Sorry for the negative post but this disorder is genuinely terrible. I was diagnosed a few months ago and from the report I received it seems like I have an extremely bad case of it.
I lost 8 percent of my final grade in an operating system class because I submitted the wrong file.
Fine, I have syncthing setup between my desktop and laptop so I’ll just check if the assignment is on my shared folder in my desktop. It’s not.
Ok, I’ll turn on my laptop and grab the file itself. Oh, I have a boot error and now I need to open up the recovery environment to see if the hard drive is even being recognized.
It’s not. Now I have to open up the laptop and reconnect it.
At this point it’s been 30 minutes of me scrambling to get my laptop up and working again and I found the damn assignment there. I emailed my professor and I’m praying that he reevaluates the assignment because the earlier submission had nothing on it. It was just the default assignment.
None of this shit would have happened had I taken just one second to check over what I submitted a month earlier.
I hate reading articles pertaining to ADHD as if it’s some quirky condition that just takes a little bit of time and medication to work through. Its not. I have to constantly remind myself that I’m even conscious in order to function at all, and now I have to sustain extra mental effort to do a relatively hard task.
The only thing that keeps me going is my boss saying “nice work” when I diagnose an issue successfully. It feels infantilizing, as if he knows there’s something going on with me that’s making it hard to cope with the demands of life but “atleast he’s trying his best, atleast he shows up to work, this customer said he had a friendly attitude”.
This line is reasoning really frustrates me
It doesn’t matter what society I live in, I’m still going to forget people’s birthdays, I’m going to forget to call them, I’m going to forget promises I made, I’m going to turn up late for things etc.
All of those things negatively impact my relationships, even in worlds built to include us
Society could absolutely be shaped better for us and reduce the issues we face, but that isn’t the total picture
I understand the frusteration–I know it feels like an unrealistic suggestion. But I think it’s important to question whether a more general understanding of ADHD could help? Like if people knew that, because you have ADHD, forgetting a date or something is not a sign that you don’t care about them as it’s out of your control. Maybe people in your life could learn how you express that they are important to you. They could learn to appreciate you for who you are and forgive you for who you are not. I know, for me, I greatly appreciate when someone remembers my birthday or an important date, but I don’t hold it against them when they don’t/can’t.
That’s what I mean. It’s not reasonable to expect us to conform to every societal expectation when we literally can’t, especially when others might have more flexibility to meet us where we are (or even in the middle) and don’t currently put in that effort a lot of the time. People could be more aware and compassionate of our condition, just as they won’t be mad of someone with a walker can’t help them move. It doesn’t mean they don’t want to help or that they don’t care, they just don’t have the mobility. People understand that, so why couldn’t they understand us, too?
Right, but even there, you acknowledge the difference. Tolerating the lack of something is not the same as finding joy in its presence. That thing you where you greatly appreciate folks who remember is something I struggle to receive in my relationships.
And to me, this stuff isn’t a societal norm issue. If birthdays weren’t important, it would be something else. Everyone, irrelevant of their culture or background, finds contact with friends meaningful, finds some memories and dates and moments meaningful. I will always struggle with those things.
Because the things we’re talking about here directly impact the ability to develop and sustain relationships. My inability to remember important things or even sustain basic regular contact directly undermines my relationships with people. And yeah, I can compensate, I can work around, I can develop other areas of the relationship etc, but my point is, it isn’t a deficit simply “because society”. In cases like this, it would be a deficit no matter how we restructured things.