I believe in the healing properties of the scugplush

Have typed up a document to give to my psychiatrist at my appointment at the end of the month. I don’t want to leave any doubt that I need ADHD treatment immediately.

The Case For Me Having ADHD

Using a list of symptoms from the Mayo Clinic for Adult ADHD, I will elaborate on the ways each symptom applies to my daily life.

I cannot stress enough how much of a problem my ADHD symptoms are for my daily life. I neglect all basic tasks, including showering, brushing teeth, cleaning my cat’s litter box, cooking, cleaning, and that’s just things at home. I have been unemployed for many years and I don’t think that I could get it together enough to actually hold down a job.

Mayo Clinic website:

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/adult-adhd/symptoms-causes/syc-20350878

Adult ADHD symptoms may include:

Impulsiveness I am very impulsive when it comes to eating. I have a major sweet tooth and once I start eating something sweet, I cannot stop myself from eating all of it – for example, an entire pack of biscuits, lollies, or chocolate. Paired with an inability to make myself prepare meals and my complete lack of interest in bland foods, I have a very unhealthy diet. Additionally, many people would call me an impulse buyer when it comes to hobbies. It’s true that I am very often buying things online, though I have managed to keep a lid on my spending enough to get by on a Newstart allowance for many years.

Disorganization and problems prioritizing In my head, I can prioritise just fine, but when it comes to actually doing things, very often the most pertinent tasks are the ones I cannot bring myself to do, so I instead end up doing anything else. Organisation is one of those things I want to do, but then when I try to do it, I hate it. So, my room and workspaces are a complete mess, and although I wish I could keep them organised, I just don’t want to think about it, and it’s easy for me to ignore. The mess just becomes part of the scenery. I have to step over clothes to go in and out of my room, because somehow it’s easier to step over them multiple times a day than to pick them up and put them on hangers. The clothes I have that ARE on hangers, I ignore because that isn’t where I’m conditioned to get my clothes from. So I just use a very small pool of clothing that gets stored in plain sight. It’s almost an “out of sight out of mind” situation.

Poor time management skills The time does get away from me a lot. There are times where all I have to do is post something, but it takes me a couple of days to actually get to the post office during opening hours because it takes me so long to start my day and muster up the motivation to go anywhere. Other times, I am so absorbed in a task that I have no idea how long I’ve been there and suddenly I’m starving or my bladder is almost in pain from fullness that I’ve not even noticed until it was this bad.

Problems focusing on a task Tasks are virtually impossible for me to focus on if I’m not very interested in the subject matter. I cannot read books, haven’t been able to so much as pick one up since I was a teen, and even then there were times I would read a page and none of it was actually absorbed, so I had to read it again. Sometimes if I can manage to initiate a task, I am so disinterested in it that my depression and anxiety kick in, making mundane tasks such as exercising and browsing job listings actively harm my mental health for the whole time I am doing them. As such, I avoid these tasks as much as humanly possible. In the workplace, I have been known to have panic attacks if I am forced to do things I don’t want to do. By far the hardest thing for me is to physically begin to do tasks my brain has decided it won’t do. It just puts up a barrier that I cannot penetrate. I believe this is called executive dysfunction. It prevents me from doing almost all everyday chores a majority of the time. It is my biggest problem with functioning in life and is the reason my freelance businesses have failed.

Trouble multitasking While I can happily play a video game and listen to a podcast simultaneously, switching between tasks is an issue. For example I am writing this currently, and cannot do anything else until I’m finished, because if I do, I don’t think I’ll ever get back to doing this because my interest will be broken. Heck, I can spend months doing a hobby every day, and as soon as I let myself have a break from it, I no longer want to do that thing, sometimes ever. And for things that I really loved doing, it is heartbreaking to find I can’t get even a little excited about it any more. Many times I can be engaged in an activity, and having my concentration broken is an ordeal – I could have all these interconnected thoughts running in my head, then bam, they’re gone in a split second and I no longer comprehend the complicated thing I was doing a moment ago. I think this is why I have not been able to reach full competence in coding, and why I had a lot of trouble with high school maths.

Excessive activity or restlessness For me, this manifests in somewhat hidden ways. See I have a chronic lack of physical energy. However, my mind races almost all the time, I have to always be doing something even if it’s just scrolling Twitter or listening to a podcast. Normally it’s both. Or playing a video game. When I’m sitting on a couch or chair, my leg will bounce up and down involuntarily, especially if my mind is engaged in a stimulating activity. If I’m standing, I might pace. If I’m in bed, I will be tossing and turning. Sometimes I will have insomnia, other times I will sleep 12 or more hours at a time. I get bored very easily, which is why I am always keeping myself occupied. However, when I’m doing nothing I will often start thinking about all the problems in my life and get quite depressive. I am known to cry out of seemingly nowhere when I am having those thoughts, so I distract myself with podcasts all day and night.

Poor planning For me it’s more like planning is as far as I get. I can plan things until the cows come home, but never put the plans into action. I dream and plan and sketch things and figure out details of some creative thing like a story or comic book, but then the doing just becomes an insurmountable barrier and I give up.

Low frustration tolerance I certainly experience this when it comes to doing things that take a lot of practice or repetition. Learning an instrument, playing particularly hard video games, doing jobs that involve unending repetitive tasks (such as working on checkouts). Anything I do where I feel like I’m getting nowhere – even if I’m not, in the case of learning something; if it is taking too long, I get sick of it and eventually come to hate it. Fortunately I am a fast learner, so there are plenty of skills I have been able to learn – just not things like a guitar or a new language, things that take years to even get a basic level of competency.

Frequent mood swings Fortunately I do not experience this much. However I do get panic attacks from time to time, which can appear sudden to the outside observer. I am on mood stabilisers, however, so I can’t really say either way. Currently though, I merely experience a consistent tired, sad mood with the occasional respite of laughing at a funny meme.

Problems following through and completing tasks I have countless creative projects I’ve started and abandoned because I lost the excitement I had for them. It’s one of the hardest parts of my life. I even spent years on a video game that I can’t bring myself to work on any longer even though I have the whole thing planned out and even a demo released. This is repeated again and again throughout my life.

Hot temper If I feel anger, it is almost always in response to injustices I see in society. I believe it is a justified anger. Other than that, I would say I am an unusually even-tempered person. If I do get annoyed or frustrated with another person I am most likely to vent about it on the internet instead of acting out.

Trouble coping with stress Since I have anxiety, yes, my stress reaction tends to involve panic attacks, insomnia, and misery. I cannot deal with stress, which is the only reason I’m glad not to have had a full time job since 2011. I was fired from that 2011 job for venting on Twitter about how stressful and unfair my job was at the time, who had been forcing me to stay back late into the night to help finish a publication.