Focusing and ADD

Something has happened these past couple of semesters, or the “2023-24 school year,” or whatever the hell you want to call it. 


I can’t fucking work.


I feel like I’m losing my ability to concentrate. This is my senior year of highschool (the 2020-21 school year, when everything was on Zoom) all over again. It deeply embarrasses me to admit this, but the very idea of sitting down and working causes a great anxiety to well up in me. I hate saying that, it makes me sound like some Tumblr theatre kid who uses mental health as an excuse to avoid all sorts of responsibility. (Think of the current discourse where entitled children larping as leftists claim they have a desperate need to DoorDash instead of buying frozen dinners because of anxiety or something…)


For me, working with ADD is an experience comparable to walking before suddenly hitting a wall. The wall is the anxiety associated with focusing on whatever task I’m trying to complete. This wall is not impassable, it simply requires an amount of effort to dig through. But it appears so impassable-because the anxiety from focusing feels that alarming-that I would rather turn and walk parallel to the wall, getting no closer to my destination, than I would spend the time digging through it. In this way, I allow myself to get distracted because focusing on a task causes such irritating anxiety.


This has always been an issue, but it has gotten worse again over my sophomore year of college. My senior year of high school I was locked inside because of the pandemic. These past couple of semesters I've locked myself in my dorm, due to introversion, and become as much of a NEET shut-in as one who still regularly attends his classes can be.


I don’t know if I’m making excuses to whoever reads this, or reassuring myself, or just putting voice to thoughts I’ve had for a long time. But this is how it is, and I loathe it.



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