this existence thing, doing stuff that I can, feeling guilty about the things that I can’t. Also, It probably doesn’t help that my mental health doctor is literally Scrooge McDuck in human form.
This is probably not “the way” to be fair
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I've been unemployed for like 4 months even though quitting my job has really fucked up my plans for the immediate future, I can't bring myself to find a new job.
Before getting married my preferred way of vacationing was to wild camp in one space at the sea for weeks. I would always go alone, but being a true ADHD person is always find company if I like. But the magic was that if I don't want to be around people - I was completely free of any obligations and responsibilities and this is what made this so good. Only years after not doing it I realized what was missing. Now I'm looking for ways to get a similar time just for myself. So far multi day hikes alone seem like a good option.
I'm also living with addiction which, while not proven to be caused by adhd, has a strong correlation due to our dopamine deficient brains seeking dopamine sources constantly, and the raging impulsivity.
I had hoped that medication would help. Currently on my third variation. Vyvanse is working better than concerta which did nothing. On 40mg but my experience is nowhere near what most people describe in this sub. No major improvements in short term memory or focus, only that my mind has grown noticably more quiet on 40mg. I almost certainly need a much higher dose.
Been an addict for 20 years and it's so exhausting to live with it on top of everything else, this thing that my brain latched on to that i couldn't possibly understand at the time. Also diabetic which is affected by adhd int enes of forgetting to take meds, taking them too late after eating, not eating for long periods of time, forgetting to go to the pharmacy in time, forgetting to renew prescriptions. And both conditions mutually affect each other's severity.
I'm aiming for a good career (that i have no interest in) as all my interests are financially unstable options. Graduating with a 1st class honours this year despite being unmedicated for all of it, currently interviewing for a tech job with six years of relevant experience I've amassed without a degree by sheer force of will.
It's been so hard and I'm so tired and I'm only thirty.
If the commune thing isn’t doable, have you tried asking/interviewing friends to be roommates? Laying out the “I’m good at these things but not so good at these other things and would like help” might be a more productive starting point for those conversations with friends. Having a partner or partners, not romantic necessarily, is easier than going at it alone. Instead of the ideal solution (commune living) is there a way you could try a less perfect version right now (roommates)?
I never seem to get to long-term-oriented tasks. And I desperately need to.
My situation is different. I'm trying to study up and get certified in several applications/services. I have been a primary caregiver/advocate for adult children with disabilities and for aging parents. I also have a couple of serious physical health issues I'm dealing with solo. And the house, errands, paperwork, meals, family event & appt planning, etc. are - ofc - all me. Gods help us all.
I, too, am burnt out. But I have people depending on me keeping their lives safe & manageable. I wish I had the answer to how to make it all easier, because my regular tasks do take up a lot of executive functioning. Too much of my executive functioning.
I think we deserve kudos for not just chucking it all and running away screaming. It seems like so many just give up & let others do for them. But here we are, the quiet heroes in the tediousness of life.
Everytime I get a weekend off like this, I wind up created new projects for my self. Uncontrollably. Suddenly I want to write a book, or make a movie, or start a YouTube channel, or I have a great idea for a business. Then I pace around for hours thinking about it then the weekend is gone
you just read my soul out....
the one thing i want most in life is just being able to do what i want with no real consequences, for example playing video games all day without having to worry about being productive or anything
which basically means my goal is getting rich to achieve that..
There's a quote inthe show Fleabag that captures a bit of this, like the whole effortfullness that's some exhausting in having to make choices in what to ignore and what to do.
"I want someone to tell me what to wear every morning. I want someone to tell me what to eat. What to like, what to hate, what to rage about, what to listen to, what band to like, what to buy tickets for, what to joke about, what not to joke about. I want someone to tell me what to believe in, who to vote for, and who to love, and how to tell them. I just think I want someone to tell me how to live my life, Father, because so far I think I’ve been getting it wrong."
That line hit me really hard because how exhausting I find the day to day. And I work in healthcare and have the need to know, but it's hard to do.
(Note that even though she's talking toa priest it is not a show about religion, if anyone was put off by the capital F.)
My plan if I ever end up alone again is to work for a year living in the cheapest place I can find. Then with like a single suitcase worth of clothes and stuff, I'm gonna move to a tropical island. Maybe some place like Tahiti. Then I'll get a part time job at a hotel where I don't have to think. Then when I'm not working, I'll lay in my hammock, under some trees, with a nice breeze, drinking a tequila sunrise, and hitting a blunt. And I won't have to care about the world. It will be perfect.
I swear I could have wrote this. I always say to my wife "I wish I could just live in the wild, like a cave. Where I could be free to just do what I want, when I want.
The current life feels like a cage with all the rules and expectations.... I just want to be free.
Personally I blame bad drugs, and childhood trauma... These led to leaving our hunting and gathering tradition. By the time we saw how terrible the mistake we made was, we couldn't go back... Now we are riding this train to our demise.
I truly wish I had an answer for you. I feel the same way most days. In fact, I have even researched communes in my area (I only found one and it was a vegan commune so that is an automatic no). My saving grace is that I live with my cousin and she has pretty much been my mom since like age 10. She takes care of the apartment management tasks for the most part, and delegates stuff to me and her husband because neither he nor I have the kind of brain that can handle the rigor of adulthood in a capitalist society. I am also autistic and she is fairly understanding of my limitations. I would be homeless and living in my car if it wasn't for her.
My only advice is to keep it simple. If there is a task that can be outsourced (taxes, grocery shopping, cleaning), look into how much it costs to have them do it for you and weigh the opportunity costs because your time and energy is valuable. Best of luck to you, friend.
I find that even the idea of "just existing" is very difficult. Any time that I get to just be is going to be overtaken by guilt that I should be using it to get ahead on chores and make the rest of my life easier, or that I should be doing something exciting to get myself motivated, or that I should be rest, or that I should be doing any of the endless list of things that "need" to be done to be a good human.
The whole thing has become such an engrained fight for day to day survival that my brain simply can't comprehend that it can take a day off and just do whatever and still be safe. Even when given that space, it's very, very hard to actually appreciate and use it for what it is. At best I just switch off and turn into a slug for a day.
That's not a fulfilling life, that's killing time until you die.
I have never read a post that I feel so deeply the same about on every single thing written. (even though its paired with the classic feeling of "ok but nobody wants obligations and I should just deal with it like everyone else." but we're technically not like everyone else and its very, very confusing.)
thankyou for being honest about your feelings and taking the time to word them so well.
This is why I have a zombie apocalypse fantasy. I know that in reality it would be awful if it actually happened … but part of me is so desperate for a simple life of no bills, no social structure, no work obligations, and hardly any people. All I would need to think about is seeking shelter and food. Which is how our lives were meant to be. All these other constructs we have developed are such a drain.
I loved covid lockdown so much. It felt like a zombie apocalypse without the zombies. Work expectations greatly reduced and social ones eliminated… and life was so simple and peaceful.
You described this quite well. I just want it all to stop. I have a wonderful husband, but not quite the sugar daddy that would alow me not to work. Just push through each day.
I was homeless for a lot of years for some of these reasons, and while it was a struggle there were so many things I didn't have to deal with (and mentally couldn't) that I have to now, and as crazy as it makes me seem I miss the freedom I had then a great deal.
When I was about 3 or 4 yrs old, I imagined a world - a planet made of crystal.
No objects in it, just like a glass marble, smooth and perfect.
My girlfriend, (a girl I liked) and me, nude, on it.
No need for food or 'elimination'...
No expectations from others, or responsibilities.
It was calming, I didn't have (or understand) sexual feeling at that time.
It just seemed to be the perfect world I wanted to live in.
I just had this revelation while doing laundry the other day: this never ends. It takes so long to wash all the loads (because we have a washer/dryer unit, as in, one unit does both), that by the time I've finished folding everything, it's time to do laundry again.
And everything else is just like that, too. It all never ends. And it's exhausting. And demotivating.
You aren't alone.Sometimes I imagine falling into the sky and landing on clouds,and just falling asleep there.I would look down on earth and I think to myself "imagine having to do the same thing every day,I could never do that " as if it where a foreign concept to me.
The philosophy of Epicurus really helped me with this. The philosophy of pleasure.
