ADHD feels like you stop maturing at a point in life but your body continues to grow. My maturity seems to have stopped at 14 year old. Opening up conversations with my Father, and sister who also have the "gift" I am trying to learn more to help others at this point.
Gift or Curse - NEITHER, if diagnosed. But so long as undiagnosed, definitely a CURSE. I’m 61, just found out. Gifted child so my symptoms went unnoticed. Impaired adult. Succeeded in many ways despite the impairments via workarounds that I intuitively invented or practiced. But knowledge is power, and I spent 60 years asking myself, WTF is wrong with me? So many times I self sabotaged. Ugh. Now that I know, I know, and I’m already better functioning with meds and talk therapy.
Totally agree. I think my dad is AuDHD and gifted, but in denial (or with anosognosia, unable to understand it) and it's definetly a curse. Glad you found out and progressing now.
41, found out AuDHD at 40. The only reasons I am as successful as I am today is due to the structure the military provided my entire adult life. Being Gifted got me through childhood. Getting diagnosed felt like getting the Rosetta Stone for "WTF is wrong with me". I wept, like full on sobbing when the meds started working. Everything was just SO EASY. I loved and hated it. Hard agree, ADHD is not a Gift or Curse if diagnosed AND treated. Without knowing AND treating it, a fucking CURSE.
I think it’s both, but as a 25 year old, the gift feels more like a party trick that got old, whereas the curse part is something that only recently came into focus since my diagnosis (3 years ago). I’m mostly focused on coming to terms with what happened during my childhood and teen years and how to better myself, and if I want to better myself for me or for the people that say that I have to. It’s a lot of thinking work, yeah ADHD is a struggle but it would be manageable if your environment didn’t make you hate every atom of yourself since the day you were born. Now it’s an unintelligible web of disorders, behaviors and patterns, which I can finally begin to untangle since I got my meds. It sucks really bad, but every now and then I come to a little realization that makes me feel a little less shit about myself. It’s like I’ve been reborn, but under the condition that I have some massive past-life emotional baggage to unpack
The curse for me is living decades without knowing it's ADHD, not knowing why I'm feeling wrong, not knowing I'm not wrong, developing early social anxiety, seeking help from professionals over 8 years without them having any knowledge about ADHD in adults, my perseption was declard as invalid, me as human beeing was declared as invalid.
There are glimmers, some positivity in my life and from the outside looks fine. I have a good career, but my personal life is less than what I want. I try to make the best of it but overall it is hard, isolating and I find day to day life difficult.
ADHD is NOT awesome or any kind of gift, at least not for women. I get very mad when ADHD people say it's a superpower, that we're more creative and all that sort of stuff. I don't know about his personal life but my guess is that Hallowell has a wife or life partner who takes care of him by taking on domestic labor and mental load that is very difficult for ppl with ADHD. Women with ADHD don't have that same luxury! We are still expected to take on mental load and do the mundane domestic labor and organizational tasks.
I'm very curious if we would truly diagnose and treat much of the 5-7% of the population with ADHD where would it leave society? That would mean a lot less accidents, financial loss, etc. I think this amount of change would be highly visible in crime statistics and economics.
Thank you for this video🙏🏻 I would add to the management part the importance of dietary interventions, such as inclusion of nutrients, for instance, Omega-3 fatty acids, and elimination of excitatory substances, for instance, added sugar, MSG and stimulants. This topic is often underestimated, when it should be prioritised.
I'm on the curse side. My disorder is worse with perimenopause- to the extreme. I'd rather not have spent most of my life struggling just to exist. EDIT: spelling.
I'm really enjoying this. I coach ADHD adults and often introduce clients to both of your work, with a view to seeing different perspectives from people who agree on the science, and to relate and translate what makes sense for them. Quick question though, did Ed Hallowell have anything to do with "ADHD is awesome"? I've seen, not read, the book but didn't see him listed as authour? For me, I think that title is out of order and unhelpful. Many with ADHD could simply read that title and start to wonder where their superpowers are, fueling the negative self concept. I have ADHD myself and it took me many years to get control, which I did after a decade post-diagnosis. Both Ed and yourself helped greatly, in particular making is clear you must be a student of your ADHD and all the content you produce along with your research. Thanks for this, it's a conversation i often have and I'm actively against labelling ADHD as an absolute gift or superpower, likewise it doesn't have to be a curse either.
I think the phenomenon of calling ADHD superpower and such things has to do with a seeking of novelty. We have a term for when good comes out of bad, silver lining. But when we ADHD'ers see the same thing again and again it becomes boring and must be made new and exciting.
I don’t know if he had any involvement with the book but he is quoted several times throughout it. I concur that the title of that book is a real problem.
