You can only get so excited about making someone else rich.
No ADHD, just autism here. When finishing I get a small relief and no accomplishment, just emptiness if anything. I have to revisit a job well done 6mo later to get the feeling of accomplishment for a job well done.
That is actually one of the major things that medication changes for me - things other than my current hyperfocus can be rewarding. Mind you I still suck at choosing the right activity, but at least I stick with whatever I’m doing.
Or the feeling of , that should gave taken way less time, man I suck. Did I do it right? Better redo it (6 hours later…)
Yeah. I struggled to finish my graduation thesis, for many reasons, but chief among them was that I took on a project I didn’t know I wasn’t prepared for (it went way, waaay beyond what my education gave me, including economic and social issues I definitely was not prepared to explore, nevermind explain) and my supervisor was as inexperienced in it as I was. Me being the perfectionist that I am, being unable to produce what I imagined meant I’d rather do nothing.
Took me about 2y to get a decent research paper together (it really didn’t need to take that long, it was a qualitative study on gentrification in my city), and by the time I was able to guilt myself into actually finishing it, I got a decent looking project in about 2 weeks, hyperfocusing through the absolute rage the entire thing was giving me. The terna (experts assigned to judge) loved it, from the research to the execution. I asked for the degree to be handed to me on site instead of through a ceremony. I was just absolutely done with it, lol.
I don’t really feel proud about it even though I should be, I’m just glad I got through it at all.
I usually feel anger at myself that it took that long/wasn’t better/something else my brain had decided to keep me from getting any good brain chemicals
“Anyone else would have done this in their sleep and done a better job than me”
Not if they had the same struggles that you do—they would have done exactly what you did.
Dopamine after an accomplishment? Nah.
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Im quite sure I dont have ADHD, and I can absolutely relate. When I finally wrote my last exam of my highschool everyone was kinda hyped afterwards and I was like “and now? That’s it?”
I was quite sure I didn’t have ADHD, too.
Not feeling a sense of accomplishment is not normal. You deserve better. Just check into it, okay?
I’m no brainologist but I wonder if things like this might be more related to autistic cognition. There seems to be something similar in the space of not attaching the same significance to events others find emotionally charged.
Nah this is purely a malfunction in the rewards and punishment functions of the brain that keeps you motivated. Autistic people don’t have any problem with motivation unless they have some other diagnosis. If there is a connection, it would be with something like depression or RADS.
ADHD and ASD go hand in hand. Not all ASD people have ADHD, but if someone’s on the spectrum, ADHD might want to be looked at if they’re having issues that are similar.
eh, kind of hit or miss with autistic people, afaik.
hyperfocus is a big thing for autists, which is a problem with attention, since it keeps you from choosing what you want to focus on.
so if you’ve got an assignment due, and your brain decides we’re gonna focus on [different thing] right now, possibly for days on end, that can be a serious problem.
it can also look basically identical to ADHD for outside observers, since the result is often the same “they didn’t to [the thing]!”…
and that then gets mistaken for a lack of motivation, which it isn’t really:
it’s a lack of ability to choose what to be motivated about.
it’s one of the reasons that there’s so much overlap in diagnosis of ADHD and ASD: symptoms can present very similarly to outside observers
No, I have both and I can tell you for sure that the hyperfocus from my autism and the hyperfocus from the ADHD are very different experiences. The ADHD hyperfocus feels more like addiction, in a sense, since it feels like I sink into the bullshit task like mud and I can’t pull myself back out without help. And it’s never actually helpful. The autism hyperfocus I can sometimes engage on purpose, and it’s more related to my enthusiasm for the task.
The thing that autistic people have that I think can be mistaken for adhd is the difficulty in switching tasks without warning. This must be a new thing, tbh. When I was a kid, I got called the r word a lot for not being able to switch tasks as fast as the people I was with. This isn’t focus, it’s an aversion to the inconvenience of being unable to complete a task.
That’s a nice explanation, I’m ASD and wife is ADHD and it makes sense in our case. I just used my son as an excuse for underperforming at work because instead of programming whatever I was programming a different thing.
I don’t even get the sense of relief. I could stop 1 second short of finishing and feel no difference.
For me the relief comes from finally being able to let go of the guilt I felt for not getting it done before. Maybe you don’t feel guilty so you don’t get the relief after the guilt?
“How much longer do I have to do this shit? I’m too afraid to live, and more afraid to die. Well, not afraid of a painless death. Fuck, I’m bored.”
No finished project without some force that provided the focus to get it done.
How can any feeling of accomplishment fill the mind when there is the bad feeling of being forced?
Well maybe if someone paid those MTX’s you would get that sense of PRIDE and ACCOMPLISHMENT 😤😤
it’s an older meme sir, but it checks out
Wait I thought that’s what accomplishment was?
Isn’t that one of the major symptoms of OCD?
ADHD and 'tism too.
I know the post is a joke but this has high impact on our lives. You don’t develop a drive for certain things unless you feel rewarded. For a lot of us we put in all the work but never get the reward. It’s fucking hell.
For me and many others it’s even the opposite: we are rewarded with a bad mood after we do the thing
Yes, and the ever-present “I should’ve done it THAT way, goddamn, I probably screwed up…”
Expectations aren’t being fulfilled.
