Top Reddit voted comment....
I have ADHD Inattentive Type (AKA ADD).
I have ADHD Inattentive Type (AKA ADD).
This is part of it, but misses the main struggle I experience.
Imagine your brain is a horse, and you are it's rider. Try telling your brain to focus on something, to go somewhere, and stay there. Most people can do this decently well, at least for ~15min. When there is suddenly a loud noise, your horse may get scared, but you are able to calm him.
ADD makes it so that I am riding a disobedient and easily spooked horse. Getting my 'horse' to go where I want and stay there (concentrate on a lecture for example) takes significant concerted mental effort, and still this effort is fruitless after maybe 10 minutes, and leaves me mentally burnt out. Medication makes that horse move slower and makes him more coax-able and more sedated. It is still difficult to begin to focus on something, it takes sitting down in a (relatively) quiet environment, with a defined task, but now once I get the horse where I want him, he will stay there without nearly as much effort.
9 comments:
I disagree entirely, I don't care how many degrees this guy has behind his name. Of course you can plan. Of course you can organize. Not necessarily easy but doable.
It's called discipline.
We have ADD or ADHD or whatever because a lot of union teachers didn't want to be bothered making the young barbarians mind, so they invented a disease and treated it with ritalin.
The Reddit commenter got through three paragraphs without going off topic. That's more than most Althouse commenters can do so I think he may be cured.
Well, shit. I watched the video and it appears that I am seriously ill. Diagnosable even.
Your brain is a horse and you are the rider.
Cute.
No. You are your brain, both horse and rider, but there is no horse and there is no rider inside that skull. No dichotomy, just two brains connect by corpus callosum. The guy did say, "imagine it." And now that's imagined, disregard the imagery because as with all analogies it is not helpful to solution nor to coping but only for imagining.
*sees a bird land on a wire*
Ok, what were we talking about again? A lot of birds die in storms, you know.
And their babies die too.
Now I'm sad.
This thing of knowing what to do and what not to do, but still being dysfunctional seems right on to me. I know a lot of people who just can't succeed despite knowing everything they need to know. They seem incapable of doing the needed thing at any given moment, while doing the wrong thing seems absolutley effortless even when the right thing is easier, more fun, or less stressful. It's a kind of inertia locking a person into failure and stagnation. I'm starting to see it like this guy explains it. These people aren't lazy. They are paralyzed. They aren't choosing failure. They just can't do the needed thing, and it seems like the very fact that they know it's what they need is precisely what makes it impossible. I'm surrounded by these people. They say things like "I know you're right." and "I'm gonna start doing that", but after hearing it dozens of times you have to accept they never will. Love 'em or leave 'em.
I thought this video was going to be a dud. What do I know.
I heard Scott Adams also describe analogies as poor ways of getting your thoughts across. Analogies are just something else entirely that reminds of something else entirely.
Birds have it tough, no doubt, but they are still here. Some say they are dinosaurs. I call them birds.
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