[Ardon]

Backing this one up with my own experience of ADD (I was never hyperactive):

I've tried all the distraction reducing techniques, and the distraction reducing techniques have been tried on me.

In school, I was, at least 70 percent of the time, sent to the isolation desk, facing a wall, only a pencil. This didn't help.

I've tried going to remote cabins, no internet. I've tried no devices. This did not help.

The problem (so far as I've come to understand) is not that I am unusually susceptible to distractions, it's that it's unusually difficult to convert 'needing to do something' into 'focus'.

The problem is not that something derails the train, but that there's no tracks. Starting something does not make it more likely that I'll continue it. Going in a direction doesn't have 'momentum'.

This is very difficult to understand, since it's not really 'a tendency that everyone has but more', it's a different brain. You aren't going to understand it by going 'oh like when I'm distracted', you have to try and create a picture from scratch, not based on your experience, but by listening to people.

Not that what people tell you should be just immediately imported into your worldview, people sure can be wrong about themselves. But you can't necessarily check other people's experiences against your own.

(The word "you" in this comment is referring to the general non-ADHD person)

[johnisgood]

Yeah, just when people who have never experienced depression, anxiety, and panic attacks tell me to "think about something else"...

I can't focus either especially if there are any sounds, for possibly different reasons than ADD/ADHD, but Lord knows, I am full of psychiatric co-morbidities.

[p_l]

> Backing this one up with my own experience of ADD (I was never hyperactive):

I'd like to add also that a lot of people without ADD/ADHD think "hyperactivity" must be stereotypical "hyperactive annoying brat that acts out", something that is still haunting diagnosis in Poland.

Meanwhile a lot of people sorta "channel" the hyperactivity in different ways - I personally have tendency to do all sorts of stimming-like behaviours that are pretty much "designed" to not make a mess where I am, or purely mental stuff, then "acting out" physically a bit when I am completely in private.

Unless of course I could hit the right kind of tasks to do that nicely slot exactly where my ADHD shines (Flying airplanes is wonderful)