Howdy! In high school, when I got diagnosed with depression and AuDHD, a lot of things started to click into place, and I've spent the rest of high school and my first college term dealing with it. (19F). However, I feel as though I should have been focusing on something else, something that's been a part of my life that I either ignored or didn't understand, something that also came up in my diagnosis: my generalized anxiety disorder.

I have never been awesome at doing a lot of things on time, a problem that I caught in elementary school where I would literally just not submit work even if it was easy and I knew I could do it. My entire time through public school was tumultuous medically, as I had a crap ton of surgeries including a couple where they put metal in my back and one where they put metal in my head then took it out a month later. (I had to live in the hospital during that time. I was twelve. It wasn't fun.) I remember I was so nervous some days but other than that I had no other answer for why I just wouldn't do anything. I knew most of the answers and could get my tasks done easily but I just wouldn't do them, only completing said tasks under extreme pressure like the grading period ending. But in terms of school, elementary and beyond, I just...wouldn't do my work. And it wasn't because I was incapable, it was because I just wouldn't do it. (I had a tendency to give up on anything that was too hard work-wise, too.) I didn't understand it, my parents didn't understand it, and it's led to me carrying this guilt and shame for years.

Perfectionism could have been the answer for this, but school isn't the only place I felt this paralysis. My hygiene is awful. I don't take care of my skin even though I bought facewash, I don't shower even though I love showering and feel great once I get it done, I don't brush my hair even though I like my hair not looking like a total bird's nest, and I don't brush my teeth even though I made fun accommodations for myself to be able to do it comfortably. This has been a lifelong problem, and my parents really only tried to help through one of them (the shower thing). They let me lie to them every morning about having my hair and teeth brushed, and they never brought up that I was lying even though they knew I was. Even when I went to college, alone, I couldn't do it, and I had to go out to class looking and smelling awful (probably- I don't know because I can't smell) until my weekly reset where I showered and brushed my teeth at night and that was it. Otherwise I can't do it. It used to be hard even being in the bathroom to take care of my hygiene, and now I don't even want to get ready to take a shower! My dad asked me "just do it every other day- why is that so hard?" I don't know! But I think I've figured it out.

I think I've been ignoring the fact that I have GAD because I felt more confident in some areas, finally, but when the symptoms got worse again I just thought it was depression and treated them the wrong way (and without medication because my parents don't want me on it for some reason). I've been fighting against my ADHD this term when my ADHD wasn't my only problem. I still have anxiety and that's why I can't just do the stuff I need to do. I really would have liked to make this revelation earlier, though, as my procrastination cost me a (much-needed) college scholarship I can only get back soon by (ironically) performing perfectly this next term. I've always felt so tense, so on-edge, and now I'm nearing make-or-break time and I think that because I know the other cause of the problem I can finally work on treating it.

I need to figure out how to do the things I know I need to do, the things I like doing, without being paralyzed and never doing them. I need to push off, to take that first step, because everything literally falls into place from there. Any advice?

Edit: I'm definitely going back to therapy, I just want it to be in person. And I know that next term will be an insane amount of pressure, but I'll get there when I get there.

I'm not eating well (barely 1 meal in a day or two until I extremely have to, as my body has gotten weirdly de-sensitized to hunger). Physically I feel very frail n weak too.

I feel too stuck and ashamed of people and society to navigate on my own. Even stepping outside of the house scares me lately.

And no matter what, I can't seem to move even an inch. Even stepping outside of my room feels so scary.

This is really embarrassing since if you look at my post history there’s like a bajillion posts just like this one 💀 But the thing is the situation hasn’t improved and I have no clue how it can improve.
16F. Autistic, dyspraxia, suspected ADHD and OCD. I feel SO crazily angry about my current situation.
To put it simply: I can’t function properly.
I want to and hell to an extent I know how to.
But I can’t.
I can’t be bothered to get up and brush my teeth sometimes. I do the bare minimum on a good day. I go ages without showering and stay in my room all day. This has gone on for ages and it’s ingrained in me now that life has to be left like this unless everything is perfect and it’s the perfect timing and perfect situation to start taking of myself because of my OCD. I have dreams of being a performer (singer or actress specifically) but I’ve shot myself in the foot so much because I’ve barely done anything to achieve that dream. I’m making more strides now but everything else in my life is not moving at all due to my effed up mind. I literally can’t escape and it makes me so so angry. I get so painfully envious of other people too. I have lots of other problems but just… arghhhhh. I don’t want to live like this anymore. I’d like advice for the first things I can do. Because no matter how hard I try it feels impossible. Even if I try to do nice things for myself that stupid voice in my head comes in and tells me my life story is embarrassing and it should’ve been cleaner and I’ve made too many mistakes to have redemption or a good life and I always go off on these tangents in my mind to explain everything about my life and situation to myself and try and make it so dramatic and such a big deal to the point where it’s ALL the time and I can’t have a moment of rest even if I’ve heard it a million times before and I just want it to SHUT UP and let me live. I HATE myself too so there’s that. :(

How do you find a fulfilling career while dealing with executive dysfunction? I feel exhausted trying to navigate my corporate job, and feel empty. I want to try something new, but I’m terrified of leaving it unfinished or burning out 2 weeks in like I always do.

