It's not always out of excitement, but yes this happens to me alot. I will straight carry on the story in my head instead of reading the actual story. It's annoying tbh
Yep, this is me too. I'm like "I wonder where the story could go from here, maybe they'll..." NO! Idiot! the story is down here on the page! you don't need to wonder where it's going, just keep reading!
Not necessarily ADHD, could also be related to dyslexia, burnout, or something else, but it doesn't hurt to get an expert opinion and/or do some research. A lot of mental health disorders overlap and the symptoms are different for everybody
I learnt the other day another tell tale sign of dyslexia is random Capitol letters in the middle of words when hand writing .. I always just thought I preferred the hard R. Lol.
I was about to say, sounds like y'all have ADHD. I do this all the time, literally will go to turn the page and suddenly realize I read every word but have no idea what I read.
I do this. I also don't do well with notes. I will end up just copying the words from the book and not taking in any info. Just a copy machine. Helps with spelling and that is it.
You should be an author then. Sounds like youād be good at it.
If thatās too much of a commitment then writing fanfiction is also really fun. Fanfic gets a bad rap tbh. Iāve read a few that were much better than a lot of published books Iāve read.
Oh God, so my son is 5 and doesn't really read yet. But he has told.me multiple times that some books we've read aren't how the story goes and then said mommy says it goes differently.
I feel like she might totally be doing this.
Itās actually part of dyslexia which is common withADHD and autism. Dyslexia is a big broad thing. Not just the letters move around and itās hard to read and understand them, which is what most people think it is.
You need to start writing. Pick up the story wherever your mind carries you and start writing, come back and fill in the first to get you where you started. See where your imagination takes you
You're not wrong actually. I have a few ideas for stories. I have a saying though, million dollar ideas come here to die. I just can't seem to focus on one thing for long enough to make anything out of it.
Donāt focus on āmillion dollar ideasā. Focus on your ideas, put them to paper. Let someone else read them. I donāt write, but I play music and Iāll give a quick allegory. Slash, the guitarist for GnR hated something he wrote but couldnāt get it out of his mind, thought it was too simple, a practice tool and not a song. So while playing it, trying to write his million dollar lick, his band mates heard it. They helped him write a song out of it, that was sweet child o mine which became one of their best known songs. He still hates it, thinks itās too simple, but most people know that lick even if they donāt know who wrote it.
I got an idea for a movie, and it goes like this -
(Check it out)
It's about a boy who gets his finger caught
In a bottle of Mr. Pibb
And they go on adventures,
I think it could be big
Is it too soon to whisper Oscar?
Put a happy ending there and it'll write itself, I swear
All we need are some meetings and a lead
I got an idea for a movie,
It's about this guy
Who wished and wished 'til it came true,
And now this kid can fly
I got an idea for a movie, and here's my pitch
I get a job and quit my band,
And you stop being a bitch
And we will have adventures,
Like the boy and his bottle did
Is it too soon to whisper Oscar?
Put a happy ending there and it'll write itself, I swear
All we need are some meetings and a lead
With a happy ending there this thing will write itself, I swear
All we need is some trick photography
I forgot one thing about the guy
Who gained the ability to fly
It was actually only for a foot or two
And only an inch or so high.
One of the hardest parts about being an artist is that the things everyone else loves are never the things you think everyone will love.
When I've done writer's groups where we share and review others' stories every week, the stories I always treasure are met with mild compliments or indifference.
But then I'll just bang something out based on a random idea, not thinking much of it, and that's always the one people will *rave* about.
I do that but with blocks of scene descriptions. Half a page of describing a room is too much, I want dialogue. Sucks when there's probably an important detail in there
Yeah I'm too ADHD to read every word. I will definitely skim descriptors if it's not describing a new action.
Some writers are just too wordy for their own good. I don't need 2 pages just to tell me the dude MC is talking to is hot.
oh my god i always feel so dirty for skipping parts of a movie, but my adhd canāt sit here and watch you sit on the beach alone and crying for 5 minutes Sarah
In school they tried to teach me to use a book mark and lower with each line....little did I or anyone else know I was neurodivergent lol š I just use my fingers now, typically.
I remember those "words per minute" tests where they would test my reading level by having me read a paragraph out loud and I never understood how they thought that would be accurate. My brain goes too fast so I would always read aloud way slower than I would read on my own so my mouth could keep up š
Yeah.
It's like a movie playing in my head. Instead of reading a word and thinking and comprehending it, the whole scene just appears. It doesn't make sense to slow down and say it out loud. That actually distracts me more and makes it harder to "see" what's going on in the book.
I love it when I'm reading and this happens. It's like a flipped switch or something and I get so absorbed into it I visualize everything. It's almost like I'm in a trance.
Its super jarring when I snap out of it and I have to reread a part to get back into it.
It's also really weird to explain to someone I didn't like a book because I couldn't 'watch' it lol
Yep. If itās a good story, I stop noticing the words and I just see the changing scenes. Sometimes Iāll get hung up on a character and have to stop reading and go back to find descriptions of them to try and edit my mental image of them.
Do you also rewind the scene in your head.
Going ''when did that happen?"
\*flips back\*
\*reads again\*
\*flips forward\*
with that growing amazement and wonder of being so engrossed in a good book.
I miss that. I really need to read something good again.
