"You Have No Idea What Real Brain Freeze Is"

8 Comments: "You Have No Idea What Real Brain Freeze Is"

1. Thank you Frank South! This article seems one of the most “real” I have read in a long time. Life isn’t just hard, it gets harder with age. I’m exercising and taking meds on time w/my new habit-hack I built (based on advice from other ADHDers.) The problem is, I’m 60. I’ve been diagnosed now for about 9 years. It has taken me THIS long to physically take my meds regularly! I can relate to the guilt and even the jealousy successful ADHDers portray. Yet I will keep trying. Keep going with life hacks that work. Needed this article today. Thanks!

2. Thanks for this text.I felt very identified with some parts of it.
   Actually, it’s really hard living as an ADHD adult in this world.
   It’s as if you struggled all the time to fit into a world in which you feel that you often do not belong to you, but in which you struggle daily to be a part.
   It’s very crazy. Only really knows it who goes through it every day.
   Thank you so much for the text, dude.
   May he and you continue to help many of us.
   Regards

3. Very good, until the ‘work harder’ bit. One of my biggest problems has always been fatigue. Even now on meds, when I don’t feel it’s absurdly low, I just don’t have the resources to work harder. Often my energy resources are depleted in the hours I need to look after my kids. I think it’s time we as a society start accepting that different people have different amounts of energy and other resources. Sometimes you just don’t have enough of one resource to compensate for lack of another.

   1. Very interesting yourcomment, Linda.
      Thanks for it.
      I agree with you when you say that society has to accept as a fact that people have different amounts of energy. Reading that, I could not help but think about the fact of really whether I can have a child someday or whether I will be a good mother because I feel that my energy is very limited and that this is mainly because it is not simply like neurotypical person. I have to make concessions. Having children requires a lot of time and energy, things that I feel I do not have. It must be really hard to be a mother and have ADHD and I do not think I’m ready for it.

      1. I will tell you as a mother with ADHD, I thought I would be able to be a mother and make some money, like I told my husband when we bought our house. He kept waiting for me to make some money and I just couldn’t figure out how to do it along with being a mother. It would have been nice to know more about this problem beforehand. I could have developed strategies that would probably have worked better. Plus I had sleep apnea so can you imagine my exhaustion? Because I didn’t get diagnosed for years with that, I just got criticized for snoring and being so tired all the time! I think my husband thought he got the short end of the stick after a few years. I was always tired more due to sleep apnea than anything and I didn’t make any money and he felt like everything was on him. Of course I was doing a pretty darn good job with the kids including one with cystic fibrosis which required lots of therapy every day and extra amount of doctor appointments as well as special food. But, all the same I wish I had had more support and understanding of what I was dealing with! I would have plunged into therapy while we had the health insurance! Actually we did have health insurance but Kaiser told me they don’t believe in ADHD. But a few years later I did get someone in the mental health dept of Kaiser to give me some stimulants. I kept having bad reactions and the people at Kaiser didn’t know what else to give me. I didn’t even know there were a million medicines you could try. I thought they knew!! Years continued to go by, with my self loathing continuing to mound. Why couldn’t I do better?? Sigh….I wish I had known what I was dealing with. You are in a much better place because you can develop strategies and don’t think you don’t need support!! Parenting is a glorious time but a constant state of interruption. If I had been required to work, I don’t know how bad it would have gotten. But with regular therapy I would have had a compass to help me choose ADHD friendly work. I didn’t even know what that was back then. I’m 61 now and coming in to a better place with my condition but I have a lot of years of sadness to deal with in my past. I thought I would accomplish so much and I have not been able to. Friends my age have left me in the dust and I find myself comfortable around the 23 year olds. And Im divorced. Sigh….life can be tough sometimes but learn from me. Get what you need now. You won’t regret it!

4. Good story until the analogy of fake wings. My wings aren’t fake. I’m not sure how the fake wings concept has anything to do with brain freeze. Using the word “fake” is disempowering. It is as if ADHD folks don’t have what it takes to make it in the “real world.” ADHD folks don’t need another imposter message; we need to know that we are valid without having to try to be fake. It is true that ADHD can cause a brain freeze sensation. I would have liked more information about how to deal with it. Taping our fake wings back together doesn’t help.

   1. Ginamd, come oooon. Don’t be so critical. That was their story. They can say whatever they want about what it feels like to them. It wasn’t a Doctor’s treatment session.

5. Brilliant! I can relate to just about every sentiment in this article. As an adult with ADHD and a mental health professional, I speak to young people, their parents and adults living with ADHD on a daily basis. I teach other people about how to cope, understand the diagnosis and learn to stop beating ourselves up for seeing the world differently than everyone else does. And yet… When I can’t find my keys to save my life (because I didn’t put them where they “go”)… When I schedule two people at the same time (because I forgot to write one of the appointments down)… When my wife says, “did you remember to XYZ today?” (and I have no memory whatsoever of X, Y or Z)… Here come the self-loathing and verbal castigation of my failures. If only the mental workouts that we routinely have to do in order to maintain any level of personal and professional self-esteem produced the same visual reward as physical ones!

   Thank you for sharing your insights and hopefulness. The world needs us!