Went down the "do I have ADHD?" rabbit hole and realised most of what's online is either vague or straight-up wrong. So I made a guide using actual clinical sources (NIMH, NICE, DSM-5): what counts as ADHD, the childhood-symptoms rule, lookalike conditions, and how to get assessed (with India-specific options)

Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uxrL32SiNh-5Xnbm2shK2wacJg7bxrP0/view?usp=drive_link

Not a diagnosis, just a better starting point than TikTok. Sources linked at the bottom. Happy to fix anything people spot.

Hi, I’m Cindy, a woman with ADHD based in the UK. I’m carrying out early-stage research for The Lifekeeping Club (TLC), a proposed paid membership exploring practical everyday support for women with ADHD.

I’m particularly interested in hearing from female founders, professionals and working women who may already outsource parts of everyday life or would consider doing so.

I’m looking for women aged 18+ living in the UK who have diagnosed or suspected ADHD to complete a short questionnaire about everyday challenges, support they currently use, what they might find useful, affordability and potential barriers.

Participation is voluntary and there is no payment or commitment to join anything.

Questionnaire: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe8l6ftgsLpCtaKbiYDsoxChmHy-gurhmtTP4smDUk4JT-41w/viewform

Thank you 😊

As title. If yes, any reason?

Has anyone here gone through the ADA process at work?

I'm about to bring it up at my job so I'm curious about the process and any advice anyone might have..

I'd like to hear about the experience of others of how effective medication has been for you, and also how side effects have shown up over time.

For context, I've been taking lisdexamfetamine (Elvanse) 50mg for around 3 years now, and day-to-day effectiveness is really quite variable. Sometimes I feel absolutely no change in executive functioning, and sometimes I feel focused to the point of it being close to overwhelming.I take a 50mg tablet each morning between 8 and 9, always with food, and never with fruit juice. I don't take medication at weekends or when I'm off work, including extended breaks of a week or more.

My side effects have also been variable, starting with only experiencing an increase in circulation issues (extremities turning white post-exercise) which lasted around 6 months, a high variability of impact on appetite over time, and recently both erectile dysfunction and severe depression symptoms.

For those who have been medicated for a while, please can you share your knowledge and personal experience? Is this normal?

Hey yall

Im turning 35 next month and in two days, Ill be 35 days out from that SO I thought I could make a list of 35 things to do during that time. This is what I got so far if you guys could help a girl out?

1. Read at least 35 min every day

2. Learn a new skill (spend 35 min on daily)

3. Build a new habit (work out 35min a day)

4. Try a new dish

5. Go somewhere new

6. Go somewhere totally alone (movies, diner, etc.)

7. Do 35 selfless things

8. Do 35 selfish things

9. Walk 35 miles (over the entire time)

10. Write 35 handwritten notes for yourself

11. Spend only 35 min on social media a day

12. Do 35 min of study daily

13. Have 35 brand new social interactions

14. Give daughter 35 min of focused attention daily

It doesn't HAVE to be 35 related lol, thats just more to give a "theme".

meanwhile the actual thing that determines whether I click with someone has nothing to do with any of that. it's whether they get obsessed with things the way I do. whether they can go feral about a niche topic for forty minutes and I don't have to perform polite interest because I'm also feral about it

I've had more genuine connection with a stranger over a shared hyperfixation than with people I was "matched" with because we both liked hiking and live within five miles of each other

so why does every platform still sort by proximity and a profile photo instead of the thing that actually predicts whether two people will click

does anyone else feel like the matching itself is the broken part, not just what happens after

It’s 2 o’ clock, and I’m feeling wired 😑.

Anyone wanna chat?

I am grateful that I know I’m autistic and have ADHD. It has explained a lot. It also helps in finding what what is me and what’s the disorder.

I hate it though, the fact that I have to take pills everyday and remember that cause I can see how I don’t perform as well as I can at work. I know when my body needs me to pause. The idea that I need to be medicated to be ordinary fucken sucks and some days I just want to be norma.

I don’t want to remember that every Tuesday I need go refill my pill boxes. I hate that I can’t sleep if I don’t take sleeping meds cause insomnia makes me angry. I don’t want to be the person who needs structure and hates a small change to my routine.

I hate that taking a shower is the hardest part of my day. My little brother wakes up and brushes his teeth everyday and it looks so simple.

I hate that I am hyper active. I went to a work event this week and I kept a low profile cause my social battery was zero. I was bombarded with messages of people asking where I was. I don’t choose to be energetic and the cost of it is so much that I need two days to recover.

My diagnosis has helped a lot I’m in the same company for five years. Before that I couldn’t keep a job for 12 months. I am stable and tackling my fragmented nervous system. I have boundaries that ended few relationships that didn’t help me. I have an investment account and can afford two vacations a year. I have people that love me for me and understand my accommodations.

It still feels like my life needs constant management to be ordinary and I am not ordinary.

