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Ya. I feel this way a lot. I think it is quite common with people with ADHD. The inability to do the things society tells us should be “easy” and we would be fine if we just “tried hard enough” and the worst thing is being able to do the “thing” some/most of the time.
For me this is by far the worst part of ADHD. It hurts your confidence making it even harder function.
I feel where you’re coming from on this. I have to spend a lot of time saying “you got this”.
Make an effort to be nice to yourself. I have written down on a whiteboard by my computer, “Praise yourself for the little things.”
It makes me cringe to see it now and then, but I have been uplifting myself for the little things, like paying my bills on time, etc. since I’ve done this I’ve found myself having a bit more confidence and it helps me balance better with my self nitpicking.
I thought to myself earlier today "hey this is something I would normally write down on my list after doing it because its a little thing that makes life easier and i did it without hesitation. So good job you!" And aptted myself on the back.
I refilled the small soy sauce container from the big soy sauce jug. There are multiple steps. Also I didn't spill anything.
Seriously, the years I spent unmedicated with a brutal inner critic who kept us barely functioning by being so cruel...sucks dude. I wish I hadn't spent my childhood thinking that way as a coping mechanism.
When I started medication and was actually able to utilize tools like lists and planners, I remember talking to people about "I've noticed i am proud of myself in my head now. It's really cool, have you tried that before?" I went 6 weeks from November/December without medication (after mostly being medicated for 16 years) and I'm STILL working on breaking the Big Meany voice habit.
Chipping away at it with soy sauce and clean laundry.
I think it’s worth mentioning that the huge inner critic voice is quite characteristic of CPTSD. Look into it a bit if you’re interested, hi g lot recommend Pete Walker’s books
For me that’s what ADHD pretty much is. The lack of accomplishments and the ability to function like a normal individual overtime ate at my self esteem overtime.
Getting diagnosed is pretty much finally understanding why I was a dysfunctional individual but nothing can be done to alleviate the damage it already caused in my life.
Nothing. I live with it. It’s messed up. This is probably the worst part about having ADHD for me.
I go to therapy occasionally, take medication, and finally function like I was supposed to.
It is what it is.
Got back on meds after 6yrs and really struggling with this. Dropped out of community college like 4 times and basically did nothing of note. Getting back on meds has made a huge difference, but I still mourne the time I wasted.
I was held back a grade in elementary school, I dropped out of college for a year and switched my major once which almost reset all of my progress. I’m doing summer courses to kind of in a way buy back the time I wasted but yes, I also wasted a bit of time.
But again, it’s not just the time wasting. It’s the lack of feeling accomplished thats eating me alive. It’s good to mourn our past errors but I also use it as motivation to do better.
Life can only get better. That’s what keeps my head on a swivel and to stay motivated.
I should be considered a world champion boxer at this point due to how much I beat myself up everyday
Literally for almost every waking moment, my mind attacks itself with unmatched ferocity. I just compare myself with my peers and plunge into the worst depression, which then paralyses me and makes everything even worse.
I need an out desperately and I do not know what do to.
Creativity. Follow your natural inclinations and whatever you naturally spend hours doing without straining to focus.
Fuck what everyone else is doing.
Left to my own devices I actually end up doing nothing lol sadly
The funny thing is as a kid my parents tried to get me to do a lot of things but I always lost interest and dropped them after a couple of days. Now I'm left stranded in this world, skillless and useless outside of my job. I gotta figure out something soon but thanks man
Same! As a kid my parents would drag me everywhere to sports or music. But I have no sense of rhythm and pitch and had no passion in any of the things i tried. Or it dwindled really quickly. Now I regret why I just now kept at it and feel so talenless and skill-less fr
Tell me about it, I feel like the worlds biggest loser. I've seen my peers excel at school and extracurriculars while I'm just...there. It hurts to think about it and I'm never gonna live with the fact that I pissed away all that time.
