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I have ADHD and relate to a couple of the things you said you don't understand; i think the social issues like forgetting people when you don't see them for a while ( object permanence ? ), and concentrating too heavily on a partner where to it's hurting you ( love bombing ? ), might be symptoms of a similar but separate disorder from adhd. however im only diagnosed with adhd, so it's the only thing we have to blame; do you think that could be what's going on ?
I believe using words that don't quite fit such as object, permanence or love bombing is an attempt to self-describe something we never see discussed or explained
I often forget my brother and niece (who live in Georgia) exist so usually the only time I interact with them, if at all, is to send BuzzFeed quiz links to my niece cause we like to do them.
I'm sure there's a decent chance this will get lost in the sea of comments, but I wanted to point out that the volume of your voice in a lot (if not all) of your videos is noticeably lower than all other videos. When I watch HealthyGamerGG, it's not too much of a problem because I can just turn up the volume, but in this video, it is especially apparent as the tiktoks are either really loud, or you are really quiet. Hopefully you see this as I feel like, though it may not be a huge issue, it is somewhat of an annoyance. Edit: so I'm a bit further in the video and heard how people in the chat were saying the tiktoks were too loud; I really think the issue is that your mic is too quiet. Try watching a different youtube video, then watch one of yours.
In my case, In addition to ADD, I have a hearing impairment and a seemingly ever growing list of medical issues. (Speaking of hearing issue's, could you record at a louder volume? 36 minutes is a long time to strain to hear what you have to say. I really do need and appreciate the information you are sharing. Anyway. . . )Trying to figure out what is causing which symptoms, it's a bit frustrating. I have had sooo many blood draws, 2 surgeries 3 biopsies, and 7 diagnosis in recent months of the things that, a couple were under the radar and undiagnosed, most problematic is I have had Celiacs for maybe 2 decades, I LOVE cracked wheat bread banana bread. . .all bread, croissants, muffins, cOOkies, pie, cake, soy sauce, pre shredded cheese. Essentially, I have been starving on a full stomach. The lack of vitamins, iron, nutrition, has played hell on my body. It started blocking functions in my organs like my liver to the point my Dr. eere talking about putting me on the transplant list. It got really scary. I know it has to do with the way my mind had been working, well, not working lately. Why my ADD, that haden't plagued me since highschool, started decimating my life. My body wasn't able to function proper. I had no energy. I never wanted to do anything. I was always tired and I couldn't focus or pay attention because my brain was starving too. Thing is, when your like that, it's hard to do what you need to do to get help. Everybody outside thinks your fine because you have been masking your entire life. Why would I want some stranger up in my business. Is what you tell yourself. The real reason is, change sounded exhausting. It was at first, but would encourage anyone feeling that low to find help. Your community may even offer help to find help. That's what I did when I realized, I didn't have a choice if I wanted to evere feel good again. I'm just getting there. I changed my diet the day I found out about the celiacs.(The freaking day before Thanksgiving. That was just mean.) I'm getting more done in a day than I would in 2 weeks before. I'm still fighting a lot of the old symptoms.brain fog, time paralysis. I have to write things down before I get up to remember where I'm going and what I'm going to get. Getting lost on my cell phone on the way to order gluten free cream of mushroom soup from amazon. Left foot. right foot. Repeat.
The whole "lacking object permanence" thing is a huge pet peeve of mine. Forgetting to contact someone or failing to think about them is not at all the same thing as thinking they've disappeared because you can't see them. I understand wanting to put a label on the "out of sight, out of mind" tendency of people with ADHD, but we need a better term for it. One that doesn't imply that our brains have not developed past infancy.
Yeah, seems like she is describing Borderline Personality Disorder, though it is correlated, almost all people with ADHD don't have those psychopatologies.
Edit: I was wrong. If you listen to the tick tock she says "Object Pertinence" Pertinence: the fact or quality of being directly and significantly related to the matter at hand; relevance
@@KiltedShepherd Oh, I thought it was a mispronunciation. Because people stating that they "lack object permanence" due to their ADHD is not uncommon on social media. I've seen it numerous times.
@@cheru_fishmonster honestly, I wasn't watching the video, just listening and browsing the comments. I went back and did see that the subtitles did say permanence, so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Though Object Pertinence, meaning object relevance does sound better than object permanence for a "out of sight, out of mind" term.
I like how Dr. K doesn't dunk on these Tik Tok kids, and merely points out what they got right/wrong. I can tell he knows how to bridge gaps between himself and others without alienating them.
I hope he teaches people that being on the internet doesn't mean having really binary opinions. On UA-cam there's this sentiment that "Tik Tok is the worst thing ever to happen to humanity- but UA-cam is amazing." It entirely depends on the person and content they consume.
Agreed. At the same time I'm concerned that a lot of these people can give the impression that they're completely informed which can then misinform others. I do wonder about the cost of tik tok.
@@ryanfnm7666 Play this mental game, Point at something, first thing that comes to mind, shout it out. The only rule is it cannot be WHAT the object you are pointing at is. Train your Brain to be comfortable being incorrect. Typing really well, Im Typing really well, Fuck now im not. IF You are afraid of typing incorrectly, face your fear of being incorrect!
It's like playing 'The Game' (I'm really showing my age here by mentioning this lol) Exercise is one of the few things that can reliably silence my brain, because it allows me to focus on my body instead
I understand what the girl is talking about with the "friend permanence" thing. I don't forget they exist, but I'm just so focused on immediate stimuli that I just don't think about them much, even though I love and cherish them when I'm with them, and it's a source of shame and guilt sometimes. Also built into that is ADHD paralysis in regaining contact with people.
there is also something to be said about many people with adhd forgetting about things they cant directly see, like vegetables in the fridge draw, or a specific shirt in a dressor, etc
I also get her. I DO forget my friends 😭 I will literally forget my grandma exists for weeks at a time and when I do remember, I have horrific feelings of guilt and can't reach out to her. Same with friends
@@dcgamer1027 I have such horrible problems with this. Even my plate of food on my stand right next to me I'll forget about (even while starving) if it's not directly in my line of sight. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of my meals I've eaten cold.
@@dcgamer1027 1000% this! Lol This is coming up in my therapy sessions now. These videos help me gather up my thoughts into coherent ideas. I'm so glad it isn't just me
9:23 I find it difficult to maintain relationships because if I don't interact with them regularly, I tend to forget about them in a way. It's not that I don't remember then or don’t want to interact with them, it just takes a lot of effort to maintain the necessary communication. Then after a while, I feel a lot of guilt and shame for not communicating and then I just slowly quietly distance myself.
The whole volume of thoughts with ADHD was so interesting and as someone with ADHD, really resonated. I often have something playing on my phone while I go to sleep. It helps my brain relax so to speak; to make my brain ready to sleep.
I fall asleep watching lectures from Harvard (theyre on youtube for free). Gets a bit too interesting, sometimes, so it can distract me, but I usually need something distracting my brain anyways..
The "Object Permanence" thing is an imperfect shorthand for the tendency of people with ADHD to be focused on people who are right there in front of you and sort of "forget" about the people who aren't... combined with a phenomena of "time blindness" where we end up not contacting loved ones for months and don't even realize that much time has passed. Then, when a friend is back in your life, you sort of pick up the relationship right from where it left off as if you only just saw them the day prior. There's not a term to describe this sort of feeling, AFAIK.
This is a year late but I’ve come to like the term object PERTINENCE. It’s doesn’t imply that we forget about others, but simply that our minds strongly prioritize those we’re in frequent face to face contact with. If I haven’t seen a friend in a week, but saw someone else twice, I might find myself continuously gravitating to that more recent person and unintentionally making my friend feel distanced when I fail to realize how long I had gone without contacting them.
This! I thought all my friends were like soooo good, we have the vibe etc that we just continue our communicattion from the moment we last communicated(eg, a month ago, couple of years ago). Maybe they just accept me for who i am and don't raise concerns straight to my face. Maybe their relationship with other people is different😅
You’re the first comment I read on this video, and you described perfectly what my head is like. It’s like brain tinnitus. The quiet makes me far too aware of my self. I only turn off sounds when I’m too externally stimulated. Photo walks let me focus that internal stimulus on an external goal. I don’t think I do “quiet” without some goal. Otherwise, I need background noise to do things and keep my brain in check.
@@ATTACKofthe6STRINGS do you know if this is healthy for us though? Like I'm always keeping videos playing at home as I stay by myself, and most times I realise I wasn't even playing it to pay attention, it was more to quiet my mind in a weird way. I even keep UA-cam playing at night when I'm trying to sleep on a low volume. So I'm not very sure if this is a good way to manage that stimulation problem because sometimes I get much more peaceful sleep when I suddenly one night decide to not play anything and just try to close my eyes and put myself to sleep.
@@pranshulmalviyayes it's completely healthy! As long as you aren't doing things like self harm that's literally hurting you in order to get the right amount/kind of simulation. On the nights you don't put stuff on, that just means you've already got enough stimulation:)
I think for ADHD it's not cure but rather management. It's not an illness or a disease that will go away. It's your brain working differently. Like he said, adaptation.
Me too! I love the instrumental music, the background and white noise, and the lighting while trying to work. However, once in a while when the cafe is overcrowded causing all the seats to be taken, it will be overwhelming as I will only hear their full conversations and lose focus which makes feel extremely irritated. On normal days when I can sit at a table thats further away from others, it’s really good,
My brain is loud in low stimulus environment, but then I get distracted in high stimulus environment. Now I just stay in a low stimulus environment with some music as an easily controllable source of stimuli.
funny ... loud is ok, but cafes isn'T for me as I'm unable to NOT listen to the conversations happening at the next table and I'm unable to focus only on my task then :-)
32:40 - As someone with ADHD who has trouble knowing how to voice my thoughts properly, I mess up a lot and word things in weird ways that, even as they come out, I realize that: "this is not what I'm trying to say." I'm here to let you know that there's no shame in just going: "hang on, let me start over because I'm not getting this out right. Just give me a minute so I can gather my thoughts into something coherent," and like 9 times out of 10 people are more than happy to comply. Because just like how you don't wanna cause any misunderstandings by wording things weirdly, they don't usually want to misunderstand what you say either.
This happens to me all the time. I just notice myself, mid sentence, constructing a sentence that doesnt make any real gramatic sense (coherently its also of). I just find myself going ok..hold on...yeah..no..And then I formulate something. I always just thought it was "they way i talk", but Ive become more and more aware.
As a therapist, I always practiced pausing with my adhd kids. I do it myself too.... it's a tough impulse to control for most people. It can be uncomfortable to sit in silence so it causes you to fill it, so much so that 5 seconds feels like an eternity to a lot of people. it's always surprising how much more sense your words will make of your take a moment to breathe and think before you speak, but it just takes a bit of practice.
@@hkandm4s23 This really worked for me from time to time. I happened to do the exact same thing dr kim does when he says, "give me 5 seconds". But when someone asks a complicated question and I just stay silent, trying to gather my thoughts, my head sometimes really suddenly overflows and I can't think about anything other than that I am stalling about time. If I am comfortable with the person then it doesn't really happen, so I suspect it's anxiety
Often get distracted during a sentence, as I'm saying what's on my mind, I'm adding to it in my head, so constantly repeating stuff in a different way, hence, over explaining or pausing way to long.
I only started hearing the silence once I started to taking the pills. Once I was able to just hear the silence on my brain was amazing. It still is, I can just take a sec, and realize how quiet my brain is.
I tried adderall for this first time recently and I almost cried because I didn’t realize how silent my brain could be and that I could actually find peace sometimes from the constant 15 discussions going on in my head
@@xpeachypie4133 oh my God, I so miss that. I had that exact experience but the Adderall made me throw up. 😭 so I had to stop. My lord though was it a beautiful interal sound.
@@xpeachypie4133 I know right? Its funny how we normalize, I could not think for a second going back, in fact, I realized after I wrote this, that I was scared, because now it could be "real" ahah, oh well, glad you are having a good experience as well (:
@@nicolassuazo4225 Yeah, I tried welbutrin. My doctor said that it's likely that stimulants in general would cause that problem since I was also having blood pressure side effects with it too.
I 100% understood the dude in the purple. He's really talking about how ADHD'rs need novelty. We have this new person, there is a challenge to when their attention, and everything is new and fresh and so we hyperfocus on the relationship. We go ALL in deep and want more and more and more. But then the new wears off and our normal adhd selves show up and we give something else our attention such as a new car, a new vacation... we still care about the person but they are no longer novel so we get distracted.
Yeah but what he's saying is to instead set the bar low in the beginning for the new relationship so that when it ends the inattention doesn't seem as bad. I think the better advice is no you don't want to love bomb but find ways to keep the relationship novel or explore new things with one another so that you remain attentive to the relationship and hopefully if everything else is good stay together.
He was wearing blue... Everything else was on point though and the boundaries was about setting realistic expectations and behaviors that would be not overwhelming to the other person while also there being less likely to have a dopamine crash. I also think relationships require upkeep that includes adding new things to create that excitement again since it's new ways to bond together and new experiences.
As a person w/ ADHD, two of these tiktoks really pissed me off -- one bc I'm a cognitive scientist, & one bc I have a personal interest in the structures & tactics of cults. RE the "object permanence" tiktok, I fully agree w/ Dr K's assessment that ppl w/ ADHD unequivocally have object permanence. ADHD def affects memory retention & recall, which can make ppl w/ ADHD v forgetful. But that's an entirely diff thing from object permanence. Lack of object permanence is what toddlers have. As an ADHD adult, I may forget where I left my phone when I put it down, but that doesn't mean I don't know it exists. Lack of object permanence is more than forgetting objects & ppl that aren't in immediate view; it's inability to know that they exist. The issues ADHD adults have are issues w/ *encoding* (properly committing a task or event or detail to memory) & *recall* (retrieving from memory something that was committed there). I may zone out & not pay proper attention to a personal detail & fail to encode it in memory, or I may be distracted at the moment of recall & fail to remember the detail, but that doesn't mean I'm not able to recognize that ppl have lives independent of mine that exist whether I'm present for the events thereof or not. ADHD doesn't make you a damn toddler. The worse one is the use of "love-bombing" in the relationship one (cw for abuse discussion). Where the tiktok is correct is that ppl w/ ADHD respond more strongly to novelty than ppl w/o ADHD, & that can lead to a lot of excitement at the beginning of a relationship, that may deteriorate over time if not properly addressed. & it can def be painful to be on the receiving end of that relationship dynamic wjere a potential partner simply lost interest & didn't make the time for you. & if that has happened to you as an individual, I'm sorry. It's painful, & that pain has a space, & it ws bad of the person to treat you like that regardless of their ADHD. Thing is, what I described above isn't love-bombing. "Love-bombing" is another academic term that tiktok has run w/ & generalized to mean any amt of intense, concentrated attention given to a person (see West Elm Caleb). Thing is, "love bombing" was coined to describe cult recruitment tactics whereby an entire cultic community will shower a potential target in praise while socially isolating the target from anyone who isn't in support of the target's membership in the cultic community. It is inherently a tactic of systematic abuse that requires a cultically-structured abusive community to be applicable (& communities can be abusive &/or employ cultic recruitment tactics w/o having a cultic structure). If describing the issues ADHD adults have w/ memory as "lack of object permanence" is infantilizing (which it is), then describing the increased interest ppl w/ ADHD take in new relationships as "love-bombing" (i.e. abuse) is outright dehumanizing. Dr K was a hell of a lot more measured than I'd have been. -- Michael-Giuliana (they/them)
About the never getting positive attention (18:45), we can change that: I suspect that my son has ADHD and have started to compliment him on when he tries, when he perseveres, when he remembers things, looks at people, shows compassion... independent of the outcome - which in combination with other things seems to really have helped him, he is way less stressed and more open. And I think we could all benefit from that shift in focus, I know I would...