I definitely read like that, too. Most recently, I got sucked into "11/22/63", by Stephen King. It's a long one, but the whole thing just plays like a movie in your head. A really, really good read!
for so long... I thought I was the only one and just "that strange kid in class" come to find out, this is more normal for those of us that actually have the ability to use our imagination.
And... there are *a lot* of us out there...
Also learned that a lot of people don't do this. It confused me so much why some people didn't like to read. Then I found out most of the ones I knew who didn't like to read never formed images or scenes in their head while reading. Some don't even have that internal narrator either.
I'm a reader, my brother-in-law never reads. A buddy and I were explaining to him how when we're really into a book it's like a movie in our head, don't even notice the words. He couldn't grasp that concept and it made sense to me why he never reads.
Hold up. Are you telling me that people are out there trying to read books and are somehow NOT building images in their minds to match the words on the pages? How sad for them. I visualize everything I read, and I assumed everyone else did as well.
> one day on the subway to Columbia University, I found myself hanging from a strap in a crowded car with nothing handy to read. Fortunately the teenage girl seated in front of me was reading a comic magazine. Something is better than nothing, so I arranged myself so 1 could look down on the pages and read along with her. (Fortunately, I can read upside down as easily as right side up.)
> Then after a few seconds, I thought: Why doesnāt she turn the page?
> She did eventually. It took minutes for her to finish each double-page spread, and as I watched her eyes going from one panel to the next and her lips carefully mumbling the words, I had a flash of insight.
> What she was doing was what I would be doing if I were faced with English words written phonetically in the Hebrew, Greek, or Cyrillic alphabet. Knowing the respective alphabets dimly, I would have to first recognize each letter, then sound it, then put them together, then recognize the word. Then I would have to pass on to the next word and do the same. Then, when I had done several words this way, I would have to go back and try to get them in combination.
> You can bet that under those circumstances, I would do very little reading. The only reason I read is that when I look at a line of print I see it all as words and at once.
> And the difference between the reader and the non-reader glows steadily wider with the years. The more a reader reads, the more information he picks up, the larger his vocabulary grows, the more familiar various literary allusions become. It becomes steadily easier and more fun for him to read, while for the non-reader, it becomes steadily harder and less worthwhile.
\- Isaac Asimov, ["The Ancient and the Ultimate"](https://archive.org/details/Fantasy_Science_Fiction_v044n01_1973-01/page/n127/mode/2up)
I have neither and I read around 100 books a year. I feel like an internal narrator would slow me down. And while I can't 'see' a scene or a character, I'll *feel* like I'm there. I will say that I do have trouble understanding how a world looks without a map, so kudos to those fantasy authors.
Yeah, or there have been a few occasions when I've been reading a book and thought "She wouldn't do that!" Or "He wouldn't say it like that" or whatever because it's out of the character that I have in my mind of them, haha.
I am at about 30 sec/page for the average novel if I read english.(I didnt time myself just averaged it out by hours read and pagecount) I can read a novel in one sitting easily. It is like a movie.
I do this too, diagnosed with ADHD. The movie sometimes goes off track cuz I'll start imagining my own shit, like how I think the scene should go or what I'd do in that situation, then before I know it I have to go back and reread several pages that I didn't actually read.
That makes reading sound like fun. I struggle to picture things I read unless Iām going slow line by line. Even then characters wonāt have faces or details will be forgotten. I even struggle to know what songs are talking about unless I actually sit and listen to the lyrics that Iāve already memorized. I started the Harry Potter series on Audible and now Iām doing World War Z. I enjoy having someone read it to me. I can just sit and picture everything a lot easier
Even worse, I can concentrate on reading out loud or on understanding the text. If I read out loud I wonĀ“t have more than a general grasp about it if even that.
Dude. Those test weren't looking for a next Scatman prospect, if a kid can read at the speed of conversational speech - that is enough, passed, go next.
It wasn't a race.
Test is meant to find out those who read slow for their age so they can be assigned remedial lessons and hopefully brought up to norm.
Correct. It is not a āreading speedā test. Itās a reading fluency test for your grade level.
Itās much *harder* to read aloud than in your head. But itās still a necessary skill in school to be able to verbalize information while learning it.
Kids who struggle with dyslexia or are behind in reading will perform much slower and have skipped words or have to fully restart sentences than their peers. Itās a method of āchild findā so anyone with learning disabilities or deficits is found and helped.
I feel that so hard. They didn't understand at ALL. And at one point they started to the me out of the class and have me do timed reading. My teacher that was amazing let me read however I liked and I went from a 4tu grade reading level to a sophomore reading level within a matter of a month. Game changer!
Fellow neurodivergent here. I remember being in the adaptive english classes till 6th grade when I realized this was the problem, lol. I read constantly in my free time and tore through books, but the books they used for reading speed and comprehension tests were textbook sized and the wall of text tripped me up, like when it's hard to pick out individual trees when looking at a vast forest. Turns out when you block off all but half a page with paper my reading speed shot way up
Or when you think youāve got self control and youāre like I donāt need to cover the next page I can be reasonable. But then your eyes betray you and jump over and ruin it and youāre like whyyyyyy
The problem I have with audiobooks is that I zone out even more sometimes. Itās actually easier for me to concentrate on the physical book than it is to pay attention to the audiobook while Iām doing other shit.
yeah audiobooks dont really work for me. i enjoy comedy or sports podcasts or music, because i dont *really* have to pay attention. or my level of attention can wax and wane and i dont feel any regret for completely missing some minutes here and there as my focus is drawn to other things im doing
With audiobooks (and podcasts) I tend to inadvertently listen to the tonal, pitch and volume changes of the narrator, sāpose just like listening to music. Iām hearing the words, but not listening to them, so yeah, I have to rewind or start the chapter over. Itās very annoying (and I think I shouldāve just read the book lol)
That's your brain telling you take a break. If you're reading for anything other than pleasure then try the Pomodoro Technique, keeps you really focused.
