Ok seriously what the fuck do I do
if i chart my life happiness, fulfilment, success over the past four years, the trend is clearly downwards. some clear wins and stretches of improvement, some quite significant, which i am proud of, but overall, i am getting worse and worse and worse. i attribute my problems mostly to two things: severe social isolation, and an extreme deficit of executive function. however i got here, i'm stuck with the fallout
my memory is bad, and my attention shot, so i kind of don't know what's happened emotionally. i know some focal points, though
this past march, i had a major depressive episode, and it feels like i spent most of a week doing nothing but crying, for no reason at all. i'm not sure how i fed myself
at the beginning of 2022, i quit my (very cushy and chill) job, which i had had for a little over a year at that point, because i felt like i was unmotivated and not actually doing work. (the facts are a bit more subtle; it was partly that the work itself was uninteresting to me, and they wanted to work with me to find something for me to do that i would find more interesting. i was going along with that, until a new opportunity appeared, which i jumped for because i wanted to be able to make a clean break. that opportunity immediately fell through.) i had been living with my parents until shortly before, so i had a lot of savings
now, i find myself in a similar situation, only much more dire. a friend got me a job working with smart people on interesting problems. i have not been doing well. i have been extremely uncommunicative. the pattern is clear: i talk to people, flex my technical chops; they are impressed and like me a lot. then i'm not very productive, and my output slowly deteriorates to nil. i think i just can't do wfh tech work. last week was a blur. i don't know what happened at all. i don't think i've checked slack in close to two weeks, and atp i'm a little bit afraid to. two weeks ago, i asked my friend/coworker to poke me every day to make sure i was doing something. it seemed and still seems like a good strategy. and then a day or two after i asked him that i just dropped off the map again
i'm not addicted to drugs or video games. it seems like i ought to be. i am a bit drunk right now, but that is quite irregular
recently, i thought i'd finally made a close friend. this morning, she broke up with me and blocked me for a really really stupid reason. i am really hurt by that, and it makes me feel a bit hopeless about the whole thing. spent the afternoon crying about it and now just feel a bit numb. i give it decent odds she comes back, but. i know one problem i have is putting my eggs in too few baskets. but there are so few baskets that seem worth investing in, and investment is so hard
she suggested i try to get prescribed add medication for my work problems, and was going to give me some illicitly to see if it helped. the latter is not happening anymore, of course. and i cannot stomach the medical system (already i have other things i have been putting off talking to my doctor about for a while), not to mention that it would take forever to do anything for me
i don't know what to do in the short to medium term. i don't know what to say to my work that i haven't said already, other than: clearly, i am just incapable of doing this. i am not super financially stable right now, and being without a job seems like a bad idea
Well, you might have ADHD but it sure sounds like you're very seriously depressed as well. I'm not a doctor and can't diagnose you but I would highly suggest making an appointment ASAP. Try a psychiatrist.
If you're in America, the unfortunate truth is that making this appointment may require some calling around and waiting.
In fact, pretty much all of the things that help with mental health are the absolute last things that people want to do when they're mentally unwell.
Improve diet
Exercise
See the doctor
Trial and error some meds
Go out with friends
Find new hobbies
Change jobs
Change locations
If mental health issues made people want to do these things, then unhappiness would be pretty a small and temporary inconvenience akin to a head cold. Depression is a motherfucker because it's like a virus whose only goal is to create more of itself. It takes over your brain and tells you not to bother with any of the things that will it make it go away.
You pretty much have two choices. Either live an unbearable life indefinitely or go do something about it. Get angry if you have to, go on autopilot if you have to, but go do something about this ASAP or it will never end.
It may be helpful to tell your parents or another loved one that you need to be pushed into getting help and making changes. Sometimes external willpower helps when we don't have our own strength to rely on. Tell someone in your life that you can't live this way and need to be forced.
Best of luck my friend. If you choose to make this change, you will come out the other side with a ton of strength, empathy, and gratitude for what life has to offer. You'll never take contentedness for granted again.
