I have ADHD, and my therapist has confirmed it, just like the results of ADHD tests. He isn’t bad, he greatly helps me with my depression. However, he doesn’t provide an official diagnosis nor prescribe pills.
He says it’s my trait and that I should learn to live with it. Like, take more breaks, find a motivation. Easy to say, hard to do. I can’t keep up with the strategies he suggests, and I feel like I’m not trying hard enough.
The world doesn’t wait for me. This trait is ruining my work and my routine, and it’s stealing my money and my time. I can’t start tasks, I can’t concentrate, and I can’t do anything boring or unpleasant.
For example, I can stare at a wall in the middle of a work task, with my hand over the keyboard, and lose myself in thoughts about my hobby. And I don’t give a damn at this moment about all my reminders, the absence of irritants, and so on.
Of course, sometimes I can force myself “just to do it”, but it costs a ton of energy (btw, because of my depression, I have a tiny amount of energy). It often requires a ton of luck, too.
Is this normal? Am I just complaining?
It is a trait of you, but the way you describe it you are not able to deal with said trait. I do like the idea of learning to live with it, doesn’t work all the time though.
All the strategies in the world won’t help if you can’t reliably adhere to them. For example, allocating time in the future to do a task, doesn’t work if you can’t rely on actually starting and finishing that task. It’s a really powerful strategy when it works, but for me it only works since I’ve gotten medicated.
Unless your surroundings can accommodate such situations, meaning someone else picks up what you couldn’t finish for example, learning to deal with the trait probably won’t work in the long run.