Is ADHD really that debilitating?
On another platform a female journalist warned other women not to use menstrual tracking apps.
I worked in a co-op during college that sold very nice paper journals for tracking menstrual cycles. I replied to that thread mentioning that very nice specialized paper journals still exist.
Someone ( a man ) replied back to tell me that ADHD women have enough to deal with these days and proceeded to list all the ways something like that could fail.
I suggested sending emails to one's self along the lines of "update your diary" which someone could then read at home and take care of things.
Since I don't have ADHD my question is if people who do have ADHD really do find it to be that incapacitating?
I know it is an Internet thing to keep replying without a reason, even if it is only out of momentum. I'm wondering if that was the deal in that thread.
It's exhausting. Everything can be a fight some days. It took literal years for me to consistently remember to check for my purse, phone, and keys before I left (I coped in college by just leaving my door open all the time so it didn't lock. Thankfully, I didn't have a roommate so that worked).
My apartment is a wreck. I joke that I lack object permanence because anything I can't see, I tend to forget it exists. Things tend to go moldy in my fridge. If I put something down to go do something else, I often forget about the original thing entirely. A few times, distracted by something else mid task, I left my phone in the fridge. I have trouble with routines that most adults would consider basic.
I have trouble breaking down large tasks into smaller ones. Sometimes, I'll get so overwhelmed by a larger task that I'll end up basically frozen in place and afraid to approach it. I have trouble switching between multiple tasks and dividing time between them. If I don't do little things (like mandatory education modules) immediately, I frequently completely forget about them.
I have impulse control problems. I'll interrupt other people during conversations. I'll unintentionally say things that are rude without realizing, and I'm somewhat compulsively honest, even when a white lie or lying by omission would be a better idea. I tend to babble and can accidentally take over a conversation.
I think I technically qualify as a 'highly successful' person with ADHD. I managed to graduate with a 4 year degree. I've held the same, good job for 5 years, and they seem happy with me. ADHD is debilitating.
As for period tracking. I do it on my fitbit app, since I open that frequently anyway, I can't imagine if it was on paper that I would remember it existed enough for it to be useful.
This sentence describes my masters thesis experience to a T, ADHD really made me ineffective for weeks at times.
The shame that goes with it is often not talked about, wildly misunderstood and affects us horribly. :/
Yup. I developed an anxiety disorder to cope đ. I live my life by the anxiety/productivity curve and occasionally have complete breakdowns when I spend too much time on the far side of it...
I think I did the same, but it never got bad enough to get an anxiety diagnosis. I realized after like 3 weeks after I got my ADHD medication that I was less anxious than I had been my entire life. What I thought was 0 anxiety was actually quite high anxiety, and my new baseline was lower than I thought it was possible to be.
If you don't mind me asking, what medication are you taking?
Atomoxetine. Brand name is Straterra. It is somewhat unique as far as ADHD medication. Most meds are stimulants, and as such are regulated pretty heavily (no prescription refills, random pill counts, limited availability). Atomoxetine has no restrictions besides being prescription. I currently have a single prescription for 1 entire year, which I needed because I am studying in France for a year. It is also available as a generic, so it is relatively cheap.
It is originally a failed test for an antidepressant. It is an SNRI (selective norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor). Stimulant meds provide symptom relief for a few hours, or up to a day. Straterra doesnât provide full effectiveness until you take it for a month or more continuously. I havenât taken a stimulant, but compared to what I read online I much prefer Straterra. The stimulants seem much better at reducing symptoms when they are active, but are useless when they fade off. My meds are less effective, but provide symptom relief continuously. Disordered sleep is a common comorbidity with ADHD, and I definitely noticed my sleep improving after starting the meds. The only symptoms I encountered were increased blood pressure, which I fixed with regular exercise (exercise also happens to be one of the best ADHD medications), and nausea in the morning when I take my pill. The nausea has not been too bad as long as I eat something.
I would highly recommend considering it. I canât convey how much better it is to not have the government worried about you abusing the drugs you need to function. That being said, if you are transitioning from a stimulant, give it time, figure out your new normal, and then evaluate if it is worth it vs your previous meds. Atomoxetine is somewhat divisive, and doesnât work well for everyone. It isnât recommended for anyone under 18 (risk of suicidal ideation), and is even banned in France where I am studying right now (itâs legal in some of the other European countries though).
Idk about you, but I can hardly do any task for very long without deviating into other tasks. At work, itâs like Iâm rolling a dozen boulders forward inch by inch but never the same boulder all at once. Iâll be doing some mundane task around the house and take several detours into other tasks before they all get done. Thankfully Iâm medicated so things do get done, but itâs the opposite of linear.
When I'm just messing around on my computer, that's often the case for me too -- I'll go from reading one reddit thread, to replying to a comment here, to checking messages with friends, to that one weird Wikipedia article... that is, unless I'm hyperfocused on some book or whatever. It also makes things like cleaning difficult because I'll get distracted doing some other task that needs to be done, and then feel frustrated at the end that I've exhausted myself and not finish what I originally set out to do.
At my job, that doesn't really work, and when I try to switch tasks, it can get rough. Programming takes having a lot of context in your head to keep going, so when I got put in a position late last year where I needed to move between two projects a lot, it completely wrecked me, because it took me so long to start again after I had to switch off one project to go to the other. After that breakdown, I got some management assistance to time box the two projects better, which still didn't work perfectly (code review, bug fixes and the like still needed to happen), but brought it down to tolerable.
I really connect with you on these two points. I've never thought of it as compulsive honesty before, but I really connect with that term.
I also would qualify as 'highly successful' with ADHD. I too hold a 4 year degree (which took me 6 years to get) and I have held the same good job for 11 years now. But in hindsight, un-diagnosed until 2 weeks ago, I picked my major based on what I knew I could handle, not what I actually wanted to learn and do. I dropped my minor of theater in college because it was too much for me. I had to drop my latin class because I was going to fail it and tank my GPA, even though it was the only elective I chose to take because I really wanted to learn it. I have never been able to learn skills that I have tried to learn for decades because I can not remember the content well enough (namely programming). I have picked my career based on what could hold my focus well enough to not get in trouble constantly, but it's not anything I actually enjoy. I have turned down promotions because being held responsible for other people's work make me viscerally angry and miserable.
I have been able to lead a good life because I have reasonable high intelligence, and I am willing to brute force things that I cannot otherwise achieve. But if I had been diagnosed and medicated as a child, I am very certain that I would have made different choices in my life that would have let me be more of the person who I always wanted to be, but always felt like I couldn't achieve being.
Ha, that's funny given I gravitated towards programming because I found it so engaging. There's not many activities with feedback loops as fast as running a program and immediately seeing whether it succeeded or failed. It can be incredibly easy to hyperfocus on. I think it helps that I was able to take a class in high school that got me through most of the basic syntax memorization stage. Then, once you know your first language, just about everyone one after (so long as it uses the same paradigm) is a quarter the difficulty.
