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Executive dysfunction

MaybeNotWhoKnows

Active Member
I have always, and continue to, have problems with executive functioning. It is incredibly frustrating. Its like my mind is not capable of taking multiple moving parts and uniting them into a cohesive whole. I know all of the things I am supposed to do, I know how to do each individual thing, but somehow I can't do them all, continuously, at the same time, and not lose my mind.

Ok, so have you seen those people that spin plates on top of poles? And they have to make sure each plate keeps spinning or it will wobble and crash. It's as if I am the spinner, and each and every mundane adult task, thing I have to remember, thing I need to do, stimulus and change in expectation adds a new plate, and I have to keep them all moving, but they start wobbling and I frantically run around trying to fix them, but as I focus on steadying one, the rest start falling, and crashing.
If I need or want to focus on doing something, and I want to do it right, it needs to be the only thing occupying my attention. I can't shift readily between different sets of words, trains of thought, tasks and processes. This means that any distraction, any thing I see that reminds me of something I need to do, any disruption to my process has the potential to completely wreck everything. I have tried SO hard, tried everything, I try so freaking hard, but I have no idea how to improve this issue. I have had to do some uncomfortable prioritizing. Any time I have held a job in the past, basically everything else was neglected in order to do my work well. This means (with very limited exception) no phone calls, no appointments, no social life, no cleaning up, very minimal self care. Every day was pour my everything into work, then distract. Getting engrossed in something interesting/entertaining to me is often the only thing that keeps my discordant thoughts from tearing each other apart. Because every time I start thinking about the "everything"- all of the things I need to do, should do, but don't have the mental or physical energy to take care of, I get extremely overwhelmed, and get stuck in a panic loop.
Now I am taking better care of myself, my environment, and maintaining a few personal relationships. But just that takes everything I have and more. I am scared I will never be able to hold a job, have a life and in general be a functional adult human.
The only thing I have found that kind of helps is writing down each individual step of complex tasks and following the list. My getting ready list, if I do not follow it, I invariably forget at least one step, usually several. This doesn't help with my energy, mental flexibility or distractibility, but it does eliminate the need for me to hold each step in my mind, remember them and put them together.
There are so many things I could do, things that could and would help me, I have heard and tried everything I know of, but taking on a new thing, even one that would help me, can jeopardize everything else I am trying to hold together.


I would appreciate hearing about similar experiences, what helps you, ideas or anything else that could help.
Thanks!
 
These are very compelling thoughts and I can relate to what you are saying on many points. Just because you can't do some crappy job doesn't mean you are less of a person. You are BETTER, believe me.

I have trouble keeping my thoughts cohesive, too. Now please heed this advice: You can be 1000% happy without holding a job. I know it sounds strange but I struggled with the thoughts of hopelessness because of not being able to hold down a job. These thoughts aren't reality. Jobs and careers and families are just chains chaining you down. You WILL find something you love to do that fits you.

It takes time to find these things out. I am 30 now. When I was your age I couldn't wipe my ass. Life is about learning stuff. I know it's cliché but you can and will not ever stop learning!
 
I can really realate to this. The only thing that has worked for me so far is having a really strict schedule. I do the same things at the same time every single day. I also set alarms on my phone for every single thing so if I lose track of time I don't have to worry about forgetting anything.
 
I know the feeling. I spent a year without a stimulant medication, trying to just "cope" my way through life, trying to learn or innovate skills that would allow me to live without amphetamine, but I just couldn't do it. That was a year in hell.

As a proponent of pharmacological interventions in general I recommend amphetamine to everyone, but it sounds like you actually really do need a stimulant medication. Caffeine does not cut the mustard, nor does anything else. Ritalin (methylphenidate), Concerta (controlled-release methylphenidate), Adderall, Vyvanse, dextroamphetamine, these are all things that would benefit you greatly. Print out that post and show it to a doctor. They'll agree with me, I promise.

edit: and don't let them sucker you in with Strattera (atomoxetine). If they offer you Strattera, offer them a purple Skittle.
 
I am scared I will never be able to hold a job, have a life and in general be a functional adult human.

You ARE a functional adult human. It seems, however, that you have a limitation that means you can't meet the expectations you have of yourself. You have, by your description, done the things you can to raise your limits. That leaves evaluating (and likely redefining) your expectation of what a functional adult human is/does.

I'm not being trite or flippant. The internal expectations we have, often "inherited" from parents or society, can be very problematic for us. I have limitations on what I can/can't do, how much I can deal with, etc. I have had to learn to adjust to these realities and stop being so critical of myself for not meeting whatever standard I thought I was supposed to be meeting, whether that is work, relationships, self-care, cleaning, whatever.
 
