At 22 years old, after months long assessments, I have been diagnosed with severe ADHD, depression and moderate anxiety. Here is a quick timeline of my experience:

• May - August :
  • I started CBT therapy and Sertraline 50mg
  • Gradually I was upped to the a dose of 75mg.
  • In this whole period I did not experience any improvements or side effects, except a loss of appetite in the first few days.
• September:
  • I started taking Methylphenidate 18mg and went back to just 50mg of Sertraline.
  • From the first day I had felt a sentiment of calmness and control. But it slowly faded away and I still felt I could not concentrate on things or act productive.
  • I also stopped going to therapy as I saw that CBT was not effective for me.
• October - November:
  • This was a completely different month. I wasn't fully in control of my attention span but it was much better than I've ever been. What was more shocking was how internally I felt at peace and something that I'd describe now as euphoric (as I assume this was just a side effect of the medication). U
  • Until mid november I was actually going around telling people I think I might not be depressed anymore, as I had felt for the first time in a way that I haven't felt since early childhood. I was able to accomplish incredible feats related to discipline and I saw my academic results improving greatly. Unfortunately this sentiment slowly faded away and I was back to my old self by the end of November.
• December - Now I was upped to 36mg of Methylphenidate and I noticed a much better control of my attention but unfortunately I have not felt that feeling of relief again. And as it seems the effectiveness of the dose diminished from the first few days to now.
  Since December I've had numerous breakdowns, feeling completely exhausted and burnt out. I suffered from classic problems of procrastination starting to work on difficult projects only a couple of days before the deadline and it was all crashing down. I submitted multiple disgustingly low quality pieces of work because I just did not work in time enough but the few days I did work I did incredible amounts of effort and I do feel like the pills helped me stay focused. After this deadline period though I was just met with my normal depression symptoms where I had a long streak of days that I could not even get out of bed or brush my teeth.

I don't know what more to do. I always knew I was broken and needed help. And for all my life I thought that seeing a psychiatrist is a last resort in case "I can't fix myself" on my own. Now it's been almost a whole year and I am in a critical time period where I need to excel and put in the work but I find myself succumbing to my symptoms while jumping up and down with the doses of some pills that barely seem to have an effect.

I didn't have many people around me from the start, and many of them would not understand my condition at all (nobody from my family does). But now it seems that even the few that were empathetic I have unfortunately tired out. I've heard my fair share of bad remarks that have gradually demoralised me (ADHD is not real. I'm just lazy. I just like to complain. etc) and due to the fact that I also have codependency problems this has greatly hurt me and made me feel like I am completely alone and nobody cares for my troubles or has my wellbeing in their best interest. Right now I just wish I'd know what to do. I wish there was some clear step by step goal oriented way to "happiness" or at least normality. I don't even know what more to tell my psychiatrist other than how I don't feel well, which is what I've been telling him since the start.

If you've been through a similar journey, I'd love to hear your experience and any advice you wish you had received earlier.

I've recently been diagnosed with adult onset ADHD. The signs were always kind of there I guess, but without the right people asking the right questions, it's easy for health problems to go undiagnosed. After seeing articles like this one I realize that I'm not alone. I'm of a similar age bracket to the writer of the article, and at first I was dismissive of the diagnosis because I'd been functional (or at least thought I was) up until around when the pandemic started. I've since come to terms with the fact I have a lot of mental health baggage piling up because of a dysfunctional childhood that I ignored until it finally reached up and bit me. I'm considering going back on medication, but the one they had me on previously (methylphenidate, aka Ritalin) has the effect of making me so intensely focused on something that I sometimes forget to eat for hours at a time. It's a toss-up between being unable to concentrate or being focused to the point of it being a detriment.

Is there anyone here in a similar situation? What have you done that works for you? Any advice is appreciated.

I am realizing as I age that when I’m feeling unwell in some kind of way, I cannot be comforted by others.

I have friends and family and sometimes a romantic partner who try to comfort me, and while I am thankful for their support, I never feel comforted. I know what doesn’t work but I cannot provide them with what I want or need because I don’t know what I want or need to feel comforted.

So, how do you get emotional or mental comfort from others?