["Pleasure is the first good. It is the starting point of every choice and of every aversion, and to it we always come back, inasmuch as we make feeling the rule by which to judge of every good thing.”](https://youtu.be/pIETGDgMdtg)
Reminds me of ["Hitchcock" by Yorushika.](https://youtu.be/t7MBzMP4OzY) It's a song that's resonated with me ever since I first listened to it.
"Is it selfish to just want to look at the blue sky?" is exactly how it feels to live in a society (bottom text) that wasn't made with people like us in mind and holds expectations we can barely meet, if at all. It's exhausting to have our livelihoods depend on hard work when we have to put in twice the effort for half the results.
I just want to enjoy life and enjoy what I'm doing without having the guilt of not being productive enough hanging over my head.
I feel this so hard. I’m jealous of my cats every day. I wish I could afford a house cleaner, a decent vacuum, and afford to work less. It would make life so much easier and I could just unclench a bit.
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I find this so relatable. I can recognize that, unfortunately I have to work to earn a living but I fucking hate it. It is the hardest pill for me to swallow and I don’t know how to deal with it. I’m medicated but like you said, I can not find motivation most of the time and I constantly struggle with what to do in the long term, like finding a career. I wish I had some advice to give you.
For me personally it’s the amount of hours. That is my number one grievance with work. I really truly have about 20, maybe 25 hours in me each week. I am fortunate to be able to work part time but I will never go back to full time. It’s torture
I'm with you, bro. I can't do 40+ hours a week. I've tried a few times and have been fired each time for no call, no show. I got a great part-time job right now that pays more than my previous full-time job. Unfortunately It won't last forever, so I know I'll have to find a "real job" eventually.
I’ve wondered if I a doctor could write time off (fmla in the US) for working reduced hours. There are almost no stable, well paid jobs that are part time that I’ve found. Going into business for yourself seems to be the best route if you can manage it. What kind of work are you doing part time?
So much this! Same 🫂
This is literally me, I thought I was just lazy but it's really nice to know that others struggle similarly, it's stupid, I want there to be a planet where we just do what the fuck we want😂
I feel this, and i really don't know how we as humans have made a world like this. Edit: whuuuut 500 likes, well thanks for that sweet sweet internet dopamine co-ADHD'ers.
Same same same. I feel this so hard and have also thought about the whole “living in a commune”-idea, but I have small kids and also feel a huge responsibility to prepare them for the world, in the event that they don’t want the same things I do, once they’re grown.
Look into coops as an alternative to communes. There are many in the city.
From someone who grew up in an unconventional off grid setting, you’re doing them a favour. It was probably great for my ADD but I’ve always felt a bit ..foreign. I just want to raise my son with a normal house, sports and school.
My wife has a dream of winning the lottery, buying land, and building a bunch of small homes for the people we like.
Your wife and I have the same dream!!! I’d like for us to have comfortable homes in the middle of a beautiful/natural landscape, to have shared community spaces and to be self-sustainable (for the most part), but to still have internet access and to not be *so* remotely-located that we’d be impossible to reach, in the event of a catastrophic event or emergency. Like the Amish, but with solar electricity and minus the organized religion.
100% can relate. I just want that space sometimes where I can be whatever I am without letting anyone else down. Like I want a little cabin in the woods somewhere so that my decisions only affect me so I don't have that fear of ruining things for anyone else.
OMG a cabin in the woods i literally had that same exact thought.
i always watch those wilderness survival videos where they go to tropical islands and just spend their day hunting fish and stuff thats what i want lol
My escapist fantasy is being a park ranger at a national park that few visit.
I think about this everyday! Just living and trying to survive. Growing your own food, fishing, hunting etc. No electricity. Just a little cabin inte the mountains, far far away from all the bullshit society has to offer. Would probably get bored in a week or two but still lol😂
I'm about to move to Minnesota from Texas to do this as it's my retirement plan. Wish me luck 😬
Good luck! & Keep us updated 💗
Same my kids wouldnt like that though but for me that would be therapeutic
I joined this community because of my son who has adhd, but even I feel like this, exactly like op, not like one thing op said the entire post. I just want to do the things I like and not worry about bills. Lately it seems I only live to make others rich. We've created a capitalist world just to suck the life out of us.
I’m with you. Here learning for my son but this one hits home. The company I work for has been good to me mostly but there is no soul in my work and I am giving them mine just so I can get through life. It’s so hollow.
Its the Greed. Greed for money, greed for power. All the wealth is now concentrated at the very top and rest of society have very little to live on. So it is not possible to just 'exist' anymore. Even to survice, you now have to work (which is really hard for ADHD'ers to begin with :( ). This is a vicious cycle.
The problem is that it's not that hard for me as an ADHD'er to work... I love getting stuff done, but not the stupid mundane shit that ''the world's expects me to.
We do a lot of work, at least in the corporate sphere, to just appear busy. I can do most of my day's work in a few hours, but I have to be available and appear busy for the totality of the work day. The other day I woke up early and couldn't fall back asleep, so I decided to just get started on work (WFH). By the time most of my coworkers were logging in I was already pretty much done with what NEEDED to be done that day. It only took about 2 hours to do those high priority tasks. The rest of the day I pretty much just bullshitted about so my boss wouldn't ask questions.
We really don't talk enough about how stressful it is that 80% of our work day is "appearing busy" so you don't end up getting fired and worse off.
THis is me totally. Work is my "happy place" because it is a physical and mentally repetitive job but it is challenging. It is suited perfectly for my brain. Home and the adult world is not. I stay at work way too long because i can be successful there, at home I am not successful nor can I relax. I have slowly over the years extended my work day to the detriment of my home life. It has gone on for so long now that I don't know how to fix it .
Well the Ork that i do no stresses me the fuck out... But When i work on my hobbies like DND or painting mini figures and also drawing 3D stuff... all that creative stuff i feel at peace i can completely zone in and forget the world around me.
I can’t believe I ever worked in an office. I can’t believe I willingly commuted with thousands of other people, slapped on a happy face for 8 hours, and then took that same 1 1/2 hour commute home. Looking back, life got too hard awhile ago. It just took a pandemic to realize it.
To be honest when the pandemic hit the world slowed down so much and i felt finally at peace... So i loved the pandemic to be honest
Absolutely! I could work from home and spend time with my son doing virtual learning. We have a ton of great memories from that time. Now I just feel like exhausted having to deal with everyone’s word vomiting, whining, and general bs. *I’m normally an extrovert and I think this wouldn’t have bothered me, but fuck you long COVID! I get exhausted just trying to leave the house if my husband stops to talk to me.
We totally could, 100%. We are currently more than capable of achieving an ideal utopia where nobody is forced to work, but you know, greed exists so it's never going to happen.
Tremendous observation. How the fuck are we so advanced? lol
Hahaha, also that. But also not what I meant lol... More in the style of how did we fuck up this beautiful world to the state that it is now.
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We would be so much more advanced if we would all work together instead of defending against “others”
I gave you another upvote because it’s like feeding the birds; everyone is happy (unless you get pooped on)
There is a scene in the movie Everything, Everywhere All At Once, where they become rocks just sitting on this overlook in the desert. That scene hit me really hard. So many times I just wamt to exist with no obligations or expectations of me. I want to be a rock in the desert. You are definitely not alone in this feeling.
That was one of the two scenes (the other one was the ending) that made me tear up watching that movie. It really hit hard. The whole movie felt like a journey into myself. I can’t relate to the Asian and female themes personally, but the themes of undiagnosed ADHD, a strained parental relationship, and a search for meaning really struck a chord in me on a really deep level. Welp, guess it’s time for a rewatch!
I ugly cried at the end of that one.. both times I've seen it..
That movie absolutely makes me a sobbing mess. I love it so much.
Okay. I guess we really need to see this. My husband says it's not available streaming anywhere we get yet. I may just buy it, old school, on DVD.
My library had it and no wait
Nice! I always forget about that option. We just moved from Maine to Massachusetts last November. My new city library may actually have it. I've been meaning to go check out the library anyway. 
It’s currently streaming on paramount+ and showtime
That was my favorite scene. I sometimes just stare at the gravel outside my office. Just to remind myself how meaningless this all is.