It's a curse, just considering what elementary, middle, and high school was like for me. I did not have a very happy childhood *understatement*. I was diagnosed about 39 years and 11 months ago, in 2nd grade. It also came with DCD and LD, further adding to the fun and games. I barely graduated high school (stopped medication for ADHD in 8th grade, maybe that's why? I actually got on the "B" honor roll a couple of times when I was taking Ritalin...). To this day I tie my shoes with the bunny-ear method because that's the only way I could learn it. At least I was smart enough to not be a complete failure at life. Though it looks like I'll be unemployed in about a month unless something changes at work. One thing that IS a gift, in a strange way, is anhedonia. I don't have the money problems that many folks with ADHD have because I have such a pessimistic view of my ability to stay employed AND I get no pleasure out of spending money. So I'm very very good at saving money, which means I have a nice reserve I can fall back on if I cannot find another job. I'm not hopeful that I can find another job anytime soon.
Everytime this series shows up in my feed while scrolling, I read it as Halloween vs Barkley and I am kind of confused to not see Michael, Jason or Freddy on the thumbnail
Hello, Dr. Barkley! I've watched many of the videos on your channel and I enjoy them a lot. In your video on time blindness you mention a time reproduction test that you administered to ADHD children for a study. I wrote a program to simulate such a test for myself and I was shocked at how bad I was at reproducing the time intervals. Forgive me if this is an obvious question, but one is not supposed to count to oneself during the test, correct?
I'd like to hear more about this Dr Barkley. That could be a really cool test to try (and I'm not saying diagnostically, more so that it would be cool for me to test if I'm wildly out of time as I keep burning my pots and pans)
We did not impose any restrictions on what they did while waiting for the interval to elapse. The greatest problem was not in telling us verbally how long the interval was but in reproducing that same interval length by turning on their own light bulb.
Thanks for all your great work, I have an unrelated question (maybe for an upcoming video if you find it interesting): Is there any negative effect of having high vitamin c (supplements/food) alongside ADHD medication? I see it mentioned quite a bit online, from people saying their psychiatrist told them, to educational ADHD sites. I'd love to know if there's any real evidence.
Me too. Since hearing about it, I take my multivitamin a few hours after my ADHD medication. Also, I drink ginger/lemon water once or twice a day. Is that compromising my ADHD meds? Thanks, Dr Russ!
From what I've seen debunking this, the effects of vitamin C on ADHD meds depend hugely on not just the type of medication (methylphenidate, lisdexamfetamine etc) but also the brand. In essence, vitamin C has more of an effect on the delivery mechanism (the compounds used for the metabolism of the medication in the body) than the actual medication itself. It also varies from person to person, and if there is an impact on the effects of the medication it's extremely slight - sometimes the length of time the medication is in the blood stream is increased (by an hour at most), sometimes it's reduced, but essentially the impact is barely noticeable if there is one and there are far more significant factors than vitamin C in their effects on these medications.
Yes - Vitamin C increases stomach acidity, reducing the amount of medication that’s absorbed by the body. It’s best to avoid drinking anything containing Vitamin C right before/after taking medication including, but not limited to, Adderall for this reason.
Does undiagnosed ADHD lead to BPD/NPD? Or is it completely different? The symptoms are so overlapping and confusing. An adult ADHD is definitely a curse.
Anecdotally (only diagnosed ADHD and depression fwiw), it seems like it is more a misdiagnosis of ADHD, especially in women, rather than it leading to it. That the swings in mood, attention, and energy levels might be interpreted as BPD, as it feels like BPD is stereotypically more associated with women/girls and ADHD with men/boys.
For my understanding ADHD can make especially young children more prone to trauma. They can't cope with relatively minor experiences (compared to the average non ADHD child). ND children are also more likely to experience childhood abuse. If there is a genetic predisposition in the family, I would argue this can lead to a higher probability of developing PDs.
All I keep hearing is "ADHD is an issue with executive functioning" and I don't understand what the CEO or Managing Director has to do with me losing track of time, or my keys.
To make a simplifying metaphor if the “manager” of your brain is constantly switching directives and losing records of meetings then the company might struggle to reach its goals. When you lose your keys or whatever it’s because the part of your brain taking notes isn’t recording them well and the “manager” makes it worse by having the meeting focused on a lot of disparate topics.
My therapist friend explains executive functions like the characters from Inside Out but they are in business suits.....except with adhd they are asleep on the job a lot of the time
Oh its turning out to be a gift. Id never not want to have it now that i know my self. I can notice patterns that other people can't. I am more Situationally aware of my surroundings
ADHD feels like you stop maturing at a point in life but your body continues to grow. My maturity seems to have stopped at 14 year old. Opening up conversations with my Father, and sister who also have the "gift" I am trying to learn more to help others at this point.