This is awesome! I think the fact that your son has a diagnosis and can learn coping methods and or has the ability to take meds helps. Untreated adhd or having a diagnosis and not being believed is probably what causes a lot of shame and rejection issues.
28:30 I think what hes referring to with "love bombing" is a form of hyper focus, I've found my hyper focus happens not only with Hobbies and things but with people too. that disregulation can cause a crash, cant keep that hyper focus forever, giving the significant other a good feeling of the person with adhd pushing away.
Yes, came here to say something similar. I definitely did this to my spouse without meaning to. Several years after being together he said he felt like I wasn't trying anymore and that I wasn't giving him the attention he got used to when we first started dating. I wasn't diagnosed until years later, so I had no idea I had done this or what I had done wrong. I felt very confused because my love for him had only grown since dating. But my hyperfixation had gone away. I know I've hurt friends this way too. And it feels like rejection when I fixate on a new person who doesn't want the same level of friendship that I do.
Well ok I want to chime in on the executive dysfunction / ADHD Paralysis bit. I noticed that you said that there's always a reason for the procrastination, but for me I don't have a conscious reasoning behind not getting things done. Instead it's like I'm trapped in my bed due to the comfort and warmth I get when I'm laying down, and the ability to get up and actually do things is EXTREMELY difficult. It's like trying to get out of the bathroom after a really hot shower, the cold air makes you hesitate, but it's MUCH WORSE for some reason. It's like I'm being held down by an invisible wall preventing me from getting up and doing things, until either hunger or the need to use the bathroom gets strong enough to snap me out of it. My shower analogy fits perfectly with how my ADHD executive dysfunction presents itself. I love the warmth and comfort that comes from being comfortable, however the moment I need to forsake that comfort and warmth in order to get things done, it becomes extremely difficult.
Yeah I disagree with his take on executive dysfunction. I have executive dysfunction for stuff like going to pee. I need to pee, I want to pee, there's no reason why I dread peeing, but yet here I am, stuck in my chair, really needing to pee, but unable to get up to actually go pee. Framing it as being procrastination instead of executive dysfunction and there being a conscious reasoning behind it is, despite how well he means, pretty damn ableist.
i always compared my executive dysfunction and ability to focus to a car stuck in neutral with no gear shift. the car is running, and i can press on the gas all i want but it's not getting me anywhere. i can get out and push and it'll take way more effort to get where i need to go and eventually i can get started, or sometimes i dont realize the parking brake is on or i'm going up an incline which wastes even more time. i can't walk because the car is needed for wherever i'm going, as crappy as it is. even for things i *want* to do, it can be a struggle to get started, especially for things that require a little more effort even though i know how to execute it. seriously sucks.
@@batfurs3001 Sounds to me like you think taking a piss is extremely boring so you avoid it (procrastination) until your bladder is so full the adrenaline starts to pump and you can't hold it in any longer and you run as fast as you can and piss as quickly as possible so you can quickly get back to something more stimulating that will give you a hit of sweet old dopamine. It's the lack of dopamine that hinders you from executing the task of "take a piss", so you procrastinate.
The last TikTok I presume he's talking about with ADHD there is often a difficulty with prioritization. With ADHD the main motivating factors are "does it captivate interest", "Is it new/novel", "does it challenge you", "does it have urgency". As a relationship continues on, you might see a decrease in those motivating factors which can lead to difficulty with prioritization and ultimately hurt a relationship. I don't know about "setting boundaries", but being able to discuss your needs/relationship accommodations goes a long way in ensuring that needs are met for everyone in a relationship.
As someone who spends a lot of time in ADHD communities this whole object permanence thing is getting out of hand. I understand it can be a useful analogy to explain our symptoms but calling it object impermanence at this point is just misinformation. And for a group of people trying so hard to get the world to be better informed about our condition I really think we need to be more responsible with how we talk about these things.
25:10 As someone with ADHD myself, and having been in a relationship with someone with ADHD, I had no trouble following his reasoning. Here's how I'd lay out the message I believe he's trying to convey: 1) People with ADHD tend to be more obsessive, particularly with novel stimuli, than the general population. [1] 2) In a relationship, this can manifest as a huge initial burst of attention, affection, and effort directed towards the new partner. 3) As the novelty fades, internally the intensity of the love has not changed, but the stimulus (partner) no longer holds the attention as strongly. 4) The attention, affection, and effort (thus the "love") can then appear to be abruptly cutoff as the person with ADHD becomes focused on (or obsessed with) some other area of their life. 5) The partner - especially if they have experienced manipulation or love bombing in the past - may subjectively experience the initial burst followed by seemingly abrupt cutoff of "love" as "love bombing." I think the guy explains it poorly because he is explaining it with very concrete examples of how it may have manifested in his own experiences, and so the abstract message (which I tried to lay out above) is getting garbled. [1] "The link between ADHD-like inattention and obsessions and compulsions during treatment of youth with OCD" Guzick et al. 2017 ^ This is a random paper I pulled from the line of research linking obsessive behaviours with ADHD. Feel free to search the literature for more.
Do you think dr k has adhd? cause he keep talking like he does maybe that’s why he has a hard time understanding simpleness of adhd that in all environments are ADHD effects us, whether it’s a relationship going outside, just wherever you go in the world, realistically that our Adhd does affect us every where in life.
My additional point would be that, once the novelty wears off and you go from giving a ton of attention to just your normal amount of attention (which lets be real is low if you have ADHD). It tends to be seen as you losing interest or have lost interest. So they think something is wrong or they did something wrong which can then lead to a break up. This is what’s happened to every relationship I’ve been in. I was recently diagnosed with ADHD so I never had a good explanation for my partners. It sucks because I genuinely love them, so I end up with a completely broken heart and I feel stupid for messing it up simply by lacking communication.
I wish we could develop a term that wasn't object permanence to explain what is a common experience of ADHD is. Out of sight, out of mind is close. Often, I am so stimulated by the things around me that I forget about what isn't in front of me. And it really does affect my relationships. My mother got so mad at me when I first went to college a decade ago because I didn't call home for four months. I didn't realize it was a problem.
its still object perminance, the better example is adults with dementia. They have some to nearly enough to be normal, but when they come up short you have problems.
So the love bombing one you were confused by, I actually kind of did what this guy's talking about with my now wife nearly 10 years ago. I always said "I fall hard, and I fall fast". But I wanted to make sure that I wasn't going to set my wife up for false expectations on how intense I would be in a relationship long term. So I specifically set limits to kind of catch myself. Examples: No, I cannot let myself spend every waking moment with this person that I possibly can. We need time apart as well to make sure that we still function separately. No, I cannot buy her a gift for the second time this week just "because i feel like it". No, I cannot spend 14 hours talking to her, 4 days in a row. By forcing myself to "slow down" it was basically me trying to prevent her from being a hyperfocus. I wanted to know for sure that I cared about her for her, and that those feelings would last years to come. I forced myself to hang out with other people, go to work, spend time with family, enjoy hobbies etc. When all my brain WANTED to do was do absolutely everything with her at every moment of every day. Even if that was just existing in the same space. 10 years later, I can safely say it worked.
Exactly! My daughter is diagnosed with adhd and she gets hyper focused on people, while I tend to focus on things or ideas. I have diagnoses of ASD and ADHD
In the second tiktok, the girl is just missing a step in the ADHD -> rejection sensitivity chain, like Dr. K said. It's the trauma caused by having ADHD. We all lived through things that made us feel ostracized; we're different but as a kid we didn't know why. We were traumatized by being told we weren't doing good enough or trying hard enough or always getting into trouble. Rejection sensitivity isn't fixed by ADHD meds because it's trauma. That takes therapy to fix.
I wish they would talk on how to prevent it. I felt this in my soul ~ it’s always been the worst feeling growing up & now with a kid who possibly has ADD I already have been told by her that her friends said they don’t want to play with her & it’s HURTS my soul to see my baby go through that. It’s even worse that i don’t know hips to fix it. ;(
I respect that there is some link here but there's a good reason to separate them. Another example is that there's a strong connection between obesity and adhd (increased prevelance by about 70%) due to impulse control and other factors. To say that ADHD causes obesity is kinda true but it's missing the point a little bit.
The tiktok about “love bombing” is really unclear but I know what the creator is trying to express. In “love bombing”, a new romantic partner is deliberately showered with attention until suddenly the affection is reduced or cut off entirely. The driving intention is to manipulate. ADHD people can display this same behavior unintentionally and hurt their new partner. The enthusiasm of an ADHD person at the beginning of a relationship mimics the manipulation technique of “love bombing”. TLDR: ADHD people are extremely enthusiastic about new experiences, including relationships, but this will fade over time and the change can leave partners feeling upset. On the outside, this shift in behavior looks like “love bombing”.
My friend and i both have add.. and when we first became friends we got sooooo exited to the point that one of my friends shipped us💀💀💀💀 but then after a view weeks we both became more relaxed which was perfect because we still matched each others energy levels Thats one of the only times I didn’t feel guilty being overly exited or “love bombing”
My partner and I both got SUPER focused on our relationship when it was new, and it was an adjustment for both of us learning to return to more normal and sustainable relationship!
so your saying that adhd people are inherently untrustworthy and manipulative, your racism is showing please cover it up better or you might find yourself attacked.
OH yes this explains it perfectly, because I was sometimes wondering if maybe I'm a narcissist because I do the love bombing thing, but it's not to manipulate the person into liking me, at least...Of course I want them to like me, but I am also excited and I'm being my best self in that phase and also want to convince the person that I'm worth sticking with because there's these moments of excitemennt where I can be a great and worthwhile partner, but I am also doing it because deep down I know the distracted less attentive partner will come out and might be not all that worthy... Like, I use the boost of adhd excitement in the beginning, and it does come across as love bombing, but it's not really a narcissist thing, but some people nowadays will also become suspicious of that behaviour.
I think all the reasons above that people are using to qualify this use of the term "love bombing" is precisely why we SHOULDN'T be using it in this way, in the first place (and why I suspect doc was thrown off so deeply). Love bombing is an existing term that describes a very specific phenomenon--one with an incredibly negative connotation. The excitability of the honeymoon phase is also not in any way exclusive to ADHD people; you might consider ADHD people as maybe appearing to have a sharper drop-off in effort than neurotypicals... but I also think that's way too generalizing to associate with ADHD as a rule. We all end up compensating in different ways. Regardless, we shouldn't be trying to recapture the term "love bombing" and associating it with ADHD 😆
Now that I heard you mentioned the birthday party example and immediately after pointed out teachers giving less positive attention, a vivid memory from when I was 6 popped into my mind: a friend’s mom came over to our classroom to give our first grade teacher invitations for the whole class (about 30 kids) to go to said friend’s birthday party at an amusement park, and the teacher flicking through them and giving mine back to her, telling her that I should not be invited because “I did not behave” in front of everyone and proceeding to hand every other kid their invitation while smugly staring at me. Then the following week all the kids that did go excitedly talking about the amazing time they had. Still feels shitty 23 years later and now I can see why.
The teacher doesn't get to decide which kids are invited to a private birthday party! When I was a kid, you invited your friends. I heard that many schools went to "If you have a party, you have to invite the whole class" which is bizarre. How does the school have the right to control what people do in their own homes outside of school? But this seems like the reverse of that! And also wrong.
I was diagnosed with ADHD since my teenage, spent my whole life fighting ADHD. I suffered severe depression and mental disorder. Not until my girlfriend recommended me to psilocybin mushrooms treatment. Psilocybin treatment saved my life honestly. 8 years totally clean. Never thought I would be saying this about mushrooms.
Can you help me with the reliable source 🙏. I'm 56 and have suffered for years with addiction, anxiety and severe ptsd, I got my panic attacks under control myself years ago and they have come back with a vengeance, I'm constantly trying to take full breaths but can't get the full satisfying breath out, it's absolutely crippling me, i live in Greece. I don't know much about these mushrooms. Really need a reliable source!! Can't wait to get them.
YES very sure of Dr.benfungi. I have the same experience with anxiety, depression, PTSD and addiction and Mushrooms definitely made a huge huge difference to why am clean today.
Mushrooms are very medicinal. This is why anybody familiar with psilocybin and any other kind of fungi will tell you, "They are alive." They have a very ancient wisdom. To my experience, all mushrooms have always said, "Pay attention to your life. How you think, how you feel, and what will you do with the information that you always knew, but now are seeing in this point of view." This is why mushrooms are so respected in tribal cultures. This mental health treatment works for me too. Half micro doses do the trick for me. At least a few days at a time with lengthy time in between. Thank you for sharing this point!
I feel as though RSD may not be a part of the clinical criteria for ADHD but if you struggle with it, it’s a part of your ADHD experience AND it’s really helpful context to the emotional impact to ADHD that helps people to advocate for themselves when seeking medical care.
RSD is caused by traumatic social experiences which neurodivergent people are more prone to. So it's not criteria for ADHD or any other neurodivergence, it's more like a common comorbidity
The problem of a lot of ADHD tiktok etc is that they present ADHD vs neurotypical traits in a very black-and-white way. E.g. Some things are ADHD traits that neurotypical people "don't have." The truth is that if we graph attention and executive function on a bell curve, "ADHD" represents a slice of the tail end of the distribution, and where we slice it is somewhat arbitrary (basically at the "causes you disabling distress" level). MOST people will identify with SOME of these ADHD traits. MOST people will understand the experiences being relayed and have at least a few examples from their life when they felt these ways. The difference between neurotypical and ADHD is a matter of intensity, frequency, and the extent to which these traits disable you. And because it is a spectrum with an arbitrary line drawn somewhere, there will be people clustered around that line who are neither fully ADHD nor fully neurotypical. Also there will be incredibly neuro-atypical people on the opposite tail end of the bell curve with unusual, extraordinary focus and executive function, and it's really important not to confuse these people with the average neurotypicals in the middle of the distribution. TL;DR -- ADHD is not the opposite of neurotypical, and most neurotypicals will resonate with some aspects of ADHD, it's just a matter of degree.
Man, the more I learn about adhd I think that I have untreated adhd. I'm 28 currently struggling with depression and apparently screwing up everything I do. At least now I have a therapist to talk to already thanks to the depression. May update in the future
As a mature adult female just diagnosed with ADHD this is the first information I've found that explains what's going on in my brain concrete enough, succinct enough, and scientific enough for me to understand. Thank you so much! Ps. Please keep the neuroscience included!
