From the “This is only news to neurotypicals” department
Yeah, it’s the pressure of needing tasks completed immediately and the obvious importance/need to remove the stress-causing thing.
It’s a perfect recipe for hyperfocus and also why I can’t set my own deadlines–because I know it’s all wibbly wobbly when there isn’t a hard deadline from an external source. I’d be rich if I had a dollar for every time I wished someone would just tell me when something is needed instead of asking me to give an estimate.
If the task feels like boring busy work or bullshit and no one told me otherwise, you’ve got fuckall chance it’s getting done.
NT “journalist” : Breaking news: CPTSD & ADHD are closer relatives than previously thought.
NDs : …
I work in incident management. I feel comfortable when everything is on fire. Look around like it’s surreal that everyone is so panicked.
I wonder if that’s why we’re here? We’re the people that act first when the animals attack the village…
Don’t be fooled, though. It adds up.
It’s a feature.
I’m the one who is awake by the fire when the sabretooth shows up at midnight. I’m the one going around telling everyone to get outside, the house is on fire. I’m the one who is suddenly at the bottom of the small cliff, still steaming and naked from the hot tub, doing first aid assessment on the partier who fell off. I’m the one who burns for 14 hours and gets the team to push that working build out minutes before going live.
There’s dopamine in there. We’re starved for it daily so we can go hard in some way when it counts.
It makes sense, but it also makes sense to design society so that situations where it’s helpful happen as rarely as possible. If some people are predisposed to being a good firefighter, it doesn’t negate the fact that you don’t want buildings to catch fire in the first place, so you still want to teach children not to play with matches, teach adults not to keep lighter fuel near their heater, and ban companies from selling combustible cladding to insulate tower blocks. Prevention is better than cure. You just then have a load of people who aren’t great at being anything except a firefighter, ready for fires that never happen, and under the current system, forced either into jobs they’re bad at, or into chronic stress to get consistent productivity.
Seriously. How do people not just stop, look around, and make a decision?
Same reason they ask introverts why they are so quiet.
I’ve always been surprised by people who panic and scream or run around. I don’t get it.
My ADHD must be broken then. Or it’s the OCD and GAD talking
More than half of adults with ADHD also experience anxiety. But, Sibley’s study shows this might not always be a bad thing. skip past newsletter promotion
this article feels… really gross. like wow, ADHD people thrive under stress! i wonder how they ended up like that
it also doesn’t seem to have any regard for the wellbeing of the people in the study, just their productivity, although it could just be being presented poorly by the article
just shitty overall
Study’s don’t have to study every aspect…they can focus on just one…like someone with ADHD and how they handle productivity during stress.
Personally, I wouldn’t want wellbeing in the way when reading about ADHD peoples stress and productivity. Stick to the point and don’t add feelings garbage into it.
would it be that it were so simple, but for that “feelings garbage” to be the cause of ADHD to begin with…
It’s a study not a therapy session.
Don’t worry, keep up the stress and ADHD will break like a neurotypical.
Yup. I rode deadline panick all the way through to a degree and now it feels like adrenaline just doesn’t work right anymore.
When the adrenaline doesn’t work anymore, it’s time to try meth.
Meth just makes you fail at jerking off for 72 hours straight. Nothing to see here
I had a near miss during autobahn driving recently and I felt nothing. I remembered it because it was so bizzare. I do feel burnt out from anxiety
Hah, for me, this broke down in the middle of my degree lol
Get a hormone blood panel done, it can check your cortisol.
I had one done a few weeks ago and (big surprise) my cortisol is basically non existent.
Time to get your masters.
Or a Monster… Red Bull… Cocaine…
I’m pretty sure my baseline cortisol levels could kill a small animal. And probably shortened my lifespan by a few years.
My AuDHD is flavored by several varieties of anxiety and crippling depression, the former undiagnosed for most of my life and the latter two only being treated sporadically. I’ve had my episodes of shining in times of chaos (usually at work) but my brain’s go-to response is freeze.
It’s not very effective.
Former Paramedic here. Damn right it does.
That’s what drives me nuts about saying we “thrive” in stress. Equating being functional with doing well is so detrimental to our mental health, because we may be hitting deadlines but we are suffering miserably while doing so.
Isn’t that the medical basis for why we take the stress medicine? Like, isn’t this one of the very few things we actually know about ADHD?
That’s me. Once you remove the pressure I’m a mess
It works for me in so far as giving me a deadline is better than saying “get to it when you get to it.” Because I will never get to it.
This worked until I developed GAD. Now it’s hard to get motivated and hard to wind down, lol.
If you figure out the motivation thing, give me buzz. For winding down, I found that doing mindless sorting tasks is good for relaxing. For instance, I build LEGO things, my son plays with them and takes them apart eventually, and I sort them back out. One time, I went through my son’s old clothes and made a list of what was in each box. I felt so relaxed after the clothes logging! It was a nice little Saturday!
We are wired differently. “Winding down” doesn’t look the same for us. It’s just hard to find the right task to let our brains relax.
What’s GAD?
Probably Generalized Anxiety Disorder
Ah that makes sense.
(Also the last few years of my downward spiral till I hit bottom ) Meds have changed my life the last six months.
Yeah, meds have helped, in my case. At least benzos, but I try not to use them since they were explicitly prescribed as a last resort. I gotta book an appointment at a second doctor one of these days… It wasn’t really working out with my previous doctor.
What are “benzos”? At first I thought that was Bezos.
Benzodiazepines. Class of drugs used for sleep, anxiety and even anesthesia. Wikipedia: benzodiazepine
I have an autism and anxiety diagnosis, but people often assume I have adhd. I say that to say that when shit hits the fan, folks tend to look to look to me, both in my professional and personal life. Maybe this is why I “love” the kitchen environment, especially when nothing is prepped and the tickets are hitting the floor. I’m in management now, and I keep being told to stop, but I’m still in the trenches all the time.
Never worked food prep but I’ve worked at a handful of help desks in IT. I always felt most comfortable and confident in my abilities when helping to identify and solve “house burning” situations. Is not that I couldn’t lead others in a managerial role, it’s that I know I’d be life you, in the thick of it, and also then have the stress of managing people and the stress of all that!
Amazing about the comments is that while a majority seems to “deliver” when the pressure is on, they split 50/50 on whether they feel great during it or suffer greatly, no middle ground.
I’m definitely in the 2nd group. I can get it done if the alternative has horrifying consequences, but it’s not a good feeling.
Maybe two things are mixed up, though. One is like a thing where not doing it is horrible, such as vet appointment for the pet, crucial last deadline at work, kid’s birthday party. The other is like working in a high stress environment, like a project where everything is on fire and under pressure, it’s not about our condition, or an emergency situation like a sinking ship.
I, personally, suffer greatly in the former, but less than the average person in the latter.
Yeah, I think both can be true for one person. It very much depends on the context if I’ll feel great or if I suffer during times of stress. Working in a café with many different orders to fulfill and things to do: nice!! Finishing assignments for university last minute and not doing a good job because you started much too late: feeling like a failure.
Pressurized work makes me feel alive and useful when I succeed.
meanwhile I’m over here breaking down over the possibility that what I say might be misinterpeted as meaning something assholey
edit: and when I get stressed about something that is actually actionable I just get demotivated
Its crazy too becauae I am almost never stressed until SUDDENLY I AM, GOD FUCK I AM SO STRESSED WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED HOW DID I LET THIS GO UNNOTICED FUCK
This is what Prozac and Atarax are for, at least until I can somehow finagle an early retirement
Tell me about it, I just got off an 8-hour brunch shift, running my ass off the whole time, and I am flying.