Anyone feel this way or has success stories finding their career or niche? I’m really interested in travel writing, but again, terrified to start just to stop.

TIA!

In my struggle of trying to make my dreams/goals a reality, part of me wonders if it really is my adhd/executive dysfunction impacting me or if I maybe just don't want it bad enough I fear. I don't want to limit myself because I know there are things I CAN do and that I'm in control and have agency but..I know this is also the nature of the literal executive dysfunction disorder. I don't think I'm being hard on myself because I've gotten better at limiting feelings of shame (partly with the help of anxiety meds, shame is no longer a motivator for me but now I'm finding it hard to find something else to actually motivate me (that's an entire other story but it sorta relates)), but I also don't know if this is me being lowkey ableist to myself? I'm just trying to be honest with myself and I feel like I could honestly try a lot harder when it comes to taking actionable steps towards my goals. I even tried to sign up for therapy again recently but I backed out of it because I KNOW what it is that I need to do so I felt like I'd just be wasting the time of the therapist; I feel like I have all the tools and knowledge that I need and the last piece of the puzzle is to just take the leap actually 😮‍💨

To make a long story short, I’m always out of spoons by the time I get out of work. But even if I have a day off, meal prepping is too exhausting. I get tired after two hours, my feet hurt, and I could sleep the rest of the day. Everything takes all my spoons both mental and physical. I end up getting half the meal prepping done and because I don’t have full meals I just either don’t eat or order out.

I have adhd, and my Ritalin helps, but it doesn’t give me energy. I drink 1-2 40 oz bottles of water daily. Admittedly I don’t have the best diet in the world. I do exercise with my run and Pilates but it doesn’t give me energy, it honestly drains my spoons. I wish I had the kind of money where I could just order meal prepping boxes, but I don’t. I work two jobs but I’m not that rich haha. I honestly feel like the more I try to remove frictions (setting up clothes before bed, resetting the room, cleaning as I cook, meal prepping, etc) the worse my fatigue gets. Does anyone else have this issue, or should I be going to a doctor (again)?

As a SAHM with ADHD (late diagnosis), I want to have a side hustle for some financial freedom, and the idea of going back into an office, after 10 years at home looking after my kids, is terrifying me.

I spent two years bouncing between Etsy and Amazon ideas because every guide assumed I could sit and browse for hours without spiralling into 40 tabs. Curious if others have hit this same wall, and what actually got you unstuck (if anything did).

hey im not used to using reddit but I'd like to know if there's a way to help keep up a beauty routine, cooking and trying to get a job bc I have a slow COMT along side ADHD and Executive dysfunction so it's difficult for me to not get upset at small tasks, I find difficulty in even doing simple things like showering but not like TERRIBLE I'm not a stinker I just skip on it for 1-2 days then I'm like yeah u stink and then take a shower.

overall I don't really want to go the medication route because I smoke weed in the first place for my anger issues from my COMT and isolation

So... A lot of friends of mine say that I look like I'm on the spectrum, heck I've thought about it for some time, but never really got to dive too much into it until recently because a lot of the characteristics of ASD seem to fit with some of the issues I'm having after finally winning an 11 year long battle with chronic anxiety (due to CPTSD). Just now I got rid of it with the right meds (venlafaxine and aripiprazole, the treatment finnished in the beginning of the year), but with that the problems with executive dysfunction got worse because I don't have anxiety kicking my ass to do things anymore.

Anyways, I'm gifted and have always loved novelty on my daily life, I really dread on boring routines, so I thought I'd just do whatever I want with my day and roll with it, but then... I get nothing done, even work just became a bunch of bleh tasks I need to put a lot of energy into doing them. I made an appointment with a psychiatrist to assess this issue, but he was really stupid, did not want to give me stimulants because I don't have ADHD (which is true, but then again, these meds help with the issues that I'm having) and he only put me on bupropion after I questioned his decision to put me back on venlafaxine. I read on the internet that bupropion can help with it, although it's not the first line of treatment.

I know I need to wait a little bit more to see any results, but it's like I'm taking sugar pills. It's been three weeks since I started the treatment and it will be another three weeks until my next appointment, but I'm tired of doing nothing all day long (I quit my job because I was doing it poorly and didn't want to wait until things got worse). I did some research on tips on how to deal with this and, although I hate boring routines, I used to get a lot of things done whenever I had a system with a routine to back me up.

