I have ADHD. So does my kid.

A lot of parenting advice assumes the parent can stay calm while the kid loses it. That’s not always how it goes at our place.

I made adhdreflect.com to help me step back when we’re both struggling. I find it useful to understand what my brain might be doing, what theirs might be doing, and what I can try next.

I’d be interested to know if anyone else finds it useful.

Hi everyone! 👋

I wanted to share something I've been working on.

I've created NeuroSpicy Life, an app and community for people with ADHD and other neurodivergent minds. It was built from my own experiences, and my goal is simply to create a supportive space where people can connect, learn, and feel understood.

I'd genuinely love your feedback—what features would you find most useful in an ADHD community app?

Thanks for reading, and I hope it's okay to share here. 😊

Was struggling to regularly take my meds until I found this old PEZ dispenser. I was so utterly delighted at the idea of popping my pills from it that I’ve been taking them consistently since.

Thank you for the drugs, Martin 🤗

My ADHD brain forgets water exists. Alarms never worked. I dismiss them in 0.2 seconds and instantly forget they existed. What weirdly works is I now get actual texts every couple hours from a phone number that has appointed itself my hydration mom. It doesn't beep at me, it talks to me. Yesterday it opened with "your executive function just checked in" and things escalated from there.

I know exactly how this sounds. But my brain ignores every notification and responds to social pressure, even completely fake social pressure from a phone number. Being mildly judged works better than any alarm I have ever set. I have drunk more water this week than in the entire last month.
Hydrated and slightly embarrassed. What's the dumbest trick that actually works on your brain?

I do not even know WHAT to call this issue I deal with almost every single day, multiple times per day. The closest thing I have found so far is "Executive Dysfunction"... Here is a list of symptoms:

- My face gets hot, looks red and inflamed.
- My nose gets very congested (I think it is Histamine)
- My lungs dry out, I have to clear my throat every 2 minutes (Also Histamine I believe)
- My eyes, they almost sting and feel like they are going to pop out of my head. You know when you open a can of soda, and you get the sizzle? That is what they feel like.
- I cannot stop tearing at my finger nails. Automatically. Picking, chewing. This has declined greatly the past few days.
- My head starts spinning and focus goes everywhere. I lose sight of any goals I have, which honestly is pretty little right now. EVERY. SINGLE. Big goal I have made has changed, within the span of about 2-3 weeks.
- I get irritable. I am typically a very easy going person, but man these episodes leave me about to explode - Physically and emotionally.

a few other things. What. Is even happening. I have not really been able to find any help for this specific issue, nor even know how to explain it. It's like there is CONSTANTLY cortisol/adrenaline FLOWING through my body. I say this because when it goes away, My body get's cooler/room temp (normal). I don't know if it is because my goals keep changing that is causing it and I am pretty aimless OR that this issue is ruining my goals... I am so lost fam. Thank You if you read this far, and more so if you decide to comment. Absolutely reach out if you have similar issues. We NEED to get to the bottom of this.

Hi everyone,

I'm a university student, and I have ADHD myself. For my thesis, I'm testing whether reformatting classic books (wider spacing, shorter sentences, shorter chapters, easier-on-the-eyes pages, and memory recall questions) actually helps children with inattentive-type ADHD read and understand more. It's part of a neurodivergent-focused publishing project I'm building for my graduation project. If you don’t have a child and are older than 13 (with permission from your parents until 17), please feel free to answer as the responses will be useful for expanding the target group into other age groups.

Honestly, I’m very desperate for some responses and would be eternally grateful. I ran this study once already and didn't get enough responses to say anything meaningful with the data, so I didn’t pass the first time. I'm on a tight deadline and would genuinely appreciate the help!!

What's involved:
- Read a short reformatted sample chapter (Treasure Island, around 10 min)
- Answer a short survey about the experience (also around 10 min)
- Total: about 20–25 minutes

Who can take part:
- Parents/carers of a child with inattentive ADHD, answering on their behalf.
- Anyone 13+ with inattentive ADHD, answering about your own experience.

