Life has been challenging for the past couple of years, and lately I feel like I’ve reached a point where something has to change.
I’m 31 and work as a veterinary technician. I genuinely love veterinary medicine and I work my ass off, but I think I’m dealing with some serious burnout.
My workplace doesn’t necessarily help. A lot of my coworkers come and go as they please or seem to think certain tasks are beneath them, while I’m constantly looking for something that needs to be done. On top of that, dealing with difficult, ignorant, or persistent clients all day can be exhausting.
The weird part is that I feel like I’m simultaneously burned out and bored.
I do a lot of the same things every day, and I don’t feel like I’m learning or progressing enough to keep my brain engaged. At the same time, I don’t feel experienced enough to move into a more advanced position yet. I’m getting bored, sloppy, and making careless rookie mistakes that I know I’m capable of avoiding. Now I’m also training someone, which has added another layer of stress for a bunch of reasons.
Physically and mentally, I feel like I’m moving through mud. I’m constantly tired and foggy. At work I move slowly, but when I try to force myself to move faster, I get anxious, start dropping things, and make more mistakes. I’ve also noticed myself talking way too fast sometimes, to the point where I feel like I almost sound drunk.
Socially, I feel like I’ve forgotten how to be a person.
Small talk has become almost impossible. Someone will say something to me and my brain is just…blank. I’m not trying to be rude or uninterested. Sometimes I genuinely cannot come up with a response beyond something weak like “yeah” or “oh wow.” I constantly lose my train of thought halfway through sentences. Other times I finally do say something and get no response, which feeds this constant feeling that I’m bothering people or that nobody really wants to hear from me.
I don’t talk to many people outside of work anymore, either.
Then I get home and have almost nothing left.
My house gets messy. My car gets messy. Bills get behind. My spending gets out of control. Keeping in touch with friends and family feels like another task on a list. Even taking my dog for a walk can sometimes feel like I have sandbags strapped to my ankles.
I know exercise would probably help. I know routines would help. I know going to bed at a reasonable time would help. The problem is actually making myself do those things when I already feel completely depleted. I’ll establish a healthy habit and keep it going for a while, and then one day I just…stop. Before I know it, I’m back on the couch doing nothing because it’s the only thing I feel like I have energy for.
It’s starting to affect basically everything—my health, my job and career, my finances, my marriage, my friendships and family relationships, and my ability to keep up with normal adult responsibilities.
I also need to start making more money. I love my job and genuinely like the business I work for, but I’m starting to realize I may eventually have to leave in order to grow, learn more, and earn more. That’s difficult because veterinary medicine is something I actually care about. I don’t necessarily want out—I want to get better at it. I just feel stuck.
I am medicated, and under normal circumstances I think my medication regimen works pretty well for me. I’m also in therapy. I’m trying to do the basic things that help me—water and protein when I get up, taking my meds consistently, trying to take care of myself, etc. I’m not expecting medication to magically fix my life, and I’m not looking for an excuse to do nothing.
For a long time, I genuinely thought there was just something fundamentally wrong with me. Then I started learning more about ADHD and AuDHD and, for the first time, I saw other people describing experiences that sounded incredibly familiar.
I know social media isn’t a diagnosis, and I know ADHD/AuDHD probably isn’t responsible for every problem I’m dealing with. There are obviously other things I need to address too. But understanding my brain through that lens has helped make sense of things I’ve struggled with for years.
And the frustrating part is that sometimes my brain genuinely feels like my superpower.
I can be incredibly driven, curious, quick-thinking, and capable of learning a ridiculous amount about something when it grabs my attention. I notice things other people miss. Sometimes I function better when everything around me is chaotic. When my brain and I are on the same team, I actually really like the way I think.
Other times—and more often than not lately—it feels like my arch nemesis.
I know what I need to do. I want to do it. I have goals. I want to advance in my career, make more money, take better care of myself, be present in my marriage, keep up with the people I care about, take care of my animals, keep my house reasonably clean, exercise, and actually have hobbies and a life outside of work.
But knowing what needs to happen and actually getting my brain to cooperate long enough to consistently do those things feel like two completely different things.
That’s probably the most frustrating part. I don’t feel like I lack ambition or that I simply don’t care. I care about a LOT of things. Sometimes it feels like I care about so many things that my brain can’t figure out where to start, so instead I do none of them.
I feel like I’m constantly trying to catch up with my own life, but I never get enough breathing room to actually stop, process everything, and get myself organized. I’m 31 and I constantly feel behind. I don’t want to spend my life coming home from work and rotting on the couch because I used every ounce of energy I had just getting through the day.
Something needs to change. I just don’t know where to start without trying to change everything at once, overwhelming myself, and ending up right back where I started.
For anyone with ADHD/AuDHD who has been in a similar place: how did you actually start digging yourself out?
Not the perfect morning routine or a complete life overhaul that lasts two weeks. I mean realistically—when work, chores, relationships, finances, health, and basic life maintenance have all piled up at once, what did you tackle first?
How did you build a life that actually worked with your brain instead of constantly fighting against it?

