I do this even while I'm by myself on my laptop. I'll be reading a random recipe from the 16th century and I'll stop and think, "Wait, how did I get here?". Then I'll look and see I'm halfway through a movie that I've paused on an actor's face and remember. I paused the movie to google where I know the actor from, then I end up down this hours long rabbit hole and by the time I get back to the movie it's too late to watch the rest of it and end up not watching it.
You pause the movie? I'll let it play in the background while checking out said actor and then seeing 'Oh Hey, he acted with this chap, wonder what they've been up too?' and they got married, cool and the movie ended by an hour or two at this point, and look up 'oh hey the movie ended. I'll probably watch it again some other time' and I never will.
I can't focus on reading if I can hear people talking. Same with people talking to me if I'm watching TV or listening to music. I have to pause it otherwise it's all just a jumble.
I apparently have an ability that no one has, (and by no one I mean the people who tells me 'Why are you so weird?' or 'How do you do that?') is that I can be on my phone reading stuff or watching things and still be participating in the on going conversation.
Damn I wish. Sounds like a handy skill. I can barely do the one thing I'm (trying) to do. If it looks like I'm multitasking, it means I forgot what I was trying to do and went back to where I think the thought trigger was to look for clues lol. I'll talk and mid-sentence look at my phone or something to try and find out where I was going with the sentence.
I can't focus on listening if there is writing to distract me and my visual processing is faster than my auditory processing, so watching videos with subtitles ruins them for me. I know most ADHD folks are reverse and actually need subtitles, but this is my brain.
Hahahahaha
I just have a love/hate relationship with trying to get the different sliders to go where I want them between streaming apps
Oh shit wasn't watching, go back.. Ok yeah.. Wait what? Go back more.. Nope too far.. It's ok just let it play, I remember this part right? Yeah cool go ahead and check that thing on my phone rq.. Oh shit wasn't watching, go back..
Forever :')
I actually just told a friend the other day that it's SO much easier to watch along with someone else bc otherwise it takes me 8x as long to watch anything
Buuuut this is the only brain I've ever had or will have, so... *jazz hands*
If I watch something informative/interesting, I set the speed to 1.5x or even higher. This way my brain has to focus more on the content video and cannot go as easily on detours while listening. Although I sometimes still have to fast forward a bit and get frustrated easily when I cannot do the same to people IRL :P
Yesterday, we couldn't figure out the word *Atrium* and we're debating if the lobby Atrium was really an Atrium or not. Anyway, I now know a bunch of pointless facts about Roman Architecture and Roman words for their Domus rooms.
Edit: Grammarly hates Roman as much as I hate Grammarly.
I do that with my own thoughts sometimes. Like, Iāll realize my mind is wandering and I want to remember the thing I was thinking about 20 seconds ago because I remember it was something important. But I canāt remember what I was thinking of 20 seconds ago, so Iāll try to figure out what I was thinking of 30, 40, 50 etc seconds ago to see if I can get back on that same train of thought.
It works like a quarter of the time.
And this is why we all flock together. Because someone else with ADHD would be like ādamn why do wasps not die?ā Take out their phone to google it and then they would end up telling you that giraffes only sleep 1.9 hours a day.
Giraffes also do not have vocal chords.
When someone asks you what sound a giraffe makes, just pretend you're munching on some leaves cause that's all they can say.
Well, that and "does anyone know a good chiropractor?"
There was a giraffe in the Santa Barbara zoo that had a mad wicked kink in it's neck and they had to put a sign out to let everyone know he was born that way because they kept getting asked about it.
Anywayš
Dolphins only sleep one half of their brain at a time. They literally sleep with one eye open.
Apparently wasps don't sleep. Explains why they're nasty little assholes.
You said dolphins and I started thinking about a shark attack video I saw today then I thought there goes my south Africa future trip plan and started planning other trips.
"The full grown male african ostrich or the latin 'struthio camelus' can go to an average size of sixty six inches... and weigh anywhere from 225 to 350 pounds that can get up to... well an average speed of...Ā 27 miles per hour."
Sometimes they do, but usually it takes a while for a conversation to gradually meander. So over the course of a long conversation the topics might shift, but not instantly. Whereas we jump through random associations with staggering speed, so by the time weāre done expressing one thought our brains are already miles away, and the next thing out of our mouth might appear completely unrelated.
do you also skip ahead in sentences when speaking? i tend to not finish sentences bc my brain is so far ahead and my mouth skips to that, and i just assume people are following along in my brain so they should be able to fill in the gaps and people are looking at me like i have three heads.
Yes, I do this as well! This actually affects my speech a lot, too. People who don't know me well often have problems understanding me because apparently I cut off parts of words to speak faster (i.e. more than the regular amount).
If I don't know the exact word I was going to say and have to stop for more than 0.2 seconds, I just don't finish the sentence. I get funny stares all the time because I just assume they know where I was going with it and I'm already staring straight ahead untangling a web of 80 thoughts.
Related, do you also have a problem not understanding people because you don't know the context of what they're asking? Like I'll be having a conversation and have a set of expected responses for things I'm saying, and then someone responds with something completely different and I just can't comprehend the words because it doesn't fit into where my brain was flowing. My mind has to do like a train brake and redo the entire sequence of events to understand where they're at. I just can't hear the words and answer.
>If I don't know the exact word I was going to say and have to stop for more than 0.2 seconds, I just don't finish the sentence. I get funny stares all the time because I just assume they know where I was going with it and I'm already staring straight ahead untangling a web of 80 thoughts.
hahaha nooooo i do this so often also, its awful man. the half a second i forget or dont know what to say completely kills my entire train of thought or flow and i just shut up completely, mates usually understand what i mean alr but man no way the people I interact with due to work doš
>do you also have a problem not understanding people because you don't know the context of what they're asking? Like
So so often. It's like without the context, my brain will absolutely refuse to process the words.. I hear them. I know they're English. I'm TRYING to piece it together but my brain is just like "no, fuck that. We NEED the environment in which this words are related to and I'm not gonna figure it out!"
My oldest friend in the world and I both have adhd. Between that and the fact that weāve known each other forever, our conversations will rapidly jump from subject to subject through those random associations you mentioned.
Iāve always wanted to record one of these conversations just to go back and document some sort of flow chart just to see how varied the subject matter can get.
My boss literally told me I have to wait 5 seconds after people speak before responding to what they said so they didnāt think I was blowing them off.
No I was not ignoring you, I just figured out what you were going to say 20 seconds before you said it and had already come up with an answer because when I came up with my plan I factored that idea in.
Holy fuck man when people ramble on forever essentially repeating themselves over and over again in meetingsā¦ I genuinely consider quitting my job every time.
Yes. And when people start arguing with the same repeated points and stupid arguments.. externally, I'll smile, but internally, I want to scream and exit the room. Like fuck, why can't people just go "X is this, Y is like that because of Z" and move on?!
Yeah lol I run a team now but when I joined we had a weekly meeting that regularly ran a full hour. It runs like 15-30 mins now when I do it, with no reduction in information shared.
It helps to throw in an āI agreeā or āYouāre rightā or āInteresting!ā before saying your stuff. I always thought that went without saying, but for some folks it does not.
So people have a mental refraction period similar to an orgasmās refraction period where they need to recharge, rest or account for what they said otherwise theyāre too sensitive?
Regardless of the type of stimulation or itās technique or application? Regardless of it we have encountered this situation, they approached us for having a background in it, or are hearing them repeat it for the nth time?
ā¦ How are we sure they just donāt have our cousin autism? This does not sound like being a neurotypical.
Here's my take on it, stick with me, it's gonna make sense.
So our brains are typically low in pre-synaptic dopamine and norepinephrine right?
A quick and easy way to get the chemicals flowing is to stimulate those receptors, this is why we're also more likely to engage in risky activities and suffer from addictions, it's the constant chasing of quick hits of reward juice that keep us motivated.