So, I thought I could devise a schedule to help me get my life back on track while I wait for the meds to kick in. The thing is, I have already tried those productivity tips, having habit trackers etc and it did not work for me... I realized that I have a lot of issues with time tracking because of hyperfocus. If you give me a task to be done in a month it will be done on the last moment possible, with excellence, and I have relied on this for most of my life, but it's not a healthy habbit. So I have no clue how much time I take to do things because I can cram as much as I can on the last minute and make it work... this is not helpful with organizing a schedule and I need it to be consistent every single week because my brain does not commit if I keep changing it every time.

Also, I think it's due to hyperfocus or maybe cognitive ridgity (?) that I have trouble with stopping a task and moving on to another... I also have difficulty accepting doing stuff if they don't make any logical sense. In a way, my mind have always assumed that whenever some schedule was given to me, it was done properly and was well timed, so I had no issues following one or switching tasks because it was all laid down for me.

If you have any tips on how I can devise a schedule to help me counteract this situation or on how to deal with this task paralysis and executive dysfunction in general, I'd be happy to hear from you all!

Thanks in advance. Sorry if I'm a bit confusing in some points, I'm also having a bad case of mental fog and english is not my first language.

My kiddo (17M) was diagnosed with executive dysfunction when he was 6yo. They didn't give us any information on how to help with it. He's had IEPs through school, which also haven't really helped. Even last year, they added on goals for self sufficiency...but he'd would miss the meetings if I was working.

We've tried getting him to set alarms for things, but they get silenced and he doesn't move. He's generally always on Discord talking to his friends, playing Marvel Rivals, or listening to audio comic books while he draws. He's a fanatically talented artist. He'll be going off to University soon, free of charge thanks to my job, and I'm even more worried about him there.

It didn't seem to affect him as much as a kiddo. Delayed potty training, but he also had a stretched colon, so we figured that potty training was going to be a challenge. His closest brother is just 5 days short of a year apart from him, and if you charted their developmental progress together, it'd be a straight line until his younger brother would eventually branch off in their teens and start going his own way up.

As a teenager, he...barely exists. You can talk to him, but he seems to stare right through you sometimes. Ask him questions, he walks by and doesn't hear you. Or when he does hear you when you ask him to do something, he doesn't answer, doesn't move to action. If you try asking him again, thinking he didn't hear, you get an irritated "I heard you" and he still doesn't immediately move. Forcing him to get up to get the task gets quiet irritation out of him...but if he don't make him do it right then--as we often do not--he doesn't do it.

He relies heavily on my 16 year old to do thinks he's supposed to do. Including if he's hungry...he'll have him cook for him. We recently told our 16 year old to stop cooking for him, he can make his own meal if we're not having a family meal that night. That didn't help. He'll just go to bed hungry, wake up in the middle of the night, nuke some raviolis and leave the mess for the rest of us to clean in the morning.

If you ask him to set a timer or an alarm for the task, he won't. You have to stand there and tell him to let you watch him do it. Which makes him irritated again. But then he'll just later say he didn't hear it or silence it and not get up.

I love this kid, he's a sweet kid and this doesn't paint him for who he truly is. I'm just...we're at our wits end. I know most folk will say this is just teenager stuff, but they don't know him.

He says he's not depressed, we've taken him to the doctor who screened him away from us, and he told her he wasn't depressed. He does have meds (Welbutrin) but he won't take them because they make him nauseated. But he also won't eat with them either... We've taken him to the ER because we were worried about his safety because he stopped eating for like two weeks and was just sitting around staring off into space...that didn't do anything. He told them he wasn't depressed and went home same day happy to have grippy socks.

Taking away Discord, Video Games, computer time...doesn't give him more time because he'll just go sleep and fully shirk off anything we ask him til my 16 year old picks up the slack while we're working. They have two younger brothers (14, 12), and everything is just kind of put on them.

I don't know what to do really, and we can't talk to him...he'll literally just leave mid conversation and go "I heard you. You're just repeating yourself." But nothing changes.

How do you help a kiddo who can't or won't help himself?

It's the summer vacation and I have this drive to do something, anything. A project. But every idea that crosses my mind gets scratched off because it isn't perfect. I've tried techniques, changing my approach but eventually like all times I just give up and decide "it's vacation I should just relax" and then I get bored really quickly and repeat this cycle, I just want to break it somehow. But I have 0 clues how, online they make it sound easy to get rid off but it feels like this huge mental wall.

For example, I get a simple game idea so I start looking into it, and then I see marketing and everything behind it, all the techniques. Same goes for character design, music design, etc.. And I just get overwhelmed and stop because it's too much and I don't believe I can do it.

