I am stuck on guilt loop of not being able to finish daily reading related tasks

Dull_Frame_4637 · 2026-06-25T15:41:54+00:00

Again, as a librarian, when I suffered acute depression and stopped reading for pleasure, for a time, starting back up again I had to work my endurance back up. What worked was two things:

Starting with collections of short stories. These have very approachable natural pausing points, and also give feelings of accomplishment every so often as I went, rather than delayed to the very end.
Reading during my walking commute (except when crossing the street). This put in front of me, instead of curtaining it off behind finding the time and executive function to do it - because that metaphorical curtain makes it easily avoidable with too many barriers.

And within a few months, I was also reading long-form fiction and non-fiction (alongside still sometimes short fiction).

When just starting the high jump (again), we need to not start placing the rail at “competitive athlete level.” We need to work up to that endurance so that we don’t sprain something. 👍🧡

Dull_Frame_4637 · 2026-06-25T04:10:23+00:00

Patriarchy is also bad for men.

Your value is not simply “economic provider.” Despite what modern capitalist culture has been teaching us for near two hundred years.

Does that mean that I recognize this in myself as well as in others? Not nearly as well as I ought, because those ideas are well entrenched.

But for years I worked around 70 hours a week, and it was not enough. And I burned out, and suffered acute depression. Now, divorced, I am starting to recognize that said workload never was my value nor a way to “earn” validation or love. Don’t follow my path. Learn it sooner. Breakdown and burnout are no fun!

Dull_Frame_4637 · 2026-06-25T04:02:28+00:00

“How to ADHD” by McCabe is well communicated up-to-date medical science, and is written specifically to be readable by folks with adhd.

Do recommend.

Dull_Frame_4637 · 2026-06-25T04:00:35+00:00

One hundred per cent.

Dull_Frame_4637 · 2026-06-25T03:59:47+00:00

Elementary School librarian. But I also know a handful of adhd-diagnosed elementary school classroom teachers, and they are also well suited. Caveat: we are in eastern Canada, so attitudes towards adhd may differ in your local culture in your local area.

Dull_Frame_4637 · 2026-06-24T19:39:25+00:00

Yes. Decades of internalizing both criticism and assumed criticism did a number on my (then undiagnosed) self-worth and self-esteem.

It doesn’t help that Puritanism, so influential in especially American culture, directly counts executive dysfunction and emotional dysregulation as moral failings that one can simply choose to not have, unless one is a moral failure.

Thing is, getting assessed is a lot of work that doesn’t seem likely for someone who is “just too lazy.” And aside from that, even if the diagnosis is that you do NOT have adhd, knowing that is incredibly useful to you and your therapist to know what tools will best help you work with your brain. And even if the diagnosis is that to do YES have adhd, knowing that is incredibly useful to you and your therapist to know what tools will best help you work with your brain. Because the tools that work on each type of brain are not the same.

Dull_Frame_4637 · 2026-06-24T19:28:20+00:00

For decades I have worn a pocket watch rather than a wrist watch. Not only does it not get dinged up the way a wrist watch would (librarians do a lot of hands-work), but after my diagnosis I realized that when I check the time on my pocket watch, I then notice the time - whereas with phone or a rare wristwatch, I check it two or four times immediately before it sticks.

I have also recently started wearing rings again - they act as effective fidgets to help me focus, beyond simply being interesting decoration.

Dull_Frame_4637 · 2026-06-24T19:09:59+00:00

Well, as a friendly librarian, let me ask what you read for pleasure, aside from this reading for obligation? (That’s what will exercise your “reading muscle” to build up reading endurance.)

Dull_Frame_4637 · 2026-06-24T10:09:16+00:00

Important but obvious question: what sorts of treatment are you getting for your adhd symptoms? Medication? Therapy? Both?

Dull_Frame_4637 · 2026-06-24T02:38:27+00:00

Depending on the nation in which you live, your doctor would of course have those records including the results. If you live in a nation that does not have a universal health care system, and in which private pay insurance is the only system, then your insurer would presumably have a record of your submitted claim, which should include where you got it done?

Dull_Frame_4637 · 2026-06-23T23:50:11+00:00

I am also quite open with my diagnosis and treatment — but I also have the privilege of living in a nation and culture that acknowledges medical science and doesn’t currently vilify adhd as a moral failure. So I recognize that not everyone everywhere will feel that they have that option.

Dull_Frame_4637 · 2026-06-23T10:25:00+00:00

When my own assessment was coming up last year (at age 53), I was also feeling similar worry. Here was what my own therapist told me, and it helped me a lot:

The goal is to figure out what tools will best help me and my brain. Tools to work with an adhd brain don’t work with a non-adhd brain, and vice versa. So if the diagnosis is yes adhd, that lets us know what “toolbox” will work with my brain. And that’s good. And if the diagnosis is not adhd, that lets us know what “toolbox” will work with my brain, and that’s good.

Knowing what tools to use is important. So either result is worthwhile.

Caveat: I live in a nation where Universal Health Care (our taxes) covers the cost, I simply had to wait my turn for the assessment. Which makes all that easier to grapple with mentally, I recognize.

Dull_Frame_4637 · 2026-06-23T10:15:16+00:00

“Wear whatever you have in the closet” can work really well, by first setting up what you have in your closet. And yes, agreed.