On the love bombing guy, sure everyone goes through the honeymoon phase and then it wears off but with ADHD it tends to be cranked up to 11. On the boundaries thing I think he's basically trying achieve 2 things. 1 to avoid doing that thing where we basically hyperfocus on the new bf/gf, giving them 100% of our attention neglecting our other relationships, responsibilities, and even ourselves. 2 by restricting the amount of time we spend with them we may be able to sort of extend how long the novelty of the relationship lasts. I think the reason he says love bombing and then kinda corrects himself by saying well not actually love bombing is because the initial excessive interest in the new partner followed by a sudden, drastic (seemingly) disinterest can look like love bombing from the outside even though it's just that when it's new we have trouble with giving attention to anything else and then after the newness is gone we have trouble with giving attention to the person/relationship
Yes! NT people do experience many of our ADHD symptoms…and the difference that people seem to not understand is that for us is not a once in a while thing, but something that gets in the way constantly and every single day , so even with new friendships we can get very intense and then suddenly loose interest for no apparent reason
13:30 I just want to elaborate that yes people with ADHD do overthink about other people and sometimes that can lead to believing everybody hates us. It’s just rumination at its finest! When I have my ADHD medication these thoughts do definitely retract, I don’t focus on what possibly other people could think about me. Fear of rejection is just emotional dysregulation and rumination together, negative thoughts fuel our emotions and make us worry about things!
Well the thing with "object permanence" is, that that is the word that you can use that people are more likely to understand cause they know what babies are like. It's the example you use. But yeah, objects don't vanish from existence entirely. We still (often, but not always) know they technically exist. But as your attention is all over the place, it's like: A) they vanish out of context: - I cannot recall why I'm holding this or why I searched for this - I cannot recall where they are. I dropped them into an information flurry and don't know how to extract it back out of there (unless I know how to access body memory) - I cannot recall names, numbers, faces etc. I recall SOMETHING of the person before me but am missing half of the crucial identifiers because when I tried to remember them, I was in high stress and that stuff wasn't filed away in my brain in first place - I have people I know and love, but I constantly lose their context and forget what they told me about themselves even though I remember the stories themselves. B) They really do kind of stop existing: - I sometimes do not see things that are there even though I'm looking for them, cause I didn't memorise what they look like exactly OR mixed them with other objects and thus I oddly end up searching the wrong thing and can't find it before me. Like being sure it was a blue box and I search blue in the room but the bix is before me and black. I would have found it if I searched for "box shape" instead. - I do forget people who are important when I don't see them for a while. And then I look at my phone and go "OMG I haven't called my best friend in half a year. I forgot time exists and they exist cause I was focused elsewhere". And I promise myself to do better next time and it really doesn't work. Either they're "in my face" or "I'm kind of obsessing over them with hyperfocus" or it's..... that. So I taught them not to expect me and please poke me when they feel like it. It's like no time passed. And that oddly works! I also poke them out of nowhere when some external factor helps me remember how much time passed since I last heard of them.
In terms of the second tiktok, I think she was just using bad terminology to explain things that happen to them. She didn't mean object permanence, and meant something more along "out of sight out of mind". I have a similar issue with people, even people I care about. If I don't hear from them, I forget to say hi to them. I don't forget they exist, I just forget to keep in touch.
I absolutely agree, but unfortunately the use of the phrase object permanence has become extremely common within adhd communities and it really frustrates me because at this point we're spreading misinformation about our own disorder, while trying to spread awareness and understanding.
@@KiltedShepherd Wow, are you sure? If so, then that's a new one for me. But regardless the misuse the term 'object permanence' within ADHD communities is incredibly prevalent and still a problem. And if I misheard her here, I don't seem to be the only one.
Thank you for the great information! That object permanence trend regarding ADHD really irks me. We don't forget people exist. We are distracted by everything right in front of us and may forget to call someone back or say wish a happy birthday when there's a lot going on (most of the time), but we still think about people when they're not around. We know they exist. Saying we don't makes people think we don't care or think about them AT ALL when they're not around. It's also very contradictory to the rejection sensitive idea, because part of what makes the depressed person think people hate them is because they're obviously thinking of that person and overanalyzing interactions. It just tends to happen after the birthday has passed or when you can't call them back.
Object permanence is a term that is clearly defined in psychology but people use it casually without the actual definition so it's not quite correct but I feel this. I talk about and think about my friends all the time, but some of them live like 3 time zones away and I haven't talked to them for years. But they're still my best friend
I forget people exist much like how I forget about the vegetables in my fridge if I put them in the crisper drawer. I get the intention behind wanting to use the term object permanence because there is no better way to say "out of sight, out of mind."
I forget people exist! I’ll get a message from someone after a few months saying ‘haven’t heard from you since before Xmas!’ And I’m like ‘oh yeah, cool, I forgot I have this friend’
There's a growing number of things about Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria that always ties it to ADHD (not at a symptom or as inherent, but as a common feature). My figuring is that it's a more widespread phenomenon that just hasn't been interlinked with its other appearances yet. Between a fair bit of what I've read about it and (probably mostly) my own experience with it, my (absolutely non-professional) thought is that it's an amalgam of the emotional disregulation and an acquired social anxiety built around being "the problem child," "the gifted child" who doesn't know how else to have value as a person, the one who's always nagged for "not trying hard enough," etc (I don't know if that'd qualify as a C-PTSD kinda thing...?). There were also a couple things I stumbled across that could be playing a part in the general social struggles. One was about how people with aphantasia seem to process things like traumatic events, the loss of loved ones, etc, differently from others (since most humans rely so heavily on vision for so much) in a way that makes it seem more broken apart and extended out. The other indicated that folks with ADHD likely had a similar process and hypothesized that a lot of folks with ADHD likely shared other things with those with aphantasia as well.
On the rejection front, there's also more than just factors of ADHD leading to that separate problem. It also comes down to Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria. Since RSD is so common in ADHD (though this is still a new topic with limited research), a lot of people treat it as, "oh, this IS my ADHD" when in reality, it isn't. It's something that would be considered to have a high comorbidity with ADHD if it were to become an official diagnosis, not a diagnostic criteria FOR ADHD. But (back to the main point), RSD also leads that fear of rejection because of the intense emotional response you KNOW you will have to said rejection. Same sort of concept, it just often stems from RSD.
Absoulutely! I've also been thinking that it could also be partly influenced by the Emotional Dysregulation that a lot of people with ADHD struggle with.
A thought about the "love bombing" comment on the tiktok video. I think what he is referring to, is the part of ADHD that hyper-focuses on something that is giving them lots of dopamine which happens at the start of a new relationship. So an ADHD person will "love Bomb" or hyper-focus on the relationship. Then when the dopamine drops ADHD brains tend to stop paying attention to the relationship. To counter it, he suggests limiting the amount of exposer to the the relationship dopamine or in other words control the hyper-focus tendency in order to stretch out the dopamine for a longer period of time so you do not suddenly lose interest and therefore stop paying attention to the relationship. I used to call it the "bon-fire effect." You take in as much stimulation at the start that things quickly burn down and you are now bored and ready to move on to something more interesting.
I agree. The love-bombing dude might have done a poor job explaining himself, but I get what he's trying to say. He's just trying to explain the hyper-focus mind set as you said. But, I don't think it's an issue of being busier as he describes, but being distracted with other things that are shiny and new. This is basically the pattern for all things whether it be a job, a relationship or something else... I think it's the drastic shift from doing the most to doing the least that might be alarming.
Hearing him break down that one tiktok about friendships and relationships, especially his breakdown of fear of rejection, it makes me wonder what his thoughts are on things like rejection-sensitive dyphoria, which is apparently highly connected to adhd!!
There are research that says people with adhd experience much more criticisms and rejections in life that they have RSD (Environmental / parental factors). However, RSD is caused by their past experience, but not directly by adhd. While disorganization, Inattention, impulsivity, they are caused directly by the executive dysfunction (Biological / cognitive factors). As a result, while people with ADHD are likely to have RSD, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s due to the adhd itself.
I respect that there is some link here but there's a good reason to separate them. Another example is that there's a strong connection between obesity and adhd (increased prevelance by about 70%) due to impulse control and other factors. To say that ADHD causes obesity is kinda true but it's missing the point a little bit.
The “emotional permanence” thing seems to be a misstatement of the emotional *dysregulation* part of ADHD. When our frontal lobes are impaired it’s more difficult to manage our emotions - so yes, rejection-sensitive dysphoria and other effects are part and parcel of ADHD.
-I have the ADHD guide preordered, counting the days until it comes out!- Apparently it's out already, gonna check it out after work today! For a lot of common ADHD experiences like fear of rejection, a good way to think of it is as complications of an untreated condition. With a physical wound, if you don't treat it early it'll get infected. Then if you don't treat the infection it will cause further lasting issues. Same thing with brain conditions like ADHD and autism--if not addressed early, you get social rejection, which leads to low self esteem, which leads to anxiety/depression, etc, etc. Edit: About taking notes for conversations: do it. It may feel weird at first, but it makes SO much of a difference. And bonus, if you do it at work everyone will think you're just really dedicated to your work (even if really you're taking notes just so you can function).
#5 is kind of interesting. It sounds like he's equating the ADHD hyperfixation -> distracted cycle to the relationship honeymoon -> routine cycle. It's the same logic as people who think that bipolar people are moody. The disorder is about attention/mood, so any issues you have caused by attention/mood are related to the disorder. However in both cases, it's possible that you are bored/moody because of the same mechanisms that would cause a neurotypical person to become bored/moody.
6:00 I’ve always described the sensation of being on stimulant medication as “it doesn’t slow down your train of thought, it speeds up your ability to steer the train”. I’m glad to know that that’s accurate to what’s actually happening chemically!
So I was diagnosed with adhd when I was in third grade and now as a 36 year old adult, I am also diagnosed with generalized anxiety and major depression. Your videos have really helped me learn and understand a lot about myself
Always when hearing him talk about the common ADHD comorbidities i get a lot of memories of being dumb, misunderstood, pitied and thinking i was at fault for it all. And everytime it’s like an emotional realization that gets me sad, because how could i forget it’s not my fault? Like adults and teachers diddn’t have enough acceptance, patience or understanding, and now im doing the same to myself on a daily basis? It really does something to ones self confience.
I take notes in my head. Like how people can play mental chess by picturing the board, I picture a notepad or a typewriter (I'm old). I imagine writing it out and then "read" what I wrote. I used to sign to myself in ASL, but I have nerve damage in my dominant hand now.
Getting a correct diagnosis can be absolutely liberating. That being said it seems as though, during the current era, that a number of psychological conditions (personality disorders, adhd, and autism particularly) are being latched onto as identities and it's detrimental to the people immediately affected, those who love them and the psychological categories themselves. Be careful with yourselves and what aspects of self you put on a pedestal. Everything effects everything.
The thing I've noticed with a lot of these tiktok influencers is the moment they get thier ADHD diagnosis, they start attributing anything they feel is wrong with them to it.
I'm interested to hear what Dr.K think about Gabor Mates insight on ADHD - he basically defines ADHD as a coping mechanism to childhood trauma, where the more sensitive children can try and tune out of traumatic events - which works as a shorterm solution, but adulthood is a nightmare...
Thank youuuuu - I was thinking I was the only person that was realizing the overgeneralizing that was being done on very tiktok videos - This is coming from somebody who has ADHD as well! It just feels like it's being said as a "definitive ADHD thing" when in actuality, ADHD and really any symptom of any disorder, is prone to overlapping with symptoms of many other disorders. I feel like it can be a good thing to have more information on these kinds of topics, but we also don't want people self-diagnosing themselves when in actuality, it can be fairly difficult to find a direct diagnosis with something that can overlap a lot with other things.
"self-diagnosing themselves" Why do SO many people say this? That's like saying, "I took a selfie photo of myself." The term "self-diagnose" already means to "diagnose oneself." Adding "themselves" just makes it redundant because OF COURSE that's who they were diagnosing, there's no other person in existence that anyone CAN self-diagnose.
13:19 Years ago i was cleaning and organizing my room. I put my cigarettes away , where i could not see them. I totally forgot about them and was wondering why i was feeling so weird as if my body wants something but i didn't know whats going on with me. Thats how i stopped smoking. It was an accident. Lol. I dont know if that could be the adhd or sideeffects of my depression that made me really forgetful sometimes.?
I heard recently that problems with object permanence is why we forget things like something's cooking in the oven when we walk away to do something else. Or like when we forget to move the laundry from the washer to the dryer until we need something that is in the wash. But that's also just working memory stuff, I think.
I feel like sometimes my brain erases itself so getting in the zone is harder. I’m panicking thinking about what I need to do while simultaneously not knowing what to do but knowing that I know I know what to do. Then stress about the time I wasted not doing it. Then I get tired and take a nap. Eventually sleep becomes the easiest task.
Ive been listening to/reading a lot of different things on ADHD. Everything leads me to believe I had it undiagnosed since I was a child and I went on to become depressed in my teen years. I really want to try and see a psychologist or something but I'm just so afraid of being gaslit in to believing it's not ADHD because of the horror stories I've heard about cheap psychologists. Even as an adult I still completely relate to most situations, results, and symptoms of ADHD.
I appreciate your discussions on ADHD and I'm learning a lot about myself. You mention compensatory responsibility, and in my professional experiences I've felt a lot of importance on "group goals" and what you can bring to the table - and find myself getting stuck in this. I find it hard to remember my individual capacity in group based settings, especially when others have expectations of you and do not understand ADHD at all.
I had undiagnosed adhd as a kid, was diagnosed with depression mid 20's and diagnosed with adhd at age 39. When I was a kid, my mom "wondered" but I got good grades and hyperfocused while watching some tv and reading novels
I don't experience the loud brain but sometimes my thoughts can be too much and I struggle to sleep sometimes. My brain often goes blank short term memory non-existent sometime. when I have conversations I noticed that I talk too much and I tend to start having a few different conversations within one and then backtrack to what I was originally supposed to be talking about because I let my train of thought go off the rails
Yeah I think that's just the closest she knows to explaining what's happening. I understand what she's talking about because it's basically "out of sight, out of mind" and I have a huge problem with if something isn't in my direct view remembering that I need to do _____ with it etc hence setting constant reminders and notes in my calender
If I leave a pot on the stove and forget about it as soon as I leave the room then it does not exist to me until I see it again. It's not that you believe the pot disappeared. It's just that the pot has ceased to exist in my mind right?
I think this is really just working memory. You do think of your family and friends, you just don't get to hold them in your mind for long enough to follow up with them before something overwrites your working memory.
12:00 I find the emotional permanence concept to be really resonant! I understood it as a really loose grasp on ones understanding of the emotional security they have in a given relationship. I find it relates to rejection sensitive dysphoria because it’s an issue in one’s self talk based concept of the state of the given relationship. I’d love to hear your take in it!!
I’m a teacher, I also am diagnosed with ADHD. I work with young kids, and I have observed some that have exhibited symptoms that can be separated from the natural emotional state of children. I’m glad you touch on the statistics about the children in school with ADHD, I was one of them. I try my hardest to make all of my kids feel seen and loved. Everyone needs to learn how to go about the world in a way that works for them, and that’s what we need to teach kids.
It's... less object permanence, more that things get misfiled and then buried and until you find the file or see them again, it never crosses your mind. It is incredibly frustrating for all involved.
I was reading an article the other day that discussed the connection between Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria and ADHD, and, iirc, explained there is some push to include it as a diagnostic criteria of a new subset of ADHD.
Yeah I definitely think it's a common experience but they need to get enough evidence to show it is a unique and specific aspect of adhd before they can include it
it's more of an BPD symptom. for decades people (esp moms, former teachers, people who think they're authorities on kids but aren't medically trained) conflated autism spectrum, adhd & any number of personality disorder symptoms. there is some overlap, but there's more distinction between them. hopefully with folks like Dr. K educating &tons of free resources on the web, the next gen onward can move past blurring disorders together achieve better outcomes!
