Apologies if this veered too much off topic. I’ve been kicking this around for a week or two, and felt the need to add recent events and post.
It’s 5am, I haven’t eaten in 12 hours, had anything substantial to drink in about 8, have been sitting on the toilet for over an hour, and instead of doing something about any of those things I’m editing a comment to fix a typo.
Fwiw severe depression with ADHD is a shitty combo because if they give you Adderall without getting the depression taken care of you might just have enough energy to off yourself now.
When people say “touch grass” it usually means that the internet shouldn’t influence your mental health. Unless any of the states decisions directly impact you, you can think about what you can do to influence it, but if you find yourself spiraling about it, its time to log off. Maybe start knitting idk
Yep, this has absolutely been what I’ve had to do.
No single one of us is the protagonist in some story where we’ll be the ones to tip the scales in what’s wrong with the world. Do what you can, where you can, and focus on the world around you. What directly effects you and those you care about.
There is not enough energy in any single person to be able to care about everything, and you’ll just burn yourself out for trying. This is true even in neurotypicals. It’s why people aren’t running around screaming constantly about the shit situations going on. It’s why people don’t seem to care, they can’t possibly care about absolutely everything.
So you, like them, have to at least try to exert some control over what you spend your time and mental energy on. It’s sure as fuck not easy and it doesn’t help improve shit in the grander world, but spiraling isn’t easy on you either and it also doesn’t help. It just makes you feel worse about everything.
I know this sounds just like someone telling you to “just focus more”, “just don’t be sad”, “just don’t worry”. But that’s not it. It’s not that simple. Never will be.
Even though it will likely be astronomically harder for you, you can exert some will and effort against the roiling storm of your own internal state. Anyone saying that it is literally impossible is letting the bad inside them win. Sometimes it is truly too much amd you have to, but you shouldn’t live in that space forever, and you need to remind yourself that it isn’t impossible whenever other people who are in a bad place are letting it win.
That internal bad is the bad you most need to try and fight, not the bad effecting the whole world.
The bad inside you may win. It may win most of the time, sometimes you might have to let it win because it’s too mich at the moment, but you need to try to fight it as much as you are able to. You don’t have to win, you just have to keep trying, as much and as often as you can.
Like if you haven’t eaten in 8 hours, and there’s food in your house, just eat some of it. Doesn’t matter what it is, if it’s appealing (is it ever when you feel like this?), if you don’t think it will help (do you ever think it will before you eat when you feel like this?), if you don’t want to (again, do you ever want to do anything when you’re spiraling like this?) Go shove some fucking slop into your goblin mouth. Something’s better than nothing. Hold onto whatever tiny bits of progress you can grasp by the edge of your fingertips and try to keep moving forward.
The secret is that you can do this. It sucks. It’s not easy. It may take years and external help. But it is possible. And it has been the most worthwhile thing I’ve ever done in my life to just keep trying.
Getting a dog has helped me in ways I never expected. I just figured “cute, cuddle, good for brain chemicals”. But they HAVE to be walked at a certain time. They HAVE to be fed at a certain time. Regardless of any of your internal issues, you love them and you have to provide for their needs.
So when you are in the kitchen filling their bowl, you make yourself some toast or grab a banana. When you are taking them for a walk, maybe you go a little farther because they like it and it’s good for you. If you struggle to get up in the morning, they look to you pleading to be taken out to pee and you get yourself up and dressed. They need training and that requires being consistent, so you do it for them. It’s so much easier to do it for them than for yourself.
Spot on with the “I’d really like to get the depression under control before I let you function at your job.”
Because fixing the unfixable is somehow more important than making sure I keep my job so I can like…eat. And live indoors. And afford the healthcare that is paying them.
As someone else said upthread (and I’ve told a lot of people myself) if you’re depressed but know you can focus and accomplish things, the first thing you accomplish might be suicide.
This is one of the few places where I agree with standard practice. Depression first, then ADHD.
I have adhd and all if these problems that go with it. I also found that my anxiety disorder causes me to get extremely stressed when my work gives me too much to do and expects me to move mountains. That’s when I start feeling like this and I start not sleeping.
Turns out sleep is really important. Right now work is in a bit of a lull for me, and I’m sleeping fine again, and I don’t feel depressed, or have any of these issues at the moment, except the usual, adhd issues of staying on task, going to bed at a normal time, etc.
I will say, getting enough sleep makes the world issues you’ve mentioned easier to deal with. Can’t say I have any advice for how to get it under control considering everyone is different when it comes to how to help their adhd symptoms. I’m super sensitive to medications for example, so a lot of them haven’t helped me much. Hope you start getting on the right track at least.
Edit: I would say definitely try to minimize the doom scrolling tho, cut out some of the news if you can. I find life easier to deal with if I’m not always worried about how bad the world is outside.