It's funny as an adult to realize that there's a category for students like I was -- twice exceptional. It was a weird dichotomy; being a special education student taking honors and AP classes, but I genuinely needed the Resource Room to keep me /actually doing/ the work for those classes. As it was, I did get overwhelmed a few times. I'm thankful I was able to receive those services.
As for medication leading to different choices, consider not being so sure of that if you can. I tried Concerta as a pre-teen and almost immediately went off it because of side effects (I didn't eat for 3 days, and nobody told me that I would need to force it, so I just felt awful). I did a longer stint on the same medication shortly before going off to college (it made me feel like a zombie, but didn't make my calculus class feel any easier). The Strattera I started early this year is helping, but it's not a cure all, and the side effects sucked for the first few months -- I don't think I would have been able to stick through them as a kid. When I start to 'what if' and regret choices/failures, it helps me to think of one of my favorite Star Trek TNG episodes, "Tapestry"; I highly recommend it if you haven't seen it.
edit: added another point about Strattera
Right there with you. I didn't get diagnosed until my mid-40's, and a lot of what followed was mentally coming to terms with what Might Have Been. Life has been really hard. It's a damn good thing I'm intelligent, because I've been able to cobble together workarounds, something that looks like a life from the outside, but it has been exhausting, and without a lot of joy.
I mean, I'm glad I finally Named the Demon, so to speak, and having medications now helps a lot. It's not a fix, of course, but they make possible things that weren't, and for that, I am grateful. Still sad for lost time.
As someone who was diagnosed and medicated as a child, don't be so certain of that. I still could never finish my 4 year degree (granted, there were outside life factors on top of the ADHD that led to that as well, I'm not going to pin that solely on my ADHD). I still have an extremely difficult time with executive function, my place is a disaster, I work in a grocery store in my thirties, I still use massive anxiety as a coping mechanism to get shit done, I have few to no hobbies because I just can't stick to something to get good enough to be satisfied, and frankly, I still don't know myself all that well.
Getting diagnosed and medicated early was to make me manageable for others, it was never focused on helping me self-actualize. That seems to be what the focus of childhood ADHD treatment was in the 90s/early 00s. So long story short, there's nothing that says you would be in a better position had you been diagnosed earlier, and there's a chance you could be in a worse one for it.
The attitudes that people have towards those of us with ADHD are even worse when you know exactly what it is that causes the behaviors/symptoms, and any attempt at asking for tweaks to make systems work better for your ADHD are met with "stop using your disorder as an excuse, you have pills for that". I think that oddly enough I might have been better off not being diagnosed till adulthood, when ADHD treatment science improved farther than just pills and tough love.
I think, ultimately, ADHD is most likely to be caught when it starts interfering with your ability to succeed by conventional measures at school and work due to its symptoms. As a result, a lot of the people who get diagnosed as adults went undiscovered for so long because other circumstances were masking their ADHD symptoms (though biases on the part of the people screening for ADHD also play a role). That's why a lot of these people end up getting diagnosed after their life circumstances change in a way that makes them lose a lot of support they used to have or where their old strategies don't work anymore (like moving on to higher education or moving out of one's parents' place). But if you lack enough support and strategies for circumventing your symptoms even from a young age, a diagnosis is likely to arise sooner because authority figures are trying to figure out why you aren't succeeding.
This is something some of my books on Adult ADHD point out has also been the case for many successful adult men in the past who exhibited what would now probably be classified as ADHD symptoms -- they often had wives and/or secretaries who were handling the bulk of the executive function tasks for them. In this context, it makes sense that they suffered far fewer of the downsides of living with ADHD in the modern world and far more of what some perceive to be "the benefits." The context and support network around you is a HUGE part of how difficult it is to succeed with ADHD.
This comment feels a bit rambly and like I'm not quite making my point clearly, so sorry if it comes off that way. Hopefully my point is at least a little clear.
Ooof you can google the link between ADHD, anxiety, and depression and how they all get intermingled (https://www.additudemag.com/adhd-anxiety-depression-the-diagnosis-puzzle-of-related-conditions/)
I have been diagnosed with depression my whole life since my teens. I recently learned within the last couple of years that women can even have ADHD. My mum still doesn't think ADHD exists and that I'm just unreliable and not very committed to things, ouch.
I have also felt shamed by a (female) doctor for not tracking my period; although I have always attempted to track it, I always fall off the bandwagon. Currently, I am not tracking it and am trying to skip my periods on birth control, which is another struggle and big pressure - remembering to take my birth control every day. The thought of tracking something (even like habits or drinking water every day) makes me sweat.
These three conditions have severity levels and are exacerbated by stressors including lack of sleep, poor diet, and external events. So yes, ADHD can be debilitating to some people more than others, and it can even depend on the day.
There are days my brain just does not do what I want it to do. To me, part of the solution is recognizing that fighting my brain on this, or trying to force it to behave a certain way, is only going to cause damage and frustration. It's better to change direction â do some exercise or house chores or a different kind of task. Sometimes it helps break the block, sometimes the day is just lost.
OP, I think it was very kind of you to try to help by suggesting a paper solution. In an era where the US doesn't have any interest in digital privacy laws and may soon use such info to target people, paper really is the most practical solution. That said, a digital reminder is hilarious to me because I would see, forget, remember, forget. I do this with my alarm to take out the bin before trash pickup, and then I'm (hopefully) jolted awake by the sound of the truck nearing my house.
I did not know that it was once believed that women couldn't have ADHD.
Would sending an email to yourself to remind yourself of something not work for you?
It goes like this:
Sends email to self - ah great a reminder, I'll do that.
Does not do that
Sees notification Shit I gotta do that.
Gets interrupted, does not do that.
Sometimes manages to do that.
Ha, that sounds like me. I have learned if i want to remember to do something, I have to do it when I'm reminded. I can easily forget in 5 minutes (I have not been diagnosed with ADHD but I do wonder sometimes).
Oof, yup thatâs exactly it. Once a week or so I end up doing the walk of shame through my notifications to clear them all out â piles of reminders just like this that:
My partner often asks âwhy not snooze tasks so you donât forget them?â and the answer is that in the moment I genuinely believe I am engaged with the task and donât need to snooze it. Itâs not like âlet me snooze this for five minutes âcause I got that car window reflection coming up thatâs going to distract meâ.
And if I do snooze it, I'll snooze it for hours. I'm an hour in to my med reminder right now. They're not on my person so I can't take them this second. We'll see whether I make it back to my desk without getting distracted.
Preach. Havenât taken my (non-essential) evening meds in WEEKS đ¤Łđ đđđ
I made it today!
Not the person you replied to, but an email reminder isnât necessarily going to work, since it is separated from the thing that needs doing.
Between getting the email and going to update a journal, any number of things could happen as distractions and then updating gets forgotten. Even marking an email as âunreadâ until you do the thing might not help, since you might forget to mark it as unread, or forgot to then mark it as read, or still get distracted by something between marking it as read and updating the journal. Or get the email, but not have the physical or mental energy to go update the journal.
