> how would you describe to someone who is not diagnosed ?
Certain abilities that normal people mature in are stuck at the level of a fifteen-year-old for me and will be perpetually. Some of them are:
Ability to "feel" the nearness of the future, and plan and act accordingly
Ability to choose to do one task over another, and particularly an uninteresting task over an interesting one
Ability to stop an interesting task to change to another important task
Ability to stay on a single topic in thoughts and conversations
Many people with ADHD also have the emotional regulation of a ~15 year old, perpetually.
Most people can approximately remember how difficult those different abilities were when they were fifteen so there can be some level of empathy. When you were fifteen, university most likely "felt" very far away, and preparing for it "felt" not very important compared to your day-to-day. In hindsight, 15 is not far away from 18 and starting university, and there are many things you can do at 15 to make entering a good university easier.
Everything you've listed (and more) have been major pain points for me for the last 14 years or so, but especially this one:
> Ability to "feel" the nearness of the future, and plan and act accordingly
I'm almost incapable of preparing and perceiving the nearness of future events until the panic settles in that I'm late, behind, etc. It is especially exacerbated for things that I'm not good at or have anxiety around, like giving a presentation, working on a large refactor/feature, buying gifts for an occasion, preparing for a trip that involves multiple transitions/transportation, interviews, etc etc.
I'm getting evaluated for ADHD as I've recently been reading the literature and realizing that almost all the things I've been complaining about and trying to fix in myself for the last 10+ years, fall in the description and the features of ADHD.
> I'm almost incapable of preparing and perceiving the nearness of future events until the panic settles in that I'm late, behind, etc.
You're spot on. There's this neuropsychiatrist (I forget the name, he's pretty famous) that says that one major characteristic of ADHD is time blindness. Until a deadline stares at you in the face, you can't see it. Medication is like putting the glasses on.
He then went on saying that normal people plan their life 2 or 3 months in advance, and that's such a mind blowing, alien concept to me. I barely have an idea what I'm going to do tomorrow. The farther I think, the foggier it is.
Also, I've noticed over the years I've developed an effective and unhealthy coping mechanism: anxiety is how I am always on time. The major the event, the earlier my anxiety surges, I can't even sleep the night before, and it dissipates as soon as the time has come.
> He then went on saying that normal people plan their life 2 or 3 months in advance, and that's such a mind blowing, alien concept to me. I barely have an idea what I'm going to do tomorrow. The farther I think, the foggier it is.
So true. But do you notice emotional blindness as well? My emotions seem to only attract my attention when they reach a certain threshold, which leaves me missing a huge amount of information about how I am, while occasionally being blind-sided by intense feelings seemingly out of the blue.
Certain abilities that normal people mature in are stuck at the level of a fifteen-year-old for me and will be perpetually. Some of them are:
Ability to "feel" the nearness of the future, and plan and act accordingly
Ability to choose to do one task over another, and particularly an uninteresting task over an interesting one
Ability to stop an interesting task to change to another important task
Ability to stay on a single topic in thoughts and conversations
Many people with ADHD also have the emotional regulation of a ~15 year old, perpetually.
Most people can approximately remember how difficult those different abilities were when they were fifteen so there can be some level of empathy. When you were fifteen, university most likely "felt" very far away, and preparing for it "felt" not very important compared to your day-to-day. In hindsight, 15 is not far away from 18 and starting university, and there are many things you can do at 15 to make entering a good university easier.