The only thing I have found that kind of helps is writing down each individual step of complex tasks and following the list. My getting ready list, if I do not follow it, I invariably forget at least one step, usually several. This doesn't help with my energy, mental flexibility or distractibility, but it does eliminate the need for me to hold each step in my mind, remember them and put them together.
Yes, I do this, too. It helps a lot. I have to keep reminding myself to stay on task, though, that I need to finish one task before starting a new one.
 
I have the same problem, and issues getting organized too because making a list is another thing that taxes my executive functions. I have to throughly consider every item that goes on the list, and the order they go in, and check multiple times to make sure the list is complete, and then when I go to execute the list, my mind turns it into an infinite series of sub-lists I have to accomplish and I get overwhelmed. My working memory is crap and I get distracted easily so it takes me forever to finish things. Sometimes I get in a zone but I don't know how to make it happen on demand..
 
I have the same problem, and issues getting organized too because making a list is another thing that taxes my executive functions. I have to throughly consider every item that goes on the list, and the order they go in, and check multiple times to make sure the list is complete, and then when I go to execute the list, my mind turns it into an infinite series of sub-lists I have to accomplish and I get overwhelmed. My working memory is crap and I get distracted easily so it takes me forever to finish things. Sometimes I get in a zone but I don't know how to make it happen on demand..
You do have a point there - I tend to forget to put things on the list.
 
In my case, it was not a lack of
amphetamine

but a lack of hormones. I am trying to ramp up my production naturally, with pregnenolone, instead of guessing at what my body needs and giving it that.

If you do have ADHD, there are things you can do. I am convinced our brains work so hard they run out of neurotransmitters. I have also used glycine for sleep, and currently am taking therapeutic levels of niacin.
 
In my case, it was not a lack of


but a lack of hormones. I am trying to ramp up my production naturally, with pregnenolone, instead of guessing at what my body needs and giving it that.

If you do have ADHD, there are things you can do. I am convinced our brains work so hard they run out of neurotransmitters. I have also used glycine for sleep, and currently am taking therapeutic levels of niacin.

Oh yes, pregnenolone. I recommend that for absolutely everyone too; ever since I've started taking it my chronic fatigue hasn't been so much of a problem. I can work longer, and actually be mentally "there" the whole time. I'm sure it's doing other stuff for me too, but that's the biggie for me. I would guess that's the reduction in lethargy they noticed in the study.

I was going to thank you via PM for your thread on pregnenolone, but I might as well do it here: Thank you, WereBear!
 
I have always, and continue to, have problems with executive functioning. It is incredibly frustrating. Its like my mind is not capable of taking multiple moving parts and uniting them into a cohesive whole. I know all of the things I am supposed to do, I know how to do each individual thing, but somehow I can't do them all, continuously, at the same time, and not lose my mind.

Ok, so have you seen those people that spin plates on top of poles? And they have to make sure each plate keeps spinning or it will wobble and crash. It's as if I am the spinner, and each and every mundane adult task, thing I have to remember, thing I need to do, stimulus and change in expectation adds a new plate, and I have to keep them all moving, but they start wobbling and I frantically run around trying to fix them, but as I focus on steadying one, the rest start falling, and crashing.
If I need or want to focus on doing something, and I want to do it right, it needs to be the only thing occupying my attention. I can't shift readily between different sets of words, trains of thought, tasks and processes. This means that any distraction, any thing I see that reminds me of something I need to do, any disruption to my process has the potential to completely wreck everything. I have tried SO hard, tried everything, I try so freaking hard, but I have no idea how to improve this issue. I have had to do some uncomfortable prioritizing. Any time I have held a job in the past, basically everything else was neglected in order to do my work well. This means (with very limited exception) no phone calls, no appointments, no social life, no cleaning up, very minimal self care. Every day was pour my everything into work, then distract. Getting engrossed in something interesting/entertaining to me is often the only thing that keeps my discordant thoughts from tearing each other apart. Because every time I start thinking about the "everything"- all of the things I need to do, should do, but don't have the mental or physical energy to take care of, I get extremely overwhelmed, and get stuck in a panic loop.
Now I am taking better care of myself, my environment, and maintaining a few personal relationships. But just that takes everything I have and more. I am scared I will never be able to hold a job, have a life and in general be a functional adult human.
The only thing I have found that kind of helps is writing down each individual step of complex tasks and following the list. My getting ready list, if I do not follow it, I invariably forget at least one step, usually several. This doesn't help with my energy, mental flexibility or distractibility, but it does eliminate the need for me to hold each step in my mind, remember them and put them together.
There are so many things I could do, things that could and would help me, I have heard and tried everything I know of, but taking on a new thing, even one that would help me, can jeopardize everything else I am trying to hold together.