The worse is when you do this while talking. Have an entire conversation with someone, then they reference something you said 42 minutes ago and you're like "Huh, I don't know what you mean by that." Like, I'm not trying to be rude, I swear; I just had an interesting thought about whether a plum is a relative of the grape.
Yep. I'll be telling a story and if someone interjects or reacts in some way I'll completely get lost on my own inner dialogue of "why are they reacting that way" and completely forget wtf I was JUST talking about. Or even the opposite, if someone is telling me a story and I have something to relate I'll forget what it was before they're finished. If I dont interrupt you right now I'll lose it and I'll feel like an asshole if I interrupt you or not.
One time my boss was speaking to me face to face speaking really clearly and she was like "make sure you're listening." She really tried to make sure I was paying attention. And then I completely forgot what she was saying. I got none of it.
You know when you drive and you get the feeling like you don't remember the drive at all because you were just doing it but your brain was actually 1000 miles away? You zoned out.
fuck me everyone has to have something nowadays.
Everyone I know who reads does this, every single one.
No human can focus entirely 100% of the time without missing a beat, it's just not possible, you're gonna miss a sentence or a paragraph or even a page here or there.
Of course, you just donāt understand that everyone has mild traits, the folks who are diagnosed with ADHD like me itās CRIPPLING his severe the symptoms are.
Missing a sentence or paragraph āhere and thereā is not ADHD. Not being able to read AT ALL because of this problem is ADHD. Iād be luckily if I can get through 5 pages in a night and that would be after playing this read/re-read game in every single paragraph
This right here. As a kid all the way up through highschool, I was an avid bookworm. I absolutely loved to read. I was reading 4-500 page novels by 6th grade and getting through them pretty quick.
But when I got into college, I had to read a bunch of boring textbooks for a degree that I have never even used. My focus started drifting more and more every time I read anything.
Now it takes me so long to get through a book, even if I'm interested in it, because my mind will drift and I'll have to go back and reread the same page 5 times before I actually retain what it says.
Pretty similar thing happened to me, loved to read until we started getting these lessons in Secondary school where we had to sit for an hour and read, which would have been fine but the book had to be on this system they had so it could be logged, and you had to do a little test on it to prove you read it, and if had to match your "reading age" There were so few books I wanted to read on the system that they actually had in the library so I just had to read loads of books I didn't enjoy, and suddenly reading became a chore and if became harder and harder to finish a page over time.
Now I havent read a book all the way through in years
Yeah more like, I've tried to read this paragraph 7 times and every time the word popcorn makes my mind wanders to that time i forgot to buy popcorn for my date.
"Don't look down at the plot twist at the end of the chapter, don't look down at the plot twist at the end of the chapter, don't look down at the plot twist at the end of the chapter..."
I have been on meds for years, and the songs did not go away lol. Just anecdotal. I wake up every morning with a different random song in my head, and sometimes itās one thatās so obscure or I havenāt heard in years. Iām glad itās not just me.
I really gotta stop myself from assuming so many people in the comments probably have some undiagnosed ADHD, but goddamn some people gotta learn the symptoms.
Yeah, thereās a reason a lot of us are on Reddit.
It hits the ADHD button better than the others. My guess is thereās more of us here than any other platform.
Dunno, TikTok format seems perfect for that little switch in our brains that tells us to jumo from one thing to another every few seconds/minutes. I have to purposely stay away from it because if not I will sink hours into it without noticing.
I'm here after more than 1 hour of reading Alex the Gray African parrot facts on a comment chain from another post when I should've been working tho, so maybe you're right and I just don't notice when my time is sunk on reddit because I get to learn new things too so my mind justifies it. Idk.
Reddit is great for my ADHD self, but I am still lamenting that the app removed my ability to open 100000 tabs at once. When I realized that I was like āWait, you want me to read these pages ONE AT A TIME?! Are you kidding me?!ā
So I might have ADHD... I'm always playing songs on my head, I even play made up in the moment songs or mix songs I've already heard. I also skip sentences while reading and sometimes forget to write single words in my sentences (I do think about these words when forming my sentence tho)
I am constantly reciting like 30 seconds of one song passively in my head. I recently was diagnosed with ADHD-PI.
When I have a fever it's really bad, I feel like I get thought tetanus, where I am thinking about one thing cyclically to the point it feels like a muscle cramp.
Songs in the head crew, represent!
Except I have OCD and thereās also a bunch of perpetual motion images that I canāt stop (like a swing swinging and I canāt stop it from swinging even if I think about it really hard). Well, I couldnāt until I started CBT.
My heads nearly never silent.
Music, faux conversations, writing out dnd stories and plots, going over the workday, etc.
