Some people with ADHD thrive in periods of stress, new study shows
Some people with ADHD thrive in periods of stress, new study shows
Patients responded well in times of ‘high environment demand’ because sense of urgency led to hyperfocus
From the "This is only news to neurotypicals" department
"People with ADHD can only get shit done when they're stressed and will often create stress just to motivate themselves" is in freaking Driven to Distraction, the first mainstream book about ADHD from like 30 years ago haha.
I thought I read that somewhere, many years before this study "just" discovered it. Shoot, I've been using that knowledge as a coping mechanism for at least a decade lol
Yeah I absolutely hate it. I am either to stressed to enjoy any accomplishments I make at the time or I become self sabotaging to the point where I must act. I consider going back to medication very often.
(It has been over ten years since I was.)
I basically have permanent anxiety because of this. My entire life, tasks have been driven by fear and anxiety. My emergency response is fucking amazing because of this. I broke my wrist last year and was in a zen mind state. Handled it like it was nothing and didn’t panic. It makes me wonder if software engineering was the wrong field for me and I should’ve instead been an ambulance driver.
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.
Oh yeah, stress will really amp up my comprehension. It will also amp up the suicidal idealation.
And health issues.
Psh, that's for future me to deal with!
AuDHD here. I got put on Buspar for anxiety once. It worked amazingly well at getting rid of anxiety. Unfortunately, I learned that anxiety was the only way I accomplished anything meaningful. I would have to be anxious that I would disappoint someone or something would result in terrible outcomes if I didn't do it. When the Buspar got rid of anxiety, I lost my drive to accomplish anything. I remember telling the doc, "I don't feel like doing anything. I just sit there." So, I was taken off of it.
My personal psychological intervention for ADHD was military training instilling discipline and increasing anxiety to illicit the military discipline to avoid doom. In other words, I accomplished everything meaningful by pretending I was in war. Accomplishments weren't accomplishments to celebrate. They were avoidance of harm to feel relieved by. A life full of fear rather than pleasure and pride.
omg I can't believe I just figured that out rn lol 😆
We are fighting a war. Try not doing the things that stress you out. Straight to living in a van down by a river.
But man, what a carefree couple months it gets you. Like mana from the sky, a blissful oasis in a sea of hurt, never to return.
Someone had to carry out a study for that? I thought that’s common with ADHD.
Stress just turns on a switch in the brain which would otherwise be off no matter how much a situation warranted it.
When i was 14 i had my first real big assignment in school. We had to write 14 pages about something. We had like 8 weeks or something. My teacher looked specifically at me and said: that's not one of these things that you can start in seven weeks and think you get by.
I knew what i had to do and i had time to do it. Anyway, i started the friday when i only had 3 more days left, didn't find the book i was looking for so i did the whole thing on a sunday and got an A. It was there where i first wondered if something is wrong with me or if school is just bullshit.
Yeah I’m terrible at normal mundane activities, god forbid paper work or writing a report. But when there is a fire, I turn into Superman. It’s weird. It’s like the chaos fuels me.
Be the chaos you need to have in your life!
that's the only way I ever submitted anything in college lmao
wait what do you mean I'm now suffering from permanent burnout and near adrenal exhaustion and inability to execute on any of my hobbies anymore? No that clearly just means I need more caffeine and to work harder because I'm lazy
If you white knuckle past the point of burnout, you eventually start getting out of bed again to do hobbies. But only hobbies that feel useful and needed, and only if done feverishly so your brain can't dwell on feeling burnt out and all the fun is gone. Dunno, maybe it's just me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Disclaimer: It doesn't go so well for people who wish to remain employed :/
I'm in this comment and I don't like it
Don't worry, keep up the stress and ADHD will break like a neurotypical.
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.
Yup. I rode deadline panick all the way through to a degree and now it feels like adrenaline just doesn't work right anymore.
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
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.
Hah, for me, this broke down in the middle of my degree lol
Like how I built a tolerance to Concerta?
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.
I've put in 60 or 70 hours of work this week. Productive. I'm a software engineer. In my normal 40 hour week there's at least one day where I do nothing and then the other days have 2-3 productive hours.
Why? Because the project is falling behind and this one is being led by our CEO. We have like 20 employees. I save his ass, I'll probably get a raise out of it.
I work in incident management. I feel comfortable when everything is on fire. Look around like it's surreal that everyone is so panicked.
Seriously. How do people not just stop, look around, and make a decision?
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.
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.
It's a feature.
We thrive, yes... But it takes its toll after repeated incidents.
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
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.
That's me. Once you remove the pressure I'm a mess
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
It’s a study not a therapy session.
NT "journalist" : Breaking news: CPTSD & ADHD are closer relatives than previously thought.
NDs : ....
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?
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
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.
I feel like my adhd is the reason for my extreme stress? I'm inattentive as fuck, which is very fucking stupid because the ptsd symptom I can't turn off is hyperawareness. I'm always noticing everything, but trying to keep track of it long enough to put into context is a struggle. Life those two symptoms are at odds and making each other worse?
Even trying to explain it like this feels stupid.
I've let non-verbal pets (my snake, for one) die because I knew I needed to feed them, but my task paralysis prevented me from doing so when I thought of it and my lack of time management meant they could always go one more day.
Man, 2020 sucked major ass. I'm sorry Juno! You deserved better than me.
It is exhausting to live like this. Now, I just have passive SI and am waiting to find out what cancer or terminal disease I have that will claim my life while I slowly eat and sit myself to an early grave.
I’m here with you, friend.
Isnt that the only way to get things done?
Yes, but maybe the ability to feel stress helps you to avoid it?
So maybe those with ADHD can do more in stressful moments... and then die sooner.
Yeah. I’m like Animal Mother. A piece of shit until stuff goes really wrong then I am a great motivated problem solver.
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!
I'm sure when you come through, find the issue, and solve it that gives you a great feeling. You're are correct that it's additional stress managing, but if you can throw down with the frontline crew, you get respect other managers just don't get and it can make it a little easier on that front.
My ADHD must be broken then. Or it's the OCD and GAD talking
Tell me about it, I just got off an 8-hour brunch shift, running my ass off the whole time, and I am flying.
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.
Super interesting. I've actually found i thrive best with 3-4 simultaneous contract jobs instead of just one, because I otherwise have too much time to wander or get distracted, versus just staying heads down and working.
Thought it was just me, but seems like it isn't, which is nice.
I used to be good at this, but I have lost my self-confidence and ability to think on my feet.
couldn't be me