How My ADHD Affects My Blindness
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- čas přidán 12. 09. 2024
- My ADHD symptoms were hard to treat due to being legally blind. Remote work during the pandemic helped me become more aware of how my ADHD impacts me in adulthood. I feel optimistic about revisiting treatment for my ADHD after months of waiting.
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This is quite a personal experience/journey I'm sharing and felt it was best published with very little editing compared to most of my videos. I hope this helps someone else out going through a relatable experience. At the very least, I hope you learned something or see different. 😄
Thank you for continuing to bring awareness to your experiences - I am absolutely certain this will provide others who have similar disabilities to feel like they are not alone
It was great to hear from someone else with multiple unrelated disabilities like this! I also have ADHD (and a bunch of other mental illness and neurodivergences), plus I have a lot of digestive issues.
When I finally figured out how to deal with my digestive system properly, it made a huge improvement in the symptoms of all of my disabilities.
It turns out that physically feeling like garbage was taking away a lot of my time and energy. And now that I have that back, I can spend it on properly accommodating my brain! It’s like a positive feedback loop. 10/10, would recommend
Thank you for sharing about ADHD & Blindness. I have progressive sight loss and learning to use screen readers and cane and feel severe overwhelm. Found out this year that I also have adult ADHD. Overwhelm overload now. Seems most ADHD accommodations are visual. Meds are helpful for learning new learning skills and focus. Just wanted to thank you for helping me know that I am not alone…
Thanks for the vulnerability and clarity my bro! Loving all your content and storytelling
I appreciate that!
Thank you for sharing your experience. I can really relate. I am visually impaired and colorblind. I’m a woman who sees only in black and white. It was hard to convince Dr of that for a while. I’m also in my late 50s and I went to Public school before anybody ever talked about ADHD and well before the Americans with disabilities act. The only accommodation was to move me to the front of the classroom which wasn’t effective. ADHD symptoms were labeled laziness. School was a very bad time for me. I graduated from high school by a hair. I was actually told I couldn’t take chemistry because it would be unfair to others to have an enlarged copy of the periodic table. I went to school where you had to have a year of physical education for every year you were in school. Thank goodness I moved to somewhere where that wasn’t required. Gym class was a nightmare. Other kids in my school we’re embarrassed by what My gym teachers expected me to do. It was humiliating. Add that to the idea that I can’t take basic math and science classes and you end up with me having a real future. I went to college when I was in my mid20s. I went to night school for years and then was able to go full-time for the last few years. Being told what was required of me and being allowed to find out the best way for me to achieve that is life-changing. I totally agree with you about struggling with double diagnoses being exhausting. I think you are on the verge of a transformation. I had already finished college when I started taking ADHD medicine. So yes, it was still a struggle but medication seems things for me, tremendously. It doesn’t come with just taking a pill. You learn and grow and are able to think about how to make things work best for you. I hope this is your experience.
THIS IS VERY HELPFUL.
KNOWING ABOUT THE NEW STEMS THAT ARE APPEARING IN MY LIFE.
I UNDERSTAND NOW.
I WAS UNDEEMED FOR A GUIDE DOG.
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR EDUCATING ME.
Thanks for sharing your story. I’m a brain tumour survivor so I know how it feels to have multiple disabilities. Keep doing what you do. Keep being an inspiration to many.
As a man with OA and ADHD as well I feel very called out. Also wasn't taught braille, the reason they gave was they were worried I wouldn't learn regular text instead completely relying on Braille.
Thanks so much for opening up and sharing! Dealing with multiple disabilities is infuriating and I'm glad to hear you finally found a medication! I hope it works out for you! You seem like a very warm guy and your voice is super calming and nice to listen to. I'm not doing great, I just had a massive health scare that cleared up but could come back at anytime so that's a bit unnerving. Other than that we're just trying to get my pain to a tolerable level. Thanks for asking, haha. Take care and thanks for the videos!
Wish you the best through that, sending good thoughts your way!
I was only diagnosed ADHD last year at 34. It wasn’t until watching people like Molly Burke, I always thought my forgetfulness/ leaving items behind, was because of my Vision Impairment. Turns out most VI people remember things. I also went through all my school years undiagnosed legally blind (drs told my parents about this, but they didn’t really do anything about it)
Being blind and ADHD is a real fun mix hahah
Thanks for sharing your experience and views. I noticed you said 'and soon a guide dog' so I'm wishing you luck with that as a fellow ADHD blind person working on getting a guide dog. Choose the place that feels best to you personally and good luck. Remember to take a moment aside for yourself and just take a breath, there's no need to get overwhelmed. It'll all still be there after you do, self-care is important.
Good work on making the choices that feel best for you personally in your own situation, you know you best after all. I love how raw this video felt too by the way.
Wow, the issue with taking naps is totally a coping strategy of mine when ADHD or anxiety brain is overwhelmed. I call it "reset naps", and it can be annoying when they take up hours of my day...