I have so many un-completed reminders.
I do not have ADHD, but I set alarms on my phone/watch when thereâs something important I need to do. I make a guess as to the proper time. When it goes off, I either:
Reminders with times have never worked for me.
I have an aggressive med reminder app that pops up every five minutes if I don't snooze for longer. Almost 4 hours later my Adderall is in the drawer.
So yeah.
I literally stack my ritalin bottle on top of my inhaler that I have to take in the morning, and even then it's not a sure thing. Ask me how good a job I do with my thyroid on an empty stomach half an hour before anything else, too!
Look, apparently carrying a pill loose in your pocket does not create some sort of emotional support pill placebo effect either.
Life is really unfair
Honestly, this is it right here.
Our reward systems are different. If the reward does not hit for me right then and there I am NOT going to do the thing.
Even shit like resetting a password, I can get distracted very quickly and easily, or as I describe it, the barrier to complete it is just too high. Like I am already irritated or over whatever I was trying to do by resetting the password. Poof, gone.
I struggle to even reward myself for doing things in attempts to reinforce normal habits.
Dont forget to add the mixture of us forgetting things quickly to the mix. Making for many, many not-so-funny pingpong dynamics of forgetting and struggling with fixing shit we forgot.
The social issues that stem for it are horrible.
I personally think forgetting things easily is legit because I just donât care about the thing*. It goes back to motivation/reward, for me.
Brain goes âremember this log in ID for this website you just signed up forâ literally right after âwhat ID I donât care about that anymoreâ**.
It feels so frustratingly annoying ! Brain, do the things I am asking you to do god damn it.
And so god help me if someone says âif itâs important, youâll remember it laterâ.
*and distractibility because I cannot ignore things(sights, thoughts, sounds).
**impatience is the Bain of my existence. âWaitingâ would certainly be the deepest circle of hell in my Danteâs inferno.
Combining it with the thing that needs doing also doesn't always work. I put a little cardboard basket in the laundry basket that says "please feed me pocket trash" and my husband still forgets to rake the receipts out of his pockets and I end up picking little bits of paper off of all of our clothes.
I try too be chill about it because I know he really can't help it but it's genuinely super annoying.
Have you tried putting googly eyes on it?
I'm wondering if personifying it might not help. (It might not but at least it would have googly eyes either way)
Haha, it's not tall enough to be able to see the googly eyes. Making it funny helps for a little while, but eventually anything that stays in the same place for long enough becomes invisible.
Oh for sure, sometimes that whole "humans can pair bond with anything" effect helps me is all. As do googly eyes
That just gave me a brilliant idea. I need to find a small, hollow animal figure with an open mouth.
I have a ceramic salt frog (like a salt pig or cellar but it's a frog with an open mouth) that I thought of instantly
That would be perfect! That would work for months!
not my frog but an example!
I wonder if I could get a little motion activated audio player that would say something like "please, I'm dying of starvation. I need to eat your pocket trash" whenever he opens the closet door.
If you do, please take a video :D
I lived with a partner that, could not for the life of her, ever put socks in a hamper. It did not matter where we moved the hamper or the shoe-taking off area or adding a bench to sit when de-socking, it just never happened.
The socks would often be right next to the hamper, too!
She was not formally diagnosed with ADHD...but I know it when I see it! lol.
Apparently I have obsessions about socks, since this example is, somehow also about socks. It reminds me of this Family Feud Episode.
I use an app called Due for reminders. I have it set up to send me a new notification every 5 minutes until I dismiss it or set it to a later time (I never dismiss it unless I have already done it). I have a daily reminder every morning to take my medication. I have been doing the same thing for a year and a half without change. Last Wednesday I forgot to take my medication. I even spent the whole day in my room playing games (Factorio), so my meds were literally 3 feet away all day. I only noticed on Thursday when I saw the hundreds of notifications on my phone.
So yeah, sending me an email isnât going to work. However it does work for some people with ADHD. I had a boss/coworker at my last job who used her email as her to do list. She didnât have a diagnosis, but she definitely had ADHD. For her, the only way to get her to do something was send her an email.
If you have meet one person with ADHD, you have meet one person with ADHD (same is true for almost all mental conditions). ADHD manifests itself so differently in each person that itâs impossible to generalize something like âemail reminders are bad for people with ADHDâ. My mom has pretty severe ADHD (undiagnosed, but definitely there). She has decades of different coping mechanisms that she has learned and habituated. Many of these are actively harmful to my sister and I with regards to our own ADHD diagnoses. We both have had to unlearn these habits she tried to teach us and replace them with new ones.
How so? Would you care to give an example or two of a bad ADHD compensatory habit?
The biggest harmful coping mechanism I learned was anxiety. My mom (not diagnosed) was constantly worried we were going to be late, look disheveled, get in trouble at work, or school. I internalized this, and used anxiety as my driving force to do everything. I thought I had to complete my work as quickly as possible, without breaks, or I would get fired. I thought I had to lie on mental health questionnaires or my life would be made hell by continuous meetings, lessons and obligations. I thought I had to wash all of the dishes every day, or my wife wouldn't love me. I had to make sure I showered as soon as I woke up or others would be offended and dislike me. For decades it gave me passable skills to come off as a fairly normal but otherwise forgetful person who could just make jokes about never remembering people's names. I people pleased to make sure they were happy with me, then eventually got enough time to be left alone and dissociate. Until eventually it finally got to be too much, and I started having regular anxiety attacks, and I sought professional help. It took almost a year of working away at the anxiety to realize that as I was dealing with it, I was getting less successful at completing tasks on time and doing chores. And then there is the evidence that living in a state of heightened anxiety is bad for your physical health.
The second biggest one is avoidance, and lowering expectations. I have passed up promotions at work because I felt they would overwhelm me. I chose not to take on projects because I know I will fail at them and feel bad. I picked a college and major that was easy for me so I wouldn't have to struggle. I avoid giving presents because it means I will get fewer presents, and then I don't have to feel bad when I forget to thank someone or reciprocate toward them.
I feel for you. My wife is also a habitual people-pleaser and it's super bad not just for her health.
As for gift giving, I have boycotted Christmas gifts for years and my wife has finally gotten on board as well couple years back. We actually tell people not to give us gifts, avoid giving gifts for Christmas and it saves us a ton of anxiety. It's one of the most screwed up "traditions" people invented.
When we receive gifts nowadays, we specifically solicit them beforehand and name the occasion, but also accept any welcome freely offered gifts in general, like an excess slow cooker when somebody received two for their wedding or unused adjustable bed slats. We also give stuff away freely outside the occasions just to help people out when we can or when we no longer need something.
It's also so much nicer to be able to reject a gift, than to have it forced on you.
Sure! The best example is masking, but thatâs a complicated topic, so Iâll start with a simpler example.