@@VeggieRice Yeah in my experience people with ADHD can experience a similar rejection sensitive dysphoria to what you would see in BPD, but it's because of the lack of emotional regulation combined with the trauma of being constantly rejected. They wouldn't all meet sufficient criteria for a BPD diagnosis though, despite that shared symptom. A lot of people with adhd have BPD as well but not all. We still don't know for sure if this symptom is a direct result of ADHD or just a common occurrence in it because of the emotional lability combined with frequent rejection. But you're of course correct that diagnostically a crippling fear of rejection is more associated with BPD.
I think what the 3rd tiktok was talking about with object permanence is something that people with ADHD do deal with, but it's a misnomer. It is instead object CONSTANCY, which (according to google) is "the ability to maintain a positive emotional bond with something even when distance and conflicts intrude."
The object permanence as an ADHD thing, so far as I know, started as a (somewhat poor, but comical) metaphor. When objects are not directly present in front of me I have a really hard time *remembering* they exist. And some things I will genuinely forget exist (oooh, I forgot I already owned herb scissors). This is the object impermanence people joke about. Bizarrely, this joke has lead to the misinformation that it is genuinely an object permanence problem.
So I find the thoughts in my brain get more disruptive with stress, not noise or lack of. I love noise. When it's quiet, I have to get my phone out and play a game.
As someone with ADHD my brain is like a radio that plays songs I know and I can't control it. Most of the time I hear nothing unless I have earbuds in.
God that working harder or more hours even though I'm not being lazy thing is so fkn weird. I can look back and think, "oh, that was because of undiagnosed/unmedicated ADHD" but it still doesn't make sense to me lol. Like I can almost believe it's actually because of a literal distortion ripping through time more than it's just ADHD 🤣
Object Permanence - Dr. K, I have severe ADHD and relate to the issue described in one girl's tiktok. I wouldn't consider Permanence to be an On/Off switch, as you describe, but a skill which needs trained and fleshed out. After a day or so of not being around someone, I just do not register their existence until something comes up which makes me think, if not directly about them, in their direction. Relationships become difficult because of this trait, not just in regards to remembering to hang out with someone, but due to forgetting what we were planning, critical information about that person, or if that's our sock or their favorite sock because we know it's a stupidly important sock but why is it important and why is my brain screaming to remember a sock? Social Relationships - Thank you, Dr. K, for so aptly boiling down how my mind works. Someone is being bullied, so I just start talking about Pokemon!! Yes, I'm taking this sardonically, and so will everyone who uses this against us "Weirdos". My brain was hyperfocused on an internal state, likely cognitively unaware of the social bullying going on nearby due to my own inner focus on that social rejection you were so happy to casually disregard, despite it being a driving force which makes my ADHD worse and could even be a symptom of the ADHD and something else that YOU'LL never get to the bottom of because of my "Weird Outburst" you disregarded. You should spend some time listening to the order of operations presented by the brain of your patient instead of deciding the ADHD caused the Rejection caused the Depression, because the reverse order is equally true and requires different treatment patterns. I find it frustrating how often you decree for others that an issue can't exist. Medicine is art, not hard and fast science, and you take things to extremes when we cry out that we have an issue. Could be conflated, but how are we going to know when the people who study and diagnose it refuse to listen when we describe a common frustration then slap it aside in the office when we tell them we're experiencing it. You made me excited to learn and study my mind before Dr. K, so stop making me wish others wanted to peek inside it every time I click on your ADHD and trauma videos. Your world view is too damn strict.
I have always have had ADHD, I am 32 now. I started to take meds for it 2 years ago, and the very first day of taking my first dose the marathon thoughts went QUIET! I cannot even explain how relieving this was and is!!!! Like the consistent thoughts alone is exhausting to deal with EVERYDAY! With the thoughts being quiet, I can now work through the tasks I am supposed to do on a daily basis without becoming burned out. ADHD can be crippling. I am thankful for medication because to legitimately have this it has severely helped in every aspect in my life ❤
I am 31 years old and was disappointed in 3rd grade with adhd. I have always had a fear of rejection way before I was ever introduced to depression, which met me in my mid to late twenties. I’m always alone and have no friends. I am learning so much about myself from your videos. Hopefully we can get me back in the right track because I’ve been losing friendships and relationships with people rapidly and I’m feeling like the people around me don’t want to be around me.
I didn't exactly feel like crying, but it was a real shock to find out that other people aren't constantly thinking about different things every few moments. I knew that the struggle of bringing my mind back to the thing I want to focus on was not normal, but I thought other people just have an easier time bringing their thoughts back.. Took me thirty years to find out that normies don't need to bring their thoughts back because they don't veer off... Sfuckin WEIRD. Hard to comprehend.
Everyone gets distracted sometimes or has to bring their thoughts back sometimes. Normies get distracted and daydream too--it's not like they have a laser focus at all times. It's just a matter of degree. ADHD is much more distractible but that doesn't mean that normies aren't distractible at all
In regard to object permanence it only affects certain things. I don't forget my car or fridge exists, but I do have 3 half sister who. 1 I don't have any contact with and the other 2 I see maybe once a year. I forget they exist and when someone talks about family or sibling I'll have a moment of revelation where I'm reminded that I have siblings too. I'm the same way that I forget to call my dad for weeks or months until they call me.
Hi everyone! this is my first time commenting here :) I just wanted to express some gratitude - thank you Dr. K! This past year I've been seeing a lot of ADHD content on social media, and although I found a lot of it relatable, I assumed it was just symptom overlap (was diagnosed with anxiety and depression back in 2018), so I never bothered looking into ADHD any further. After watching some of your videos on ADHD and hearing things explained better by a professional, I realized I related a bit *too* well to things... I was still hesitant and thought I was making things up, ended up doing a couple of self-evals and they all confirmed I should speak to a professional - so I decided to talk my therapist about everything I was experiencing and asked to get an evaluation for ADHD about 3 weeks ago, and she agreed I met the criteria! Basically had an emergency appointment with my psychiatrist a couple of days later - after going over everything I discussed with my therapist, he also agreed that I met the criteria and it could be ADHD. I was prescribed Concerta and my life has been changed ever since. It hasn't even been a full month but I feel like a fully functioning person for the first time in my life. I always felt like I was never in control of things, and I couldn't understand how people were doing so much. I didn't realize my thoughts could be this clear and that my brain could be so quiet and that I could feel this emotionally stable. I cried so much on the first day of the medication just from pure relief. My friends and family immediately noticed a change in me, and just being able to be a more stable person for the people I care about has been wonderful. My quality of life has drastically improved - and I would've never brought ADHD up with my therapist had it not been for your videos! So I just wanted to say thank you for your videos, and for being such a positive influence and providing such informative content. I know you might not see this, but I'm so thankful and I wish you all the best! :)
Loving all the deep explanations! I'm thankful to "TikTok" as it's how I even considered that I had ADHD, but since then I've wanted to truly understand how my brain works in order to find solutions. For example, I know that executive dysfunction causes me to procrastinate and so I keep trying to find solutions for that, but I never considered asking myself each time it happens if it's a matter of the task overwhelming me or my emotions. I'm glad I found this channel, thank you for sharing your knowledge!
"Object permanence" may not be the best term for it. I've yet to meet anyone who doesn't at least retain the idea that something continues to exist when not observed. But I'd argue that a lot of times, the only difference is that that knowledge prevents us from being utterly shocked when we see the thing again, and we don't have to observe a thing to remember it every so often. My experience with ADHD: Yes, I do frequently forget that people and things exist, or that events happened, until something suddenly brings whatever it is to mind again. I think it's... kinda just the normal thing of not perpetually having every single memory in mind simultaneously, and maybe just gets expanded on for us? Groceries is an easy example. I know I have groceries in the fridge. With a little effort, I can remember what at least some of them are. But I have to keep them in a spot where I can see them every time I open the fridge, or I'll randomly find rancid sludge that was once something edible that I paid money for and just sort of forgot I had until... rancid sludge. And I have to keep all my stuff in the same, constant space, or I'll completely lose track of what's mine and what belongs to a roommate. And yes, my mind process people the same way. I won't just lose track of how long it's been since I talked to someone. I can forget that person even exists. The memory is still there somewhere, just... not handy. Most of the time, it's not even in my mind that I have a mother. I just go about existing, and then something will randomly remind me "oh yeah, I have a mom." And even then, that concept usually will just exist as a label unless some more specific memory is brought up. I'm... suddenly baffled as to how I did so well on stuff like vocab quizzes back in school. Maybe I just need some sleep though....
I have often thought about carrying around a small notebook to write things down, but I didn't want to seem weird so I'm glad that you brought that up and also I love the way you explain things and I enjoy your teachings very well. You are great!
attending online classes at home having numerous distractions while having adhd (not sure, I'm self diagnosing, but I def relate to most of the people who have it) is sooooooo disorienting.
I think these shirts really demonstrate/your explanations how important it is to get evaluated rather than self diagnosing. I talked to my psychiatrist about the possibility of ADHD after seeing several memes/TikToks and she had me get evaluated. Turns out anxiety can mirror a lot of ADHD symptoms.
When i am not being stimulated it is worse, that's why i live listening to music and i can't, like CAN'T study without it or like, do anything (yeah cleaning the house is torture if i don't listen to music) 😀✌️
That thing where I try to use the external tools like calendars and shopping lists, but either forget to add the event/item in the first place, or forget to check later because “I did something about X already by adding it to my list” and then don’t think about it again. I feel like I’ve had the same original thought more than once multiple times
My brain is way louder when it's quiet. Hence, always listening to something. It's not like a thousand voices all at once for me, though. It's more like a radio dial that i can't control scanning thru the stations too fast trying to find good signal, so you only hear like a half second blip at a time. All my unhealthy coping mechanisms are desperate attempts to get it to STOP
What taught me to operationalize tasks is a classmate when I was studying computer programming. Retelling something his sister had told him, he said "Don't wait until you know how to do your program because then you will never start. Just start somewhere, anywhere. It doesn't matter where you start, just chip at it bit by bit and eventually you'll realize your program is done." That was one of the most important and impactful pieces of advice I have heard in my life. It identified and allowed me to tackle my 2 biggest sources of procrastination : My brain shutting down when feeling overwhelmed by a big task in front of me (thanks to this advice I taught my brain that putting my head down and chipping at it bit by bit lead to success without feeling overwhelmed) and not knowing how to start a task due to lack of knowledge (thanks to applying this advice, I realized that lack of knowledge is what prevented me from starting tasks a lot of the time). So I taught myself to consciously operationalize tasks by consciously identifying the block(s), then consciously thinking of what steps I could take to remove them. It sounds silly and obvious, but my mind doesn't automatically make these connections. It gets easier though.
I drive my family nuts with having to have things out and visible. This is a coping strategy, using visual cues to remind myself to use, or continue working on, things. I attribute this to having poor working memory, combined with being easily distracted, especially by novelty.
I probably have adhd and honestly never think that if I don’t see a friend he or she doesn’t exist anymore .i think of friends I don’t hear regularly often actually .
Definitely experienced “I can’t hear myself think” for the first time a couple months ago. Kids like to run around screaming and they managed to drown out my inner dialogues 😂
I noticed the second one more at my first concert. Everything felt louder than it actually was and my mind felt like it couldn't filter out sensory input to the point I felt paralyzed by it. Focusing on the performer was impossible and my mind felt like it was unsuccessfully trying to discern different inputs
I am sensitive to rejection because I've spent my life being rejected for appearing to be a bad friend/person. I isolate because it's easier than socializing, I'm late, which really infuriates people because they find it rude and disrespectful. I've ghosted all the people I've ever known, except for family. I was a social bunny til about 30 when I got married and started a family, I was quite literally the hub of our friend group. Now, I am alone all the time, I don't mind, as it's a relief to not be on alert constantly about my behavior. I have lots of hobbies and I love to read. I'm 64 in a few weeks, and I got diagnosed at 61.
Your content is vibrant and I'm thankful for having such an approachable starting point for a source of knowledge for one of my special interests: people and how they function. Since you don't shy away from citing studies and pointing out when you lack knowledge of something, it makes watching and learning from you all the more pleasurable and encourages me to keep on looking up more studies and research and read through them even if it's so detached from my obligations and therefore doing so has no direct purpose or impact on my life (other than trying to understand people and maybe make my daily life a bit less heavy and foggy). Thank you for your work, really. I've watched some other videos and they've been great so far. Wish there were doctors like you around here but I guess they'd be too expensive :(
Fear of rejection is mostly rather caused by family and school system making mistakes, because they didn't know about the diagnosis or weren't educated on how to help those kids
I think the whole object permanence is kind of a meme way of saying out-of-sight, out-of-mind. At least thats how its used in that one tumblr post where someones talking to their therapist like “i have no emotional object permanence, honey i have no idea how this past week went i remember nothing”
I had an ADHD therapist for my PTSD trauma. Talk about FRUSTRATING. It was like riding a bike in a swimming pool. We got NOWHERE!! Never felt heard. Got a new therapist.
Hey folks - Dr. K’s Healthy Gamer Coaching is a cutting-edge program tailored for the unique mental health needs of the internet generation. It can help with issues like lack of motivation, excessive procrastination, missing life purpose, repairing/building relationships, and more! Sessions start at just $30.
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I have ADHD and relate to a couple of the things you said you don't understand; i think the social issues like forgetting people when you don't see them for a while ( object permanence ? ), and concentrating too heavily on a partner where to it's hurting you ( love bombing ? ), might be symptoms of a similar but separate disorder from adhd. however im only diagnosed with adhd, so it's the only thing we have to blame; do you think that could be what's going on ?
I believe using words that don't quite fit such as object, permanence or love bombing is an attempt to self-describe something we never see discussed or explained
I often forget my brother and niece (who live in Georgia) exist so usually the only time I interact with them, if at all, is to send BuzzFeed quiz links to my niece cause we like to do them.
I'm sure there's a decent chance this will get lost in the sea of comments, but I wanted to point out that the volume of your voice in a lot (if not all) of your videos is noticeably lower than all other videos. When I watch HealthyGamerGG, it's not too much of a problem because I can just turn up the volume, but in this video, it is especially apparent as the tiktoks are either really loud, or you are really quiet. Hopefully you see this as I feel like, though it may not be a huge issue, it is somewhat of an annoyance.
Edit: so I'm a bit further in the video and heard how people in the chat were saying the tiktoks were too loud; I really think the issue is that your mic is too quiet. Try watching a different youtube video, then watch one of yours.
In my case, In addition to ADD, I have a hearing impairment and a seemingly ever growing list of medical issues. (Speaking of hearing issue's, could you record at a louder volume? 36 minutes is a long time to strain to hear what you have to say. I really do need and appreciate the information you are sharing. Anyway. . . )Trying to figure out what is causing which symptoms, it's a bit frustrating. I have had sooo many blood draws, 2 surgeries 3 biopsies, and
7 diagnosis in recent months of the things that, a couple were under the radar and undiagnosed, most problematic is I have had Celiacs for maybe 2 decades, I LOVE cracked wheat bread banana bread. . .all bread, croissants, muffins, cOOkies, pie, cake, soy sauce, pre shredded cheese.
Essentially, I have been starving on a full stomach. The lack of vitamins, iron, nutrition, has played hell on my body. It started blocking functions in my organs like my liver to the point my Dr. eere talking about putting me on the transplant list. It got really scary.
I know it has to do with the way my mind had been working, well, not working lately. Why my ADD, that haden't plagued me since highschool, started decimating my life. My body wasn't able to function proper. I had no energy. I never wanted to do anything. I was always tired and I couldn't focus or pay attention because my brain was starving too.