100% agree this is the impression I got as well. The two are often very much correlated as well, getting a handle on ADHD antipatterns can help with depression. At the same time, depression can make it difficult to take the steps needed so your other suggestions there would be of use as well.
I also concur. I actually started taking my ADHD medication on the weekends because it made me feel so good and allowed me to take care of weekend chores instead of sleeping half of the day away.
Some sound advice here.
I might add, maybe, to expand your potential sphere of mental health practitioners if you're in a region where healthcare/mental healthcare is strained and finding a psychiatrist involves very long wait times.
At least speaking from my experience in Canada, psychologists and social workers can also offer therapy, and may have experience navigating the system to guide you to additional resources for formal diagnoses/medication. If you have access to a family doctor/gp, they may also be able to help on these points.
In my experience (I'm in Germany), therapists/psychologists can even do formal diagnosis -- you just need a psychiatrist for ADHD meds themselves. Which can be tough af, but you at least don't have to wait on psychiatrist appointments in order to get the assessment sorted.
Similar situation in the Netherlands. The assessment is often done by psychologists (multiple interviews, also involving parents and partner), they write a report which is then reviewed by multiple of them, and then you have a final interview with a psychiatrist for the formal diagnosis.
I can only talk for myself, but at least for me here in Germany, my diagnosis through a psychiatrist was rather hassle-free. While I did have to wait a few weeks for an appointment, at said appointment we had an initial interview about why I think I had ADHD, I had to fill out a standard diagnostic questionnaire and did an EEG and EKG.
I departed with another appointment a week or two in the future and the request of the psychiatrist to see my end-of-year school reports from grade school. I retrieved them and send them to his office the same week.
At the second appointment he noted that the diagnosis for ADHD seems pretty clear to him, we talked about medication and he recommended therapy to accompany the meds (which I took and was also very helpful).
All in all, it took about 6-7 weeks from my first talk with my GP about my suspicions on ADHD to an official diagnosis combined with my first dose of meds and appointments for therapy.
To be clear, I didn't say it was a hassle. In fact, it was relatively straightforward, all things considered.
But, it was also thorough, which I feel is also important given some of the misconceptions people seem to have around it.
Yeah, I agree, the diagnosis was quite straightforward. I don't think the EEG and EKG are technically part of the diagnosis, but rather to make sure there aren't any preexisting problems that would be exacerbated by the medication. I was diagnosed by a therapist before I found a psychiatrist who had time/expertise to start me on meds, though, so the process was more spread out for me. Most of the actual diagnosis was a few sessions of (thorough) interviews with my therapist (though I also did the standard diagnostic questionnaire beforehand).
I know the therapist who diagnosed me was also interested in my old school report cards (which I did get pictures of and which were helpful, since "enthusiastic student but poor attention to detail" was a common thread). I've heard of people's parents being interviewed as part of ADHD diagnosis before in other countries, but it wasn't an option for me (since I'm an immigrant from the States and mine are back in Ohio) so I don't know how common that is here in Germany.
I would suggest a psychologist before a psychiatrist anyway. Adult ADHD is often managed enough through masking that it isn't dire, but has other effects that should be checked before taking brain-altering chemicals (depression, anxiety, etc). You can also discuss options with a therapist, man-to-man as it were, then see a psychiatrist.
Not sure how it is in Canada but in the US an MD can provide ADHD meds as well, and a psychologist should be able to help the mental side.
Firstly, I think by the time someone is making a post like OP's, we're well into "dire". Adult ADHD is masked by individual circumstances -- that's how it goes undiagnosed until adulthood, after all -- but it's very common for symptoms to suddenly cause really intense difficulties with one's life, especially when there's a change in environment or support systems. I personally didn't even suspect I had ADHD until I was nearly finished with undergrad, and I didn't get diagnosed until partway through grad school. "Masking" isn't a method of managing ADHD, but merely a description of how other circumstances can disguise it. Once it's to the point where it's causing problems like those OP describes, we're well past the point where it can even be described as "masked" anyway.
