Thank you Nome @NomedaBarbarian
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@NomedaBarbarian on Twitter:
Thinking about how I’ve been lied to as an #ADHD person about what habits are.
That apparently is not what neurotypical folks get to experience.
Habits are things that they do without thinking.
They don’t have to decide to do them. They don’t have to remember to do them. Things just happen, automatically, because they’ve done them enough for that system to engage and make them automatic.
That system…which I lack.
Every single time I have brushed my teeth, it’s been an active choice. I’ve had to devote thought and attention to it. It’s not a routine, it’s not a habit, it’s something that I know is good to do, and hopefully I can remember to do it.
Every single time I exercise, or floss, or pay my rent, or drink water, or say “bless you” when someone sneezes,
It’s because I’ve had to actively and consciously engage the protocol.
It never gets easier.
Just more familiar.
It’s part of my struggle with my weight–exercise never becomes a habit, and every single time I do it, it is exactly as hard as the first time. It takes exactly as much willpower & thought.
I got lied to about how it would just “turn into a habit”. And blamed, when it didn’t.
Drinking water isn’t a habit. Feeding myself isn’t a habit. Bathing isn’t a habit.
I spend so much more energy, so much more time, so much more labor on just managing to maintain my fucking meat suit.
And now you want me to ALSO do taxes?
ON TIME?
I am not every ADHD person, but this could have been written by me. I had NO IDEA that you could have something be so ingrained that you don’t think about it. Even if I develop a “routine” of doing something, it is NEVER automatic. I have to put mental effort, even if small, into every task or it won’t get done.
After reading this my definition of habit would be better termed routine. I develop a routine and I try to stick to it. Also I could have a great routine and it lasts for a month or so and then it’s just, I don’t know what else to call it but ‘gone’. It’s gone. That routine is gone.
When I was in college, my GF went to a different one 100 miles away. Every Saturday, I’d get in the car and drive to her dorm, stay the night, then drive back Sunday afternoon.
One weekend, she had something she had to do, so I didn’t go. I decided to get some stuff from an art supply store half a dozen miles down the same freeway. I was about 25 or 30 miles away when I realized I had passed my exit and was just driving to my GF’s out of habit. I didn’t even remember the drive.
Auto pilot. They talk about tasks being done on autopilot, but it’s mostly a car thing (piloting a vehicle, duh). For pretty much everything I have to put effort in, but I will say that with driving something different is happening to the point where if I am driving my husband somewhere and he knows it’s part of my normal route, he will remind me SEVERAL TIMES not to take my usual turn.
What’s up with that?
Yeah no this is true. I THINK it has to do with how driving uses so many of your senses and disparate parts of the brain, despite how mundane and easy it seems to us since we have trained ourselves and perceive it as the norm, it is crazy how complicated driving is, and yeah plenty of people have that autopilot experience.
Driving is a common example, but for me at least it’s not the only thing. For instance, when I’m brushing my teeth, I frequently don’t remember if I’ve already done part of them or not. And I’ve turned off the water in the shower and realized I’m not certain if I washed my hair (I don’t have much).
Maybe it’s just because I’m an old guy and have had more years of doing the same thing over and over, but there are for sure things that are so ingrained that I don’t think about them.