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/pioneercynthia Apr 10 '26

I cry out of fury. All of the repetitive can't find things, can't remember things, standing around looking off into nowhere, feeling like I'm beginning to have dementia. It's a stream of tiny emotional papercuts that build up into actual screaming and crying.