Save your patronising nonsense - stop trivialising and dismissing a real neurological condition because you lack the awareness to understand the condition doesn’t impact everyone the same.
I'm sorry you feel I'm being patronizing. I have been struggling with ADHD & Dyslexia my whole life. I do understand that the condition doesn't effect everyone the same.
Yeah, no shit. That is exactly why therapy and drugs are so important. I only recently got diagnosed and have started to work on these issues. I score on all but one of the mentioned "taxes". I'm 42 years old. Don't be an ass.
I think the worst part is that even if you do all you can to avoid these things, they may still happen anyway.
The so-called ADHD tax is not something I am personally super affected by because I am usually too paranoid about bankruptcy to spend on much of anything outside of food, bills and necessities.
However things still happen where I lose money because I am the way that I am. There was a period where I became very into eating cucumbers and I would buy one everytime I was at the store until I realized we had six whole cucumbers in the fridge and some of them were going bad.
Things like that happen even though I hate spending money. Even if I don't mean to. They still happen.
The area where I struggle the absolute most is when it comes to structure and routine. You wouldn't believe how many systems I have tried, how strict I have been about them and how every single one of them have collapsed into rubble after a few months. I yearn for structure, routine and stability, but I can't fucking do it without help. I just can't. It is so much effort to build a house of cards and then life happens, like a gust of wind and I have to start from scratch. Every. Single. Time. You can't put the world on pause to have your feeble attempt at stability survive for longer. Shit happens. Sickness, weekends, vacations, family visits and so on. They happen and they will fuck up every attempt at structure I have every single time. My life is the closest to structured when I live the same day over and over and cut out all enjoyment and spontaneity, but that's not how life works. It took me many years to accept this. I just have to build my house of cards all the time and I have to accept that it will collapse all the time.
I imagine that those who really struggle with the ADHD tax are in similar positions. If the tax is to them what the inability to keep structure is to me, then I feel pretty bad for them. Especially if they're being told to "just do it and stop making excuses".
Thanks for sharing your perspective. From my experience there is no perfect solution, routines take time and effort to develop. You can put energy into developing routine, wake up one morning and find it doesn't work anymore. It's like trying to hit a constantly moving target.
My commentary is about the image. I view it as promoting acceptance of behaviors that are unhealthy. I resent the implication that I'm helpless to my impulses, when I have worked so hard to control them.
Not trying to invalidate anyone's experience, just sharing mine
I dunno if I find the meme to be promoting acceptance of that type of behavior tbh. There may be some people out there who will use it to excuse bad behavior and never try to improve. I see memes like this as funny commentary on symptoms that are pretty annoying, but not much else.
It'd be different if it was a meme that basically said that trying to change and improve is futile and one might as well give up or something like that. I wouldn't agree with that. One always have to try, but it is okay to remember that some things will probably never be easy and that isn't really your fault if you try your best and still fail sometimes.
I know a disproportionate amount of ADHDers in my personal life and most of them keep trying and they do their best. Some function really well while others struggle a bit more. I only really know one ADHDer who refuses to take responsibility for himself and constantly blames everybody else for his predicaments. Needless to say, most people don't like this guy and he isn't really getting anywhere in life because of his attitude. ADHDers like him would look at any ADHD meme and use it to confirm their own victimhood and continue to make it other people's problems that they are like this.
Meanwhile most others will look at these meme and go "lol, I do do that, but I'm working on it" in some shape or form.
This is exactly how I feel looking at this "meme". It's all money related and feels like it's encouraging people to say things like "oops I forgot to cancel my Amazon prime subscription, I must have ADHD haha". We live in overwhelming times, too much information everywhere, too many subscriptions, too much stuff with instant access, but nobody ever mentions that.
People used to get their news from a newspaper once a week. There weren't 10-20 "subscriptions" to keep track of. You couldn't pull a thing out of your pocket to relieve boredom or sadness or loneliness, and people couldn't contact you expecting a response within an hour. We're not used to this biologically...
To me, this meme seems to be making fun of ADHD more than anything.
Most of these replies seem to assume I have no understanding or empathy for these problems. I just don't like the image, and the implication that we have absolutely zero control over impulsive decision making.
To control impulses does not mean to cure them. My experiences as a person with ADHD are just as valid as everyone else's.