Thing is, when your like that, it's hard to do what you need to do to get help. Everybody outside thinks your fine because you have been masking your entire life. Why would I want some stranger up in my business. Is what you tell yourself. The real reason is, change sounded exhausting.
It was at first, but would encourage anyone feeling that low to find help. Your community may even offer help to find help. That's what I did when I realized, I didn't have a choice if I wanted to evere feel good again. I'm just getting there. I changed my diet the day I found out about the celiacs.(The freaking day before Thanksgiving. That was just mean.) I'm getting more done in a day than I would in 2 weeks before. I'm still fighting a lot of the old symptoms.brain fog, time paralysis. I have to write things down before I get up to remember where I'm going and what I'm going to get. Getting lost on my cell phone on the way to order gluten free cream of mushroom soup from amazon. Left foot. right foot. Repeat.
The whole "lacking object permanence" thing is a huge pet peeve of mine. Forgetting to contact someone or failing to think about them is not at all the same thing as thinking they've disappeared because you can't see them. I understand wanting to put a label on the "out of sight, out of mind" tendency of people with ADHD, but we need a better term for it. One that doesn't imply that our brains have not developed past infancy.
Yup I don’t know if there’s a term for it - the closest is “inattention.”
Yeah, seems like she is describing Borderline Personality Disorder, though it is correlated, almost all people with ADHD don't have those psychopatologies.
Edit: I was wrong.
If you listen to the tick tock she says "Object Pertinence"
Pertinence: the fact or quality of being directly and significantly related to the matter at hand; relevance
@@KiltedShepherd Oh, I thought it was a mispronunciation. Because people stating that they "lack object permanence" due to their ADHD is not uncommon on social media. I've seen it numerous times.
@@cheru_fishmonster honestly, I wasn't watching the video, just listening and browsing the comments. I went back and did see that the subtitles did say permanence, so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Though Object Pertinence, meaning object relevance does sound better than object permanence for a "out of sight, out of mind" term.
I like how Dr. K doesn't dunk on these Tik Tok kids, and merely points out what they got right/wrong. I can tell he knows how to bridge gaps between himself and others without alienating them.
I hope he teaches people that being on the internet doesn't mean having really binary opinions. On UA-cam there's this sentiment that "Tik Tok is the worst thing ever to happen to humanity- but UA-cam is amazing." It entirely depends on the person and content they consume.
@@Balloonbot I get your point but I believe youtube is better than tiktok overall for being a less addictive social media
@@deretti347 it's the same shit
Agreed. At the same time I'm concerned that a lot of these people can give the impression that they're completely informed which can then misinform others. I do wonder about the cost of tik tok.
@@Dimitris_Half my exact reaction lol
Even with ADHD sometimes my brain does go silent. However, noticing that immediately ruins it.
If you get proficient in meditating, the next moment it will be silent again, if you want
Yea I could be typing really well without messing up and then think "wow I am typing really well today" and then it is ruined.
@@ryanfnm7666 Play this mental game, Point at something, first thing that comes to mind, shout it out. The only rule is it cannot be WHAT the object you are pointing at is. Train your Brain to be comfortable being incorrect. Typing really well, Im Typing really well, Fuck now im not. IF You are afraid of typing incorrectly, face your fear of being incorrect!
Tru 🥲
It's like playing 'The Game' (I'm really showing my age here by mentioning this lol)
Exercise is one of the few things that can reliably silence my brain, because it allows me to focus on my body instead
I understand what the girl is talking about with the "friend permanence" thing. I don't forget they exist, but I'm just so focused on immediate stimuli that I just don't think about them much, even though I love and cherish them when I'm with them, and it's a source of shame and guilt sometimes. Also built into that is ADHD paralysis in regaining contact with people.
there is also something to be said about many people with adhd forgetting about things they cant directly see, like vegetables in the fridge draw, or a specific shirt in a dressor, etc
I also get her. I DO forget my friends 😭 I will literally forget my grandma exists for weeks at a time and when I do remember, I have horrific feelings of guilt and can't reach out to her. Same with friends
@@dcgamer1027 I have such horrible problems with this. Even my plate of food on my stand right next to me I'll forget about (even while starving) if it's not directly in my line of sight. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of my meals I've eaten cold.
@@Lady-Mara it's why I have a dozen alarms for random stuff, trick is making yourself actually do things when the alarm reminder goes off
@@dcgamer1027 1000% this! Lol
This is coming up in my therapy sessions now. These videos help me gather up my thoughts into coherent ideas. I'm so glad it isn't just me
9:23 I find it difficult to maintain relationships because if I don't interact with them regularly, I tend to forget about them in a way. It's not that I don't remember then or don’t want to interact with them, it just takes a lot of effort to maintain the necessary communication. Then after a while, I feel a lot of guilt and shame for not communicating and then I just slowly quietly distance myself.
Yep exactly
💯
The whole volume of thoughts with ADHD was so interesting and as someone with ADHD, really resonated. I often have something playing on my phone while I go to sleep. It helps my brain relax so to speak; to make my brain ready to sleep.
The more mildly entertaining videos the better
Same i always need to hear *something* almost anything works, unless its fun bc then i get hyped and sing along or something
I fall asleep watching lectures from Harvard (theyre on youtube for free). Gets a bit too interesting, sometimes, so it can distract me, but I usually need something distracting my brain anyways..
I fall asleep to beach wave sounds, if I start watching Netflix I'll be awake waaaaaaay too late cause I can't disengage 😆
Favourite sleeping pill is a movie I enjoy but have watched a dozen times haha.
The "Object Permanence" thing is an imperfect shorthand for the tendency of people with ADHD to be focused on people who are right there in front of you and sort of "forget" about the people who aren't... combined with a phenomena of "time blindness" where we end up not contacting loved ones for months and don't even realize that much time has passed.
Then, when a friend is back in your life, you sort of pick up the relationship right from where it left off as if you only just saw them the day prior.
There's not a term to describe this sort of feeling, AFAIK.
This is a year late but I’ve come to like the term object PERTINENCE. It’s doesn’t imply that we forget about others, but simply that our minds strongly prioritize those we’re in frequent face to face contact with. If I haven’t seen a friend in a week, but saw someone else twice, I might find myself continuously gravitating to that more recent person and unintentionally making my friend feel distanced when I fail to realize how long I had gone without contacting them.
This! I thought all my friends were like soooo good, we have the vibe etc that we just continue our communicattion from the moment we last communicated(eg, a month ago, couple of years ago). Maybe they just accept me for who i am and don't raise concerns straight to my face. Maybe their relationship with other people is different😅
my brain is def louder when things are too quiet. that’s why i always have some sort of background noise cause it drives me nuts!
You’re the first comment I read on this video, and you described perfectly what my head is like. It’s like brain tinnitus. The quiet makes me far too aware of my self. I only turn off sounds when I’m too externally stimulated. Photo walks let me focus that internal stimulus on an external goal. I don’t think I do “quiet” without some goal. Otherwise, I need background noise to do things and keep my brain in check.
Same !!!🤔😲👏🏼👏🏼 thank you for sharing !!! 🎉🎉
Yes! This is why I even though I love the convenience of working from home, I work better from the office
@@ATTACKofthe6STRINGS do you know if this is healthy for us though? Like I'm always keeping videos playing at home as I stay by myself, and most times I realise I wasn't even playing it to pay attention, it was more to quiet my mind in a weird way. I even keep UA-cam playing at night when I'm trying to sleep on a low volume. So I'm not very sure if this is a good way to manage that stimulation problem because sometimes I get much more peaceful sleep when I suddenly one night decide to not play anything and just try to close my eyes and put myself to sleep.
@@pranshulmalviyayes it's completely healthy! As long as you aren't doing things like self harm that's literally hurting you in order to get the right amount/kind of simulation. On the nights you don't put stuff on, that just means you've already got enough stimulation:)
I think for ADHD it's not cure but rather management. It's not an illness or a disease that will go away. It's your brain working differently. Like he said, adaptation.
My brain is way louder in low-stimulus environment so working at cafés helps me so much 👍
Me too! I love the instrumental music, the background and white noise, and the lighting while trying to work. However, once in a while when the cafe is overcrowded causing all the seats to be taken, it will be overwhelming as I will only hear their full conversations and lose focus which makes feel extremely irritated. On normal days when I can sit at a table thats further away from others, it’s really good,
My brain is loud in low stimulus environment, but then I get distracted in high stimulus environment. Now I just stay in a low stimulus environment with some music as an easily controllable source of stimuli.
I have to study outside or in cafes plus listening to brown noise with noise canceling headphones
Head still noisy
But better than nothing
funny ... loud is ok, but cafes isn'T for me as I'm unable to NOT listen to the conversations happening at the next table and I'm unable to focus only on my task then :-)
32:40 - As someone with ADHD who has trouble knowing how to voice my thoughts properly, I mess up a lot and word things in weird ways that, even as they come out, I realize that: "this is not what I'm trying to say."
I'm here to let you know that there's no shame in just going: "hang on, let me start over because I'm not getting this out right. Just give me a minute so I can gather my thoughts into something coherent," and like 9 times out of 10 people are more than happy to comply. Because just like how you don't wanna cause any misunderstandings by wording things weirdly, they don't usually want to misunderstand what you say either.
This happens to me all the time. I just notice myself, mid sentence, constructing a sentence that doesnt make any real gramatic sense (coherently its also of). I just find myself going ok..hold on...yeah..no..And then I formulate something. I always just thought it was "they way i talk", but Ive become more and more aware.
As a therapist, I always practiced pausing with my adhd kids. I do it myself too.... it's a tough impulse to control for most people. It can be uncomfortable to sit in silence so it causes you to fill it, so much so that 5 seconds feels like an eternity to a lot of people. it's always surprising how much more sense your words will make of your take a moment to breathe and think before you speak, but it just takes a bit of practice.
@@hkandm4s23 This really worked for me from time to time. I happened to do the exact same thing dr kim does when he says, "give me 5 seconds". But when someone asks a complicated question and I just stay silent, trying to gather my thoughts, my head sometimes really suddenly overflows and I can't think about anything other than that I am stalling about time. If I am comfortable with the person then it doesn't really happen, so I suspect it's anxiety
adhd is just' tuning out' it's a construction of the mind.
Often get distracted during a sentence, as I'm saying what's on my mind, I'm adding to it in my head, so constantly repeating stuff in a different way, hence, over explaining or pausing way to long.
I only started hearing the silence once I started to taking the pills.
Once I was able to just hear the silence on my brain was amazing.
It still is, I can just take a sec, and realize how quiet my brain is.
I tried adderall for this first time recently and I almost cried because I didn’t realize how silent my brain could be and that I could actually find peace sometimes from the constant 15 discussions going on in my head
@@xpeachypie4133 oh my God, I so miss that. I had that exact experience but the Adderall made me throw up. 😭 so I had to stop. My lord though was it a beautiful interal sound.
@@xpeachypie4133 I know right? Its funny how we normalize, I could not think for a second going back, in fact, I realized after I wrote this, that I was scared, because now it could be "real" ahah, oh well, glad you are having a good experience as well (:
@@hotarubinariko Awh man, that sucks, have you tried other medicine?
@@nicolassuazo4225 Yeah, I tried welbutrin. My doctor said that it's likely that stimulants in general would cause that problem since I was also having blood pressure side effects with it too.
I 100% understood the dude in the purple. He's really talking about how ADHD'rs need novelty. We have this new person, there is a challenge to when their attention, and everything is new and fresh and so we hyperfocus on the relationship. We go ALL in deep and want more and more and more. But then the new wears off and our normal adhd selves show up and we give something else our attention such as a new car, a new vacation... we still care about the person but they are no longer novel so we get distracted.
Yea thats what i was thinking. So it comes off love bomb-y
Yeah but what he's saying is to instead set the bar low in the beginning for the new relationship so that when it ends the inattention doesn't seem as bad. I think the better advice is no you don't want to love bomb but find ways to keep the relationship novel or explore new things with one another so that you remain attentive to the relationship and hopefully if everything else is good stay together.
He was wearing blue...
Everything else was on point though and the boundaries was about setting realistic expectations and behaviors that would be not overwhelming to the other person while also there being less likely to have a dopamine crash. I also think relationships require upkeep that includes adding new things to create that excitement again since it's new ways to bond together and new experiences.
@@jclyntoledo have you ever been tested for color blindness? That shirt is purple, close to blue but certainly purple 💜
@@Illumnia548 ... it is very much blue
As a person w/ ADHD, two of these tiktoks really pissed me off -- one bc I'm a cognitive scientist, & one bc I have a personal interest in the structures & tactics of cults.
RE the "object permanence" tiktok, I fully agree w/ Dr K's assessment that ppl w/ ADHD unequivocally have object permanence. ADHD def affects memory retention & recall, which can make ppl w/ ADHD v forgetful. But that's an entirely diff thing from object permanence. Lack of object permanence is what toddlers have. As an ADHD adult, I may forget where I left my phone when I put it down, but that doesn't mean I don't know it exists. Lack of object permanence is more than forgetting objects & ppl that aren't in immediate view; it's inability to know that they exist. The issues ADHD adults have are issues w/ *encoding* (properly committing a task or event or detail to memory) & *recall* (retrieving from memory something that was committed there). I may zone out & not pay proper attention to a personal detail & fail to encode it in memory, or I may be distracted at the moment of recall & fail to remember the detail, but that doesn't mean I'm not able to recognize that ppl have lives independent of mine that exist whether I'm present for the events thereof or not. ADHD doesn't make you a damn toddler.
The worse one is the use of "love-bombing" in the relationship one (cw for abuse discussion). Where the tiktok is correct is that ppl w/ ADHD respond more strongly to novelty than ppl w/o ADHD, & that can lead to a lot of excitement at the beginning of a relationship, that may deteriorate over time if not properly addressed. & it can def be painful to be on the receiving end of that relationship dynamic wjere a potential partner simply lost interest & didn't make the time for you. & if that has happened to you as an individual, I'm sorry. It's painful, & that pain has a space, & it ws bad of the person to treat you like that regardless of their ADHD.
Thing is, what I described above isn't love-bombing. "Love-bombing" is another academic term that tiktok has run w/ & generalized to mean any amt of intense, concentrated attention given to a person (see West Elm Caleb). Thing is, "love bombing" was coined to describe cult recruitment tactics whereby an entire cultic community will shower a potential target in praise while socially isolating the target from anyone who isn't in support of the target's membership in the cultic community. It is inherently a tactic of systematic abuse that requires a cultically-structured abusive community to be applicable (& communities can be abusive &/or employ cultic recruitment tactics w/o having a cultic structure). If describing the issues ADHD adults have w/ memory as "lack of object permanence" is infantilizing (which it is), then describing the increased interest ppl w/ ADHD take in new relationships as "love-bombing" (i.e. abuse) is outright dehumanizing.
Dr K was a hell of a lot more measured than I'd have been.
-- Michael-Giuliana
(they/them)
About the never getting positive attention (18:45), we can change that: I suspect that my son has ADHD and have started to compliment him on when he tries, when he perseveres, when he remembers things, looks at people, shows compassion... independent of the outcome - which in combination with other things seems to really have helped him, he is way less stressed and more open. And I think we could all benefit from that shift in focus, I know I would...
