i’m pushing 40 and have only recently been given an informal diagnosis (seeking out a formal diagnosis currently) from my therapist of ADHD, so it’s all new to me and changing the way i look at my behaviors and patterns. i’ve been thinking about this distinction between executive dysfunction and depression quite a bit lately and wanted to bring it to other folks who have a better grasp on how their ADHD impacts them and see if this resonates or if i’m maybe not hitting the mark.
i have two different things that i’ve always identified as ‘depression’, one that includes the sads, and one that doesn’t but has the same low energy and inability to get anything done without external pressure to move me forward. the impact is very, very similar, but the feeling is very different. with the one that includes being sad, it’s that sadness that’s the driving force behind my inability to move. for the one that doesn’t, it’s just… i don’t know how to describe it, it’s just an inability to get myself to take action.
i’m in the middle of an episode of the second one now. i find myself listless, bored but can’t get myself to do anything about it, hungry but nothing sounds good when i think about the steps it takes to get it, and it’s when my memory is the worst and i most often find myself misplacing things, unable to focus, or doing that thing that Hal does in that one Malcom in the Middle cold open when he goes to replace a lightbulb but is working on the car when Lois gets home. this doesn’t feel like a good description, but that’s how i feel about literally everything i do or talk about when i’m feeling like this, so i hope it’s coming across ok.
does this sound like there’s a differentiation between the two to ya’ll? anyone feel similarly?
I am experiencing the same kind of problems right now. I’m convinced that a large part of it is depression. I got an ADHD diagnosis couple of decades ago as an adult. I’m very successful at what I do and make decent money. He felt that I had done a great job of coming up with compensations for my problem.
However lately those compensations aren’t working. I look at my list of things to do, and I just can’t do them. I’m in the state where the key things I need to do cause me such emotional pain that I avoid them. This to me is depression.
It appears depression magnifies the problems caused by ADHD. One has an additional layer of “what’s the point of all this? It won’t change anything”, going through one’s head. It saps the will, which is needed to overcome the initial motivation barrier.
Now, instead of having to smash through one stone wall, one has to smash through two…
I’m similar. By all means successful (six figure salary, own my home, nearly no debt and none that’s ‘bad’, etc), and what I see now as my old coping mechanisms not working anymore as my life has become immeasurably more difficult to manage over the last few years in particular.
Same except I am in a decent amount of debt due to ADHD impulse purchasing. I was diagnosed as a teenager but only in the last year have I started taking meds to help control ADHD as my symptoms and issues have gotten worse in the last 2 years to the point of having a full on breakdown.
I finally created an account just to post this because OPs and other’s accounts resonate with what I am also experiencing.