So when a Neurotypical person learns a topic. They store information hierarchically, it is categorised by the topic in a top down manner (maths > calculus > set theory > independent events | dependent events | mutually exclusive events) etc.
Because their minds do not have a deficit of reward neurotransmitters, the process of learning and storing information happens in a methodical top down, left to right manner as it is categorised currently.
Now an ADHD brain is constantly chasing more dopamine to fill the pre-synaptic cleft and allow us to return to baseline.
So when you are learning a topic, you don't just learn top down, left to right. You see something interesting that piques your curiousity and you follow it. You store it like you would store information in a graph, you continue to follow the trail, storing more and more information as you go.
Each new idea gives you a reward and motivates you to continue your search. Each new idea is stored in your brain like a node in a network. You create the node. Create a connection to it and then a connection to the next node. And so on and so on. All the way down to the end of the information pipeline, then you traverse back up the network and pursue adjacent nodes and create new connections to previous nodes or new nodes. You don't even think about doing this but your brain does it automatically. At the end, you don't have neatly configured stores of information that you can access. You have a web. Everything is connected.
I'll come back and expand on this later. I'm tired now.
> I'll come back and expand on this later. I'm tired now.
Please do. I donāt know enough about neuroscience to dispute or confirm anything youāve said, but it definitely resonates with me.
This is my life - when at work and on a problem solving task - I like to observe and soak in every details of info and choose the outliers Vs. Following one lead at a time .
The worst is when you enter a sector of the graph where the edges are undirected and the weights of each edge aren't even based on the same criteria. It's a wonder we're not constantly trapped in cycles. I wonder if neurons rely on a TTL value to prevent that š¤
I think they do its just less jumps or a slower process for them that they talk through more. In HS I was the "translator" for a friend who was far more neurodivergent than our other friends and while I could piece together how he got to a topic to help the friends follow along, it didn't make sense to me how THEY didn't connect those dots.
Got officially diagnosed a little over a year ago as ADHD and I just masked/coped pretty well in HS (lived with parents and dad owns a coffee shop so I had access to caffeine to unknowingly self medicate every day)
That happens to me all the time.
Then we get into a 30min sort explanation with distracting things to be commented and then they say: you talk too much.
It took me a while to understand this, but itās because they most likely expected a socially appropriate reply to light conversation but now youāre exhaustingly going on a rant about mice ears when they asked/commented on was a random video of capybaras. Get the disconnect to non-neurodivergent people?
Most of the time it is relevant from your perspective because while you are explaining and adding details you are making the road for a clear explanation of a detail you want to add later so the person can't not understand it or have many questions on how you came up with certain situations on your story because those aren't neurotypical way of thinking and you are used to people not understanding so you do it ahead of time. I genuinely don't understand how neurotypicals tend to not understand how much context is important
I think that often people can intuit or figure out much of the context for themselves without it being explained in exhausting detail, and if context were lacking ask a question about it.
This is an endless thing with me and my husband. He's AuDHD and I'm ADHD. He always explains a ton more than necessary to set up context, thinking it's needed for me to understand. But it's really something HE needs to understand to express his thoughts; it doesn't help me understand it. Most of the time the added "context" info is so much unnecessary information that I (and sometimes he as well) lose track of the main point.
The way I need the info, and how I expect it to be generally presented in neurotypical conversation, is for someone to explain their main points, then the listener follows with questions for clarification of the context or details IF NEEDED. This creates an actual conversational interaction between two people, rather than a one-sided lecture, which can be alienating to the listener and come off like the speaker doesn't care about getting any interaction from the listener.
As a listener, I want to hear about your thing a little bit, ask a question, hear more, etc. because it's a two-way street. If it's a context dump one-sided lecture, it's like my presence or interaction in the situation is irrelevant and you might as well be talking to a wall; it comes off like your priority is hearing yourself talk, not interacting with me as a person. Also, it can be so much info that it's overwhelming to the point that I am exhausted and just want it to be over with, so I stop listening.
I say this having been both the over-explaining lecturer and the overwhelmed and annoyed listener. I see when I'm doing this to others and I manage it pretty well most of the time, because it drives me crazy when people do it to me. My husband, however, cannot seen to manage this very well because extensive context and painting a picture are how he thinks and understands things.
I think the extra context can help for some people or in certain situations, but generally it is detrimental to neurotypical understanding and conversational interactions in my experience.
Then I don't understand what's the sense of small talk (between people who already know each other, because strangers have a reason to do it you don't know anything about the other person you need to figure out interests and stuff) like what do you get from it, most of times useless information or technically lies like "how are you?" (While you are not actually concerned on the person's well being the tipycal "how are you?" "Good thanks") do you actually think about the answer you might be in a depressive moment in your life but it's not the time or place to talk about it so of course you are not going to think about the answer. It's just a big waste of time
Uhm, because not every conversation or interaction has to be super deepā¦even with people youāve known for a while. Iām not attacking you, merely trying to offer a different perspective. You seem a little frustrated.
Probably put it down wrong, my mom just came to me and told me that in these days i seem a little short tempered, and I'm a little stressed I just wanted to put it out as fast as I could and couldn't say want exactly what I meant, and I'm not capable old doing now. Takes for being kind tho, you're comment gave some calm in a way, I love this subreddit people are most of the time kind and always understanding, the fact that we all have ADHD probably creates the hive mind effect so that helps. Thanks for your time have good day now kind stranger of the Internet
I know that feeling. This is why I am so happy with my friends, they understand (well, not really but understand that my brain works like this) the connections I make between a billion subjects at once and how we started with talking about shoes to now me telling them that the tram ride inside the local zoo is stupidly expensive.
It's funny because I've been called quiet my whole life by people I don't really know. But once I get comfortable with someone, all the stuff in my brain starts coming out and suddenly I'm too much. Just need time to observe and figure out if someone is going to love me when I'm myself or think I'm nuts or annoying LOL
For a long time I tried so hard to suppress talking because of these comments and now I can't even start small talk with people. I spend long times in silence and the same kind of people tell me you're so grim. Fuck all of them.
This is exactly why Iām so bad at conversation. I ping off into distant unconnected thoughts and donāt want to bring them up as it wonāt make sense to the other person, but that also means I have nothing relevant to add to continue the ānormalā conversation.
Unless Iām talking to other people who do this, in which case we end up changing subjects every few sentences for thirteen hours.
Once I get beyond 4-5 tangents, the original subject is lost to me. Usually I'll ask my SO and she'll start throwing out random keywords to try and spark the original thought. Ive been more cognizant of it in recent years where it used to be 2 tangents but it's still mentally straining. I go blank and try to brute force my recollection and any break in concentration kicks it into the ether only for me to possibly remember it, randomly, 4 days later.
Keywords help me so much that I end up throwing them at neurotypical people after Iāve gone on so many tangents that Iāve distracted them.
Usually, itās like, I unintentionally interrupt them and get them 10 topics away from the story they were originally telling me, and 10 minutes into that, Iām like, āOh god, Iām sorry. I totally cut you off. What were you saying about your boat?ā
And theyāre like, āOh, umm, I canāt remember now. It doesnāt matter.ā
āYou were trying to repair it, and something about your dad, and the neighborās dog, and there was a banana?ā
āYes!ā
Earth is round, but only to someone of sufficiently large scale. To us its rough and uneven. Are rubber balls rough and uneven? If we were tiny would a rubber ball be like Earth? Could we live on it? But what is alive? What is life? Itās just matter and thought and thought is partially intangible. And if thats true, arenāt comic book characters alive?
This is why I did so poorly in geometry. They wanted us to write out proofs with steps 1-10, and my brain would go from 1 to 3 to 6 to 10. So, I'd get the answer right, but because I hadn't written out every single little step the teacher would mark it wrong.
