Mastodawn

Asdam9 (He/Him)Jan 11, 2023

As someone who sees all of the individual blocks and takes great satisfaction in clicking each individual block into place, this diagram is pretty great... and is one more tool in the toolkit of helping me understand how some of my other friends' fascinating brains work differently than mine.

(It's not enough just to have neurodiverse friends; it's important to keep their perspectives and such on your mind)

Nire Bryce Jan 10, 2023

it's not that accurate ime. maybe for a subset

xX Linn Xx 🔒Jan 10, 2023

@deviantollam The way I often explain it, is that for me, everything feels like it takes 4 hours.

Finish the entire huge project at work I just started? 4 hours.

Washing the dishes? 4 hours.

Taking out the trash? 4 hours.

Making dinner? 4 hours.

So, when I come home from work, I feel like I have over 20 hours of tasks that need to be done before bed, so I get overwhelmed and don't do any of them 🙃

snaperkids Jan 10, 2023

@Linn @deviantollam Or you can get the opposite where they all feel like they take 10 minutes (this is my experience). So as soon as something starts taking longer you start getting stressed from falling behind schedule.

xX Linn Xx 🔒Jan 10, 2023

@snaperkids_neko @deviantollam Yeah, I get stressed when things take longer than 4 hours... "This should've been done in half a workday, why am I still working on it 2 weeks later??!"

Riley S. Faelan Jan 10, 2023

@deviantollam: FWIW, I think one of the most valuable things I got out of of my ADHD treatment is, I've learnt to not tell myself that I failed today.

It was surprisingly hard ... and it came subtly. But it stayed with me when I went off the medicine, and even with many of the other issues coming back, this one has been very helpful.

s00ner🌈Jan 10, 2023

@deviantollam Coming from the other side, it's helpful for me to see how more neurotypical brains work. I swear the adhdmemes subreddit has informed me more about my brain than anything else in my life.

It's also opened my eyes to the fact that all the help and accommodations offered to me in my youth to help cope with my adhd were misguided because they came from neurotypical people approaching the problem from the perspective of how their brains operated. #adhd

⁰FisherTX14 Jan 11, 2023

@jeffers00n @deviantollam
#adhd
Even top ADHD experts and coaches view the world from the nuerotypical perspective. Why is it assumed that nuerotypical is best for human evolution? It seems a growing subset of neurodiverse people could guide us into the future better than a bunch of people who think alike.
#adhdSuperHumans

s00ner🌈Jan 11, 2023

@FisherTX14 @deviantollam Personally, I do not feel that my ADHD has given me superhuman abilities and I would greatly prefer the executive function that comes with a more neurotypical brain. I don't find that sitting on the couch for an hour trying to convince myself to get in the shower is a productive use of my time.

⁰FisherTX14 Jan 11, 2023

@jeffers00n @deviantollam
I have to be in structured environment to function and procrastinate on most every action. All of the nomenclature is negative. And we judge all of our actions as deficient because it doesn't align with nuerotypical with that choice being the only acceptable behavior. Even if the behavior doesn't negatively affect ourselves or others,, nuerotypical is still the only correct behavior.

WolfStar76 Jan 10, 2023

@deviantollam Is there a third lego block option?

My ADHD ass sees each individual "peg" on the legos, and obsesses over how they all have to align perfectly. One by one. And if they don't I fail.

And I'm so busy staring at the "pegs" I can't figure out how to BEGIN to put them together.

pencer.io Jan 10, 2023

@WolfStar76 @deviantollam 100% with you on the third Lego brick. I drive myself to distraction with the detail so I get nothing done. Possibly OCD mixed in I guess as I obsess over the minutest of things.

Darwin Woodka Jan 10, 2023

@WolfStar76 @deviantollam this was when I should've known my kid was ADHD as a child (and mostly did), when he dropped one of those iron together bead designs and then insisted on re-creating it EXACTLY the way he had designed it five minutes before the end of his preschool class. Sadly everyone I took him to just told me what a delightful child he was and SO smart and so he didn't get diagnosed til he was an adult.

dr 🛠️🛰️📡🎧

blobfoxcomputer

@deviantollam When I get to work and I have like 5 things that have to happen that day, I work F R A N T I C A L L Y on all 5 at once and complete them in the first 20 minutes. Then I have to find other things to do for the day.

Why can't I calm down and do 1 leisurely for an hour, then another, etc?

Darwin Woodka Jan 10, 2023

@davidr @deviantollam and then you have all the work done and they WON'T LET YOU GO HOME. Sigh.