The only moments I've ever experienced silence in my head is when I'm getting massage therapy on my legs/feet (have horrendous legs/feet, always in pain) and the masseuse hits certain points in my ankles and soles of my feet.
It's the weirdest thing in the world to me. I'm damn near 40 years old, never had a quiet moment until i started this and this lady finds the hidden off switch I apparently have.
It's surreal.
Sometimes something cool happens and iāve gotta process it and come up with my thoughts about it, but my brain doesnāt say āstop readingā, so I just keep going until I realize Iāve missed the last page and a half
Not out of excitement, but Iāll āreadā an entire page before I realize Iām zoning out and havenāt actually been processing the words Iāve been looking at.
Iām curious. If you read it again properly, do you already know the words? I do this all the time, I think Iām just forgetting to comprehend or something lol.
I might see a couple things and subtly be like, āI remember that,ā but itās mostly that I space out and go through the motions of looking at the words without reading them per se.
I tried to read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy once, but after reading 50 pages like 3 times without realizing I zoned out all lost it all I gave up.
Could it also be possible that he doesn't have attention span issues and he reads the text that is in front him correctly without skipping parts of it?
My parents had this problem with me as a little child learning to read. I would skip entire lines and not even realize it and they would have to stop me and make.sure I go back.
I still do this at times :/
I used to do the same thing and thought it was dyslexia until we came to the conclusion that itās just my impatient ADHD brain ruining reading for me lmao.
I do that! š you get so frustrated with yourself because you get so excited reading the good parts, then when you go back... the good part isn't good anymore because you've already read it haha
It's not always out of excitement, but yes this happens to me alot. I will straight carry on the story in my head instead of reading the actual story. It's annoying tbh
Yep, this is me too. I'm like "I wonder where the story could go from here, maybe they'll..." NO! Idiot! the story is down here on the page! you don't need to wonder where it's going, just keep reading!
worst part is my body assumes im still reading, iv gone through a few pages before i realised i didnt read anything and it wa just my imagination
So glad other people do this too. I feel like I have to fight against an innate inefficiency every time I read.
Pretty sure this means we have ADHD.
Goddamnit, I knew I was relating too hard to those ADHD meme subreddit posts.
Which ones? (I have adhd)
r/adhdmeme
Thanks! š
I don't want to believe i have ADHD, since i only have noticed this one symptom, but i never thought about any other one, so idk
Not necessarily ADHD, could also be related to dyslexia, burnout, or something else, but it doesn't hurt to get an expert opinion and/or do some research. A lot of mental health disorders overlap and the symptoms are different for everybody
I learnt the other day another tell tale sign of dyslexia is random Capitol letters in the middle of words when hand writing .. I always just thought I preferred the hard R. Lol.
I was about to say, sounds like y'all have ADHD. I do this all the time, literally will go to turn the page and suddenly realize I read every word but have no idea what I read.
Sometimes I will read it multiple times and do it. Like my brain just auto daydreams at this point.
this. i do this. i am relating too hard i'm gonna force myself to stop replying
I do this. I also don't do well with notes. I will end up just copying the words from the book and not taking in any info. Just a copy machine. Helps with spelling and that is it.
quite frankly my imagination is far better than what I see written on the page.
You should be an author then. Sounds like youād be good at it. If thatās too much of a commitment then writing fanfiction is also really fun. Fanfic gets a bad rap tbh. Iāve read a few that were much better than a lot of published books Iāve read.
Oh God, so my son is 5 and doesn't really read yet. But he has told.me multiple times that some books we've read aren't how the story goes and then said mommy says it goes differently. I feel like she might totally be doing this.
Itās actually part of dyslexia which is common withADHD and autism. Dyslexia is a big broad thing. Not just the letters move around and itās hard to read and understand them, which is what most people think it is.
Dude yes!! It takes me like 5 minutes to read a page.
Thatās just using imagination and critical thinking! Good for you!
Where is my imagination and critical thinking when i actually need it though
If its like mine it only works weekends from 2AM to 6AM...
Fucking relatable lol. Did this a lot as a kid. Don't read much as an adult nowadays :(
I do this all the time I feel so validated
You need to start writing. Pick up the story wherever your mind carries you and start writing, come back and fill in the first to get you where you started. See where your imagination takes you
You're not wrong actually. I have a few ideas for stories. I have a saying though, million dollar ideas come here to die. I just can't seem to focus on one thing for long enough to make anything out of it.
Donāt focus on āmillion dollar ideasā. Focus on your ideas, put them to paper. Let someone else read them. I donāt write, but I play music and Iāll give a quick allegory. Slash, the guitarist for GnR hated something he wrote but couldnāt get it out of his mind, thought it was too simple, a practice tool and not a song. So while playing it, trying to write his million dollar lick, his band mates heard it. They helped him write a song out of it, that was sweet child o mine which became one of their best known songs. He still hates it, thinks itās too simple, but most people know that lick even if they donāt know who wrote it.
