It occurred to me recently when I saw a video on YouTube that I might fit into a particular diagnosis if I were to be evaluated today.
See, back in my day, we didn’t have all these fancy diagnoses for our weirdness. People were just the way they were and had to figure out how to fit into societal norms with the help of their friends and family – or be ostracized and labeled eccentric.
So now we have a diagnosis for everything and everyone is some combination of weird and it’s all okay, as well as there being a plethora of information on how to self-diagnose and how to cope with your weirdness so you can continue to exist in this crazy, messed up world.
I think that mental health is still underrated. There’s still a stigma on people trying to get help and it’s still way too expensive. The fallacy of healthcare aside, we still have a real problem getting help in this country because health insurance is just another racket and it wasn’t really created to help keep people well.
So, enter YouTube, where we’re all trying to help each other cope with our weirdness by letting people know they’re not alone and give our own suggestions for how to be a functional human despite our individual, yet shared, undiagnosed weirdness.
Waiting Mode
So the video I found so interesting was about waiting mode, where if you have an appointment you can’t seem to do anything else until that appointment time comes and you go take care of it, but then you can’t do anything after the appointment because you feel so exhausted like you’ve done an entire day’s worth of work.
#relateable
The video suggests that this is a side effect of ADHD (which I will tell you, there is nothing hyper about this girl) and that if you experience it you have ADHD, even if it isn’t diagnosed. I love that the guy tells you exactly how to solve it in the first 10 seconds of the video, then he goes in-depth about it, even including some actionable tips on how to handle it and related issues (set an alarm, in fact, set many alarms).
I’ll admit, I do tend to feel like I can’t really get into anything when I have to do something that’s scheduled because, in the past, I’ve forgotten to show up at a designated time because I was just too into what I was doing (website coding, namely).
Of course one of the easiest ways to deal with this, is to schedule your scheduled appointments for first thing in the morning, then you don’t have to think about it all day long. Get it out of the way and get on with your own day. But the solution to a later appointment and also being able to do other things that day is to set an alarm on your phone for a few minutes before you need to leave for the appointment.
So in this case, people who have this issue will just have to set aside their pride about their mental fortitude for remembering to show up to an appointment and let their pocket assistants handle it for them.
Anyone else struggle with this type of appointment paralysis?
Are you diagnosed with anything?