Do neurotypicals really not have to do this? I'm seriously asking.
Thank you Nome @NomedaBarbarian
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@NomedaBarbarian on Twitter:
Thinking about how I've been lied to as an #ADHD person about what habits are.
That apparently is not what neurotypical folks get to experience.
Habits are things that they do without thinking.
They don't have to decide to do them. They don't have to remember to do them. Things just happen, automatically, because they've done them enough for that system to engage and make them automatic.
That system...which I lack.
Every single time I have brushed my teeth, it's been an active choice. I've had to devote thought and attention to it. It's not a routine, it's not a habit, it's something that I know is good to do, and hopefully I can remember to do it.
Every single time I exercise, or floss, or pay my rent, or drink water, or say "bless you" when someone sneezes,
It's because I've had to actively and consciously engage the protocol.
It never gets easier.
Just more familiar.
It's part of my struggle with my weight--exercise never becomes a habit, and every single time I do it, it is exactly as hard as the first time. It takes exactly as much willpower & thought.
I got lied to about how it would just "turn into a habit". And blamed, when it didn't.
Drinking water isn't a habit. Feeding myself isn't a habit. Bathing isn't a habit.
I spend so much more energy, so much more time, so much more labor on just managing to maintain my fucking meat suit.
Uh... No. This suggests that NTs act like drones, without any thought. Like they're sitting on the sofa, then they just get up, wander to the bathroom, brush their teeth, then get into bed and think "wow how did I get here hahaha what a habit, eh?"
Damn as a neurotypical person reading this it blows my mind. Yes, my habits are absolutely automatic, to the point I daydream through them. Am I just misunderstanding something or are you saying every adhd person struggles to form habits?
You always are mentally and actively doing something otherwise you'd be unconscious. Habits just means the mental resistance becomes a lot lower. If you struggle to brush your teeth, it's a lot of effort to initially get you to go the bathroom. When it's a habit, there's usually a trigger that gets you to go to the bathroom without having to expend all that energy as much. Unconscious habits are automatic which are different.
Yes, that's how habits work. They are mostly automatic.
No, that's not how brushing your teeth, flossing, taking the time to exercise or drinking water works as those are not habits at all.
PS: Drinking water might be the exception. You might be able to create a habit out of it... by taking the concious choice to always make some water readily available...
I think I can confidently say that I have habits. I am ADHD, and I have habits. Not good habits like brushing my teeth, or chores or anything...
No. My habits are either useless, or actively detrimental. Things like chewing my finger nails, or self-soothing behaviors like when I rub my feet together (drives my SO nuts). Stuff like that which I do subconsciously.
Everything else requires some measure of effort to get to doing.... Usually when I'm in the process of getting something done, it's far easier to see it through to conclusion, vs. Getting started....
Habits doesn't and shouldn't imply that the habits are good. Things I consider habitual now are a result of many years of doing the same things over and over in the same way with a consistent result...
It's fine. Just always be present. 100% of the time. Always be aware of what you are doing, what you need to do, and what you are doing next. Don't forget to be thinking about what is happening today. Also, keep in mind what is happening next week.
Pretty sure I forgot to take my stomach pill today. The same pill I take every morning, for about 7 years.
No, there is nothing about brushing my teeth that's automatic. At some point during the evening I usually notice fuzzy-feeling teeth, or as I'm nodding off while reading my book will think "oh no, I never brushed my teeth..." There is always some small element of discipline to getting up and doing the thing. But I can usually remember without having to set an alarm or post a sticky note, if that meets your definition of "habit".
Exercise is brutal and IMO, that never gets easier, either. In contrast, I generally have an easier time with mental discipline & focus compared to physical tasks.
Strangely enough, as a (mostly) white Millennial woman, the majority of my peers now claim to have adult-onset/adult-diagnosed ADHD. Maybe this is an accurate diagnosis for some. And even if it's an exaggeration in other cases, who cares, as long as the coping strategies or medication is improving someone's quality of life.
What's sad to me, though, is when the diagnosis becomes an all-consuming identity and an excuse to stop trying altogether, a way to shut out the rest of the world. These women I know who excelled in school and work or had creative hobbies and traveled the world, now they just post mental health memes all day and joke about how it's impossible to get out of bed. And if anyone suggests maybe they TRY getting out of bed and see how it feels to participate in X, Y, Z activity like we used to, then come the accusations that we're clueless NTs who will never understand what it's like to struggle.
And that's just not true. NTs also work hard and struggle at times...that's life. So let's just make sure all these diagnoses are helping and working FOR us rather than AGAINST us. And sometimes forgetting to brush your teeth is just ... forgetting to brush your teeth.