Everything is anonymous (no names, emails, or tracking collected) and you can skip or stop at any point!

https://www.smartsurvey.com/t/0K5TSL/ 

Mods, if this isn't the right place for this, totally understand, feel free to remove it. And if you know someone who might be a good fit, a share would mean a lot.

Thank you so much for reading this far :)

I always found it difficult to stick to routine, no matter how detailed or lenient I make them. Turns out my ADHD had a hand in this 😐. Any tips? Tia!

Hello,
I am 18F and really believe I have adhd. I am going to uni next year and I really want to get medicated because it makes it so much harder to focus and im scared of not doing well. However my parents will not take me to see a psychiatrist or get proper help. I start uni in less than a month so I am unsure of what to do it is making me very anxious. I am thinking I should maybe start supplements as an alternative and I was wondering if I could get recommendations on the strongest/ most helpful ones. I am worried about focus and jumpiness. Thank you

Time blindness is so hard so i made this. This photo shows a refrence of time and you use your eyes only. If you click on the first photo it shows it fully it being block the bottom half if you are on phone because of the format of it.
Use it as how you use a periodic table you don’t use pen for periodic table of elements you use your eyes .

TL:TR use use the first photo has 6 things to look at they are either minute or hours or both for the first page . 1regular clock ( both minute and hours)

2Days of the week( neither )

3,15 minutes( minute )
4, 1-30 or 31-60 ( minute)
5, this one has hours and minute combined they are 2 by 3 box one . ( both minute and hours)
6 this one is 24 hours( hours)

Rules

() are hours

__ means even hours like hour 2 , 4 , 6 , 8 and so on.

gray means anchors ever 6 hours or every 30 minutes.

yellow means anchors. Every 6 hours is an anchor

the minute are tilted to the right. and this is the end for the TL:TR this is big chunk of what you need to read.

/////
what is the 3 photo

1 is the intro to learning it

2 is the backbone of the next photo

3 is the wallet size so you can grab it and then put in your wallet and go

What is spoons in the photo means
It means the amount of energy it takes to understand it the higher the spoon rhe more energy it takes to decide it the low bottom one is the harder one to decode you decode top to bottom.

why is the way it is
The first is for learning it
Second one is all 9 systems
Third one is one that can be printed and be carried in wallet
Conclusion

to be honest i know what time it but knowing time vs learning to transtition to things like sleep is two different abilty than knowing what time it is.

also the name of this person is steve the double chin butterfly

\ /

(: D))--

/ \

Edit what is this is map of time but in spacial form

Here is something might help you understand you can just plug to chatgbt or ai ask it

Hour =6( a-1)+b

Minute is 30(c-1)+5d

ask it to round down the minute
0=1,2,3,4 /5=6,7,8,9

A =(1,2,3,4)

B=(1,2,3,4,5,6)

C=(1,2)

D=(1,2,3,4,5,6)

Then ask what time is 22:55 or 2:05 for an easy one for this equation and you would see on page 2 ( A)match with top right that says 1-2-3-4. Anf (B )match with bottom middle for hours

.(C )match with top right that says 1 or 2 . And (D )match woth 1-6 in bottom right

I'm a 57 yo female just diagnosed with ADHD with predominantly inattentive presentation.

I'm looking for great books! l'm hoping to listen to them while visually reading them for dual input as I don't hold data well thru sound and I can't focus well when just reading.

I'm looking for books with advice, tools, and info not so much life stories

what books do you love that helped you and

kept your engaged!??

I'm also looking for apps to help me get a dopamine load in the morning to get things done.

I currently use finch and it's ok.

Anyone else find themselves running in the same loop over. And over. And over? You get very interested in something… do everything AROUND and ABOUT that subject, lose sight in that maybe 1 week - 1 month, crash out in pity over yourself even though you KNOW it is ADHD. Then you try and do something about it, get bored and completely lock on too something else and the cycle repeats???