Edit - I wanted to start a conversation about how you (the reader) feel comfort from others. Thank everyone so much for the tips for me, but that was very much not the point and I can see now how that was unclear. Thanks again, everyone!

To the powers that be: if there is better phrasing, please help me out with the title.

I hear people saying to suicidal people that its easier to get through life if you just try to get through the next moment, but tbh for me its at a point where depending on my mood i can't get through one moment, and i have used drugs much more frequently and made 3 attempts in the past week as a result (though they were all when cptsd and psychosis was bad so i wasn't thinking at all rationally, and i didn't completely expect them to work).
For me "getting through the moment" is just continuing to exist, or just trying to distract myself/take drugs.

So does anyone know of any ways to keep going without drugs if things are really severe?

I've been writing and rewriting this to make it more formal, but I've decided to screw it because the original was raw and can probably describe my needs better than my rewrites could ever. So apologies if it doesn't fit the tone of Tildes

As of right now, I am currently not seeing anyone for my mental health. However, I'm in the process of getting help. I already have a consultation form for one and all I have to is figure out if I'm saying too much because one part ended up being like 16 paragraphs long and I don't think mental health professionals like that...

Anyways, I've been having trouble getting myself to clean. There's a gap between my bed and the wall that I put in case I ever got bedbugs (never got bedbugs in my life) and what ended up happening is various items of clothing would fall into that gap without me knowing. Which led to a whole bunch of carpet beetles suddenly flying in my room a month and a half ago.

Here's my concern: I did have a period where I found fleas in my room, and after seeing them a few times I went on a cleaning spree. Eventually my dad had to stop me because I was deep cleaning the house every single day, and when I wasn't doing that I was researching about pest control. When I wasn't able to clean I ended up researching too deeply on pest control, which led me to find out about scabies. Which led me to a delusion that I had scabies, then went straight back to my cleaning frenzy again, this time with this newfound fear that I'm infesting my family with scabies if I don't babywipe or vacuum everything.

Then one day, I started getting psychosomatic hallucinations that matched the symptoms of scabies. At night, I wouldn't be able to sleep because I would feel hundreds of bugs crawling inside my skin every time it got dark, forcing me to sleep with 3 lamps around me to mitigate the sensation. Every time I got out of a hot shower I could feel it too, but not as strongly as at night. And then when I sought out a dermatologist, because there was no way I didn't have scabies if I was going through all these symptoms, it just suddenly... stopped? Which was my biggest indicator that it wasn't scabies, because it would have never stopped if it was scabies.

It was a... bizarre experience for sure, but an impactful one. Especially now that it's been about a year since it all went down, and I've been having trouble sleeping because my room gets so stuffy. I keep my window open at all times, even when I'm too cold to sleep, just because the air is so musky and makes me feel like I'm on the edge of throwing up. I don't feel hunger in my room, and all I can think of is how there's carpet beetles in those gaps and how I will have to clean them when I get better. Because I don't want to repeat what happened last year. I don't want to clean and have these stupid carpet beetles or whatever else I find in that gap briefly take over my life like those fleas and imaginary scabies did. For the past few years I've been swinging between moments of depressive symptoms, grandiosity, and paranoia one after another and a few months ago is the first time in five years since I stopped having these back-to-back moments and I just... can't have another one again. Not until I get help.

But it has come to my attention that help might take a long time. If I need therapy, that might take months, if not years, and there's a good chance if I need medication I won't find the perfect one right away. So either I have to wait until months or years of my room rotting more and more or I clean it now. To clean knowing full well that I might relapse into another stupid paranoid episode because it was a trigger before and can be a trigger now.

I don't know. I don't know what to do. I want to clean but I don't want to trigger what I went through in the past again. I don't want to trigger anything. Any causes to my episodes I keep it in my head and make it a rule to avoid at all cost, but how do I avoid cleaning when it's impacting my physical health not to clean? I know I should get help, get treatment, but I shouldn't do anything funny while I wait for the perfect solution right? When I have the right treatment and coping mechanisms I can tackle my triggers, so best not to clean? If that's a trigger? I hate this. I just want guidance

I signed up for a class from Udemy. Udemy makes tech classes you take at your own pace. The lessons are many short videos with lectures and some practical exercises.

