ADHD memes

I just use a neurotic fear of being late :)

Precious habits, yes, the rituals we does, yesss, over and over, they can hurt us, or make our lives better, precious!

"like what nuns wear?"

You had one consistent habit, which was moving through the world untested and unmedicated. Most of your success can be attributed to this habit.

I know but then it's so easy to give up, and even if you don't, the next time something slightly disturbs the balance, such as it being Thursday, you need to achieve a monumental life changing effort again just to do the exact same thing you did for months..? And the crazy thing is that even experts on the subject don't seem to understand going "it'll get easier just keep at it" my sister in Christmas, I am fourty freaking years old I don't think I'll suddenly be able to not randomly forget brushing my teeth

Best part is when there isn't anything that interrupts, but you just forget the habit

It's so fucking hard.

Life is just a loop of scrambling to be stable, struggling to maintain it, then inevitably falling back to square one when something knocks you out of the routine.

For hand washing, just develop a minor germ phobia from the covid pandemic. Now I wash my hands before I eat, after I get home from the outside world, and after I touch anything my mind deems "unclean". It does of the side effects of dry hands.

What was the habit?

Well, it worked for 10+ years, that’s something, isn’t it?

Triggers are the real key. Like needing to use the bathroom in the morning. Then hang a habit of taking meds right after. You have to look at the habits you already have, and connect new things to that. You can also build new habits, but if they are forced, they won't have a high success rate. I built a habit of looking back into a space I am walking out of when not in my home. I built it on the anxiety of forgetting something. So it stuck. I try to build a habit of letting others talk, but it has no trigger, so it hasn't stuck.

The one exception is when you end up on a runaway train of thought.

You go for a walk and you see a seagull, which reminds you of the last time you went to the beach, which reminds you of coconuts, which reminds you of a silly cartoon you used to watch, which reminds you of a specific day in elementary school when a kid quoted an episode, and then you start to wonder what that kid's up to as an adult today.

And maybe you have the thought of, "I should reach out to them. I think they added me on Facebook like 15 years ago." But then a nearby car honks. You snap out of the thought and look around. You don't know what car honked, but you do spot a dog. It's an uncommon breed and you can't remember the name of it. You then spend the next minute or so either guessing the wrong breed or going down the alphabet, hoping to trigger the right name.

By the time you give up guessing and decide to look it up on your phone, you've completely forgotten about that kid from elementary school. The thought has vanished back into the void whence it came.

I feel validated...

My phone does that for me. I use a habit tracker with undismissable notifications that take only a "Yes" or "No" answer (it's a bit more customizable, but this is how I use it), which helps keep me accountable for my habits.

Unfortunately, it's been almost 3 months for a habit that I'm trying to nail down and I still forget sometimes.

Even if something tickles my brain it still doesn't become a habit. I genuinely don't think, in my 30s, with dozens of daily systems and all things considered a damn organized life, that I have a single habit. Everything I do is painstaking. Everything is conscious thought. I do laundry every single day and I have to think through the steps. Brushing my teeth is a slog. Figuring out what to eat is so difficult I often skip it despite just eating the same things over and over. If I don't set alarms, I will forget to feed my kid. Alarms for vitamins that I'm not allowed to dismiss until the vitamin is swallowed. I am struggling to think of a single thing that is automatic. I have to think about opening the blinds every day. I have to think about turning off the lights at night (I think about the consequences of leaving them on to decide which lights I leave on. Every night). Nothing happens out of habit.