The point of view of most of the experts on Adult ADHD in books I've read on the topic is the opposite of what you recommend here -- it is very common for adults with ADHD to have depression and anxiety as well (they're often diagnosed with these before they get an ADHD diagnosis, as I was) and most of what I've read recommends focusing on the ADHD first to see how much of the depression and anxiety is alleviated by treating the ADHD and how much exists independently of it. One factor in that is likely that the stimulant medications prescribed for ADHD have much better efficacy rates and fewer side-effects than antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication -- it is on average much more straightforward to treat and there are fewer medications to try. The therapeutic approach that has shown the most progress for depression and anxiety, cognitive-behavioral therapy, also includes a lot of "homework", which can be hard to handle as someone with untreated ADHD (it's something I've struggled with even while on medication). That's on top of the fact that for many people, treating the ADHD often eliminates or greatly lessens the depression and anxiety because they ultimately originated from ADHD symptoms or their consequences in a person's life.
I can also say anecdotally that getting treatment for depression and anxiety without addressing comorbid ADHD can result in poor progress on those issues. I remember crying to my first therapist about how I felt like I was behind everyone else and that my peers were all effortlessly handling things that were a huge struggle for me. Her response, reassuring me that all my peers were struggling as well, would make sense for someone whose problem is just how they perceive their abilities and effort compared to others -- but because I have ADHD, that approach neglected the very real differences in how I was coping and my executive function tools compared to my peers. Once I received my ADHD diagnosis, receiving treatment for that significantly improved portions of my anxiety and depression, and it allowed me to focus on the portions that were actually independent of my ADHD rather than caused by my struggles with it.
I'm coming to see it that "masking" is just a way in which you hide your ADHD from others. It's like when you fill out those questionnaires in school or at the doctors office with the "correct" answer, not the honest answer. You still have the symptoms, you are just dealing with them internally and alone, so no one cares. If the goal is to make it so that people with ADHD do the things their boss wants, then that is pretty achievable in at least some adults without medication. If the goal is for them to be happy, to have their own goals, and to achieve the goals they set, things are more likely to be difficult. People with ADHD are basically incapable of being happy to doing something difficult today in order to improve their happiness later. I'm not saying someone with ADHD always can't do those thing, I'm saying that doing those things will make them more miserable.
Just to pipe in with an additional viewpoint: I got my ADHD diagnosis 2 years ago at the age of 27 through an psychiatrist how both prescribed me methylphenidate (which I am on to this day with no intention of changing that) and recommended a certain type of therapy. He very explicitly recommended doing both, saying he had the best results in patients that don't limit themselves to only one or the other. I am very glad he did that, because while I most definitely gained valuable tools and insight through my therapy, the meds have an effect that I don't think could possibly be recreated by only doing therapy.
"Brain-altering chemicals" sure sounds scary, but remember, an ADHD brain literally functions differently to a neurotypical one, with potentially significant negative effects. That's why we want to get treated. We want to change how our brains work, because the way they work on their own is not good for us.
Go for a walk. Right now. I mean seriously, stop reading this comment, get out of the house, and start walking. It doesn’t have to be anywhere in particular, just start walking.
You are in a mental health crisis right now, and something has to change. I think you already know that, otherwise you wouldn’t have posted this thread. But I want to reiterate: your problems are real, they are valid. You are an important person, and you are worth the effort.
Why did I tell you to walk? Getting out of your familiar surroundings will be helpful. Getting exercise will be helpful. ADHD medication has been brought up a few times in this thread, including in your post. One of the best medications for ADHD is endorphins, which your body produces naturally when you exercise. If you can muster the effort to do more than a walk, do it. Run, bike, swim, something else if you can. You don’t have to do it for long, just start doing it.
/u/Wolf_359 had a really good post. Take a look at their info and take it to heart.