I signed up for a class that will prepare me to take a certification class for a skill that will help my resume. Complete worth it.

I am about 2/3 done.

The thing is I've getting frustrated and mentally run down.

The course is voluminous. The going is slow.

I know the thing to do is to forget about finishing, forget about the results, and just focus on enjoying each lesson in the hear and now.

I enjoy taking notes, I am good at it, and I find reviewing notes to be soothing/meditative.

I still get frustrated and demoralized.

Worse, I always thought if I got a lot of time to learn something I would sit down at it 8 hours a day and blow it away. I get wiped out at about 3-4 hours. I'm kicking myself for this which isn't helping.

Any advice, commiseration, or success stories?

I have a very long history of mental illness from age 10, and though I've cycled through a lot of explanations the diagnoses that best match my symptoms currently are currently ADHD and CPTSD. I am medicated for both, and although I am not in active therapy I have also done therapy. I consider my mental health relatively well-managed currently: at least, I am not in any urgent danger of hurting myself and it has been a very long time since I have been. Certainly things could be better but I'm usually functional.

But sometimes I go through these phases, generally 1-3 months long, where my ability to function on a normal level slips dramatically. It never gets to the nightmarish state I was in when I was a teenager, but it becomes hard to... oh, make appointments, do the dishes, walk the dog, just generally deal with the obligations of being an adult. My house is never in GREAT shape but it becomes a disaster. Work performance suffers a lot, my relationships suffer. I also start experiencing emotional PMS symptoms (or perhaps I just lose the ability to suppress them), and while I'm not the type to have "emotional outbursts" I do experience deep and irrational sadness or anger on those days. I also tend to end up dealing with insomnia, which is like a force multiplier on feeling overwhelmed.

It sucks especially because it's like I'm watching myself do it, and I feel as though I don't have enough control over myself to nip it in the bud, and sometimes the damage I do during these times is not fixable at all. It's almost like an unplaceable craving, like there's some thing I'm missing and my subconscious and my body are trying to send me signals, and I just can't interpret them right and figure out what I need.

How I generally get out of these phases is -- well, it's a bit chicken-egg, because the turmoil makes it difficult for me to reach out for help or even do anything to help myself, so to me it seems like sometimes the wave just passes. I'll say, "ok, this time I'll get my shit together", download some new app or whatever, organize my time or tasks via some new fascinating system, and that'll work... but it feels like it's only because I'm "ready" for it to work.

I think it's unlikely I'll find a solution that will work indefinitely to prevent these slips (hooray, novelty-obsessed brain). And anyway - as though it even needs to be said - I'm sulking in the midst of one now, so prevention or reduction tips might be helpful later, but for this moment I'm mostly concerned with getting out once I'm in.

If you have "swingy" mental health, or phases, or waves - what do YOU do about it, if anything? Therapy? Do you change your medication? Do you take a vacation? Commiserate on your favourite internet forums? What works for you?

I'm a long time Tildes user but I've created this separate account because I'd like to avoid connecting this topic to my normal username.

I am going through a divorce that will take about a year to finalize and I am struggling with the stress. If it were a short term thing, I would grit my teeth and bear it, but I have a full year ahead and I'm afraid I need some help in order to make it through with my physical and mental health intact.

My wife has a personality that includes "kill mode" for anyone she deems as an opponent -- whether it is another driver on the road, a customer service agent who doesn't give her what she wants, or anyone at all who she perceives as having slighted her. This is one of the reasons why we're getting divorced. I have nearly the opposite approach to conflict, and I can't handle seeing people get attacked so fiercely or so often. Now that we're getting divorced, I am the target of these attacks. For clarity, they're only verbal attacks, not physical -- there is no physical abuse in this case.

I could stiffen up and fight back whenever she starts arguing with me, but we have kids and I want to commit myself to preventing their exposure to hostilities as much as possible. But this means I have to do my best to brush off my wife's verbal abuse and maintain composure so they can have a stable dad to rely on.

