Some thoughts on my particular brand of ADHD

I have ADHD. Specifically, the inattentive type.

People with ADHD are socially motivated and body doubling is a simple and effective means to get the activation energy required to actually start and follow through on tasks:

Body doubling is very simple: the ADHDer who is having trouble starting or staying on task simply sits down with another person who is also working on a focus-intensive project, and the ADHDer feeds off the other person’s social energy and attention in order to get things done.

When body doubling, the ADHDer retains agency. It’s not up to the other person there to tell you what to do or how to do it. They just have to be there, and then it’s so much easier for you to do what needs doing.

But it is so hard to accept offers of body doubling, especially if you were raised in a thoroughly Irish Catholic environment as I was. If you were to body double, you’d be perceived as having let things get this out of hand, and that intensifies your malignant shame to the point where you can’t possibly accept the help. And so the cycle continues. Thanks, JP.

One terrible way out of this state (that is entirely too easy to slip into) is to abdicate your own agency & to let someone else codependently become the President of Everything in your household. This isn’t healthy or sustainable for either one of you.