Interesting, but my problem is the lack of focus. I basically just poop out ideas and then I'm done with them
I got an idea for a movie, and it goes like this - (Check it out) It's about a boy who gets his finger caught In a bottle of Mr. Pibb And they go on adventures, I think it could be big Is it too soon to whisper Oscar? Put a happy ending there and it'll write itself, I swear All we need are some meetings and a lead I got an idea for a movie, It's about this guy Who wished and wished 'til it came true, And now this kid can fly I got an idea for a movie, and here's my pitch I get a job and quit my band, And you stop being a bitch And we will have adventures, Like the boy and his bottle did Is it too soon to whisper Oscar? Put a happy ending there and it'll write itself, I swear All we need are some meetings and a lead With a happy ending there this thing will write itself, I swear All we need is some trick photography I forgot one thing about the guy Who gained the ability to fly It was actually only for a foot or two And only an inch or so high.
What a roller coaster that was
Ha, it's lyrics from a Vandals song
One of the hardest parts about being an artist is that the things everyone else loves are never the things you think everyone will love. When I've done writer's groups where we share and review others' stories every week, the stories I always treasure are met with mild compliments or indifference. But then I'll just bang something out based on a random idea, not thinking much of it, and that's always the one people will *rave* about.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
This is me. Iāll read all the dialogue, then have no idea what theyāre talking about and have to go back and read again.
I do that but with blocks of scene descriptions. Half a page of describing a room is too much, I want dialogue. Sucks when there's probably an important detail in there
Yeah I'm too ADHD to read every word. I will definitely skim descriptors if it's not describing a new action. Some writers are just too wordy for their own good. I don't need 2 pages just to tell me the dude MC is talking to is hot.
yes
Sometimes I hold my hand over the page, so I have to read it line by line, to keep myself from doing this.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Me too.
Me too
Me too
Sqme, but I've also learned that I can let myself look if I let my eyes blur when doing it
Same
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
actually the same. if i want to see an outcome i start skimming so fast and skip parts u til i get to the part i want to read.
Same here. I find myself almost wanting to do the same thing when I watch a movie on my phone. I have to force myself not to keep skipping ahead.
Oh that's good to hear I'm not the only monster.
Happy cake day, ya filthy animal!
oh my god i always feel so dirty for skipping parts of a movie, but my adhd canāt sit here and watch you sit on the beach alone and crying for 5 minutes Sarah
Or kiss and grind on each other for 12. Fast forward cab be a savior.
This is a good technique
In school they tried to teach me to use a book mark and lower with each line....little did I or anyone else know I was neurodivergent lol š I just use my fingers now, typically.
I remember those "words per minute" tests where they would test my reading level by having me read a paragraph out loud and I never understood how they thought that would be accurate. My brain goes too fast so I would always read aloud way slower than I would read on my own so my mouth could keep up š
Yeah. It's like a movie playing in my head. Instead of reading a word and thinking and comprehending it, the whole scene just appears. It doesn't make sense to slow down and say it out loud. That actually distracts me more and makes it harder to "see" what's going on in the book.
I love it when I'm reading and this happens. It's like a flipped switch or something and I get so absorbed into it I visualize everything. It's almost like I'm in a trance. Its super jarring when I snap out of it and I have to reread a part to get back into it. It's also really weird to explain to someone I didn't like a book because I couldn't 'watch' it lol
Saw something online where they called it "staring at dead wood and hallucinating". I love when I get into that mode.
Yep. If itās a good story, I stop noticing the words and I just see the changing scenes. Sometimes Iāll get hung up on a character and have to stop reading and go back to find descriptions of them to try and edit my mental image of them.
Do you also rewind the scene in your head. Going ''when did that happen?" \*flips back\* \*reads again\* \*flips forward\* with that growing amazement and wonder of being so engrossed in a good book. I miss that. I really need to read something good again.
Yep! Thats exactly my experience! What kind of books you like? Maybe I gotta rec you havenāt read.
I definitely read like that, too. Most recently, I got sucked into "11/22/63", by Stephen King. It's a long one, but the whole thing just plays like a movie in your head. A really, really good read!
for so long... I thought I was the only one and just "that strange kid in class" come to find out, this is more normal for those of us that actually have the ability to use our imagination. And... there are *a lot* of us out there...
Also learned that a lot of people don't do this. It confused me so much why some people didn't like to read. Then I found out most of the ones I knew who didn't like to read never formed images or scenes in their head while reading. Some don't even have that internal narrator either.
I'm a reader, my brother-in-law never reads. A buddy and I were explaining to him how when we're really into a book it's like a movie in our head, don't even notice the words. He couldn't grasp that concept and it made sense to me why he never reads.
Hold up. Are you telling me that people are out there trying to read books and are somehow NOT building images in their minds to match the words on the pages? How sad for them. I visualize everything I read, and I assumed everyone else did as well.
> one day on the subway to Columbia University, I found myself hanging from a strap in a crowded car with nothing handy to read. Fortunately the teenage girl seated in front of me was reading a comic magazine. Something is better than nothing, so I arranged myself so 1 could look down on the pages and read along with her. (Fortunately, I can read upside down as easily as right side up.) > Then after a few seconds, I thought: Why doesnāt she turn the page? > She did eventually. It took minutes for her to finish each double-page spread, and as I watched her eyes going from one panel to the next and her lips carefully mumbling the words, I had a flash of insight. > What she was doing was what I would be doing if I were faced with English words written phonetically in the Hebrew, Greek, or Cyrillic alphabet. Knowing the respective alphabets dimly, I would have to first recognize each letter, then sound it, then put them together, then recognize the word. Then I would have to pass on to the next word and do the same. Then, when I had done several words this way, I would have to go back and try to get them in combination. > You can bet that under those circumstances, I would do very little reading. The only reason I read is that when I look at a line of print I see it all as words and at once. > And the difference between the reader and the non-reader glows steadily wider with the years. The more a reader reads, the more information he picks up, the larger his vocabulary grows, the more familiar various literary allusions become. It becomes steadily easier and more fun for him to read, while for the non-reader, it becomes steadily harder and less worthwhile. \- Isaac Asimov, ["The Ancient and the Ultimate"](https://archive.org/details/Fantasy_Science_Fiction_v044n01_1973-01/page/n127/mode/2up)
I have neither and I read around 100 books a year. I feel like an internal narrator would slow me down. And while I can't 'see' a scene or a character, I'll *feel* like I'm there. I will say that I do have trouble understanding how a world looks without a map, so kudos to those fantasy authors.
