SubArcticTundra

I either have an exciting plan,
or when that fails, no plan (I resign).
Since the exciting plans usually fail, I end up living on autopilot.

I really struggle making things in life move. There's too many simultaneous Big Tasks* whose logistics I need to keep track of that I can’t hold them all in my head at once (I can only focus on one Big Task at once). Especially when most tasks are timelines where you need to wait for responses, compose emails, search for things (there might be none – what then?) etc. and where you need to think about the order of the tasks in the timeline so that you save time. Not to forget remembering to notice if people haven’t replied to your e-mail and having to either remind them or come up with a Plan B (this usually leaves you stumped because you now can't get the thing you started the whole journey for). There's so many steps to keep track of and you can't even write them down because the amount of steps keeps changing.

*Finding the next place to rent, booking a dentist for my hurting tooth, planning journeys (what is the Plan B if the journey is too expensive?)

The cluelessness and dread of having to come up with a Plan B is why I hate searching for things. Having to come up with a Plan B is so disorienting. And it's the opposite of stimulating: you've put in a ton of effort and gotten nowhere. How do you all deal with it?

My psych wants to take me off Strattera because it isn't helping my ADHD and apparently it's quite expensive.
One thing it is helping me with though is my anxiety – I no longer get the random bouts of anxiety that I used to and I feel like I'm just generally more chill and enjoying the present moment.
What's more, I can actively feel the Strattera keeping me calm at times when my brain would have panicked before, like when approaching girls.
Do you know if other anti-anxiety meds my psych is likely to give me will have this same effect, or should I urge him to keep me on Strattera?

I've realized that I check the news several times a day but not because I'm curious about what's happening on the grand scheme of things, but because my brain wants to check something that keeps changing with new, evolving information. It fills a slightly different niche than social media, and I don't watch sports so I don't have that to check. Can anyone think of something else that could fill this need? I could read blogs but they just don't feel current. And the news is making be stress about information I didn't need to know.

My main problems:

• Inability to stick to lowly stimulating tasks
• Executive dysfunction
• Forgetting what I was doing every 2 minutes
  Bonus mention: random bouts of anxiety
  (Don't know which subtype this amounts to)

Meds I've tried so far:

1. Atomoxetine (extinguished the anxiety but did nothing for the ADHD)
2. Methylphenidate (amplified the ED, essentially gluing me to even boring tasks. This helped for reading but not for my executively intensive physics homework, where I literally had to use my inner voice to guide myself. Did nothing for the forgetfulness.)

Has anyone had a similar response? What ended up working? I'm in the UK so there's no Aderall.

Lemmy, I have completed tens of modules across several different universities. I have been course-hopping for long enough that I’d have a bachelors degree by now had I found and stayed on a course that suited me. I can’t be asked to commit to one and study it for yet another 3 years before I get a degree*. Yet I feel like all of the effort that I have expended up to this point will go unacknowledged, just because it was spread across several unis and doesn’t fall into any of their pre-defined study plans. I am a person driven by short bouts of intense curiosity of the type that dives down Wikipedia rabbitholes**. I want to do a highly qualified job but am failing to fit in to the rigid framework that academia sets you. I have several Master’s theses that I’d start researching tomorrow if the system let me. Yet without so much as a bachelor’s I might as well go work in a supermarket. How do I move on from here?

*Perhaps it’s also because I’m now in my early 20s and finally want to have some time to explore.
**I am a logical thinker and predominantly interested in STEM topics.

Edit: while I'm at it, does anyone know what I should do when I'm waiting for a coincidence/adventure to happen, but it never comes? I can't really go outside and arrange for it to happen because I don't know what I'm looking for.

Often when I start feeling guilty for putting off a task (even if I genuinely didn't have time), the guilt makes it harder for me to get back to it. It's an additional emotion that I have to barge through in order to get started.

What if the person is annoyed with me for still not having replied? What if they've followed up with a strongly worded email that I'm now going to have to suffer through? And I'm going to have to come up with an excuse for taking so long. This would have been so much easier if I'd done it yesterday.

The guilt increases exponentially. How do you dispel it so that it's not in the way of actually getting to the task?
(Alcohol and sleep deprivation does not count)

For me showering means standing in a windowless room staring at a blank wall for 20 minutes (I get lost in my thoughts). Also there are several steps and I have to think about each of them.
This means that I only end up showering when my fear of coming across as dirty becomes bigger than the dread of being bored.
What do you do?

I've found that breaking a daunting task down into concrete steps and eating away at it in baby steps helps me get it done. When I take Concerta, it helps me focus on the boring nitty-gritty bits, and it enables me to focus on activities like reading where you don't have to do any planning. But the actual process planning/task breakup stays just as cognitively straining as before and becomes the new bottleneck to my productivity. Can this also be fixed with a pill, or does everyone have it this hard and is it a skill that you get better at over time?

21M, my life right now is such a mess.

My childhood feels deficient in some things, I really want to move out, my life is spread over multiple countries and I can't decide how to fit each into my future, I'm struggling & demotivated at university, and I've had no success dating and just can't figure out why.

I have a long term plan to get myself out of this but I'm afraid that the plan may prioritize the wrong things or be naively ambitious or specific. I'm AuDHD and seeing as it was my thinking that got me into this mess, my plan to fix it is probably riddled with the same mistakes. Which would mean I'd stay stuck where I am.

What would really help me is to consult my plan with a wise person who has watched many people's life trajectories and who would be able to advise me on what parts of my plan are naive or likely to fail. Since I am AuDHD, I also need someone who will alert me to the sorts of narrow-minded ways of thinking that got me to where I am, because I am obviously blind to these. Or maybe the problem is that I think too much altogether. I can ask for individual pieces of advice on Lemmy but I'm looking for someone who would look at my life in a more holistic way.

What sort of person would be able to help me? I have tried coaching but coaches seem to focus more on CBT and have lacked the wisdom that I am looking for here.