Helping others vs. helping yourself

Honestly it's more like

Oh boy, a well-defined task with a beginning, progress, an end, and an obvious benefit to someone! I get to be valuable!

versus

I have several days' worth of clean clothes, there is no need to rush

Yeah, tbh, I tend to not do a lot of my chores because.. I don't feel the need to. Why clean when I'm ok with the current level of dirtyness? Why wash when I still got clean stuff that I want to wear? Etc.
- Just realize that your level of comfort with dirt and debris can change gradually. And all of a sudden, you are hip deep in trash
- Yeah, I feel this. My partner hates it that I don't usually help out around the house.
Exactly this, for me at least.

I was a failure relative to my peers in my late thirties, got diagnosed with ADHD and it’s insane.

So before I always wanted to be a software developer but I couldn’t finish shit, and just procrastinated and kept learning but never progressing.

Afterwards, I am now a software developer and working from a massive spec sheet has kept me engaged the whole time. I still suck at planning but give me a plan and I’ll knock it put the park.

What remains to be seen is if I still have the same vigour, 1 year, 2 years in etc.
For me personally, even if I don't have days of clean clothes and NEED to do laundry like right now, it's still way harder to do something for myself than it is to do it for someone else.
Wow.. true!

I don’t know what I ever did to you to be called out like this.

It's your fault for having ADHD! 👿
- I blame my parents.
- This has nothing to do with ADHD?

Sometimes it helps to think of yourself as a friend you are helping out.

Right, but my problem is that I hate myself
- Try doing it out of spite.
  
  "That lump of shit in my cranium thinks I can't do this task, well, I'll show you, you glob of expired tapioca pudding!"

I am still fighting with back pain from last weekend, when I helped friends to carry 9 cubic meters of firewood. Would help again any time.

I am also, in this very moment, fighting to get up from my couch and start, at the very least fucking start my washing machine or dishwasher. I am loosing.

You can do it. This internet stranger believes in you.

With this site I feel it's like.. aren't these problems everyone suffers from? Or am I just projecting my potential fear of having a condition 😅

As has been said previously to this question: most people likely have issues like this from time to time, what makes it problematic is having them almost constantly and to such a degree that it's crippling.

Everyone coughs from time to time, but if you have a chronic cough that's so bad that you cough up blood every time, that's not normal and you need to see a doctor.
- See mom, I told you I am fine!
Kinda. One post I like to quote is the one that says that everybody pees too, but if you do it 30 times in an hour you need a doctor. ADHD is relatable to everyone because everybody deals with our problems to some extent, just in much more manageable doses.
The thing that separates a disorder from a normal issue is the magnitude and/or frequency of occurrence. E.G. most people that currently have a uterus will get cramps on their period, but if they're actively in pain instead of just uncomfortable something is probably wrong
- Yeah that kinda makes me worried about myself tho lol
- That is a bad example because many women are actively in pain with cramps and have seen a doctor about it but have been told they're just unlucky.
If everyone had this particular issue the world would be very different I think.
- You're probably right
https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/4051762
- Just pondering on my own misery, cause I can relate is all. Wasn't trying to put OP down for feeling it. I'll try to be more careful with the wording next time thx
Speaking facts

Guilty af.

Is this really an ADHD thing? I will go out of my way to help other people, but yeah, I can't be bothered to fold my own laundry so I just throw it all in a clothes basket and stick it in the closet.

It's not exclusively ADHD but a lot of us ADHD folks seem to be like this.

The difference I think is for ADHD it's not "can't be bothered to fold my own laundry" it's "I cannot force myself to fold laundry and if I try I will lose focus on the task and be scrolling my phone within 30 seconds of starting."
- more than that, in my experience when i simply cannot do something and try to force myself to do it, it leads to me feeling like i'm going to die.
  
  The phone scrolling is a form of self-defence to distract from that feeling of "i'm useless and god is about to smite me for sucking so hard"
- Folding laundry is a gargantuan task to me. It takes 10-15 minutes of my life, but it feels like an eternity.
The laundry was just an example. Apply having problems to every activity, even those that you like to do. Helping others serves as an external source of motivation on which ADHD people thrive. Our brains have problems with motivating us/our body to do things that we want to do without some kind of external pressure/motivation. I don't remember the specifics properly although I watched videos on that ~7 days ago for the x damn time. Here are videos explaining what I was trying explain in more detail: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3
- You just linked over an hours worth of video with only a vague description as to why someone should watch them...to an audience of ADHD people. Would you care to place a wager on many people will watch them? 😆😆😆
- Yeah, obviously laundry isn't my only problem. It seeps into every aspect of my life. Motivation to do stuff is usually not high unless it's new to me.
Why are we people pleasers so much??
- humans are inherently social animals, so helping others is programmed to make us feel good
  
  what is a common part of ADHD? that's right, being really sensitive to rewards and easily getting addicted.
- I have no idea
It isn't just laundry of course. This meme speaks to motivation as other folks commented.

Motivation can come from emotion either from response to external input or ones own thinking.

Motivation can also come from the brain's executive function, where you decide to "Just do it".

So if someone yells angrily at me to do a thing, or if I am freaking because the deadline is early upon me, or there is an emergency, or if a friend asks for help, the emotions can motivate me easily as is the case for anyone.

If I know I need to work on a boring thing today to save myself from panic later, the "just do it" part of my brain doesn't have enough oomph to actually get me to do the thing. Like, no amount of pushing myself, self goading, self talk, nothing. It's like trying to push a car alone with the parking brake on. I just can't budge myself.

When I am on medication, it can still be hard but I actually feel like getting something done, I want to do it, and I am able to just will myself to do the thing. I can just be like "yeah this sucks, it's boring but fuck it let's do this" and then, unlike before, I actually start doing it. Which is still a marvel to me even though I have been on meds for several years. I don't think most people find self motivation to be a novel thing to marvel over. I think most people are more able to convince themselves to do the sucky boring thing if they just set their mind to it. Being able to do that (even if difficult) is taken for granted.

Which is why ADHD people are told they are lazy or told to "just do it already". Normal people don't know what it is like to have a broken "just do it cortex" :)

One of Dr. Barkley's videos explain the motivation issue really well.

And the thing with ADHD is that it is a constant, every minute of every day struggle with motivation if your line of work involves too little excitement and a lot of tedious boring stuff.

It was bad enough with me that the only way to function even close to average was to be in constant fear and panic about forgetting things, missing deadlines, getting in (more) trouble, while failing to avoid those things constantly and gaining a reputation as an unreliable lazy flake, eroding trust, and performing poorly in work, school, in relationships. The result was getting lower grades than I could have without ADHD as well as missing out on career growth, losing friends, etc.
The meaning of ADHD has been diluted by posers to mean anything short of some unrealistic, hyper-focused, infinite-willpower ideal.