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Hmm I’m sure it’s personal for each but me I feel like I didn’t outgrow it. More like I overcame it.
Yeah. I feel like it never bothered me when younger (he’s “gifted and mature”) but you get screwed later on when you have a 8-5 office job where you sit and stare for 9 hours. I can’t focus on boring useless stuff like that. Unfortunately, the alternative is destroy your body doing manual labor to keep moving around. Plus. You make a lot more money sitting and staring at a screen. So just keep it bottled up and pretend you know what you’re doing and don’t feel like going nuts!
This is kinda why I ended up as a manufacturing engineer. It’s technical, well paid, and doesn’t require hard physical labor. But I’m constantly “putting out fires” and going to some forgotten corner of the factory to figure out what broke. “Oops sorry I skipped the meeting - the production line was stopped!” Neurotypicals view this chaos as stressful, but it’s the only way I can flow through the day without hating my job.
Lucked out big time.
I’m still doing physical labor, but I think neurotypical people would go crazy with my schedule. I don’t know what days I’m working sometimes until two days before. I don’t even know where in the country I’ll be next week. I thrive in the chaos and the physical work, but I can’t keep it up forever. Freelance contractor for IT work.
I don’t think the ADHD necessarily gets worse, it’s more often that the consequences get worse.
I.e. the intensity of the disorder relative to a given set of stimuli doesn’t increase, but the average significance of the stimuli (and consequently the outcome of one’s reaction to them) does increase.
You could argue that’s a meaningless distinction, but perhaps it’s a helpful change in perspective for someone.
That’s a valid point. Although I’d add that, as you get older, it’s not only the significance of the stimuli that increases, but the overall levels of stimuli increases. More responsibilities, more burdens, more stress, and less likely to be given any concessions due to being young.
No, it gets worse. Adults don’t have the amount of mental plasticity that younger people have. While it’s possible to make things easier through CBT and learning to cope and deal with certain challenges. The mental load of keeping up with daily life ultimately has its toll. Life is getting harder every year for everyone, and having ADHD makes that mental load just that much harder.
Realistically, it’s utterly dependent on one’s life situation.
When you’re in school, your main focus is trying to get through school, get home, and not get hassled about keeping up with yourself and your things.
Later on, some jobs, are congruent or even complimentary with symptoms, some jobs aren’t. Some partners help compensate, some don’t.
It absolutely will get worse for some, better for others. Some may have consequences that are an issue, some may have circumstances that defuse the consequences.
Turns out that people don’t “grow out of” physiological differences in how their prefrontal cortex forms. Who would have thought?! /s
Most people tend to develop coping mechanisms that help them pass as non-ADHD individuals, by lowering their standards for what they can achieve in life and by accepting the abnormally high amounts of stress that hiding their ADHD causes them.
Psychologists call this “growing out of ADHD”.
Took me getting fired from one job and almost a second before I finally got my coping mechanisms figured out. It’s still a struggle and it’s also cost me a significant amount of my ability to enjoy my free time (have to severely limit my investment in anything not work related so I don’t accidentally get consumed by it and lapse at work), but I’m ‘functional’ now.
It’s still a struggle and it’s also cost me a significant amount of my ability to enjoy my free time (have to severely limit my investment in anything not work related so I don’t accidentally get consumed by it and lapse at work)
This path leads to burnout. I have no practical advice since we are kind of required to put work first in order to survive. But the fact that it’s socially acceptable to call this “living” makes me sick to my stomach.
Yup. Currently on my 4th burnout that’s lasted 3 yrs and counting (previous 3 were 1 yr each).
I just don’t have it in me to buck up and try to work again. :/
They don’t necessarily lower their standards. Sometimes, they simply “pay” by other means.
The problem is that responsibilities seem to grow faster than I can create coping mechanisms…
You’ve got “management” written all over you. I hope you like meetings!
Heading for the top, that’s me. Of an office building or psychiatric ward, remains to be seen.
“Gifted child, if only they’d apply themselves”, turns into “Average adult, not always reliable and my god have you seen their <thing we ignore because we don’t have the bandwidth> but usually gets things done.”
Well, guess they need to be diagnosed for LBD (Low Bandwidth Disorder).
And then start berating everyone who doesn’t care about the small stuff, instead of letting them say that we are “overreacting”, just because we realise that, under different conditions, ignoring some of that stuff could cause bigger problems.
To be fair, ADHD is a developmental disorder that sometimes can present as delayed development rather than halted development. I.e being behind in executive functioning development but eventually “catching up” to peers.
That said, the severity of cases is still often determined through the lens of “how well do they fit in/mask it” and not “how is their emotional/mental wellbeing”, which definitely gives the impression of kids “growing out of it”.
Well, minds are difficult, patterns are easy.