Now you need to get yourself some professional mental health. If you are anywhere near the San Francisco Bay Area, send me a PM and I can get you set up with my psychiatrist. If not, you will have to find your own psychiatrist. Right now, you want a psychiatrist, not a psychologist or therapist. I won’t go into what those terms mean right now. They will all be important for you, but right now look for a psychiatrist.
Do you think your work is trustworthy and accepting of mental health issues? If so, you may want to tell them about your struggles. They may have advice or contacts for you. They may be able to help you find mental health support that is covered by your health insurance.
Lastly, I want to say this again: you are an important person. You are not broken, you just have a hard time with some things. You will get through this, and your life will improve. You deserve a good life, and you will find out how to make that a reality. You are a good person. I wish you the best of luck. If you need any help navigating the mental health system, post here or shoot me a pm.
A question I've been asking myself for a couple years now... I am burned out from working in the IT sector, everything just gets shittier by the year and I no longer want to burden myself with keeping shitty tech alive. Compound that with new bosses who are now ruining the sweet equilibrium of peace we had at my workplace and I'm so demotivated I've gone on a one year sabbatical and did fuck all the whole time because I simply didn't care anymore, about anything.
I've spent a lot of time contemplating of what if anything could get me motivated again and none of it seems realistic or within reach for me. I feel very much stuck with the little I have and no good way forward.
Some advice and wisdoms that I have gathered the hard way:
Therapy can help if you get lucky and you can afford it.
Same with medication albeit the side effects can also make things a lot worse.
Finding something, anything that brings you even a little joy is worth hanging on to and defending it with your life.
Drugs will make you feel better for a bit and then slowly drag you down further.
Negative self talk is the devil, talk to yourself like you would to a friend.
There will be better times again even if it doesn't feel that way at the moment.
A point of clarification, do you mean so-called "street drugs" or medications prescribed for psychiatric treatment of ADHD/depression/etc?
My own experience from being on a prescribed NSRI for 10+ years is that I still have to do the work to stay well, but it keeps the scary dark hole from being too deep.
I’ll throw a plus one to this. Properly dispensed ADHD medication can be extremely effective and has few long term problems. Being “dragged down” is certainly not common for ADHD medication. It still needs to be handled by a professional, so I would not recommend self medicating, but don’t be afraid of medication for ADHD. It isn’t for everyone, but there isn’t much reason not to try it if your psychiatrist thinks it makes sense.
I can only assume based on these two lines, they were referring to "street drugs"
Given your earlier comments about people initially being impressed, and then after you just having trouble getting a handle on things, I want to point that this likely is not true at all. As @sparksbet and @Wolf_359 already said is that a lot of what you describe very much sounds like unhandled ADHD. Besides medication, there is a lot that can be done to give yourself a better handle on things. Specifically, dealing with antipatterns you have established over the years and giving you better mechanisms to introduce a bit of order in your otherwise chaotic brain.
When I was diagnosed, I saw a therapist weekly (at first, then monthly) for a few months. What we did was structurally work through this book: Mastering Your Adult ADHD: A Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment Program, Client Workbook.
I am linking to it because I know how difficult it can be to get the proper treatment in some countries. But ideally you have someone specialized to go through it with you, as they provide the needed structure and insights you don't yet have.
Without my diagnosis and, I can't stress this enough, the above process of finding mechanisms to deal with a lot of the antipatterns, I strongly believe I would have ended up in a similar situation as you now.
But they no longer throw me entirely off-track as they would have otherwise, and I also know much better how to ask for structure from the world around me. If you feel like that asks too much from those around you as they now need to facilitate you, don't. One dirty little secret of most work environments is that most people like it when things are more structured. So 9 out of 10 times when I ask for more structure, I do it in a way that benefits the team or organization. More often than not, people appreciate me doing so.
That isn't to say that everything now goes swimmingly. Again, chaos still happens, and my brain is part of that chaos. I still have days when I effectively get side tracked and get barely anything done. But they don't weigh as heavily on me as I have the means to pick things up fresh the next day. Also because the sort of work I do I know people generally are happy with the results. So it doesn't matter if I have an off day here
Long story short, you are not alone.