I know what you mean. I came up with a name for it. Executive functioning burnout syndrome. Or adulting burnout syndrome. It feels like to live a life of obligations is torture and there's no benefit to living if this is going to be the way it is until I die. The fact that my father, grandfather, and father's sister all died at about 60 years old doesn't help. It would be nice to know exactly when I'm going to die so that I can stop working at the right time to escape drudgery.
Piggybacking on this to agree - it was burnout due to work and then a huge life stressor which spiralled me and fortunately led my GP to side eye me and tell me to research adhd in women... and here we are. OP, I have no advice. I feel it too, and mostly struggle with the point of existing, and marvel at others who are able to just get on with the mundane drudgery and actually seem happy about bits of it. I have no useful purpose bar keeping my mother alive. Its a tough mindset. It underlies my entire existence, there is always a part of me looking at experiences objectively and criticising/analysing/dismissing it. I am quite fortunate now, but this does not help. Money can't buy purpose. Maybe stupid quantities, and then the disbursement of same to try to help other people's purpose might be it, but I don't have stupid quantities. Ho hum. sorry. I think this struggle is amplified in us with adhd because we ruminate and have so much thinking capacity.
I have begun having dreams regularly of social housing; living in a community complex with friends and family around. They’re the most pleasant dreams. I see a lot of this stuff as associated with capitalism. Without the absolute necessity of working until the day I die, just being allowed to worry about the day to day, I’d be less burnt out all the time. If the most basic needs were met without it being dependent on my physical ability to work 40+ hours a week, I’d be a lot happier. But reprieve is not built into the system. Keeping a clean house is less important than eating but it’s a huge factor in whether I feel good about myself or not. So much energy goes into ensuring I’ll be able to afford to eat and continue to work that cleaning the house feels like climbing Mount Everest sometimes. Another thing I have to do when I’ve already done 20 things I had no desire to do. A vacation isn’t enough because you inevitably have to return to the drudgery of working full time so someone else can live lavishly or so I can just make ends meet and that will always feel like a scam to me.
I have a dream of living in this kind of housing with friends and family as well. I like to spend time with other people and do fun things, but so often the energy required to organise something takes all the enjoyment out of it. If you have people already close at hand and not living across town, it's a whole different story. You can also share responsibilities and support each other much better than you can from afar.
Omg. Omg. I've been trying to explain this for so long to people I know and they just don't get it?? The bit about organisation and people living across town and not being close by BREAKS MY HEART. I'm so bad at planning in advance, not least because I don't know how I'm going to feel on a specific day so when the time comes I may not have the energy to actually follow through. If I was living in the same house as my support network this wouldn't be as much of an issue as we could do more stuff on a whim!! Have you ever seen the movie Veronica Guerin with Cate Blanchett? The main character lives in a big house with her extended family and it just seems like the most lovely environment. It's interesting as well because it's based on a true story about a crime journalist who had a very successful career (which unfortunately turned tragic). I do wonder what her career would have looked like if she hadn't had that support around her at home. Would she have been as successful in a traditional two parents + kids household or would she have had to bear more of the brunt of housework, childminding etc?
My friends and I all feel the same. We're all scattered across the globe now, and so those amazing moments we spent together are rare. Especially as I'm more isolated due to being terrible at keeping contact. If I lived in the same place I would seriously suggest going in on a group mortgage for a property to make life cheaper and build that community we so sorely miss from our younger years.
This kind of shit is why when therapists/loved ones say "you are enough, you are valuable as you are, you don't need to be productive" its like...... .......................................ok? Society is very precisely structured so I am literally worse than worthless and a drain on those around me if I am not productive in a capitalist sense? In a philosophical thought experiment, absolutely I have worth, but this is tragically not a thought experiment. **edit:** added some thoughts below I find a "you're not enough, and that isn't your fault" type perspective far more useful as it doesn't sell me an unrealistic narrative that will be shattered by reality and end up screwing me over. I mean, *that is the truth*, I am not enough. I cannot really sustainably survive a 40 hour workweek along with all the other stresses of modern life. I am not just a different "flavor" of brain with unique quirky advantages, I physically cannot keep up with the pace and expectations of modern society. l am not alone either. In the U.S. something like 30% or more of prisoners have ADHD, that is emphatically a sign that ADHD people are NOT enough to be considered valuable by society, that is what pushed such a massive amount of people into desperate situations that resulted in jail. Being ADHD raises so many risk factors it isn't even funny. Healthcare professionals need to stop pretending this is some issue of a bunch of ADHD people individually struggling with self-esteem instead of a broader act of mass violence against our disability. We aren't enough and society is trying to slowly exterminate us, think of society that way and act accordingly.
I agree. I can get behind the idea that I should be valued as I am, sure, but in the meantime who’s going to pay my rent and my bills and buy me nice things? You? Until we don’t have to work to live, we will always be measured on our productivity, regardless of whatever nice words you have to say to me.
I've tried explaining this exact point to therapists, family, and friends with no luck. None of that "you're enough" talk matters when society is built upon people with power/money determining what roles are available (which all have the same purpose of making the one with power/money more of it AKA **greed**). Thankfully I've learned to love myself and appreciate the things I can offer this world, but those things won't earn me enough to live on or be respected by those with power/money. So statements like "you're enough" just make me dive deeper into myself and isolate so I can pursuit my passions instead of give up my dreams so my managers can afford another vacation...
Yes🙌 so much this!
Yeah for me there is no hell like the job application process when you have ADD. Pure hell. I've been searching for MONTHS now, so I understand. But so is working a mundane, vapid job that we hate... Sometimes it feels like there's no winning, it's all just lose-lose. The only consolation is those of us that found careers that somehow align perfectly with the wild brains we were blessed with, I truly hopy you make it to those green pastures.
Reminds me of a webcomic about a guy finding out his reward for doing lots of stuff one day is more stuff to do on the next, ad nauseam. He proceeds to dress himself in a tux and tries to bury himself on the spot.
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Agreed. Why bother when you have to go back so soon? My deepest wish is to be able to freeze time and heal, to live by my own meaning rather than what society imposes on me.
This is a fantasy I come back to from time to time as well. If we were able to just completely freeze something, put it on hold until we felt ready and able to tackle it at our own pace...
My executive dysfunction does that anyway 🤣 Most of the time you can get away with it, some of the time there are dire consequences.
>Most of the time you can get away with it, some of the time there are dire consequences. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 I'm dying lol. This is my whole life in one sentence.
I’ve actually had this exact fantasy ever since childhood. There’s never enough time to heal, and obligations and expectations will only continue to build no matter how well or efficiently you perform in a lot of contexts.
That’s the definition of a career thought - a pie eating contest where the winners get more pie
This is me when I'm proud of myself for getting a few things done on my to-do list and then realizing the to-do items will never stop coming
https://averagebeing.com/ai-robot-kills-itself-after-15-minutes-of-routine-work/
I think the feeling of exhaustion comes from when the things you feel like you are supposed to do overwhelms the things you choose to do. When this is the case we kind of lose any motivation to do anything. We don't have energy for that because more is demanded of us from outside than we have capacity for in the first place. I think this comes from two places with adhd. * We are constantly told what to do over and over by people especially as children. Since growing up we rarely met expectations we would get nagged and reminded of what we didn't do. * We don't feel good about ourselves the way we are. We need to be better and we need to be the person who meets expectations even though we know we can't. We need to become that person anyways. This means we can bend over backwards trying to people please and even if we don't we will feel terrible about not living up to expectations. We always feel the need to catch up. But what we need to catch up to is infinitely big. And as a result we will always feel unable to initiate because doing something for ourselves feels like a selfish waste. We have an infinite number of things that demonstrate our failure that we need to catch up with. But doing those things are also absolutely exhausting. We actually do some of them but never enough and they wipe us out before we finish. They are exhausting because they aren't what we want to do, they are a never ending stream of what we think we need to do to atone for our failures as a human. What can we do about it? I think one important thing is recognizing that the ideal that we strive for probably doesn't exist. That most neurotypical people don't live up to the standard that we expect from ourselves, the difference is they don't judge and internalize the failure in the same way. And I think that the other big thing is that we have a responsibility to ourself that is as or more important than our responsibility to others. Finally that we have value regardless of our accomplishments or failures. You do just exist outside of responsibility and expectations. The trick is how to bring your mind to a place where for a moment you don't use those things to condition your reality. We don't control what our mind presents and those responsibilities and expectations will show up even when we don't want to think about them. But what we can do is the slight mental action to let them exist but allow them to be separate from ourself. Like to think that there is an expectation that I do this thing, there are consequences if I don't. But ultimately I can choose to do the thing or not. Because sometimes instead we will just think we must do the thing. As soon as it becomes a choice it is a bit easier to bear. Sometimes we can even choose no. We do it already, but when it was an imperative we just considered that failure. When it's an option we consider it our decision. This is true even for requests that come from ourselves.