It’s rough… over time I’ve trained myself to laugh about it rather than giving myself a hard time. I have a friend where we message each other our ADHD related screw ups and mock each other for it. Don’t get me wrong, some days I still drop to my knees and wonder why it all has to be so hard, but it has certainly taken a bit of the sting out of it.
I think a good sense of humour about daily life is essential. Easier to laugh when you have like minded people around for sure. A friend just stopped by our conversation was all over the place 😁 discussing lots of things at once .. like we were talking in the style of jazz 👐🏼🎷🎶🎺🤩.
Keep smiling keep laughing ADHDers!! It’s good medicine 💚💫
Part of the criteria for diagnosis is some amount of self hatred lol. At least for DSM we have to fill a bunch of forms out, which included statements like “I think I’m ugly” “I have a negative perception of myself and my abilities” etc (not phrased exactly I don’t remmeber what I filled in phrased exactly)
I agree 100% I was unmedicated for around 2ish years give or take and that was the worst downward spiral I’d ever been in. I noticed that I was doing things the day before to make my “tomorrow’s me” morning a little better and being so thankful for it. That’s when I decided to finally start taking care of myself (was drinking HEAVILY at the time) and got remedicated. Ever since I’ve been getting better. However slow that might be. I still do the same shit and it sucks. Beating yourself up over not doing basic stuff. Your comparison to a roommate is a great one and it’s one that I will use from now on so thank you 😤👊Hope things are going well and get better for you!
Edit: grammar (I’m high sorry)
I had this same realization today when I heard people with ADHD usually have low self esteem. When I got over-proportionally mad at myself for something small today, I was like oh, lightbulb moment, this is what does it.
Definitely an issue for me. I call myself not too pretty names (inferior to others, wasted sperm, and since I’m getting fatter now I have started calling myself fattie). Believe it or not I do not have these same judgements about other people and I’m pretty forgiving of people.
Since I got diagnosed I've spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out where I stop and my ADHD begins, but ultimately they're one and the same. My brain has been this was since I was born, which has shaped how I've learned to be. But I spent the first 39 years not knowing why I am the way I am.
As a result, I still struggle to be kind to myself because I'm just not used to it.
Take this week for example; I've spent a huge amount of time at work just idly scrolling the internet, struggling to build any enthusiasm to get any work done. The kind thing would be to step away from my desk, go for a walk in the sunshine without my phone and clear my head. But I can't automatically be kind because I've never formed that habit, so I'm sitting here beating myself up for not earning my wages.
I find that my ADHD impacts my self-esteem because there’s such an enormous dissonance between who I want to be/what I want to do, versus who I am and what I’m able to do. It’s frustrating because it feels as if I have no agency.
I try to remain positive by telling myself that I’m not my own worst enemy, my ADHD (which is a separate entity to me, the person) is.
I also like to remind myself that my achievements are made all the more impressive by the fact that I have ADHD and it’s so much harder for me than it is for everybody else.
But generally I try to make sure that I don’t conflate my ADHD, my neurodevelopmental disability that I have no control over, with myself and who I am as a person. Easier said than done though!
You should watch everything everywhere all at once it's an amazing movie and teaches you about being nice to yourself. My self esteem and sudden outbursts of frustration and sassy to my closest and loved ones is def burnout from high expectations of myself and not understanding how to cope.
Undiagnosed adhd till my 30s, anxiety, burnout, expectations, friend environment, sure didn't help. ADHD dx and therapy, moving states, working on myself, changing healthy habits, meds, new supportive friend group, and just being kind to myself with not being able to accomplish everything all at once has helped me wonders.
