You People Are Great So I'm Posting This Here Too

[Deleted member 27340]

I sent this text in to a tumblr called ActuallyADHD, they answer questions and offer advice and stuff. It's a massive rant and probably partially extremely poorly articulated, but whatever. I made a rant there and now I'm copy pasting it here to see if anyone has any advice here... or just to be heard. I don't know.

"This ended up super long so I'm sending it as a submission instead of ten separate asks, hope that's okay. Also, could you please tag with Tia so I can find this post?

Hi, so I'm almost 16 now and shit at executive functioning. I'm pretty sure it's that, at least. I don't go to school (after skipping two years out of boredom (I'm 2e) I finally got an intellectual challenge and LOVED it but wasn't able to keep up with the workload so when I was finally diagnosed I was just told they couldn't accommodate my ADHD and that I should just drop out and go with something simpler next year, which won't happen because f*ck me) so my foster parents expect me to do things around the house during the day so I won't get into the habit of sleeping all day and staying up all night and never doing anything productive. Which is all good, but I just can't meet their expectations (or mine, for that matter) and it really hurts and I feel totally useless.

I'm procrastinating getting started at chores right now. I tell them I try to do things, but they just say "sitting at your computer is not trying" and keep asking what thoughts go through my head when I walk into a room I'm supposed to clean and then "consciously make the choice to do something else instead", but I can't even answer that question because I DON'T KNOW. I feel like "I'm trying to be productive" really is "I'm trying to try and be productive", which sounds stupid and lazy and like a hopelessly dumb excuse.

When they come home after a day where I haven't gotten anything else than a batch of laundry and dishes and cleaning the counters in the kitchen (that doesn't take all day, obviously) they ask me what I've been doing, and I struggle to even be honest because usually I've just been sitting on my ass hyperfocusing on the internet and that's so embarrassing and I'm so ashamed.

We constantly have "talks" about me not doing what I need to do, me not being honest and making up excuses, me not following rules, me not respecting my bedtime, etc, and I HATE and DESPISE those talks because I ALWAYS struggle not to cry and when they let me go upstairs I'm usually always so angry I smash my arm into the wall and kick and throw dirty laundry I haven't done all over the place before I crash down in my bed to cry and hate myself for a while.

I don't want to be like this, I want to do what I'm supposed to do and I want to be good and follow the rules and be honest and respectful, but it seems no matter what I want I break rules and do stupid shit like climb out the bathroom window in the middle of the night to smoke and accidentally lock myself out or run away or some shit like that.

My foster parents talk about how earning and building trust takes a long time, but destroying it only takes a few minutes. I want to be able to be in a way that lets them trust me, and I feel like an asshole and a shitkid and completely worthless when they can't trust me. I also end up feeling like whatever shit went on in my previous homes and with my own biological parents must've just been my fault, and that there really wasn't anything wrong with either my mother or my father, that it was just me being a manipulative little brat wanting to get out because I couldn't get things my way... So I feel like the biggest liar and douchebag in the universe, and feel like what my grandmother said about me (that I manipulate the CPS to get them to do what I want and that the CPS are idiots for listening to a "crazy fifteen year old") must be true and I just hate myself so much... It's hard to even articulate how much I just resent myself. I start thinking that I don't deserve to live with my foster parents because they're still nice to me and even more I start wondering why they put up with me and how long they'll continue putting up with me before they decide I'm too much bullshit and tell CPS they can't keep me here. I honestly wouldn't be surprised I'm the type of person who would manage to make someone who loves me want to get me the hell away, cause everything I do feels wrong.

When I lived with my biological father he told me several times that I was becoming my mother, and my mother is severely bipolar and manipulative and abuses illegal drugs to self-medicate her illness. I haven't talked to her in over two years because I couldn't deal with her anymore, and she used to always talk about how much bad shit my father has done and what an asshole he is, and my mother's side of the family don't like my father's side of the family and never talk to them and my father's side of the family (really, just my grandmother and my father's sister. They're this trio of old manners and outcast personalities) has never really been positive about my mother or her family and my father never talks to my mother anymore and neither do I and I don't have much contact with my father and almost no contact with my grandmother or aunt but I still have no idea who's right and who's wrong and I just sit here feeling like I'm the biggest asshole of all of us.

