What is ADHD and Why do I think I have it?

Written by Christopher Pentecost on January 27, 2024

Lather, rinse, repeat—consistency, that’s what we’re looking for here. So, I’ve been sitting here doing the same thing I’ve done for the past couple of weeks: staring at a blank screen, trying to figure out how to describe the things that I am wanting to describe. I’ve kind of come to an impasse, and I say this because it’s very hard for me to describe all of the things going on in my mind and all of the things I want to say to you while trying to figure out all the major parts that I should be, you know, saying. So, what am I saying?

I’m saying I’m going to leave it up to an expert… or something thereof. Welcome to YouTube, a place where people have already made videos on almost anything you want to know about, and you know you can find it out for yourself. So, I’ve looked for a couple of videos, and I found one that best describes what ADHD is. So, a link below—have a look, and come back, and we’ll talk about other things.

Okay, we’re back. Now that we sort of know the 10 common symptoms of ADHD in adults, I can say I deal with all of these in various levels of my life and in various levels of severity. Difficulty staying organized was one of those things that I’ve struggled with for a very long time. Only recently, in the last five years, have I actually started using a planner more successfully than throughout the bulk of my life. You know, I can write things down, but unless I’m going back over them, it’s very hard to keep things in check. Also, breaking my days out—I need to actually break them out more by the hour, and sometimes that can get tedious. But it’s more on the lines of when I say I’m going to the gym. Yes, my workouts are only one to two hours long, but it also takes me half an hour to get to the gym, and most of the time, it takes me about 45 minutes to get home. So, all of a sudden, if I haven’t planned for that travel, my day gets out of whack, and then I become a little more unfocused and upset with myself to the fact that I haven’t gotten a lot more things done that I should have gotten done. So, that lack of organization also has made the lack of time awareness a little more prevalent.

I’ve gotten a little better at time awareness thanks to being a part of the deaf community, in which time boxing things becomes more important because we have to be able to time our projects based on when things need to go out. So, that’s helped me in a lot of ways. I find struggling to stay motivated for me is more about the amount of stress linked to what I need to be motivated about than it is most of the other factors. The additional stress also flares up my anxiety, which I actually am on medication for, but it impacts the ability to focus and be motivated to be focused on the project at hand, which then leads to mistakes, and it’s one big snowball from there.

How do I deal with it all? Well, gingerly. I try to balance my dealing with the ADHD and the things that I need to do in life just to get by. Since being out of work, I have noticed that my ability to become not focused on things truly impacts things like this project. I’ve wanted to do this project for roughly 20 years, but I’ve also really wanted to be doing this project for the last 6 months, and we’re here finally. But it’s been a harder road to get here and to this spot. Now, a lot of times, all of these common symptoms lead to frustration for me and lead to anxiety. How do I deal with that? Well, a lot of symptoms like insomnia and anxiety for me get helped out with the idea of being active. If I go to the gym and I work out, I feel better. I feel more focused because I’ve burnt off a lot of the physcial side effects of my anxiety. For me to become more focused, I’ve started using other techniques like Pomodoro timers—allowing myself 25 minutes to be hyper-focused on the task at hand and then breaking for 5 minutes to give myself a little time to relax, to hydrate, to grab a snack if I need to, and then come back to it and be focused again in a more healthier way.

I understand that one of the big symptoms is being hyperfocused, and that can be an absolute problem, especially when you sit down to do something and get caught up in YouTube or TikTok or Instagram or the thing that you were supposed to do yesterday, which currently that floor is still not getting clean today, but it is something to work forward to and to strive towards. So, by using these sort of what seem to be like simple tools, I’m becoming a little more focused on what I want to be focused on, which is the things I should be doing, like this post.

Now, I was reminded in that second video, that as much as I have put forth that I’ve been undiagnosed with ADHD, this is a true statement. Having seen many psychologists over my lifetime so far(for Anxiety and Depression), I have sort of gotten not an official ADHD diagnosis but the tools to help deal with symptoms that I have been feeling and have been dealing with going back to my high school days. Most of the things that I do nowadays are things that were recommended to me years ago that, unfortunately, I still haven’t been able to get right up until now. But I’ve never really stopped trying. So, to an extent, I have had professional help with certain symptoms, but again, never been given a full diagnosis that I do in fact have ADHD. That is my current disclaimer at this moment. I hope to do more of these posts going forward, but also I want to get into other things. Let my ADHD sort of semi-flow and bring forth a whole bunch of new topics to sort of delve into. Starting next month, which will be February, I will be increasing my posts to two times a week. The main one dealing with, as we’ve been dealing with so far, my dealing with ADHD and how I’m dealing with it in my adult life. The other post will be more things that I enjoy. Being that I grew up as a Gen X person, we’ll delve into music, pop culture, some movies, some changes in sociopolitical stuff, and my sort of journey on how to delve into what it means to be a Gen X in what is currently a Millennial and Gen Z world.

Have a great rest of your week and try to get outside and breathe in some fresh air. Lots of things can be cured by just a deep breath in…and out!

[Photo by micheile henderson on Unsplash]