Have you ever heard the advice âif a task takes less than 1 minute to do, just do it nowâ? Often with some variation of the time threshold. Many people gave me that advice growing up. As I became independent, I tried to follow it because itâs pretty logical advice. About a year ago, after my ADHD diagnosis, I decided to ignore that advice. My new personal guideline is if a task takes less than a few minutes, you can do it or not, it doesnât really matter either way. The problem with the original advice is when I fail it brews self loathing. I am failing at the most basic parts of human existence just because I am lazy. But that isnât true, and that isnât a helpful mindset. With my modified advice, if I fail do, for example, take the trash out of my car, I can forgive myself since it doesnât matter. Unexpectedly I actually got better at doing these small tasks when I gave myself permission to not do them.
Now for masking. This is pretty hard to understand if you have never had to do it yourself. I never understood it until I realized I had been masking my entire life. For us neurodivergent people, our brains donât function like the rest of the world. It isnât necessarily better or worse than neurotypical people (people without a mental disorder; it sounds like you are neurotypical). The problem is the neurotypical world expects everyone to be neurotypical. So neurodivergent people are encouraged to hide their neurodivergent traits and behave like a neurotypical person. Hiding the core of your being for every moment of every day is exhausting and very mentally unhealthy. My mom has a coping method that involves heavily masking some of her traits and not masking some other traits. None of this was explicit, because she isnât diagnosed and I failed to get a diagnosis as a child (that was some bullshit, and screwed me up for much of my life, but thatâs a different story). She never told me to mask, or even that I was different than some people and might need to mask, but through watching her growing up I learned to mask. She handles masking quite well, and it is successful for her. But for me and my sister, it has been incredibly harmful. I got much better mentally when I stopped masking almost completely.
I hope that helps! I want to add that (assuming you are neurotypical) you are way more empathetic than the majority of neurotypicals simply because you are willing to accept that people might be different and are interested enough to spark and engage this conversation. If more people were like you, the world would be a much better place. Let me know if you have any more questions!
As someone who takes medication for ADHD, if you struggle to consistently take your medication (as I know many people with ADHD do), set many timers. I have an alarm for 6, 7 and 8, just to make sure that I take it when at least one of the alarms go off. Also always sleep the alarm when it goes off until you take the medication, eventually I usually get annoyed being interrupted and go take the medication.
If you struggle to remember if you took the medication, I would write the days of the week on the packaging of the drugs with a sharpie. Then if you miss a day you can know, and it helps to prevent overdosing by accident. I also find it easier (therefore Iâm more likely to be bothered to do it) than those physical drug planners, but do whatever you find easiest
I'll second that it's weird to champion "women with ADHD" (and only women with ADHD) in this situation, particularly from a (assuming based on the context) cis dude.
That said, women with ADHD, and depression and plenty of other executive dysfunction related things do have it hard enough. I'd encourage folks that need an app to track menstruation to use a more generic self-care tracking app and only track how often they eat grapes or something else. Or, throw a calendar on the fridge that can be erased, trashed, or whatever works for them.
It is incredibly unfair that we cannot have privacy in our medical care or safety in our data storage, or any of those things. That is not the fault of the fancy paper notebook/calendars.
"Incapacitating" depends. Unmedicated I'd probably get fired for missing deadlines. Medicated I still don't get everything done at home. I don't remember to do things like "make daily notes of anything" without app reminders because my brain doesn't form habits. And pre-apps, I didn't know when my last cycle was. Still don't, but I don't use an app to track it.
There is a bunch of privacy-friendly open-source apps for android. Install GrapheneOS, install all Fossify applications, Firefox mobile with uBlock Origin, get NeoStore and you are all set. It's not as nice as in the corpo-land, but it gets the job done. The only issue left is sharing calendars. Oh and you can't pay with your phone because corps enjoy bullying you.
I sync my documents using SyncThing between my phone and my computers, it works pretty well. Including
todo.txtwhen I feel like trying to get organized.By the way, GrapheneOS does not give Play Store any extra privileges related to managing your files, so unless you keep your data in an app from Play Store or allow access to an app from Play Store to all files, Google can't touch them.
And you obviously shouldn't use anything else than PIN to lock your phone. Especially not any kind of biometrics.
I use Android, but most Americans do not. Even though I do, I'm not installing a new OS and all new apps. Never mind the ADHD of it all.
This sort of advice is fine for tech oriented folks, and for power users but it isn't really helpful for the average user, especially again, since a huge share of Americans use iOS.
I speak about safety and data storage and privacy and healthcare and particularly speaking about government regulation of both of those things. Something that America has found to be unimportant and a very frustrating way.
It is a choice, though. Using a computer you do not control with an untrusted software vendor who will not hesitate to incriminate you and/or sell your personal data for their own gain is obviously problematic as your and mainstream morals depart. iOS users will learn this the hard way eventually.
I believe that the situation for privacy-conscious average user who wishes to venture outside the walled gardens is much better than it was 2 or 4 years ago.
As for healthcare privacy, the situation is pretty complex. It would be immensely beneficial for healthcare professionals, insurers and patients to have well-structured, accurate data. It would literally save not just time, but lives. The problem is that under our current economical/political regime the benefits would probably not outweigh the
riskscertainties associated withpotentialabuse of said data. I am not talking just about persecution, but also about insurers blaming poor health on patients without capacity to do better.Practically, the advice just isn't useful for most Americans and thus most people dealing with this issue currently is what I'm saying. It's not wrong, but it's not useful to the person just looking for a cycle tracking solution. They may find out in time, or not, but it's still not helpful.
And yes, if we had strong protections and regulations for our privacy in healthcare and our data it'd be great for healthcare providers to have all this data we could provide. It's just not, like you said.
Debilitating? Well, habits are harder to make and easier to break, unless they center around dopamine production. And task completion does not generate dopamine production.
I am always surprised when I step outside and it is raining, because checking the weather is not and cannot be part of my morning routine. Similar with having a daily to-do list, because checking it cannot be part of a routine. Many of us have workarounds â I put my to-do notebook somewhere where I will see it without needing to seek it out, and it's chartreuse so I DO see it... most days.
But the things that can be done automatically by NTs need to be done intentionally every time for those with ADHD, which takes time, focus, and mental energy every time.
I "solved" the weather thing by adding it to my daily "good morning" routine on my phone - it's also part of my "good night" routine." I am often still surprised as I don't always remember to start the routine each morning but I sometimes know the temperature!
I incorporated a bunch of similar stuff like that into Routines on my Alexa devices that have helped me tremendously. I used to really struggle to wake up in the morning, and never knew what day it was or what the weather was ever going to be. Here's my setup, for anyone that wants to do something similar:
When -> You say, "Alexa, goodnight"
Alexa will ->
Lights : Power OFF (turns off all my smart lights, in case I forgot to before going to bed)
Tell current time
Custom : 'Alexa, set alarm' (which will prompt it to ask me what time to set a morning alarm for)
When -> Alarm is dismissed : Only if -> Every day 6:00am - 11:00am (so it doesn't trigger after every alarm)
Alexa will ->
'Wake up light' : Power ON
(I have a 10k lux Verilux light pointed directly at my bed, which is so bright I can't ignore it and go back to sleep)
Tell current time
Tell today's date
Report Weather
Custom : 'Alexa, set alarm 15 minutes'
(automatically sets another alarm in case I somehow do fall back asleep, which is thankfully happening way more infrequently these days thanks to sticking to these Routines)
My Goodnight routine turns off the bedroom light, tells me the weather tomorrow, warns me if battery is low, turns me on DND and lowers my audio volume.
