What does ADHD feel like to you?

[Cassepipe]

Originally Posted by deepest blue

Hi we all get days like that in this club, but just remember they always pass and just think of all the great days you’ve had and I'm sure you do have the occasional great day too right ?

Yeah. I have days I cope with, like, I have moments. But generally I have no motivation or desire for anything. I have these hyper-focal days where I spend every waking minute focused on one thing. Well... one of two things. But very rarely. And while I have these days I'm still restless, I just can't stop, even for the loo! But it still beats the hell out of restless Once a fortnight maybe? Otherwise I find it hard to shower (painfully boring), but I do, cleaning my teeth, my clothes pile up, my house gets messy as hell. I'm hoping that psychology starting in 2 weeks, which is also when my medication will go up to the level I need it at, will bring about a more regular motivation and desire to keep myself going a little bit.

[Cassepipe]

I REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY want want it to happen! So impatient and expectant.

[HolyAlchemyzt]

I feel like my brain has a 56k modem instead of Comcast.

[shamrock]

Originally Posted by artymom

Shamrock, just curious...what is your other recurring dream?

Being chased by a bull all the way up the stairs into my bedroom. I make it up into my overhead cupboards with a second to spare. Dont ask..God knows.

[TheChemicals]

Being given an adrenalin shot and then locked inside a coffin. When the adrenalin wears off the coffin opens and everyone is asking why your so *out of it.

[Rebelyell]

A volcano of bs that has exploded all around me

[DeathMetal2000]

Feels like 2 power cables being shoved up your nostrils and into your brain whilst it has an electrical current running through them. And sometimes you feel like that and you also feel like you're staring into a void until you get distracted by that bumblebee you saw outside of your house a few years back.

[TheChemicals]

Like my butt hole is tightened up 24 hours a day

[Spacemaster]

When I'm forced to idle when I feel like stripping my gears.

[fracturedstory]

You know when you play pinball and get stuck on a bumper and keep ricochetting off it into another one and back onto it, again and again and again and again?

Yeah...it's nothing like that.

[TheChemicals]

When you get 30 lives in contra and don't play your best because hey...you have 30 lives now.

[TheChemicals]

Or stuck in mario world and princess toadstool is always in another castle

[yellowflowers]

Originally Posted by TheChemicals

Being given an adrenalin shot and then locked inside a coffin. When the adrenalin wears off the coffin opens and everyone is asking why your so *out of it.

Oh My God yes - I feel like I'm suffocating - and just cannot be what everyone else expects. That coffin is society and I drown in it.

[In.a.daydream]

I'm constantly finding new ways to describe my experience and I've written them down before so this isn't all on the spot-just edited. I will say I have Inattentive ADD so that may make a difference. I'm glad I have a chance to share though.

Sorry for anything that's harder to follow than I realize, but...here's a look inside my mind:

Saying it’s like a waking dream is appropriate. My conscious mind feels like my subconscious.
Thinking about/trying to focus on what’s in front of me feels like trying to recall a dream. It’s as though I have knowledge of this “other”…something I know somewhere inside me (so it feels present), but that I just…can’t…remember/look at. It’s right there in front of you, but for some reason you feel like you just can’t find it.

It's like you're having the experience of watching a television show, but the TV screen's blank. It's playing, but it isn't, it stops before it starts, but somehow you know that some part of you is watching something because of the bits that accidentally come through. The more you try to realize those flashes of "somethings"-focus on them…they move slower, lose their color, blur together, and read like shadows on the screen until they come into stillness…but you’re still watching the show playing-somewhat, somehow, in some weird sense.

It's like my thoughts start melting at the moment of their conception, until they're all melded together into a rather meaningless...goop.

It's like I'm standing inside my body, but I’m stuck facing the opposite direction that my body is. What my body sees/hears/takes in right in front of me is background noise, not my actual experience-it’s something that happens elsewhere. If “inner me” tries to turn around to see it though, my body will turn right along with it….then my body’s eyes will be facing away from what I’m trying to see and toward something else. (I also told my mother a bit ago that it’s like I have another person hiding out somewhere in my head and experiencing of all my attention exactly when I attempt to). So it’s liked being overlapped by yourself…or…by something.

It’s like the world is split up into many different sections, then each part sped up and mirroredin slow motion; none of these are accurate reflections of the world, but I have one eye following the sped up versions and one following the slowmo versions. There’s all these different paces, but your mind won’t align with one-it’s like everything little thing marches along (at its own pace) in quicksand and the paces are all balled up inside your head. I’d just look at the things around me, but I have a set of kaleidoscopes built in behind my eyes (& equivalents for my other senses) and it screws up the transmission.

It’s like you’re swimming against the current-never really sure how far from the shore you are, why you’re there, or who’s pushing the ocean at you. You don’t even realize it most of the time…you just start dealing with something/someone around you and start wondering how the “F” they’re magically standing on top of the water that you’re fighting to stay afloat in. You’re distracted by your own swimming and are constantly trying to reconcile it with their strange stationary…ness…but you can’t even think clearly about that, so the thought just becomes another buoy bobbing along in the mess of it all.

I don’t lose and regain focus. I don’t feel I ever have focus. My gears spin-sometimes all of them at once, but they don't realize they're part of a whole; a machine; a single unit. They're too independent; Someone is always out of step and always will be. There is no break from it. I unconsciously play a never-ending game of mental whac-a-mole and listen to the guy in the carnival booth talk to me between hits. Sometimes I realize I’m playing, other times I don’t-either way, it's not up to me. My mind’s playing for a stuffed animal but…in the end? All it’ll get from booth guy is, “…What whac-a-mole game?”

[justtim]

Originally Posted by In.a.daydream

It’s like the world is split up into many different sections, then each part sped up and mirroredin slow motion; none of these are accurate reflections of the world, but I have one eye following the sped up versions and one following the slowmo versions.

I can relate especially well to this. It's like my brain is trying to catch up to my eyes and at the same time it's ahead of them. Sometimes I have days where it's like this all day and I can never get anything accomplished because I'm always half a second out of sync with myself.