I was in my mid 30’s when I was diagnosed with ADHD. Actually my twin daughter’s ADHD doctor asked me at one of their appointments if I had ever been tested/ seen about it. I was kinda confused since I didn’t think at the time I had it. Once I get tested and then started on ADHD meds… my whole life of struggles became clear. I had struggled with anxiety and depression from middle school on and was on two-three meds for that. Even then I still struggled with anxiety and panic.
Once started on ADHD meds, no longer needed my anxiety or depression meds. My doc said my ADHD presented with that. So that was a bonus!
I can’t stay focused, I “spin in circles” as I call it. Where my brain is like “boot looping” basically. I can’t start all the projects/ tasks I know I need/want to do… so I literally… SPIN. I get super frustrated with unfinished tasks and easily get distracted with something new.
Ie; folding laundry.. start putting them away and see I need to empty the trash in the bathroom, then, see the dishes need doing so Ofc I start washing them…and then one of my daughters starts talking to me and I’m off doing something else for them. End result? Bullshit. Laundry not done, dishes half assed… kid’s task.. well that’s completely done cause I have them there in front of me making sure it’s done… oh and trash IS emptied but I lost the trash can somewhere. Probably where the laundry is.
That is a typical day. I also am so “busy” all day I don’t eat till right when I’m sitting down for the first time all day and then I graze all evening long till bedtime…
For better or for worse, this is normal. Habits are never really easy to be honest, and they remain easy to break forever. I tried to make a habit out of flossing. I did it for awhile, and it almost felt like a habit I formed anew, but then one day I skipped it and it was all over. Hell I skip brushing my teeth sometimes and I actively have to avoid falling out of that habit too.
I don’t know if that helps or not. But I believe almost everyone feels this way about habit formation. I think you’re just more aware of your choice. Everyone does the activity consciously but most people aren’t really analyzing it in the same way as you describe.
Hygiene is the thing I struggle with. Every time i brush my teeth it's, "I'd better do it while I'm think about it." Showering is an active choice which i hate doing because I dispise how my body looks. Exercising? Absolutely terrified because the last time I truly exercised I almost died due to a septic pelvis injury.
Often enough I dont have enough spoons to do everything I do in the day and spend a lot of it in bed. I'm currently trying to find a source of income and have put some images on redbubble, but the thought of holding down a job is foreign. ADHD, Autism, and Anxiety are not a good mix
The habit is the part that says oh I should brush my teeth.
But it's also the part that says, nah, I should just keep playing on my phone.
They're both habits. The one you engage in more is the one that will probably end up happening without some effort and self discipline.
Making new habits when you have strong habits encouraging you to follow old routines is never easy and takes practice to get right, neurotypical or not.
My girlfriend, her mother and several family members have adhd. It's quite the experience for me beings I don't have it but I do understand it much better than I used to so I navigate the relationship rather well now... but people with adhd fatigue much quicker than people without it. The brain is being overworked and the mental becomes physical.
If you're exhausted, you sometimes don't communicate the right things, you won't normally finish an activity you started and you quite literally feel tired all the time. The depression is like buying bullets with the +p... it's more powerful but in the context we're talking about... the adhd seems more potent or concentrated to the point you become unaware of it often times than not.
Always seeking approval and or justification is your natural habitat... you want to be loved, you're insecure and you just hate that you ended up with this to work through or worry about. When you hurt someone, you typically hurt more because you didn't mean to hurt anyone. Often, you'll lie about something in order to protect your vulnerability or to avoid conflict of any sort.
This is what I have experienced with an adult where their ADHD has gone unmanaged and unnoticed but we're tearing down the walls and she's learning to communicate better as well as becoming more attentive to her condition while accepting it and working a little to make it a bit easier so it works for her and I...
In my experience with her for almost 6yrs now.... once I stopped seeing her as a threat, and when I stopped allowing her to constantly fumble the ball, things started improving but she had to understand and see what she was doing and how it effects people around her and even the responsibilities as an adult. For me, I had to learn how to not speak out of turn, and I had to help her find understanding without becoming insulting and it required me to be more supportive and loving before she started making an effort to cope on her own and willing to change some things that weren't healthy for the both of us.
This is the short version but hopefully you guys and gals understand what I'm sharing.
If you or someone you love has adhd. Wear it proudly! You are awesome and you are important and play a vital role in society. You go through things others don't think about or feel so don't give anyone the power to force you to live under a rock. If they were wise, they could learn quite a lot of good things about you, even if you can't say a whole lot about yourself that would represent you in a good light. In my opinion, you are the light so stay shiny!
Ahh yes, my "habits" are just routines I do often or daily. And I have a love hate relationship with them. I love that they work and help me take care of myself and my family. But I also hate having to do them, hate that I need them, and hate that if I change them I will in all likelihood forget something.
I'll be brutally honest. You're right, it doesn't get easier.
To paraphrase Kara Lawson, you just get better at handling hard stuff.
It sounds like you have a hard time forming habits. That's definitely how they're defined though. Habits are the things we do on autopilot.