And I'm used to my f*cked up family tree. I'm cool with that. But when I completely fail to do what I'm supposed to do and fail to behave properly (even though I behave much better now than I used to before I came to my foster parents) I start thinking about everything I do wrong and there are so many feelings I can't describe and so much going on in my head that I never talk about and I just hate myself, hate everything I do, hate who I am, hate my stupid and idiotic impulsive decisions, hate my unproductive chronic internet-hyperfocus, hate my lazy ass, hate all my never-really-good-at-it-but-slightly-above-average-skills because I can't get better than a certain level because I can never focus long enough to really practice and really I just wish my stupid brain wasn't like this and I just wish I wasn't like this but I am and I feel like I never improve at anything else than useless things only I like (solving the Rubik's cube sadly doesn't go under the things I'm supposed to do during the day...) and I just want to crawl up in my bed under the covers and stay there for the rest of my life with some chocolate and vodka.

I have a psychiatrist that I go to who's got experience with both PTSD and ADHD (I have both) but I can't open up properly to her, my last session she even seemed slightly tired of trying to get something out of me and went like "come on, [my actual name]" with a please-just-talk-kiddo look on her face. My foster parents ask me to talk to them and open up, but I don't and it seems like it frustrates them and I don't know what to do. I can't talk or open up, the words just disappear and my head is a constant jumbling mess with background noises and three billion trains of thought at the same time and people say all teens struggle to do what they need to do because they just wanna have fun and all teens test boundaries but I don't see my friends the same way. Friends of mine that are my age come with typical "just put away your phone and do it now and you can have fun later, that works best for me"-advice and then I say I can't and they just stare at me like I just told them they're purple and moved to earth from Jupiter. And then what if all this is not because of ADHD and just a typical "teenager thing"? I'll hate myself even more because then I won't even have a valid reason for why I'm like this. I actually don't know if my foster parents realize ADHD can make cleaning a room hard, if they do they're not saying it and I'm afraid to go "My ADHD makes me-" when talking to them because I don't want to sound like that asshole who makes up excuses and tries to get out of doing things by flashing a diagnosis. They never really mention the ADHD thing either, I think it's only been mentioned in the context of "you're not the only person with ADHD", so there's really no open dialogue on that at all. I can't just go up and start listing what things I do are related to ADHD either, because then I sound like I'm making excuses even though I'm really just trying to explain and seeking their acknowledgement of them seeing that it affects me.

Like when I sat down on my computer to draw a little while waiting for my foster mother to finish mailing her boss at 1pm, then I looked at the time again and it was 3pm. I told them that, and I've done the same thing with reading a book (Ready Player One, I love it), and they said something like "but now we know you can, so don't try to say you can't focus" or something like that and I responded by saying how it's a different type of focus where I just disappear into what I'm doing (hyperfocus) and that I can't turn it on and off myself and that it only happens with things I'm really interested in (which is normal for ADHDers) but they just stick to saying that now they know I can. Which is sort of terrifying because imagine when I get back to school and I can't focus on my work and they go "but we know you can focus" and refer back to the book thing or the drawing thing? And I try to say that it's not the same and sound like the lazy idiot I am...

I don't know what to do, I just wish I could be in a way that made them be happy with what I do. And they're not being unreasonable at all, I completely get their side with wanting to prevent me from turning my sleep pattern upside down and preventing me from getting into the habit of not doing anything, and trying to set consistent boundaries for me, I just wish I could meet their expectations and open up to them... I do sort of wish they'd understand too, but it's probably my fault they don't because I don't talk. My foster mother said she gets what it's like for me when I don't manage to do my chores and stuff because she was there when she was a teen, but she doesn't have ADHD so I feel like there has to be a difference...? I don't know. Maybe absolutely none of this is related to ADHD at all and I'm just as much of an asshole as I feel like, but I don't know.

This submission got WAY TOO LONG and I'm SO SORRY about that and I'm also sorry that I'm not going to be able to proofread it (also: sorry if there are ridiculous sentences in here, I have a messier brain than usual now and English isn't even my native language) and I hope you reply... I don't even have a clear question in here I just need advice on what to do and how to get chores done and how to be open and honest and how to actually follow rules because now I fail at all of the above.

If it's relevant I'm not on any medication and I've never been either. It's just been half a year or so since I was diagnosed with combined type ADHD, I had 9/9 of the hyperactive/impulsive symptoms and 9/9 of the inattentive ones... I don't know if they diagnosed me as mild, moderate or severe, but I don't think they specified that at all. Also I'm a girl. If that matters.

Thank you so much for running this blog, even if you don't answer I've been able to rant and that's a good thing."

That's it. Yeah.

 

[Deleted member 27340]

oh and sorry if this seems like a ridicilously stupid problem in comparison to bad PTSD issues but it's kinda really relevant in my life right now... PTSD just comes on top of this but the PTSD stuff aren't worth talking about cause I won't open up about trauma anyway so the focus is just on everything else than trauma. if you get what i mean

 

[mary1979]

You're pretty articulate and 'open' for a teenager in general, let alone one with adhd.

