Thank you Nome @NomedaBarbarian
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@NomedaBarbarian on Twitter:
Thinking about how I’ve been lied to as an #ADHD person about what habits are.
That apparently is not what neurotypical folks get to experience.
Habits are things that they do without thinking.
They don’t have to decide to do them. They don’t have to remember to do them. Things just happen, automatically, because they’ve done them enough for that system to engage and make them automatic.
That system…which I lack.
Every single time I have brushed my teeth, it’s been an active choice. I’ve had to devote thought and attention to it. It’s not a routine, it’s not a habit, it’s something that I know is good to do, and hopefully I can remember to do it.
Every single time I exercise, or floss, or pay my rent, or drink water, or say “bless you” when someone sneezes,
It’s because I’ve had to actively and consciously engage the protocol.
It never gets easier.
Just more familiar.
It’s part of my struggle with my weight–exercise never becomes a habit, and every single time I do it, it is exactly as hard as the first time. It takes exactly as much willpower & thought.
I got lied to about how it would just “turn into a habit”. And blamed, when it didn’t.
Drinking water isn’t a habit. Feeding myself isn’t a habit. Bathing isn’t a habit.
I spend so much more energy, so much more time, so much more labor on just managing to maintain my fucking meat suit.
And now you want me to ALSO do taxes?
ON TIME?
Thanks for speaking to the other side, because that’s so hard to believe. I don’t know about everyone with ADHD, but it definitely seems to be a common shared experience. The only habits I do completely without thinking are a) putting my seatbelt on in the car, and b) picking my phone up like 100 times a day. Anything bigger, even something like eating, is something I have to will myself to do.
And when I’m trying to form a “habit,” like certain types of note taking or task planning at work, no matter how effective it is and how much I like it, I never manage to do it more than about 3 weeks before my brain just completely shuts off that pathway and it’s like I forget that process exists altogether.
If I don’t put my meds on my nightstand AND have a reminder on my phone, I will forget them most of the time. Daily activity, takes almost no brain power, and it still doesn’t trigger in my head as something I need to do unless I physically see it.
ugh, I constantly forget to eat. People would ask “how the hell can you FORGET to eat, for two days” and I’d be like. “three days… I think”.
LOL, relatable. I also had to literally train myself over years to feel hungry, and all that training goes away when I’m really stressed. Living with a partner is the best thing for my eating habits. He needs to eat, so I eat… at least once a day.
The range of ADHD is wild, I’m just always hungry, I have to consciously stop myself from randomly eating any food in my proximity. If there’s a box of crackers, or leftovers in the fridge, I’ll eat them, even if I ate an hour ago, if I don’t make a conscious effort to remind myself that I ate a meal already. Adderall has helped with me being aware of when I’m not actually hungry, but when the drugs wear off in the evening, I have to be careful about cruising the kitchen/pantry.
A few days late, but I just stumbled across the community. I know that when I was on meds I wouldn’t eat for days. Without meds, I’m just Homer Simpson saying “ooh a piece of candy” all day
Dude. Three days isn’t even my record, and I don’t feel hungry during that time, like at all. Or if I do it’s this vaguely distant feeling that isn’t nearly as important as whatever I’m hyper focusing on at the moment.
How did you train yourself to feel hungry? I need to take medicine to feel hungry and I want to take control of it
Sorry for the long message ahead :)
This is a TL;DR list I wrote to help when my cousin was struggling to eat and having stomach aches whenever he did eat:
Learning #1 was what made me realize my relationship with food was unhealthy and needed to change. #2-3 might not apply to your situation but I’m leaving them in case anyone else needs it.
#4 and 6 really are the answer to your question. When I got my first job out of college, I ate lunch daily with coworkers even if I had no desire to eat, which greatly helped the last thing I’ll share: I redefined what I thought of as hunger.
I realized even when I didn’t consciously feel the need to eat, my body had symptoms. I paid attention to things like lightheadedness, a tightness in my stomach, and shakiness, and started considering those to be “feeling hungry.” After forcing myself to eat more consistently and listening to my body, I actually started to feel hungry on a regular (daily-ish) basis.
Oh, and for a year or two I lifted weights 3x/week and that made me hungrier than I’d ever been in my life. The first three months I always felt hungry. But that’s a bigger commitment than the other suggestions :)
I hope this might help you!
I already do all of those things except the weightlifting, and I think burning more kilojoules would be counterproductive to my goals given I want to do the opposite. Making it easy to eat doesn’t cause me to feel a subjective sensation of hunger, and I don’t get those other signs of hunger you describe like lightheadedness or shakiness either. I get a tightness in my stomach, which my nervous system interprets as fullness and turns into a “no more eating” signal.
I’m asking how to feel hungry.
My mom. Super skinny her whole life. People thought she took care of herself, but I knew that she forgot to eat for days.
I used to think that would be nice. I have the other end of it where I am constantly nibbling for dopamine hits.
Yeah. I’m super skinny. I have trouble keeping weight on. I’m 6’1, male, and like 144 lbs. It’s not good for ya.
This happens to me all the time. People will ask about the last time I ate, and I’ll tell them “Uhh… I think I had a granola bar for breakfast… two days ago.” Today I ate two full(ish) meals. The last time I remember eating that much is almost three weeks ago. It’s gotten to the point where people think I’m intentionally starving myself, but I just genuinely don’t get hungry. I have no urge to eat, so I constantly forget.
My girlfriend takes me out to dinner twice a week. Most of my calories come from those two weekly nights out. Add in my time blindness and I’ll think that I ate breakfast in the morning, but then realize that it was the previous morning and that I just never noticed the passage of time.
Yeah, for thing like the seatbelt, it’s just part of the process of getting in the car, right?
Whereas with the phone, it’s the dopamine chase that our brains don’t have the right machinery to override reliably.
Oh shit the seatbelts are a great example, I’d maybe add that typing on a keyboard is another thing that feels habitual. Everywhere else the 3 month rule applies pretty well in terms of maybe picking them up and randomly immediately dropping.
Can a neurotypical chime in and say whether seatbelts and typing are habits to them like brushing teeth?
Neurotypical here. I don’t call it habits, I prefer autopilot. My autopilot is so strong that I’ve made dinner/cleaned house while on the phone without even realizing I did it. Like seriously get off the phone and look around and wondered when did I do that? I also have driven to work instead of shopping because I am so used to only leaving the house for work. You can set a clock by my daily routine down to the minute.
Sometimes I finish showering, and I was so heavily on autopilot while thinking about other things that I have no memory of if I actually washed my body or not, I just trust that I did
I have ADHD and sometimes when I get out of the shower I’m like, “wait: did I wash my hair?” Then I reach up to feel it and sure enough, it feels greasy; I forgot.
I can physically feel when my body isn’t clean so that’s easy (water rolls off me like a duck, LOL!). Hair is different 🤷
This is me. How can you just “forget” something you’ve developed into a routine and done daily for a month? I do though. Shit.
The more I hear about ADHD, the more I wonder if I have it. Is there something I should be doing?
If not experiencing those things would dramatically make your life better, might go see a psychiatrist about evaluation?
Doesn’t bother me, but my SO is of an other opinion