Gift or Curse - NEITHER, if diagnosed. But so long as undiagnosed, definitely a CURSE. I’m 61, just found out. Gifted child so my symptoms went unnoticed. Impaired adult. Succeeded in many ways despite the impairments via workarounds that I intuitively invented or practiced. But knowledge is power, and I spent 60 years asking myself, WTF is wrong with me? So many times I self sabotaged. Ugh. Now that I know, I know, and I’m already better functioning with meds and talk therapy.
same with me, found out at 50
Totally agree. I think my dad is AuDHD and gifted, but in denial (or with anosognosia, unable to understand it) and it's definetly a curse.
Glad you found out and progressing now.
41, found out AuDHD at 40. The only reasons I am as successful as I am today is due to the structure the military provided my entire adult life. Being Gifted got me through childhood. Getting diagnosed felt like getting the Rosetta Stone for "WTF is wrong with me". I wept, like full on sobbing when the meds started working. Everything was just SO EASY. I loved and hated it.
Hard agree, ADHD is not a Gift or Curse if diagnosed AND treated. Without knowing AND treating it, a fucking CURSE.
I think it’s both, but as a 25 year old, the gift feels more like a party trick that got old, whereas the curse part is something that only recently came into focus since my diagnosis (3 years ago). I’m mostly focused on coming to terms with what happened during my childhood and teen years and how to better myself, and if I want to better myself for me or for the people that say that I have to. It’s a lot of thinking work, yeah ADHD is a struggle but it would be manageable if your environment didn’t make you hate every atom of yourself since the day you were born. Now it’s an unintelligible web of disorders, behaviors and patterns, which I can finally begin to untangle since I got my meds. It sucks really bad, but every now and then I come to a little realization that makes me feel a little less shit about myself.
It’s like I’ve been reborn, but under the condition that I have some massive past-life emotional baggage to unpack
You guys are a God’s gift to science and ADHD research! ❤
The curse for me is living decades without knowing it's ADHD, not knowing why I'm feeling wrong, not knowing I'm not wrong, developing early social anxiety, seeking help from professionals over 8 years without them having any knowledge about ADHD in adults, my perseption was declard as invalid, me as human beeing was declared as invalid.
There are glimmers, some positivity in my life and from the outside looks fine. I have a good career, but my personal life is less than what I want. I try to make the best of it but overall it is hard, isolating and I find day to day life difficult.
ADHD is NOT awesome or any kind of gift, at least not for women. I get very mad when ADHD people say it's a superpower, that we're more creative and all that sort of stuff. I don't know about his personal life but my guess is that Hallowell has a wife or life partner who takes care of him by taking on domestic labor and mental load that is very difficult for ppl with ADHD. Women with ADHD don't have that same luxury! We are still expected to take on mental load and do the mundane domestic labor and organizational tasks.
Thank you from Egypt.
I'm very curious if we would truly diagnose and treat much of the 5-7% of the population with ADHD where would it leave society? That would mean a lot less accidents, financial loss, etc. I think this amount of change would be highly visible in crime statistics and economics.
As usual, thank you so much Dr Russell. Your talks are fantastic.
Thank you for this video🙏🏻 I would add to the management part the importance of dietary interventions, such as inclusion of nutrients, for instance, Omega-3 fatty acids, and elimination of excitatory substances, for instance, added sugar, MSG and stimulants. This topic is often underestimated, when it should be prioritised.
I'm on the curse side. My disorder is worse with perimenopause- to the extreme. I'd rather not have spent most of my life struggling just to exist.
EDIT: spelling.
I'm really enjoying this. I coach ADHD adults and often introduce clients to both of your work, with a view to seeing different perspectives from people who agree on the science, and to relate and translate what makes sense for them.
Quick question though, did Ed Hallowell have anything to do with "ADHD is awesome"? I've seen, not read, the book but didn't see him listed as authour?
For me, I think that title is out of order and unhelpful. Many with ADHD could simply read that title and start to wonder where their superpowers are, fueling the negative self concept. I have ADHD myself and it took me many years to get control, which I did after a decade post-diagnosis. Both Ed and yourself helped greatly, in particular making is clear you must be a student of your ADHD and all the content you produce along with your research.
Thanks for this, it's a conversation i often have and I'm actively against labelling ADHD as an absolute gift or superpower, likewise it doesn't have to be a curse either.
I think the phenomenon of calling ADHD superpower and such things has to do with a seeking of novelty. We have a term for when good comes out of bad, silver lining. But when we ADHD'ers see the same thing again and again it becomes boring and must be made new and exciting.
I don’t know if he had any involvement with the book but he is quoted several times throughout it. I concur that the title of that book is a real problem.
A curse, I have missed so many opportunities and sabotaged myself too many timesto count.
