I literally thought all the symptoms were the default way a brain works, so you’re telling me some of you can “choose” what to pay attention to? Like, if you know you absolutely have to listen to and remember something you just “can” even if you don’t like it?

And if you’re at a restaurant and three other tables are having conversations you don’t just automatically absorb everything they’re saying?

And if you know you have to do something within the next hour it won’t just remind you of a different subject entirely which reminds you of another different subject entirely and you don’t just take you three days to remember the original thing you were doing????

Oh yeah and I was never once fucking told in my entire life until TODAY that ADD is an UNDER-active brain. It feels to you and looks to others like your brain is “over” active because the brain is desperately seeking stimulation but deficient in its ability to maintain it. You’re not distracted by every little thing because it’s all actually interesting or your brain goes “too fast” but because no single thing is ever exciting enough to satisfy your reward processes.

AND THE FUCKING THING ABOUT -THAT- WHICH I NEVER HEARD ABOUT BEFORE is that ADD symptoms can resemble or be misdiagnosed as pure anxiety or depression because negative stimulation is stimulation all the same so an ADD brain looooooves to contemplate the mortality of your loved ones and everything wrong with you and wrong with the world and hypothetical future disasters and what people “really” think of you and even that one embarrassing thing you said to a cashier twelve years ago.

Some other things I hadn’t necessarily thought of as ADD-related and I have all day, every day include severe procrastination, executive dysfunction, fearfulness or self-consciousness in social situations, being “smart” in some ways but seemingly “stupid” in other areas, and even hyperfocus on a narrow set of subjects, which of course can all also be symptoms of autism, another thing that may sometimes be misdiagnosed ADD or just kind of the bonus prize you got with it.

Some things I DON’T personally suffer from, but maybe you do, and was even more shocked to learn are often ADD symptoms include a disregard for your own safety, harsher standards for yourself than you hold anyone else to, poor impulse control, risk-taking, thrill-seeking, sabotaging yourself and even sabotaging interpersonal relationships or “dropping” them too easily (”that last conversation rubbed me the wrong way…I better just cut ties with them before it gets worse”)

All of these things can be either the ADD brain trying to get its next “fix,” bad habits unfortunately instilled in you from how ADD strained everything else in your life, or a mix of both.

sabotaging yourself and even sabotaging interpersonal relationships or “dropping” them too easily