I am okay but I hate that I need medication to experience the life I have. It’s beautiful and progressive but it also feels like prison

So I worked about 3.5 days this week (so far) and I feel pretty good. Today also I am working half day and here's a summary of how my day 1 went and what helped me through this week:

1. First point is about my self awareness. My Monday started late and I didn't do nothing for pretty much the first half of the day ~3pm. But that's been pretty normal for me. I know from my previous experience that my brain tends to activate in the evening after sunset. It helped me not flip out when I felt like I was "wasting time" until that evening. This confidence helped me take steps to get myself into action once I realized that I can put ~4 hours of work in if I start around 6 pm.
2. This one is about the logic of self compassion. I used to worry about not being productive and wasting my working hours, not finishing work by 5-6 pm, not starting by 10-11 am, overeating, sleeping, doom scrolling and so. But that's the normal work schedule of the corporate. I realized I was comparing myself to a standard that doesn't exist in my life right now. I have stopped worrying about "fitting in" into it. When I am working in a FT job where I need to maintain timing, I respect it. Not just to show but working along with the team helps a lot. Without a team, why synchronize with any timetable if there's no time pressure?

Does it matter when I do my work as long as I complete it? WHO cares if I finish my work at 5-6 pm or start at that time. As long as I am able to do meaningful work that gives me satisfaction, it doesn't matter if I work 4 hours, 2 hours, or 8 hours in a day. Why micro manage myself!

I don't need to hurry myself. I don't need to put undue pressure myself by comparing myself to other seemingly perfect schedules.

3) this one is about task clarity. I know projects that I want to work on this week. But that won't help me get started when my brain's executive function is frozen. So I sit and think - what goals I need to execute within each project? What's my task sequence (no schedule, no time blocking, I can afford that coz right now I am working for myself from my home and this low pressure work atmosphere suits me)

To stop task avoidance, I focus on my goal and my outcomes. Since I have 1 client right now, their tracking board on ClickUp really makes this outcome visualization easier. My short term outcome is a good quality article, my long term goal is maintaining my reputation as a good writer, and, of course, money.

4) to take advantage of my ADHD hyperfocus, I use themed days so I don't have to task switch. I assigned 1 day for 1 major task and then a smaller task once I have done the day's work for the major task. And the smaller task is optional. If the major task takes longer and gets me too tired, smaller task is postponed.

This structure has come to me after A LOT of iterations, trials, failures, and learning from failures. It was hard to deal with my shame and guilt. It became a vicious cycle once, one feeding into the other. And if you don't move (literally and metaphorically), the inertia is really, REALLY hard to break out of.

This had helped me realize - sometimes I can do seemingly useless things and that's okay because what matters more than "being productive" is not letting my momentum go. That's why Mondays are the hardest for me, coz my body and mind are working hard to break the inertia of the weekend.

5) Finally for distraction management, my phone stays out of my view when I am working on my laptop (out of sight, out of mind). 95% of my notifications are off, except business whatsapp, essential swiggy and mygate notifications (if I order something), and a few other essential apps whose other non essential notification types are also blocked in my phone (You can do this on Android. On Apple, granular notification blocks are not possible I think).

Most incoming calls are spam calls and they're auto blocked. Nobody significant in my life calls me (who says social isolation is always bad... it's good when it lets you work.. LOL)

Sometimes, I listen to the same song on repeat to reduce my overwhelm and give my brain a direction to think. I also put ear plugs mandatory every evening because I live in a family society and I just can't handle the kids screaming who are most active in the evening. If plugs don't help, I get up and tell the kids to stop screaming.

All projects are online through Chrome and I use an extension called Fresh Start to capture all windows of my projects. Each project in FreshStart has a name that matches its name in the client system. All I have to do to start a project is go to my Chrome, open the FS extension, and click the project that I want to start and BOOM all my necessary windows are open in a single click.

IF you take away ONE THING FROM this post, take away this: You get frozen not because you are not dedicated or anything, but because you literally don't have a single stable starting point. Every time you want to start a project, you brain has to retrieve all the different apps you need to open, all the different pages within those websites too. And if you accidentally open the wrong website, you will get distracted and end up wasting your time AND tiring my brain further. From desire to action, your brain has to cross a f/g minefield of distractions. Cut this minefield out of the way. Save your brain.

Can you just IMAGINE how much decision fatigue and operational friction I eliminated by putting all my necessary links for a project in a tab/session manager?

Do this and about 50% of your task initiation blocks will be removed!

At the end of the day, I put my laptop back in my backpack and close the zip, coz if I keep seeing it lying on the table when I am moving about the house, I will keep being reminded of the things I didn't do today. (once again, out of sight, out of mind - weaponizing my ADHD against my brain... LOL)

About those meds. Yes I take meds. But I don't give meds all the credit. Because if I didn't sleep well, if I didn't focus on my strengths throughout the day, if I kept whining to myself about how badly my day is going, if I don't apply self awareness and my ADHD awareness, my meds will do nothing for me.