I would appreciate hearing about similar experiences, what helps you, ideas or anything else that could help.
Thanks!
Stress can affect you and make you think more narrow minded. Sleep also affect you. Dehydration can affect you. Don't drink caffeine after 11 am. It will affect your sleep. Maintain a regular sleep schedule. Hydrate when possible. Deep breathes and relax. Don't let the world collapse on you. Keep with your step by step plan and keep moving forwards. If you can try to knock out your tasks as soon as you can to clear your mind of them. Better to not have the stress of forgetting hogging up your mental resources.
 
In my case, it was not a lack of


but a lack of hormones. I am trying to ramp up my production naturally, with pregnenolone, instead of guessing at what my body needs and giving it that.

If you do have ADHD, there are things you can do. I am convinced our brains work so hard they run out of neurotransmitters. I have also used glycine for sleep, and currently am taking therapeutic levels of niacin.
What resources have brought you to that conclusion and is it restricted to asd?
 
What resources have brought you to that conclusion and is it restricted to asd?

Timeline:

  • I was a weird “gifted” child before ASD was known about in the US. So I had no idea I was on the Spectrum.
  • With puberty, I had terrible periods and acne and weight gain until I got put on birth control pills which cleared much of these issues. I led a normal life with few breaks from these supplemental hormones (taking me off OR increasing the dose didn’t go well) until my age got me taken off of them. Despite my request to keep the hormones of some kind I was dismissed. Within months I developed a cystic ovary and had to have it removed (and it was only my research skills that let me resist the scare tactics of “could be cancer” and let me hang onto what was left of my reproductive machinery... which continues to make hormones.)
  • However, despite this dramatic save, the surgery seemed to shock me into complete and sudden surgical menopause. Things got very bad (fatigue, insomnia, short term memory problems) because they don’t want to give you hormones, they want to give you Prozac. Once again, I researched it and went in to demand hormones by shooting flame from my eyes. I got... artificial hormones. Things seemed to be getting somewhat better for a year. Then it stopped and I got worse than before. Stopped the hormones... nothing changed.
  • Continued to sink into crippling fatigue, terrible moods, lack of appetite, inability to digest food, and severe insomnia. Of course all these symptoms made each other worse; I was now short of sleep, nutrients, and all tests came up “normal normal normal.” I had a lot of the symptoms of Addison’s Disease and felt slightly better by eating cortisol anti-itch cream, but the endocrinologist I managed to finally get in to see wouldn’t even test me or look at the painstaking temperature chart I had kept for months. I couldn’t have Addison’s because I wasn’t on the point of death. (Silly me. I thought this was a science.) When he prescribed Lipitor, Prozac, and Ambien and I refused, he threw me out of his office.
  • One good thing that did come from it is that I made him do a cortisol test. (Even though he did it wrong. I cannot make this stuff up.) By adjusting for his errors I realized I was looking at a medical conundrum: I had all the symptoms of cortisol deficiency, combined with much higher than normal cortisol blood levels. How could this be? I wondered if there was such a thing as Acquired Cortisol Resistance. There is, but it is only acknowledged by one doctor on Earth: Dr. Jack Kruse. Fortunately, he writes on the Web. By following his protocols to treat this issue, I started to get better.
  • And then I got stuck again; better, but not all the way better. It was almost two years ago that I read about a Aspsie getting dressed in the morning and realized that might as well be me. Took an online test and found out I AM ONE OF YOU. This continued my progress because now I am actually focusing on what is causing the stress as well as what can fix it. Got an official diagnosis and changed my job and living situation (expanded our space so I get the alone time I must have.)
  • Could not get out of my head the impact of hormones on my lifelong state of health. Did my usual research pattern and determined that pregnenolone would supply the raw materials for whatever hormones my body needed, letting me stop guessing and just keep the cement trucks rolling into the loading dock.
Most recently, I stopped listening to every other source on pregenenolone and ramped myself up to 1.5k a day. So far, so much better.

Being ASD is an incredibly stressful state, and not knowing you are ASD multiplies that exponentially. I think a lot of us have the same problems I did, because our bodies are in such a constant state of stress that we stop responding to cortisol. That is basically Addison’s Disease.

That is flirting with actual death.
 
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Being ASD is an incredibly stressful state, and not knowing you are ASD multiplies that exponentially.

It will haunt me to the end of my life as to what I might have done differently had I known so much earlier in my life than to figure out who and what I am at the age of 55.
 