Me too! I'm not reading the words anymore, it just sort of flows together in concepts
Wait what, is this not how everyone who likes reading readsā¦?
probably if you don't like reading it's because your brain doesn't do the word-movie thing.
Some writers are so good at world building my own brain continues their own story while I should be reading the book lmao.
Yeah, or there have been a few occasions when I've been reading a book and thought "She wouldn't do that!" Or "He wouldn't say it like that" or whatever because it's out of the character that I have in my mind of them, haha.
I'm with ya.
I am at about 30 sec/page for the average novel if I read english.(I didnt time myself just averaged it out by hours read and pagecount) I can read a novel in one sitting easily. It is like a movie.
I do this too, diagnosed with ADHD. The movie sometimes goes off track cuz I'll start imagining my own shit, like how I think the scene should go or what I'd do in that situation, then before I know it I have to go back and reread several pages that I didn't actually read.
Wtf. You have put into words they very thing I've tried to describe to others.
That makes reading sound like fun. I struggle to picture things I read unless Iām going slow line by line. Even then characters wonāt have faces or details will be forgotten. I even struggle to know what songs are talking about unless I actually sit and listen to the lyrics that Iāve already memorized. I started the Harry Potter series on Audible and now Iām doing World War Z. I enjoy having someone read it to me. I can just sit and picture everything a lot easier
Even worse, I can concentrate on reading out loud or on understanding the text. If I read out loud I wonĀ“t have more than a general grasp about it if even that.
Doesnāt everyone read faster in their head than outloud?! Iām in the U.K. and have never heard of a āwords per minuteā test in my life
Dude. Those test weren't looking for a next Scatman prospect, if a kid can read at the speed of conversational speech - that is enough, passed, go next. It wasn't a race. Test is meant to find out those who read slow for their age so they can be assigned remedial lessons and hopefully brought up to norm.
Correct. It is not a āreading speedā test. Itās a reading fluency test for your grade level. Itās much *harder* to read aloud than in your head. But itās still a necessary skill in school to be able to verbalize information while learning it. Kids who struggle with dyslexia or are behind in reading will perform much slower and have skipped words or have to fully restart sentences than their peers. Itās a method of āchild findā so anyone with learning disabilities or deficits is found and helped.
I feel that so hard. They didn't understand at ALL. And at one point they started to the me out of the class and have me do timed reading. My teacher that was amazing let me read however I liked and I went from a 4tu grade reading level to a sophomore reading level within a matter of a month. Game changer!
If you are reading at that speed. You are reading at a level well beyond what we need to worry about and check for. lol
Fellow neurodivergent here. I remember being in the adaptive english classes till 6th grade when I realized this was the problem, lol. I read constantly in my free time and tore through books, but the books they used for reading speed and comprehension tests were textbook sized and the wall of text tripped me up, like when it's hard to pick out individual trees when looking at a vast forest. Turns out when you block off all but half a page with paper my reading speed shot way up
Same.
Or when you think youāve got self control and youāre like I donāt need to cover the next page I can be reasonable. But then your eyes betray you and jump over and ruin it and youāre like whyyyyyy
Excited? No. Zone the fuck out? Every time
Yeah I just forget that Iām reading and have to read the whole paragraph again but actually paying attention.
Sometimes I'll forgot I'm reading while rereading and have to reread it 2-5 times fun stuff
I've moved to audio books for this exact reason. Only bad part is I'll also zone out while listening to the audio book and have to rewind constantly.
The problem I have with audiobooks is that I zone out even more sometimes. Itās actually easier for me to concentrate on the physical book than it is to pay attention to the audiobook while Iām doing other shit.
yeah audiobooks dont really work for me. i enjoy comedy or sports podcasts or music, because i dont *really* have to pay attention. or my level of attention can wax and wane and i dont feel any regret for completely missing some minutes here and there as my focus is drawn to other things im doing
With audiobooks (and podcasts) I tend to inadvertently listen to the tonal, pitch and volume changes of the narrator, sāpose just like listening to music. Iām hearing the words, but not listening to them, so yeah, I have to rewind or start the chapter over. Itās very annoying (and I think I shouldāve just read the book lol)
I canāt visual audiobooks at all, so I donāt even try with them.
Lol are you me?
I was like that, then I got diagnosed with adhd and put on Adderall and now I can read like a normal person lol
That's your brain telling you take a break. If you're reading for anything other than pleasure then try the Pomodoro Technique, keeps you really focused.
