Hello,
To start off, I am 24 years old, a woman, and have been dealing with inattentiveness and forgetfulness for a few years. I searched about the reasons why I could not get myself to start studying in the library at college when I was 20 and I came across adhd. I found similarities between the symptoms and what I go through.
When I was a child, I was hardworking and ''gifted'', but never studied much to the point where I would be considered a ''nerd''. I would daydream a lot. I had many imaginary friends, I still have an imaginary universe where I have some friends and I have even made families for them in my mind. In real life, I do have friends and can communicate with people even though I personally prefer to keep only a few I trust truly around me.
In middle school we had exams in 7th and 8th grade to get into highschool. In 7th grade, I hated the science classes, never paid attention to them. In the course, someone was impersonating our teacher at the end of the semester and I said ''wow, the teacher talks like that? Never noticed'' Nevertheless, I studied for my language classes and maths well so I got a good result even though I tanked in science. Seeing other people getting better results than me and aiming to get into a particular highschool made me ambitious so i studied hard in 8th grade and got into the highschool i wanted. In my second year in highschool (age 15-16), I studied hard in the 1st semester but started getting bored in the second semester. I failed a lot of exams. Nothing bad happened to me during that time. I just did not study well because didn't get to it, did not want to get private lessons. I did a bit better next year and the year after but my willingness to study was very low compared to me in 8th grade.
I turned 19 and was in college.
I started getting panic attacks in public transportation and watched out everyone's actions there. A few months later I grew out of it but I started getting intrusive thoughts of me having romantic/ sexual desires to people I do not wish to have. I spent almost a year battling with those thoughts until I went to a therapist and was diagnosed with OCD. It also explained my religious rituals of praying whenever I stepped on a crack or misplaced objects so my loved ones wouldn't die. I have been on 2 meds, selectra (50 mg daily) and abilify (2,5 mg daily).
My adhd symptoms:
- Obviously not being able to pay attention to classes, and now as a graduate, to work.
- Picking up a lot of ideas but never doing anything about them.
- I want to learn more languages. I used to study German so I have basic and upper knowledge but I need to get more fluent. However, I can't begin to study.
- I enjoy kpop, made it the center of my life even though I hate to admit it. I learned the Korean alphabet, want to learn Korean and everytime I begin to do something about it, I can't keep it up more than a few weeks.
- I enjoy being on ''stan twitter'' basically fan accounts, which takes up a lot of time for me. I cannot focus on anything else.
- I can't watch videos, even kpop videos. If it's longer than 3 minutes, it's a torture to me. Cannot finish series for that reason.
- As a child, I would read books a lot but now, I am thankful if I read a few pages a week.
- I forget things. I forget my tasks at work. I forget what I ate, the chores my mom told me to do.
- Weekends are so boring if I don't go out with friends, I basically do nothing other than being on stan twitter.
- I still daydream a lot.
- I get bored quickly. Even at concerts I sometimes think about going home and lying on my bed.
- Doing a lot of small mistakes at work. I also cannot begin to do tasks that requires thinking, like writing explanations to my reports. Sometimes, I can't do any tasks so I kill time doing nothing because I don't feel like it and i postpone it to AFTER the deadline. My coworkers get angry with me.
My therapist who I visit once in 2-3 months diagnosed me with adhd but my mom also talked to her cousin's therapist friend and they said I most probably don't have adhd since I didn't show much symptoms as a child. I don't know what to believe but whatever it is, that's killing me. My mom blames my meds for OCD but my ocd isn't healed completely. During the quarantine, I can't risk going on a lower dose.
Can I hear thoughts from you guys? Do I possibly have adhd? Is it a side effect of my meds? Or am I becoming a lazy person?
Thank you