Right now I'm having trouble sleeping and I am constantly anxious throughout the day. It gets worse whenever I have to interact with my wife; and unfortunately we have to interact frequently every day to coordinate childcare and logistics of the divorce. I have a tightness in my chest from being so anxious (not heart attack) and I am struggling to maintain focus on work or any tasks I have to complete. I can hold back the tears, but I really do want to cry many, many times a day.

What can I do to wade through this time period? I know there are breathing exercises to help calm down. What else can you recommend? I am trying to make sure I do eat well enough and that I drink enough water. I avoid alcohol entirely and don't take any kind of medication.

Any advice at all would be greatly appreciated. And I'm sorry if this is not an appropriate forum for this question. I will delete if so.

I've started to date a lovely woman, and she's now allowed me to know that she has Dissociative Identity Disorder. I've done my best to read and watch information about the 'disorder' but I was wondering if anyone has had any experiences that might they're willing to share.

I know that everyone is different, and there's no set way anyone who has it acts or behaves.

My mind is way annoying to listen to and I don’t like it!

I'm 45 years old and I have a hard time coming to term with the fact that the majority of my life---the one which supposedly should had been my golden years---lies in the past. I know I'm still alive but I just can't drum up much enthutiasm for an existence which I mostly see as sad leftovers of something which wasn't worth much either. I simply don't care much. I can distract myself for some time, but I have this deep feeling that, well, what's the point.

And I can ignore it, for some time. But ignorence can only go so far. At some point you need some hope, some sliver of meaning and purpose. And I just don't see it.

And this is all awful impractical, because whenever I try to strive for anything, my brain just goes, “narh, why bother struggle when it doesn’t lead to anything”

Is there any clever way to turn stuff like this around? Some NLP stuff to nudge me towards a less self-defeating mindset?

I'm failing. My usual tricks aren't working and I don't know what to do with my clothes anymore.

One of my ADHD symptoms is that needs to see everything. My "pantry" is open shelves in my kitchen. Everything in the fridge is up near the front of the shelves. I have a giant desk so I can spread out when I'm working. I need to see it all at all times.
So the issue becomes, how do I do that with clothes. My alligator brain wants them all over the floor so I can see everything. That's not gonna work lol. I used to be good with a closet with no doors, but my new apartment isn't laid out in a way I can do that.

Does anyone have any interesting clothes storage advice? The clutter is stressing me out, so I need to figure out whatever my new system is going to be.

I'm working on pruning the sources of information that come into my Readwise/Read Later feeds down based on usefulness/actionable in my life and quality. My priorities are for data sources to expand my 'reality tunnel', to provide unique insights (not an echo chamber), and to remove a lot of the 'noise' of the day-to-day information overload. I'm considering what those sources might be. If you have a moment, I'd appreciate your thoughts, advice, and links to any writings or videos that speak to this similar goal and how others have done it. Thanks in advance!

Nick Milo said:

The noise is deafening, but I promise to focus on the high-value signal.

I'm seeking to reduce the noise, and increase the signal of my Reader feeds.

I figured I would help kick off this new subgroup by starting a discussion on how people with ADHD try to manage it.

I had a late diagnosis a couple years ago as an adult, and I have been working with a counselor to develop some behavioral techniques (in addition to medication). Not all of them stick, which in my experiences is the primary challenge of this disorder, but I've had good results when I do use them.

Primarily, I have a calendar where I put reminders and plan things out. If I have parts of a project I need to get done, I lay those out and assign them to certain days of the week. Working in academia, I live my life a semester at a time and this helps me reevaluate certain goals and it feels reasonable to me to plan out a few months at a time.

One thing I struggle with when it comes to planning is coming up with accurate estimates of how much time it might take to spend something. This was always a big obstacle in my way when it came to planning things out before - I wanted to know the exact time on how long it took to do something so that my schedule would be perfect. My counselor suggested that I come up with an initial estimate of how long something should take based off my intuition, and then double it (e.g. if I think a task should take 30 minutes, plot it out for 60 minutes of my day). This has been great for me because usually it's a win-win. Often, my initial assessment is underestimating how long something takes, so by accounting for slippage in time I can better chunk out my day. On the other hand, if I do get it done sooner I can pat myself on the back and I now have extra time in the day to get other things done.