Its hard enough for me as an adult to wrap my head around the work I need to do on my ptsd, let alone with adhd detracting your focus.

Keep talking here, you'll be amazed at how effortlessly it will all flow in a supportive environment full of people in the same situation and then eventually it will spill over into therapy.

Are they discussing meds soon?
Would be SUPER helpful if they could help you slow your brain down a little.

You seem like a pretty awesome kid to me, your foster parents scored well with you, at least you know what needs to be done.
Go easy on you!
You're only human x

 

[Deleted member 27340]

You're pretty articulate and 'open' for a teenager in general, let alone one with adhd.

Online with strangers who will never meet me in real life from behind the protection of a screen, yeah. I'm not very open in real life. I can write something and show it to someone, talking and thinking at the same time is just way harder than writing and thinking for some odd reason.

Its hard enough for me as an adult to wrap my head around the work I need to do on my ptsd, let alone with adhd detracting your focus.

So it's not just me being a poorly disciplined teenager?

then eventually it will spill over into therapy.

I've been on here for two years and made quite a few rants, hasn't affected therapy the slightest bit... I just suck at therapy.

Are they discussing meds soon?

Nope!
I'm just told meds aren't a quick fix if I try to even slightly wander near the topic, lol. I wonder why there are so many resources stating that trying medication is absolutely worth it because they do make a difference, and why all my friends with ADHD say their meds help. They won't give me ADHD meds unless I'm in school and accommodation in school doesn't help, but if I do one of the simple programs they want me to do and get accommodation I won't need meds because I'll just float on learning fast like I did all the way up until I finally got an intellectual challenge. But there's no point in sending me to school if I won't be challenged cause I'll be so bored accommodating my ADHD will be pointless as I won't even bother trying. So yeah unless I go back to school meds won't be discussed, but it probably won't even if I go to school. They just simply seem to not want me on meds, which is weird cause I have friends who basically had the meds thrown at them, so there's clearly no logical common practice going on here.

You seem like a pretty awesome kid to me, your foster parents scored well with you, at least you know what needs to be done.

Sure... I'm unproductive and don't do well at anything else than useless creative ideas that won't get me anywhere in life. But thanks. I just don't see it myself.

 

[Anarchy]

I'm relating to a lot of that.
I can't use the teenage excuse.

@

 

[mary1979]

Well then, I suggest you step outside your comfort zone and give us a shot.
(sorry didn't even realise you've been here so long!)
I was in therapy at your age, and definitely struggled with discussing my trauma also, in part because of shame, and in part because I was so young that I didn't have a single clue how to verbalise my pain.

I have an 18 yr old son.
No medical or mental illness, above average intelligence and his social skills are pretty good.

But I reckon the last 'productive' thing that little brat did was probably in primary school ahaha.
Most kids your age dont have a single clue what they want from life, and without that motivation, not a lot gets achieved.

Have you put much thought into what you'd like to do with this life of yours?
I dont mean career goals or work, I mean EXPERIENCES.
My 20 yr old daughter decided when she was 18 that by 25 she wants to have seen at least some of each continent.
2 years later she's managed 5 countries, and she works in a supermarket.
What makes you feel passionate?
Thats where you will find your mojo.

 

[Anarchy]

We constantly have "talks" about...

I absolutely hate those too

 

[The Albatross]

Tyraary, I think your post was a really clear description of your difficulty and issue. Any chance you would consider printing it out to give it to your T?

Not having or feeling "motivation" to do tasks could be a depressive aspect of PTSD rather than or maybe in addition to the ADD difficulties... but with practice, and persistence goal/challenging task completion can happen. 26-28 days or so makes a new habit, 6 months - a new behavior. So, I know for me (I'm ADD/PTSD as well)... it's kind of a two fold issue... "motivation" and task completion too. More aptly sustaining motivation and sustaining the willingness to do and complete tasks. I'm not as good as I'd like to be about that frankly... but it's gotten better as I had to learn how to cope and how to be willing to endure some frustration/uncomfortableness to get the pay off of a task successfully completed. There too, might be some sites on procrastination?

Kidnapped from elsewhere:

It is important to finish tasks:

• so you don’t waste time working out where you were
• so you don’t forget your intentions for the tasks e.g. what you were going to write in the letter
• to get the wonderful glow when you know you’ve really completed a task
• because the time spent on an unfinished task is lost time as could have spent it on something else
• to reduce the build up of negative feeling each time you remember you haven’t completed a task
• to reduce the length of your task list enabling you to spend more time on the things you really want to do
• to reduce the likelihood of mislaying things, for instance where did the photograph go you were planning on posting to your Aunt
• to reduce the possibility of pretending you are progressing a task when you are really just procrastinating
• to feel more in control

Sometimes it is good to keep some of the above things in mind when faced with difficulty completing tasks.

