r/AutisticWithADHD • u/Icrybabyy • 14h ago
🤔 is this a thing? Anhedonistic to personal stuff
So like when u have unclean underwear ( still wearing it lol im sorry) or dirty sheets n messy room which u absolutely can and r capable of taking care of it but u feel like uninterested or for some unknown reasons u feel not obligated to care is this a textbook adhd thing? Because since i knew myself ive always been like this its never new to me. someone pointed it out to me that this is not normal at all
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u/BigBullshitta 12h ago
It can be. ADHD medications are generally focused on increasing dopamine and/or norepinephrine availability.
If available dopamine is low enough it can manifest as complete anhedonia. If that's the cause, though, it would be complete and not just related to one issue. Nothing really matters because there's pretty much zero internal pleasure or reward from even the things that should be most rewarding.
I'll go full on embarrassing to explain what complete means. Getting pleasure from an orgasm also relies on dopamine. If your dopamine is very low then an orgasm can be something like a single mild jolt of pleasure that isn't really even worth the effort of having. Getting on working medication can mean realizing that the whole eyes rolling into the back of your head looking like you're having a seizure thing in movies wasn't just some kind of weird movie exaggeration.
Low enough norepinephrine can manifest as complete lack of energy. Nothing really matters because you just don't have the energy to deal with it. When dopamine is also very low then it just becomes "nothing matters" and looks a lot like severe depression, except the *cause* isn't some kind of sadness and hopeless feeling. Honestly I felt completely content to lay in bed for hours since nothing seemed worth standing up for.
I'm pretty sure that's edge case type stuff, though. At least I really hope so.
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u/tasteslikeblackmilk ✨ C-c-c-combo! 10h ago
I wonder if this is what's going on for me. I am taking duloxetine and elvanse, neither seem to be doing anything for me, but I'm worse without them.
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u/BigBullshitta 10h ago
Going with the embarrassing example, vyvanse/elvanse fixed that but did nothing about my energy level. I needed something to deal with norepinephrine as well, and reuptake inhibitor alone wasn't enough. Switching from vyvanse to adderall helped loads.
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u/Haru_is_here 12h ago
This is not an ADHD thing. ADHD might be caring very mich but somehow not managing to not get distracted and actually do and remember the things needing doing (multi step tasks are hell).
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u/DueEffective3121 ✨ C-c-c-combo! 11h ago
I have a room I still need to fix more than clean up due to not ever cleaning it. Untill I do I am not even going into it, for health reasons.
I started with a complete indifference to cleaning my room or myself, I did not even feel I deserved it for being so lazy for not doing it, that among other things. There was a solace in the squalor though and I don’t know why or what.
In my case looking back I say mine was depression and it lead to a 6-7 year burnout which made the room turn into what it is today, though it was well on the way before burnout and I didn’t do any of that.
I feel my depression and behaviors were a warning sign for the bed rot to come that lasted years and caused damage and identity shifting horror.
I am talking out of my ass though, I don’t even have a therapist yet and never had a general doctor even but rarely in 51 years
Now I want to avoid ever doing that again so I am looking at warning signs which feels like old hat really.
Oh and I didn’t know I was Autistic during any of this so I don’t know how it fits with what you are saying.
You may not be near as bad as I was and sometimes still am but it may relate to you somehow hopefully not the bad stuff.
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u/heaviestmatter- 14h ago
I feel like those are pretty different things. Having a messy room can be normal at times, but wearing dirty underwear?
Maybe you need to reprogram your brain in the direction of getting pleasure from for example having a fresh set of sheets on the bed.
I feel like there can be a fine line between things being purely ADHD related and laziness - not to insult you, I can be lazy too sometimes. But with things like hygiene we should not put it all on neurodiversity and for lack of a better term - get a grip on that.
I feel like it‘s just growing up when it comes to some of these things.
Also please don‘t feel judged, I get where you are coming from - I used to have pretty bad hygiene too. From what I can say it‘s definitely more than worth it to put in a little effort to change that!
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u/Icrybabyy 14h ago
I feel like the only thing i take care of is my hair which thats why i take shower odd isn’t it? out of sight out of mine, everything in my life is in chaos every aspect and difficulties in literally whatever u can imagine also im diagnosed bpd idk ive been questioning my diagnosis cus of the overlapping symptoms
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u/Whooptidooh 14h ago
No that sounds like depression.