I wanna find better ways of trying to stay on track with habits. I've tried some different apps and none are working too well. Recently I picked up Sunsama which has helped in terms of reviewing the day and looking at subtasks, but as I've gotten busy with experiments I've kind of lost track of that. What are some things that you do to accommodate the way your brains works?

...When I can't complete a task right now but instead have to wait for some reason. For example:

• When I have to complete a task list for school, and would love to just blitz through it all, but have to wait on someone else to fill out some form. Then I get it in an email a day or two later, but have already completely forgotten about the list and things I should do, because something else took over my mind. And I put it off because I have other things to do. Then the deadline comes and goes, and I'm sitting there thinking "Well shit, if I could have done it immediately then it would have been fine."

• I ask my kids for things they want at the store. I know I need to add it to the grocery list app immediately or I won't remember it, but I'm driving them to camp and can't use my phone. By the time I've dropped them off, I forgot already. Then they're upset with me because I forgot their things, and I'm upset with me because I forgot their things.

All these little things that just add up to make life a little more frustrating and annoying.

Anyone else with ADHD, have any tips to overcome these? Frustrations of your own to vent? How do you explain to others that it isn't you being careless or lazy, but instead it's your brain working against itself?

I have a very close friend that has been in the deepest troughs of depression for the past couple of years. They live about an hour away, so though my wife and I try to physically show up to support them whenever we can, that's much less often than we'd like. Their support network is thin, and day-to-day basically consists of only their partner, with whom they live, and who is visibly fraying at the seams.

This person (I'll just call them John for the sake of readability) is currently on medication for their depression and OCD (I'm nearly certain it's Lexapro, can't remember for sure) and has on and off therapy, though they often find themselves at odds with their therapists' perspectives. Some of this is because it feels like the profession has been flooded with folks who lack experience with patients with severe chronic mental illness, and some of this is (I suspect) John's illness distorting their thinking, leading to frustration and anger in the moment that doesn't make sense in retrospect.

John had a particularly bad day yesterday, and after I spent some time with them, we started talking about how they felt like they needed considerably more support than they were able to get in their current situation. Unfortunately, the only option he was aware of was "group homes", which seems like a pretty broad term and I don't know much about what they look like (or how successful they are at helping people like John).

I'm trying to get a sense of the spectrum of options available for people like John who are suffering from severe chronic mental illness. On the one end, there's what we're doing now; regular psychiatry and counseling, and on the other end, I guess, is involuntary in-patient behavioral health/medicine clinics. Being involuntarily committed to such programs has been a source of trauma for them in the past, so I'd like to avoid anything even close to that end of the spectrum, if possible. I know that there are, for example, 90-day rehabilitation centers for folks with substance use disorders (I have a family member that found a lot of success at one of these), but do similar programs exist for folks non-substance-related mental illness? Does anyone have personal experience with any of these programs?

Thanks in advance to anyone who takes a moment to read and share their thoughts; I know this is a really challenging topic.

For several years now (4-5-ish, but hard to pin down when it started), I have been stuck in a cycle of enervation/depression. I don't really like to use the word 'depression' to describe this, because in my youth (I'm in my early 50s now), I suffered from serious bouts of extreme depression, and by comparison, this is a walk in the park ... so I've gotten into the habit of colloquially referring to is as "ennui".

The duration varies (a lot), but the cycle is most often roughly 7-14 days long, where 60-70% of the time, my energy, motivation, my ability to focus on and accomplish tasks ... all goes into the toilet, and I spend most of my day reading news, surfing the 'Net, playing video games, watching re-runs, walking about town with my dog, or even just sleeping. The other 30-40% of my time, I feel good -- clear-headed, focused, motivated and energized -- and I spend most of this time catching up on all the stuff I neglected during the ennui phase, and making Grand Plans for the future.

It is hard to tell, objectively, whether I am getting better, worse, or just treading water ... in part, because the cycle varies enough that it's hard to see any clear trends over anything less than 6-8 month time frame ... but more so because my ability to objectively assess my status is so colored by the cycle itself ... when I am in one of my ennui phases, it feels like I am getting worse or, at best, maintaining. When I am in the manic-ish phase, I feel like I will never feel unmotivated again, and I must often remind myself that it is temporary, and in another day or 3, I will be back in a funk. As objectively as I can be, however, I think I am actually treading water or, possibly, getting gradually worse at a very glacial pace.