Not all doctors are going to do it the hard way, same as not all people (encompassing all professions) do it the hard way.
It bothers me that no one acknowledged that this can still be logically true. Of course if most people’s ADHD goes away in childhood then it doesn’t really logically mean anything to ask “most people you know with ADHD” because by definition, you will only be asking the subset of people for whom that isn’t true.
You can’t really survey the people for whom ADHD went away in childhood by asking all the people you know with ADHD because the people who would confirm the psychologist’s claim are not going to be included in that survey.
True
But it is also be true that the insight “most people loose ADHD by adulthood” is in itself kind of flawed as people can develop coping methods which can mask the ADHD. If there’s a significant people complaining/reporting then, it would be something to look into.
People are more open about having adhd into adulthood as compared to in the past where it might have been seen as a childish thing and hence undesirable to report. And not a problem enough to report it to someone who could help with that.
These are assumptions based on personal and shared anecdotes, so I guess you could still argue what you said is right.
Why does it seem like ADHD is the new Autism self-diagnosis? I’ve met a lot of people lately who have self-diagnosed themselves with ADHD.
Because it was wildly under diagnosed in many places until recently, and if you weren’t a white boy you were a lot less likely to be correctly diagnosed.
I thought the consensus was that it was wildly OVER diagnosed in the late 90s to make kids shut up in school
edit: Oh lmao I just realized was sublemmy I’m in
How exactly would your answer be different if you’d realised where you were?
My answer wouldn’t have changed, I just would’ve realized why I’m getting the same response over and over lol
This is probably because you are stating your subjective opinion in a rude & condescending way, instead of providing any peer-reviewed data to back up your claims.
tl;dr/succinct version - you are full of shit
If we look at the timeline of ADHD research, we can see that there was a lot studies about it in the 80s, and even more in 90s, so it kinda makes sense that there would be more ADHD detected in the population when the general understanding of it improved.
Also DSM IV was published in 94, and refined the diagnostic criteria for ADHD https://www.cdc.gov/adhd/media/pdfs/ADHDTimeline.pdf
That was the pop culture take on it, that doesn’t mean that’s what the evidence shows.
Bcz people don’t actually understand that ADHD is a debilitating condition that I wouldnt wish on my worst enemy. (I don’t have any enemies tho bcz I’m an adult :P)
I think some people are just trying to score Ritalin
Don’t be surprised when this kind of response is met with hostility.
I mean, read the room.
I think
Ah there you have the root cause
Which is of course reason enough to withhold it from the people who need it and to doubt their experience at every turn. /S
Every person with ADHD I have met has related heavily to my struggles with simply staying on my prescribed medication, you should reevaluate what you think you know about the disorder because you seem really ignorant.
I was diagnosed with ADHD and ODD when I was 8, but haven’t taken the meds in years
lol the ODD explains it all.
Bye bye now
Ritalin is a nightmare drug, so no.
It’s true that, for people who don’t have ADHD, the meds used to treat it can be misused for ‘recreational purposes’. For people with ADHD however, is not a party drug. Infact, it has the opposite effect’s (generally).
No I’m not saying they’re using it as a party drug, they’re using it to focus on school and work and stay up late. People do it in the tech industry all the time
Without looking it up, I believe the DSM says that diagnosis requires three out of five indicators. That would suggest that many people can get one or two indicators. Social media (specifically short form like twitter, instagram, and TikTok) has measurable negative impact on attention spans, while also propagating a narrative of colloquial symptoms.
“Whee look at me being neurodivergent!” - golly, I do that too! Maybe I’m ADHD.
For what it’s worth, I have both ADHD and mild autism. I’m not saying it doesn’t exist. I’m saying that the diagnosis is devalued by “oh i do that too, I’m also a little bit adhd”.
I self diagnosed before getting my formal diagnosis from a doctor. I was a hard yes to like 30 of the 32 signs of adult ADHD in Driven to Distraction.
At some point it’s kinda a relief to realize that other people are going through the same stuff as you, and start therapy and treatment that are actually catered to your needs since you’ve already tried a million other things and nothing has worked.
And yeah everybody struggles with executive function and attention sometimes. But like, we all bleed when we’re cut, doesn’t mean haemophilia is fake.
You got that backwards.
Because a lot of people don’t have access to mental health resources, or even medical ones, and are struggling with the pressures of navigating a life setup for type A brains with a type B brain. They know “something” is off, and find symptoms match up with ADHD.
I only got diagnosed because I was at the hospital for something else, and the local specialist noticed something was off with my behaviour. (I was there for a little while, to be fair.)
As an adult, navigating anything administrative is a nightmare.
My adult appointment for testing/evaluation was nearly 2 grand. I met my annual deductible in a month because of it. I’m fortunate enough to be middle class, so I could afford it, but I can’t imagine someone making a lower end of middle class income just being able to drop that kind of money like that.