How long is forever compared to for how long you've been through this?
i suppose. but the outcome is uncertain (so i can't count on it to do anything in particular), and either way i have to do something in the mean time
One thing I've learned throughout my own recovery is that often, what we call 'self control', 'discipline', 'motivation' or another vague term that can have very different meanings, boils down to something that sounds very different:
Having empathy for your future self.
What makes these investments so hard for you?
Thank you.
I hate those other words. Your summary makes it so much kinder and gentler.
And this helps me to GTFO bed and pedal my butt another 20 miles to be kinder to my future self.
If you were in the same city as me, I'd offer to let you try some of my ADHD meds. A lot of this is very familiar to what I went through when I was unmedicated and working on something that was overwhelming without enough guidance or oversight (in my case, it was a master's thesis). Getting diagnosed is non-trivial, but the meds help pretty much immediately. I know you feel like shit right now, but if you're able to, try to pursue a diagnosis. Even aside from the meds, learning to frame your thinking as struggling with symptoms rather than being an inherently flawed, lazy person is a big help.
I wish I had more advice besides this. Getting diagnosed and medicated didn't fix all my problems by any stretch (I just got put on a PIP at work after all). I recommend reading Wes Crenshaw's I Always Want To Be Where I'm Not -- I was recommended this along with several other books about adult ADHD when I got diagnosed, and it was informative but also had a less clinical and more down-to-earth tone than most of the others. Based on your post here I think it could offer some non-zero insight for you, at least.
Hey, I already did ping you in another reply. But I noticed you only mentioned medication, which seems to be the approach often taken in the US. So I wanted to bring this specifically to your attention as well.
The process over here also involved an entire program where I with a therapist I went through this book Mastering Your Adult ADHD: A Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment Program, Client Workbook.
While ideally you do it with someone, I still feel like it might be of benefit to some people even without that guidance. I looked into it and it seems like it is also available on Amazon and other websites as well.
Figured I'd at least make you aware of it :)
Ooh, that has a similar title to a book I've already got but the one I have isn't a workbook, so I'll definitely check it out! I actually got diagnosed well after I moved to Germany, so my therapists didn't focus on the US approach, but I struggled a lot with traditional CBT even once I was medicated because of the "homework-y" nature of it. I focused a lot on medication because of how big of an impact it can have -- stimulant medication for ADHD is one of the best-tolerated and most effective treatments in all of psychiatry -- but definitely combining it with therapeutic approaches is worth it. I still struggle a lot even on my medication, it's just that when I don't take it I'm kneecapping myself. I'll definitely check this workbook out and see if it helps!
Yeah, the homework like aspect of it also was a challenge for me. It certainly isn't a silver bullet that will fix all the challenges. I still managed to get quite a bit out of it, which is why I figured I'd mention it. Though given the extra context, a lot of it already might be familiar to you in one way or another.
Can't hurt to try it! I think working on it myself gets rid of a lot of the "homework" response that happens when I'm supposed to have some portion "complete" after a week or two to show a therapist, so I'm optimistic.
Hey OP, I just realized that given what you wrote you might also not check back on this thread for a little while. And might be discouraged to reply because it has been a little and you feel like you are too late to reply now. Don't let that discourage you, I think I can safely say that most people in here don't mind at all if you reply at a much later date.
SWE/Reverser here.
I cannot do WFH. My ADHD will not allow it. I will do the absolute minimum to not get fired, and I'm never incentivized to work harder than that. In person, I can plug-in in a way that just isn't possible for me remotely. I know WFH works for some people, but it is legitimately impossible for me to will myself to work on something if I don't have an in person team I have built rapport with.
I'm not going to diagnose you remotely, but please consider therapy. They may be able to give you resources that may legitimately change your life for the better. It's hard to communicate how different your life might be given the right resources.