As my username suggests, it's not all sunshine and roses. I used to have a habit of drinking and smoking. My typical cycle was that I'd wake up with a hangover and just go to work. Fortunately, that part was all on autopilot. I'd make it through work and do all the normal work crap. Assuming there was no office happy-hour, I would go to the train on autopilot. At this point I'd firmly intend not to buy wine or cigarettes. I meant it, 100%, every time. I'd take the train home and firmly intend to walk right past the liquor store, without stopping. But unfortunately my autopilot habit was just as strong here. Day after day I would just take a slight detour and end up with a pack of Camel lights, a bottle of Marques de Caceres and usually some variety drink, often some Hefeweizen or IPA.
Good habits can be really helpful. Bad habits can suck donkey balls. Changing them can be really hard.
I enjoyed reading Atomic Habits and it helped me think about ways to influence my own autopilot behavior.
If it makes you feel any better, exercise seems to be one of those habits that a lot of people find difficult. There's a well known phenomenon where gyms completely fill up on January 2 and then empty out around January 15 for the rest of the year.
It sounds like you're doing what you can to make yourself better at the hard stuff. Best of luck, friend.
For me (neurotypical as far as I know), habits are a mix of 3 things:
Conditioning from when I was a kid (quite literally Pavlovian Conditioning) which I will do without thinking. For example I will clean my shoes on the doormat both on the way in and the way out, the latter not really making logical sense: I've just been conditioned by my mother when I was a kid with constant "Clean your shoes!" and the behaviour just got associated with the trigger of going over the doormat, hence I unthinkingly do it also on the way out
Familiar and always (so far) no problem choices. For example having lunch in pretty much always the same handful of places, buying the same brand of certain things. As an introvert I am not comfortable with new places with new people plus there is a cognitive cost (and risk) with trying new things, hence the familiar feels comfortable and the unfamiliar discomforting. The habit is driven by favoring the easy/comforting over the discomforting. This is not the same as being unable to change: I'm actually a serial immigrant and can very quickly adjust to living in a completelly new place and a different country (nowadays it takes me only a few days) - it's just that there is a huge barrier to actually get myself to the point of starting such a change.
Stuff I have to force myself to do because it's important to do it for social or health reasons. Shave, proper cooking (rather than quick improvisation involving no significant meal preparation or ready-made meals), even brushing my teeth.
All those things qualify as habits (in the sense of being done regularly) but the drives for each class of thing are very different.
PS: I get the impression that what some think of as habits in a neurotypical sense is mainly the first class of things. As far as I know nobody has only conditioned habits, plus you can't really condition complex things (at best you can have a "get up and go do it" conditioning).
I'm like this too, as a neurodivergent without ADHD. Everything I do, I do deliberately and thoughtfully, with intense focus. Even driving, I can't go into autopilot mode. It's probably why I need a nap most days...
No, xd, nobody just exercises without initiating it. The point of making exercise as a habit is that if you have this momentum then you might feel a slight obligation to do it and be more familiar with it so it's not intimidating.
I'm fairly certain I'm ND, but never fully knew if it was Autism (Aspergers?) or ADHD. Mom never followed up on the testing when I was a kid (and neither did I as an adult), but autism runs high in my family, and I have low and high functioning extended family.
Yeah, definitely not ADHD. I have issues, stims, triggers, but I'm functional, and can definitely form habits, and don't necessarily experience the issues noted here.
As someone who thinks he has ADHD and not Bipolar is now confused after reading this. I feel like I have habits but I’m like half way in half way out on this. Feel like I’m straddling the fence.
No but seriously, I get into what I call “ruts”, be they good or bad, where I’m doing (or not doing something) routinely…for a few days, weeks, even months, and then it all comes crashing down.
It’s like my autistic side is wrestling with my ADHD side: I WANT and NEED things to be the same, but I can’t maintain it, so I just flip flop between what is and isn’t “normal” in the moment, which makes switching back hard.
Dude we need some legit study or science on this because if so this blows my brain. I'm a huge proponent of Seinfeld chains, and books on habit science, improving yourself. I have several apps but I'M CONSTANTLY struggling to do these systems. Like it feels impossible.
I have quit nail biting, I've done a month of meditation. I can concentrate intently on one thing for a period of time but then I context switch and because I'm not actively everyday using a checklist to remember what I have to do I don't do it.
I have cavities right now because I focused on something else I needed to do regularly and let my teeth go.
My friends and family make fun of me for constantly changing interests and habits and that I can't stick with one thing. Maybe!!! They aren't the same way because it's EASIER for them to be in automatic mode to do the same thing.
So as a NT that is only recently thinking about how ND I might be, what's striking about this to me is that no only do I not have or form any "automatic" habits, but I think my lack of such or my lack of ability to form them has formed a deep aspect of my personality.