I got screamed at in front of the whole class in 8th grade math because I just couldn't show my work. I would learn the formulas, look at the problems, and then my brain would just fly through it and I'd write down the answer. I legitimately could not do it step-by-step, my brain would just keep fumbling over itself. The teacher kept accusing me of cheating on worksheets and homework, and then he stared at me during a test one day. I walked up to his desk and turned in a 100% test with no formulas on it and he just lost his mind. I was crying and everything.
I got a D in a math class because of this. Straight A student until this happened. The teacher kept accusing me of cheating because I couldn't write out my work, so I asked him if I could take a test during lunch, just me, he could watch me the whole time. He refused, still said I was cheating. It was infuriating. Sorry your brain is too slow to do 7th grade mental math, bro? Wtf.
I'd liken neurotypical vs ADHD thought processes to be more like...
Neurotypical thought process:
A ---> B ---> C ---> D ---> E
Neurotypical verbalization:
A ---> B ---> C
ADHD thought process:
A->B->C->D->E->F->G
ADHD verbalization:
A------------>G
Did you guys ever have a conversation where you were thinking of something completely unrelated, and you accidentally insert a word from your internal train of thought into the conversation?
"When you go to the pet store, be sure to pick up some elephant food."
Yes, once i was talking to someone about going to the mountain cabin and in our dialect (italian) the word is "mas" and while speaking someone in the other room said the word "computer" so in my sentence the word "mas" became "mouse", I was so surprised because it happened so fast and midway through the sentence
i do this so much especially when I'm sleepy. my friend gets a good laugh out of it too because I'll say something like "how is your dog?" while remembering the dog from The Conjuring. my friend doesn't have a dog.
then I'd immediately say, "wait, what?" and he would burst out laughing.
I think everyone's thoughts work like this, but the path from semantic connection to semantic connection for us is based on novelty and for NTs it's...what? A conscious choice? Like, can they just say, "Yeah, snoopy was also a dog, but I'm not going to think down that path just because I'm noticing this dog outside the grocery and I still have to pick up some lemons on the way home."? 'Cause id be all snoopy->red baron->baron von richtofen->get wrecked often->heh!->wonder if he's related to Zeppelin->I should try ziplining->why am I at the grocery store? Oh right! Melons! ...Melons?
I'd end up back home with some ice tea and a bag of mangoes, then see "lemons" on a sticky note on the table when I open the door.
Totally. I've actually done this. A few times.
>'Cause id be all snoopy->red baron->baron von richtofen->get wrecked often->heh!->wonder if he's related to Zeppelin->I should try ziplining->why am I at the grocery store? Oh right! Melons! ...Melons?
Reminds me of this sequence of events that happened one day when I forgot to take my Adderall.
I had just left my office area to go to another building for a meeting. Almost to the elevator, I realized I had left my phone at my desk.
Back at my desk, my water bottle caught my eye. I decided to refill it in the break room (just a few steps away) so I could take it with me.
After refilling it, I returned to my desk and tried to remember why I had come in to begin with. My first guess was my work ID, and I spent a good minute or so looking around my desk area for it before I realized it was on the lanyard hung about my neck.
So, I shrugged it off and went back out to go to the meeting. I was halfway down the street before I realized I'd still left my phone behind. (This was back before smart phones were big.) By then, it was too late and I went ahead without it.
I'm not using Adderall anymore, specifically because a missed dose would leave me in a worse state than before I ever started medicating, and this is one of the case examples I give whenever that comes up.
My father is not formally diagnosed but absolutely one of us. When I was a kid, we'd go on these super long rambles and sometimes he'd get lost and ask where we were and how we got there so he could rememberwhere he was going. I'm now excellent at tracking the rabbit warren of thought forms we have. It was a fun game to me then and critical to interfacing with mundanes now. Thanks for the weird life skill, Da.
I do this with my dad too, who I also suspect is part of the community! I have such great memories of late-night conversations in the living room or sitting on the porch in thunderstorms and just chatting and talking about everything and nothing. Heād always ask āHowād we get on this topic?ā and be delighted to follow our wacky train of thought.
this reminds me of a friend I had, we knew each other only for 10 days but we talked nearly everyday for HOURS on end, i mean for 8 hours straight sometimes. pulling all nighters. we'd have fun just laughing at stupid shit, and following our (my) train of thought during the conversation.
we'd talk about anything and everything. we'd say "ok let's go to sleep" then just continue talking lmao.
but then turns out he was quite a toxic person (insulting my intelligence during a serious conversation, then backtracking and saying it's a joke. then he said he loves playing with people's emotions, if I didn't understand his "sense of humour" we can't be friends anyway".) and I basically stopped talking to him.
but damn, I really really miss those long aimless conversations and think about him often. sometimes I contemplate texting him again, but I remember what he said and stop myself. i just hope to find a connection like that with someone else again. :')
Depending on the audience, I announce the stops before get to my destination topic. Sometimes itās easier than backtracking to explain why Iām not bonkers for the response I want to give.
For instance, a typical conversation with my husband might be:
Him: Did you get the picture I sent you of the cat?
[brief pause]
Me: So the cat is orange, which made me think of Garfield, and comics made me think of painting, which got me to the broken paintbrush that was involved in the JonBenet Ramsey crime sceneāand did you know that while most people think the device used to strangle her was a garrote, it actually technically was not? Yes, I got the picture.
Our amazing brains can make connections between multiple seemingly disparate things on multiple levels and in multiple paths of separation.
I think that's why we're inclined to explore so many topics; we're feeding our brains with the data it needs to make those connections.
Like, when you learn something new, it automatically goes into the web, right? Sometimes it implies a change to an existing structure in your web of understanding, but that's okay.
I don't know if everyone has such a "web of understanding," but I'm convinced that me having such a web is part of why I'm able to see the connections between what seem like disparate problems in society, which not everyone can do (it would seem.) Most of them have a common root imo.
In psychology they're called [schema](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schema_(psychology)). I get the feeling most people can't even "see" their schema, let alone make deliberate changes to them when faced with new information that conflicts with theirs.
Literally this is why Iām currently taking two majors and a minor. My brain craves exploring different topics that I can weave together and the topics Iāve chosen do that so nicely :)
I remember when I played youth soccer I would talk my teammateās ears off, and they would always ask me, āhow does this relate to soccer?ā And I would explain a logic tree similar too this and link whatever topic it was all the way back to soccer or a drill we were running. None of them would ever accept it though and would just tell me to shut up lmao.
Everything's connected in my brain.
I remember I used to practice connecting things to each other in my head when I was a kid. It probably wasn't the best thing to do but I also feel like this way of thinking makes me more flexible when it's needed. But I'm also easily distracted.
When I was little and lying in bed because I couldnāt sleep, my favorite game was to let my mind wander, then I would work backwards to remember everything in that train of thought in reverse and get back to the original idea I was thinking about at the beginning.
Now Iām lucky if I can remember what I was thinking about 10 minutes ago.
People without ADHD fail to understand that anything we say is but a drop in the ocean of the thoughts in our minds. If I seem random to you for the things I say, buddy, you've been spared from the 99.999% of other thoughts that *I* have to deal with.
If my thoughts seem fast to you, please consider that they are often too fast for *me* and I regularly miss my chance to snatch one out of the air and hold onto it for long enough that I might bring it up in conversation before it escapes me again in the flood of 2300 other thoughts that hit me as you were telling me about your trip to Maryland.
literally me.
i was talking to a buddy who was on the phone during grocery checkout. the speaker was suuuuper loud. so naturally, i asked ādo they have self checkout options for the visually impaired (not like me with glasses, but like really low vision?)ā
how did i get here, you ask?
loud noise = maybe for the visually impaired = what about other impairments? = what about vision?
my ppl understand, im sure.
I have a feeling that thoughts flow faster in ADHD brains, or there is less matter between brain cells, so there is a less of a barrier and thoughts can travel more freely.
I think this is why so many creative or technical minded people end up having partly or full ADHD like symptoms. It might help them think more creatively. Or see connections NTs do not. Or allow them to think about more of a thing than a NT.
