What Is ADHD?
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Do you know what ADHD stands for? It’s not just a jumble of letters! ADHD actually stands for Attention Deficit hyperactivity Disorder, and is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects people of all ages. It’s categorized by numerous symptoms which we will explore in this article!
What Is ADHD?
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While there is no cure for ADHD, with the right knowledge of what causes it, the symptoms of it, and the steps that can be taken to make it more manageable, can allow people to have the disorder but not let it control their lives. Now let’s get into the signs of ADHD in people…
A Poor Sustained Attention
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This is a widely recognized symptom of ADHD -a really poor attention span. If you find that situations such as going to the movie theatre, or binge watching a TV series with your partner keep your attention for a very limited amount of time, then it could be a sign of ADHD.
Difficulty Focusing
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This short attention span can also impact your focus skills. Those with ADHD find that focusing on a task can be really difficult, especially when it is a task that isn’t very interesting to them, such as writing an essay. This inability to focus can hinder the everyday lives of those who suffer from ADHD.
Impulsivity
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Now, we all like a splurge every now and then… and who doesn’t LOVE shopping? However, if you find that you overindulge a bit too frequently, and your money is going down the drain, then it could be a sign of ADHD. The spontaneous spending is linked with the impulsive behaviours that those with the disorder can possess.
Hyperactivity
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It’s literally in the name! Hyperactivity in ADHD is one of the biggest factors of the disorder. Those who suffer with ADHD will find that they experience uncontrollable bursts of energy, and it will appear to those around them that they’ve just had too much sugar!
Forgetfulness
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Everyone can be forgetful at times, but for those with ADHD, it can occur more often than people would care to admit. Those with this disorder process information completely differently to those without it – this can lead to forgetfulness. This can also occur due to the fact that distractions may get in the way and things get forgotten.
Poor Time Management
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Do you have that one friend that is ALWAYS late? Well maybe it is time to cut them some slack, as this is a big sign of ADHD. The processing of information is different depending on whether you have ADHD or not, which can lead to a poor perception of time!
Disorganization
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The frontal cortex of the brain is altered in those that suffer from ADHD, which can provide an explanation for the lack of organizational skills they possess. If you know someone whose bedroom looks like the one above, then maybe lend a helping hand!
Trouble Prioritizing
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People with ADHD often struggle with prioritization of tasks as their brains have difficulty filtering out irrelevant stimuli and focusing on what is actually important! As they can’t determine what tasks are important and what tasks are not, it can lead to many knock on effects in day to day life.
You Talk… A Lot
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Those with ADHD have a difficulty with impulse control, hence the tendency to spend impulsively – this also affects the amount that they talk! Due to troubles with impulse control, those with the disorder have trouble thinking before they speak, so have the tendency to blurt out whatever springs to mind, does this sound like you?
Difficulty Completing Tasks
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As we have already established, those with ADHD have trouble prioritizing tasks, and separating important and unimportant tasks. This then can impact their completion of tasks as it can lead to the individual feeling like they have to complete EVERY task (big or small) which is just unrealistic!
Emotionally Troubled
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ADHD can be frustrating. It can be stressful, overwhelming, lonely, so it’s no surprise that those who live with it have the tendency to be on the emotional side. There are numerous factors that could cause this, including problems with impulse control, and troubles with prioritization!
Social Interactions Bother You
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Those with ADHD possess qualities that can hold them back in social situations, making them not want to participate in them. They have difficulty with social cues, interrupting others, overtalking, and maintaining eye contact during conversations. This can lead to many awkward moments and misunderstandings…
Procrastination Is Your Enemy
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Those with ADHD often struggle with procrastination due to problems with motivation, executive function, and is noted to be a coping mechanism for the anxiety and stress that can come with completing tasks. There are many ways to overcome issues with procrastination, such as using rewards, setting deadlines, and breaking tasks down into more manageable chunks.
Restlessness
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Restlessness is a common symptom of ADHD that can be visually recognised in the form of fidgeting, tapping, or an inability to sit still for prolonged periods of time. This restlessness occurs as those with ADHD have a surplus of physical energy and have the urge to move in order to use it up.
You Can Never Stick To Plans
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People with ADHD have the tendency to not stick to the plans they have created in advance. And this occurs due to those with ADHD not taking the time to logically work out their plans, and how long each task takes to complete. This occurs due to issues already mentioned such as procrastination of tasks.