Yes! Once I turned 30 I had health anxiety and then I had some bad stuff happened and I wanted to be sober in a new home and the positives have been so rewarding I won't look back. Thank you ☺️
Yes! We internalize all of the inconvenience we find ourselves confronting on a hourly basis. Because we could have prevented it we think it’s our fault and then it’s guilt shame self hatred etc. doesn’t help if you have people around you who are impacted 😑😑
Yeah. I used to really hate my own guts. Nothing subtle about it. It’s brutal to live with that disconnect between your intentions and your ability to execute, and if you don’t understand why it’s happening, it’s incredibly easy to slip into the mindset that you Must Not Care Enough. And when that situation comes into conflict with things like taking care of people you care about, or just finding the energy to be a pleasant and likable person, you feel like a Monster because you think that you don’t care enough to be a decent and kind human being. But you are a decent human, and you do care. Executive function and emotional dysregulation are just getting in your way. Once I got medicated, it wasn’t just that I felt like Myself: I felt like I knew for sure where I ended and my my ADHD began.
I mean yeah, obviously. Most people can't recognise the symptoms, instead you're lazy, inconsiderate, flaky or just plain stupid. Even if those words aren't used specifically, that becomes the way people treat you, they wouldn't say it to your face but that's how you're perceived. Ofc that would have an impact on your self esteem, people internalize that shit man, even if they know better, even if they don't realise that's what's happening.
The data around people with ADHD regarding all death mortality, proclivity towards harmful habits, etc. all serve to completely reinforce your natural feeling. Every small win/failure grows into the next win/failure, and if people are constantly on the failure spiral it can easily grow into a general sense of failure and even hatred.
I'm glad to hear you focused on the little win a little bit at least!
I was over 50 when I got diagnosed. I had decades of going to bed frustrated that I didn't get things done and vowing to do better the next day - repeat. Learning how my brain works and getting an executive functioning coach were among the best things I've ever done for myself. (My biggest issues are a combo of time blindness (I can do all the things in 10 minutes!) and executive dysfunction.)
I know my partner gets super frustrated with me and my child, who is also diagnosed. We have the attention deficit but not so much the hyperactivity. With my child, I see so much of myself that it is kinda freaky. I have to tell my partner and my other kids and other people to BACK OFF!!!!
The constant criticism isn't helpful, and I truly believe it can start to develop or intensify negative self-talk within someone especially those who have ADHD- At least in my experience with constantly being criticized by all the adults in my life as a child. *Plus my super religious mom and the dumb crap she listened and still listens to made her think she knew more than the doctors and believed that ADHD is some made up illness by the government or some sh*t to drug kids. She blamed bad parenting and people needing God. (I hate parent bashing, which I'm kinda doing to my own mom...oops..., but I like to do the research myself then come to a conclusion myself and not blindly believe what some talk radio dude says and whatever opinion news says and fellow peers believe, who listen and watch the same stuff say.)
I didn't get treatment for ADHD until i was an adult and could advocate for myself.
Funny thing is- she was fine having me drugged for my other mental illnesses, bipolar at first, and then awful crippling anxiety that only got worse as I got older.
TBH, I believe that the extreme religious beliefs and upbringing and the constant pressure to be the best at everything (and I usually was) may be to blame for triggering the bipolar. Then, add the stigma of mental illness that was really bad among the religious community at the time plus not getting treatment for my ADHD and also the pressure to be perfect may have caused the anxiety I felt from a very young age to only get worse as I got older.
The belief was that just because I wasn't bouncing off the walls and got amazing grades, I couldn't have ADHD in my parents' minds despite what the doctors said. I recently had a therapist who had/has the same ideology. This makes me mad because I knew something was different about me in like 3rd grade when I could absorb and retain anything written, but when instructions and directions were given to me vocally, my brain wouldn't retain anything said as I stopped listening after the 1st couple words or sentences lol. It also makes me mad because that tells me that some people believe that you can't be intelligent and have ADHD.
All this stuff does not help with self-esteem and self-worth and confidence and the negative self-talk.
We need patience from others, but I see that it is hard for those without ADHD to understand and do. That, for sure, doesn't help us feel better about ourselves.