The type of humans that produce art and science are probably walking a balancing act between having enough neurodivergence to be creative or solve problems and not having so much that it is crippling.
If scheme is the actual way our brains process and store information I wonder if a brain with ADHD has "cracks" that leak electric signals to other scheme that are closely related more often. A nerotypical brain would talk about other things at the fair. Food, rides, crowds etc. An ADHD brain has all of that with the addition of oh it was once this and now all of the memories of that chained in memory are accessible and being pulsed. In essence our brains have the scheme Dasiey chained together in what are small details to most people.
My mom and I used to play the train game when I was little where we would try and backtrack to figure out how we got to the topic we were currently on.
Should have been a sign.
When I was 14, I took the joke "Crazy, I was crazy one. They locked me in a room full of rats. Rats make me crazy. Crazy? I was crazy once..." and I added about a hundred steps between the crazys. I did it at speech team competitions in the original comedy category.
People asked, "How did you put that together?" I just thought it was how thinking works.
Yes, it does. To answer the question from the tumblr-post: bees have barbed stingers, who when attacking get Stuck more easily than a wasps stinger, which is smooth and therefore doesn't get stuck. Some urban legends say that there is a way for bees to not rip out their entire stinger and venom glands, by just letting them work instead of just slapping them intantly as a reaction to the sting. But I don't know if that's true.
This makes perfect sense! Sometimes I donāt say the rest of what Iām thinking so it doesnāt make sense to people. For example the bee story like I could remember all that and then Iāll be like āoh the bees, why does this happenā without telling the person what I was thinking or even explaining how I got there so it seems as if I wasnāt listening or something lol
All the time. How did I get from washing dishes to the song "Cat's in the Cradle"? As a teenager, I was trying to be nice and wash the dishes. My dad's fiancee walks in, puts her hand in the water, deems it's not hot enough, then adds hot water to the point where it's scalding hot. I put my hand in the after to grab a dish and scream in pain, after which she laughed and called me a wuss. I think it was that moment my dad finally decided he'd had it with her. So that got me thinking about my dad, who's been passed about three years ago. That got me thinking about the song "Cat's in the Cradle", which reminds me of him every time I hear it to the point that I cry.
edit: hear, not see it.
There was this one time when I had to pick up my sister and her friend and when they got in the car my sister and I chatted about normal stuff. When we got home the friend texted my sister and told her how confused she was while listening to us talk and said she couldnāt keep up with how fast we change the subjects for the whole conversation. All the while we just thought our conversation was pretty normal
I feel like the alleged neurotypicals are the ones who don't work right because they honestly think that such a comprehensive explanation that really doesn't leave anything left unanswered still doesn't make sense and my experience is they really can't explain why it doesn't make sense. It's like their ability to form associations really doesn't work right.
The worst is when this rabbit hole is completely an inner monologue and you come up and make a wasp comment.
I do this constantly when talking to my wife. We collectively laugh at the roundabout path when I have to audiibilize that shit after the fact.
Makes complete sense. Thankfully after being together 16 years my mrs is well versed at 'picking up threads' when I often go 'Where was I?' 30-45 seconds later xD
That last line is true! Like do they just notā¦ think more beyond the immediate topic at hand? Like they can keep it that simple? I donāt understand this concept lol
It's the rabbit hole of thought process. I do it all the time (so does my ex) and it seems unconnected to someone not following the bullet train of thoughts that lead from point a to point b
My bf has started telling me when I just blurt something out with zero context that is completely unrelated because I have been thinking about it and get to it on a train of thought š
Makes perfect sense to me. Dad and I would have great conversations driving around talking like thatā¦. I just realized that maybe dad had adhd. Thatās probably where I got it. Thanks for lightbulb moment!
This happens to me all the time. And I constantly get accused of āoverthinking.ā No, Iām not over thinking anything, this is the natural way my brain operates.
It's hard to accept not all find small things as interesting as I do.
Either I'll say it anyway and accept others might not listen to me in the future or I'll have to keep it inside and be called distant and shy.
It's only in all not caring about what others think I found peace and like-minded friends.
We don't show our work. NTs will go through the whole story in detail, with gusto. Meanwhile I'm giving myself realtime commentary on the conversation and sometimes that commentary is better than the conversation so I get more interested in that and it takes over.
It's basically like playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, but with all the thoughts all the time and it sucks because nobody ever understands except other people with ADHD
Because bee stingers have a barb. Wasp stingers do not. The bee stinger embeds and then breaks off leaving the venom sack in place to continue pumping venom into the target.
Since worker bees are more than 50% related, dying to protect the hive makes evolutionary sense.
I do this even while I'm by myself on my laptop. I'll be reading a random recipe from the 16th century and I'll stop and think, "Wait, how did I get here?". Then I'll look and see I'm halfway through a movie that I've paused on an actor's face and remember. I paused the movie to google where I know the actor from, then I end up down this hours long rabbit hole and by the time I get back to the movie it's too late to watch the rest of it and end up not watching it.
You pause the movie? I'll let it play in the background while checking out said actor and then seeing 'Oh Hey, he acted with this chap, wonder what they've been up too?' and they got married, cool and the movie ended by an hour or two at this point, and look up 'oh hey the movie ended. I'll probably watch it again some other time' and I never will.
I can't focus on reading if I can hear people talking. Same with people talking to me if I'm watching TV or listening to music. I have to pause it otherwise it's all just a jumble.
I apparently have an ability that no one has, (and by no one I mean the people who tells me 'Why are you so weird?' or 'How do you do that?') is that I can be on my phone reading stuff or watching things and still be participating in the on going conversation.
Damn I wish. Sounds like a handy skill. I can barely do the one thing I'm (trying) to do. If it looks like I'm multitasking, it means I forgot what I was trying to do and went back to where I think the thought trigger was to look for clues lol. I'll talk and mid-sentence look at my phone or something to try and find out where I was going with the sentence.
š©š¤£ for real! This is me all day, every day.
It really depends on the day for me. Some days I'll have 3 screens all going at once, and other days I need total silence just to do one thing.
I have that too, it's so good (and rude if people aren't used to it yet)
I can't focus on listening if there is writing to distract me and my visual processing is faster than my auditory processing, so watching videos with subtitles ruins them for me. I know most ADHD folks are reverse and actually need subtitles, but this is my brain.
Almost the same i canāt focus if People are talking to me or near meā¦ I hate that -.- Also as fucked up as it is this happing right nowā¦
Hahahahaha I just have a love/hate relationship with trying to get the different sliders to go where I want them between streaming apps Oh shit wasn't watching, go back.. Ok yeah.. Wait what? Go back more.. Nope too far.. It's ok just let it play, I remember this part right? Yeah cool go ahead and check that thing on my phone rq.. Oh shit wasn't watching, go back.. Forever :') I actually just told a friend the other day that it's SO much easier to watch along with someone else bc otherwise it takes me 8x as long to watch anything Buuuut this is the only brain I've ever had or will have, so... *jazz hands*
If I watch something informative/interesting, I set the speed to 1.5x or even higher. This way my brain has to focus more on the content video and cannot go as easily on detours while listening. Although I sometimes still have to fast forward a bit and get frustrated easily when I cannot do the same to people IRL :P
>āwait, how did I get here?ā Letting the days go byā¦
Let the water hold me down
Yesterday, we couldn't figure out the word *Atrium* and we're debating if the lobby Atrium was really an Atrium or not. Anyway, I now know a bunch of pointless facts about Roman Architecture and Roman words for their Domus rooms. Edit: Grammarly hates Roman as much as I hate Grammarly.
I do that with my own thoughts sometimes. Like, Iāll realize my mind is wandering and I want to remember the thing I was thinking about 20 seconds ago because I remember it was something important. But I canāt remember what I was thinking of 20 seconds ago, so Iāll try to figure out what I was thinking of 30, 40, 50 etc seconds ago to see if I can get back on that same train of thought. It works like a quarter of the time.