Poor Listening Skills
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As previously mentioned, those with ADHD can often struggle with over – talking, social cues, and distractions – this makes listening to others extremely difficult. Now it could just be a case of boring company, but more often than not, it’s a combination of those three symptoms of ADHD that make it hard to keep your attention on one conversion and not get distracted.
You Struggle With Routine Tasks
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Those with ADHD favor a non-routine schedule, meaning they enjoy spontaneity to their every day life. However, that doesn’t mean that vital tasks such as paying bills can just stop. Regardless of how a person navigates life, routine tasks have to be completed and the mundane nature makes it easier for them to procrastinate.
You Are VERY Impatient
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Patience, or lack thereof, is a pretty common trait of ADHD! The hyperactive tendencies of someone with the disorder can cause someone to be impatient. Also, those with ADHD struggle with impulse control which can cause outbursts of anger and impatience when things don’t go how they planned.
Fine Motor Skills
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ADHD can put a wrench in fine motor skills. Those small, precise movements like writing or buttoning clothes can be a HUGE struggle! With challenges in executive function and focus, coordinating those tiny muscle groups becomes a huge challenge. The result? Frustrating attempts at tasks requiring delicate hand-eye coordination.
Poor Decision Making
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There’s no clear evidence as to why, but those with ADHD have been noted to struggle with making decisions, and good ones at that! ADHD is divided into two behavioural issues which are hyper activeness and impulsiveness, and as you can guess, it can lead to people struggling to come to a comprehensive decision!
Prone To Reckless Driving
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As we now know, those with ADHD have difficulties with executive function, meaning that they have risk-taking/thrill-seeking tendencies. This, along with problems with sustained attention can lead to a pretty reckless life on the road. Those with ADHD find driving manually much easier as they can keep focused with changing the gears.
Your Self Motivation
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Those with ADHD are thought to have lower dopamine levels, a neurotransmitter associated with motivation and reward. This means that if you have ADHD, you are likely to suffer from poor motivation, and there are many other symptoms of the disorder that can contribute to that.
Impaired Short Term Memory
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Our executive function has been mentioned many times throughout this article and refers to a set of cognitive processes that allow us to plan, organize, and manage information in our minds. Many of the symptoms of this disorder link to cognitive function, and explains exactly why those with ADHD struggle with their short term memory too!
Prioritizing Emotions
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Studies have suggested that ADHD could be associated with differences in the brain regions that are responsible for emotional processing, which can alter (and potentially contribute to) emotional activity. There are many reasons for humans to struggle with prioritizing their emotions, so is not a stand out symptom of ADHD.
The Thrill Of Risk Taking Behaviour
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There are many possible reasons that people with ADHD enjoy risk-taking behaviours and quite often engage in them: the increased levels of dopamine to the brain, or the fact that those with ADHD don’t think before they do and don’t factor in the consequences of said behaviour!
Chronic Lateness
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There’s a running theme with time management here, isn’t there! As the brain struggles with organizing, and determining how long tasks take to complete, it can lead to a serious case of chronic lateness. This is as frustrating for the person with the disorder as the one who’s waiting on them…
Sensitive Soul
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People with this developmental disorder have difficulty processing blue light wavelengths, which can cause sensitivity to light – this can disrupt the circadian rhythms associated with sleep. As the brain struggles to prioritize the importance of things, things like sound, and light can become higher up on their importance list, making those with ADHD more sensitive to it.
We Are Not Professionals!
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If you feel that you possess these qualities of ADHD, then you should definetly contact a doctor or a professional. They will be able to provide expert advice on the next steps to be properly diagnosed, and will lend a helping hand for you on your journey. You should never self diagnose!
Absolutely Anything Can Be A Distraction
When you have ADHD, you’re very easily distracted, but it’s on another level for you – it isn’t just like having a phone call in the middle of a task or scrolling social media for a bit. Absolutely anything, even the tiniest thing, can instantly grab your attention and then snowball into a million other distractions.
Making A Lot Of Careless Mistakes
It’s likely you might mistakes within your job or your everyday tasks, and this isn’t because you’re not good at your job – these will usually be careless mistakes that can be easily avoided when you’re really focusing, but because you’re so easily distracted, these mistakes are likely to happen.
You Might Lose Things All The Time
With being forgetful and distractible also comes the likelihood of losing things a lot of the time! It goes without saying that forgetting where you put your pen or phone when you walk into the other room is likely, but it can go beyond that to completely losing things a lot of the time.
