Post by cantthinkofaname on Oct 30, 2019 16:05:26 GMT
Hello! This is my first post so forgive me if I'm asking obvious questions
This will be vague as I'm not sure exactly what I'm asking for, but here goes. Thanks for reading, if you do
I'm 20 years old, 2nd year of university, and last month I was diagnosed with inattentive ADHD. I'm on day 8 of a 3-week trial prescription for Lisdexamfetamine; it isn't doing anything bad or good yet, but that's all fine, it's only the first week.
My basic thoughts now are:
If meds work, I don't want to have to rely on them.
I want to be able to carry out the simple things that I want to do, without the help of drugs.
I know I'll be OK through uni even if nothing changes. I want to do my best, but I know I won't, I'll just trundle along at my current pace and do "alright".
My main fear is this; after uni there will no longer be anyone pressuring me at all, I'll be fully under my own steam. This scares me because I don't think I'll be able to do anything. I want to work hard but I never have and I don't know how to.
I'm confident in my potential. The things I want, the life I want to live, I truly believe is well within my capabilities; if I could only get myself to do things when I want to do them.
So I just don't know where to go from here, basically.
Besides meds, what has helped you?
What should I try?
The shed-load of waffle below basically describes my symptoms + diagnosis, just for context, if anyone cares:
Since I was 13/14 years old, I've struggled with motivation to do things, and with procrastination in a few areas of my life.
The most noticeable was school work:
Throughout GSCEs, A-levels and now university I would never do homework, leave everything to the very last moment, not revise, miss school days, miss lectures, forget exam dates, miss deadlines etc: all combining to mean I always underperformed (against my own standards). Last year at uni, I didn't attend a single lecture from Christmas to exam period. Throughout school I always managed great results throughout, so teachers and friends assumed I was a slacker and arrogant, and there was no real "problem" to be solved. In reality, I always wanted to do more and try harder; the only thing I wanted to do every day was revise and catch up on lost work. Now in uni, it is becoming increasingly harder to scrape a good grade.
Sleep:
every night I stay awake for hours, doing anything easy (sit on phone, read a book, draw, listen to music), until I begin to fall asleep uncontrollably. There's some mental block, or mental dread of laying in bed waiting to fall asleep. That little period of time, for some reason, cannot happen - I have to do anything else until I'm so exhausted that I will sleep as soon as I close my eyes. This has been a pretty bad ongoing problem in my life so far; for 6 or 7 years now I've been falling asleep pretty consistently from 2am to 6am, regardless of what time I wake up. I'm always tired.
Daily life:
Every morning I delay each tiny task, so: wake up, 20 minutes doing nothing, brush teeth, 10 mins doing nothing, shower, 20 mins doing nothing in the shower, 20 mins doing nothing out the shower, get dressed, spend 5 mins doing nothing in between each item of clothing etc etc etc. This is a daily occurrence for the last few years. It's why I missed most school days, it's why I was 10mins late to work every day, and there's nothing I can do about it. Every day now I wake up and think: "I have to be in uni in 1 hour, the total time of getting ready takes maybe 30 minutes. Let's do it. Just do it, get ready and go. Let's go." But in the back of my mind I know, to an absolute certainty, every day, that I will take 1.5hrs to get ready and I'll miss the first lectures of the day.
It's the exact same feeling, just applied to different situations. I can't describe the feeling. For everything, sleep, work, getting dressed, I just want to DO IT, but I don't. It's simple I just don't do it. And I don't know why.
Since I was 10, and consistently until now, I've had acne and I always picked at it (I'm a fidgeter, everyone in my family is). When I'm trying to sleep or trying to get ready, my mind will block and I'll absent-mindedly just pick at my skin and sometimes I'll do this like I'm in a fucking locked trance for like 45 minutes straight, just tearing my skin apart, all over my back, my shoulders, arms and face. I don't even have bad acne anymore but my skin is all scarred to shit from years of abusing it and there's always scabs and blotches and shit everywhere. And the whole time I'll be saying to myself over and over: "stop it stop it, you're bleeding, you're making yourself look like shit, stop it, just get dressed and leave, just go to sleep, just stop and carry on with your day". But I don't fucking stop. It's horrible I have no fucking control over myself. Often I literally have to slap myself and say "fucking stop" out loud before I'll carry on. The severity of it rises and falls randomly week-in, week-out, but most of the time it's noticeable over my torso and arms, and it's the biggest insecurity I have, I avoid wearing short sleeves as much as I can. This regularly takes over an hour out of my day.
Now, I've always done well academically, and I've never been depressed, so none of this was ever looked at together because on a whole, I've always been generally alright. It was always just, "oh I don't like school", "oh yeah I'm a bad sleeper", "oh I have spots and I fidget", "oh I'm lazy". Anyway. Went to ADHD clinic, and while speaking thoroughly and honestly in depth about everything, from childhood to now, it all kind of fell into place.