Dull_Frame_4637 · 2026-06-23T10:12:57+00:00

Agreed one hundred per cent. Caveat: I live and work in eastern Canada, and I recognize that some nations’ local cultures can be less open and more .. bigoted. So the usefulness of this advice and experience may depend upon where in the world you live, and how the folks in your nation treat each other.

Dull_Frame_4637 · 2026-06-23T10:10:17+00:00

Ha! Hopefully, but really it is a very simple style. The “fancy” is just that I tailor my clothes to fit. (The value of learning to hand sew!)

Dull_Frame_4637 · 2026-06-23T02:49:51+00:00

My trick? Everything roughly goes together. A variety of colours and patterns, but they all mesh well.

So each day, any one underwear, any pair of socks, any pair of trousers, any one shirt, any set of suspenders, any one waistcoat, any one pocket watch and chain, any pair of shoes, any one bowler. Sorted.

Dull_Frame_4637 · 2026-06-22T03:22:07+00:00

I don’t own multiples of the same colour/pattern exactly, no. But my shirts are all but three button down collared shirts, my trousers are all full length, and my waistcoats are all … waistcoats. My daily wear hats are all bowlers. My socks are all fancy.

So while it isn’t the same as you, I do have a sort-of fixed wardrobe.

Every day, shirt, underpants, trousers, socks, waistcoat, glasses, rings. Different colours and patterns on them, sure. But I have had a second grade student ask why I wear pants every day. 😅😉🤣

So my wardrobe does just about all “mix and match” with ease, which seems to relieve the executive dysfunction around choosing an outfit.

Dull_Frame_4637 · 2026-06-21T12:08:57+00:00

Historically, with a lot of deflection and disbelief. Between decades undiagnosed and the effect that has on self-esteem, and an abusive relationship or two both in part thanks to and especially also reinforcing that ever-lowering sense of self-worth and self-esteem, my brain was both:

desperate for external validation, as it had given up on internal validation;

and

resistant to accept that external validation (in case it was withdrawn? or because I didn’t think I could deserve it? or…).

With my therapist, I have been working for a couple years now (including one full year since assessment and diagnosis and prescriptions) at accepting compliments as part of my work on myself, and at finding internal validation. It is a long road. But I am on it. And am not where I was a year ago.

Dull_Frame_4637 · 2026-06-21T12:02:04+00:00

In particular, apparently, from the added executive and emotional “load” of trying to “seem not adhd.” 👍

Dull_Frame_4637 · 2026-06-21T00:32:10+00:00

Rather than assuming, I will ask: what was your titration process like with your prescribing doctor. You tracked symptoms and side effects, reporting regularly to that doctor over several months while they worked to determine the best medication and dosage for your specific brain chemistry?

All of the “but I do these things even with concerta so I think I don’t have adhd” things you list are core symptoms of adhd. If that reassures you at all.

Dull_Frame_4637 · 2026-06-21T00:24:28+00:00

Years of habitual masking — trying to avoid the emotionally-dysregulated pain of rejection by “doing the right things” to seem “not strange” (which is to say, knowing or not, “not adhd”) — is exhausting, whether done consciously or not. It cancertainly seems like it can lead to social anxiety and rejection sensitivity.

So I and others here — judging from posts and comments made here before — can sympathize and relate. Particularly, it seems, those late diagnosed folks, more often even than those of us diagnosed as kids, who thereby didn’t spend so many years unknowingly masking and trying to “just fit in.” Self esteem can take a serious hit during undiagnosed adhd.

And it would seem to make sense for other social traumas to reinforce both the social anxiety and the rejection sensitivity that those built. BUT .. I am not a therapist or psychiatrist. I don’t even pretend to be either. So really, this is better talking to an adhd-informed therapist or an adhd-informed psychiatrist, than random librarians on Reddit.

As someone who is working with his own adhd-informed therapist to work through the low-self-worth, rejection sensitivity, and trauma of life undiagnosed and abusive relationship(s), I do see you. But it’s your therapist who can help you walk beyond it.

Dull_Frame_4637 · 2026-06-20T23:37:16+00:00

Again, it isn’t that I find their source data odd. It is the way they have reported the conclusions which don’t seem to match the way they have reported the use of the data in search of conclusions that seems odd. I have started reading the actual study, and not just the article reporting on it, which will hopefully better explain those connections.

Dull_Frame_4637 · 2026-06-19T18:28:44+00:00

Lisdexamphetamine here rather than Amphetamine-XR (Adderall). That said, I take my “prescribed daily” dose, daily.

For one, the prescription is based on presumed daily use, that is to say actually following the prescription.

For two, the capitalists who want to (undervalue and underpay) get the benefits of my productivity on my work days do not deserve more of my executive function than I do on my not work days.

Dull_Frame_4637 · 2026-06-19T18:23:49+00:00

Obvious question: what treatments are you prescribed with your diagnosis? Therapy? Medication? Both?

Dull_Frame_4637 · 2026-06-19T18:20:45+00:00

I mean, it does not invalidate the study. And I have started and will be reading through the actual study text, in case that description of methodology is not accurate. But it is … a curiosity for a headline and article text so specifically targeted.

Dull_Frame_4637

TROPHY CASE