Today's Takeaway Lesson

[soc_puppet]

Shiiiit, I am super ADHD.

(Oh look, it's that lack of ability to prioritize thing that my boss has gotten on my case about before! And not being able to manage my time properly! And deciding to actually leave when I'm scheduled to leave when there's still a few things that could conceivably be done either today or tomorrow! HOW ABOUT THAT!)



Also, a fun quote from me:

"Brains: Can't reason with 'em, can't reason without 'em."

Because brains. And neurodivergence. And all of that fun stuff.

Comments

[shy_magpie]

thanks for the link, I knew that not having a sense of time passing was an ADHD thing but I didn't know that people without ADHD are able to pull up a memory based on date rather than figure out the date of the memory based on clues with in it. Kinda seems fakey that you could choose to remember a meal from 5 or 10 years ago

[izzet_bedtime_yet]

I'm pretty confident I don't have ADHD and I sure as heck can't do that. I think it's the putting the memories in sequence that differs, not calling them up?

[shy_magpie]

The meal memory test is in the article just completely baffled me, so I probably described it badly. Unless there was a wedding or something I can't imagine being able to picture a meal from an arbitrary year. Maybe if I could look up events that happened in that year.

[soc_puppet]

Honestly? The other links I had to pick from were:

* Slideshow of how to deal with time seeming fake
* YouTube video of expert talking about what he calls Time Blindness (which I would probably prefer a different name for), which I haven't watched and therefore am uncomfortable linking
* Two different Tumblr posts talking about having a poor sense of linear time

I probably could've looked longer, or linked one or both of the Tumblr posts, but at that point I'd been awake for a good twenty hours already and Tired Brain decided that the first decent-looking Article With An Official Source was the best option. I was absolutely not up to watching the video, though.


Anyway. My memory has always been ludicrously good, but I absolutely organize items around a central theme more than as according to a timeline. This has also gotten me in (minor) trouble at work when we've changed the baking time and temperature on a recipe several times and I don't remember which is the most accurate or recent change, just as an example.

[shy_magpie]

I'm not doubting you, it is just strange to think that most people have their brains organized in a completely different way and I didn't even know.

[soc_puppet]

I swear, at least once a month I learn another way that neurotypical brains are super weird compared to my ADHD brain. Except for me it's usually, "Holy crap, so that's what's going on and why other people don't seem to have a problem with [x]?"

[mesotablar]

haha, I read those first three lines of the article and laughed.

“I told you the movie started at 8 p.m., but we missed it because you’re always late.”

“Let’s just see another movie. This one looks good.”

A primary foundation of any relationship is spending time together,

Movies (especially at the cinema), in themselves are not 'spending time together' it is just a mutual activity that allows more conjoined points of reference in your lives. The more meaningful time is the conversations after the movie or the preparation/organisation time before the movie when the two people are actually interacting.

The article was interesting but the examples all seemed really flawed (as in they don't make anything clearer). The movies example and the meal-20-years-ago were just terrible. 'Baffling' is a good description for them.

[soc_puppet]

*shrugs* IDK, different people draw their lines in different places.


I can put together an approximate meal from ten or twenty years ago, but that's mostly because what I tend to make to eat on my own hasn't changed a lot over the years, even after becoming a food industry professional. Fixing the changes in relation to different specific years would definitely prove a challenge to me, though. Like, what year did Dad get diagnosed with diabetes? We definitely cut a lot of carb-heavy meals out of regular rotation at that point. When exactly did we stop doing our regular "everyone cooks a meal for the family at least once a week" rotation? Was it before or after I moved out? And when did that happen in relation to Diabetes? I think we were still doing meal rotation up until I moved out, and I had to switch out my carb-heavy easy meal options a few years before then, so I guess Diabetes happened when I was in high school?

Someone with a better sense of where these events happened on a linear time frame might be able to build a probable menu faster than me, was my interpretation.


I definitely agree it wasn't the best article I could have chosen to link, but at twenty hours awake, Tired Brain wanted to get this dang post up, and it seemed like the best choice at the time. I may try and find a better one sometime today.