I have my light start turning on in and getting brighter starting at 6 with my first alarm, and then the good morning routine tells me the weather, turns off the DND, adjusts my audio volume, tells me if my battery is low.... It's pretty similar but it plays news at the end
Yeah, I used to have my bedroom nightstand lights slowly get brighter at a certain time too, but I found the blast of the Verilux light directly into my face was way more effective at actually getting me up. And it can't be adjusted in brightness, since it's just attached to a basic smart plug, so ON/OFF only. It's not the most pleasant thing to wake up to, but I really do need something that harsh and jarring to get me up in the morning, otherwise I am only half-awake after I dismiss my alarm and can too easily fall back asleep again. :P
I've never had a car until 6 months ago, which pretty much coincided with getting a job I need to drive to (public transport is 4x as long).
I've driven that car to and from work, up to 5 times per week.
Every. Single. Day. I end up in traffic.
I've still never checked the 'traffic radar' my country religiously maintains. Logically, I know I should check it so I can decide to leave earlier or later, my work doesn't mind what time I arrive at all.
But still, every. single. day. Total suprise-pickachu when I'm stuck in traffic again...
This same thing happens with public transport I'm afraid. I'm always either late or SUPER early, because I either don't compensate at all for potential delays and missed connections, or I compensate too much.
Yes. Wait But Why's procrastination posts really hammer home some of the most debilitating aspects. While they don't explicitly mention ADHD, the two have a comorbidity and many ADHD people also suffer with debilitating procrastination. Imagine never being able to accomplish anything important unless in an emergency-level panic mindset.
The real reason to not use these anymore is because Project 2025 calls for creating a national menstruation registry using their data.
Edit:
While I've learned this is not directly so (well other than Trump doing so for migrants), Republicans have been taking steps to tank efforts to protect menstruation app data from search warrants, which is a massive problem when they're continually talking about prosecuting "abortion tourism," as well as requiring documenting when somebody has multiple abortions.
To answer your question:
Yes.
Within the comments here, I think one of the most salient points is the cycle of shame included with the ineffectiveness of help suggestions. There is a lot of distress from being constantly invalidated as a neurodivergent person living in a neurotypical world.
Let me explain. People, out of the goodness of their hearts, will suggest umpteen suggestions(which they think are solutions) of how to "fix your life" or if you "just did this" (which is usually some form of setting alarms, reminders, emails, calendars, etc.). They will say this works for them or it works for someone else in their life and act like this simple act will solve all your problems, meanwhile ignoring that these things "just don't work" for you. It makes you question your own sanity and ask yourself "why isn't this working for me?" When it inevitably doesn't work. It puts a lot of blame on the person for it not working since it "works for everyone else".
This leads to masking for several reasons: don't want to be suggested to again, don't want to let the other person down and make them feel bad that their solution didn't work(rejection sensitivity and people pleasing is a big part of ADHD for some people, as well), stupidly believing that "maybe this time it will work". So on top of you trying to figure out what system you're going to use to fix whatever original problem you had (let's say in this scenario, you hate filling out lab reports), you are also pretending to use their stupid system to make you/them feel better(set up notifications and reminder alarms and to do lists, sign up for an app, whatever). The lab reports pile up, you don't have a good system, but you are completing them to not look like a failure/it's your job, AND you are performing a show by using their suggested system.
tl;dr - ADHD is exhausting because of the constant masking, and being not understood, coupled with constant self blame and shame. You try to fit in and often miss the mark and thus you end up not wanting to engage at all with those activities and avoid them. Lastly,you don't even get to have the things you want/the help you want on top of all of that (it's still excruciating to you to fill out the lab reports and nothing is coming to relieve that).
PS. I applaud you for going out of your way to try to understand a struggle for a cause that does not really "directly" affect you! Thank you for your efforts and caring!
Thank you for explaining so clearly why OP got the response they did. Life these days is both bigger and smaller than it used to be, thanks to the internet. We're all starting to become more aware of how our words affect other people, but even if one has the best of intentions, one can and will fall into conversational pitfalls. If it's a conversation between friends, it's much easier, on that individual and personal level, to explain how it feels to hear it. No blame is assigned, because the receiver of the advice knows that the initiator only needs to learn a new concept of courtesy which they, through no fault of their own, had previously been unaware. But if Anonymous Person #1000 offers advice which is well-meaning but demonstrates that lack of awareness, it's easy enough for it to feel like the straw that broke the camel's back.
@BeanBurrito, am I right in reading that ADHD was never brought up in the discussion before your suggestion of paper journals? If so, I think the response you got was completely unwarranted (from your description it seems more aggressive than explanatory, although it's hard to tell). Your followup suggestion of emails is a bit trickier of a gambit, as I think you may have now realized. I as well appreciate you looking to understand further. Thank you for doing so. (By the way, tact is not my strong suit; I badly would like to be good at it, and I try very hard, but I just want to say explicitly that my purpose in writing this out is not to make you feel bad in any way.)
For the record, this applies to any disability or medical condition. "Have you tried" and "you should just" are phrases that we all, unfortunately, become very familiar with and very tired of hearing. It's along the same sort of lines as meeting someone and saying, "You're very tall!" They hear it all the time, because it's the first thing anyone thinks of on meeting them.* If a solution immediately comes to mind upon learning of someone else's long-suffered difficulty, then they've likely already tried every variation on it years ago. When we realize this, I think it's like a little hack for unlocking a bit more empathy that we're able to employ.
Â
* I did this to a good friend of mine on meeting them in person for the first time. I knew they were surprisingly tall; I knew they got comments on it all the time; and yet the first words I blurted were, "You are tall!" They forgave me, since we are such good friends, but it's definitely part of my cringe reel. :-) And I have worked since on attempting not to let my first thought run my mouth in similar situations.
Edit: Minor rewording.
I think plenty of people have made the deeper points, but I would like to point out that in one of the books I have by a clinician who specializes in Adult ADHD, he specifically recommends that women with ADHD get on longer-term contraception (like the ring or an IUD) rather than the pill, since it's so easy to forget to take it. And from my personal experience, remembering to track my period (even with an app; I'm too young to have ever done it without one) was more of a pain than remembering to take the pill every night.
Implant and zero tracking for me, I would recommend the same for anyone that can, especially before Jan 20
Personally, I tried the Nuva Ring once, and remembering to change it monthly was definitely much harder than incorporating the pill into my daily bedtime routine (which includes brushing teeth and taking meds), which is pretty hardcoded into me by now. :-) YMMV!