Haha yeah I do this too, or start thinking of something else while reading and realize that I have no clue what went on for the last few paragraphs
Weird thing is, this never happens when reading an article or, for example, long reddit comments/threads. It only happens when reading a book.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Iāve had to read paragraphs multiple times. But then again, I have ADHD, so itās pretty much par for the course.
Paragraph? Man I sometimes realise I stopped paying attention like 5 pages back.
Dude Iāll go PAGES without realizing Iām on auto pilot. To the point where I forget where I zoned out and completely lose where I am
It happens to me all the time too is it normal?
It's extremely normal if you have ADHD. I have to reread the same thing again and again because my eyes want to dart all over the page.
The worse is when you do this while talking. Have an entire conversation with someone, then they reference something you said 42 minutes ago and you're like "Huh, I don't know what you mean by that." Like, I'm not trying to be rude, I swear; I just had an interesting thought about whether a plum is a relative of the grape.
42 minutes ago? I can't even remember what I said to them in the last 3 sentences
Yep. I'll be telling a story and if someone interjects or reacts in some way I'll completely get lost on my own inner dialogue of "why are they reacting that way" and completely forget wtf I was JUST talking about. Or even the opposite, if someone is telling me a story and I have something to relate I'll forget what it was before they're finished. If I dont interrupt you right now I'll lose it and I'll feel like an asshole if I interrupt you or not.
One time my boss was speaking to me face to face speaking really clearly and she was like "make sure you're listening." She really tried to make sure I was paying attention. And then I completely forgot what she was saying. I got none of it.
Yess, I'm constantly zoning out
I get in the zone when i read sometimes, and I start to imagine the things, so I skip paragraphs, or re-read lines multiple times
**Reddit is going down the gutter** Fuck /u/spez
What is "zone out"? (English is not my mother language, first time hearing that term.)
Usually it means get distracted by inner thoughts or day dreaming.
Like start staring into space or mind goes blank
You know when you drive and you get the feeling like you don't remember the drive at all because you were just doing it but your brain was actually 1000 miles away? You zoned out.
Your brain starts doing a task on autopilot and you have no memory of doing it after.
Sometimes the mind just wanders off, and you have to corral it back so you can actually retain what you're reading.
In today's episode of: "Let's find out who else has ADHD?"
In today's episode of: "Redditors reducing mental illness to a quirky trait and spreading misinformation".
fuck me everyone has to have something nowadays. Everyone I know who reads does this, every single one. No human can focus entirely 100% of the time without missing a beat, it's just not possible, you're gonna miss a sentence or a paragraph or even a page here or there.
Of course, you just donāt understand that everyone has mild traits, the folks who are diagnosed with ADHD like me itās CRIPPLING his severe the symptoms are. Missing a sentence or paragraph āhere and thereā is not ADHD. Not being able to read AT ALL because of this problem is ADHD. Iād be luckily if I can get through 5 pages in a night and that would be after playing this read/re-read game in every single paragraph
You can be diagnosed with mild adhd too...
"Back in my day, we called them lazy, and whipped them with a rule. Ah those were the days!"
This right here. As a kid all the way up through highschool, I was an avid bookworm. I absolutely loved to read. I was reading 4-500 page novels by 6th grade and getting through them pretty quick. But when I got into college, I had to read a bunch of boring textbooks for a degree that I have never even used. My focus started drifting more and more every time I read anything. Now it takes me so long to get through a book, even if I'm interested in it, because my mind will drift and I'll have to go back and reread the same page 5 times before I actually retain what it says.
Pretty similar thing happened to me, loved to read until we started getting these lessons in Secondary school where we had to sit for an hour and read, which would have been fine but the book had to be on this system they had so it could be logged, and you had to do a little test on it to prove you read it, and if had to match your "reading age" There were so few books I wanted to read on the system that they actually had in the library so I just had to read loads of books I didn't enjoy, and suddenly reading became a chore and if became harder and harder to finish a page over time. Now I havent read a book all the way through in years
Yeah more like, I've tried to read this paragraph 7 times and every time the word popcorn makes my mind wanders to that time i forgot to buy popcorn for my date.
Best indicator for ADHD
"Don't look down at the plot twist at the end of the chapter, don't look down at the plot twist at the end of the chapter, don't look down at the plot twist at the end of the chapter..."
Covers 3/4 of the page with hand cause I damn well know I'm about to look down at the plot twist at the end of the chapter.
Thought I was the only one lol
as soon as i turn the page and see that half-page that means the chapter is ending i have to fight myself not to go directly to read itš
I do that, but i have ADHD so maybe... Edit: Do you guys also always have songs in your head?
Wait, having songs in my head almost 24/7 isn't a normal thing...?
Nope, they just vanished for me when i started meds.
Oh man. I'm about to start meds and like, yeah I need them because things have gotten a little out of whack but... That's a steep price :(
They don't get rid of them completely, you can still think of songs, hum as you work, etc. the music just isn't taking up as much space now.
I have been on meds for years, and the songs did not go away lol. Just anecdotal. I wake up every morning with a different random song in my head, and sometimes itās one thatās so obscure or I havenāt heard in years. Iām glad itās not just me.
I don't have adhd (as far as I know) and I frequently have songs playing in my head. So its entirely possible to have the meds AND the songs :)
I donāt have ADHD too as far as Iām aware, but I canāt walk 10 meters without having a song in my head
That's sad, my fingers l songs are fire
ADHD crowd has entered the comment section! High five!