This is awesome! I think the fact that your son has a diagnosis and can learn coping methods and or has the ability to take meds helps. Untreated adhd or having a diagnosis and not being believed is probably what causes a lot of shame and rejection issues.
Wish I had a parent like you tbh, that's so awesome!
28:30 I think what hes referring to with "love bombing" is a form of hyper focus, I've found my hyper focus happens not only with Hobbies and things but with people too. that disregulation can cause a crash, cant keep that hyper focus forever, giving the significant other a good feeling of the person with adhd pushing away.
Hyperfixation, rather than hyperfocus. Hyperfocus is a temporary state, where hyperfixation is a more enduring obsession.
@@CatalogK9 yes! Thankyou, usually lasts about a month on my end
Yes, came here to say something similar. I definitely did this to my spouse without meaning to. Several years after being together he said he felt like I wasn't trying anymore and that I wasn't giving him the attention he got used to when we first started dating. I wasn't diagnosed until years later, so I had no idea I had done this or what I had done wrong. I felt very confused because my love for him had only grown since dating. But my hyperfixation had gone away. I know I've hurt friends this way too. And it feels like rejection when I fixate on a new person who doesn't want the same level of friendship that I do.
Well ok I want to chime in on the executive dysfunction / ADHD Paralysis bit. I noticed that you said that there's always a reason for the procrastination, but for me I don't have a conscious reasoning behind not getting things done. Instead it's like I'm trapped in my bed due to the comfort and warmth I get when I'm laying down, and the ability to get up and actually do things is EXTREMELY difficult. It's like trying to get out of the bathroom after a really hot shower, the cold air makes you hesitate, but it's MUCH WORSE for some reason. It's like I'm being held down by an invisible wall preventing me from getting up and doing things, until either hunger or the need to use the bathroom gets strong enough to snap me out of it.
My shower analogy fits perfectly with how my ADHD executive dysfunction presents itself. I love the warmth and comfort that comes from being comfortable, however the moment I need to forsake that comfort and warmth in order to get things done, it becomes extremely difficult.
totally agree!
Yeah I disagree with his take on executive dysfunction. I have executive dysfunction for stuff like going to pee. I need to pee, I want to pee, there's no reason why I dread peeing, but yet here I am, stuck in my chair, really needing to pee, but unable to get up to actually go pee.
Framing it as being procrastination instead of executive dysfunction and there being a conscious reasoning behind it is, despite how well he means, pretty damn ableist.
Omgthe shower thing, YES!!!!!!!! I have trouble with that SO MUCH
i always compared my executive dysfunction and ability to focus to a car stuck in neutral with no gear shift. the car is running, and i can press on the gas all i want but it's not getting me anywhere. i can get out and push and it'll take way more effort to get where i need to go and eventually i can get started, or sometimes i dont realize the parking brake is on or i'm going up an incline which wastes even more time. i can't walk because the car is needed for wherever i'm going, as crappy as it is. even for things i *want* to do, it can be a struggle to get started, especially for things that require a little more effort even though i know how to execute it. seriously sucks.
@@batfurs3001 Sounds to me like you think taking a piss is extremely boring so you avoid it (procrastination) until your bladder is so full the adrenaline starts to pump and you can't hold it in any longer and you run as fast as you can and piss as quickly as possible so you can quickly get back to something more stimulating that will give you a hit of sweet old dopamine. It's the lack of dopamine that hinders you from executing the task of "take a piss", so you procrastinate.
The last TikTok I presume he's talking about with ADHD there is often a difficulty with prioritization. With ADHD the main motivating factors are "does it captivate interest", "Is it new/novel", "does it challenge you", "does it have urgency". As a relationship continues on, you might see a decrease in those motivating factors which can lead to difficulty with prioritization and ultimately hurt a relationship. I don't know about "setting boundaries", but being able to discuss your needs/relationship accommodations goes a long way in ensuring that needs are met for everyone in a relationship.
As someone who spends a lot
of time in ADHD communities this whole object permanence thing is getting out of hand. I understand it can be a useful analogy to explain our symptoms but calling it object impermanence at this point is just misinformation. And for a group of people trying so hard to get the world to be better informed about our condition I really think we need to be more responsible with how we talk about these things.
25:10 As someone with ADHD myself, and having been in a relationship with someone with ADHD, I had no trouble following his reasoning. Here's how I'd lay out the message I believe he's trying to convey:
1) People with ADHD tend to be more obsessive, particularly with novel stimuli, than the general population. [1]
2) In a relationship, this can manifest as a huge initial burst of attention, affection, and effort directed towards the new partner.
3) As the novelty fades, internally the intensity of the love has not changed, but the stimulus (partner) no longer holds the attention as strongly.
4) The attention, affection, and effort (thus the "love") can then appear to be abruptly cutoff as the person with ADHD becomes focused on (or obsessed with) some other area of their life.
5) The partner - especially if they have experienced manipulation or love bombing in the past - may subjectively experience the initial burst followed by seemingly abrupt cutoff of "love" as "love bombing."
I think the guy explains it poorly because he is explaining it with very concrete examples of how it may have manifested in his own experiences, and so the abstract message (which I tried to lay out above) is getting garbled.
[1] "The link between ADHD-like inattention and obsessions and compulsions during treatment of youth with OCD" Guzick et al. 2017
^ This is a random paper I pulled from the line of research linking obsessive behaviours with ADHD. Feel free to search the literature for more.
Do you think dr k has adhd? cause he keep talking like he does maybe that’s why he has a hard time understanding simpleness of adhd that in all environments are ADHD effects us, whether it’s a relationship going outside, just wherever you go in the world, realistically that our Adhd does affect us every where in life.
This was very helpful.
My additional point would be that, once the novelty wears off and you go from giving a ton of attention to just your normal amount of attention (which lets be real is low if you have ADHD). It tends to be seen as you losing interest or have lost interest. So they think something is wrong or they did something wrong which can then lead to a break up.
This is what’s happened to every relationship I’ve been in. I was recently diagnosed with ADHD so I never had a good explanation for my partners. It sucks because I genuinely love them, so I end up with a completely broken heart and I feel stupid for messing it up simply by lacking communication.
I wish we could develop a term that wasn't object permanence to explain what is a common experience of ADHD is. Out of sight, out of mind is close.
Often, I am so stimulated by the things around me that I forget about what isn't in front of me. And it really does affect my relationships. My mother got so mad at me when I first went to college a decade ago because I didn't call home for four months. I didn't realize it was a problem.
its still object perminance, the better example is adults with dementia. They have some to nearly enough to be normal, but when they come up short you have problems.
So the love bombing one you were confused by, I actually kind of did what this guy's talking about with my now wife nearly 10 years ago.
I always said "I fall hard, and I fall fast". But I wanted to make sure that I wasn't going to set my wife up for false expectations on how intense I would be in a relationship long term. So I specifically set limits to kind of catch myself.
Examples:
No, I cannot let myself spend every waking moment with this person that I possibly can. We need time apart as well to make sure that we still function separately.
No, I cannot buy her a gift for the second time this week just "because i feel like it".
No, I cannot spend 14 hours talking to her, 4 days in a row.
By forcing myself to "slow down" it was basically me trying to prevent her from being a hyperfocus. I wanted to know for sure that I cared about her for her, and that those feelings would last years to come. I forced myself to hang out with other people, go to work, spend time with family, enjoy hobbies etc. When all my brain WANTED to do was do absolutely everything with her at every moment of every day. Even if that was just existing in the same space.
10 years later, I can safely say it worked.
Yep this made a lot of sense to me
Exactly! My daughter is diagnosed with adhd and she gets hyper focused on people, while I tend to focus on things or ideas. I have diagnoses of ASD and ADHD
I've been trying to regulate that myself, it's not easy. So good on you for managing it.
I was kind of surprised he didn't understand this one because in the ADHD groups I hear this one a lot.
In the second tiktok, the girl is just missing a step in the ADHD -> rejection sensitivity chain, like Dr. K said. It's the trauma caused by having ADHD. We all lived through things that made us feel ostracized; we're different but as a kid we didn't know why. We were traumatized by being told we weren't doing good enough or trying hard enough or always getting into trouble. Rejection sensitivity isn't fixed by ADHD meds because it's trauma. That takes therapy to fix.
I wish they would talk on how to prevent it. I felt this in my soul ~ it’s always been the worst feeling growing up & now with a kid who possibly has ADD I already have been told by her that her friends said they don’t want to play with her & it’s HURTS my soul to see my baby go through that. It’s even worse that i don’t know hips to fix it. ;(
I respect that there is some link here but there's a good reason to separate them. Another example is that there's a strong connection between obesity and adhd (increased prevelance by about 70%) due to impulse control and other factors. To say that ADHD causes obesity is kinda true but it's missing the point a little bit.
The tiktok about “love bombing” is really unclear but I know what the creator is trying to express.
In “love bombing”, a new romantic partner is deliberately showered with attention until suddenly the affection is reduced or cut off entirely. The driving intention is to manipulate.
ADHD people can display this same behavior unintentionally and hurt their new partner. The enthusiasm of an ADHD person at the beginning of a relationship mimics the manipulation technique of “love bombing”.
TLDR: ADHD people are extremely enthusiastic about new experiences, including relationships, but this will fade over time and the change can leave partners feeling upset. On the outside, this shift in behavior looks like “love bombing”.
My friend and i both have add.. and when we first became friends we got sooooo exited to the point that one of my friends shipped us💀💀💀💀 but then after a view weeks we both became more relaxed which was perfect because we still matched each others energy levels
Thats one of the only times I didn’t feel guilty being overly exited or “love bombing”
My partner and I both got SUPER focused on our relationship when it was new, and it was an adjustment for both of us learning to return to more normal and sustainable relationship!
so your saying that adhd people are inherently untrustworthy and manipulative, your racism is showing please cover it up better or you might find yourself attacked.
OH yes this explains it perfectly, because I was sometimes wondering if maybe I'm a narcissist because I do the love bombing thing, but it's not to manipulate the person into liking me, at least...Of course I want them to like me, but I am also excited and I'm being my best self in that phase and also want to convince the person that I'm worth sticking with because there's these moments of excitemennt where I can be a great and worthwhile partner, but I am also doing it because deep down I know the distracted less attentive partner will come out and might be not all that worthy...
Like, I use the boost of adhd excitement in the beginning, and it does come across as love bombing, but it's not really a narcissist thing, but some people nowadays will also become suspicious of that behaviour.
I think all the reasons above that people are using to qualify this use of the term "love bombing" is precisely why we SHOULDN'T be using it in this way, in the first place (and why I suspect doc was thrown off so deeply). Love bombing is an existing term that describes a very specific phenomenon--one with an incredibly negative connotation. The excitability of the honeymoon phase is also not in any way exclusive to ADHD people; you might consider ADHD people as maybe appearing to have a sharper drop-off in effort than neurotypicals... but I also think that's way too generalizing to associate with ADHD as a rule. We all end up compensating in different ways.
Regardless, we shouldn't be trying to recapture the term "love bombing" and associating it with ADHD 😆
Now that I heard you mentioned the birthday party example and immediately after pointed out teachers giving less positive attention, a vivid memory from when I was 6 popped into my mind: a friend’s mom came over to our classroom to give our first grade teacher invitations for the whole class (about 30 kids) to go to said friend’s birthday party at an amusement park, and the teacher flicking through them and giving mine back to her, telling her that I should not be invited because “I did not behave” in front of everyone and proceeding to hand every other kid their invitation while smugly staring at me. Then the following week all the kids that did go excitedly talking about the amazing time they had. Still feels shitty 23 years later and now I can see why.
Broooooooo! That sucks!
Wow that's terrible!
Omfg that's terrible of her. That's considered child abuse I think, right? To emotionally abuse a kid in front of his/her/their peers?
@@fluffyou9276It wouldn't be enough for child or emotional abuse. It is definitely unfair treatment.
The teacher doesn't get to decide which kids are invited to a private birthday party! When I was a kid, you invited your friends. I heard that many schools went to "If you have a party, you have to invite the whole class" which is bizarre. How does the school have the right to control what people do in their own homes outside of school? But this seems like the reverse of that! And also wrong.
I was diagnosed with ADHD since my teenage, spent my whole life fighting ADHD. I suffered severe depression and mental disorder. Not until my girlfriend recommended me to psilocybin mushrooms treatment. Psilocybin treatment saved my life honestly. 8 years totally clean. Never thought I would be saying this about mushrooms.
Can you help me with the reliable source 🙏. I'm 56 and have suffered for years with addiction, anxiety and severe ptsd, I got my panic attacks under control myself years ago and they have come back with a vengeance, I'm constantly trying to take full breaths but can't get the full satisfying breath out, it's absolutely crippling me, i live in Greece. I don't know much about these mushrooms. Really need a reliable source!! Can't wait to get them.
YES very sure of Dr.benfungi. I have the same experience with anxiety, depression, PTSD and addiction and Mushrooms definitely made a huge huge difference to why am clean today.
Mushrooms are very medicinal. This is why anybody familiar with psilocybin and any other kind of fungi will tell you, "They are alive." They have a very ancient wisdom. To my experience, all mushrooms have always said, "Pay attention to your life. How you think, how you feel, and what will you do with the information that you always knew, but now are seeing in this point of view." This is why mushrooms are so respected in tribal cultures. This mental health treatment works for me too. Half micro doses do the trick for me. At least a few days at a time with lengthy time in between. Thank you for sharing this point!
How do I reach out to him? Is he on insta
Does he make delivery across the country? Am here in Belgium 🇧🇪
I feel as though RSD may not be a part of the clinical criteria for ADHD but if you struggle with it, it’s a part of your ADHD experience AND it’s really helpful context to the emotional impact to ADHD that helps people to advocate for themselves when seeking medical care.
RSD is caused by traumatic social experiences which neurodivergent people are more prone to. So it's not criteria for ADHD or any other neurodivergence, it's more like a common comorbidity
I would consider it a comorbidity rather than a symptome. It's by no means a part of your adhd.
Right RSD isn't adhd, but if you have adhd you'll be invited to parties less and have RSD, like
The problem of a lot of ADHD tiktok etc is that they present ADHD vs neurotypical traits in a very black-and-white way. E.g. Some things are ADHD traits that neurotypical people "don't have." The truth is that if we graph attention and executive function on a bell curve, "ADHD" represents a slice of the tail end of the distribution, and where we slice it is somewhat arbitrary (basically at the "causes you disabling distress" level).
MOST people will identify with SOME of these ADHD traits. MOST people will understand the experiences being relayed and have at least a few examples from their life when they felt these ways. The difference between neurotypical and ADHD is a matter of intensity, frequency, and the extent to which these traits disable you. And because it is a spectrum with an arbitrary line drawn somewhere, there will be people clustered around that line who are neither fully ADHD nor fully neurotypical.
Also there will be incredibly neuro-atypical people on the opposite tail end of the bell curve with unusual, extraordinary focus and executive function, and it's really important not to confuse these people with the average neurotypicals in the middle of the distribution.
TL;DR -- ADHD is not the opposite of neurotypical, and most neurotypicals will resonate with some aspects of ADHD, it's just a matter of degree.
Man, the more I learn about adhd I think that I have untreated adhd. I'm 28 currently struggling with depression and apparently screwing up everything I do.
At least now I have a therapist to talk to already thanks to the depression. May update in the future
The section on ADHD at work really resonated with me. In fact I'm watching this at work right now! Appreciate your work Dr. K, I feel much more aware.