It's already a struggle to keep up with life with ADHD. If only these people, who don't understand or refuse to at least try to understand, would back off because it isn't like we don't know these things about ourselves and aren't already frustrated enough with ourselves.
Sorry this is too long. I was trying to shorten it, but all that is going on around me just made me frustrated because I couldn't concentrate and just hit post
I can definitely attest to medicated - for me, there's FAR more pros than cons when it comes to medication but it does suck to return to "reality" from being a functional, clear headed and chill person. I have bpd also, so I'm sort of "used" to mood swings but often it just gets tiring/frustrating
I was unmedicated for 30+ years and I definitely felt the same sort of frustration and self loathing, alongside other disorders making things more difficult, but it was slightly more level, I guess. having the meds gives me back control of my brain, and I can function without them but coming back to my version of reality is frustrating
Honestly I don't think my adhd chipped away at my self esteem as an inherant thing. People judging me for making small mistakes, calling me lazy for not doing pointless school shit like homework, and the feeling of alienation in my experiences chipped away at my self esteem. Forgetting stuff frustrates me but it only turned into self hatred after being judged for years.
Hi /u/SootSpriteStreet and thanks for posting on /r/ADHD! ### Please take a second to [read our rules](/r/adhd/about/rules) if you haven't already. --- ### /r/adhd news * If you are posting about the **US Medication Shortage**, please see this [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/ADHD/comments/12dr3h5/megathread_us_medication_shortage/). --- ^(*This message is not a removal notification. It's just our way to keep everyone updated on r/adhd happenings.*) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ADHD) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Ya. I feel this way a lot. I think it is quite common with people with ADHD. The inability to do the things society tells us should be “easy” and we would be fine if we just “tried hard enough” and the worst thing is being able to do the “thing” some/most of the time. For me this is by far the worst part of ADHD. It hurts your confidence making it even harder function. I feel where you’re coming from on this. I have to spend a lot of time saying “you got this”.
youre so right. the sometimes has to be probably the most frustrating part and in my opinion what contributes the most to the imposter syndrome
Nothing about my self-hatred is subtle
Yeah, it wasn't papercut for me haha it's a baseball bat to my head everytime
Make an effort to be nice to yourself. I have written down on a whiteboard by my computer, “Praise yourself for the little things.” It makes me cringe to see it now and then, but I have been uplifting myself for the little things, like paying my bills on time, etc. since I’ve done this I’ve found myself having a bit more confidence and it helps me balance better with my self nitpicking.
I thought to myself earlier today "hey this is something I would normally write down on my list after doing it because its a little thing that makes life easier and i did it without hesitation. So good job you!" And aptted myself on the back. I refilled the small soy sauce container from the big soy sauce jug. There are multiple steps. Also I didn't spill anything. Seriously, the years I spent unmedicated with a brutal inner critic who kept us barely functioning by being so cruel...sucks dude. I wish I hadn't spent my childhood thinking that way as a coping mechanism. When I started medication and was actually able to utilize tools like lists and planners, I remember talking to people about "I've noticed i am proud of myself in my head now. It's really cool, have you tried that before?" I went 6 weeks from November/December without medication (after mostly being medicated for 16 years) and I'm STILL working on breaking the Big Meany voice habit. Chipping away at it with soy sauce and clean laundry.
I think it’s worth mentioning that the huge inner critic voice is quite characteristic of CPTSD. Look into it a bit if you’re interested, hi g lot recommend Pete Walker’s books
I'll check out Pete Walker thank you. I was diagnosed with C-PTSD 6 years ago.
I do this with affirmations on post it notes I keep on my mirror! Sometimes it feels corny but I feel good when I read them.
For me that’s what ADHD pretty much is. The lack of accomplishments and the ability to function like a normal individual overtime ate at my self esteem overtime. Getting diagnosed is pretty much finally understanding why I was a dysfunctional individual but nothing can be done to alleviate the damage it already caused in my life. Nothing. I live with it. It’s messed up. This is probably the worst part about having ADHD for me. I go to therapy occasionally, take medication, and finally function like I was supposed to. It is what it is.
