This is very relatable for me. I often find my internal voice shouting at my body to either do something or stop doing something, and my body just refuses to cooperate. And then of course I start to feel guilty/ashamed when it becomes clear that I should have done the thing.
I start to feel guilty/ashamed
Which makes it even harder to engage. Once the guilt and anxiety get bad enough, I frantically try to complete the task before seriously upsetting others. It’s never ending cycle of anxiety, guilt, despair, and relief.
I didn’t expect to see me in a comic, but okay. Thanks for calling me out in front of everyone.
But for real, I will neglect the most basic tasks like urinating or eating. However, if someone is with me, I become extraordinarily productive. It’s so weird. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like I suddenly have all the motivation and energy to do everything in the world. Then, when I’m alone, back to the stagnation or obsession.
Good ol’ fashioned body-doubling can do wonders.
Yes! Imagine a society in which the treatment for AuDHD was to send someone respectful over to your house to sit there doing their own thing while you accomplish your daily tasks 😆
Please do not pet or feed my service human.
Today I learned a thing about myself. It’s probably why I get so locked down, waiting for some scheduled event. Like if I have a thing at 3 pm, I can’t start anything else, cuz I might leave it half done.
Or wanting to start things like a Pathfinder campaign with my kids or game dev. I don’t know how to start.
Inertia. I hate that word. I’ve been hearing it my entire life from my father, who clearly noticed this trait of mine, but instead of helping me he turned it into a means of piling on guilt and shame. “You have too much inertia.” “You need to stop having so much inertia.” “Why aren’t you fighting the inertia? You said you wanted to do this.”
I hate that word.
I will definitely try this thing out, truly I feel so happy reading this out
I thought that was an ADHD trait… or is this one of those symptoms that can be true for both?
But this explains why my partner will play the same game all day and nothing else, even though she has plans to work on projects and stuff.
Sounds a lot like hyper-focus to me too, but like most traits shared by ADHD and Autism, there are probably some subtle differences. Personally I find the inertia terminology to be more representative of my experience.
Yeah I thought so too. Body doubling is similar to what they’re suggesting here and is often recommended for ADHDers.
That’s me. I will get “stuck” on something for hours and hours and suddenly it’s 12 midnight and I should have been in bed 2 hours ago. I just… Can’t pull myself away from it.
I’m pretty sure this is an adhd thing because that’s almost everyone I know including myself.
There’s a lot of overlap between autism and ADHD. This sounds very similar to executive dysfunction on one end and hyperfocus on the other.
I have both autism and ADHD, and whilst it’s difficult to draw the line between the two, I do have some instances of inertia that feel more ADHD flavour than autism. I’ve also seen many of my ADHD friends struggling with something like this too, but it seems like it works differently than autistic inertia.
I think that there’s a decent chance that understanding autistic inertia will help us to understand ADHD inertia, even if they’re distinct modes
