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Seeing some tweets on the TL about ADHD and I’m feeling a thread coming up... I have written several in the past but I’m not sure if any directly talk about how (my?) ADHD is slippery and resists negative reinforcement. You can’t frighten/intimidate ADHD away. I tried. For years
Funnily this is the intersection of the two next books I intend to write: Unlearning Coercion, and Constructive ADHD Caveat: all of the following is my personal experience ADHD is very, very, very stubborn. You can’t “contain” it because it will outlast your executive function
This is something people don’t seem to get so I think it’s worth repeating: the game is rigged. No amount of clever strategizing can really help you outwit an opponent who is stronger, faster, and just better than you on every dimension. I struggled & failed until I accepted this
Exactly https://t.co/CVilVPgadW
I’m not going to be able to get into all of the nuances of how to navigate this relationship well in a twitter thread when i haven’t slept all night but I’ma just line up a couple of riffs: https://t.co/jgP93jbXIL
to have ADHD, in my view, is to be blessed & cursed to be the custodian of a wild trickster spirit who refuses to be tamed, broken, refuses to obey anybody else's directions – including your own. You can't win, IMO, so you might as well accept your fate and go along for the ride https://t.co/GMDvYCcWfL
Actually if you click through the above thread you’ll get a bunch of useful details. This is part of how I manage my ADHD in a constructive way: I collaborate with past and future selves https://t.co/2GCuplR4KG
there is a lot of work that a person with ADHD can do to make life less miserable. But what I’m trying to convey here is that you can’t install an authoritarian government and expect to control a messy, chaotic, irreverent, independent people. You have to respect their autonomy
I have a good enough relationship with myself that I can joke about it. But there is a truth here. Not all people respond to repression the same way. Some will literally choose death. There is staggering variance here that many people don’t seem to appreciate https://t.co/4ge6MH1Aid
If I am a charming and persuasive person, maybe half of it is that I had to charm and persuade others to survive socially, but another half of it is that I have to charm and persuade myself to get me to do *anything*. It’s a tremendous amount of work. It did pay off eventually
I am really like this even today, and it has gotten in the way of my life — so much so that I’ve basically designed my entire life around this I can recognise that it’s unhelpful/costly and try to admonish etc but ADHD brain does not give a fuck about negative reinforcement https://t.co/yz69igqBUy
guy: i’ll pay you $100 to bring me a glass of water me: whoa! nice!! i'm on it me: *opens 100 tabs* what is water? how do clouds even? history of naval warfare? roman aqueducts? how desalination works? guy: hey nvm I got it me: ok me: *opens 100 more tabs* why ice floats? https://t.co/91dUiTFDur
I do nrecognise that there’s a flavor of defeatism in some people’s tweets about their ADHD, and I don’t encourage that. But I understand it. Sometimes it’s a coping mechanism, sometimes it can be something much worse. Which is why I really like the frame “constructive ADHD”
Here’s a post with some of my existing notes on the topic, including a video. I will eventually expand this into a book https://t.co/utRtidyfHc
The text of this thread is available in the above post, but ima repost it here too if you don’t wanna bounce from the twitter app. I’m considerate like that 😌 https://t.co/44EBOkNcYT
someone once said something like "I like how visa says he's going to do something, then immediately does it". it's actually an ADHD coping mechanism. if you ask my friends from my teenage days, they'll tell you I was unreliable, full of shit and you couldn't trust anything I said
@visakanv https://t.co/ZxFMGmsL4U
Your subconscious drives are reorganizing your mind to try new strategies til one works, and since they aren't conscious, they aren't constrained by: • what you think is okay • your own… belief… that you're not allowed to fuck around and find out?!? 🤯