Got back on meds after 6yrs and really struggling with this. Dropped out of community college like 4 times and basically did nothing of note. Getting back on meds has made a huge difference, but I still mourne the time I wasted.
I was held back a grade in elementary school, I dropped out of college for a year and switched my major once which almost reset all of my progress. I’m doing summer courses to kind of in a way buy back the time I wasted but yes, I also wasted a bit of time. But again, it’s not just the time wasting. It’s the lack of feeling accomplished thats eating me alive. It’s good to mourn our past errors but I also use it as motivation to do better. Life can only get better. That’s what keeps my head on a swivel and to stay motivated.
I should be considered a world champion boxer at this point due to how much I beat myself up everyday Literally for almost every waking moment, my mind attacks itself with unmatched ferocity. I just compare myself with my peers and plunge into the worst depression, which then paralyses me and makes everything even worse. I need an out desperately and I do not know what do to.
Creativity. Follow your natural inclinations and whatever you naturally spend hours doing without straining to focus. Fuck what everyone else is doing.
Left to my own devices I actually end up doing nothing lol sadly The funny thing is as a kid my parents tried to get me to do a lot of things but I always lost interest and dropped them after a couple of days. Now I'm left stranded in this world, skillless and useless outside of my job. I gotta figure out something soon but thanks man
Same! As a kid my parents would drag me everywhere to sports or music. But I have no sense of rhythm and pitch and had no passion in any of the things i tried. Or it dwindled really quickly. Now I regret why I just now kept at it and feel so talenless and skill-less fr
Tell me about it, I feel like the worlds biggest loser. I've seen my peers excel at school and extracurriculars while I'm just...there. It hurts to think about it and I'm never gonna live with the fact that I pissed away all that time.
this is the way
It’s rough… over time I’ve trained myself to laugh about it rather than giving myself a hard time. I have a friend where we message each other our ADHD related screw ups and mock each other for it. Don’t get me wrong, some days I still drop to my knees and wonder why it all has to be so hard, but it has certainly taken a bit of the sting out of it.
I think a good sense of humour about daily life is essential. Easier to laugh when you have like minded people around for sure. A friend just stopped by our conversation was all over the place 😁 discussing lots of things at once .. like we were talking in the style of jazz 👐🏼🎷🎶🎺🤩. Keep smiling keep laughing ADHDers!! It’s good medicine 💚💫
Part of the criteria for diagnosis is some amount of self hatred lol. At least for DSM we have to fill a bunch of forms out, which included statements like “I think I’m ugly” “I have a negative perception of myself and my abilities” etc (not phrased exactly I don’t remmeber what I filled in phrased exactly)
I’ve been on meds about a month now. I looked in the mirror today and didn’t think I was the most disgusting human in the world. It’s nice.
I agree 100% I was unmedicated for around 2ish years give or take and that was the worst downward spiral I’d ever been in. I noticed that I was doing things the day before to make my “tomorrow’s me” morning a little better and being so thankful for it. That’s when I decided to finally start taking care of myself (was drinking HEAVILY at the time) and got remedicated. Ever since I’ve been getting better. However slow that might be. I still do the same shit and it sucks. Beating yourself up over not doing basic stuff. Your comparison to a roommate is a great one and it’s one that I will use from now on so thank you 😤👊Hope things are going well and get better for you! Edit: grammar (I’m high sorry)
I had this same realization today when I heard people with ADHD usually have low self esteem. When I got over-proportionally mad at myself for something small today, I was like oh, lightbulb moment, this is what does it.
Definitely an issue for me. I call myself not too pretty names (inferior to others, wasted sperm, and since I’m getting fatter now I have started calling myself fattie). Believe it or not I do not have these same judgements about other people and I’m pretty forgiving of people.