You Can’t Stick To Tasks That Seem Tedious
It’s hard enough trying to focus your attention at the best of times, with something you really want to do. But if a task is tedious to you? It’s going to be almost impossible for you to stick with it. This is what can make work really hard too, if you have a boring job the work probably won’t get done.
Or, Tasks You Feel Are Taking Too Long
The same can happen with tasks that are taking far too long, even if it’s something that you really want to do. Your attention span can work in small bursts so it’s likely your mind and motivation is going to wander halfway through if something is taking far too long.
You Find It Hard To Carry Out Instructions
Carrying out instructions means listening or paying attention to a big set of rules beforehand. You can find this very hard because it’s likely you weren’t fully listening in the first place, through no fault of your own, and then you have to really focus on what you heard.
You’re Constantly Changing What You’re Doing
Multi-tasking is one thing – but changing what you’re doing a million times and jumping from task to task is another thing entirely! This is likely to happen during your workday when you have a lot of things to do. You could start one thing, reach for something else, start thinking about something else on top of that… and on and on.
You’d Find It Hard To Organize Something Big
To organize a big event, whether for work or for your personal life, you really have to focus on everything, plan and be organized. This is going to be really difficult for you. Although you’d think that managing a whole bunch of tasks is what you’re good at because you usually jump from one to the other anyway, the likelihood is things will be forgotten.
Especially If It Was A Surprise Event!
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And if it’s a surprise event? No chance. You’d likely feel very overwhelmed and stressed about having to co-ordinate a whole bunch of people, while keeping the details a secret from the person in question. You’d likely slip up or forget to invite certain people – maybe even the person whose party it is!
You Might Sit Up In Your Chair
If you have a job or hobby that sees you needing to sit in a chair for long periods of time, it’s likely that sitting normally in it is something you’ll never do. You might prop yourself up on your feet in a crouch, stand behind it leaning over it, or kneel one leg on it!
Or Prefer A Standing Desk
The other alternative you might have is a standing desk, because this is just easier when you move about so much and you’re a fidgeter. With a standing desk you can walk off to the other corner of the room, constantly move from side to side, or just shuffle about – which all seems better to you than sitting in a chair!
Walking Into Another Room Is A No-Go For You!
If you’re in the middle of something and you go into the other room, like the kitchen for a glass of water or the bathroom, chances are you’ll return to your original task about seven hours later! Whatever you find along the way or in the other room is going to distract you.
Working From Home Is Near Impossible
This is also why working from home can be very difficult for someone with ADHD, because there are many more distractions in their home space that they can wander off to. If you’re working from home, you might end up getting behind with work because of everything else going on.
You Have To Keep Your Phone Locked In A Drawer
Phones can be one of the biggest distractions even for people without ADHD, but if you have it, it’s likely you have to take extreme measures to stop the temptation of looking at your phone, so you might even have to keep it in a lock box or drawer far away from you!
You Hyperfixate On Things Or Tasks
While it’s true that people with ADHD get distracted easily, it’s also true that the extreme opposite can happen: hyperfixation. This is when you’re so focused on one task that you forget or ignore to do other things, even things like eating, drinking or using the bathroom.
Things Are Always Left Unfinished
You’re likely someone who has a million tasks or hobbies unfinished. You might hyperfixate on a new hobby and throw loads of money at it for the first few days, then forget about it and move on. Your home is probably just a museum of all the things you started and never finished.
You’re More ‘Get Stuck In And Hope For The Best’!
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Because you don’t do too well with listening or following instructions, it’s likely your mentality is ‘oh we’ll just work it out as we go along’! You’re likely not a huge fan of planning or preparation and ‘winging it’ is probably a daily mantra for you, whether with work or with a personal errand.
You Have A Lot Of Nervous Energy
If you have something that you’re nervous or worried about, you’re likely to have buckets of extra energy that leave you fidgeting about, talking even more than you usually do, or getting distracted even more easily. This could happen in the lead up to something, too, like if you’re nervous about a job interview so you have tons of nervous energy during the week before.
You’re Always Leaving Messages On ‘Read’
As someone who is easily distractible, it’s likely you’re not a very good messager either. You likely forget to reply someone, read something and then get distracted before you’ve typed a response, or ignore group conversations because they’re too overwhelming for you with all the messages.
99% Of A Conversation Can Be About You
This isn’t because you’re self-involved or because you mean to do it – a lot of people with ADHD don’t realize they’ve been talking so much, and it’s not something consciously done a lot of the time. But you can easily dominate a conversation, especially if the other person is quiet, because your mind is in overdrive.