Like, I don't want to do anything "automatically", and any kind of environment or culture or expectation that relies on "just doing things automatically" is something I not only dismiss as unappealing and even "bad" but something I even get suspicious about and about the kinds of people that get into that. Like, however productive and helpful it is, I honestly think I've developed an unconscious distrust of people that simply "do things automatically" on the grounds that they're not plugged in enough to values and purposes and the "why this should be done".
Of course, maybe I've got a point there. Though maybe virtue doesn't play a role when it comes to the dishes. My point though is that I'm pretty sure I've incorporated this as a given and allowed it to inform my worldview, so I guess that's fun.
I have alarms. I feel this in my core though. I have very strict routines that I follow, but they sure as fuck aren't habbit's I have to watch the clock and get extremely anxious around the time I know I need to do things, all.the.things.
As an autistic person, habits are integral to my existence. I hate it when my schedule gets crazy, unless I very specifically plan for it. However, my husband who has ADHD, the above seems true. As a simple example: I always leave my stuff like keys, lunchbox, and headphones in the exact same spot when I get home from work. On the other hand, I spent 10 minutes this morning trying to find where my husband put the potato chips that I was planning on taking for lunch. Instead of being in the kitchen, they were in the living room(??!!) cos he moved them there to "get them out of the way."
I'm very structured in the way I work; he needs to be constantly redirected to stay on task. I have boundless attention to fiddly, very specific high-attention things (I do a lot of fiber crafts such as knitting and crocheting lace) for HOURS, to quote Neal Stephenson, "I have attention surplus disorder." He can't work on anything longer than 15 minutes.
It used to drive me crazy, but now I've realized that's just how his brain works, and we just work around it. On the other hand, he keeps makes me take breaks and pace myself (which I don't usually do), and I help him be more efficient. It's a pretty good system.
I'm not sure what is going on with this stuff. Habit is another word for automation and we all have that. Nobody is consciously growing their hair. When you move up to behavioural habits it becomes less clear. We fundamentally don't understand where our motivation comes from. It amazes me how much behaviour people take credit for. Sit in silence and listen to your mind, the thoughts arrive continuously and they are unpredictable. If you can admit that you don't really know why you do the things you do, life is easier. It's just a process that unfolds, moment by beautiful moment.
They should do what I do and get so stressed with other stuff that I hyperfocused on doing my taxed one night at 1AM while anxiously procrastinating something else
I think that the neurotypicals have ability to make these things onto "habits" that then happen automatically for them.
As a person that has to remember to every time, and decide everything I do, from what time I get up, to when I drink (and what) to when I shower or even brush my teeth, it is exhausting just maintaining daily hygiene and while I fully understand why I need to do all those things and WANT to do them to maintain myself, none of it comes without considerable forethought and considered decision making.
Frankly it can be exhausting just to exist, let completely alone, progress.
Habits are pretty much definitionally subconscious, so this person is most likely describing poor habits rather than an entirely different type of habits. I wouldn’t be surprised if habit formation is significantly more challenging with ADHD, though.
I haven't been fully tested but my doctor agrees it is likely I have ADHD and this is all new to me, grain of salt.
I definitely do things without thinking. Drinking, snacking, vaping, reaching for phone just because my hands need to be busy. Mindless stuff.
As for what I think most neurotypical people consider habits I have maybe one that is somewhat automatic for me and that is I ALWAYS do my skincare and teeth before bed. But part of that is because that routine is really good sleep hygiene. Like it is still a decision, still a bit of a chore, but it would feel VERY wrong and off if I didn't do it.
Then um let's see I've been taking the same medication at the same time for over 15 years now and I still need an alarm on my phone and I have still forgotten to take it if I don't take it that very second. At least most of the time later in the day I suddenly remember...
I don't think any body for example would brush their teeth completely sub consciously, but when it becomes a habit I'd say it becomes the default choice rather than something you need to remember to go out of your way to do.
Nothing is a habit, eveything is an alarmed notification. This is the lifestyle i will lead to late future since can't afford therapy and ritalin anymore
Maintain your meat suit?! Get the fuck outta here. You think everyone doesn't need to remember oh yeah gotta brush my teeth, or forget now and then? And yeah taxes suck for everyone. Life is hard, who knew. Get over yourself.
This is interesting. I'm an NT with several NDs in my family. This explains a lot about my husband and about my kids as they were growing up. The odd thing is, I also have a difficult time with developing habits and have to make myself do pretty much everything.
Reading this post and the comments has made me question whether I am neurotypical or not. I was never diagnosed with any kind of neurodivergence, but autism is present in my family. Is it possible that I’ve picked up ways of thinking from them or is it likely that I have some of the same traits, if not enough to warrant a diagnosis?
Yes, it is a cliche that "habits are hard to beak", because they are things you've done so much that you are condition to do them automatically. Like, dictionary definition.