fun with ADHD

[elisem]

 Wait, not everybody having a stressful day can play a few fierce rounds of speed sudoku to calm and clarify their mind enough to plan the next thing they need to do?

You know, to hit the point where thoughts float to the top with all of their supporting data architecturally arranged?

Oh. 

This probably falls under the heading of Sometimes I Need Something Loud Enough To Be Quiet and Centered In.

Do you have that? If so, ADHD you, or not?

Comments

[china_shop]

the point where thoughts float to the top with all of their supporting data architecturally arranged

This sounds amazing! I'm probing my brain trying to find if this ever happens to me... I don't think so. (Sorry, I know that wasn't the point of the post.)

[elisem]

Hey, no prob! Topic drift is one of my happy places.

It gets really interesting when the thought that floats to the top is about some decision I'm coming up on, and the underpinning architecture includes elucidation and analysis of feelings I didn't realize I was having. Doesn't always happen, but very useful when it does.

It's a coping thing, though, and probably a bunch of folks have more direct access by much shorter routes to internal clarity. Or I hope they do? It would be nice if it were easy for some folks at least.

[yhlee]

to hit the point where thoughts float to the top with all of their supporting data architecturally arranged?

I'm an extreme version of this. Literally my procedure for getting math problem sets done as a math major, i.e. where we were given a bunch of theorems to prove, was:

1. read the theorems-to-prove the DAY we got them
2. sweat over them for a day. get stuck.
3. walk away and spend three days not even looking at them or thinking about math (other than my lectures). play video games. go hiking.
4. come back and find all the proofs shining in my head. I'm not sure how. I mean yes I'd have to write out and sort the details of the arguments. But they weren't there, and then they showed up.

It was completely reliable, but infuriating instructionally because I have no access to what happens in the black box inside my head. I can reconstruct some kind of narrative or proof logic after the fact, but tbh it's almost certainly not how my brain ARRIVED at the thing, just how it PRESENTED them after the fact.

ETA: What I mean by "frustrating instructionally" is that this WORKS for me, but I absolutely cannot teach it to anyone else. I think if you're the kind of person for whom this kind of non-procedure works at all, you have probably sussed it out already. Is it learnable? I actually don't know. Cf. my husband the physicist, who does use intuition sometimes, but his thought process is much more "A then B then C therefore D" etc. and he's conscious of how he arrived at a conclusion in the first place, which means he can explain/teach this to others.

...that said, I cannot for the life of me sudoku. A friend gave me a sudoku book once (an easy one) and I got every single one of the first fifty wrong and then I gave up. Something about sudoku makes my brain short out. XD

ETA: Oh - I have ADHD, adult diagnosis.

[elisem]

Oh, wow. That process sounds familiar to me, and strangely comforting.

Do you also have times when it feel like your brain kind of just... tessers to the answer? "Was there, am now here,"? I keep looking for language to describe these things, but I don't have n-dimensional grammar and it feels like they need it.

Sudoku probably works for me because I find great comfort in perceiving (and inventing) and matching and/or complementing patterns, literally. This happens at the workbench, too. It lives in my conciousness as a constant desire, so much so that I have told a few people that I make art in self defense kind of.

When I was a math major lo these many decades ago, my advisor explained to me that women did not do well in mathematics. He had to explain it several times before I took his meaning. (I did not have the vocabulary then to ask him "And what about non-binary people?" but I wish I had.)

[yhlee]

Oh, my brain MAJORITY of the time tessers to the answer, yes! I'm actively meh at thinking in straight-line logic chains (Joe is extremely good at that, he's that kind of physicist) and actively good at thinking in webs where things that aren't "logically" juxtaposed end up next to each other BECAUSE they're not ~linear and I jump to the connection and justify it afterward. It looks completely bonkers to people who prefer to think linearly, though, and when I write characters who do that, it often drives readers bonkers, because from a motivation standpoint of course if the character doesn't consciously know why they did a thing, either you have to switch to an external observer who might be able to narrate in a way that sheds light, or omniscient, flash-forward "I didn't know then but now I realize..." etc.

I love patterns but I'm actively bad at visual patterns. I'm better at kinesthetic and actively good at sound-based patterns. I am completely unsurprised that patterns are a home-feeling mode of thought for you, though - I see the rhythms in your jewelry.

(sorry for awkward phrasing, I had a root canal today and I'm still not super coherent, apologies in advance for anything infelicitous)

[wild_patience]

Off-topic: are you a violist? I am. With your user icon being an alto clef with middle C, I would guess you are.

[yhlee]

Former violist, yes! (My (student-level) instrument was destroyed in a natural disaster.) I'm currently using the alto clef icon because I just started an M.A. in professional media composition (film/TV/game scoring).

[light_of_summer]

This is a fascinating discussion!

Some bits of me-data:

I have never played Sudoku—the vague impression I've gotten about what it's like doesn't attract me. My calming?/respite/procrastination game of choice is Mahjong Connect.

I don't know if I ever get float-to-the-top-with-arranged-supporting-data thoughts. I do sometimes get gradually emerging decisions kind of like Magic 8-Ball answers. Other decisions involve lot of exhaustive conscious slogging through pros and cons of various possibilities. With those, sometimes the final step of deciding is kind of floaty, but sometimes it's painstaking and sometimes it's argh-after-all-that-flip-a-coin.

For planning, I tend to think in combinations of tree-structures and sequences of steps.

AFAIK, no ADHD here, but I wasn't sure about that for awhile, because I feel like I have some problems with executive function and sometimes memory, conjecturally from a combo of long-term depression, habitually suboptimal amounts of sleep, and internet addiction.

🤷‍♀️

Sending good wishes your way!