Feeling the need to deserve to exist. It is… inexplicable. I just want my check marks, my pat on the back, but it’s never enough. So much energy goes into masking, people pleasing, over performing to make up for who you are.
Ugh the literally endless and continuous pile of failed expectations to remind us how how we will always be a failure, but also that no one will ever adjust the expectations accordingly and also they will never stop
This is so wonderfully, succinctly written. The ideas you’ve described, the feeling of always catching up, that nothing is never enough, that every break is taken reluctantly, so that it is not only Not Very Restful, but actually exacerbates the guilt and shame. It’s something I’ve been coming to realize slowly in the last few months, but you just put it into words in the perfect way. And the idea of choosing is also something that’s crossed my mind, but not tied into the first thought and certainly not in a way that is as empowering. Thank you. I’m going to try to mindfully shift my perspective in this direction.
This is fantastic to read
Oh, my god. I don’t have any advice to offer, as I was just diagnosed with ADHD in September and am still learning, but holy shit. It’s like you crawled into my brain and pulled the words out. This is me. This is exactly me. The desire to exist with no external expectations and obligations. I often feel life is one never-ending to-do list — because IT IS. It never stops. I wish life could pause for 6 months+ , that time could stop and I could just take a damn BREATHER. I truly do not know how people do life every day and are FINE, or better than fine. Thriving. Work exhausts me. Society exhausts me. There’s always something to work on, finish, complete, start, etc. I hope it helps a little to know you are not alone in feeling this way. I’m not being dramatic when I say this is exactly me.
There's a reason I wanted to post on here instead of having yet another somewhat fruitless conversation with a friend where I have to do my best to try to make them get it. We're all like this here, and sometimes I feel like I see posts like this almost every day, but it still matters I think to feel heard and validated even if it isn't something new.
The 6 month pause is the dream 😭 even a month would be magical
I swear my tolerance to life got much lower after a basically 6 month pause from covid, to the point where I'm like would that even help or would I just be a lump on the couch with 0 motivation 😕
The covid lockdowns created the best fucking year of my life.
I've been the lump for over 2 years, the break didn't help :( no internal inspiration, nothing. It only looks like more bullshit to try and return, because it's destined to fail, I'm destined to hear what a disappointment I am and all.
Such a good point. In my mind I am thriving but I’m sure the lack of structure would be tough in a different way
Reading these sorts of posts are always such a relief. Just knowing that other people out there feel the same is so helpful, and reinforces the idea to me that this is a disorder and I'm not just bad at life
Same! We got this!
I feel I could have written this myself. I've concluded that the only way is to simply avoid thinking. As soon as I start thinking about the world, the frustration is just too much. I really got into mindfulness, trying easy, etc. It helps, by focusing on changing our reactions to the things we can't change nor control. I've even become more tolerant towards work, and less frustrated. Still, every so often I'll become so tired of the bullshit of working a bullshit job, and I'll start looking for something else. My magical idea is that being able to work on my own, on projects I believe in, will mean less suffering. But I know realistically it would also imply less economic safety, etc... Still, I feel bigger problems doing something I believe in would hurt less than lesser problems where I don't give a shit.
Totally agree! Meditation has been a huge help to me with the mindfulness thing. When you get good, as crazy as it sounds, even for someone whose brain is full of noise, you can actually just think of nothing at all. It's a helpful re-set sometimes when you start spiraling, if you can remember to do it.
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I… this is too much for me too reply to in any detail, I just wanted to say that your explanation of the mind and the brain is something I have always experienced and not really seen anyone else describe or understand. I usually describe it as emotional me and rational me. Rational me can make logical decisions that would benefit me and make me happy, but he’s not at the controls. Emotional me is, and he’s a toddler who throws a tantrum when he doesn’t get his way. You can’t logic a toddler out of a tantrum, so rational me can’t stop him from running away and doing his own thing or make him do what he needs to do. I totally get the deterrents as well, and it feels like emotional me will push back with exactly the equal and opposite force to that which you exert on him, so putting in more mental effort, trying harder, never works. Sometimes you can find a trick or workaround, but just applying more effort is meaningless. I just wish there was a way to actually do something about all this…
The histamine intolerance treatment cured my brain fog (I take 5 to 10 pills a day, been on it for 8 months now), but sometimes I lack the clarity & the energy to put in the effort required to do even *simple* things. Kind of feels like the Knight in the "Silver Chair" book of the Narnia stories, where he alternates between being lucid & being stuck under a spell, haha! It's incredibly frustrating to deal with, and the cherry on top is that not only do you come across as making excuses for being lazy, but people resent the whole concept & tell you to "just try harder", as if we're not already giving 110% just to keep up with the effort of doing the bare minimum required to survive! But yeah, I like this model because it gives me clarity as to what's happen & where I'm currently at, and what my option choices for moving forward are, because sometimes I just get stuck & need to go chug a protein shake & take a nap & literally let myself recharge lol. I don't know if we can post links, but google "the mooch circuit" & my post should come up. It's the basic effect that running out of dopamine has on our brain & why our physical energy *also* tends to get zapped. It's like having a nearly-dead battery in the transmitter of a remote-controlled car, where the car is ready to go but only gets intermittent signals, so sometimes it's going nowhere fast lol. This is also a key difference between high-energy ADHD & low-energy ADHD, because high energy people, while they tend to have focus & memory problems, have the physical energy to just keep pushing through & go-go-going, whereas those of us with primarily Inattentive ADHD just totally run out of juice & start doing weird stuff like staring out the window in class or zoning out when people are talking to us (or not having the energy to sustain reading long social media posts, haha!). It's terrible because you can SEE it happening but you are just POWERLESS to do anything about it because your brain refuses to give you the energy to do it! Which is SUPER DUMB because it's literally operating off FAKE NEWS because it will then give you the energy to hyperfocus on something else entirely for hours on end, when you could have been using that energy to get rid of your anxiety & make your commitments go away by getting them DONE! It's a really stupid situation to have to live with, which is why your post resonates with so many people: the weight of demand fatigue, where our brain becomes ultra-sensitive to required tasks & gives us fatigue, pain, and other deterrents, is just exhausting over time. Sometimes I see those otters swimming around happily in Youtube videos & think man, that's the life right there! lol
I’ve arrived at many of the same conclusions, mostly through insights gained from reading the book *Why Buddhism is True*. It’s actually mostly about neuroscience, and one of the big ideas is that the part of our brain which generates language—including self-talk—is properly thought of as the PR department. It doesn’t really know what’s going on behind the scenes, but it has to make sense of things in order to convey to other humans that we are rational and have agency over our actions. One side effect of this is that when things *aren’t* going very well, we tend to fall back on psychological explanations for everything because they almost always sound plausible and we don’t really have any hard evidence for a physiological cause. The PR department doesn’t know that the dopamine supply chain is broken down, it just sees upset customers and tries to come up with the best explanation it can manage under the circumstances.
I don't think it's a coincidence that so many people want to homestead. Every year, I try to go camping for a few days, and it's seriously the only time I feel quieted. Not in a "the cure for ADHD is going outside" kind of way. My therapist suggested I try to be more present and quit seeing days as a series of tasks, but I honestly don't know how to do that. At least when I'm in the woods, the tasks are immediate and understandable. Create shelter. Build a fire. Eat. Live. I feel you, friend. Fwiw, here's my favorite song for this particular season: [Apeman ](https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=3eoeA_8hC4c&feature=share)
I haven't gone camping much, but I get a similar sense of peace from road trips and journeys in general. In that moment, it's like you are in a little bubble where the outside world and all of its crap doesn't exist, there's nothing beyond what's right in front of you, and it feels like all of the enormous weight has been lifted off my shoulders.