To be fair, the book that recommended this was written by a man!
I also find the nightly pill easier, but I take one with both estrogen and progestin included so there's more leeway with taking it at somewhat different times each night. Apparently the progestin-only pill is much stricter with timing, which I'd never be able to do.
As a male with ADHD, I have to wonder why a man is making this point/contributing to this discussion?
To answer your question about ADHD as a whole, it is a spectrum. Some have it worse than others, and everyone has days that are worse than other days. I have days that are dysfunctional where I get next to nothing done, even though I want to. Other times, if the thing is engaging I find that I have to tell myself to stop working on the productive thing I am working on because I need to go to bed. An email reminder may just cause me guilt and shame as I see the notification but do not have the energy to do it. Or, it may be the thing to actually remind me to do the task.
As a woman with ADHD, I am, for once, not upset that a man made this point. It's nice that he was sticking up for women with ADHD and understood that women overall have enough to worry about.
We're all human, my friend. There are definitely times where one person should defer to another, but being empathetic to other's struggles is a good thing. I've had women stick up for me as a man, and it was such an unexpectedly warm feeling to have someone give a fig about me and my problems, you know?
It's more that to me this felt like a weird tangent - yes women (and anyone tracking periods) with ADHD have enough to deal with, but stopping using the apps is about protecting themselves. They have to make their own choices about it, but the alternative if one is trying to stay safer is paper, using other apps but without making it clear what you're tracking or not tracking at all. None of these are hurdle free and it's super unfair societally... But OP wasn't trying to fix someone's ADHD but offer an alternative to the "don't use this" app.
It's a weird angle to jump in with, and maybe I'm misunderstanding the conversation as laid out here. We only have the external POV after all. Maybe it was well intentioned but missed the mark. (Also I don't love falling into the trap of just referring to women, other genders menstruate)
Idk it's the internet so people misfire all the time.
tbf, I struggle WAY harder with stuff on paper than I do with apps. I struggled a non-zero amount to remember to use apps, but I constantly lose or at least misplace notebooks and papers. So I can see why it might make sense to bring up ADHD women as a counterpoint to the idea of using a physical notebook or calendar, as there's definitely a potential subset there for whom tracking that way will never work.
I also don't think a physical notebook or calendar actually solves the fear of your cycle being used as evidence, since those things aren't safe from a warrant either. But I suppose it might be harder for cops to get a warrant for your physical belongings than for the digital records of whoever runs your period app? I don't know enough about getting a warrant to say. Emailing yourself definitely isn't safer, though, at least not on that front.
Sure, it's not easier for me either, but that's more a response to the initial "don't use these apps" than a "these paper options exist" in my mind. It's also why I suggested a fridge calendar or tracking something else with an app that you may do monthly ish. Coincidentally.
Like I said this is all guessing really as we just don't know exactly how it went down.
If anyone uses a physical copy, keeping it around later is also a bad idea. But it's a lot easier for them to get your digital records without you knowing you're being investigated. And easier to destroy physical copies.
A lot of this happened when the two women in Oklahoma, a mom and her daughter. Mom was sentenced to two years in prison for giving daughter illegal abortion pills at 29 weeks. Daughter was sentenced to jail time and probation for "improper handling of a human body." Authorities got their Facebook messenger posts and I think a friend ratted them out. It highlighted the dangers of tech solutions.
This is why these conversations need to be individual, private and in person whenever possible.
Yeah, I think the only real advantage to physical copies in that type of situation is that they're easier for you to destroy and perhaps harder for cops to find. But anywhere you store this data is dangerous if cops can get it with a warrant. I think as of now, some period tracker apps are probably safer than any other digital option if they encrypt any data you send them and have other forms of security, because other sources of information on the matter (like your email or text messages) won't do that. It all comes down to how easy it is for cops to get that information from them with a warrant, but that's different per app. The biggest risk is always going to be other unencrypted digital communications, like Facebook Messenger or email.
Most period apps allow you to set a separate security code, and afaik that means if you set that up cops can't use your fingerprints or face ID to get into that app without a warrant. I don't really track my period anymore because I no longer get it sufficiently often for it to be worth the trouble, but the app I've got right now, Euki, is very privacy focused -- they only store your data locally and allow you to turn on automatic periodic data deletion. There's also a specific PIN that will show fake data if you enter it, in case someone asks you to show it to them. The app also contains advice on how to keep other sources of information secure as well as links to legal resources. Having a dedicated app like this allows them to include security measures that wouldn't really work or make sense for other solutions.
I originally found Euki by looking at Mozilla's privacy and security guide for period and ovulation trackers, which does a very good job of laying out the privacy concerns with various apps, including pointing out when their Terms and Conditions say they'll share information with law enforcement in addition to more common privacy concerns like "are they selling your data to advertisers?" I think sharing resources like this is more practical under the current circumstances when it comes to safety than giving blanket "no period tracker" advice tbqh.
The time when this information can be used against you, as of right now, is if you need an abortion. If you keep the information physically, you can destroy it as soon as you realize that you might need one, before the law could even possibly be involved, and you can be certain that all traces and evidence that it ever existed are gone completely. I know very little about data storage, so I may be wrong about this, but I think if you keep a digital record there may be evidence that you had data at one point to be deleted, even after you've deleted it. Also if there's evidence of when it was deleted, that could be used as evidence in and of itself. The ashes of a notebook that you've flushed down the drain definitely can't be dated in any way useful to this type of investigation. It's also much more difficult for users to be certain that their data has been deleted, especially if they aren't tech-savvy.
It seems to me like both have their ups and downs depending on what the user is comfortable with and their own capabilities, and the best solution is to offer as clear and comprehensive a guide as possible to the benefits and drawbacks of each method.
That's correct. Especially if you're not directly in control of that data there could be multiple different reasons for that data to stick around in ways that could make it accessible to law enforcement.
I agree that these are potential problems (and I'm well aware of the time when this information can be used, that's been the context throughout this entire conversation). The data deletion my app does is automatically done, on a schedule, if you turn it on. This mitigates the problem you describe as a risk from a legal perspective. They'll get about as much from "I set my app to delete my data every month" as they would from finding destroyed remnants of your physical journal. Possibly less, actually, since one happens automatically and the other clearly is only done in response to something.
I do agree that it's very hard to assess whether the guarantees apps like these give you are trustworthy or not when it comes to deleting or not sharing your data. That's why I think it's important to share resources that do detailed looks into the privacy of various apps -- the differences between particular apps can be wild. This is more useful than blanket insisting people shouldn't use any app like that -- especially if you do so without making really clear what the risks are compared to alternatives you suggest. Someone suggested emailing yourself for Christ's sake, which is a MUCH greater legal risk than almost any period tracking app. And the biggest legal risk is actually other humans you know in real life getting unauthorized access to the information -- even in the case discussed earlier in this thread, a friend turned on the girl -- and this risk is potentially much bigger for some people with a physical log than with digital data.
