adhd: the fight against instant gratification

Parents out there will know this feeling. Will know this metaphor. You had toddlers once. Toddlers nagging for stuff. Not wanting to eat their vegetables. Wanting candy all day long, if you let them.

Adhd is kind off the same way. If we let our minds do what we want them to do, we would do nothing but eat candy and do the first thing that comes to mind. It is irritating to say the least. I didn’t know I suffered from this toddler in my head until I got my autism diagnosis, so that toddler got to run free for 29 years, and to be honest, it has done it’s best.

A day begins with me getting out of bed, hopefully rested and heading over to the bathroom and then the fridge. There my first battle begins, actually, it begins the moment I open my eyes. I reach for my tablet and there the battle starts already. I can lose spoons then and there if I get sucked in a youtube or wikipedia click-through frenzy. If I survive just opening my eyes and checking my e-mail, I head to the bathroom and to the fridge. There the second battle of the day presents itself: snacks or healthy food? I really must limit myself so I don’t go for the unhealthy food, and when I need to take care of myself, I really need to keep my toddler at bay and not buy unhealthy things (sometimes it is not controllable, especially during a depressive episodes and my spoons are depleted).

This battle goes on and on and on, until it is time to sleep. There is an extra factor of Alexythimia that doesn’t signal correctly what my body needs and it could be that I interpret hunger or a craving for food instead of the fluids it actually needs. And this is only the nutrition part we are talking about. This is only one facet of a day we are talking about.

What about entertainment? I have lost days just clicking through on youtube, when I actually wanted to write. I have lost days just playing games, or deciding which game, loading one only to start up another because I got bored of loading that one. Adhd is a constant struggle. It fucks up my schedule (if I already have one made) and it stresses me to get to start a certain task, because procrastination is ADHD’s strongest weapon. It makes you guilty of not doing to thing, so you alleviate the stress by doing something else entirely which sucks you into a black hole of click-through and unhealthy snacking.

To be honest, I know now that I am an adhd’er and am constantly looking for solutions to get out of this loop of wanting to do something, battling my brain, and eventually doing something else or overeating.

Those who say that adhd is only a mild disability, haven’t seen those of us, who have ruined their lives with hopes and dreams, only to lose the battle against their brain. To lose a constant spoonwar. I have thrown spoons towards my adhd only to see them deflected. It laughs in my face while I attempt something, screaming “are you sure? why not try it this way? Certain you want to do this” constantly in my ear. It stifles me. It hurts my creativity.

The moments I get things done, like this blogpost, is when I take it by surprise. I watch inspirational youtube videos (what I was doing before this blogpost) and just head over to the computer with and idea and start pounding out words. Mostly I do blogposts like this in one sitting. Writing, editing and publishing it at once, so my adhd can not interfere.

It is a constant battle to post things of value for you people to read. To post things where I can pour a little of me out, so you can get to see a glimpse on how it is to live with certain things.

Every post is written first in scrivener 3, which you can get a 30 day free trial of here at literature and latte.

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