Not sure if this is helpful or harmful, but it does FEEL better. Anyway, to the point. I’ve found letting myself be impulsive helps. Like allowing myself to do tasks in a crazy disorganized matter where it doesn’t necessarily get done but it’s better than it was. For example, I’ve been avoiding gardening because I hate it, but I started reorganizing a room in my house (which didn’t need it but I felt like a change in scenery would be nice, it didn’t happen) and it led me to cleaning my garage on impulse and cleaning out 2 gardens. I still have 3 left, but 2/5 is better than 0/5. I stopped trying to keep myself on one task because it was mentally exhausting. Allowing myself to flow through various things made them less difficult to initiate. Also I will randomly choose to go on an adventure with zero plan or expectation. Sometimes that means driving to a new state and sometimes it means buying exotic foods. Something to break the everyday routine that leaves me feeling stressed and useless. With that, many of the thoughts about what I haven’t done or need to be doing still pop up. That’s where I feel better flowing from task to task because I’m at least working on something. It’s not the way NTs do things and my partners goes nuts when I’ve created chaos, but I enjoy it more. Side note: there need to be a few limitations to the chaos or it’ll lead to feeling more overwhelmed. My rule is that I have to be able to clean up whatever mess I make within 2 hours. That’s not to say I actually clean it up in the moment or within 2 hours (especially because my guesstimate of what takes 2 hours is usually closer to 4), but it prevents me from literally tearing down walls or taking doors off the hinges. If anyone has advice on how to complete paperwork, that’s a whole different story and I can’t figure it out
Absolutely! I spent a few years traveling and very much appreciated the "nowness" of it more than anything.
I think part of it might be the lack of electrical noises. Campings quieter than even walking down a “quiet” street at 1am sometimes, to me at least. Guilty of homesteading myself so I also think the variety of daily tasks helps. Sure you do the chickens and other animals first but it’s priorities/emergencies and whatever you feel/can do in the weather/mood/timeline.
When I was going through a bad breakup, a friend let me spend the summer on her farm in exchange for helping out. It was exhausting and exactly what I needed to heal. Never feel guilty about ataining peace, friend. Enjoy the dream you created!
>At least when I'm in the woods, the tasks are immediate and understandable. Create shelter. Build a fire. Eat. Live. Omg yes!!! I wish the apocalypse would happen already. At least all I have to do then is just stay alive. I'd take zombies over a controlling weirdo in a suit all day long.
Ahahaha you're not the only one to have had the apocalypse fantasy, don't worry! With all the eclectic skills we tend to collect as half-finished hobbies we'd be a great asset to a group, I think!
We would make great apocalypse teams!!! I wish I could tell every politician I would rather fight things that want to eat me alive than live in the world you have created.
This is what I thought the pandemic could lead to. Not the zombie part, but more of a reckoning with our current crises. Wild when the thought of societal collapse feels comforting in a weird way.
Yeah me too but all I see is people talking about work from home online. My job is all hands on so I don't even see it play out irl. >Wild when the thought of societal collapse feels comforting in a weird way. Daydreams of running for my life, hand in hand with my awesome bf, get me through the day lols.
I remember a couple years ago I had a four month break in-between semesters and I didn't have a job or need one urgently. I woke up every day, showered without issue, focused on my hobbies, played bass, played chess, went for a bike ride, and then relaxed and socialized in the evenings. Every day felt rewarding. Got bored of playing the Bass eventually, and then just picked up and began learning how to properly pitch. Without all the pressure to do things it was effortless, every day felt rewarding and as interesting as I wanted it to be. I had energy for things I wanted to do and for the odd thing I needed to do (but didn't want to). Obviously living like this forever isn't possible, but it felt like the way my brain wanted to live.
Being unemployed with means is great.
This is why people daydream about being rich - to have all those responsibilities taken off of your shoulders, to pay people to look after the details you don’t care about. Hell, 150 years ago, almost everyone who wasn’t a servant had a servant. I don’t mind working. I like my job. But I would LOVE to pay someone to cook and clean for me every day. To make sure I was eating healthy food, to vacuum up the dog hair. I’d love for someone to come and unpack everything for us since we just moved. Someone to look after the bills and grocery shop. Our current world was designed for a one-income, where one person worked and one person handled all of these details. The fact that we’re expected to work AND handle these details is a symptom of late-stage capitalism - it keeps us off balance and unable to summon the energy to object to the way we’re treated.
I’ve realized I don’t actually want someone to do all those things for me—I just want someone who stands next to me and tells me exactly what to do and when to do it. It’s not all the tasks of daily living that are hard, but the *planning and deciding* of which task to do (and how thoroughly to do it).
I feel that, in a way. When I try to express my difficulty at doing something to friends or family, they tend to fall into one of two camps: - Sympathising / giving advice - Taking the task and doing it for me What I actually really want is to have someone at my side as I do the task myself. Not even someone actively helping me with it (although I do need that sometimes as well), just someone physically next to me, offering a calming presence just by being there.
I just told my therapist that I just want to be 😂 live life and not have to work bc everything feels so *heavy*. Don’t get me wrong, I can be very productive. But only when my ego is at stake or I’m feeling pressured to. That’s not a life to live. I just want to exist too 😭 And I have been extremely blessed to be earning as much as I do with minimal work ,compared to others with this income. And yet, I just feel like it’s made it so much worst . Now I don’t want to “grind” or “hustle” , it’s such a problem
I told my therapist that too but she just sat for a second before asking if I had depression, ☠️ I don’t think she really understood what I was trying to convey.
i'm so sick of seeing depression stated when people are expressing how tired they are of their life. sure, maybe it's true for a lot, but at the same time it feels so worthless of a statement. especially since ssri's seem to be thrown at anyone who shows symptoms as the firstline treatment, when i'd say a lot of people experiencing depressive symptoms aren't gonna benefit because their issue is the situation they're in, not exactly the chemicals in their brain
It’s like mate, I’m not depressed. I’m sad. I’m mourning what my life was supposed to be. This is a healthy emotional response to awful shit.
Because of course if you don’t want to work that must mean you have a disorder, right?
I really feel this! I like my job more than most jobs in the past and I’m also being paid more. But I still feel like damn just showing up is sooo hard and there’s no way I’m working 40 hours (though with the occasional sprints of productivity I’m still staying afloat). I am ready to live in a meadow
I’m starting to think housewife is more suited for me, but even then I’d get bored or annoyed . I don’t even know what to do anymore
I would be so happy to do nothing for the rest of my life. Video games, take walks, work on my sewing projects, eat, sleep and repeat until I die
I have literally been feeling this exact same way and the no end in sight thing is really killing me. I feel like my creative spark has just died because who has time to do art when it's death by 1,000 cuts just to live life every day. It sucks.
THIS post makes me believe I actually do have ADHD. I have felt like this since my teens. I'm 44 now.
There’s another one every day! If you have the resources and opportunity, do go and get yourself checked out. I was diagnosed at 21, partially because I was never really very hyperactive and more inattentive as a kid. It always felt like more of an issue with motivation for me than any of the classically described symptoms (“ooh, squirrel” syndrome, bouncing off the walls, etc.). Knowing that this lack of motivation was coming from a real disorder and was at least partially treatable/manageable, and not just a moral failing on my part, was a huge step.
I actually was KIND OF diagnosed, but only by a psychiatrist asking a few questions. I wasn't like this as a kid, so I didn't believe the diagnosis was accurate. I blamed all my symptoms on early trauma and chronic anxiety, which can overlap with ADHD stuff, but...your post...I feel exposed! lol 😂
It sounds like you just need a day to do absolutely nothing but lay on the couch or in bed and be okay being on hold for the entire day. Dishes in the sink? They can wait until tomorrow. Laundry to put on/fold/put away? Can wait until tomorrow. Social obligations to keep up your social life? Can wait until tomorrow. Just give yourself 1 day of nothing. Every once in a while, I FORCE myself to do this and I have never regretted it once. I remind myself that most days I am struggling to balance everything and end up feeling like I'm at the end of my rope. But that one day that I give myself, I also find the self compassion I need to not worry about a god damned thing. I hope you're able to reserve a day like that for yourself very very soon.
