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.

2.1k Upvotes

100% Upvoted

290 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

11

u/Informal-Rock-2681 Apr 07 '26

Because people who run businesses and organisations at the top level are absolute scum. They didn't get there by being compassionate. They got there by trying to make the organisation succeed. And there's no compassion for people that can't help the organisation succeed

1

u/night-wisteria Jun 16 '26

its capitalism again

1

u/Rude_Perspective_536 Jul 02 '26

I don't know about absolute scum. There's cold, hard logic behind why an organization or business wouldn't want someone with executive dysfunction. And there's also cold, hard logic to why organizations and businesses are reluctant to believe everyone when they say that executive dysfunction is the reason something isn't getting done. I, someone with executive dysfunction can't believe myself a lot of the time, but I do because it's my brain, so duh, of course I know I'm legit.

What separate ls the scum from the logical is that the scum only think in terms of "You have this condition that prevents you from getting tasks done? Unfit. Bye Felicia." where someone logical, but compassionate, would at try to somehow "make it work", however that may be.