My provider that tested both of my kids stopped taking insurance for tests, so they wanted me to pay 13000 dollars for spectrum testing, I found a different provider and I still have to get lined up with a test but they’ve already started my adhd symptoms right away. It has been so nice after 34ish years of just coping
The officially changed it in my country to be an syndrome diagnosable in adults as well the very year I turned 18. I’m not saying it HAS to be because of me, but yeah.
Doctor leaves appointment with Droggelbecher
“Get the Chancellor on the phone immediately.”
My friend says it got much better as he learned strategies to keep afloat… Then as he got older, into his 40’s, work and life got more complicated with harsher consequences for forgotten paperwork or failure to notice time pass… And the number of things demanding attention made sleep and focus harder than ever.
He thinks his strategies just haven’t been able to keep up, but thinks things will get better again
…because if it got better, you don’t know about it?
Does learning how to deal with it, but still struggling more than an average person count as getting better?
Getting better doesn’t mean it’s fixed. It’s just less bad.
Masking may come easier to someone who is fully an adult and had to adapt to be able to survive. One doesn’t keep a customer service job by being unmasked. So perhaps that is “better”?
But on the flip side, growing up means more responsibility. Failing a final in high school says I get a C- for the year, big whoop. Failing a final in college means I get a C-, means the class doesn’t count as a prerequisite, means I have to spend more money to retake the class.
Forgetting to hand in an assignment doesn’t mean much in school. But forgetting to pay a bill has much bigger consequences (especially if you do that ADHD thing of stressing about it every night and day but being unable to actually do the damn thing that would fix it :) )
I’ve set up workarounds in my own life. Elsewhere in this thread there’s people talking about forgetting to pay bills, versus bill pay. That’s what I’ve done (and in some instances, have reminders on my phone set up to periodically remind me to do the things that can’t be automated).
I’ve also steered my social relationships and my career to be more accommodating of my brain. I’m with a wife who doesn’t mind (and in some ways finds it endearing), and can help me fill in some gaps. I have a career where jumping around from topic to topic helps me seem well rounded, and where occasionally showing how I’ve done a deep dive into something persuades my colleagues that I’ve got great attention to detail (I do, but only on some things).
My ADHD might be the same as it’s always been, but my life has been set up so that it’s all low consequences. The guardrails and safety nets are in place, and I can just be.
Exactly. This sounds like selection bias in action. If you’re sampling adults who have ADHD and asking if it’s better from when they were kids, you’ve already skewed the results beyond repair. You need to follow kids with ADHD into adulthood and see if it gets better.
Accurate. My wife’s got worse. It went in to bloody overdive when perimenopause started.
Mrs. Warp Core is also going through this very thing. Basically the wild hormone swings hit her hard, right in the executive function. ADHD meds helped, but ultimately weren’t enough. HRT has helped tremendously. That said, we’re now terrified to roll off of that.
Do you mind telling me what age she was? My wife is suffering severely with mental health but will not see a psychiatrist. I suspect perimenopause. She does see a therapist.
It started in the late 40’s, which is on the early side.
My wife is suffering severely with mental health but will not see a psychiatrist. I suspect perimenopause. She does see a therapist.
I’m very sorry to hear that; I can appreciate that the struggle for you both has to be very, very real. It’s a raw deal and it’s hard to manage. I wish you both the very best on this.
What I can share is that finding a good Gyno was instrumental in all this. We went through several practices before we found one that was sympathetic to what was going on. to my complete shock and horror, some seemed far more interested in treating reproduction and reproductive health issues than aging and quality-of-life1. Your town might be different than mine, but I suggest that you both be prepared to move around a bit if you can’t get support right away. You might find that doctors that are LGBTQ+ friendly as more willing and better equipped to handle this kind of thing.
- I really need someone with an educated background in women’s issues to make exact sense of this beyond “this isn’t right/fair”. I’m way out of my element.
It definitely got less hyperactive and more fogbrain, as I like to call it.
You want me to pay bills? On time? Best I can do is rack up late fees.
Set auto payments for all the things!
Oh, my workaround for that is easy, just develop lifelong crippling anxiety and still forget about 10% of them anyways!
Anxiety is a heaven sent for the Bill Paying Problem.
You just get better at masking the worst effects.
Edit:
The consequences are worse when you’re an adult.
If you miss homework assignments or forget a quiz when you’re a kid and you lose some grade points people give you shit, but if your parents aren’t abusive the consequences aren’t life damaging. People around you keep the guard rails up and try to help you atay pointed in the right direction.
If you’re constantly late for work, don’t get your taxes done, or forget your car registration renewal, these can get you fired or have big financial consequences. There are no guard rails in the adult world, just consequences.
Of course it got worse, I have to work now