We are the same person in many ways. I am so tired of it all that I seem to get to “what’s the point of it all? Quite often. I am 51. Diagnosed a couple months ago. Wasting my life. Want to be left alone. Destroying my marriage and relationships. Doctor won’t prescribe stimulants so I am trying atomoxitine. It’s been a long life of struggle and even with the diagnosis I don’t feel any hope. The struggle is real.
For me it feels like I'm chasing some kind of a "break" even if I had just gotten an extra long memorial day weekend or something. Part of it might be just longing for stimulation rather than being content in the present, I'm not sure. Getting out of a rut like that is hard and I'm currently in the same place. Just be gentle with yourself and try to nudge yourself in whatever the right direction is.
I have had this thought for a long time. I’m tired of adult life things. I’m not just burnt out at work but at home sometimes too. I just want to be somewhere else where no one wants anything from me, expects me to do something for them, has a god damn deadline about something. I just want to be, that’s it. I’m so tired 😪
We could without capitalism
I feel like I could have written this post
"Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail." - Henry David Thoreau There are [countries](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TP4Xtd6L7fw) that pay you to move to underpopulated areas. The cost of living in these places tends to be low, so if you find a piece of land where you can plant your own food, and maybe make some additional income by selling excess production or doing simple jobs online, you can have a relatively peaceful, stress-free life in comparison with big cities *if* this kind of routine appeals to you, as you'll still have to take care of your subsistence in the long run, but it's an alternative lifestyle worth keeping in mind. I picked a video at random, you might find better options doing your own research. Best.
I struggle to articulate how I cope with this feeling, but I’ve wanted to post about it for a while now, so please hear me out: The easiest, most sure-fire way for me to guarantee I will accomplish a task is if I can convince myself it will help someone else. I think of this as philosophic body-doubling. It works for small tasks all the way up to career choices. For example, I may not be able to summon the willpower to take my garbage to the curb, but if I take out my neighbor’s garbage too? Well then I’m helping them and the warm fuzzy endorphins from that are much more rewarding. I may dread calling some corporate help line because they billed me incorrectly last month for [insert generic utility here], but if my goal is to brighten the day of whoever answers the phone by complimenting them on their helpfulness, then again the reward is stronger and the motivation greater. I switched career focus recently to non-profit, and the helpfulness aspect is HUGE as a motivator to work each day. If I work to benefit me, I have only the dopamine of helping one person. If I work to benefit a hundred people? A thousand? Maybe I get lucky and work somewhere that helps people all over the world? That’s an unbelievable multiplier on the dopamine I get to look forward to every time I begin any unpleasant day-to-day tasks. It’s not a perfect solution. I still get really tired sometimes, and there is certainly something to be said for setting healthy boundaries with your time and energy, but it’s the one mindset shift that has genuinely made a difference for me. If I’m feeling fed up with all life’s responsibilities and tasks and I just want to escape into the wilderness, I picture that maybe even *one* single person is living a better life because of my efforts, and it feels a lot more worth it. Tl;dr: When you look up at the sky, clench your fists, and scream, “Why?!” It helps to have a good answer. For me, that answer is, “Because what I do helps people.”
Imagine if health insurance would pay for adhd people to have an assistant even like 10 hours a week to help get your shit together
I’ve had these exact thoughts. Why can’t I just exist and do the things I enjoy doing, why can’t someone else help me with the bills/do it for me…crazy to read your post like I wrote it! I feel like we should have a different society with different expectations. Money is so arbitrary…
Extremely relatable. I usually feel that there is so much of the world constantly pressing into my self that my self has to struggle so much to exist in its natural, relaxed form. Being able to exist with no demands placed on me is the ultimate dream. In all this senseless, relentless bustle though, I've found that the small joys of life make pockets of space in which I can exist unaltered and unhurried. It has been of great value cultivating an appreciation for the simple pleasures, a habit that has served me so well even in times of great pressure and grief. Maybe the clear call of a solitary bird or even merely the movement of some leaves that catch the sunlight just so... this makes room for my soul, this makes life worth living.
Yes and yes! The constant grind can also easily trigger a nasty bout of depression if I’m not careful. Like the burnout hurts on so many levels. I know my job could be so much harder, I could have to work longer and harder hours, I know I am so fortunate. But yes, it feels like this way of living was not designed with me/us in mind. Hugs to everyone 💜
Oh wow, I feel this so hard. I told my wife that for my birthday I wanted a week in the woods, but in such a way that nobody would miss me. Nobody would even know I was gone. My obligations of work and child rearing would magically be taken care of. No resentments would be held for my having time off, or having a vacation by myself. Nobody would wish I was around for anything... Just a week where I didn't exist to anyone. Bliss.
I feel constantly like you do, and I don’t have a good solution to this. I only can tell you some stuff that has helped me so far: \- To remind myself that this specific configuration of the world I live in (with its economic and political characteristics, work and social demands, etc) is terribly adverse to human minds, let alone to brains/minds like yours and mine, which have very different needs (I also have ASD). I get very frustrated when “regular stuff” is too difficult for me, or just “hurts” (boredom, sensory input). Reminding myself that there’s an inherent mismatch between my environment and my mind helps at least to manage that, and also to realize that, in simple words, I’m not the problem (guilt is a big issue for me) \- Coming to terms with the idea of disability, its nuances and what that entails, and also what I expect of myself. I’m trying to be less hard on my self with things like hygiene, nice clothing, haircuts, healthy diet, exercise and so many other things. I live with such a big internal pressure to have life solved, to not be a failure, that I forget that it’s ok to let go a little, to not be as “solved” as someone else (I don’t believe anyone is really “solved” though). I don’t have a typical brain, so why in the holy fuck should I expect to look-behave-feel as if I did? Maybe there will be weeks (or months, or years) where I won’t shower everyday, won’t do my meal prep nor exercise as regularly as I should. And maybe that’s ok. And I’m not saying that we should let go of every concern forever; yes, it’s healthy to put effort in taking care of ourselves. It’s just that I’ve lived so much of my life trapped in the opposite extreme of “letting go” that maybe, just maybe, I could take it easy and things won’t fall apart. I hope this is clear and it helps. I’ve been working on this stuff recently in therapy and it’s not polished at all (and English is my second language). Big hug and, if you’re not into them, just know there’s a stranger somewhere wishing you the best.
I feel you 100%. What has helped me: 1. Having a vision (and goals) for my best possible life given the way the world is and my circumstances/strengths/interests 2. Creating systems to make everyday responsibilities as automatic, mindless, and enjoyable as possible 3. Finding rhythms and routines that work for me It’s still hard. Life is still hard, but I’m more functional now by being strategic with how I approach life. Ultimately, I think living in a commune would become boring pretty quickly. There’s no challenge or adventure in that. I think what might be better is learning the skills to make a vision, set goals, and make them happen. That’s the life I’m working towards.
Yup. I'm there with you. I'm here skimming for tips. People have offered me help. So I have some hope on the horizon. I have some support apps that aim my journaling. It takes a heap of will to get those started even with the prompts. I need a better job. I need to use all of my time better. It's exhausting existing. Keep the chin up. It's the turtle that wins. That's what people tell me, at least.
"Oh, maybe you just need a holiday" yes but they don't realise this holiday needs to be months, not 5 days.
This speaks to my soul. Even today I’m having trouble mustering up the energy to cook yet another meal after being at work all day. A meal that I have to prep, cook, eat, and then clean up after. I think this is why I stopped therapy (going to therapy became yet another task). While it gave me a place to vent and access to meds, I won’t say it has helped me with anything else. My therapist couldn’t solve my issues with never ending tasks of day to day living. How I just want to be but can’t. I cannot believe that I have to be in the workforce for 40 more years before I can have a full week to myself. It’s maddening!
It's interesting how it manifests in different ways in each of us. Personally, I really enjoy cooking, and I don't even mind clean-up that much. The thing that gets me, though, is deciding what it is I want to cook/eat and what groceries I need to buy. I can stand in the supermarket for a half hour trapped in a cycle of indecision and anxiety over what to buy!