[mesotablar]

Your post is fine, and the article information is interesting. The only thing that lets it down are the examples that are there to make things easier to understand but the writers are clearly showing their internal bias that the readers should all be older-ish (and understand a standard marriage dynamic, but that is another issue)....cause 20 years ago I would have been 6-7 and the only food thing I remember is I didn't like cake. And even then I am not sure if it is something I remember or if it is just me remembering what other people say about what I was like. (Basically I think my memory banks are ...tricky)

[soc_puppet]

Ugh, agreed. I mean, it's nice that ADHD adults are getting attention and are subject to studies like this and stuff? But there's got to be some more universal options to be had.

My memory is actually ridiculously good in a lot of ways, but the fact that it tends to pile everything related to a certain subject in one area without sorting out which came first sometimes even when I work at it is... problematic 9_9a

[mesotablar]

Studies are great, especially when they get attention. Even ones like this one where some people have issues understanding their method because if people see it and complain then there will be a rival institute somewhere who will want to do a better job on the same subject. Science is so competitive that even massively flawed/bad studies are useful to push information along for a certain subject.

[which_chick]

This explains a lot about brother-the-younger, who is impossible to make plans with. He's all... "Let's just do whatever" and you can't tell him, like, "Dinner is at 12:30" because he'll roll in at somewhere from 11 to 2 and be "OK, Let's eat!" and not understand why you're mad at him. *sigh*

He really hates locking down the probability field because it feels like it's trapping him from freedom, so many interesting things could come up that he might miss or have to turn down if he made solid plans. (He does not see that some things are missed because he is unable to make plans for them sufficiently in advance. I have tried to explain it to him and he just... no. He's never gonna get it.)

For what it's worth, I had to rope my friend into talking to my dressage clinician for me over the weekend because I couldn't do it myself. Clinician is a very kind, exceptionally clueful lady who very much wants to teach people how to do dressage. She is NOT TRYING to be hurtful, but she's a kinesthetic, emotional instructor and I am a Needs Actual Words And Not Feelings Or Emotions learner and honest to dog, she keeps making me cry like a frustrated toddler every time I ride for her. Neither of us wants this to happen, any of the times, and yet it keeps happening.

I gave the matter a considerable amount of thought and figured out how clinician could adjust her instructing slightly to not-frustrate-me-so-much and also help me learn better, but I knew from experience that I couldn't tell kindly clinician lady how to fix the problem in a way that would ACTUALLY WORK. Anything I said would hurt the clinician's squishy human feelings and therefore be counterproductive as hell even if that was not even remotely my intention.

So I had my dear friend Lala, who can speak human, fix clinician for me (without hurting her squishy human feelings) and that was great and worked really well. Yay. But also it was awful because normal adults do not need their friends to go speak human for them.

*sigh* Adulting amongst the flesh people. It is hard.

[soc_puppet]

Honestly, I latched onto a wristwatch from a very early age. Possibly second grade? Sometime in grade school, at any rate. I rely so heavily on watches and clocks that having a watch break or losing it left me feeling horrifyingly adrift. Probably half the reason I'm okay not wearing a watch these days is because I virtually always have my cell phone with me and can check time on it.


Urgh, I feel you so hard on different learning/communication styles. I'm pretty sure I've got the same situation the other way 'round with my current boss; if I had to guess MBTI assessment, I'd put her firmly in Thinking rather than Feeling, where as I am very much Feeling with a side of Hyperempathy (not to mention RSD). Problem is, I'm not sure how aware she is that other people communicate differently? Or that changing her communication style for other people might help at all. It's frustrating :/

[which_chick]

I am not sure how to broach the learning/communication styles topic and have a good outcome, especially if the person you need to have the talk with is a boss of you. But yeah, it's so frustrating when people are not-well-suited out of the box because nobody in that situation is being INTENTIONALLY obstructive or hurtful or nasty and yet stuff just... sucks.

[soc_puppet]

Ugh, yeah, it's a tricky situation. She's still miles better than my first boss at this job, and probably the second as well, but still. I did end up sending her an informative link on RSD after a brief meeting with minor constructive criticism ended with me in tears, but I have no idea if she actually read it.

That said, it probably wouldn't hurt for me to contact HR and be all, "Hey, I've got ADHD, I don't know what sort of accommodations I might need or want for it, but I do want to make sure it's noted somewhere in case I figure it out."