Totally not being sidetracked, right? 😁
Me too! But it helps me stay focused on a work
As a mature adult female just diagnosed with ADHD this is the first information I've found that explains what's going on in my brain concrete enough, succinct enough, and scientific enough for me to understand.
Thank you so much!
Ps. Please keep the neuroscience included!
Russell Barkley the best for ADHD information
but I love watching Dr K talk to people with ADHD such as "miskif"
On the love bombing guy, sure everyone goes through the honeymoon phase and then it wears off but with ADHD it tends to be cranked up to 11. On the boundaries thing I think he's basically trying achieve 2 things. 1 to avoid doing that thing where we basically hyperfocus on the new bf/gf, giving them 100% of our attention neglecting our other relationships, responsibilities, and even ourselves. 2 by restricting the amount of time we spend with them we may be able to sort of extend how long the novelty of the relationship lasts. I think the reason he says love bombing and then kinda corrects himself by saying well not actually love bombing is because the initial excessive interest in the new partner followed by a sudden, drastic (seemingly) disinterest can look like love bombing from the outside even though it's just that when it's new we have trouble with giving attention to anything else and then after the newness is gone we have trouble with giving attention to the person/relationship
Yes! NT people do experience many of our ADHD symptoms…and the difference that people seem to not understand is that for us is not a once in a while thing, but something that gets in the way constantly and every single day , so even with new friendships we can get very intense and then suddenly loose interest for no apparent reason
13:30 I just want to elaborate that yes people with ADHD do overthink about other people and sometimes that can lead to believing everybody hates us. It’s just rumination at its finest! When I have my ADHD medication these thoughts do definitely retract, I don’t focus on what possibly other people could think about me.
Fear of rejection is just emotional dysregulation and rumination together, negative thoughts fuel our emotions and make us worry about things!
Well the thing with "object permanence" is, that that is the word that you can use that people are more likely to understand cause they know what babies are like. It's the example you use. But yeah, objects don't vanish from existence entirely. We still (often, but not always) know they technically exist. But as your attention is all over the place, it's like:
A) they vanish out of context:
- I cannot recall why I'm holding this or why I searched for this
- I cannot recall where they are. I dropped them into an information flurry and don't know how to extract it back out of there (unless I know how to access body memory)
- I cannot recall names, numbers, faces etc. I recall SOMETHING of the person before me but am missing half of the crucial identifiers because when I tried to remember them, I was in high stress and that stuff wasn't filed away in my brain in first place
- I have people I know and love, but I constantly lose their context and forget what they told me about themselves even though I remember the stories themselves.
B) They really do kind of stop existing:
- I sometimes do not see things that are there even though I'm looking for them, cause I didn't memorise what they look like exactly OR mixed them with other objects and thus I oddly end up searching the wrong thing and can't find it before me. Like being sure it was a blue box and I search blue in the room but the bix is before me and black. I would have found it if I searched for "box shape" instead.
- I do forget people who are important when I don't see them for a while. And then I look at my phone and go "OMG I haven't called my best friend in half a year. I forgot time exists and they exist cause I was focused elsewhere". And I promise myself to do better next time and it really doesn't work. Either they're "in my face" or "I'm kind of obsessing over them with hyperfocus" or it's..... that. So I taught them not to expect me and please poke me when they feel like it. It's like no time passed. And that oddly works! I also poke them out of nowhere when some external factor helps me remember how much time passed since I last heard of them.
In terms of the second tiktok, I think she was just using bad terminology to explain things that happen to them. She didn't mean object permanence, and meant something more along "out of sight out of mind". I have a similar issue with people, even people I care about. If I don't hear from them, I forget to say hi to them. I don't forget they exist, I just forget to keep in touch.
I absolutely agree, but unfortunately the use of the phrase object permanence has become extremely common within adhd communities and it really frustrates me because at this point we're spreading misinformation about our own disorder, while trying to spread awareness and understanding.
@@outsidethewall8488 she doesn't say "object permanence" though, the says "Object Pertinence".
@@KiltedShepherd Wow, are you sure? If so, then that's a new one for me. But regardless the misuse the term 'object permanence' within ADHD communities is incredibly prevalent and still a problem. And if I misheard her here, I don't seem to be the only one.
@@outsidethewall8488 no, at this point I'm not sure. The subtitles say object permanence so she probably just said it wrong
@@KiltedShepherd Lol fair enough
Thank you for the great information! That object permanence trend regarding ADHD really irks me. We don't forget people exist. We are distracted by everything right in front of us and may forget to call someone back or say wish a happy birthday when there's a lot going on (most of the time), but we still think about people when they're not around. We know they exist. Saying we don't makes people think we don't care or think about them AT ALL when they're not around. It's also very contradictory to the rejection sensitive idea, because part of what makes the depressed person think people hate them is because they're obviously thinking of that person and overanalyzing interactions. It just tends to happen after the birthday has passed or when you can't call them back.
Object permanence is a term that is clearly defined in psychology but people use it casually without the actual definition so it's not quite correct but I feel this. I talk about and think about my friends all the time, but some of them live like 3 time zones away and I haven't talked to them for years. But they're still my best friend
I forget people exist much like how I forget about the vegetables in my fridge if I put them in the crisper drawer. I get the intention behind wanting to use the term object permanence because there is no better way to say "out of sight, out of mind."
I forget people exist! I’ll get a message from someone after a few months saying ‘haven’t heard from you since before Xmas!’ And I’m like ‘oh yeah, cool, I forgot I have this friend’
There's a growing number of things about Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria that always ties it to ADHD (not at a symptom or as inherent, but as a common feature). My figuring is that it's a more widespread phenomenon that just hasn't been interlinked with its other appearances yet. Between a fair bit of what I've read about it and (probably mostly) my own experience with it, my (absolutely non-professional) thought is that it's an amalgam of the emotional disregulation and an acquired social anxiety built around being "the problem child," "the gifted child" who doesn't know how else to have value as a person, the one who's always nagged for "not trying hard enough," etc (I don't know if that'd qualify as a C-PTSD kinda thing...?).
There were also a couple things I stumbled across that could be playing a part in the general social struggles. One was about how people with aphantasia seem to process things like traumatic events, the loss of loved ones, etc, differently from others (since most humans rely so heavily on vision for so much) in a way that makes it seem more broken apart and extended out. The other indicated that folks with ADHD likely had a similar process and hypothesized that a lot of folks with ADHD likely shared other things with those with aphantasia as well.
On the rejection front, there's also more than just factors of ADHD leading to that separate problem. It also comes down to Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria. Since RSD is so common in ADHD (though this is still a new topic with limited research), a lot of people treat it as, "oh, this IS my ADHD" when in reality, it isn't. It's something that would be considered to have a high comorbidity with ADHD if it were to become an official diagnosis, not a diagnostic criteria FOR ADHD. But (back to the main point), RSD also leads that fear of rejection because of the intense emotional response you KNOW you will have to said rejection. Same sort of concept, it just often stems from RSD.
Absoulutely! I've also been thinking that it could also be partly influenced by the Emotional Dysregulation that a lot of people with ADHD struggle with.
A thought about the "love bombing" comment on the tiktok video. I think what he is referring to, is the part of ADHD that hyper-focuses on something that is giving them lots of dopamine which happens at the start of a new relationship. So an ADHD person will "love Bomb" or hyper-focus on the relationship. Then when the dopamine drops ADHD brains tend to stop paying attention to the relationship. To counter it, he suggests limiting the amount of exposer to the the relationship dopamine or in other words control the hyper-focus tendency in order to stretch out the dopamine for a longer period of time so you do not suddenly lose interest and therefore stop paying attention to the relationship. I used to call it the "bon-fire effect." You take in as much stimulation at the start that things quickly burn down and you are now bored and ready to move on to something more interesting.
I agree. The love-bombing dude might have done a poor job explaining himself, but I get what he's trying to say. He's just trying to explain the hyper-focus mind set as you said. But, I don't think it's an issue of being busier as he describes, but being distracted with other things that are shiny and new. This is basically the pattern for all things whether it be a job, a relationship or something else... I think it's the drastic shift from doing the most to doing the least that might be alarming.
Hearing him break down that one tiktok about friendships and relationships, especially his breakdown of fear of rejection, it makes me wonder what his thoughts are on things like rejection-sensitive dyphoria, which is apparently highly connected to adhd!!
RSD is not a clinical thing so highly connected is a bit of a stretch.
There are research that says people with adhd experience much more criticisms and rejections in life that they have RSD (Environmental / parental factors). However, RSD is caused by their past experience, but not directly by adhd. While disorganization, Inattention, impulsivity, they are caused directly by the executive dysfunction (Biological / cognitive factors). As a result, while people with ADHD are likely to have RSD, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s due to the adhd itself.
I respect that there is some link here but there's a good reason to separate them. Another example is that there's a strong connection between obesity and adhd (increased prevelance by about 70%) due to impulse control and other factors. To say that ADHD causes obesity is kinda true but it's missing the point a little bit.
The “emotional permanence” thing seems to be a misstatement of the emotional *dysregulation* part of ADHD. When our frontal lobes are impaired it’s more difficult to manage our emotions - so yes, rejection-sensitive dysphoria and other effects are part and parcel of ADHD.
-I have the ADHD guide preordered, counting the days until it comes out!- Apparently it's out already, gonna check it out after work today!
For a lot of common ADHD experiences like fear of rejection, a good way to think of it is as complications of an untreated condition. With a physical wound, if you don't treat it early it'll get infected. Then if you don't treat the infection it will cause further lasting issues. Same thing with brain conditions like ADHD and autism--if not addressed early, you get social rejection, which leads to low self esteem, which leads to anxiety/depression, etc, etc.
Edit: About taking notes for conversations: do it. It may feel weird at first, but it makes SO much of a difference. And bonus, if you do it at work everyone will think you're just really dedicated to your work (even if really you're taking notes just so you can function).
The guide has come out.
the guide is out already my guy
Oh shit, nice! I never got an email or anything so I didn't know. Lol
let's go I love hiding desperate needed information from mentally ill people behind a paywall.
#5 is kind of interesting.
It sounds like he's equating the ADHD hyperfixation -> distracted cycle to the relationship honeymoon -> routine cycle. It's the same logic as people who think that bipolar people are moody. The disorder is about attention/mood, so any issues you have caused by attention/mood are related to the disorder.
However in both cases, it's possible that you are bored/moody because of the same mechanisms that would cause a neurotypical person to become bored/moody.
6:00 I’ve always described the sensation of being on stimulant medication as “it doesn’t slow down your train of thought, it speeds up your ability to steer the train”. I’m glad to know that that’s accurate to what’s actually happening chemically!
So I was diagnosed with adhd when I was in third grade and now as a 36 year old adult, I am also diagnosed with generalized anxiety and major depression. Your videos have really helped me learn and understand a lot about myself
Always when hearing him talk about the common ADHD comorbidities i get a lot of memories of being dumb, misunderstood, pitied and thinking i was at fault for it all.
And everytime it’s like an emotional realization that gets me sad, because how could i forget it’s not my fault?
Like adults and teachers diddn’t have enough acceptance, patience or understanding, and now im doing the same to myself on a daily basis? It really does something to ones self confience.
I take notes in my head.
Like how people can play mental chess by picturing the board, I picture a notepad or a typewriter (I'm old). I imagine writing it out and then "read" what I wrote.
I used to sign to myself in ASL, but I have nerve damage in my dominant hand now.
Look into synsesia
Getting a correct diagnosis can be absolutely liberating. That being said it seems as though, during the current era, that a number of psychological conditions (personality disorders, adhd, and autism particularly) are being latched onto as identities and it's detrimental to the people immediately affected, those who love them and the psychological categories themselves.
Be careful with yourselves and what aspects of self you put on a pedestal. Everything effects everything.
The thing I've noticed with a lot of these tiktok influencers is the moment they get thier ADHD diagnosis, they start attributing anything they feel is wrong with them to it.
I'm interested to hear what Dr.K think about Gabor Mates insight on ADHD - he basically defines ADHD as a coping mechanism to childhood trauma, where the more sensitive children can try and tune out of traumatic events - which works as a shorterm solution, but adulthood is a nightmare...
Thank youuuuu - I was thinking I was the only person that was realizing the overgeneralizing that was being done on very tiktok videos - This is coming from somebody who has ADHD as well! It just feels like it's being said as a "definitive ADHD thing" when in actuality, ADHD and really any symptom of any disorder, is prone to overlapping with symptoms of many other disorders. I feel like it can be a good thing to have more information on these kinds of topics, but we also don't want people self-diagnosing themselves when in actuality, it can be fairly difficult to find a direct diagnosis with something that can overlap a lot with other things.
"self-diagnosing themselves"
Why do SO many people say this? That's like saying, "I took a selfie photo of myself." The term "self-diagnose" already means to "diagnose oneself." Adding "themselves" just makes it redundant because OF COURSE that's who they were diagnosing, there's no other person in existence that anyone CAN self-diagnose.
13:19
Years ago i was cleaning and organizing my room. I put my cigarettes away , where i could not see them.
I totally forgot about them and was wondering why i was feeling so weird as if my body wants something but i didn't know whats going on with me.
Thats how i stopped smoking. It was an accident. Lol.
I dont know if that could be the adhd or sideeffects of my depression that made me really forgetful sometimes.?
Most "symptoms" people link to ADHD are actually results of trauma, that comes from growing up ADHD
I heard recently that problems with object permanence is why we forget things like something's cooking in the oven when we walk away to do something else. Or like when we forget to move the laundry from the washer to the dryer until we need something that is in the wash. But that's also just working memory stuff, I think.
I feel like sometimes my brain erases itself so getting in the zone is harder. I’m panicking thinking about what I need to do while simultaneously not knowing what to do but knowing that I know I know what to do. Then stress about the time I wasted not doing it. Then I get tired and take a nap. Eventually sleep becomes the easiest task.
Ive been listening to/reading a lot of different things on ADHD. Everything leads me to believe I had it undiagnosed since I was a child and I went on to become depressed in my teen years. I really want to try and see a psychologist or something but I'm just so afraid of being gaslit in to believing it's not ADHD because of the horror stories I've heard about cheap psychologists.
Even as an adult I still completely relate to most situations, results, and symptoms of ADHD.
I appreciate your discussions on ADHD and I'm learning a lot about myself. You mention compensatory responsibility, and in my professional experiences I've felt a lot of importance on "group goals" and what you can bring to the table - and find myself getting stuck in this. I find it hard to remember my individual capacity in group based settings, especially when others have expectations of you and do not understand ADHD at all.
I had undiagnosed adhd as a kid, was diagnosed with depression mid 20's and diagnosed with adhd at age 39. When I was a kid, my mom "wondered" but I got good grades and hyperfocused while watching some tv and reading novels
I don't experience the loud brain but sometimes my thoughts can be too much and I struggle to sleep sometimes. My brain often goes blank short term memory non-existent sometime. when I have conversations I noticed that I talk too much and I tend to start having a few different conversations within one and then backtrack to what I was originally supposed to be talking about because I let my train of thought go off the rails
Forgetting objects (or people) that you dont have in your area of vision does not mean lacking object permanence.
Yeah I think that's just the closest she knows to explaining what's happening. I understand what she's talking about because it's basically "out of sight, out of mind" and I have a huge problem with if something isn't in my direct view remembering that I need to do _____ with it etc hence setting constant reminders and notes in my calender
And yes this includes following up with people regularly etc, I just forget to check in on friends
If I leave a pot on the stove and forget about it as soon as I leave the room then it does not exist to me until I see it again.
