Anyone else?

Community
, , ,
#1

Hi, everyone!

I have a question or two about one of the things that annoys me most that I suffer from…

Firstly, does anyone else experience that scenario where you are extremely restless and on edge and are really feeling the need to do something, but either nothing is stimulating enough to hold your interest or you literally just have nothing to do, and so you end up just lying there thinking about how much you want to be doing something and how annoyed you are that you’re not, and then you just get angry and get a headache?
This is something I get daily and it really gets go me.

Secondly, does anyone know if this is an ADHD issue, an anxiety issue, a depression issue, or all of the above issue? To me it seems like it could be any and all I think I suffer from all 3 so am not sure.

Lastly, people who have used medication or know about it, is this something that stimulant medication could help with? By stimulating my brain more than it’s lovely naturally lowered ADHD/depression levels are, would it prevent this sort of issue and the sort of paralysis that comes along with it?

1 Like
#2

It’s really hard to say if I’ve experienced exactly what you’ve described, but I think I’ve experienced similar. I can now recognize that I’ve gone through anxiety multiple times in my life, though I’ve only been diagnosed once. The time I was diagnosed was last year, at the same time I got my ADHD diagnosis.

It was the worst and longest period of anxiety I’ve been through in my life, and it came about from about 3-4 years of feeling taken advantage of and taken for granted as an employee. I felt kind of like a caged animal. I wanted something to change, and my attempts at change either led to nothing, or even more frustration.

  • This was before I knew I have ADHD. However, I think that my intense feelings of frustration at the time we justified. Many people that I know, including a couple of former supervisors, seemed to think that my frustration was justified. Also, since I have the Predominantly Inattentive presentation, and not the Hyperactive-Impulsive or Combined presentation, I don’t think that I experience Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria. (This is just my opinion, but I think that RSD only occurs with H-I traits.)
  • At other times in my life when I’ve felt anxious, I think that I’ve felt like you described:

… Except that I don’t usually get the headache.

So, for me anyway, I think this is due to anxiety.

I do tend to ruminate on things that I cannot change, making it harder to turn my attention to the things I can do that might bring about positive change. Medication does seem to help me to be able to direct my attention, instead of getting stuck in a thought-loop like that. (In my case, I’ve found that non-stimulant atomoxetine is twice as effective as stimulant Adderall; I haven’t tried the other stimulant, methylphenidate, i.e. Ritalin, Concerta, etc.)

1 Like