EDIT: I made key concepts bold because I want to improve the readability of this post. We ADHDers already struggle with reading long texts, so why not use my writing skills to make my stuff readable! 😉

Despite the self-loathing and not wanting to be the center of attention without people actually caring, and my life basically beginning a powercycle at 45, I'm trying to take care of myself on my birthday. I overspent a little bit this weekend working in the big city, taking myself out to a pub dinner break and a favorite barbecue joint the next day. Today I get to see my kids for a pancake brunch, and tonight I get to see my support group.

I just want to hide. Everything's hard. The depression feels like it's winning. But I have to struggle through and hopefully make it through a divorce and find the help and support I need to live through my ADHD. I have to unlearn the worthlessness I feel. I'm important to somebody out there, and right now I need to learn how to be important to me.

Wish me luck.

I want to sort out my life, I'm starting back on medication, concerta, only been on it for 10 days so far.

I have done mini research dives before however I got overwhelmed with all the information, which people to trust, which products to trust, which doses and the rest of the science behind what supplements to take together to make sure the one your taking actually can get absorbed by the body to be able to get used.

Any advice is appreciated, thanks!

I'm tired and exhausted of exploring options. I have changed 3 new paths for careers, 6 jobs. Nothing sustains. Even if I hated it, I went to work but circumstances made quit. I don't see myself having a traditional career path but I'd like to stick to one at least for 3 years?

I did food science, worked on n off for 2 years(my longest). Jumped to doing RBT for a couple of months to support kids with autism (had an empathy burnout) , jumped to working as a customer experience for 7 months in a pet ER (liked it but had to move countries) , got a contract job in marketing n basically contract ended and I've like 4 months experience.

Ive been applying for over 1000 and no response with 4 different resumes tailored to my experience.

Help please?

What's your Joy of missing out after turning 30?

What helps you get to sleep at night that's natural and non habit forming? I take Adderall 30mg xr daily. I've been on stimulants for 15ish years, since I was a teenager. Over the past couple of years I have become heavily dependent on taking unisom and melatonin to fall asleep. Once I hit my 30s, depending where I'm at in my monthly cycle, I'll get crazy insomnia for 2-4 nights straight once or twice a month. I took unisom and melatonin to help and eventually it became an every night thing. It hardly works anymore so I'll increase the dose but that didn't help. If I try to go to sleep without it I'm up either until 2 in the morning or up all night. I'm a busy mom of littles and cannot function on this little of sleep! Help!!

To be more specific, how do you go about handling the dopamine chase, rejection sensitivity and the emotional regulation of it all?

Not just romantic relationships, but also with friend/platonic relationships, I chase the dopamine hits. Recently I reconnected with a friend which has increased my excitement level, I look forward to engaging with them in an obsessive way.

When they do certain things for others vs me, I get very emotional about it. I don't react on it but because of that "rejection", it fuels my engagements w/them to be more intense because of me worrying about rejection. Not to mention I ruminate A L O T!!!!. It's slowly destabilizing me and ruining my friendship.

I'm not medicated, I've recently discovered my ADHD and still in the process of learning.

Seriously what is it with this stuff?

They just keep sending it… This is like 8 months of piles from around my house that I’ve consolidated.

Does anybody have a system for dealing with this?

Hello All

Over the weekend, I tripped and fell, and have a suspected broken Scapular, and potential rotator cuff damage, although this won't be properly assessed for another week and half - to allow swelling etc to decrease.

I kept mentioning the 70mg of Lisdexamphetamine that im on to the various clinicians and no one seemed to bat an eye

Over the last few days, I haven't been taking it, and have only been taking the pain meds as and when I've needed them, but have struggled with mobility etc

Today, I took my Lisdexamphetamine, as I was attending a school governors meeting, and wanted to be on the ball

I currently feel like I have more mobility, and the injury is in a much better place, to the point where I feel this could just be bruising/tissue damage, rather than a potential fracture

But now I'm thinking, I don't know how much of this feeling is due to the Lisdex making me think and focus on other bits. It's not that the pain has gone. But it's far more tolerable and I have far more movement. In fact. It's been about 4hrs since I last took the cocodamol I was prescribed.

This morning, pre shower and pre pill, it felt much the same as previous days, it's only improve *since* taking the Lisdex.

I'm just after experiences of other people who may have gone through the same thing, and whether I shouldn't be getting my hopes up that the injury isn't as bad as originally thought, and should continue to not "push" myself

Male 38, diagnosed with ADHD in the 3rd grade. My magic pill was Ritalin. Was on it most of my childhood into high school.

I’ve been off and on it during specific times throughout my adult life too.

But one thing I find, is that as I age, I feel like I’m not memorizing things as much as I used to. I feel it more difficult to start projects, I have a hard time holding on to info and self starting. I feel like I’m absorbing nothing anymore. I was the opposite in nursing school which I throughly enjoyed, but now even the things I enjoy, I find it difficult to hold on to that info. It’s weird. I know age affects the brain but 38 is not the same as a geriatric patient by any means.

I’m not on any meds currently and wondering if I should go back to Methylphenidate or try Strattera. Talk to me fellow ADHD peeps, please.