I'm not going to discourage people from switching to a physical log, but I wish these discussions were more nuanced and looked more into the details of how you can best protect yourself in your individual circumstances, rather than just giving a blanket "app bad".
I have a practical question about using an app that way. If a period tracker deletes your data monthly, what is the use case for the app? It won't be able to predict your next period or ovulation cycle, and if you need to track irregularity over months (some people use them to keep tabs on their PCOS, for instance) it can't help there either. Is it that it only deletes the previous month once it predicts the next cycles?
I get that you can probably set a longer time between deletes, but that does run into the risk of the data hanging around long enough to get into the wrong hands, too.
I appreciate very much the app suggestion and the Mozilla link, by the way. I'm going to look at those today!
Just a note:
The email suggestion was only to set up auto-reminders to write in the paper journal. Sure, having a digital trail that you're tracking your period at all is at least slightly dangerous, but there would have been no actual tracking data in the emails.
Euki can actually delete your data as frequently as weekly if you want (and that frequency I do genuinely not understand, but to each their own -- perhaps it's useful to someone!). I think monthly deletion could still work with period prediction for people with shorter cycles, but I haven't actually used the app super deeply (I take birth control without taking time off, so I no longer get regular monthly periods). I think the "every 3 months" option is probably the most sensible frequency that they offer.
Idk the initial conversation as I've said, but I also know many folks don't follow best privacy practices myself included , the same way most folks use some sort of biometric login rather than a pin or password despite its lack of protection from the police forcing you to unlock your phone.
I can't speak to why the OP of the OP was suggesting no apps vs some apps and that's far too many guessing games about motivations on a discussion I can't even see and didn't participate in. ÂŻâ \â _â (â ăâ )â _â /â ÂŻ
As described the ADHD comment feels like a tangent to the response OP made. Who knows why - frustration that all of this is happening? Fear? Actual misplaced advice? Idk.
I would probably not use a tracker at all right now unless I needed to medically. But you also wouldn't catch me trying to get pregnant right now either. But I wasn't using a tracker before nor was I trying to get pregnant, so... Salt grains
I think the trackers become more important among exactly the class of people for whom the privacy concerns are greatest, unfortunately. I haven't had the kind of sex that gets you pregnant in ages, but someone trying to get pregnant is way more likely to both find utility in the cycle tracking... and to get prosecuted for a miscarriage.
Yep. Which is why there's no way I could be convinced to try to get pregnant right now. (This isn't a 4B movement thing which has a lot of TERFdom wrapped into it apparently, it's just a "this isn't a safe time to do that" situation.)
But, life goes on.
If I were going to ask someone to represent my concerns on my behalf, my #1 pick by far would be my partner. Even though he is a cis man, he understands my experiences better than anyone else does on account of living with me and empathizing with me deeply.
A random woman who doesn't know me would do a far poorer job of understanding my concerns, regardless of our biological similarities, because there are more differences within genders than there are between them. The odds that she experiences her life just like I experience mine are essentially zero.
The man in question likely has close friends or family members who are women who have ADHD and menstruate, and he is just representing the struggles they've expressed to him about period tracking.
I'm very thankful that I have these days because without them I'd be pretty convinced that I'm just a lazy piece of shit. A lot of chores around the house, "busy work" at work, etc. goes undone because it never clicks the right way. But when something at home or work does...whoa watch out. I'm unstoppable.
Men gotta have an opinion about everything, even when they don't fucking get it. You don't need to white knight for ADHD women when somebody is recommending against the use a period tracking app lmao.
The message is not that women don't deserve to use an app. The message is not even that a menstruation tracking app is inherently bad. The message is that these apps are made by companies who have a lot to gain from receiving and sharing information about this private part of one's life. There is absolutely no technical reason why these apps could not keep all their data locally... there is absolutely no technical reason why these apps must share this information with their author.
The message is find and use an app that doesn't send your private data to some server to be analyzed and sold (and quite possibly be used for oppression). Open-source apps are not usually as pretty, because they're mostly made by passionate nerds in their free time who don't have the budget to create some fancy slick UI, but they can provide the functionality you need.
I don't menstruate, so I have no opinions on which to use, but there are 5 apps currently actively maintained on F-Droid: https://search.f-droid.org/?q=period&lang=en
iOS users are probably out of luck on this front.
I just use a spreadsheet. I store it locally and share it between my devices. I previously used an app, but it shut down after Roe v. Wade was struck down, so I downloaded my data in Excel format and have been editing that directly ever since. I honestly prefer it to the app because it's so simple and flexible.
I've seen TOSs change on a dime. If my freedom were on the line I would not trust an app. Even if the app was open source that doesn't dismiss the possibility of someone writing something else to tap into the information. Paper books, and paper is private unless someone gets a search warrant.
You know, it really would not be that difficult.
It wouldnât have many features, you wouldnât be able to do things like compute overall trends so you wouldnât really be able to have a âlateâ notification and have it be meaningful, but you could make a basic tracking app.
Women would have to look at their own trends and decide for themselves if theyâre significantly late, but thats it.
The Health app built into iOS has a cycle tracking feature:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/120356
Regarding the privacy and security of the user's data, Apple says:
I don't have periods, and so don't use the cycle tracking feature, but I do trust the Health app and my Apple Watch with literally all of my other health and nutrition information. If I did have a period and wanted to track it, that would be the app I would use. Any other app would have to be open-source and demonstrate that user data is encrypted on-device and never leaves it, before I would consider that app over Health.
There does remain the possibility that Republicans might introduce legislation or regulations that force Apple and other companies to make menstrual data available to the government and law enforcement. However, I think your chances of hearing about such a thing in time to delete all your data are good. It's ultimately up to each individual how much risk they want to take, but I personally still feel comfortable recommending the Health app.
My understanding is that this legislation already exists in the form of a search warrant. If you are in a state where abortion is not under threat and you don't spend any time in states that are, you'd probably know before that changes, but lots of people who can get pregnant are currently living in a situation where this danger already exists.
I'm not sure that, if you follow the procedure Apple mentions on their support page for end-to-end encryption, that cycle tracking data could actually be produced or handed over to law enforcement by Apple.
So I get what you're saying, but I'm unsure how much of an actual threat a search warrant could be.
Of course, with a search warrant, police could just seize your iPhone. However, it's trivial to disable biometric unlocking on an iPhone (tap the lock button five times in a row).
And an iPhone is much harder to unlock and search through than any notebook, unless you've got a few thousand dollars to build a safe inside your home to keep that notebook in (and time to put it in that safe when police knock on your door and yell "warrant!", if they yell at all). It's also a lot easier and faster to delete your cycle tracking data on an iPhone than it would be for a physical notebook, unless you keep a bottle of kerosene and a spare metal dumpster next to your desk.
Like, a notebook isn't a bad idea, I just think it has different pros and cons over using an app like Health. Like I said, it's ultimately down to each individual how much risk they want to take, but even considering the possibility of a search warrant, I still feel comfortable recommending the Health app to people.
This whole thing is shitfucked though, and I hate it.
