Post by crashcourse144 on Oct 26, 2016 0:11:08 GMT
I've done the whole Uni thing once before, when I was undiagnosed. It did not end well... I'd always been a fan of various TV series, but without parental structure for the first time I found it seriously hard to control the obsessive side of my personality. It started with losing track of time and be late for lectures, or staying up too late and not being able to wake up in the morning. Then I would totally forget time and realise that I'd missed a lecture.
Eventually, it became a place to hide, to distract myself from the anxiety, from the sense of defeat, from the constant sense of failure that hangs over someone undiagnosed. It got so bad that I just stopped going to classes, workshops and after a while I didn't even get out of bed. Sometimes for days at a time. I'm sure I don't need to explain how well that went with the Uni...
It's really shameful, even though I know why it happened, I hate admitting to this. I certainly didn't admit it at the time, to anyone. I played along like everything was ok to my friends and family. Over a year and a half of total isolation and depression later, the truth came out to my family and everything detonated.
My girlfriend at the time put me on my feet (though she never knew the truth) and I made it into a small specialist college. Coursework was great, I flew through it happily, but admin fell apart. As a private course, I never got the finance sorted properly and fell back on my parents. It was at this point ADD came up. 2 years later, as I enter Uni for the second time and I got my official diagnosis: ADHD (IP).
But now, despite having come so far, I can feel the obsessive/addictive habits coming back. I really want this course to work out, so much, but I don't know how to stop being like this. It's so stupid that I know I have stuff to do, but I just get totally absorbed. "Just one more", "Just until 2 o'clock", "Just until after this story arc", "Screw it, I'll just pull an all-nighter and I'll sleep easier tomorrow". I've lost a week already, but luckily for my current degree that's not a killer, but far from ideal.
I want to take control back, but I don't really know how. I only seem to be clear in the evenings, by which time it's way too late and I've lost out on important work that needed doing.
Does anyone else struggle with addictive behaviour and how do they manage it?
Eventually, it became a place to hide, to distract myself from the anxiety, from the sense of defeat, from the constant sense of failure that hangs over someone undiagnosed. It got so bad that I just stopped going to classes, workshops and after a while I didn't even get out of bed. Sometimes for days at a time. I'm sure I don't need to explain how well that went with the Uni...
It's really shameful, even though I know why it happened, I hate admitting to this. I certainly didn't admit it at the time, to anyone. I played along like everything was ok to my friends and family. Over a year and a half of total isolation and depression later, the truth came out to my family and everything detonated.
My girlfriend at the time put me on my feet (though she never knew the truth) and I made it into a small specialist college. Coursework was great, I flew through it happily, but admin fell apart. As a private course, I never got the finance sorted properly and fell back on my parents. It was at this point ADD came up. 2 years later, as I enter Uni for the second time and I got my official diagnosis: ADHD (IP).
But now, despite having come so far, I can feel the obsessive/addictive habits coming back. I really want this course to work out, so much, but I don't know how to stop being like this. It's so stupid that I know I have stuff to do, but I just get totally absorbed. "Just one more", "Just until 2 o'clock", "Just until after this story arc", "Screw it, I'll just pull an all-nighter and I'll sleep easier tomorrow". I've lost a week already, but luckily for my current degree that's not a killer, but far from ideal.
I want to take control back, but I don't really know how. I only seem to be clear in the evenings, by which time it's way too late and I've lost out on important work that needed doing.
Does anyone else struggle with addictive behaviour and how do they manage it?