Jinger Duggar Vuolo 60

[Kiki03910]

14 hours ago, Cam said:

Agree 100% with everyone’s remarks on Gothard’s stance regarding meds for ADHD, PTSD, etc. In mid-life I was hit with severe anxiety due to a health crisis. No amount of journaling, meditating, exercising or praying (at the time I still held Christian beliefs) offered one tiny, single bit of relief. My doctor worked with me to find the right meds to help, and when I started taking it, I literally went from sitting on my sofa shaking to getting up and walking back into my life. I’ve continued on the meds and am pretty sure I probably had untreated anxiety since I was a teenager. My family, including siblings, were of the “tough it out” mentality. They viewed this kind of medicine as a crutch, a sign of weakness, and they ridiculed and criticized it. Nice people, right? 

So, yeah, fuck Gothard. 

I'm sorry you went through that, and very glad that you feel better now. Fuck anyone who doesn't take people's suffering seriously.

[Giraffe]

@Cam Anti-anxiety meds were life changing for me, too. I had to work on not going down the rabbit trail of "what if I'd been on these 20+ years ago?"

[CarrotCake]

I got diagnosed with adhd when I was around 25. Mainly because I was struggling with BED. I did not have issues in school because I was lucky that I am smart enough to get through university without studying in the typical way. Learning by doing was enough for me to get through school and get my degree. Only when I was thrown into the adult world and having to manage a fulltime job with personal finances etc. it became too much and I was eating my stress away.

I tried meds but for me it was not the answer. It did help me focus more on what I needed to do but at the end of every day I was so exhausted that it was not worth it. Plus, it also took away the characteristics that actually helped me be so succesfull in my job (creativity, fast thinking, constantly connecting the dots).

I am lucky to now have a job where I can work on my own pace and use my 'flaw' as an advantage. Plus it helps that my husband is supportive. I still stuggle with eating during stressfull times but my therapist then helps me with managing it as much as possible.

I am really grateful that I can manage it this way without meds, for me the acknoledgement that I am not stupid was the biggest win from the diagnosis. But I do feel for people that have more severe issues resulting from the adhd.

Edited May 8 by CarrotCake

[Smee]

I do think we as a society tend to over-diagnose and over-medicate. But that's not because ADHD and OCD don't exist, nor is it because we don't punish kids enough. It's because we have designed an entire fucking society that is very difficult for neurodiverse people to function in (heck, it's not very easy for neurotypical people to function either), force all but a small handful of people to live with untenable levels of stress and deal with real anxiety-inducing problems on a daily basis, and then make them feel like failures for not being able to cope.

I'm 90% sure I and my middle daughter both have ADHD (there's a strong family history), and like @CarrotCake I'm fortunate to now be in a creative industry that is super flexible so I can get away with executive dysfunction one day and hyperfocus until 11pm the next. I still struggle with the balance of 'I forgot to eat... and now I'm STARVING' and I joke that my only two states of existence are boredom and burnout, but for the most part I make my life work and I'm happy. I also definitely have had the kind of suicidal depressive episodes that cannot be prayed away or solved without meds, but in saying that, the meds basically kept me afloat for a few years there and I didn't actually start to get BETTER until my circumstances dramatically changed (and I stayed medicated throughout that transition). I just don't think it's an either/or thing, and you can believe we over-medicate for ADHD without believing all meds are bad for all people all of the time and it's 'sin' causing so many children to not cope in a badly designed and out of date school environment.

[GuineaPigCourtship]

My brother was diagnosed with Asbergers as a child and probably also ADD because they put him on ritalin.  He loved it because he could totally focus and do his work but he developed some sort of shoulder shrugging tic on it so they stopped it and never did anything else.  As a recently-turned 40yo he is still dealing with a lifetime of thinking he was stupid and incompetent because he couldn't learn or work in a traditional way.  He is a TREASURE of a human being whose life has been made immeasurably more difficult because no one really followed up or took his issues seriously.  I don't know if he'll ever seek help for it as an adult but I wish he would - he still thinks it's possible everyone else in the world knows how other people work and nobody will just tell him.

[Kiki03910]

2 hours ago, GuineaPigCourtship said:

My brother was diagnosed with Asbergers as a child and probably also ADD because they put him on ritalin.  He loved it because he could totally focus and do his work but he developed some sort of shoulder shrugging tic on it so they stopped it and never did anything else.  As a recently-turned 40yo he is still dealing with a lifetime of thinking he was stupid and incompetent because he couldn't learn or work in a traditional way.  He is a TREASURE of a human being whose life has been made immeasurably more difficult because no one really followed up or took his issues seriously.  I don't know if he'll ever seek help for it as an adult but I wish he would - he still thinks it's possible everyone else in the world knows how other people work and nobody will just tell him.

I'm so sorry. I have a friend a bit older than your brother who was diagnosed with ADD as a kid but never treated (fuck his parents) and is almost certainly Aspies as well. He finds the world extremely difficult to navigate but will not get help, even though my BF and I have tried to gently encourage him. It's awful and frustrating to watch someone suffer like that.