Since I got diagnosed I've spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out where I stop and my ADHD begins, but ultimately they're one and the same. My brain has been this was since I was born, which has shaped how I've learned to be. But I spent the first 39 years not knowing why I am the way I am. As a result, I still struggle to be kind to myself because I'm just not used to it. Take this week for example; I've spent a huge amount of time at work just idly scrolling the internet, struggling to build any enthusiasm to get any work done. The kind thing would be to step away from my desk, go for a walk in the sunshine without my phone and clear my head. But I can't automatically be kind because I've never formed that habit, so I'm sitting here beating myself up for not earning my wages.
Subtle?
Death by a thousand cuts
Sure as h-e-double-hockey-stick does.
I find that my ADHD impacts my self-esteem because there’s such an enormous dissonance between who I want to be/what I want to do, versus who I am and what I’m able to do. It’s frustrating because it feels as if I have no agency. I try to remain positive by telling myself that I’m not my own worst enemy, my ADHD (which is a separate entity to me, the person) is. I also like to remind myself that my achievements are made all the more impressive by the fact that I have ADHD and it’s so much harder for me than it is for everybody else. But generally I try to make sure that I don’t conflate my ADHD, my neurodevelopmental disability that I have no control over, with myself and who I am as a person. Easier said than done though!
It's not subtle. It's a constant background layer of denigration of every thought, action or idea.
You should watch everything everywhere all at once it's an amazing movie and teaches you about being nice to yourself. My self esteem and sudden outbursts of frustration and sassy to my closest and loved ones is def burnout from high expectations of myself and not understanding how to cope. Undiagnosed adhd till my 30s, anxiety, burnout, expectations, friend environment, sure didn't help. ADHD dx and therapy, moving states, working on myself, changing healthy habits, meds, new supportive friend group, and just being kind to myself with not being able to accomplish everything all at once has helped me wonders.
Those are some big, healthy changes! Good for you!
Thank you so much. Next week is six months of sobriety and I'm in shock with my come back after a rough start last year. Thank you appreciate you!
Holy bananas, six months?? That’s AWESOME!!! CONGRATULATIONS!!! 👏💪🎉
Yes! Once I turned 30 I had health anxiety and then I had some bad stuff happened and I wanted to be sober in a new home and the positives have been so rewarding I won't look back. Thank you ☺️
🤗🤗
Yes! We internalize all of the inconvenience we find ourselves confronting on a hourly basis. Because we could have prevented it we think it’s our fault and then it’s guilt shame self hatred etc. doesn’t help if you have people around you who are impacted 😑😑
Yeah. I used to really hate my own guts. Nothing subtle about it. It’s brutal to live with that disconnect between your intentions and your ability to execute, and if you don’t understand why it’s happening, it’s incredibly easy to slip into the mindset that you Must Not Care Enough. And when that situation comes into conflict with things like taking care of people you care about, or just finding the energy to be a pleasant and likable person, you feel like a Monster because you think that you don’t care enough to be a decent and kind human being. But you are a decent human, and you do care. Executive function and emotional dysregulation are just getting in your way. Once I got medicated, it wasn’t just that I felt like Myself: I felt like I knew for sure where I ended and my my ADHD began.
Yea. It does.
Subtle???
A little? 😂
I mean yeah, obviously. Most people can't recognise the symptoms, instead you're lazy, inconsiderate, flaky or just plain stupid. Even if those words aren't used specifically, that becomes the way people treat you, they wouldn't say it to your face but that's how you're perceived. Ofc that would have an impact on your self esteem, people internalize that shit man, even if they know better, even if they don't realise that's what's happening.
The data around people with ADHD regarding all death mortality, proclivity towards harmful habits, etc. all serve to completely reinforce your natural feeling. Every small win/failure grows into the next win/failure, and if people are constantly on the failure spiral it can easily grow into a general sense of failure and even hatred. I'm glad to hear you focused on the little win a little bit at least!