I was in a similar boat as you a few years ago, so I'll tell you the things that worked for me. They may not work for you, but they may be worth a try.
I know a lot of this advice feels very "pull yourself up by your bootstraps", but in reality, with executive function problems, you really do need a little bit of that. Medication won't fix everything. You have to just get a little aggressive with yourself to keep your mind on track.
One thing I’ve noticed about myself is that I am not able to tolerate the cognitive dissonance that other people can. If I find myself in a position where I don’t like my boss and don’t want to see him find success then working for him becomes very hard. Other people are able to compartmentalize their work. The very idea of that upsets me. Most of my thinking takes place at work. It’s half of my waking hours during the week. A large percentage of the conversations I have will be with coworkers. Essentially, work is a major part of your life and it isn’t worth sabotaging your life by working somewhere that requires a sacrifice to mental health - and for me mental compartmentalization is a major sacrifice.
If things are going well I’m always telling people about my work and how happy I am with it. The wacky coworkers, the customers, the projects, etc. But if things are going poorly I won’t stop complaining about my boss or the company.
A common theme for me has been that when I lose respect for a power figure I can not work to make them happy. This has happened with teachers in high school, professors in college, and bosses after graduation. Working for them becomes unethical in my eyes. I would rather get and F or get fired than contribute to their own career. I fall on my sword, raising concerns to their deaf ears, in the only act I can think of to nudge them towards introspection. This is a property about myself that I only recently came to understand. In the future I will look to avoid these situations by prioritizing working environments with leadership I can respect.
So for you I recommend therapy, introspection, and magic mushrooms. Your behavior is actually relatable to me. I have been depressed, avoided work, and lost my way from time to time. But there is a way to get out of it.
You need to come to understand yourself better and what causes your current state of mind. Before that you need to get out of it, because depression limits your ability to introspect. That’s why depression sticks around. One of the best ways out is to deeply understand yourself and what makes you happy and what ruins your happiness. But depression stifles your memory, including memory of your emotional state. It all becomes gray in hindsight. So you won’t remember why you’re stressed. You can’t recall the last time you were happy (even if you had a great day last week). This makes it really hard to bootstrap your way out. But therapy helps.
Hi it’s me, you. I’m literally on my way to work after raising a big stink to finally get that toxic narcissist removed from leadership that is doing nothing but making all our days harder.
It is so, so difficult to make other people see what I see and I’m starting to feel like some raving lunatic. But something needs to be done about this great injustice and I can no longer suffer watching it.
Wish me luck.
PS: if you haven’t yet I recommend reading into the research on highly sensitive people by Elaine Aron
I do think the only way to have an impact on these people would be to surround them with people like us. One loud voice is easy to ignore. You can simply be called an outlier and get fired. But what if everyone on the team said the same thing? Like a professional union but for social behavior.
Thanks for the book recommendation. It sounds like it’s describing autism. I’m actually looking to have myself evaluated. I couldn’t be more than mildly autistic. And maybe I’m something else entirely. But it’ll be nice to gain more insight.
I‘m basically trying to get all the other people who have been wronged by said person to make their stories heard but no one wants to speak up and no one wants to listen it seems. It’s quite maddening.
Anyways on the topic of being highly sensitive, it is common for hsp to misdiagnose themselves with either autism or adhd or both. There are similarities and overlap but some critical differences in the details. There is also a short test for it on ms Aron’s website: https://hsperson.com/test/highly-sensitive-test/
Alright I got the book and I’ve been reading through it. There are a number of bits that don’t feel relevant to me, and I suspect reflect the author’s personal flavor of sensitivity. Like the frequent talk of being shy or keeping to oneself, maintaining the peace, not engaging with coworkers, etc. I’m an absolute bulldozer of a concern raiser. I will intuitively discover what problems are at play and confidently report them to a superior, regardless of the political will to address them. Some leaders truly appreciate this. Others do not.