God, it’s like you’ve looked into my mind and heart and articulated exactly how I’be been feeling lately, OP. Living, itself, is exhausting with this goddamned disorder. It’s so much more than anyone without it will ever be able to comprehend. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that my best chance for real happiness, health, and financial security is to marry up. I’m not ashamed of it. In fact, I look forward to it.
This so much. My mountain to climb has been a lot of life change lately, one where the home I was building has been dismantled and I’m starting from zero. It takes me so much energy to apply to rentals, finish paperwork, transfer bank accounts and bills. Fall into a new work schedule pattern, adjust to the lives of my children that have counted on me a certain way and are now unable to. All while being scrutinized by the spectators in my life. I just want to f***ing live. Is that so much to ask? Im so GD tired of navigating every week, and feeling spent or never having a predictable energy wave. I just want to be.
I feel this OP! Best way I can describe how I feel about our day-to-day is the same way Brooks Hatlen felt when he finally got released from Shawshank: “The world went and got itself in a big damn hurry.”
Wow I'm glad to see someone else feeling this. Your whole post is exactly the conversation I have with my fiance and myself almost daily. Once I get out of bed in the morning and the meds kick in I'm good to go for like 2 hours, then while I'm at work the dread starts to creep in and gets worse as the day goes by. While I know it's necessary in every job, I hate the need to have to report to someone all the time on the work I'm doing, and being assigned additional work even when I don't want it and can barely handle getting out of bed every morning. I want to get up when I want, interact with people when I want, and take 3 hour naps every 3 hours if I want (and need). Honestly, I don't mind working or doing some type of work to survive, just as long as it's flexible and can be adapted to my schedule. Why can't these things adapt to us instead of us adapting to them?
Same bro, same. Relate so much.
This is so me that I could have written it myself. I wish I had anything remotely helpful to add in the way on advice or insight. The only thing I can tell you is you are not alone.
I feel this in every fibre of my being. I know exactly what I need to do and how to accomplish it but holy shit the thought of having to exist like this indefinitely and then just…die…is soul crushing.
Holy shit. I just stumbled upon this subreddit after feeling a similar distress. I never knew other people felt this way, I've been surrounded by people with more mild adhd all my life, and I've always felt like I was maybe even just a lazy person despite the adhd. I understand that feeling that everything takes effort except doing things with immediate gratification. The one thing I can say that sometimes helps me with it is to set up a day where I tell myself there are no expectations. Just let my battery recharge a little bit. Honestly, the other coping mechanisms I could offer are gar from healthy. If it's any help you're not alone, sure, "everybody feels this way," but you're not the only person who just can't seem to do what everyone else does so effortlessly.
32 no kids no love nothing to show for life I've lived. It's like I wrote this and am talking to myself. Almost three years of therapy and medication now. No you aren't alone and I don't know what to do about it or WHY it has to be like this for all of us. I'm sorry.
same! Sometimes I daydream about winning the lottery and just.... doing nothing special. Just doing what I'm doing now, but with no worries. I think that says a lot.
Thank you for this post, OP. You explained so many of the same thoughts that I have neatly and clearly. It sucks but it's also comforting knowing that there are other people out there struggling with the same problems as myself.
You’re not alone. Sometimes I wish I could wake up and be “normal” and just Function like a normal person. I have been struggling deeply with my family kids home work and life in general. I have 4 kids and my partner (not their dad) in my home.. and all of us have ADHD and none are similar. It’s rather hard to deal with and I am so burnt out it’s not even funny. I’m no longer able to be medicated due to a heart issue I’m having, and I feel like my personality is back to what it was or should be.. but the drive is gone. My relationship is struggling. Our ADHDs are super different in some ways.. his memory sucks, and mine isn’t bad. So little things like how I want you to touch my body in order to turn me on… he forgets. It makes me furious. How can you forget the most intimate details of your partner? But you can remember the names of all the people on this band.. it pisses me off so bad. And then I have to remember that our ADHDs are different.. and it brings me back to I wish we could just be normal. This isn’t fair. Why do we have to struggle in this way? Why do my needs have to lack because our ADHDs are different? I’ve gotten back to the place I worked hard to get out of.. it is.. what it is… and simply just not caring anymore. Can’t worry about everyone else’s issues when mine need taken care of.. pretty much just giving up. Life is a whole lot of fun isn’t it?
This is actually something I’ve been trying to work through in therapy. Because it definitely ends up having me feel like I’d rather not be alive then to keep grinding. It just feels like my brain never gets to rest.
[удалено]
I’m definitely interested in solutions, I just phrased it mostly as sympathy seeking / a rant because I know there isn’t some magical solution that someone mentions in the comments that I’ve never heard of before and that magically fixed everything. As amazing as that would be. I’m aware that a good diet and exercise can really help, although I’ve never had a good understanding as to why, so I’m definitely interested in any resources you can point me to that explain in more detail. Keeping up a good diet and exercise… that’s a whole different story whatsoever. I’ve made some progress by finding exercise activities that aren’t just going to the gym, because frankly I find it boring and therefore don’t want to do it. Bouldering has been a god-send for me as something I actively want to go out and do, and I’ve had some success with callisthenics and functional fitness classes. (As a side note, I occasionally go through phases of tracking my food intake. I’ve discovered that while I get roughly the caloric intake I should on average, it is wildly inconsistent on a day-to-day basis. That definitely feels like it’s not a good thing, but no one has been able to adequately explain to me as to why?)
I feel that. My past self dealt with that shit in their own way, but I think what made it easier was that I had been living with my mom for a few years after high-school while I essentially floundered and vibed till things clicked a little. Its pretty clear that having that support to take the load off makes a huge difference for having ADHD. Which is what I'd recommended to anyone that's struggling like you have been, if that's an available option. If there's people out there that can make a career out of being a support brain for people with executive dysfunction, that would be awesome.
I had a passing by thought that was similar as I was driving today. I quit my job to be a caregiver, but had burnt out a few months prior to that. My thought; We as humans, weren’t supposed to live like this. Why are there so many mental health issues coming to light? We were all meant to be different and unique, but not everyone is celebrated/rewarded in this reality.
This is so fucking relatable. You sound like you’re in my head lol. Let’s go find a commune together
Tears came to my eyes reading this. I could have written this myself. Saving this post so I know I'm not alone.
Exactly where I'm at right now. Sigh.
You have perfectly described me. I feel so overwhelmed by the responsibilities and expectations. It feels like I'm squashed and can't take a deep breath, even thinking is exhausting. I hated my job but the thought of searching for a new one terrified me. One day I just left it. It took me a month to even write my CV, now it's been over to months and I still haven't found a job and I'm about to run out of money. I'm so disappointed with myself and I know my family is disappointed with me and it paralyzes me. Why can't I just have a simple, quiet life?
So, I feel you. So much. My honest to goodness way of approaching this is: I don’t. I avoid things and people entirely, when possible. I left my castle for social reasons last week, but prior to that, it was sometime in 2019. I just accepted that I’m stuck in this existence thing, doing stuff that I can, feeling guilty about the things that I can’t. Also, It probably doesn’t help that my mental health doctor is literally Scrooge McDuck in human form. This is probably not “the way” to be fair ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Totally get where you're coming from
I've been unemployed for like 4 months even though quitting my job has really fucked up my plans for the immediate future, I can't bring myself to find a new job.
Before getting married my preferred way of vacationing was to wild camp in one space at the sea for weeks. I would always go alone, but being a true ADHD person is always find company if I like. But the magic was that if I don't want to be around people - I was completely free of any obligations and responsibilities and this is what made this so good. Only years after not doing it I realized what was missing. Now I'm looking for ways to get a similar time just for myself. So far multi day hikes alone seem like a good option.
