Dr. Micaela

Even if you are a person who takes ADHD stimulant medication, a lot of times when we're done hanging out with friends, it's usually in the later afternoon or evenings.

And so that is when our ADHD medication is wearing off.

So you are particularly more vulnerable to the fact that your frontal lobe is less functional and less able to regulate those loud emotional reactions, whether it's anxiety, guilt, or just that negative self-esteem talk in your mind.

So it can be incredibly overwhelming.

And then layering, of course, on top that if you have ADHD, you probably did forget to respond to someone's comments or you probably did interrupt a story to tell a story that told a story that told a story.

And, you know, in the best conversations, these are stories that go back and forth and back and forth.

But in that moment, you're like, OMG, we never got to the original story.

And I'm such a dick that I like interrupted my friend and they wanted to tell me this cool thing.

And like, I derailed that whole conversation.

And I bet they felt like I wasn't even listening and I don't even care.

And I make everything about me.

And so there's just this pattern of negativity that is related to very real differences or deficits.

If you wanted to use the word deficits, I prefer differences because, for example, I still actually did remember the... Sorry, I just got distracted by that color swatch.

I still did remember the original story that my friend was talking about.

Highly unlikely that somebody who doesn't have ADHD could pluck that single tidbit of content because

the one of the executive functioning deficits and this is why the name attention deficit kind of sucks is because it's not a lack of attention it's a lack of a filter on the attention it's a lack of selective attention so it's like s-a-d-h-d selective attention deficit disorder

We don't need to go down that rabbit hole.

So people with ADHD are taking in every piece of information all at the same time without the ability to say, hey, stop paying attention to the seams on my shirt.

You don't need that information right now.

um focus on the conversation that's happening in front of you focus on the lecture focus on what your boss is saying right um it's also why people with adhd are like squirrel um because there there's no filter and so they can bounce bounce bounce bounce bounce bounce bounce now um