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fairytalesanddragons:

fairytalesanddragons:

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oh my god, when will people finally stop doing this. claiming that “everyone gets that” is not helping! at all!

yes, everyone can feel inner restlessness sometimes, everyone has difficulty concentrating sometimes, and yes, everyone gets into the “flow” of doing something SOMETIMES.

but for us, it’s not just sometimes, it’s constantly which is why it’s classified as a disorder! it comes with impairments.

anyway, someone please introduce this person to the term hyperfocus:

“Latching onto a subject is not unique to people with ADHD or Bipolar Disorder. There is a concept called “flow” that most people experience. Flow is a groove. When a person is in flow, focus is heightened, creativity is high, ideas conglomerate seamlessly and one point of focus after another simply falls into place.

The ability to focus acutely or find a flow is not the problem with hyperfocus. Like most aspects of life, too much of a good thing can become dysfunctional. Hyperfocus is a problem when the person experiencing it begins to ignore the world around them. Time passes without realizing it. Others are ignored and responsibilities fall by the wayside. At that point, and especially when it happens repeatedly, it’s no longer a positive state like flow, but becomes debilitating.“

flow (which everyone gets) and hyperfocus (which most commonly comes with ADHD, Autism and Bipolar Disorder) are not the same.

stop erasing our symptoms 2k17.

Also hyperfocus doesn’t generally or necessarily occur when it’s useful/you’re trying to focus.

For instance you could come home from the store and you just need to put away your groceries and then get the rest of your chores done for the day and while you’re putting the fridge stuff away you see all the veggies and remember you were going to make tomato soup later so you just start making tomato soup and nearly an hour later the soup is simmering and you’re like “I’m not even hungry” and you’re standing there and you notice none of the groceries are put away and hey look there’s that ice cream you bought… still on the counter.

It’s not necessarily that you’re so focused you forget about everything else, it’s more like you’re so distracted you forget about everything else

Also I feel like hyperfocus wears you out, like you get to the end and you’ve used up all your useful energy
Like no making tomato soup isn’t that strenuous but I used All My Energy to make it because for some reason tomato soup was Very Important and now I exhausted because I used today’s allotted focus on one item

And at the end of a good flow of focus you’re tired, exhausted maybe, but you feel satisfied and like you accomplished what you set out to do, you’ve Done Something
I usually just feel confused, like why was making tomato soup so important again? What year is it? Why am I only wearing one shoe???

^^^ THIS