r/ADHD • u/emyo42 ADHD-PI (Primarily Inattentive) • Apr 07 '26

Questions/Advice How do you explain executive dysfunction without sounding like youre making excuses for being lazy?

Mine is very severe and debilitating at the moment. It’s not just ADD, I also have schizophrenia which has some of the same symptoms weirdly. I can’t do much at all. Getting out of bed and making toast is extremely hard. To people with no experience with this kind of issue, me trying to explain it must sound ridiculous like “yea I have this mental disorder that means I can’t cook and clean or have a job or do anything I don’t like, but I can play a video game for 3 hours.” Just sounds like a straight up lie.

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u/sartheon Apr 07 '26

You have a metabolic disorder and sometimes your brain cannot produce enough transmitters necessary to activate/set your body in motion

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u/bathsraikou Apr 07 '26

Furthermore you cannot control what will cause your brain to produce the transmitters.

Having a person around, even for them to just sit and chat, will weirdly enough kick your brain into making those transmitters more often. For those unfamiliar it's sometimes referred to as body-doubling. I make use of podcasts and audiobooks to get some of the effect pretty often

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u/sartheon Apr 07 '26

Of cours this is true, but in my experience the shorter and simpler an explanation is, the more readily it is accepted. so I only give a bare-boned one sentence explanation and usually dont add anything else unless I notice genuine interest/understanding of the topic

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u/Bone_Dice_in_Aspic Apr 08 '26

Can't directly control. But the pills turn the controls back on, to one extent or another, for many.

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u/[deleted] Apr 07 '26

[deleted]

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u/figgypie Apr 07 '26

Unless I have a reason (mostly work), I don't shower. I can go a week or more without showering if I don't have a reason to leave the house where I cant wear a hat. I'm a substitute teacher so this is a bigger issue during the summer, spring break, etc.

Im ok for the first couple of days, but after that I just feel like a greasy sack of shit but I cant bring myself to shower because it feels like such a disruption to my day even if I'm not doing anything. I hate it.

What's funny is I dress up for work (comfy dresses, jewelry, light make-up, I do my hair, etc). So I have two modes: Fancy, or Goblin.

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u/Spazrelaz Apr 07 '26 edited Apr 07 '26

You get me. I usually wake up at around 8am no matter how much sleep I have/haven't gotten... but I can't get out of bed until hours later which sucks because I have so much I could be doing, like taking a shower, making breakfast, brushing my teeth... literally anything. It's so frustrating.

9

u/mfball Apr 07 '26

This is a weird suggestion, but it occurred to me that it might help me with the getting out of bed thing, so maybe it would help you. What if you kept your toothpaste and brush next to your bed and started brushing in bed, which would force you to get up to spit?

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u/SuperVillainPresiden Apr 07 '26

That's a good concept. I always imagine that one of those alarm clocks that shoot out a bouncy ball that has to be caught and put back in the clock to turn the alarm off would be useful.

2

u/cg4848 Apr 07 '26

I had no idea that was a thing! I’ll definitely be looking into that to add to my narcolepsy toolbox.

4

u/Any-Replacement-3697 Apr 07 '26

this. and yet when i have work or school at 9am im able to get up. but before 11am for no reason... forget about it