this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2023
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ADHD
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A casual community for people with ADHD
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I second the seclusion idea. We cannot be trusted with distractions. Remove them and you won't have to resist or use will power. Speaking of will power, we don't have as much as others. I've found routines are my lifeline. Each task or step has to complete near the beginning of the next one. The closer the better, so there is as little time for a distraction to interfere with the flow. One last thing, it doesn't get better or worse. You ability to cope gets better or worse. We have ADHD, you don't grow out of it any more than a person with a missing hand (an an extreme example) grows out of it. They work around it. They can't use both hands, because they don't have two hands. We have our personal ADHD symptoms that won't go away. Our only way forward is to identify them, accept them, and then work on ways to mitigate them. You wouldn't fault a one handed man for not being able to clap like everyone else, so don't beet yourself up over your "failings". Help yourself of tomorrow by finding how to cope with your symptoms today.
YMMV, but seclusion doesn't seem to work for me... I can't be trusted with distractions, but it seems I can't be trusted not to seek the situations where I'm exposed to said distractions either. Taking the aforementioned example of going to the library and closing my phone, I'd probably leave early after convincing myself I could do the same from home, or pull my phone out of my bag and boot it up later "just to check something", and bam, back to square one.
Routines are absolutely key, though.
We are our worst enemy. There was an interesting piece on NPR (might be a TED Talk) about how our brains see our future selves the same as a stranger. Meaning we have the same amount of goodwill and empathy as for a random stranger on the street. Like, if you see someone in the rain without an umbrella, then think "sucks to be them" well, that is you tomorrow. Weird