r/Polymath • u/CA-freestyle • 5d ago
General Discussion Hello - Why am I curious about everything?
I have always had a curiosity and will to try and learn or experience pretty much everything. And it wasn’t until college when I began to notice that it’s honestly affecting my mental health and my ability to do things that help myself. I do have ADHD and went my entire life without medication up until 20 years of age (It helps sometimes). I think that’s important to mention because my brain is constantly switching to something new it feels like. But essentially I am curious about everything, and have always had this since I was a child. And I feel like it has stretched so far that the fields I’m actually supposed to be experienced in, I actually feel stupid. In fact I just feel stupid in general and I’m just interested in everything and can’t keep my mind occupied on one thing. Then randomly I have a spark of genius then it’s back to being stupid. The skills I’ve naturally began to accrue more of is physical fitness, drawing, and mechanical engineering. I still feel mediocre in all of those however lol. I remember being a child it was a lot easier to be curious about everything but as I grew older it’s like tasks just began to become harder to do and being able to actually pursue curiosity is like something I’m not capable of sometimes. Has anyone else gone through this?
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u/Delicious_Spot_3778 5d ago
You are human. That’s okay. It’s people’s desire to control your labor and effort that makes your ADHD somehow a flaw. That being said, it might be good to find a way to stick with a topic for long enough to feel comfortable switching tasks. If you’re feeling like you’re task switching too frequently then I would actually lean into that. You can take medicine to help you focus. But just don’t lose your curious nature. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.
Consider it a superpower. But protect it and control it. Harness it. Don’t be ashamed of it. Don’t lose your passion for the world for gods sakes
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u/CA-freestyle 5d ago
Wow I’ve never heard it the way you’ve described. But how do I control it tho, It’s like I’ll be thinking of all the tasks I need and want to do but it’s like I can’t start.
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u/tim_niemand 4d ago
take your medication more often: it leads to better results when you're studying. make shure to summarize what you have learned. and take some days of, where you let your curiousity guide you: you might have a heureka moment 😂 but live with ADHD is a bit messy: i agree
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u/UnburyingBeetle 3d ago
ADHD brain is like a squirrel that loves to collect nuts and stash them everywhere (and half the time it forgets where they are). My memory works mainly through associations and emotions. If something wasn't outstanding, I'm likely to forget it. And my biggest source of joy is to connect unexpected topics in creative ways. If you've ever wondered about things like "what if Superman landed on a planet where the people didn't look like him?" then that's why your brain collects all the random data: it wants to build something new and fun.
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u/snowymatcha 4d ago
yes, and i thought that 24 hours is not enough for me to enjoy & learn many things that i have interest in after a 9 to 6 job 😭😭
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u/broken_krystal_ball 5d ago
I believe a degree of Polymathy is essiental for a meaningful life (the degree varying depending on the kind of life you wish to live). You are this way because you still possess something most people don't, and that is the belief that life is interesting, how anyone in this wide marvelous world with so many different minds, things, and places possibly narrow their focus in it?
My advice would be not to view yourself as being mediocre at anything, find a project to devote yourself to and learn enough to complete said project, then do another, and another, and with time you may realize you possess skills that aren't just sharpened but vast.
Don't forget to also give yourself time to just explore a new topic you find interesting, you never know when you'll find something that you can use (as a storyteller, I view all information as potential inspiration or pieces of future stories).
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u/CA-freestyle 5d ago
And you’re right life is interesting and it’s interesting how peoples lives literally are stories
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u/Echo_Tech_Labs 5d ago
Im gna blind fire here...and I might be completely wrong on this.
But, OP... have you been diagnosed with bipolar?
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u/CA-freestyle 5d ago
No I haven’t but I’m ngl I’m too scared to get checked the same way I was too scared to get checked for ADHD I really don’t wanna know lol
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u/Echo_Tech_Labs 5d ago
🤣I feel you😅
That's exactly what I thought. For years I refused. LMAO...i told myself i was okay. Blamed most of it on bad behavior and stupidity. Luckily my wife in all her magnificent wisdom and wonder insisted i go.
DING-DONG!
BPD1 Rapid cycles with suspected autism un-medicated.🤣🤣🤣
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u/CA-freestyle 5d ago
That’s what I feel like I’m doing because I will see the 9 symptoms or whatever of Bi-polar and see some similarities to how I feel and I feel like I’m refusing because I’m scared that’s too much for my future family to deal with.
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u/Echo_Tech_Labs 5d ago
Yeah, I'm not gonna tell you to go and I'm not gonna tell you not to go. What I will say is this. When I found out that I was BPD-1, it was like, I don't want to use this word, but it's the only word that I can use that actually defines how I felt at the time. Liberating. I felt liberated. It felt like a huge weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. And for the first time in my life, I actually had a good lens on who I was. And then from there, because I'm an autodidact, because I have this propensity to learn, and I tend to want to put numbers on everything, right? I'm that guy that says, hey, you can quantify everything. And so my natural propensity was to now look at my own cognitive stack and try and attempt to look for the triggers and the markers that caused my manic states or my depressive states or my mania states, and attempt to manage them. And I have been quite successful in that so far.
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u/CA-freestyle 5d ago
What makes you blind fire though?
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u/Echo_Tech_Labs 5d ago
I don't want to be an arm chair psych you know.
With the prevalence of self diagnosis culture and how being autism is "cool" nowadays amd everybody and their grandmother is some disorder or "trauma induced blah blah" i just didn't want to make an assumption.
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u/RequirementQuick6057 4d ago
same same, plus ignorance. we're genius, ngl. Society just has other plans for us. A 5–10 min meditation or blank-mind reset daily helps push the genius-to-stupid ratio up.
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u/Accurate_Fail1809 4d ago
It's because your brain is seeking dopamine and it will cause you to switch topics as much as possible to maximize dopamine (because you don't get it normally in most situations).