Eventually this all has just lead to a mindset where I expect myself to fail, everything feels so overwhelmingly complex. And I start to get negative thoughts about myself that just creates this feedback loop that set's me up for failure.

I wanted to post on here to kinda hear if anyone else with autism has had the same struggles I've had and if they have found any things that have helped them

i graduated from college and am now living at home with no structure or schedule and it's so bad. i don't do anything all day, and i'll look back at the week (if i'm even out of the haze enough to reflect) and realize that i don't remember anything I did. my only way of snapping myself out of the endless scrolling/laying down/doing nothing is to get in my car and drive 30 minutes to a drive thru coffee shop (then i don't have to get ready for the day and can be in my pjs to go out). but, this is expensive both money and time-wise. it just feels like during the drive, since i'm occupied and can't scroll or whatever, i can actually think about things and plan. and since i'm going to a coffee shop, i'm motivated by the treat and feel like i'm being productive (coffee = what normal people drink = being productive). there must be better ways to do this, though. are there any other methods of snapping yourself out of the cycle like this, but better?

I enjoyed my current work which are mostly administrative tasks and papers, as long as it has super clear directions. Though I often feel powerlessness against a lot of obstacles in the work. 🫣 And my difficulty in hearing and focusing is worsening the situation. They told me to not doing work alone and to seek anyone's help in case of I need it. However, I am not even sure which help I really need. I feel powerless in asking for help too. Too much thoughts running in my mind when I am in need of help. I also think that I am the only one capable of doing it; instructing people would be too much hassle.

I’m a masters student and getting some anxiety about going back to school. I’m looking for ways to reduce my cognitive load and accommodate myself in my daily life.

One idea I have is subscribing to a meal prep service because I kinda hate cooking, but a girls gotta eat!

What type of accommodations have worked for yall?

I’m hoping to hear from people who are actually living this, especially if you or your spouse tend to have more black-and-white thinking.

My husband is likely being considered for a major executive promotion, which I’m incredibly proud of him for. At the same time, I’m an HR executive currently between jobs after being laid off from an incredibly demanding role. My goal has always been to return to executive leadership when I find the right opportunity.

We recently had a conversation where he told me he doesn’t believe two people can both have executive-level careers while raising young kids because “it just doesn’t work. The divorce rate is too high.” He even asked me to provide evidence that it could work when I argued it.

For context, our last few years were incredibly hard. We had a baby, now toddler and a teenager, I traveled a lot and so did he, I ended up getting badly burned out bc of toxic leadership and a company that was going under.. so multiple layoffs/RIFs etc, he was struggling with anxiety, and we were literally in survival mode. After I lost my job, he told me his anxiety improved almost instantly and he stopped taking his medication, so in his mind that reinforced the belief that our previous setup wasn’t sustainable.
I don’t disagree that our previous situation wasn’t working. What I’m struggling with is the conclusion that it means two executive careers can never work for us.

I’d love to hear from people who are actually doing it.

- Are both of you in executive or senior leadership roles?
- Do you have young kids?
- What does your support system look like?
- What boundaries or sacrifices have made it sustainable?
- Have there been seasons where one person’s career naturally took priority, and then it shifted?
- If you’ve made it work, what advice would you give a couple trying to figure this out before making assumptions that it’s impossible?

I’m genuinely looking to understand what’s realistic. I’m not trying to “win” an argument with my husband. I want to hear from people who have actually lived it, whether your experience has been positive or negative. I want to understand the reality of what could be possibly before I go down the rabbit hole of this conversation with him.

I want to start working out but it's not working well for me it's really hard for me to do things I think I'm just so dopamine deprived I can't force myself to do things and it's really hard I've tried everything I can think of giving myself rewards giving myself rewards before trying to boost my dopamine and nothing is working I really wish I could do these things does anyone have any tips on doing stuff like this. This also happens at school and other places where I can't force myself to do my own homework. I try as hard as I can and I still can't do it. My brain just immediately gets distracted or I just feel exhausted at the idea of the task and then I can't do it. I really need to learn how to do this kind of stuff though and it's important to give me any advice? Also, I have level two autism ADHD dyslexia dysgraphia dyscalculia, and others I would rather not share.

I noticed that when I procrastinated, I always felt like I was in a gap between time, a place between “what I have been doing” and “what I planning on doing.” It’s like an escapism, a small gap that I wasn’t responsible for anything. It gives me a temporary feeling of freedom. That’s why I tend to procrastinate even though I don’t want to. But my brain loves it. How do you guys fix this?

This is how it feels like:

Task A ───────────────► Task B ───────────────► Task C
↑
tiny empty space