Paul Martin Jan 10, 2023

@deviantollam There's also a depth-first versus breadth-first approach to chores, where any attempt to do one thing becomes an extreme exercise in Yak shaving due to other connected tasks. (For example starting to do the dishes leads to doing some plumbing but the dishes still aren't clean at the end of the day.)

LadyUnicornEJG's Struggles Jan 10, 2023

@nowster @deviantollam oh I hate that. Or start with "clean X room" and then either:
A) Ahhhhh! Too many things need done here. *Flails and does none of them, but also does nothing else because I have to clean this room, specifically*
Or
B) ok let's start with taking care of the kids toys. No, no, I can't just throw them in the box. *Proceeds to dump all toy boxes to try to get toy parts together, rooms end up WORSE than before I started.

The Nerdy Mel Jan 10, 2023

@deviantollam omg. I just got diagnosed at the beginning of the pandemic, and I think it might have happened a lot sooner if I'd seen this. 😅

Pseudo Nym Jan 10, 2023

@deviantollam Add this thread shows, the image is great to start a discussion, but if be curious to know if the original creator was NT, or ADHD.

It looks more like what I'd expect an NT creator to make (from their PoV).

Would be interesting to know if my guess is wrong, and this was created by an ADHD person to describe their own experience, and what they think the NT experience is.

The discussion thread seems to pretty strongly indicate that many ADHD folks don't see this way.

Shevaun Jan 10, 2023

@deviantollam what's interesting for me is that I can't read the ones in red, which negates *EVERYTHING* with panic; anyway I'm off to get a diagnosis tomorrow so wish me luck #adhd

Lynn McAlister UE

@shevyf @deviantollam Good luck!

Darwin Woodka Jan 10, 2023

@shevyf @deviantollam same but I blame my old eyes for that AND PEOPLE WHO PUT BLACK TYPE ON RED BACKGROUNDS! Age discrimination!

LadyUnicornEJG Jan 10, 2023

@shevyf @deviantollam it took me a bit to read the red ones, too. But I had to know. I might have just made up answers that for though, they're pretty smudgy.

grecs Jan 10, 2023

@deviantollam Very cool pic. Never really saw it depicted like this - good for reference.

Cyber Yuki Jan 10, 2023

@deviantollam 😭 so true

Delroy L Jan 11, 2023

@deviantollam so accurate

Asmodea Jan 11, 2023

@deviantollam I'm not sure that works for my adhd brain
For me I can see each individual block
But feel that if I haven't completed the whole thing in the day it's a failure, and it also makes it highly likely that I'll build completely off script as hyperfocus means I spend the entire day building using reb blocks, creating some sort of misshapen monstrosity

₦̜̼̈ͧ €̬̚ ̼̔ℝ̖̝͋ͥ̒ Đ̿͑ 🧠🏴‍☠️Jan 11, 2023

@deviantollam I can certainly relate to this. I saw this one recently too which really struck me personally. #neurodivergent 🧠🧩

Deviant Ollam Jan 11, 2023

@nerd that's good use of memery

@deviantollam I feel personally attacked by this image. Why is it so true?🤣

Alda Örlygur Villiljós Jan 12, 2023

@deviantollam this is great but doesn't take into account the other side of the tower, where each coloured block is actually also made up of at least five different blocks (ie. Walk the dog consists of:
Stand up
Find clothes
Get dressed (+outside clothes)
Put leash on dog
Go outside
Walk, stop, pick up poop, find trashcan, throw poop away, walk again
Go inside
Take outdoor clothes off
Possibly dry the dog

And when each individual task looks like this it all becomes overwhelming 😵

annaliese Jan 13, 2023

@deviantollam not dx but definitely suspected - I have all the labeled lego but they're in a pile, and there are other lego in the pile with tasks for the next day, week, month mixed in as well. I grab the one that's closest and brightest even if it's not a "today" task. I can overcome it to focus now, but it takes a stupid amount of energy. This image still resonates though!

Deviant Ollam Jan 13, 2023

@annaliese I do that, too, actually. When the list of tasks seems almost overwhelming, I sort of declare it to be un-triage-able at some point.

I pick up the first thing I can find, I do that thing.

I come back to the pile, I pick up the next thing I can find, I set that thing to rights.

I will find myself doing this as much as possible, with little I for priority, for an hour or two just so I can get the pile to where I can at least see the whole thing.

Mimu [aka Aurora

@deviantollam I’m working on how to make my brain work for me and I learned somewhere that I can set up my goals like bumpers and bounce around like a pinball!