This will be vague as I'm not sure exactly what I'm asking for, but here goes. Thanks for reading, if you do
I'm 20 years old, 2nd year of university, and last month I was diagnosed with inattentive ADHD. I'm on day 8 of a 3-week trial prescription for Lisdexamfetamine; it isn't doing anything bad or good yet, but that's all fine, it's only the first week.
My basic thoughts now are:
If meds work, I don't want to have to rely on them.
I want to be able to carry out the simple things that I want to do, without the help of drugs.
I know I'll be OK through uni even if nothing changes. I want to do my best, but I know I won't, I'll just trundle along at my current pace and do "alright".
My main fear is this; after uni there will no longer be anyone pressuring me at all, I'll be fully under my own steam. This scares me because I don't think I'll be able to do anything. I want to work hard but I never have and I don't know how to.
I'm confident in my potential. The things I want, the life I want to live, I truly believe is well within my capabilities; if I could only get myself to do things when I want to do them.
So I just don't know where to go from here, basically.
Besides meds, what has helped you?
What should I try?
The shed-load of waffle below basically describes my symptoms + diagnosis, just for context, if anyone cares:
Since I was 13/14 years old, I've struggled with motivation to do things, and with procrastination in a few areas of my life.
The most noticeable was school work:
Throughout GSCEs, A-levels and now university I would never do homework, leave everything to the very last moment, not revise, miss school days, miss lectures, forget exam dates, miss deadlines etc: all combining to mean I always underperformed (against my own standards). Last year at uni, I didn't attend a single lecture from Christmas to exam period. Throughout school I always managed great results throughout, so teachers and friends assumed I was a slacker and arrogant, and there was no real "problem" to be solved. In reality, I always wanted to do more and try harder; the only thing I wanted to do every day was revise and catch up on lost work. Now in uni, it is becoming increasingly harder to scrape a good grade.
Sleep:
every night I stay awake for hours, doing anything easy (sit on phone, read a book, draw, listen to music), until I begin to fall asleep uncontrollably. There's some mental block, or mental dread of laying in bed waiting to fall asleep. That little period of time, for some reason, cannot happen - I have to do anything else until I'm so exhausted that I will sleep as soon as I close my eyes. This has been a pretty bad ongoing problem in my life so far; for 6 or 7 years now I've been falling asleep pretty consistently from 2am to 6am, regardless of what time I wake up. I'm always tired.
Daily life:
Every morning I delay each tiny task, so: wake up, 20 minutes doing nothing, brush teeth, 10 mins doing nothing, shower, 20 mins doing nothing in the shower, 20 mins doing nothing out the shower, get dressed, spend 5 mins doing nothing in between each item of clothing etc etc etc. This is a daily occurrence for the last few years. It's why I missed most school days, it's why I was 10mins late to work every day, and there's nothing I can do about it. Every day now I wake up and think: "I have to be in uni in 1 hour, the total time of getting ready takes maybe 30 minutes. Let's do it. Just do it, get ready and go. Let's go." But in the back of my mind I know, to an absolute certainty, every day, that I will take 1.5hrs to get ready and I'll miss the first lectures of the day.
It's the exact same feeling, just applied to different situations. I can't describe the feeling. For everything, sleep, work, getting dressed, I just want to DO IT, but I don't. It's simple I just don't do it. And I don't know why.
Since I was 10, and consistently until now, I've had acne and I always picked at it (I'm a fidgeter, everyone in my family is). When I'm trying to sleep or trying to get ready, my mind will block and I'll absent-mindedly just pick at my skin and sometimes I'll do this like I'm in a fucking locked trance for like 45 minutes straight, just tearing my skin apart, all over my back, my shoulders, arms and face. I don't even have bad acne anymore but my skin is all scarred to shit from years of abusing it and there's always scabs and blotches and shit everywhere. And the whole time I'll be saying to myself over and over: "stop it stop it, you're bleeding, you're making yourself look like shit, stop it, just get dressed and leave, just go to sleep, just stop and carry on with your day". But I don't fucking stop. It's horrible I have no fucking control over myself. Often I literally have to slap myself and say "fucking stop" out loud before I'll carry on. The severity of it rises and falls randomly week-in, week-out, but most of the time it's noticeable over my torso and arms, and it's the biggest insecurity I have, I avoid wearing short sleeves as much as I can. This regularly takes over an hour out of my day.
Now, I've always done well academically, and I've never been depressed, so none of this was ever looked at together because on a whole, I've always been generally alright. It was always just, "oh I don't like school", "oh yeah I'm a bad sleeper", "oh I have spots and I fidget", "oh I'm lazy". Anyway. Went to ADHD clinic, and while speaking thoroughly and honestly in depth about everything, from childhood to now, it all kind of fell into place.