Euki exists -- and the UI is actually still pretty slick! It's available for both iOS and android. It's also developed by a nonprofit. I don't know if the app is open-source, but it's about as trustworthy as it could be otherwise.
Yes, it can be. Itâs a spectrum of difficulties you suffer in a few categories like impulse control, hyperactivity, and memory.
I wasnât treated for ADHD until I was an adult, and only after going through treatment did I learn that symptoms often get worse as you age. I have mild ADHD, as in Iâm fortunate enough that a low dose of medication suppresses my symptoms enough for me to function without stress or anxiety.
Based on a couple of your replies, I donât think you have a good picture of what itâs like living with ADHD. Your brain doesnât work the way it should. You can want desperately to do something, anything, but what you want and what your brain does seldom line up. Youâre aboard the âtrain of thoughtâ but you are not the conductor. You can only hope the conductor lets you off at your stop so you can make the transfer to another train.
Others have mentioned, a reminder or notification doesnât mean the task will be completed. You need the brain train conductor to let you transfer to the train that completes that task.
It's a mild and funny condition that, nevertheless, because of how prevasive and constant it is, cumulatively becomes a disability. It's like saying Parkinson's is just a bit of shakes or asthma is just a wheeze or a fever is just a bit warm: yes, but the degree to which these persist makes things very difficult to downright dangerous.
I've often said that if I were required to take one pill a day every day to stay alive, I will be dead within the fortnight. I'm not making a joke.
Imagine if your phone+calendar randomly turns off or go silent or drop calendar events, but you must use the apps to interact with humans or pay taxes or do your job or hand in homework or anything fun or to sleep and eat.
Oh, what an absolute mood. I might make it three weeks. I'm just trying to imagine the circles I would have to try and institute even if the only consequence was like, severe pain. I'd also be double dead if the same consequence happened if I took it twice in a day. The real answer is that I would need a caregiver if I had medical needs that critical.
I'm pretty sure I only remembered to take my Anti-Baby pill (this is actually its name in German and I refuse to call it anything else now) tonight because I saw this thread. And I already forgot to take my other daily pill this morning đ
Ah, you see, the best solution to not needing birth control is to fail to ever obtain a romantic partner đ
Unfortunately plenty of folks need it for other reasons too...
I have a friend who takes it for PMDD, since she doesn't take it for birth control reasons, she actually doesn't worry about missing a day here and there.
Missing one will usually not trigger a "period" but two can, and it depends on the person. It's the worst to forget and fuck that up and bleed again
But yeah depends on the human.
Yup dead in the first week for sure. I've literally had pill boxes with days of the week and it didn't work. I would find abandoned pills sitting on a counter; I would find the box opened and pill missing but did I take it or rolled off the counter when I put it down?
The ADHD medication gave me so much anxiety and I missed so many doses i was never able to report if I found them helpful after a two week period. The ridiculous irony. After more than half a year of trying to get two weeks worth of success I gave up asking for refills out of shame and defeat.
I know people experience clarity and improvement with just one dose but that never worked for me
It's a spectrum. It has different types, and varying intensities of different symptoms. I (a man) don't have much problem with it generally, but I found that my executive function is higher than a lot of other people with ADHD, and I'm also lucky enough to be pursuing a lifelong passion of mine in my professional life. If I couldn't do that, I might have had a much more miserable life. The reason is that I get extremely passionate and hardworking about things I like, but even simple things that aren't interesting to me feel unimaginably harder. Without the satisfaction and gratification I get out of my professional life, I would be at a much worse position. Lack of stimulation is very painful for ADHD. I'd even call the chase for stimulation an existential condition for me, as its abscence tremendously impacts my mood and mental health.
I also think it makes my anxiety worse, and I suspect the reason is, when I get anxious I get many more anxious thoughts than neurotypical people. I also suspect it's a major reason why I have OCD, because I remember when and how it developed. In my early teen years I went through a really rough time, which led to a lot of anxiety. The constant barrage of anxious thoughts made me think I was going crazy, and I tried to control them, but since I didn't know what I was doing I ended up developing compulsions. This led to a dysfunctional thinking pattern, which manifested as OCD.
It definitely wasn't the only reason, but I also suspect it's why I isolated myself in the past (lived the neet/hikikomori life for some time). All this unchecked anxiety was unbearable to me at the time.
I'm much better now, but I can see how it can be debilitating for some others. It can make the daily responsibilities much harder for some; it can lead to avoiding responsibilities in professional or academic settings, which leads to a lack of discipline, and that results in potential going unrealized; it can make some ADHD people be volatile emotionally, leading to problems in relations; it can lead to or make comorbid conditions worse; it can lead to substance use disorders or other addictions.
I'm sure there are many more ways it can heavily impact people, but circling back to my initial point: it's a spectrum, it depends on the person in question (and how well they're coping). However, there are still enough commonalities to be categorized under the same umbrella. If anyone wants to learn more about ADHD, I'm still early on in this book, but "ADHD: What Everyone Needs to Know" by Oxford University Press seems really good. It's written with a lot of different demographics in mind, and it's only around 200 pages. And for fellow ADHDers, the chapters are short, and it provides a summary at the end of each chapter.
For me, no, but ADHD, like all mental disorders comes in degrees. Even unmedicated, I can generally remember to do a handful of regular tasks, but it's a bit like a death by a thousand cuts.
Right now, I can remember to take out my trash, I can remember to do my laundry, I can remember to feed my dog and myself, I can remember to brush my teeth, I can remember to vacuum, but I've automated away almost every aspect of my life I can. I don't pay any bills manually. I have a lawn service that automatically comes. I have my mortgage, property taxes and insurance managed automatically in an escrow account.
I'm close to my limit for manual tasks. If you add one or two more regular things I need to remember doing, the whole thing would fall down like a house of cards, stressing me the fuck out in the process.
When I get like that, I just shut down, don't do anything and spend my time browsing the Internet or playing videogames instead.
I think it's extremely unlikely that having to remember to track your menstrual cycles alone would be beyond the capacity of virtually anyone with ADHD if that's the only, or main disorder they have. The problem is that no adult has no other responsibilities, especially women.
When you stack it on top of the absolute mountain of other things the average has to do on a regular basis to prevent their lives from falling apart, it can cause the entire thing to come apart at the seams.
That's why, when I contemplate taking on an additional regular responsibility, I'm extremely careful about it, evaluating all the other things I have to do and being realistic with how much I'll remember to do it after all the other stuff I have to do.
I'd like to share this podcast, this link is only part 1, and it may or may not help but it's informative.
[Stuff You Should Know] ADHD pt 1 #stuffYouShouldKnow
https://podcastaddict.com/stuff-you-should-know/episode/185488669
Why did they recommend not using an app to track menstrual cycles?
Red state governments can get the information from the app makers and use it as evidence against women who had abortions.
It is profoundly debilitating in ways that are hard to convey and sometimes surprising. I'm partly commenting to reminding myself of writing a proper response later.