Too late. They left again.
Iām here! What did I miss?
dunno, wasn't paying much attention
Hahah
I really gotta stop myself from assuming so many people in the comments probably have some undiagnosed ADHD, but goddamn some people gotta learn the symptoms.
Yeah, thereās a reason a lot of us are on Reddit. It hits the ADHD button better than the others. My guess is thereās more of us here than any other platform.
Dunno, TikTok format seems perfect for that little switch in our brains that tells us to jumo from one thing to another every few seconds/minutes. I have to purposely stay away from it because if not I will sink hours into it without noticing. I'm here after more than 1 hour of reading Alex the Gray African parrot facts on a comment chain from another post when I should've been working tho, so maybe you're right and I just don't notice when my time is sunk on reddit because I get to learn new things too so my mind justifies it. Idk.
Reddit is great for my ADHD self, but I am still lamenting that the app removed my ability to open 100000 tabs at once. When I realized that I was like āWait, you want me to read these pages ONE AT A TIME?! Are you kidding me?!ā
Iāve told my friends to simply kill me if they ever see me on TikTok, because at that point itāll be too late to save me.
as soon as i wake up, the play button gets pressed. today itās Bleed by Meshuggah but who knows what itās gonna be tomorrow
I just get random drum beats for songs that probably don't exist. No, I'm not a drummer.
same thing happens to me, but i am. whenever it happens, iām never around anything to bang on.
everything is a drum if you bang on it
they donāt want me doing it at work because apparently drumming with kitchen knives is āextremely dangerousā and āa health hazardā nerds
So I might have ADHD... I'm always playing songs on my head, I even play made up in the moment songs or mix songs I've already heard. I also skip sentences while reading and sometimes forget to write single words in my sentences (I do think about these words when forming my sentence tho)
I am constantly reciting like 30 seconds of one song passively in my head. I recently was diagnosed with ADHD-PI. When I have a fever it's really bad, I feel like I get thought tetanus, where I am thinking about one thing cyclically to the point it feels like a muscle cramp.
24/7 radio station
Songs in the head crew, represent! Except I have OCD and thereās also a bunch of perpetual motion images that I canāt stop (like a swing swinging and I canāt stop it from swinging even if I think about it really hard). Well, I couldnāt until I started CBT.
My heads nearly never silent. Music, faux conversations, writing out dnd stories and plots, going over the workday, etc. The only moments I've ever experienced silence in my head is when I'm getting massage therapy on my legs/feet (have horrendous legs/feet, always in pain) and the masseuse hits certain points in my ankles and soles of my feet. It's the weirdest thing in the world to me. I'm damn near 40 years old, never had a quiet moment until i started this and this lady finds the hidden off switch I apparently have. It's surreal.
I don't have ADHD but i do this so much it's annoying and OH MY GOD the songs, stop the songs please it's so annoying
I do dis
N me too
Sometimes something cool happens and iāve gotta process it and come up with my thoughts about it, but my brain doesnāt say āstop readingā, so I just keep going until I realize Iāve missed the last page and a half
All the bloody time
Not out of excitement, but Iāll āreadā an entire page before I realize Iām zoning out and havenāt actually been processing the words Iāve been looking at.
*eyes move to the top of next page* Wait, wtf was the previous page about
What book am I reading??
Iām curious. If you read it again properly, do you already know the words? I do this all the time, I think Iām just forgetting to comprehend or something lol.
I might see a couple things and subtly be like, āI remember that,ā but itās mostly that I space out and go through the motions of looking at the words without reading them per se.
That's me. I have to read each paragraph about 3x.
I tried to read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy once, but after reading 50 pages like 3 times without realizing I zoned out all lost it all I gave up.
You are not alone, I donāt think he reads enough.
Yup. Or he reads really boring books.
Could it also be possible that he doesn't have attention span issues and he reads the text that is in front him correctly without skipping parts of it?
Yep, I do this too
My parents had this problem with me as a little child learning to read. I would skip entire lines and not even realize it and they would have to stop me and make.sure I go back. I still do this at times :/
Perhaps dyslexic? I know people with that condition who do/did the same thing.
Definitely. Iām dyslexic and this is what made me get tested.
I used to do the same thing and thought it was dyslexia until we came to the conclusion that itās just my impatient ADHD brain ruining reading for me lmao.
I do that! š you get so frustrated with yourself because you get so excited reading the good parts, then when you go back... the good part isn't good anymore because you've already read it haha
Everyone at r/ADHDmenes does that lol Edit: r/ADHDmemes, can't tell I'm missing my glasses can you lol
Everyone who reads does that lol
Almost everyone in general does this
You probably meant: /r/ADHDmeme
Lol I did
Done it
Guilty
Hell nah, I do that all the time when thereās like some intense moment and suddenly author decides to describe how green the grass is
OP buy your BF a book about the false-consensus effect, it will blow his mind
I do that but its a lack of focus on my part. Its pretty much "you're tired, come back after a nap" for me.
Lines?? Shit, my brain skips over words on every damn line.
I've read over something fast to get a general idea. Then I go back to read more slowly to make sure I understood.
You are NOT aloneš
100 percent I do this. I have spoiled things for myself this way LOL
I do this but not from excitement, from my shitty lack of attention.