$5k?! A doctor’s visit is $250 for me (insurance doesn’t cover anything until I never reach the deductible). Also there were only like 2 tests totalling 20-ish questions. The hardest part was making an appointment, which I never would have done if I wasn’t also making appointments for other pressing health issues.

I started doing that last year with Joplin on my computer and it’s a big help.

I also keep big notes to just dump everything I’m working on into - websites, pdfs, screenshots, screen video captures with no commitment to organization except I can add things in chronological order. A lot of it is initiated by showing it to someone else and then realizing I should have a note for myself too.

I really should start doing the same with personal stuff and random observations. If something is important enough to tell (or what to tell) other people about it should be important enough to tell my future self about.

It’s crazy how much not experiencing rewards yourself/the inability to do things for yourself influences things I wouldn’t even imagine before understating what ADHD is/does and consciously examining them.

Based on what they’ve done in the past, they’re going to write it off on their taxes when though the titles aren’t even games that they own.

In terms of abilities, there’s problems other people can solve that I never will even with years of study and training, and there are problems I can solve that my immediate peers never would, even with years of study and training.

In terms off knowledge, everybody you meet knows something you don’t. (They might not have the ability to help you find what it is though)

In terms of skills, behaviors it seems like nobody ever considers trying and finding out for themselves, which is endemic across all levels of academia, government, business, and profession, and in that matter they are all as dumb as a bunch of rocks.

I really didn’t believe that a bunch of memes on lemmy meant that I had ADHD so instead of making an appointment for it specifically I described the executive difficulties I had when making an appointment, and the doctor brought up anxiety and ADHD and depression all as things that could cause that, and that frequently go together, which they gave screening questionaires for and wanted to treat anxiety first. Then after a few weeks I had a follow-up appointment for ADHD, which was just questions about symptoms and when they first appeared.

Yeah that amounts to the same thing-report the symptoms, get diagnosis, but it felt more honest to me. I guess I really wanted to hear somebody else say it.

Diagnosis and medication for ADHD (and anxiety) was a huge benefit to me. Before I would want to do the dishes but not be able to. I’d go to the kitchen and the dishwasher would be full, so before I could do the dishes, I needed to empty the dishwasher, and before I could empty the dishwasher I needed to wash my hands and I’d get overwhelmed, not do dishes, and feel bad about it. I could empty the dishwasher if it’s what I planned on doing ahead of time, and if I started doing dishes I’d keep going stacking up dishes to wash even with the dishwasher full.

The very first day I had medication for ADHD (I’d had anxiety meds for a few weeks) I plowed through washing my hands, putting dishes away, doing dishes, went shopping for various things (I hate shopping), got winter bike pants so I could keep biking in the winter (it was already late November), and then eating dinner I got close to the end of my meal and just stopped because I didn’t want to eat anymore instead of finishing what I was eating because it’s what I was already doing.

Now when I don’t do dishes it’s because I don’t want to, not that I’m overwhelmed by it.

I still have anxiety and indecisiveness and avoidance of projects that are important to me, that somehow have my identity/ego tied up in them, or things like that. But I can do small things for myself now instead of only being able to do things for other people. Like @xmunk said it’s not solved for me, but things are much better.

Between getting treatment for ADHD and another medical condition I’ve lost about 10kg without even trying, I’m sure both treatments have contributed to it.

Besides getting medication, diagnosis is helpful because it’s easier to understand what’s happening. Even though I could tell myself “I know this isn’t normal” when I was overwhelmed or stressed out over seemingly nothing, part of me would be questioning if I wasn’t really just that lazy/inadequate. Now I know what’s going on and I still feel frustrated, and bad, but I’m more kind to myself about it.

I never even would have been able to make an appointment to get treatment if I hadn’t seen tons of ADHD memes on lemmy and realized, oh, maybe that’s not normal. Seeing people describe being on ADHD meds as easy mode and describing the things I struggled with as being hard. I saw something on facebook that said

If being hard on yourself worked, it would have worked by now.

And that really stuck with me. I also got the idea in my head that

I deserve to be able to do things for myself, not just for other people.

I also resolved before going to the appointment for ADHD that no matter what, whether that’s what I had, or I got medication, or if the medication worked, I was going to try to be kind to myself.

But I never would have even been able to make an appointment if another medical condition hadn’t escalated to literally feeling pins and needles and I made a bunch of appointments for other things when I made one for that. I didn’t make it specifically for ADHD, just some general complaint that I had some executive disorder and a description of what was happening.