I know the "up" phase of my cycle sounds a lot like the manic- part of a manic-depressive bipolar thing. Maybe it is; as I said, it is hard to be objective. That said, though, I am really, really confident that, prior to the beginning of this, ~5-ish years ago ... that "manic" phase was my normal state of mind. I used to be a very focused, productive individual.

So ... I've tried many different things to address this. Assorted doctor visits have mostly concluded that either they don't know what the problem is, and/or, I'm exaggerating/imagining it (no doctor has explicitly said this -- it is my interpretation of "we can't find anything wrong with you"). I've tried increased exercise, more time outdoors, more sleep, less sleep, meditation, a wide variety of changes in diet, vitamins/minerals/supplements, etc. I've lost over 40 lbs. I'm currently trying (for a 2nd time) large daily doses of turmeric, and contemplating trying (also for a 2nd time) a round of tDCS self-treatment.

For context, I am right now on an upswing, coming out of my latest "ennui" phase and feeling optimistic and productive.

I should also add that I have another issue ... one that I believe is unrelated, but sounds similar when I describe it. This dates back to about 15-16 years ago, and is another thing I have seen many doctors for, and tried various things to remedy. In a nutshell, about 15 years ago, I got dumber. Prior to that, my ability to learn and remember, my executive functions, my ability to deduce, my ability to focus and prioritize and plan ... were all much better.

Over the course of 12-18 months, I lost a lot of my mental functions. For anyone who has read it, it felt a lot like the tail-end of the book "Flowers For Algernon". The simplest quantifiable example I can give of this is the notion of ... how many things are on your mental shopping list (stuff you need to get at the grocery store) before you realize you better write it down? For me, prior to this loss, my magic "I'm gonna forget stuff if I don't write it down" number was around 12-13 items, that I could fairly confidently remember. Afterwards, that number dropped to around 3.

At that time, my doctor found a (benign) lump in my throat (a goiter), and ultimately, they removed half of my thyroid. After they removed it, over the course of 6-12 months, my mental faculties improved again, but I feel to this day, that they never returned to anything close to what they were before. My mental "shopping list" number today is around 5.

Multiple tests since then have repeatedly confirmed that my half-of-a-thyroid is fully getting the job done, and I do not need any kind of supplemental hormone treatment -- with the possible exception of testosterone (ps: I'm a guy), which I tried for a little while -- and dammit, it helped, too -- but then I freaked out and quit once I started reading about side-effects.

I am writing this explicitly looking for suggestions and advice. Keep in mind, though, that (I'm guessing here), 80-90% of my responses will be "already tried it, didn't help".

In advance, danke y gracias.

Hello,

So I've been officially diagnosed with depression a few years ago. I am on medication for it and I've done therapy in the past. I am a more functional person than I was, let's say, one year ago as I've adjusted my medication.

However there is something that is SEVERELY affecting my quality of life and that is the generalized lack of interest or extreme difficulty in doing almost anything. Yes I've talked with my doctor about this. It's "normal" and we are working on it.

I don't know many people and COVID-19 took a hit on my already limited social life. So I guess I want to share my experience and hear from others who experience(ed) the same difficulties. When you are trapped in not wanting to do anything, what the hell do you do?

Recently I've started reading a physical book again. I think it is a good thing for me to have something to do that does not involve a screen. Plus it makes me sleepy if I am a bit tired which, for me personally, is great. Aside from this next experiment, the activities I do the most are playing one or two video games, study for my degree and work part-time.

Another thing I've started doing is doing the bare minimum in terms of physical exercise. I am working on doing pull-ups (I went from doing 0 to 1,5 =) ) and doing some squats. School and work rob me of a lot of energy so I tend not to exercise. But now I'm trying to at least do something.

I will try to keep up with this post but I have a tendency to procrastinate on them if I get a lot of replies. Thanks for bearing with me =).