Timeline:

  • I was a weird “gifted” child before ASD was known about in the US. So I had no idea I was on the Spectrum.
  • With puberty, I had terrible periods and acne and weight gain until I got put on birth control pills which cleared much of these issues. I led a normal life with few breaks from these supplemental hormones (taking me off OR increasing the dose didn’t go well) until my age got me taken off of them. Despite my request to keep the hormones of some kind I was dismissed. Within months I developed a cystic ovary and had to have it removed (and it was only my research skills that let me resist the scare tactics of “could be cancer” and let me hang onto what was left of my reproductive machinery... which continues to make hormones.)
  • However, despite this dramatic save, the surgery seemed to shock me into complete and sudden surgical menopause. Things got very bad (fatigue, insomnia, short term memory problems) because they don’t want to give you hormones, they want to give you Prozac. Once again, I researched it and went in to demand hormones by shooting flame from my eyes. I got... artificial hormones. Things seemed to be getting somewhat better for a year. Then it stopped and I got worse than before. Stopped the hormones... nothing changed.
  • Continued to sink into crippling fatigue, terrible moods, lack of appetite, inability to digest food, and severe insomnia. Of course all these symptoms made each other worse; I was now short of sleep, nutrients, and all tests came up “normal normal normal.” I had a lot of the symptoms of Addison’s Disease and felt slightly better by eating cortisol anti-itch cream, but the endocrinologist I managed to finally get in to see wouldn’t even test me or look at the painstaking temperature chart I had kept for months. I couldn’t have Addison’s because I wasn’t on the point of death. (Silly me. I thought this was a science.) When he prescribed Lipitor, Prozac, and Ambien and I refused, he threw me out of his office.
  • One good thing that did come from it is that I made him do a cortisol test. (Even though he did it wrong. I cannot make this stuff up.) By adjusting for his errors I realized I was looking at a medical conundrum: I had all the symptoms of cortisol deficiency, combined with much higher than normal cortisol blood levels. How could this be? I wondered if there was such a thing as Acquired Cortisol Resistance. There is, but it is only acknowledged by one doctor on Earth: Dr. Jack Kruse. Fortunately, he writes on the Web. By following his protocols to treat this issue, I started to get better.
  • And then I got stuck again; better, but not all the way better. It was almost two years ago that I read about a Aspsie getting dressed in the morning and realized that might as well be me. Took an online test and found out I AM ONE OF YOU. This continued my progress because now I am actually focusing on what is causing the stress as well as what can fix it. Got an official diagnosis and changed my job and living situation (expanded our space so I get the alone time I must have.)
  • Could not get out of my head the impact of hormones on my lifelong state of health. Did my usual research pattern and determined that pregnenolone would supply the raw materials for whatever hormones my body needed, letting me stop guessing and just keep the cement trucks rolling into the loading dock.
Most recently, I stopped listening to every other source on pregenenolone and ramped myself up to 1.5k a day. So far, so much better.

Being ASD is an incredibly stressful state, and not knowing you are ASD multiplies that exponentially. I think a lot of us have the same problems I did, because our bodies are in such a constant state of stress that we stop responding to cortisol. That is basically Addison’s Disease.

That is flirting with actual death.
I am curious about cortisol and the doctor's research. Would you be willing to educate me in pm or link me to where the essential data is?
 
Google calendar is a genius! I also use "google Keep". I make lists there. Everytime I remember something that needs to be done I write it in the list. And then every morning I have a routine where I prioritize all the to-do for a "today"- list.

I never get anything done if I do not prioritize. I get overwhelmed and paralyzed. So I need that list. But I love making lists, so it is more than OK for me to do that.

I have also been bad at holding jobs. I kept a job for (3 years! wow). I was just working the weekends, in a silent health shop, were I just talked about my special interest (nutrition) to the customers.
In my experience, I need to work with some of my special interests. And it NEEDS to be an environment that fits me. It needs to me "customized" for me.. And I have tried a lot to figure out what that customizing means for me.

I have had this feeling multiply times (still), that I "should" have a fulltime job. Because that is what everyone has. That is what the society expect. I have to find that balance of not pushing myself too much into doing all kinds of things. My energy is at the top of my priority. If I do too much, I get overwhelmed and confused. It is all about balance and accepting my limitations. Accepting that I am different then others, and that I can´t do fully what they do. And do you know what? People sometimes tell me that they are inspired by me, because I always do what "I want".

If I am going do something that overwhelms me, I close my eyes and go through the steps in my head like a movie. That helps sometimes. And my routines helps me. I do not have routines all day long. But as "steps" throughout the day. (morning, "lunchtime", "dinnertime" and evening). To get there, I wrote step- by- step lists. Suddenly, I did them automatically in order. I still have the list though, if I forget.

I also do different things each day of the week. Today is friday- and this is the day for cleaning the house. (in a specific order though, so it do not get overwhelming). Friday I also make myself a pizza. hihihi :)

Hope that helped... Em. And I really hope you figure some metode just for you so things will get easier for you. I know the feeling (Or I can not know it entirely, but I know it for myself).
 

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