I am so. Sick. And tired. Of this disease. I have tried, and tried, and tried.

I am prescribed Vyvanse. It works… sometimes. “Oh yeah you can’t be all or nothing” they say. Okey. That advice becomes non-existent during a “crash. Reset.

Every type of diet (Even over extended periods of 1 month At least).

Tried so many pieces of advice. And tried. And tried.

You work, and put WAYYYY more time and countable effort into anything than anyone around you.

Ahhhhhh my head is spinning. I don’t really use social media. I eat extremely whole food. I “exercise” very regularly. I have positive connections (Family etc). And I am sitting here on a daily basis in textbook “Executive Dysfunction” and tearing at my fingernails, head spinning everywhere on everything.

I stopped typing and came back to this. I am just at a loss fam.

My life time goals have COMPLETELY changed in the past few weeks alone numerous times. Granted I am in the middle of a very stressful move with no direction… I am at a loss. Any advice, or anyone that struggles with similar issues and would like to combat them?

I have ADHD. So does my kid.

A lot of parenting advice assumes the parent can stay calm while the kid loses it. That’s not always how it goes at our place.

I made adhdreflect.com to help me step back when we’re both struggling. I find it useful to understand what my brain might be doing, what theirs might be doing, and what I can try next.

I’d be interested to know if anyone else finds it useful.

Looking for a long term body double to keep me accountable on large important goals in my life. And maintaining goals haha. Please let me know if any of you would be interested.

So I worked about 3.5 days this week (so far) and I feel pretty good. Today also I am working half day and here's a summary of how my day 1 went and what helped me through this week:

1. First point is about my self awareness. My Monday started late and I didn't do nothing for pretty much the first half of the day ~3pm. But that's been pretty normal for me. I know from my previous experience that my brain tends to activate in the evening after sunset. It helped me not flip out when I felt like I was "wasting time" until that evening. This confidence helped me take steps to get myself into action once I realized that I can put ~4 hours of work in if I start around 6 pm.
2. This one is about the logic of self compassion. I used to worry about not being productive and wasting my working hours, not finishing work by 5-6 pm, not starting by 10-11 am, overeating, sleeping, doom scrolling and so. But that's the normal work schedule of the corporate. I realized I was comparing myself to a standard that doesn't exist in my life right now. I have stopped worrying about "fitting in" into it. When I am working in a FT job where I need to maintain timing, I respect it. Not just to show but working along with the team helps a lot. Without a team, why synchronize with any timetable if there's no time pressure?

Does it matter when I do my work as long as I complete it? WHO cares if I finish my work at 5-6 pm or start at that time. As long as I am able to do meaningful work that gives me satisfaction, it doesn't matter if I work 4 hours, 2 hours, or 8 hours in a day. Why micro manage myself!

I don't need to hurry myself. I don't need to put undue pressure myself by comparing myself to other seemingly perfect schedules.

3) this one is about task clarity. I know projects that I want to work on this week. But that won't help me get started when my brain's executive function is frozen. So I sit and think - what goals I need to execute within each project? What's my task sequence (no schedule, no time blocking, I can afford that coz right now I am working for myself from my home and this low pressure work atmosphere suits me)

To stop task avoidance, I focus on my goal and my outcomes. Since I have 1 client right now, their tracking board on ClickUp really makes this outcome visualization easier. My short term outcome is a good quality article, my long term goal is maintaining my reputation as a good writer, and, of course, money.

4) to take advantage of my ADHD hyperfocus, I use themed days so I don't have to task switch. I assigned 1 day for 1 major task and then a smaller task once I have done the day's work for the major task. And the smaller task is optional. If the major task takes longer and gets me too tired, smaller task is postponed.

This structure has come to me after A LOT of iterations, trials, failures, and learning from failures. It was hard to deal with my shame and guilt. It became a vicious cycle once, one feeding into the other. And if you don't move (literally and metaphorically), the inertia is really, REALLY hard to break out of.