 

[The Albatross]

Let my fingers do a little more walking... and found this article with some tips and tricks from ADHD experts... hope there's something assistive here for you. There's a couple in there I could employ myself: http://psychcentral.com/blog/archiv...heir-favorite-ways-to-manage-procrastination/

Here's one more: Link Removed

 

[Changing4Best]

Thanks for opening up with us here, that is some kind of a start. I have found the support here to be so helpful at times, I don't know what I would do without this Forum. So keep coming back to us here and ranting, if this is the only place where you can open up (as well as the other place where you posted this, of course). Maybe we can help you and hopefully they can too.

One thing I suggest is to take small chunks of a chore and do a little bit of it at a time, then go do something you enjoy and set a timer to help regulate this. When the timer goes off, get back to your chore for another 5-10 minutes and then when your timer goes off, get back to the thing you enjoy. If you have a cell phone, use the alarms on it to help you. That is what I do. It really helps. I am not ADHD, though, so I don't know if this method will help you. But it is worth a try!

 

[scout86]

A lot of that sounds very familiar to me too. Not that that helps much.

And I'm used to my f*cked up family tree. I'm cool with that.

THAT I find a little hard to believe. It sounds good. And maybe it's true, but I think it would take at least a life time to get used to that. I know I'm not totatly used to mine.

I suspect "being a teenager" might be a complicating factor. Being distracted, among other things, comes with that territory. But you've got plenty of other things to deal with.

My own personal experience (and my T says I seem to have "ADHDish tendencies), it works best if I take on the projects I most want to avoid (cleaning the house, washing the dishes) BEFORE I sit down to read a book or play on the computer. If I do the more fun stuff first, I'll get wrapped up in what I'm doing, lose track of time, and never get anything else done. You might also try setting some kind of alarm. Getting wrapped up in something like a book or a computer seems to be a well known ADHD "thing". My T has it too and says the same thing happens to him, if he's not careful how he manages his time. (And he admits that he's not always THAT careful, so we're not along in this.)

accidentally lock myself out or run away or some shit like that.

You accidentally run away? :eek:

I feel like an asshole and a shitkid and completely worthless

I hate those feelings! You're far from worthless and this stuff isn't your FAULT. It's your responsibility to deal with it, in spite of that.

My foster parents ask me to talk to them and open up, but I don't and it seems like it frustrates them and I don't know what to do. I can't talk or open up, the words just disappea

It probably DOES frustrate them, but you're definitely not the only person who has this problem to deal with too. I actually haven't quite decided whether or not it's a problem, but it's definitely a real thing. I have no suggestions for this one. (Just started a thread here on "talking about feelings?" because apparently it's expected, possibly even "good" and I totally don't it. Check it out, after you clean your room. :p)

None of this sounds like a stupid, ridiculous problem to me! It all sounds very real and very familiar. Maybe we can help you find better ways through it than what we found for ourselves at your age. (That would be nice! :)) Don't give up on yourself! We're not giving up on you either.

 

[Anarchy]

Avoidance, distraction seeking and difficulty in focussing are part of "PTSD" too.

There's a big distraction for me, right there - the question of whether the discrete diagnoses like ADD are actually real, or whether we just have more difficulties functioning in our everyday lives than most other people have with functioning in theirs.

an interpretation through PTSD alone might look something like this;
We find tasks that let us ruminate on or remind us of our internal shit (cleaning room, doing the ironing, feckin boring school busywork, "opening up") uncomfortable and so we tend to avoid them more than people who don't have that level of shit would avoid them

Distractions that either allow us to loose ourselves (like chatting here, reading a book, hanging out with friends) and activities that demand that we stay absolutely present and focused (like martial arts, boxing, climbing, caving, canoeing in rapids), keep us from thinking of our shit - so we like them and don't want to leave them.

This is some of my distraction and avoidance stuff
https://www.myptsd.com/search/11000495/?q=resume&o=relevance&c[title_only]=1&c[user][0]=28019

One of our members had corresponded with one of the researchers who has PTSD himself (a young guy who lost an eye and who is into mountain biking). The researcher reckoned that most people who do extreme sports, do them because they have PTSD

One thing I find, is I tell myself I can't do something that I would like to do, until after I've done something that I'm avoidant about. That usually results in me doing neither
so I now have to consciously give myself permission to do things that I like, rather than spend hours/days/weeks being totally frozen in avoidance and typing shite here