I went to lookup something about tomatoes on Wikipedia once, and 4 hours later I am reading a whole ass book on the Civil War written in the 1930s.
I hate going to the movies because I can't pause to search some stuff
I constantly have the how did I get to this thought and I realize Iām ā10000ā tangents deep
And this is why we all flock together. Because someone else with ADHD would be like ādamn why do wasps not die?ā Take out their phone to google it and then they would end up telling you that giraffes only sleep 1.9 hours a day.
Giraffes also do not have vocal chords. When someone asks you what sound a giraffe makes, just pretend you're munching on some leaves cause that's all they can say. Well, that and "does anyone know a good chiropractor?"
There was a giraffe in the Santa Barbara zoo that had a mad wicked kink in it's neck and they had to put a sign out to let everyone know he was born that way because they kept getting asked about it. Anywayš
Iāve heard they make a throat clearing noise? Is that accurate?
Wtf, that's wild.
Koalas sleep for around 20 hours a day
Dolphins only sleep one half of their brain at a time. They literally sleep with one eye open. Apparently wasps don't sleep. Explains why they're nasty little assholes.
You said dolphins and I started thinking about a shark attack video I saw today then I thought there goes my south Africa future trip plan and started planning other trips.
Did you see how Orcas have begun attackin yachts?
I like how they're mobilizing because they're tired of our shit
Honestly, good for them
I'm a Koala.
Most of them also have Chlamydia
"The full grown male african ostrich or the latin 'struthio camelus' can go to an average size of sixty six inches... and weigh anywhere from 225 to 350 pounds that can get up to... well an average speed of...Ā 27 miles per hour."
When males bees mate with the queen, their bee peen swells up and until it explodes and they die.
I wish that happened to my ex
Wait... is this not how most people think of things?
Sometimes they do, but usually it takes a while for a conversation to gradually meander. So over the course of a long conversation the topics might shift, but not instantly. Whereas we jump through random associations with staggering speed, so by the time weāre done expressing one thought our brains are already miles away, and the next thing out of our mouth might appear completely unrelated.
do you also skip ahead in sentences when speaking? i tend to not finish sentences bc my brain is so far ahead and my mouth skips to that, and i just assume people are following along in my brain so they should be able to fill in the gaps and people are looking at me like i have three heads.
Yes, I do this as well! This actually affects my speech a lot, too. People who don't know me well often have problems understanding me because apparently I cut off parts of words to speak faster (i.e. more than the regular amount).
If I don't know the exact word I was going to say and have to stop for more than 0.2 seconds, I just don't finish the sentence. I get funny stares all the time because I just assume they know where I was going with it and I'm already staring straight ahead untangling a web of 80 thoughts. Related, do you also have a problem not understanding people because you don't know the context of what they're asking? Like I'll be having a conversation and have a set of expected responses for things I'm saying, and then someone responds with something completely different and I just can't comprehend the words because it doesn't fit into where my brain was flowing. My mind has to do like a train brake and redo the entire sequence of events to understand where they're at. I just can't hear the words and answer.
>If I don't know the exact word I was going to say and have to stop for more than 0.2 seconds, I just don't finish the sentence. I get funny stares all the time because I just assume they know where I was going with it and I'm already staring straight ahead untangling a web of 80 thoughts. hahaha nooooo i do this so often also, its awful man. the half a second i forget or dont know what to say completely kills my entire train of thought or flow and i just shut up completely, mates usually understand what i mean alr but man no way the people I interact with due to work doš
>do you also have a problem not understanding people because you don't know the context of what they're asking? Like So so often. It's like without the context, my brain will absolutely refuse to process the words.. I hear them. I know they're English. I'm TRYING to piece it together but my brain is just like "no, fuck that. We NEED the environment in which this words are related to and I'm not gonna figure it out!"
I do this all the time! I just donāt finish a sentence because I feel like the end is implied
yes! and then i get annoyed bc like use context clues or something idk how to help either of us at this point lmao.
ADHD brains are either running at 100% speed... ^there ^is ^no ^other ^option
Or they are asleep. And we prefer not to do that.
My oldest friend in the world and I both have adhd. Between that and the fact that weāve known each other forever, our conversations will rapidly jump from subject to subject through those random associations you mentioned. Iāve always wanted to record one of these conversations just to go back and document some sort of flow chart just to see how varied the subject matter can get.
My wife can usually follow me, as can some of my family, but less so everyone else.
My boss literally told me I have to wait 5 seconds after people speak before responding to what they said so they didnāt think I was blowing them off. No I was not ignoring you, I just figured out what you were going to say 20 seconds before you said it and had already come up with an answer because when I came up with my plan I factored that idea in.
Holy fuck man when people ramble on forever essentially repeating themselves over and over again in meetingsā¦ I genuinely consider quitting my job every time.
This regularly kills me - scolded for interrupting but then they repeat themselves six times before the end of their question, urgh!
Oh! Or when people ask ādo you know about X?ā And yet, if you respond yes, they explain it anyway! Me saying yes should be like clicking skip!
Work from home as been a god send for this reason. They sum up every meeting in an e-mail anyway.
Yes. And when people start arguing with the same repeated points and stupid arguments.. externally, I'll smile, but internally, I want to scream and exit the room. Like fuck, why can't people just go "X is this, Y is like that because of Z" and move on?!
Yeah lol I run a team now but when I joined we had a weekly meeting that regularly ran a full hour. It runs like 15-30 mins now when I do it, with no reduction in information shared.
See I hate it when other people do it, but I also do it so I also hate myself for it
Though the repeats can be helpful in cases where your mind has wandered away, and can give you the subject without having to ask, but yeah...
It helps to throw in an āI agreeā or āYouāre rightā or āInteresting!ā before saying your stuff. I always thought that went without saying, but for some folks it does not.
"Oh yeah, totally! Here's the thing though..."
So people have a mental refraction period similar to an orgasmās refraction period where they need to recharge, rest or account for what they said otherwise theyāre too sensitive? Regardless of the type of stimulation or itās technique or application? Regardless of it we have encountered this situation, they approached us for having a background in it, or are hearing them repeat it for the nth time? ā¦ How are we sure they just donāt have our cousin autism? This does not sound like being a neurotypical.
Here's my take on it, stick with me, it's gonna make sense. So our brains are typically low in pre-synaptic dopamine and norepinephrine right? A quick and easy way to get the chemicals flowing is to stimulate those receptors, this is why we're also more likely to engage in risky activities and suffer from addictions, it's the constant chasing of quick hits of reward juice that keep us motivated. So when a Neurotypical person learns a topic. They store information hierarchically, it is categorised by the topic in a top down manner (maths > calculus > set theory > independent events | dependent events | mutually exclusive events) etc. Because their minds do not have a deficit of reward neurotransmitters, the process of learning and storing information happens in a methodical top down, left to right manner as it is categorised currently. Now an ADHD brain is constantly chasing more dopamine to fill the pre-synaptic cleft and allow us to return to baseline. So when you are learning a topic, you don't just learn top down, left to right. You see something interesting that piques your curiousity and you follow it. You store it like you would store information in a graph, you continue to follow the trail, storing more and more information as you go. Each new idea gives you a reward and motivates you to continue your search. Each new idea is stored in your brain like a node in a network. You create the node. Create a connection to it and then a connection to the next node. And so on and so on. All the way down to the end of the information pipeline, then you traverse back up the network and pursue adjacent nodes and create new connections to previous nodes or new nodes. You don't even think about doing this but your brain does it automatically. At the end, you don't have neatly configured stores of information that you can access. You have a web. Everything is connected. I'll come back and expand on this later. I'm tired now.
> I'll come back and expand on this later. I'm tired now. Please do. I donāt know enough about neuroscience to dispute or confirm anything youāve said, but it definitely resonates with me.
This is my life - when at work and on a problem solving task - I like to observe and soak in every details of info and choose the outliers Vs. Following one lead at a time .