It's a curse, just considering what elementary, middle, and high school was like for me. I did not have a very happy childhood *understatement*. I was diagnosed about 39 years and 11 months ago, in 2nd grade. It also came with DCD and LD, further adding to the fun and games. I barely graduated high school (stopped medication for ADHD in 8th grade, maybe that's why? I actually got on the "B" honor roll a couple of times when I was taking Ritalin...). To this day I tie my shoes with the bunny-ear method because that's the only way I could learn it. At least I was smart enough to not be a complete failure at life. Though it looks like I'll be unemployed in about a month unless something changes at work. One thing that IS a gift, in a strange way, is anhedonia. I don't have the money problems that many folks with ADHD have because I have such a pessimistic view of my ability to stay employed AND I get no pleasure out of spending money. So I'm very very good at saving money, which means I have a nice reserve I can fall back on if I cannot find another job. I'm not hopeful that I can find another job anytime soon.
Everytime this series shows up in my feed while scrolling, I read it as Halloween vs Barkley and I am kind of confused to not see Michael, Jason or Freddy on the thumbnail
Thank you Russ! :)
Thank you
Hello, Dr. Barkley! I've watched many of the videos on your channel and I enjoy them a lot. In your video on time blindness you mention a time reproduction test that you administered to ADHD children for a study. I wrote a program to simulate such a test for myself and I was shocked at how bad I was at reproducing the time intervals. Forgive me if this is an obvious question, but one is not supposed to count to oneself during the test, correct?
I'd like to hear more about this Dr Barkley. That could be a really cool test to try (and I'm not saying diagnostically, more so that it would be cool for me to test if I'm wildly out of time as I keep burning my pots and pans)
We did not impose any restrictions on what they did while waiting for the interval to elapse. The greatest problem was not in telling us verbally how long the interval was but in reproducing that same interval length by turning on their own light bulb.
Thanks for all your great work, I have an unrelated question (maybe for an upcoming video if you find it interesting): Is there any negative effect of having high vitamin c (supplements/food) alongside ADHD medication? I see it mentioned quite a bit online, from people saying their psychiatrist told them, to educational ADHD sites. I'd love to know if there's any real evidence.
Me too. Since hearing about it, I take my multivitamin a few hours after my ADHD medication. Also, I drink ginger/lemon water once or twice a day. Is that compromising my ADHD meds? Thanks, Dr Russ!
And thanks, @thewanderer37, for raising the issue.
From what I've seen debunking this, the effects of vitamin C on ADHD meds depend hugely on not just the type of medication (methylphenidate, lisdexamfetamine etc) but also the brand. In essence, vitamin C has more of an effect on the delivery mechanism (the compounds used for the metabolism of the medication in the body) than the actual medication itself. It also varies from person to person, and if there is an impact on the effects of the medication it's extremely slight - sometimes the length of time the medication is in the blood stream is increased (by an hour at most), sometimes it's reduced, but essentially the impact is barely noticeable if there is one and there are far more significant factors than vitamin C in their effects on these medications.
Yes - Vitamin C increases stomach acidity, reducing the amount of medication that’s absorbed by the body.
It’s best to avoid drinking anything containing Vitamin C right before/after taking medication including, but not limited to, Adderall for this reason.
@@psyken_2321 Great comment. Thank you! 🙏
Does undiagnosed ADHD lead to BPD/NPD? Or is it completely different? The symptoms are so overlapping and confusing. An adult ADHD is definitely a curse.
Anecdotally (only diagnosed ADHD and depression fwiw), it seems like it is more a misdiagnosis of ADHD, especially in women, rather than it leading to it.
That the swings in mood, attention, and energy levels might be interpreted as BPD, as it feels like BPD is stereotypically more associated with women/girls and ADHD with men/boys.
For my understanding ADHD can make especially young children more prone to trauma. They can't cope with relatively minor experiences (compared to the average non ADHD child).
ND children are also more likely to experience childhood abuse. If there is a genetic predisposition in the family, I would argue this can lead to a higher probability of developing PDs.
All I keep hearing is "ADHD is an issue with executive functioning" and I don't understand what the CEO or Managing Director has to do with me losing track of time, or my keys.
To make a simplifying metaphor if the “manager” of your brain is constantly switching directives and losing records of meetings then the company might struggle to reach its goals. When you lose your keys or whatever it’s because the part of your brain taking notes isn’t recording them well and the “manager” makes it worse by having the meeting focused on a lot of disparate topics.
You nailed it. Great reply.@@guacamole6934
@@guacamole6934 I was kidding, but that's not a terrible metaphor.
My therapist friend explains executive functions like the characters from Inside Out but they are in business suits.....except with adhd they are asleep on the job a lot of the time
Am I missing something? I keep thinking Dr. Halloway will be part of this debate.
He will be at the end with a part 5. He has said he will send me a clip to post nut it could be in early October. Be well.
Oh its turning out to be a gift. Id never not want to have it now that i know my self. I can notice patterns that other people can't. I am more Situationally aware of my surroundings
that could be a result of something else though. My pattern recognition sucks and I trip over everything all the time