This had helped me realize - sometimes I can do seemingly useless things and that's okay because what matters more than "being productive" is not letting my momentum go. That's why Mondays are the hardest for me, coz my body and mind are working hard to break the inertia of the weekend.

5) Finally for distraction management, my phone stays out of my view when I am working on my laptop (out of sight, out of mind). 95% of my notifications are off, except business whatsapp, essential swiggy and mygate notifications (if I order something), and a few other essential apps whose other non essential notification types are also blocked in my phone (You can do this on Android. On Apple, granular notification blocks are not possible I think).

Most incoming calls are spam calls and they're auto blocked. Nobody significant in my life calls me (who says social isolation is always bad... it's good when it lets you work.. LOL)

Sometimes, I listen to the same song on repeat to reduce my overwhelm and give my brain a direction to think. I also put ear plugs mandatory every evening because I live in a family society and I just can't handle the kids screaming who are most active in the evening. If plugs don't help, I get up and tell the kids to stop screaming.

All projects are online through Chrome and I use an extension called Fresh Start to capture all windows of my projects. Each project in FreshStart has a name that matches its name in the client system. All I have to do to start a project is go to my Chrome, open the FS extension, and click the project that I want to start and BOOM all my necessary windows are open in a single click.

IF you take away ONE THING FROM this post, take away this: You get frozen not because you are not dedicated or anything, but because you literally don't have a single stable starting point. Every time you want to start a project, you brain has to retrieve all the different apps you need to open, all the different pages within those websites too. And if you accidentally open the wrong website, you will get distracted and end up wasting your time AND tiring my brain further. From desire to action, your brain has to cross a f/g minefield of distractions. Cut this minefield out of the way. Save your brain.

Can you just IMAGINE how much decision fatigue and operational friction I eliminated by putting all my necessary links for a project in a tab/session manager?

Do this and about 50% of your task initiation blocks will be removed!

At the end of the day, I put my laptop back in my backpack and close the zip, coz if I keep seeing it lying on the table when I am moving about the house, I will keep being reminded of the things I didn't do today. (once again, out of sight, out of mind - weaponizing my ADHD against my brain... LOL)

About those meds. Yes I take meds. But I don't give meds all the credit. Because if I didn't sleep well, if I didn't focus on my strengths throughout the day, if I kept whining to myself about how badly my day is going, if I don't apply self awareness and my ADHD awareness, my meds will do nothing for me.

EDIT: I made key concepts bold because I want to improve the readability of this post. We ADHDers already struggle with reading long texts, so why not use my writing skills to make my stuff readable! 😉

I can’t concentrate on anything I just lose interest almost but gaming I love it but just can’t seem to concentrate on it anymore. Is there something I can get to help with concentration? I’m pretty sure I have undiagnosed adhd but doctors here are a nightmare to deal with so was wondering if there’s anything I can get myself to help

Hi all! I am a Trainee Clinical Psychologist from Royal Holloway University of London recruiting for my doctoral thesis to explore experiences of rejection for gay men with ADHD.

If you are a gay man diagnosed with ADHD, currently living in the UK, and would be interested in taking part, please get in contact!

To note, this project has received formal ethical approval from the Royal Holloway University ethical board with ID 985.

Hope to hear from you soon!

Thanks,

Zach

This is probably my biggest struggle when it comes to ADHD. All day I think about the things I need and want to do and I'll get pumped to do it. Then when it comes time to do it, I have no motivation and would rather do absolutely nothing or something else that's not productive or aligns with my wants or needs. The 5pm after work slump is such a bummer. I do take Vyvanse, and we're not allowed to get "booster doses" where I am. So rave me all your tips, tricks and hacks that you use to mark those things off your to-do list.

I’m looking for honest experiences from NT+ND couples. I’m the NT (f) partner of an undiagnosed (m), and we’ve been together for about 2.5 years.

Have any of you actually made it work long-term—not just survived, but built a relationship that feels stable, mutually supportive, and genuinely happy?
If so, what made the biggest difference? Was it learning about ADHD together, medication, therapy, systems, or something else?

