Lived Experience Forum

[Jynx]

Also I will come back soon and respond to others, but for now I've just finished work and I am SLEEPY!! Big love y'all 💜

@greenspace @Shaz51 @tyme @AFK 

[greenspace]

Good night @Jynx , sleep well. 

It's great reading about your experiences 

[Rosemary4]

Well done @Jynx ! I so identified with so many of your explanations living with and researching ADHD. Of cause I'm an adult, and not formally diagnosed, but it sure would answer a LOT of questions for why I've felt so 'strange' among my peers, all my life, and why I just can't seem to Finish! anything much in one sitting, or remember things outbid sight... and feeling lazy etc. etc So much I didn't understand why I do. And my mum was even worse. I'm wondering if adhd is high among HOARDES then? Thank you for this tonight, i feel connected and I'll definately be using some of the tips here to help.
💙💙💙
PS love your sense of humour 🤣👍

[AFK]

Hi all,

Thanks for the welcome, @Shaz51 and thanks @greenspace for saying I'm not verbose. I try to reference things I'm responding to and be thorough, so the person I'm talking to feels properly acknowledged. That can wind up a bit wordy and oftentimes people don't care for it.

@tyme  - if you don't mind, I'm going to chime in on the question of whether lists are helpful or stressful. In my case, the answer is both! I long since found that if I don't write things down, I am guaranteed to forget them. On the down side, I often don't remember I've written it down, so I have umpteen lists - on whiteboards, in writing pads, on my phone, occasionally on my computer - and the same items keep cropping up across various lists. For the moment jotting down a few important things for this one day and sticking it on the kitchen bench is working. The novelty is fading out though, and it won't work much longer - techniques that work for a time inevitably just turn into the visual equivalent of white noise, the eye just starts to skip over it as a background thing. Problematic! I have the same problem with things like phone reminders. They worked for a while. But there are so many things to remember - take your asthma meds, take out the bins, you have an appointment, phone bill's due, blah blah blah. There are then bleeps and bloops for everything and bam - it's white noise, disappeared into the background. The other problem with phone reminders and lists - if I go to check them, and I have a message or a missed call, that thing catches my attention and the point of the reminder is off and away, out of my head until "uh-oh, that's the rubbish truck, and I forgot the bins". For this reason I have notifications turned off for social media of all kinds, we don't need more bleeps and bloops!

I guess that ramble didn't help much! Sometimes lists are great. They were a lifesaver when I started work in my current role, though it's worth noting that was coupled with the adrenaline of deadlines, which helps keep me focused. At home it's another matter entirely. Some of my phone lists have retained usefulness, I seem to be able to keep track of appointments by keeping them in one list, which I refer to periodically when I have a feeling I'm forgetting something. I write a daily planner on lined A4 pages I mostly forget to look at now I've been doing it a while, but I've found the tactical experience of handwriting a thing helps me remember the things I wrote a little better, or at least enough to leave a niggling sense I should check the list sometimes. It's all so hit and miss.

AFK.

[AFK]

*tactile, not tactical. Cheers, autocorrect. (*shakes fist*)

[tyme]

Thanks @AFK ,

It's great to know these things. I'm so glad you shared your experiences, because it can definitely inform my practice and how I manage my own life and the lives of those around me!

I'm learning.

tyme

[tyme]

Hey @Jynx @AFK @Rosemary4 @greenspace @Shaz51 and everyone else, 

I've read that ADHD and dyslexia are also related.

Have you had any experiences, or know of, the links between ADHD and dyslexia?

tyme

[AFK]

Hey @tyme ,

Glad you're finding my experience helpful and informative. 🙂

To answer about dyslexia, yes there is a link between dyslexia and ADHD. My understanding is simply that they are both neurodivergent traits. Various articles and studies I have read (and I wouldn't quote this as gospel, it's general reading) have suggested dyslexia often appears concurrently with ADHD - which makes a certain sort of sense, as there is that similarity in brain chemistry.

My dyslexic best friend shows strong signs of ADHD as well, though is undiagnosed at this time. Anecdotal evidence will only show so much, though. To use my own case and my sister (who also has ADHD and ASD), we lean in the opposite direction toward hyperlexia (our understanding/interaction with literature developed faster/better than average and ahead of our development in other areas). I guess the moral of the story is there are as many ways for neurodivergence to manifest as there are people with neurodivergent brains.

AFK.

[tyme]

Remarkable, @AFK !

[greenspace]

@AFK, @tyme ,  my sister (ASD) and I (ADHD) have hypermedia too. Both of us learnt to read around age 4 y.o., and love words and languag