“Have you tried just paying attention”
“Oh shit, no I haven’t - thanks, you really set me straight!”
😤😤😤
I see memes from this adhd community all the time on my feed, and every time I’m like - isn’t everybody like that? What’s so special about it? Like the metronome one, isn’t that how everyone with a three digit iq feels but hides it to different degrees? Or the one about being disappointed when you suck at something you never tried - how is all this stuff adhd specific? 90% of the stuff I see here is like that.
A lot of the “adhd” people I’ve seen online are 200% self diagnosed and use it as a replacement for a personality, because having adhd is fashionable - to the detriment of the credibility of the real adhd people - which is probably why people react the way that this meme hints at.
ADHD isn't some thing that makes you experience things that other people don't experience. It just makes those much much more frequent, stronger and harder to control. Your response is exactly what this meme is about, not enough people take ADHD seriously and many ADHD folks suffer unnecessarily because of that. ADHD is a condition that has a wide range range of symptoms and is not just "haha, I can't focus on things as well as others". There's also a chance that you and your family have undiagnosed ADHD which makes it seem to you that everyone lives like that when it's simply not the case.
If you're the type of person to actually listen to us then please watch this 3-part video because it really puts into the perspective what ADHD is. Of course this video is a bit dated and doesn't cover our experiences too much but that's understandable as it's about the neuroanatomy behind ADHD to lay a foundation to understand ADHD.
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyZtYzFq4WY
Part 2: https://youtu.be/M8dLiH1LFx8?si=7NUMGSDFXrvd4ixe
Part 3: https://youtu.be/sPFmKu2S5XY?si=XToMJ3kvrt5TiW97
Edit: ADHD also has a big overlap with other neurodevelopmental disorders or things like depression. And speaking of depression, a lot of people with ADHD have it which means that although some of the things are not directly caused by ADHD they're still indirectly caused by it which makes it alright to discuss in this group. Role of those kinds of groups is to make people find comfort by showing that there are other people that are experiencing the exact same things. Sharing your success stories is also encouraged to motivate people to not give up and try different things till they find something that works for them.
Thanks for the reply, that’s exactly what I was going for. I hope it was clear that my observation was genuine and had no intention whatsoever to troll.
I do take adhd seriously, and I have met some who quite clearly suffer from it - but I have also seen plenty of posers, if you listen to the internet everybody has Tourette or OCD. My point in that paragraph was not that adhd is not a thing, but rather that the abundance of posers who just want to feel special gives the condition the lack of credibility that you and I both denounce.
As for me suffering from it, it is quite possible having struggled with depression as well. I am very annoyed by the “self diagnosers” so I try to practice what I preach. Not that I could possibly find out properly, as adhd is not taken quite seriously where I am from.
Thanks for the resources, they’re on top of my watch list.
If you indeed relate very often with adhd memes, you might in fact have undiagnosed adhd. Or autism. These two disorders bleed into each other and have a very high comorbidity
I can’t really see myself going to a doctor and saying “could you please test me for adhd? see there is this community that posts adhd memes and I find them relatable”
I space out all the time when I’m not captivated, but I have no particular struggle focusing on stuff I really care about - in fact the world disappears when that happens. I might be wrong but it doesn’t look like adhd.
I forgot to read the second part of your comment so I will make it as a separate comment:
A lot of the “adhd” people I’ve seen online are 200% self diagnosed and use it as a replacement for a personality
Self-diagnosis is the first step to the official diagnosis, stopping at just that is totally not the way to go and I hope that that's not the case for majority of people. Also about the personality thing, when you live your whole life with undiagnosed ADHD and then one day learn about what ADHD does to you you realise that a lot of what you thought is your "personality" is actually ADHD symptoms. So people joking about their personality being ADHD is understandable.
because having adhd is fashionable
Rather than it being fashionable a big part of human population has it and symptoms make it easier to get addicted to social media which makes it seem like there are more ADHD people online than offline. Tbh learning about anything through social media is a bad idea because there's always some kind of bias or misinformation.
Permanently Deleted
It can be useful, in that many neurodivergent people suffer from similar reactions from neurotypicals, and a similar lack of understanding and support. But it does nothing for the specific problems of any one type of neurodivergence, no. Consider it more of a catch-all, like how LGBT is also grouped for having similar struggles in society despite the T being quite different from the LGB part.
I've had friends compare the vagueness of neurodivergant to the vagueness of being "queer" (i.e. LGTBQ+)
it's a generic catchall that tells a listener that there's something there without having to share details you might not be comfortable with/ they might not want to get lost in the weeds over.
I figure there's a valid use case for a catchall generic term
Is it really even divergent when such a huge population has something that makes them diverge from the norm? At that point, isn't being abnormal... normal? 🤔
Like, just for an example, if 60% of the population had ADHD, they're the norm, so the neurotypicals would be the weirdos who are different.
Yes, that hypothetical would reverse the script. However, neurotypical people still vastly outnumber neurodivergent people. It can feel like an overwhelming amount of people online are neurodivergent, but in the “real world” we’re still very much a minority.
It's more of a perceived normality rather than a real normality. Even if adhdh and asd people were the majority (they are not), the world is still wired to expect and accomodate neurotipical people
What would be a better word to replace it? Because there's still an option to remake the meme and replace it with the alternative version.
Yes, but what about AD4K?
I'm still just running ADSD :(
There's hope, though! Back when I first started out, it was all ADCRT or nothin'!
Gonna skip right past undefined marketing term UltrADHD?
I'll just lead with stating I have BPD then. Nobody even knows what that is!
Avant-garde: I have both