But I do score high on the tests. And most things in the book are relatable. If nothing else the concept of abnormal sensitivity to stimuli is a useful lens for analyzing my life. It explains many things. I’ve avoided a number of things that most people really enjoy, seek out, and revel in because I suspect they would be completely overwhelming to me. There are a number of standout exchanges from my life when I realized how different I am on these things.
I'm happy to hear my comment was useful to you! Ever since I learned there is approximately 20% of us I've been on a bit of a quest to find them and tell them about this.
My personal experience is one of being a living oxymoron, for instance I do not like to talk but once i get sufficiently excited i won't stop talking. That goes for happy and angry, to my detriment i can get so upset that i become unable to communicate in a non erratic fashion...
But yes essentially it boils down to just being really good at processing (a lot of) stimuli but at the same time becoming quickly overstimulated, leading to things like shyness and introversion for a lot of people as a necessity to protect their sanity. I don't think I've met an extroverted hsp yet.
I’m definitely very introverted. But I’m reasonably sociable. I just prefer to see the same people most of the time. Generally at parties with lots of people I burn out within a couple of hours unless I’m having a 1:1 conversation. And the noise alone can make me miserable and cause me to leave.
I guess first hear you are not alone. I am walking this way with you and I know others who are and have as well. It’s awful and terrifying. I also feel you on the medical front. The establishment assumes a lot of authority, avoids as much accountability as it can, and doesn’t know a lot more than it does. Psychotropic meds often don’t work and often do have profounf side effects, and doctors are unable to help you decide you are one of the folks who they can’t help. It’s probably still worth trying, because if you are one of the folks they can help, meds actually do help.
A good therapist helps too, but finding one can be a nightmare.
The solution for myself is to come out of denial about my childhood trauma, which was extensive. Awareness is not enough of course, there’s a lot of work to do, but others have successfully walked this way and left good hints.
I definitely second advice about going outside. Fresh air, nature (even just a city park), and exercise are a great way to reorient yourself.
I will say to tread carefully with drugs, both pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical. Certain careers (notably many aviation roles) are almost impossible to do if you’ve been prescribed ADHD meds, and many (especially those requiring a security clearance) frown on using illegal drugs. I’m not saying to completely forgo medication, it may be necessary, but proceed with caution, especially if considering a career change.
Generally speaking the sort of careers that exclude people on ADHD medication are also the ones where someone with ADHD will struggle. Or not even come close to considering.
It is difficult to understate how massive of a positive impact ADHD medication can have on someone who has ADHD. To the point that I am willing to say that for a lot of people the advice to consider avoiding medication is borderline harmful.
The advice to go outside is mostly sound, as one of the basic things to do to get out of a negative headspace. However, it is no solution certainly not for someone who is struggling to the degree like OP is.
And to be clear, nobody here can diagnose OP with what is really going on. But that is why so many people are saying they need to see a specialist.
Sure, I’m not trying to suggest it is a long-term solution, nor am I trying to discourage them from getting treatment. I just want them to be aware going in that these are potential issues and to be careful about how they approach it.
Telling someone to "proceed with caution" when it comes to pursuing medication is discouraging them from getting treatment. There are exceptionally few careers where it's even appropriate for your employer to ask what medications you're taking, much less exclude people for being on legally-prescribed ADHD medication, so framing it as a common issue misrepresents the risk/reward ratio for starting ADHD medication.
From what I've read before, ADHD medication isn't even widely available globally as some countries have much greater restrictions on them, and prescriptions themselves are discouraging people from getting treatment. I noticed OP said this...
So the medical system is seemingly a bigger discouragement to the OP getting drugs that could change their lives (according to many of the comments in here) far more than a simple comment that says "proceed with caution". Which as a general statement of advice, isn't actually all that crazy. Medications have side effects, some worse than others. I get that you were pointing out there are "exceptionally few careers" where ADHD medications would be a problem and the comment was misrepresenting the impact there, but it's not as if that is the only basis to ever consider 'proceeding with caution'. Also notably within that phrase is the word proceed, which doesn't mean stop, it means keep going, so it seems a highly strange interpretation to say someone is discouraging them from getting treatment.