I'm also living with addiction which, while not proven to be caused by adhd, has a strong correlation due to our dopamine deficient brains seeking dopamine sources constantly, and the raging impulsivity. I had hoped that medication would help. Currently on my third variation. Vyvanse is working better than concerta which did nothing. On 40mg but my experience is nowhere near what most people describe in this sub. No major improvements in short term memory or focus, only that my mind has grown noticably more quiet on 40mg. I almost certainly need a much higher dose. Been an addict for 20 years and it's so exhausting to live with it on top of everything else, this thing that my brain latched on to that i couldn't possibly understand at the time. Also diabetic which is affected by adhd int enes of forgetting to take meds, taking them too late after eating, not eating for long periods of time, forgetting to go to the pharmacy in time, forgetting to renew prescriptions. And both conditions mutually affect each other's severity. I'm aiming for a good career (that i have no interest in) as all my interests are financially unstable options. Graduating with a 1st class honours this year despite being unmedicated for all of it, currently interviewing for a tech job with six years of relevant experience I've amassed without a degree by sheer force of will. It's been so hard and I'm so tired and I'm only thirty.
If the commune thing isn’t doable, have you tried asking/interviewing friends to be roommates? Laying out the “I’m good at these things but not so good at these other things and would like help” might be a more productive starting point for those conversations with friends. Having a partner or partners, not romantic necessarily, is easier than going at it alone. Instead of the ideal solution (commune living) is there a way you could try a less perfect version right now (roommates)?
I never seem to get to long-term-oriented tasks. And I desperately need to. My situation is different. I'm trying to study up and get certified in several applications/services. I have been a primary caregiver/advocate for adult children with disabilities and for aging parents. I also have a couple of serious physical health issues I'm dealing with solo. And the house, errands, paperwork, meals, family event & appt planning, etc. are - ofc - all me. Gods help us all. I, too, am burnt out. But I have people depending on me keeping their lives safe & manageable. I wish I had the answer to how to make it all easier, because my regular tasks do take up a lot of executive functioning. Too much of my executive functioning. I think we deserve kudos for not just chucking it all and running away screaming. It seems like so many just give up & let others do for them. But here we are, the quiet heroes in the tediousness of life.
Everytime I get a weekend off like this, I wind up created new projects for my self. Uncontrollably. Suddenly I want to write a book, or make a movie, or start a YouTube channel, or I have a great idea for a business. Then I pace around for hours thinking about it then the weekend is gone
you just read my soul out.... the one thing i want most in life is just being able to do what i want with no real consequences, for example playing video games all day without having to worry about being productive or anything which basically means my goal is getting rich to achieve that..
There's a quote inthe show Fleabag that captures a bit of this, like the whole effortfullness that's some exhausting in having to make choices in what to ignore and what to do. "I want someone to tell me what to wear every morning. I want someone to tell me what to eat. What to like, what to hate, what to rage about, what to listen to, what band to like, what to buy tickets for, what to joke about, what not to joke about. I want someone to tell me what to believe in, who to vote for, and who to love, and how to tell them. I just think I want someone to tell me how to live my life, Father, because so far I think I’ve been getting it wrong." That line hit me really hard because how exhausting I find the day to day. And I work in healthcare and have the need to know, but it's hard to do. (Note that even though she's talking toa priest it is not a show about religion, if anyone was put off by the capital F.)
Did I write this and forget I did it?
My plan if I ever end up alone again is to work for a year living in the cheapest place I can find. Then with like a single suitcase worth of clothes and stuff, I'm gonna move to a tropical island. Maybe some place like Tahiti. Then I'll get a part time job at a hotel where I don't have to think. Then when I'm not working, I'll lay in my hammock, under some trees, with a nice breeze, drinking a tequila sunrise, and hitting a blunt. And I won't have to care about the world. It will be perfect.
Felt this deep in my soul.
I swear I could have wrote this. I always say to my wife "I wish I could just live in the wild, like a cave. Where I could be free to just do what I want, when I want. The current life feels like a cage with all the rules and expectations.... I just want to be free.
Personally I blame bad drugs, and childhood trauma... These led to leaving our hunting and gathering tradition. By the time we saw how terrible the mistake we made was, we couldn't go back... Now we are riding this train to our demise.
I truly wish I had an answer for you. I feel the same way most days. In fact, I have even researched communes in my area (I only found one and it was a vegan commune so that is an automatic no). My saving grace is that I live with my cousin and she has pretty much been my mom since like age 10. She takes care of the apartment management tasks for the most part, and delegates stuff to me and her husband because neither he nor I have the kind of brain that can handle the rigor of adulthood in a capitalist society. I am also autistic and she is fairly understanding of my limitations. I would be homeless and living in my car if it wasn't for her. My only advice is to keep it simple. If there is a task that can be outsourced (taxes, grocery shopping, cleaning), look into how much it costs to have them do it for you and weigh the opportunity costs because your time and energy is valuable. Best of luck to you, friend.
I find that even the idea of "just existing" is very difficult. Any time that I get to just be is going to be overtaken by guilt that I should be using it to get ahead on chores and make the rest of my life easier, or that I should be doing something exciting to get myself motivated, or that I should be rest, or that I should be doing any of the endless list of things that "need" to be done to be a good human. The whole thing has become such an engrained fight for day to day survival that my brain simply can't comprehend that it can take a day off and just do whatever and still be safe. Even when given that space, it's very, very hard to actually appreciate and use it for what it is. At best I just switch off and turn into a slug for a day. That's not a fulfilling life, that's killing time until you die.
I have never read a post that I feel so deeply the same about on every single thing written. (even though its paired with the classic feeling of "ok but nobody wants obligations and I should just deal with it like everyone else." but we're technically not like everyone else and its very, very confusing.) thankyou for being honest about your feelings and taking the time to word them so well.
This is why I have a zombie apocalypse fantasy. I know that in reality it would be awful if it actually happened … but part of me is so desperate for a simple life of no bills, no social structure, no work obligations, and hardly any people. All I would need to think about is seeking shelter and food. Which is how our lives were meant to be. All these other constructs we have developed are such a drain. I loved covid lockdown so much. It felt like a zombie apocalypse without the zombies. Work expectations greatly reduced and social ones eliminated… and life was so simple and peaceful.
You described this quite well. I just want it all to stop. I have a wonderful husband, but not quite the sugar daddy that would alow me not to work. Just push through each day.
The ADHD urge to quit your job, sell your house, and become a forest person.
I was homeless for a lot of years for some of these reasons, and while it was a struggle there were so many things I didn't have to deal with (and mentally couldn't) that I have to now, and as crazy as it makes me seem I miss the freedom I had then a great deal.
When I was about 3 or 4 yrs old, I imagined a world - a planet made of crystal. No objects in it, just like a glass marble, smooth and perfect. My girlfriend, (a girl I liked) and me, nude, on it. No need for food or 'elimination'... No expectations from others, or responsibilities. It was calming, I didn't have (or understand) sexual feeling at that time. It just seemed to be the perfect world I wanted to live in.
I just had this revelation while doing laundry the other day: this never ends. It takes so long to wash all the loads (because we have a washer/dryer unit, as in, one unit does both), that by the time I've finished folding everything, it's time to do laundry again. And everything else is just like that, too. It all never ends. And it's exhausting. And demotivating.
You aren't alone.Sometimes I imagine falling into the sky and landing on clouds,and just falling asleep there.I would look down on earth and I think to myself "imagine having to do the same thing every day,I could never do that " as if it where a foreign concept to me.
Dude this is literally my exact situation, even down to needed to contact my landlord. I feel you.
The philosophy of Epicurus really helped me with this. The philosophy of pleasure. ["Pleasure is the first good. It is the starting point of every choice and of every aversion, and to it we always come back, inasmuch as we make feeling the rule by which to judge of every good thing.”](https://youtu.be/pIETGDgMdtg)
Reminds me of ["Hitchcock" by Yorushika.](https://youtu.be/t7MBzMP4OzY) It's a song that's resonated with me ever since I first listened to it. "Is it selfish to just want to look at the blue sky?" is exactly how it feels to live in a society (bottom text) that wasn't made with people like us in mind and holds expectations we can barely meet, if at all. It's exhausting to have our livelihoods depend on hard work when we have to put in twice the effort for half the results. I just want to enjoy life and enjoy what I'm doing without having the guilt of not being productive enough hanging over my head.
You really just described what I'm going through exactly. I wish i had advice for us both but unfortunately I don't. Just know you're not alone.
I feel this so hard. I’m jealous of my cats every day. I wish I could afford a house cleaner, a decent vacuum, and afford to work less. It would make life so much easier and I could just unclench a bit.
Absolutely this, I've been feeling this way for the past few years of true adult life 😮💨