I was over 50 when I got diagnosed. I had decades of going to bed frustrated that I didn't get things done and vowing to do better the next day - repeat. Learning how my brain works and getting an executive functioning coach were among the best things I've ever done for myself. (My biggest issues are a combo of time blindness (I can do all the things in 10 minutes!) and executive dysfunction.)
I know my partner gets super frustrated with me and my child, who is also diagnosed. We have the attention deficit but not so much the hyperactivity. With my child, I see so much of myself that it is kinda freaky. I have to tell my partner and my other kids and other people to BACK OFF!!!! The constant criticism isn't helpful, and I truly believe it can start to develop or intensify negative self-talk within someone especially those who have ADHD- At least in my experience with constantly being criticized by all the adults in my life as a child. *Plus my super religious mom and the dumb crap she listened and still listens to made her think she knew more than the doctors and believed that ADHD is some made up illness by the government or some sh*t to drug kids. She blamed bad parenting and people needing God. (I hate parent bashing, which I'm kinda doing to my own mom...oops..., but I like to do the research myself then come to a conclusion myself and not blindly believe what some talk radio dude says and whatever opinion news says and fellow peers believe, who listen and watch the same stuff say.) I didn't get treatment for ADHD until i was an adult and could advocate for myself. Funny thing is- she was fine having me drugged for my other mental illnesses, bipolar at first, and then awful crippling anxiety that only got worse as I got older. TBH, I believe that the extreme religious beliefs and upbringing and the constant pressure to be the best at everything (and I usually was) may be to blame for triggering the bipolar. Then, add the stigma of mental illness that was really bad among the religious community at the time plus not getting treatment for my ADHD and also the pressure to be perfect may have caused the anxiety I felt from a very young age to only get worse as I got older. The belief was that just because I wasn't bouncing off the walls and got amazing grades, I couldn't have ADHD in my parents' minds despite what the doctors said. I recently had a therapist who had/has the same ideology. This makes me mad because I knew something was different about me in like 3rd grade when I could absorb and retain anything written, but when instructions and directions were given to me vocally, my brain wouldn't retain anything said as I stopped listening after the 1st couple words or sentences lol. It also makes me mad because that tells me that some people believe that you can't be intelligent and have ADHD. All this stuff does not help with self-esteem and self-worth and confidence and the negative self-talk. We need patience from others, but I see that it is hard for those without ADHD to understand and do. That, for sure, doesn't help us feel better about ourselves. It's already a struggle to keep up with life with ADHD. If only these people, who don't understand or refuse to at least try to understand, would back off because it isn't like we don't know these things about ourselves and aren't already frustrated enough with ourselves.
Sorry this is too long. I was trying to shorten it, but all that is going on around me just made me frustrated because I couldn't concentrate and just hit post
Heh heh, subtle self hatred. I wanted to kill myself at 11 years old because of how much I hated myself, and how much it seemed others hated me
I have to say now, after knowing what's going on with me... I don't hate myself anymore. I just hate how ADHD makes my life hell
I can definitely attest to medicated - for me, there's FAR more pros than cons when it comes to medication but it does suck to return to "reality" from being a functional, clear headed and chill person. I have bpd also, so I'm sort of "used" to mood swings but often it just gets tiring/frustrating I was unmedicated for 30+ years and I definitely felt the same sort of frustration and self loathing, alongside other disorders making things more difficult, but it was slightly more level, I guess. having the meds gives me back control of my brain, and I can function without them but coming back to my version of reality is frustrating
Honestly I don't think my adhd chipped away at my self esteem as an inherant thing. People judging me for making small mistakes, calling me lazy for not doing pointless school shit like homework, and the feeling of alienation in my experiences chipped away at my self esteem. Forgetting stuff frustrates me but it only turned into self hatred after being judged for years.