It's not that you believe the pot disappeared. It's just that the pot has ceased to exist in my mind right?
@@fr3chill yeah definitely have boiled all my water away getting distracted into another task before
I think this is really just working memory. You do think of your family and friends, you just don't get to hold them in your mind for long enough to follow up with them before something overwrites your working memory.
12:00 I find the emotional permanence concept to be really resonant! I understood it as a really loose grasp on ones understanding of the emotional security they have in a given relationship. I find it relates to rejection sensitive dysphoria because it’s an issue in one’s self talk based concept of the state of the given relationship. I’d love to hear your take in it!!
I’m a teacher, I also am diagnosed with ADHD. I work with young kids, and I have observed some that have exhibited symptoms that can be separated from the natural emotional state of children.
I’m glad you touch on the statistics about the children in school with ADHD, I was one of them. I try my hardest to make all of my kids feel seen and loved. Everyone needs to learn how to go about the world in a way that works for them, and that’s what we need to teach kids.
It's... less object permanence, more that things get misfiled and then buried and until you find the file or see them again, it never crosses your mind. It is incredibly frustrating for all involved.
I was reading an article the other day that discussed the connection between Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria and ADHD, and, iirc, explained there is some push to include it as a diagnostic criteria of a new subset of ADHD.
Yeah I definitely think it's a common experience but they need to get enough evidence to show it is a unique and specific aspect of adhd before they can include it
it's more of an BPD symptom. for decades people (esp moms, former teachers, people who think they're authorities on kids but aren't medically trained) conflated autism spectrum, adhd & any number of personality disorder symptoms. there is some overlap, but there's more distinction between them. hopefully with folks like Dr. K educating &tons of free resources on the web, the next gen onward can move past blurring disorders together achieve better outcomes!
@@VeggieRice Yeah in my experience people with ADHD can experience a similar rejection sensitive dysphoria to what you would see in BPD, but it's because of the lack of emotional regulation combined with the trauma of being constantly rejected. They wouldn't all meet sufficient criteria for a BPD diagnosis though, despite that shared symptom. A lot of people with adhd have BPD as well but not all.
We still don't know for sure if this symptom is a direct result of ADHD or just a common occurrence in it because of the emotional lability combined with frequent rejection. But you're of course correct that diagnostically a crippling fear of rejection is more associated with BPD.
I think what the 3rd tiktok was talking about with object permanence is something that people with ADHD do deal with, but it's a misnomer. It is instead object CONSTANCY, which (according to google) is "the ability to maintain a positive emotional bond with something even when distance and conflicts intrude."
The object permanence as an ADHD thing, so far as I know, started as a (somewhat poor, but comical) metaphor.
When objects are not directly present in front of me I have a really hard time *remembering* they exist. And some things I will genuinely forget exist (oooh, I forgot I already owned herb scissors). This is the object impermanence people joke about.
Bizarrely, this joke has lead to the misinformation that it is genuinely an object permanence problem.
So I find the thoughts in my brain get more disruptive with stress, not noise or lack of. I love noise. When it's quiet, I have to get my phone out and play a game.
As someone with ADHD my brain is like a radio that plays songs I know and I can't control it. Most of the time I hear nothing unless I have earbuds in.
God that working harder or more hours even though I'm not being lazy thing is so fkn weird. I can look back and think, "oh, that was because of undiagnosed/unmedicated ADHD" but it still doesn't make sense to me lol. Like I can almost believe it's actually because of a literal distortion ripping through time more than it's just ADHD 🤣
Object Permanence - Dr. K, I have severe ADHD and relate to the issue described in one girl's tiktok. I wouldn't consider Permanence to be an On/Off switch, as you describe, but a skill which needs trained and fleshed out. After a day or so of not being around someone, I just do not register their existence until something comes up which makes me think, if not directly about them, in their direction. Relationships become difficult because of this trait, not just in regards to remembering to hang out with someone, but due to forgetting what we were planning, critical information about that person, or if that's our sock or their favorite sock because we know it's a stupidly important sock but why is it important and why is my brain screaming to remember a sock?
Social Relationships - Thank you, Dr. K, for so aptly boiling down how my mind works. Someone is being bullied, so I just start talking about Pokemon!! Yes, I'm taking this sardonically, and so will everyone who uses this against us "Weirdos". My brain was hyperfocused on an internal state, likely cognitively unaware of the social bullying going on nearby due to my own inner focus on that social rejection you were so happy to casually disregard, despite it being a driving force which makes my ADHD worse and could even be a symptom of the ADHD and something else that YOU'LL never get to the bottom of because of my "Weird Outburst" you disregarded. You should spend some time listening to the order of operations presented by the brain of your patient instead of deciding the ADHD caused the Rejection caused the Depression, because the reverse order is equally true and requires different treatment patterns.
I find it frustrating how often you decree for others that an issue can't exist. Medicine is art, not hard and fast science, and you take things to extremes when we cry out that we have an issue. Could be conflated, but how are we going to know when the people who study and diagnose it refuse to listen when we describe a common frustration then slap it aside in the office when we tell them we're experiencing it. You made me excited to learn and study my mind before Dr. K, so stop making me wish others wanted to peek inside it every time I click on your ADHD and trauma videos. Your world view is too damn strict.
I have always have had ADHD, I am 32 now. I started to take meds for it 2 years ago, and the very first day of taking my first dose the marathon thoughts went QUIET! I cannot even explain how relieving this was and is!!!! Like the consistent thoughts alone is exhausting to deal with EVERYDAY! With the thoughts being quiet, I can now work through the tasks I am supposed to do on a daily basis without becoming burned out. ADHD can be crippling. I am thankful for medication because to legitimately have this it has severely helped in every aspect in my life ❤
I am 31 years old and was disappointed in 3rd grade with adhd. I have always had a fear of rejection way before I was ever introduced to depression, which met me in my mid to late twenties. I’m always alone and have no friends. I am learning so much about myself from your videos. Hopefully we can get me back in the right track because I’ve been losing friendships and relationships with people rapidly and I’m feeling like the people around me don’t want to be around me.
I didn't exactly feel like crying, but it was a real shock to find out that other people aren't constantly thinking about different things every few moments. I knew that the struggle of bringing my mind back to the thing I want to focus on was not normal, but I thought other people just have an easier time bringing their thoughts back.. Took me thirty years to find out that normies don't need to bring their thoughts back because they don't veer off...
Sfuckin WEIRD. Hard to comprehend.
Everyone gets distracted sometimes or has to bring their thoughts back sometimes. Normies get distracted and daydream too--it's not like they have a laser focus at all times. It's just a matter of degree. ADHD is much more distractible but that doesn't mean that normies aren't distractible at all
In regard to object permanence it only affects certain things. I don't forget my car or fridge exists, but I do have 3 half sister who. 1 I don't have any contact with and the other 2 I see maybe once a year. I forget they exist and when someone talks about family or sibling I'll have a moment of revelation where I'm reminded that I have siblings too. I'm the same way that I forget to call my dad for weeks or months until they call me.
Hi everyone! this is my first time commenting here :) I just wanted to express some gratitude - thank you Dr. K! This past year I've been seeing a lot of ADHD content on social media, and although I found a lot of it relatable, I assumed it was just symptom overlap (was diagnosed with anxiety and depression back in 2018), so I never bothered looking into ADHD any further. After watching some of your videos on ADHD and hearing things explained better by a professional, I realized I related a bit *too* well to things... I was still hesitant and thought I was making things up, ended up doing a couple of self-evals and they all confirmed I should speak to a professional - so I decided to talk my therapist about everything I was experiencing and asked to get an evaluation for ADHD about 3 weeks ago, and she agreed I met the criteria!
Basically had an emergency appointment with my psychiatrist a couple of days later - after going over everything I discussed with my therapist, he also agreed that I met the criteria and it could be ADHD. I was prescribed Concerta and my life has been changed ever since. It hasn't even been a full month but I feel like a fully functioning person for the first time in my life. I always felt like I was never in control of things, and I couldn't understand how people were doing so much. I didn't realize my thoughts could be this clear and that my brain could be so quiet and that I could feel this emotionally stable.
I cried so much on the first day of the medication just from pure relief. My friends and family immediately noticed a change in me, and just being able to be a more stable person for the people I care about has been wonderful. My quality of life has drastically improved - and I would've never brought ADHD up with my therapist had it not been for your videos! So I just wanted to say thank you for your videos, and for being such a positive influence and providing such informative content. I know you might not see this, but I'm so thankful and I wish you all the best! :)
Loving all the deep explanations! I'm thankful to "TikTok" as it's how I even considered that I had ADHD, but since then I've wanted to truly understand how my brain works in order to find solutions. For example, I know that executive dysfunction causes me to procrastinate and so I keep trying to find solutions for that, but I never considered asking myself each time it happens if it's a matter of the task overwhelming me or my emotions. I'm glad I found this channel, thank you for sharing your knowledge!
"Object permanence" may not be the best term for it. I've yet to meet anyone who doesn't at least retain the idea that something continues to exist when not observed. But I'd argue that a lot of times, the only difference is that that knowledge prevents us from being utterly shocked when we see the thing again, and we don't have to observe a thing to remember it every so often.
My experience with ADHD: Yes, I do frequently forget that people and things exist, or that events happened, until something suddenly brings whatever it is to mind again. I think it's... kinda just the normal thing of not perpetually having every single memory in mind simultaneously, and maybe just gets expanded on for us? Groceries is an easy example. I know I have groceries in the fridge. With a little effort, I can remember what at least some of them are. But I have to keep them in a spot where I can see them every time I open the fridge, or I'll randomly find rancid sludge that was once something edible that I paid money for and just sort of forgot I had until... rancid sludge. And I have to keep all my stuff in the same, constant space, or I'll completely lose track of what's mine and what belongs to a roommate. And yes, my mind process people the same way. I won't just lose track of how long it's been since I talked to someone. I can forget that person even exists. The memory is still there somewhere, just... not handy. Most of the time, it's not even in my mind that I have a mother. I just go about existing, and then something will randomly remind me "oh yeah, I have a mom." And even then, that concept usually will just exist as a label unless some more specific memory is brought up. I'm... suddenly baffled as to how I did so well on stuff like vocab quizzes back in school. Maybe I just need some sleep though....
I have often thought about carrying around a small notebook to write things down, but I didn't want to seem weird so I'm glad that you brought that up and also I love the way you explain things and I enjoy your teachings very well. You are great!
I have ADD and my best friend has ADHD we used to keep a notebook for when we had conversations so we could go back and finish our thoughts
attending online classes at home having numerous distractions while having adhd (not sure, I'm self diagnosing, but I def relate to most of the people who have it) is sooooooo disorienting.
I think these shirts really demonstrate/your explanations how important it is to get evaluated rather than self diagnosing. I talked to my psychiatrist about the possibility of ADHD after seeing several memes/TikToks and she had me get evaluated. Turns out anxiety can mirror a lot of ADHD symptoms.
When i am not being stimulated it is worse, that's why i live listening to music and i can't, like CAN'T study without it or like, do anything (yeah cleaning the house is torture if i don't listen to music) 😀✌️
Something i like about Dr K. is how he uses math with vocabulary and concepts with zero numbers and i understand all of it.
That thing where I try to use the external tools like calendars and shopping lists, but either forget to add the event/item in the first place, or forget to check later because “I did something about X already by adding it to my list” and then don’t think about it again. I feel like I’ve had the same original thought more than once multiple times
yay, new Dr.K content. .. and it's adhd. double-jackpot !
My brain is way louder when it's quiet. Hence, always listening to something. It's not like a thousand voices all at once for me, though. It's more like a radio dial that i can't control scanning thru the stations too fast trying to find good signal, so you only hear like a half second blip at a time. All my unhealthy coping mechanisms are desperate attempts to get it to STOP
What taught me to operationalize tasks is a classmate when I was studying computer programming. Retelling something his sister had told him, he said "Don't wait until you know how to do your program because then you will never start. Just start somewhere, anywhere. It doesn't matter where you start, just chip at it bit by bit and eventually you'll realize your program is done." That was one of the most important and impactful pieces of advice I have heard in my life. It identified and allowed me to tackle my 2 biggest sources of procrastination : My brain shutting down when feeling overwhelmed by a big task in front of me (thanks to this advice I taught my brain that putting my head down and chipping at it bit by bit lead to success without feeling overwhelmed) and not knowing how to start a task due to lack of knowledge (thanks to applying this advice, I realized that lack of knowledge is what prevented me from starting tasks a lot of the time). So I taught myself to consciously operationalize tasks by consciously identifying the block(s), then consciously thinking of what steps I could take to remove them. It sounds silly and obvious, but my mind doesn't automatically make these connections. It gets easier though.
I drive my family nuts with having to have things out and visible. This is a coping strategy, using visual cues to remind myself to use, or continue working on, things. I attribute this to having poor working memory, combined with being easily distracted, especially by novelty.
I probably have adhd and honestly never think that if I don’t see a friend he or she doesn’t exist anymore .i think of friends I don’t hear regularly often actually .
Definitely experienced “I can’t hear myself think” for the first time a couple months ago. Kids like to run around screaming and they managed to drown out my inner dialogues 😂
I noticed the second one more at my first concert. Everything felt louder than it actually was and my mind felt like it couldn't filter out sensory input to the point I felt paralyzed by it. Focusing on the performer was impossible and my mind felt like it was unsuccessfully trying to discern different inputs
I am sensitive to rejection because I've spent my life being rejected for appearing to be a bad friend/person. I isolate because it's easier than socializing, I'm late, which really infuriates people because they find it rude and disrespectful. I've ghosted all the people I've ever known, except for family. I was a social bunny til about 30 when I got married and started a family, I was quite literally the hub of our friend group. Now, I am alone all the time, I don't mind, as it's a relief to not be on alert constantly about my behavior. I have lots of hobbies and I love to read. I'm 64 in a few weeks, and I got diagnosed at 61.
HealthyGamer never freaking miss like dam, I am so blessed for coming across you thank you ❤️
Your content is vibrant and I'm thankful for having such an approachable starting point for a source of knowledge for one of my special interests: people and how they function. Since you don't shy away from citing studies and pointing out when you lack knowledge of something, it makes watching and learning from you all the more pleasurable and encourages me to keep on looking up more studies and research and read through them even if it's so detached from my obligations and therefore doing so has no direct purpose or impact on my life (other than trying to understand people and maybe make my daily life a bit less heavy and foggy). Thank you for your work, really. I've watched some other videos and they've been great so far. Wish there were doctors like you around here but I guess they'd be too expensive :(
Fear of rejection is mostly rather caused by family and school system making mistakes, because they didn't know about the diagnosis or weren't educated on how to help those kids
Bruh Dr. K's face while watching the second tik tok sent me to the moon 😂
I think the whole object permanence is kind of a meme way of saying out-of-sight, out-of-mind. At least thats how its used in that one tumblr post where someones talking to their therapist like “i have no emotional object permanence, honey i have no idea how this past week went i remember nothing”
I dont remember 90% of my Life i feel you
I had an ADHD therapist for my PTSD trauma. Talk about FRUSTRATING. It was like riding a bike in a swimming pool. We got NOWHERE!! Never felt heard. Got a new therapist.
1:22 😂 my only thought at this segment was “silence is my stimulator” appreciate the question bit. Tiktokers and reality differ greatly