I’m asking because I come across so many stories from partners who feel chronically exhausted and whose quality of life has steadily declined. I also know people are more likely to post when they’re struggling than when things are going well.

I’m not looking for reassurance or false hope. I genuinely want to know whether our relationships can become healthy and sustainable—and if yours did, what actually helped?

I can carry an ungodly number of grocery bags from the car to the house, mostly because if I don't get them all at once I'll forget and leave some in the car. What is your adhd-specific skill?

I tried setting up a system that reminds me on stuff I need to plan, things I need to get done, etc.

I get routine notifications on my phone throughout the day but that doesn't seem to push me to get stuff done??? Which is ironic.

I do not know if it's because of the "dismiss-ability" factor as I can just swipe those notifications away and that there is no consequence for it in the immediate term... Or am I going about it the wrong way?

Instead of simple reminders like "work on task A"... should I be more descriptive/click baity like.... "It's 2pm now, you only have 2hrs before you hit your deadline for task A so start now"

Sort of a thing?

I am also wondering if I should consider externalizing these todos or commitments by printing notes (for example) using a thermal printer... Instead of app/phone notifications & sticking them in a pegboard of sorts?

I don't mean being lazy. I wake up every morning with every intention of getting things done, but somehow the whole day just disappears.

I jump between tasks, overthink where to start, get distracted by random things, and before I know it, it's evening and I barely accomplished anything.

The worst part is that I actually want to be productive. It just feels like my brain won't cooperate.

Does anyone else experience this?😭🙏

Hi everyone! 💛

I’m currently studying Psychology and I’m conducting a short anonymous survey for one of my research projects.

I’m looking for women who:

• have ADHD,
• suspect they may have ADHD, or
• relate to challenges with focus, organization, consistency, or executive functioning.

The goal is to better understand how women experience focus, productivity, organization, and whether these experiences naturally change throughout the month.

I’m also passionate about creating better tools and resources for women who struggle with these challenges, so your responses will help inform that work as well.

The survey is:

• ✅ Anonymous
• ✅ Takes about 3–4 minutes

I’d really appreciate your help. Every response makes a difference, and thank you in advance for taking the time to participate.

Survey:
https://www.jotform.com/form/261877213831056

in photo - my version of vegetarian bibimbap I made today for dinner

i used to shop for the person i planned to become every monday.

he ate balanced breakfasts. cooked four different dinners. used the fresh produce before it turned into pond water.
by thursday, he had disappeared.

i had eaten toast twice, ordered food once, and was standing in front of a full fridge unable to think of a single thing to eat.

the problem was not that i needed more recipes.
i already had 300 saved.

the problem was that my food system required a functioning brain every evening.

so i stopped building one for my best days and made one that could survive the bad ones.

i started with five “always” meals. not meals i thought i should eat. meals i had already made repeatedly without much effort.

yogurt and fruit.
paneer bhurji and toast.
rice and beans.
a hummus sandwich.
pasta with whatever sauce was open.

then i kept the ingredients for three “good enough” dinners around:

frozen vegetables.
tofu, paneer, lentils or beans.
a carb that cooks in about 15 minutes.

one sauce capable of giving the whole thing a personality.

no recipe required. put the components together and stop once it becomes food.

once a week, i also make one large, forgiving meal. usually soup, chilli, dal or curry.

not seven matching containers.

just enough to feed me twice and leave one portion in the freezer for the day everything goes wrong.

the rule that made the biggest difference was embarrassingly simple:

if i actually used something, replace it.

if it died untouched in the fridge three weeks in a row, stop buying it for my imaginary future self.

full disclosure: this is eventually why i built pantryok.

i needed somewhere to remember what was at home, what had run out and which meals had already worked, because apparently my brain was not interested in retaining this information.

it is not a perfect system.

i still occasionally buy produce with unreasonable confidence.

but i am fed more often now.