The worst is when you enter a sector of the graph where the edges are undirected and the weights of each edge aren't even based on the same criteria. It's a wonder we're not constantly trapped in cycles. I wonder if neurons rely on a TTL value to prevent that š¤
I think they do its just less jumps or a slower process for them that they talk through more. In HS I was the "translator" for a friend who was far more neurodivergent than our other friends and while I could piece together how he got to a topic to help the friends follow along, it didn't make sense to me how THEY didn't connect those dots. Got officially diagnosed a little over a year ago as ADHD and I just masked/coped pretty well in HS (lived with parents and dad owns a coffee shop so I had access to caffeine to unknowingly self medicate every day)
That happens to me all the time. Then we get into a 30min sort explanation with distracting things to be commented and then they say: you talk too much.
THE MOST INFURIATING THING. You asked! You chose not to listen! Why am I meant to feel guilty for do what you asked!
It took me a while to understand this, but itās because they most likely expected a socially appropriate reply to light conversation but now youāre exhaustingly going on a rant about mice ears when they asked/commented on was a random video of capybaras. Get the disconnect to non-neurodivergent people?
Definitely. My mom would say āmake it brief. If itās longer than a sentence that youāve said to much fluffā
BUT I HAVE RELEVANT CONTEXT! Actual quote I said, to my wife. She did not agree it was relevant.
Most of the time it is relevant from your perspective because while you are explaining and adding details you are making the road for a clear explanation of a detail you want to add later so the person can't not understand it or have many questions on how you came up with certain situations on your story because those aren't neurotypical way of thinking and you are used to people not understanding so you do it ahead of time. I genuinely don't understand how neurotypicals tend to not understand how much context is important
After 15 years, shes helped me by asking me to form at least a brief outline in my head so I stay on track.
I would get so lost forming the outline I would forget to actually answer.
I think that often people can intuit or figure out much of the context for themselves without it being explained in exhausting detail, and if context were lacking ask a question about it. This is an endless thing with me and my husband. He's AuDHD and I'm ADHD. He always explains a ton more than necessary to set up context, thinking it's needed for me to understand. But it's really something HE needs to understand to express his thoughts; it doesn't help me understand it. Most of the time the added "context" info is so much unnecessary information that I (and sometimes he as well) lose track of the main point. The way I need the info, and how I expect it to be generally presented in neurotypical conversation, is for someone to explain their main points, then the listener follows with questions for clarification of the context or details IF NEEDED. This creates an actual conversational interaction between two people, rather than a one-sided lecture, which can be alienating to the listener and come off like the speaker doesn't care about getting any interaction from the listener. As a listener, I want to hear about your thing a little bit, ask a question, hear more, etc. because it's a two-way street. If it's a context dump one-sided lecture, it's like my presence or interaction in the situation is irrelevant and you might as well be talking to a wall; it comes off like your priority is hearing yourself talk, not interacting with me as a person. Also, it can be so much info that it's overwhelming to the point that I am exhausted and just want it to be over with, so I stop listening. I say this having been both the over-explaining lecturer and the overwhelmed and annoyed listener. I see when I'm doing this to others and I manage it pretty well most of the time, because it drives me crazy when people do it to me. My husband, however, cannot seen to manage this very well because extensive context and painting a picture are how he thinks and understands things. I think the extra context can help for some people or in certain situations, but generally it is detrimental to neurotypical understanding and conversational interactions in my experience.
Your wife was wrong. Tell me what the context was
My social anxiety has saved me from these pitfalls I think lol
Then I don't understand what's the sense of small talk (between people who already know each other, because strangers have a reason to do it you don't know anything about the other person you need to figure out interests and stuff) like what do you get from it, most of times useless information or technically lies like "how are you?" (While you are not actually concerned on the person's well being the tipycal "how are you?" "Good thanks") do you actually think about the answer you might be in a depressive moment in your life but it's not the time or place to talk about it so of course you are not going to think about the answer. It's just a big waste of time
Uhm, because not every conversation or interaction has to be super deepā¦even with people youāve known for a while. Iām not attacking you, merely trying to offer a different perspective. You seem a little frustrated.
Probably put it down wrong, my mom just came to me and told me that in these days i seem a little short tempered, and I'm a little stressed I just wanted to put it out as fast as I could and couldn't say want exactly what I meant, and I'm not capable old doing now. Takes for being kind tho, you're comment gave some calm in a way, I love this subreddit people are most of the time kind and always understanding, the fact that we all have ADHD probably creates the hive mind effect so that helps. Thanks for your time have good day now kind stranger of the Internet
No worries. Sending gentle pat-pats to you. No harm no foul on either part and I appreciate your input.
So true!
Yes, my husband always complains that I over explain things, but if I don't, he asks where did that come from? š”
We should then ask our SO if they had issues staying focused and gaslight them for 1minā¦. Hahaha
I know that feeling. This is why I am so happy with my friends, they understand (well, not really but understand that my brain works like this) the connections I make between a billion subjects at once and how we started with talking about shoes to now me telling them that the tram ride inside the local zoo is stupidly expensive.
It's funny because I've been called quiet my whole life by people I don't really know. But once I get comfortable with someone, all the stuff in my brain starts coming out and suddenly I'm too much. Just need time to observe and figure out if someone is going to love me when I'm myself or think I'm nuts or annoying LOL
For a long time I tried so hard to suppress talking because of these comments and now I can't even start small talk with people. I spend long times in silence and the same kind of people tell me you're so grim. Fuck all of them.
This is exactly why Iām so bad at conversation. I ping off into distant unconnected thoughts and donāt want to bring them up as it wonāt make sense to the other person, but that also means I have nothing relevant to add to continue the ānormalā conversation. Unless Iām talking to other people who do this, in which case we end up changing subjects every few sentences for thirteen hours.
Once I get beyond 4-5 tangents, the original subject is lost to me. Usually I'll ask my SO and she'll start throwing out random keywords to try and spark the original thought. Ive been more cognizant of it in recent years where it used to be 2 tangents but it's still mentally straining. I go blank and try to brute force my recollection and any break in concentration kicks it into the ether only for me to possibly remember it, randomly, 4 days later.
Keywords help me so much that I end up throwing them at neurotypical people after Iāve gone on so many tangents that Iāve distracted them. Usually, itās like, I unintentionally interrupt them and get them 10 topics away from the story they were originally telling me, and 10 minutes into that, Iām like, āOh god, Iām sorry. I totally cut you off. What were you saying about your boat?ā And theyāre like, āOh, umm, I canāt remember now. It doesnāt matter.ā āYou were trying to repair it, and something about your dad, and the neighborās dog, and there was a banana?ā āYes!ā
Earth is round, but only to someone of sufficiently large scale. To us its rough and uneven. Are rubber balls rough and uneven? If we were tiny would a rubber ball be like Earth? Could we live on it? But what is alive? What is life? Itās just matter and thought and thought is partially intangible. And if thats true, arenāt comic book characters alive?
Asking the important questions in the right order
i once read that the earth is smoother than a marble
If you machined a ball that had, to scale, the same inconsistencies that the earth has on its surface, it would be the smoothest ball ever machined.
[Neil deGrasse Tyson: Earth is smoother than a cue ball](https://youtu.be/hrjWzBY_dLw)
I remember seeing this one comic about how we think. Most people will be like A -> B -> C -> D but we think so fast we come out with A -> D
This is why I did so poorly in geometry. They wanted us to write out proofs with steps 1-10, and my brain would go from 1 to 3 to 6 to 10. So, I'd get the answer right, but because I hadn't written out every single little step the teacher would mark it wrong.
NOOOO DONT REMIND ME OF PROOFS! I WANT TO FORGET!!! š
I got screamed at in front of the whole class in 8th grade math because I just couldn't show my work. I would learn the formulas, look at the problems, and then my brain would just fly through it and I'd write down the answer. I legitimately could not do it step-by-step, my brain would just keep fumbling over itself. The teacher kept accusing me of cheating on worksheets and homework, and then he stared at me during a test one day. I walked up to his desk and turned in a 100% test with no formulas on it and he just lost his mind. I was crying and everything.