In addition to what @sparksbet just said, a lot of the times when people have said to me 'proceed with caution' or something similar is when what they actually intended to say was that they think people should not be on medication. Which, given the enormous quality of life improvement it is for so many people diagnosed with ADHD is a problem.
To be clear, I am assuming good faith here with no ill intend. But even with the best intentions, how messaging can come across and how it influences discourse is still important to be aware of.
I agree, that's why I found it odd that it seemed like the parent comment was getting nitpicked over something as minor as I interpreted it to be. The messaging of that action comes across as anything other than full-throated support is highly damaging, which I find to be quite peculiar considering the circumstances.
As seemingly there is some agreement that the medical system is broken to the point that it discourages people from getting treatment, or as sparksbet worded it "so much of a barrier for getting treated", full-throated support does not acknowledge those barriers at all. It actually comes across as totally dismissive of those barriers, like as if they don't exist.
It's not a stretch to say that I could potentially have written something similar to OP here, I've long suspected that I'd benefit from ADHD medications, but the reason I haven't gotten them is not because someone said to "proceed with caution". It's because our institutions and the medical system has such barriers that I cannot engage with the system to get those medications.
Fair enough. There is one last bit of context I'd like to offer. For me, the medical system was not the biggest hurdle. I have written about it elsewhere in this thread. It was as easy as going to my GP, getting referred for a diagnosis and after a few interviews I had my diagnosis and my initial subscription as well as appointments for follow up things (getting the dosage right, as well as what I wrote about here. Getting your GP to refer you is sometimes a bit more of a challenge around here, but generally speaking this is how it works for most adults.
My hurdle was truly the lack of support from a lot of people before I got to the point where I wanted to try and see if I had ADHD. The dismissive attitude to the idea, or if people thought I might have it the sort of thing I mentioned earlier where they would vocally oppose any sort of medication.
Even from people who as part of their education should have known better. At the time I was in college for an educational degree, various courses were about things like ADHD, given by people who were supposed to know more about it than your average Joe. And even from some of these people I got similar responses.
It was only because some other people actually did give me what you call “full-throated support” and actually pushed me in a positive sense that I finally made the appointment.
The fact that the medical system provides so much of a barrier for getting treated is why many people (including myself) are particularly sensitive to people otherwise discouraging seeking treatment. There are enough hurdles in the way without adding more. There already are enough social forces pushing against getting medicated for ADHD, to the extent that almost every book I've read by a clinician or researcher who specializes in ADHD has to dedicate a section to talking about how safe and effective stimulant medication is for treating ADHD because of how much stigma and misinformation about it there is in our society.
Yes, I am cleared. That part of the advice was geared toward being careful about using shrooms/weed/ketamine. Drug use can result in a denial, although these days it generally results in a having to wait a year before you can hold a clearance.
The other part of my comment was about certain career fields being limited if using legal meds, mostly aviation (the FAA is stuck in the past on ADHD/psychiatric med use, just go on r/flying for the zillions of posts about trying to be a pilot with ADHD). If OP is trying to make a career change to aviation or some other field that has intense medical evals, that was the spot where legal meds can be a problem (even if they are perfectly capable of flying an aircraft, for example).
A lot of the advise above is quite good, but I wanted to add my own note from a different angle that might give you more of a short term solution WHILE you work on the longer term solutions.
If you are comfortable with drugs, I would try mushrooms. There are lots of studies on them about their anti-depressant properties. They are very good at connecting the dots in your brain, kicking you out of bad habits, and allowing you to be mindful of what's bothering you in life.
As someone who can't take ADHD meds (I seem to get hit by unacceptable side effects no matter what), I've found mushrooms to be really helpful. The next step I'm working on is diving into meditation which also has a surprising amount of evidence behind it as well. I suggest Meditation for Figity Skeptics as a good starting point.
Good luck!
Do you have all of these problems at an in-person job?