tomate 🍅Jul 31, 2025

One of the many treats of #ADHD I hate the most: ADHDers have no internal motivation and rely completely on external motivation: urgency, novelty, pressure, competition and the need to belong. Except novelty they require negative emotions: anxiety and fear for urgency and pressure, competition and need to belong require shame. Hyperfocus is not for oneself but caused by seek for novelty.

To have ADHD is to battle negativ emotions all the time by doing stuff for _others_ and not for oneself. >>

Show threadlucieJul 31, 2025
@[email protected] this made me think, so thanks. i have ADHD and while i'm also this driven, self-pressuring person, my gut reaction was that i don't feel (or don't want to feel) that my personality is mostly built on negative foundations. i feel that capitalism is mostly responsible for my pressures and pains, and i could relax more if either: 1. i had gamed capitalism to the max (FIRE etc), but it feels ethically wrong 2. cost of life in safe and interesting places was not so damn high. otoh i always had big issues relaxing on vacations, which was only recently fixed through medication.
Show threadlucie
@[email protected] @[email protected] the new way i see it at the moment is that i had trained myself over all those years that i can only be visible and meaningfully interact with others through the work i do, which i now realize is a problem, and my new goal is to find visibility and connection outside of having to work for it
Jul 31, 2025 at 10:04amWeb
Show threadtomate 🍅Jul 31, 2025
@lucie You have not trained yourself but did what gave yourself the best reactions in your brain. This is a coping mechanism.
Show threadlucieJul 31, 2025
@[email protected] that's what i mean, pavlovian conditioning
Show threadtomate 🍅Jul 31, 2025
@lucie Ah, I got you wrong, my bad. Now I get it.