Some "teachers" shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a classroom.
I got a D in a math class because of this. Straight A student until this happened. The teacher kept accusing me of cheating because I couldn't write out my work, so I asked him if I could take a test during lunch, just me, he could watch me the whole time. He refused, still said I was cheating. It was infuriating. Sorry your brain is too slow to do 7th grade mental math, bro? Wtf.
That happened to me too! I could never tell them how I knew it was right, but it was right.
I'd liken neurotypical vs ADHD thought processes to be more like... Neurotypical thought process: A ---> B ---> C ---> D ---> E Neurotypical verbalization: A ---> B ---> C ADHD thought process: A->B->C->D->E->F->G ADHD verbalization: A------------>G
Did you guys ever have a conversation where you were thinking of something completely unrelated, and you accidentally insert a word from your internal train of thought into the conversation? "When you go to the pet store, be sure to pick up some elephant food."
Yes, once i was talking to someone about going to the mountain cabin and in our dialect (italian) the word is "mas" and while speaking someone in the other room said the word "computer" so in my sentence the word "mas" became "mouse", I was so surprised because it happened so fast and midway through the sentence
I do this every day.
i do this so much especially when I'm sleepy. my friend gets a good laugh out of it too because I'll say something like "how is your dog?" while remembering the dog from The Conjuring. my friend doesn't have a dog. then I'd immediately say, "wait, what?" and he would burst out laughing.
I think everyone's thoughts work like this, but the path from semantic connection to semantic connection for us is based on novelty and for NTs it's...what? A conscious choice? Like, can they just say, "Yeah, snoopy was also a dog, but I'm not going to think down that path just because I'm noticing this dog outside the grocery and I still have to pick up some lemons on the way home."? 'Cause id be all snoopy->red baron->baron von richtofen->get wrecked often->heh!->wonder if he's related to Zeppelin->I should try ziplining->why am I at the grocery store? Oh right! Melons! ...Melons?
ā¦only to then remember āoh and while iām at it j should actually grocery shop tooā only to forget the lemons
I'd end up back home with some ice tea and a bag of mangoes, then see "lemons" on a sticky note on the table when I open the door. Totally. I've actually done this. A few times.
This is one of the reason my wife does most of the groceries.
>'Cause id be all snoopy->red baron->baron von richtofen->get wrecked often->heh!->wonder if he's related to Zeppelin->I should try ziplining->why am I at the grocery store? Oh right! Melons! ...Melons? Reminds me of this sequence of events that happened one day when I forgot to take my Adderall. I had just left my office area to go to another building for a meeting. Almost to the elevator, I realized I had left my phone at my desk. Back at my desk, my water bottle caught my eye. I decided to refill it in the break room (just a few steps away) so I could take it with me. After refilling it, I returned to my desk and tried to remember why I had come in to begin with. My first guess was my work ID, and I spent a good minute or so looking around my desk area for it before I realized it was on the lanyard hung about my neck. So, I shrugged it off and went back out to go to the meeting. I was halfway down the street before I realized I'd still left my phone behind. (This was back before smart phones were big.) By then, it was too late and I went ahead without it. I'm not using Adderall anymore, specifically because a missed dose would leave me in a worse state than before I ever started medicating, and this is one of the case examples I give whenever that comes up.
My father is not formally diagnosed but absolutely one of us. When I was a kid, we'd go on these super long rambles and sometimes he'd get lost and ask where we were and how we got there so he could rememberwhere he was going. I'm now excellent at tracking the rabbit warren of thought forms we have. It was a fun game to me then and critical to interfacing with mundanes now. Thanks for the weird life skill, Da.
I do this with my dad too, who I also suspect is part of the community! I have such great memories of late-night conversations in the living room or sitting on the porch in thunderstorms and just chatting and talking about everything and nothing. Heād always ask āHowād we get on this topic?ā and be delighted to follow our wacky train of thought.
this reminds me of a friend I had, we knew each other only for 10 days but we talked nearly everyday for HOURS on end, i mean for 8 hours straight sometimes. pulling all nighters. we'd have fun just laughing at stupid shit, and following our (my) train of thought during the conversation. we'd talk about anything and everything. we'd say "ok let's go to sleep" then just continue talking lmao. but then turns out he was quite a toxic person (insulting my intelligence during a serious conversation, then backtracking and saying it's a joke. then he said he loves playing with people's emotions, if I didn't understand his "sense of humour" we can't be friends anyway".) and I basically stopped talking to him. but damn, I really really miss those long aimless conversations and think about him often. sometimes I contemplate texting him again, but I remember what he said and stop myself. i just hope to find a connection like that with someone else again. :')
It's out there. You'll find it, don't give up.
Sometimes I go on a tangent in a conversation trying to track how the conversation got to where it did.
I saw it being described as having a new os on old hardware and it has never made more sense to me.
Itās connected some people just donāt see the connection š
Everyday, a meme shows me that there are others that have been living this life as I have for 40 years.
This makes absolute sense, whatās wrong with it? This is how my brain works
I usually bring in the 2nd topic with "Sorry, my train of thought just did a bunch of traveling, but..."
When you get that baffled "how did we get here" look my go-to is "I'm sorry, I forgot to announce a few stops on that train of thought"
> "I'm sorry, I forgot to announce a few stops on that train of thought" I'm 1000% stealing this if I still remember it in the next 5 minutes.
Depending on the audience, I announce the stops before get to my destination topic. Sometimes itās easier than backtracking to explain why Iām not bonkers for the response I want to give. For instance, a typical conversation with my husband might be: Him: Did you get the picture I sent you of the cat? [brief pause] Me: So the cat is orange, which made me think of Garfield, and comics made me think of painting, which got me to the broken paintbrush that was involved in the JonBenet Ramsey crime sceneāand did you know that while most people think the device used to strangle her was a garrote, it actually technically was not? Yes, I got the picture.
Outdoor pools are wasps for me. Because I once had a snack at an outdoor pool and got swarmedā¦
That's just a simple association though.
Oak trees for me
Our amazing brains can make connections between multiple seemingly disparate things on multiple levels and in multiple paths of separation. I think that's why we're inclined to explore so many topics; we're feeding our brains with the data it needs to make those connections.
Like, when you learn something new, it automatically goes into the web, right? Sometimes it implies a change to an existing structure in your web of understanding, but that's okay. I don't know if everyone has such a "web of understanding," but I'm convinced that me having such a web is part of why I'm able to see the connections between what seem like disparate problems in society, which not everyone can do (it would seem.) Most of them have a common root imo.
In psychology they're called [schema](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schema_(psychology)). I get the feeling most people can't even "see" their schema, let alone make deliberate changes to them when faced with new information that conflicts with theirs.
Yes, exactly this.
Systems thinking.
Literally this is why Iām currently taking two majors and a minor. My brain craves exploring different topics that I can weave together and the topics Iāve chosen do that so nicely :)
That... 100% makes sense, how else do conversations continue on???
I remember when I played youth soccer I would talk my teammateās ears off, and they would always ask me, āhow does this relate to soccer?ā And I would explain a logic tree similar too this and link whatever topic it was all the way back to soccer or a drill we were running. None of them would ever accept it though and would just tell me to shut up lmao.
Dude explained step by step how he arrived at it and got told it made no sense, wat
Everything's connected in my brain. I remember I used to practice connecting things to each other in my head when I was a kid. It probably wasn't the best thing to do but I also feel like this way of thinking makes me more flexible when it's needed. But I'm also easily distracted.
When I was little and lying in bed because I couldnāt sleep, my favorite game was to let my mind wander, then I would work backwards to remember everything in that train of thought in reverse and get back to the original idea I was thinking about at the beginning. Now Iām lucky if I can remember what I was thinking about 10 minutes ago.