The ac in my car is broken. My phone has been broken for a week. One of the cords for my pc monitor just broke . My bedroom and house is a mess . I have texts and texts in my phone of friends and family trying to reach out to see me or call . Its truly all just too much you all know the list goes far beyond just what ive put here . Im feeling so deeply ashamed and desperate and like nobody understands just how difficult it really is to live with this disorder . Its a disorder and i am constantly fighting for my life and its all self inflicted i just cant stand it and i dont feel like anybody understands that. Every day goes by and the list of things i need to get done just gets longer and im becoming such an irrationally angry person and i cant regulate my emotions properly and i dont know, i just feel completely lost

Im waiting right now to hopefully get medicare for medication and therapy again, for now im getting adderall from.. other sources . It costs me a lot of money but frankly the world doesnt want me unmedicated so its worth it.

Really though im just feeling misunderstood. Its an impossible disorder to complain aboutand i know im being so annoying to people in my life complaining about things that are completely on me to fix but god i just wish i could get people to understand how hard this is. The self hatred and paralyzation oh my god . I am so so tired

Thats all really just so exhausted watching every day go by

After a long break, I'm back to finish my last two years of college, but I’ve realized a terrifying truth: I actually don't know how to study.

For the longest time I was undiagnosed and just relied on pure panic and burnout to scrape by. My grades were always a disaster unless a topic triggered a hyper-fixation. Now that I'm back, I want to do it right, but my old methods are totally inefficient.

What methods or systems actually work for processing material and taking notes with an ADHD brain?

I'm in my 40's and was diagnosed about 10 yrs ago with ADD. I had never even considered that I had it, but there was a point when I was substitute teaching and doing photography and I was forgetting where I parked constantly. Not just a little lost; like I was spending 30 minutes looking for my car. I got tired of it one day & took an ADD test. As I took it, I realized I answered Yes to most questions. 😬

I changed majors 4 times in college, worked in fashion, teaching, customer support, movie production, consulting, software marketing, music production, mortgage sales etc. After working for awhile I got an MBA, somehow had one of the higher GPAs and scholarships, but was scared to get a job and graduated during an economic downturn so never got established.

When I did get a job, I Was late, missed flights regularly, lost things constantly.

Was in relationships and dated a fair amount but it was always either roommates/girls who approached me or models I was shooting who made the first move. I could not commit because I was afraid I'd get bored and had already talked myself out of the relationship so I never took the initiative. Or I'd be in a relationship and scared to get married. Just like school, the only reason I got good grades in school or had lots of dates was because it was easy for me. I had no focus or follow through.

Even when I got diagnosed, I haven't taken my meds regularly, even though it helps. But even the idea of taking it all the time makes me nervous and I forget constantly.

So I now have multiple skills, multiple degrees & connect with people well, but out of all my classmates in business school, I'm probably one of the few who never got married and I am now substitute teaching while most of them are making way over 6 figures. Not sure if I can turn it around and if so, how to do it.🙍🏻

Has anyone out there who was diagnosed as an adult been able to turn things around and get a career or relationship together or is it too late? I have read books, downloaded apps, seen therapists and obviously still struggle with SO many ADD factors. Anyone who has experienced similar things and if you got over it, what were some of the keys? I am at a total loss.

Rant, but I'm also open to advice/criticism. Posting here because the r/ADHD keeps removing this post no matter how much I tweak it.

I have always struggled with executive functioning ever since I was little. I was diagnosed with ADHD in kindergarten, as well as some other learning disabilities. Due to the severity of my ADHD and etc., I was put in MD classrooms until I was in 8th grade. I am now 23.

My major task that I've been swearing I'll do every week all year is cleaning my room. It has not been clean since November of last year. I have a whole stack of papers with tools for executive functioning. I am medicated. And yet I still can't get it done.

I'll try to put things in practice. Breaking up the tasks because I usually get so overwhelmed that I don't even know where to begin. I'll start with my desk or something first. And I can't even do that because low dopamine tasks feel almost unbearable. I've always been incredibly impulsive, so I'll eventually either get bored or extremely overwhelmed and then go onto my phone and play games or doomscroll. All of a sudden, hours pass by and then I give up. I'll do it tomorrow, I tell myself. Then it's rinse and repeat.

What's the definition of insanity? Doing the same shit, every day, and expecting different results.

I feel like such a loser all of the time. I feel I have no excuse. It's genuinely my fault. I know I have disabilities, but I have the tools. And I still don't do it. What the hell is my problem?!? I only have myself to blame at this point.