That’s a very good analogy if you ask me. Very good analogy but I like it go with it, the driver being the driver and there is an obnoxious child in the backseat hey I’d go with it
Everything will always work out and fall into place!
Thanks, Kat!
Yay. Great to see you accommodating yourself. I find that when my mental health is in check my ability to process other info is way higher. When it’s poor, I can barely process info or read/ write (I’m 30, dyslexic and have processing issues but work in a job that has a lot of thinking and writing needed)
I totally relate!
I have undiagnosed adhd and getting myself to do homework was like hitting a wall for my brain. I can't imagine having to balance the brain focus it requires for a visual impairment with adhd. Thanks for sharing your story!
Thankya for sharing your experience. One thing I've found from speaking with other folks who have lost their vision later in life, the effect it has on our ability to learn is huge, almost like undergoing brain trauma. I also live with depression and anxiety, and it has been a struggle to manage those as well as adapting to new visual impairment during a pandemic. It is a lot for the brain to handle, one of my friends has R P and has been a can user for two decades, he still finds it takes a whole lot of brain power to do every activity.
Finding out I had ADHD was a real life changer. Still a lot of work ahead of me but things are so much better now then in the past
Thank you so much for this video. Its helped me as a father understand some things. My son also has severe nystagmus and ocular albinism on top of Asperger's and he too comes home from school (11th grade) and goes to sleep for hours.
Glad it was helpful!
I reeeally need to get checked for ADHD and hope they can hook me up with liquid meds if ADHD is the case.
I know what you mean I am legally blind and also have depression and anxiety so I know what you’re feeling when you have so many things going on it’s really hard when you have to take multiple medications to get them all timed out to straight straight to I really enjoy your channel and if you’d like I also have a CZcams channel if you’d like to subscribe I could use all the support I appreciate it and I appreciate all your content!
This is the first video im watching from you and I was wondering if you could give your thoughts on a relationship where both disabilities are interacting? My wife is completely blind (both eyes prosthetic) but was able to see until her mid 20s. I have severe ADHD that I was also diagnosed as a young child (5 for me). We work very hard to accommodate both of our challenges, but it can be very difficult and clashing at times. Such as my need to have things out and visible so that Im less likely to forget something exists, but that can cause lots of issues with her needing spaces where can feel for what she needs without knocking things down or not being able to find it. I thought you might have some interesting perspectives or advice as someone who has both impairments. Thank you!
Thank you for today’s video. I truly needed to see this today. I have retinitis pigmentosa I was diagnosed at age 12 and I am now 40. I also had a main stream education all the way through college where I met my husband. I am from a very small town and my parents and everyone used magnification as well as other things to help me get through school and I never learned braille and you are preaching to the choir about the long naps when I got home from school. My daughter has recently been diagnosed with ADHD. My vision over the past 12 years deteriorated to shapes shadows late distinction but most of the time everything is gray. I still get vision migraines on the regular from my fatigue and I still sleep more than anyone I know. Watching my daughter struggle with her focus and us trying to learn medication’s and things like that I don’t know how I would have handled the struggles of losing my vision compounded with the racing I can tell her brain is doing when I just asked a simple question. Not to mention the anxiety that goes along when you have ADHD. I think you are incredible and the fact that you are as successful as you are it is truly inspiring. I appreciate how honest you are videos always are and sometimes I watch your content and other blind contributors content so I don’t feel alone in the world with my blindness. I still live in a small town in the Midwest so unfortunately I don’t have many or any visually impaired or blind friends so I just wanted to take a minute to tell you thank you for your honesty and for being a relatable you tuber! Also I have made my daughter watch some of your videos we recently watched your video with the android phone and I think she gets a kick out of seeing someone else who is blind figuring out how to use technology! She is 12 and thinks I am super lame A direct quote from her is that you are a cooler You are a better blind person than me!😃
Hahah, thanks for sharing the kind words! Wish you the best!
Thank you for sharing! How neurodivergence and eye problems intersect can be wild.
I think I’ve shared in previous comments that my eyesight tanked this year from injury and infection, but has also been healing. It’s wild how for months, thanks to these somewhat temporary problems (the dryness that injured my eyes will always be there), I didn’t have any sensory overload or meltdowns. But as my eyes heal, my brain is getting overwhelmed with seeing too much. I’m also understanding more about how my strabismus and seeing out of only one eye at a time and complications therein have impacted both my sight and autism throughout my life and vice versa.
Thanks for sharing!
Dancer your question and how I’m doing. The fact that I’m going to therapy, pretty good I think we’ll see
Now that I've gotten this addressed, I think that's the next route for me, looking into therapy. Thanks for sharing!
@@jamesrath By the way I’m very glad that you’re getting a guide dog. That’s amazing I got my guide dog from guide dogs of America in California Inn Sylmar. Good luck with your guide dog journey
fellow adhder here who slept for hours every day after school 👋🏽