People without ADHD fail to understand that anything we say is but a drop in the ocean of the thoughts in our minds. If I seem random to you for the things I say, buddy, you've been spared from the 99.999% of other thoughts that *I* have to deal with. If my thoughts seem fast to you, please consider that they are often too fast for *me* and I regularly miss my chance to snatch one out of the air and hold onto it for long enough that I might bring it up in conversation before it escapes me again in the flood of 2300 other thoughts that hit me as you were telling me about your trip to Maryland.
literally me. i was talking to a buddy who was on the phone during grocery checkout. the speaker was suuuuper loud. so naturally, i asked ādo they have self checkout options for the visually impaired (not like me with glasses, but like really low vision?)ā how did i get here, you ask? loud noise = maybe for the visually impaired = what about other impairments? = what about vision? my ppl understand, im sure.
Honestly, I knew exactly how you got to that question with no explanation required at all. So yes, we understand :)
convinced that nts *dont* think of anything
The worst is when you ask someone a random question, but you thought all the context was implied or already understood/discussed.
I'm talking to 2 people, you and myself You talking to just me Me and myself often carry on the conversation without you, and we talk fast
Wow this one hits really close to home
And it all happens in a fraction of a second!
Let connections happen. The more connections your brain can make, the smarter you are.
Wait do normal people not think like this?
I have a feeling that thoughts flow faster in ADHD brains, or there is less matter between brain cells, so there is a less of a barrier and thoughts can travel more freely. I think this is why so many creative or technical minded people end up having partly or full ADHD like symptoms. It might help them think more creatively. Or see connections NTs do not. Or allow them to think about more of a thing than a NT. The type of humans that produce art and science are probably walking a balancing act between having enough neurodivergence to be creative or solve problems and not having so much that it is crippling.
If scheme is the actual way our brains process and store information I wonder if a brain with ADHD has "cracks" that leak electric signals to other scheme that are closely related more often. A nerotypical brain would talk about other things at the fair. Food, rides, crowds etc. An ADHD brain has all of that with the addition of oh it was once this and now all of the memories of that chained in memory are accessible and being pulsed. In essence our brains have the scheme Dasiey chained together in what are small details to most people.
Makes complete sense to me.
You see, it's like we're playing a Wiki-Link Game all the time, and we just unreasonably expect everyone to be playing the exact same game as us.
My mom and I used to play the train game when I was little where we would try and backtrack to figure out how we got to the topic we were currently on. Should have been a sign.
When I was 14, I took the joke "Crazy, I was crazy one. They locked me in a room full of rats. Rats make me crazy. Crazy? I was crazy once..." and I added about a hundred steps between the crazys. I did it at speech team competitions in the original comedy category. People asked, "How did you put that together?" I just thought it was how thinking works.
actually the more connections, the smarter the person is, overall. esp when they can see the routes of connection.
This is how I think on a day-to-day basis, for any topic, even internal monologue with myself, and this can happen in a split second for me
Yes, it does. To answer the question from the tumblr-post: bees have barbed stingers, who when attacking get Stuck more easily than a wasps stinger, which is smooth and therefore doesn't get stuck. Some urban legends say that there is a way for bees to not rip out their entire stinger and venom glands, by just letting them work instead of just slapping them intantly as a reaction to the sting. But I don't know if that's true.
This makes perfect sense! Sometimes I donāt say the rest of what Iām thinking so it doesnāt make sense to people. For example the bee story like I could remember all that and then Iāll be like āoh the bees, why does this happenā without telling the person what I was thinking or even explaining how I got there so it seems as if I wasnāt listening or something lol
Does that actually not make sense to people?
People really just be out in the world not having any train of thought that isn't about what's directly in front of them.
I can't imagine how boring that must be
All the time. How did I get from washing dishes to the song "Cat's in the Cradle"? As a teenager, I was trying to be nice and wash the dishes. My dad's fiancee walks in, puts her hand in the water, deems it's not hot enough, then adds hot water to the point where it's scalding hot. I put my hand in the after to grab a dish and scream in pain, after which she laughed and called me a wuss. I think it was that moment my dad finally decided he'd had it with her. So that got me thinking about my dad, who's been passed about three years ago. That got me thinking about the song "Cat's in the Cradle", which reminds me of him every time I hear it to the point that I cry. edit: hear, not see it.
This is what it's like for me, except narrated by Morgan Freeman. Hes speaking the words as I type this now. Aaaand now you can hear him too...
There was this one time when I had to pick up my sister and her friend and when they got in the car my sister and I chatted about normal stuff. When we got home the friend texted my sister and told her how confused she was while listening to us talk and said she couldnāt keep up with how fast we change the subjects for the whole conversation. All the while we just thought our conversation was pretty normal
This is why so many scientific breakthroughs have been made by the neurodivergent
I feel like the alleged neurotypicals are the ones who don't work right because they honestly think that such a comprehensive explanation that really doesn't leave anything left unanswered still doesn't make sense and my experience is they really can't explain why it doesn't make sense. It's like their ability to form associations really doesn't work right.
Thatās how my brain works š¤£
The worst is when this rabbit hole is completely an inner monologue and you come up and make a wasp comment. I do this constantly when talking to my wife. We collectively laugh at the roundabout path when I have to audiibilize that shit after the fact.
Makes complete sense. Thankfully after being together 16 years my mrs is well versed at 'picking up threads' when I often go 'Where was I?' 30-45 seconds later xD
That last line is true! Like do they just notā¦ think more beyond the immediate topic at hand? Like they can keep it that simple? I donāt understand this concept lol
It doesnāt make sense to them because they canāt think fast enough to make the connections.
I do this a lot, but what I fail to convey to people is how lightning fast this connection is
It's called... Train of thought. Every human ever does it.
It's the rabbit hole of thought process. I do it all the time (so does my ex) and it seems unconnected to someone not following the bullet train of thoughts that lead from point a to point b
My bf has started telling me when I just blurt something out with zero context that is completely unrelated because I have been thinking about it and get to it on a train of thought š
This isnāt normal? Uh ohā¦
I feel seen
Makes perfect sense to me. Dad and I would have great conversations driving around talking like thatā¦. I just realized that maybe dad had adhd. Thatās probably where I got it. Thanks for lightbulb moment!
This happens to me all the time. And I constantly get accused of āoverthinking.ā No, Iām not over thinking anything, this is the natural way my brain operates.
People dislikes me because of this apparantly i cha ge the topic to often
Yep...makes sense to me
ADHD brains are the equivalent of "show your work" while neurotypical brains just show the answer
In about 1.4 seconds to boot.
It's hard to accept not all find small things as interesting as I do. Either I'll say it anyway and accept others might not listen to me in the future or I'll have to keep it inside and be called distant and shy. It's only in all not caring about what others think I found peace and like-minded friends.
Isn't it just having a string of thoughts? Do neurotypical folks think of one thing and stop?
This is my primary way of thinking about things
Makes sense to me and Iāve not been diagnosed with ADHDā¦.. Oh right I got the form to fill out to get that started and havenāt done it yet.
āI promise there was a thought process.ā -me every time I topic jump.
We don't show our work. NTs will go through the whole story in detail, with gusto. Meanwhile I'm giving myself realtime commentary on the conversation and sometimes that commentary is better than the conversation so I get more interested in that and it takes over.
Iām NT and this makes sense
It's basically like playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, but with all the thoughts all the time and it sucks because nobody ever understands except other people with ADHD
Isnāt this just how your brain thinks about things?
Because bee stingers have a barb. Wasp stingers do not. The bee stinger embeds and then breaks off leaving the venom sack in place to continue pumping venom into the target. Since worker bees are more than 50% related, dying to protect the hive makes evolutionary sense.
I do this with friends all the time.
That is now the fifteenth time Iāve thought āwait thatās not normal???ā Since joining this sub.
Doesn't matter if it makes sense just answer the freaking questions as they come to me. Jeez.
I LEGIT THOUGHT THIS WAS NORMAL ššš