idk if it's exactly the same thing, but the problem I've experienced - and I don't really know how to put this in a way that doesn't sound demeaning, but trust that I am literally describing how my brain seems to work, based on the only evidence i have - is that I do not have the ability to "fool myself." i am, to put it plainly, too smart for my own good.
you know when you shake a feather behind a box, and the cat jumps through the box instead of just, going around to grab the feather? but then some cats understand that the feather is actually outside the box and they don't need to stuff their big soft face through a hole and look like a disgusting gremlin in their attempts to reach it? i feel like cat #2
i must point out that cat #2 does not have any fun, in this scenario. instead of wildly pawing at a thing they can't reach and having a grand old time playing, they just walk around the box and go "uh, it's right there" and lay down like a stuck up little asshole who's too good for your generous attempt to entertain them.
I feel like people who can develop good habits have brains that just accept what they're told. Like, not in a "you're gullible" sense, but in a "your godforsaken meat computer respects the instructions you give it, instead of acting like a petulant know-it-all kid who knows they're ahead of their class and thinks it means they get to skip straight from childhood to adulthood without any of the scut work in between."
I wish something like "set your clock 10 minutes late so you'll always be early to things" would work for me. It does not; the exact millisecond that I institute that policy, my brain turns to me and goes "I just started subtracting ten minutes from everything. Can we not... you know, do this?" It's response to every single thing I try is "do you think I'm stupid over here? I can see that the feather is attached to the string. I can see your hand moving it."
When you form "good habits," and when you try to create "systems," you're creating an outside authority, something bigger than your id. You tell yourself, "let's make a system where I write down everything I need to do on a post-it, and then I update the post-its, and then I can just look at them to see what needs doing."
This works for a couple days. In that time, you are letting the post-its police your behavior. They are in charge - you believe, for that period, that if it isn't on a post-it, I can't do it.
This works until you need to make an exception. You need to do something that's not on a post-it, something emergent, or a little convenience item that isn't worth walking over to wherever the post-its are, filling one out, going and doing the thing, and coming back two minutes later and crossing it off.
Whoops!
The system is now powerless. You have stripped it bare, you can see how naked it is, you can see that it never had any power at all, and you will never fucking respect it again. Your brain goes "post-it? what, you're still doing that? do you still believe in santa claus too?"
Is it ADHD? Is it something comorbid? Do I just have oppositional defiant disorder towards everything including myself? I don't know and it wouldn't matter if I did; the effect is that there is a voice in my head mocking every solution I try to create, as soon as it's revealed to be voluntary. Fuck that, it says; I know more than a pile of post-its or a kanban or a set of personal guidelines you created for me to follow. I'm smart, says the id, and I don't need any of that bullshit.
It's Scorched Earth Syndrome because you leave a trail of these broken, incinerated systems behind you, failed plan after failed plan. And every time you feel worse about it, because you remember how nice things were the last time, when the system was working. The post-its were wonderful! They fixed so many problems! You had a couple of the lowest-stress days of your life with them, until the moment they began feeling like preschool baby blocks that were being imposed on you by some demeaning third party.
As I wrote in my article six or seven years ago, I say again now: I have no advice. Knowing what the problem is didn't help me solve it and I still haven't figured anything out.
whatever gravis’s brain disease is, i have it. i’ve given up on trying to create systems for myself because i know from the start they’re fake and can’t be made to respect them. the best i can do is get momentum by causing some external force (like, another person) to make me stick to a schedule but the first time that schedule needs an exception it all goes off the rails. i streamed almost every friday in 2020 and then circumstances resulted in needing to cancel two weeks in a row and the spell was broken and i haven’t been able to get the mental momentum to get back on the horse ever since, even if the desire sometimes briefly returns to me. it flickers out or is just outright forgotten entirely before i act on it. love to have my cool brain
coming back to this because i realized sharing the information might be helpful for some, not particularly the people i'm replying to but for anyone reading this.
something that's often comorbid with (or occurs without but looks a lot like) ADHD is Cognitive Disengagement Syndrome (CDS) (also known as Concentration Deficit Disorder or Sluggish Cognitive Tempo but i don't like that term and it's about as accurate as ADHD being only a deficit of attention is)
where (in simplistic but good enough terms) ADHD can be understood as primarily a dysfunction in executive functions, CDS is currently understood as a dysfunction in the orienting network or the engagement/disengagement/shift of attention. where attention is concerned, ADHD fails to sustain attention, CDS fails to engage attention.
an important part for both is the concept of inhibition which is when your brain says no, usually filtering out anything irrelevant or a waste of resources. in ADHD, it can be too slow or very bad at filtering irrelevance. you keep doing things before you properly think about doing them i.e. impulsive. in CDS, it's your working memory system which can be too slow where your inhibition is normal or overactive so inhibition is too good and filters out even the relevant before you can organize your thoughts. you keep not doing things because you're working against your brain telling you no i.e. inhibited.
if you have both, it is basically a horseshoe and have fun doubting if you actually have adhd or not. you may also only have one and you or your brain probably picked up compensatory/coping mechanisms that can overcorrect so you're consciously self-inhibiting yourself to deal with impulsivity, or trying to be more creative or active somehow with inhibition, and that's even more confusion.
so you have a nice little system and maybe after a while the novelty/interest/challenge/urgency or momentum of it has worn off or was interrupted. the next time you try to engage with the system the brain might just immediately say no first and before you can consciously recognize the thought, all resources are already terminated so you can't complete much less start the behavior. nothing about it works for you anymore because no, do not engage. if you've ever been burnt out, it can feel kind of like that.
if you're finding all the adhd tips and tricks aren't working out the best, it might be worth a look if this can help explain especially if your ADHD presentation is inattentive and you're often lethargic. it won't directly help, but it'll help cut down on things that probably won't work with you and what particular things to expect, like which adhd medication being less likely to help with these symptoms (most of them) and what parts of the systems recommended to you would more visibly give you friction (if you only have CDS your executive function might be fine so you'd find tips to sustain attention baffling).
the internal/external divide of motivation is another thing where people with ADHD just aren't really internally motivated but can be externally so and trying to understand what that means exactly is just juggling self-justifications of imposing systems on yourself but they don't really feel external unless you're clever with stimulus, framing things, and self-regulation which is the problem in the first place. the concept of psychological reactance may be helpful for anyone trying to get their brains to accept things because it doesn't like being limited, not even by itself, which emotional dysregulation then exacerbates.
barkley's 2018 lecture was my first good understanding of CDS and it's probably still a great place to start
disclaimer: some of the explanations are way too simplified or generalized and the majority is me talking from what i remember and experience. i'm also not a psychologist or someone who studied medicine, just someone trying to be well-informed on their own personal condition so ymmv. i'm confident enough in the general body of research and evidence but many do disagree, and CDS is not an official or well-known diagnosis (that may hopefully be changing, i'm not caught up on recent literature).
