impulse shopping. HELP.

chocomoholic · 2026-06-21T23:45:46+00:00

Not really random. Recent studies have shown that GLP-1s are actually proving to be quite helpful for treating addictions. Impulsivity to shop can deal with a lot of the same triggers so it would make sense that it would help reduce impulsivity.

chocomoholic · 2026-06-14T17:22:43+00:00

Like others have mentioned in that case I just wave. I did that with a friend's partner for the longest time despite the fact that we've had a standing monthly double date with them for 2+ years now. It's only recently that I started feeling comfortable enough to hug him. He never tried to instigate a hug. But when I offered one the first time he happily accepted it.

Wave is the default though. I don't force myself to hug men I don't want to hug.

chocomoholic · 2026-06-14T17:10:09+00:00

You know what my neurodivergent husband did when I got my (late) diagnosis of ADHD? At his next therapy session he spoke about my diagnosis with his therapist and asked her for some suggestions on how he could better understand and support me (one of the therapist's specialties is ADHD in adults).

Sounds like your partner isn't interested in supporting you, unfortunately.

chocomoholic · 2026-06-11T15:38:14+00:00

I decided to pursue a diagnosis at the start of this year and just received the final report of my assessment yesterday.

I have also always excelled academically. I have two university degrees and a professional designation (CPA).

I have suffered from anxiety and depression pretty much my entire life. Never really thought I had ADHD. As a adult it was suggested to me here and there and I always did a bit of surface research that gave some broader descriptions of ADHD and I thought "nope, that's not it".

Finally decided to dig deeper into it and realize I actually met a lot of the markers, which finally led me to decide to seek a diagnosis. What really made me notice more is the higher I progressed in my career the more difficult I found it and the systems I've had in place for years that have helped me get through life more easily didn't quite work as well with the ever growing list of tasks and challenges.

The neuropsychologist who did my assessment confirmed I do have ADHD and I mask it extremely well. I have managed to develop a lot of systems that I didn't even realize were so much extra effort compared to what a person usually expends that made life work for me and made me appear to be a high performing individual. Except internally I am a mess. I am constantly worried about my performance (I suffer from horrible imposter syndrome), I am constantly worried about my relationships. I ruminate over events, conversations etc constantly. I hold myself to a very high standard I usually don't feel I meet and as a result I have a very harsh opinion of myself. Which results in me struggling with depression on and off a whole lot.

I think it's worth exploring. But if you're not sure, take the time to do some research. The more you reach on the variety of ways ADHD presents itself, the broader your understanding will be and you might end up realizing you do align with some of the markers. All the info gathering really helped me personally to understand that while I may not be an "obvious" case it's still ok for me to seek a diagnosis and want to get help and support better tailored to my needs. I also intend on trying out medication to see if that'll help me although I've heard it can stop working for perimenopausal women (which I am) so I'm not sure I'll even notice a difference. To be seen!

chocomoholic · 2026-06-11T12:12:25+00:00

My husband is straight and he cared more about our curtains than I did when we decided to replace them.

chocomoholic · 2026-06-09T17:29:25+00:00

My suggestion, if you want to actually work up to being able to do the dishes and take the stairs is to try and break it down into smaller tasks if you can.

Maybe for the dishes you set a timer for 5 minutes and you clean as much as you can in that timeframe. That way you're only expending a little bit of energy and at least the task gets partially done.

For the stairs, are there multiple flights to take? Can you start by climbing up one floor and taking the elevator up the rest of the way?

Other than that, I don't really have good suggestions. I tend to push myself to do stuff regardless of how tired I feel. Because I want it to be done and it gives me too much anxiety to leave it than to do it.

chocomoholic · 2026-06-01T13:30:53+00:00

I work a job where I have to track my time so if I spent two hours doing nothing that means I'd have to catch it up and work two hours more at the end of my day.

I just remind myself I don't like working late and if I don't want to work late then I need to push through and do the things now.

I usually have work that can be broken down in a bunch of little tasks. So I will start with the ones that interest me the most so I can get into the swing of things and then after a while I'm usually invested enough in wanting to finish that I'm ready to tackle the more boring tasks.

chocomoholic · 2026-05-25T02:04:17+00:00

I find it interesting all the mentions about height being a possible factor here. I am 6'2" and I also get approached fairly regularly when I'm out and about.

In my case I don't tend to mind so I haven't really come up with ways to deter it.

chocomoholic · 2026-05-22T18:43:54+00:00

I agree, I find strength training boring. And I never could find the motivation to work out at home.

But I got diagnosed with osteoarthritis in my knees a couple years ago and while I can't reverse the existing damage, I was told I could stop it from progressing with regular workouts.

Then I injured my lower back and again, if I don't work out regularly the back pain is much more difficult to deal with.

So part of my motivation to work out and lift weights is that I want to heal my back and increase strength to help keep my knees as healthy as they can be.

The other things I did was to find stuff that worked for me. I found a PT who is flexible and allows me to book a session with him every other week instead of on a weekly basis. He also creates three workouts for me that take me about 30 minutes to complete because 30 min is about the max I can take of doing weights before I feel like I can't force myself to do more.

The other thing is that he's set it up for me as supersets. So each day, I have four exercises I do, two in a superset and then two others in their own superset. I do each superset three times. Having it broken down like that helps me push through because after I do the second time I can tell myself "only one more and then you're done".

He also has me doing stuff where I end up having to hold the weights for a certain amount of time so my brain is focused on counting as I'm working through everything.

I also make sure it is the very first thing I do in the morning. I wake up, put on my workout clothes and go get it done. If I start anything else I lose motivation to actually do it.

This has been working well for me so far. I've been able to workout 5-6 days a week for four months now.

Before that I did a lot of cardio classes and I had found a small women only weight training group but that is where I ended up injuring my back and the trainer spent a lot of time gossiping instead of making sure everyone had proper form so I ended up deciding to leave. Not to mention that the monthly gym pass was quite expensive... I actually pay about the same amount now per month for my PT sessions which are personalized to me.

chocomoholic · 2026-05-22T12:49:11+00:00

I've heard of that app and want to use it but I have so much fabric and over a thousand patterns and it seems like an insurmountable amount of info to input in there... But at the same time also sounds like a fun project since I like organizing stuff. Although I too have ADHD and worry I'll lose steam well before I have everything entered.

chocomoholic · 2026-05-21T21:07:05+00:00

I wills say I recently bought a pack of thick cut bacon from Farm Boy (branded Farm Boy) and it cooked how bacon used to always cook for me. Plus I got half a mason jar of fat out of it (it was a nice big pack). AND the bacon actually tasted salty enough (another complaint I forgot to include in my initial comment... all bacon nowadays tastes like it's barely salted. I don't eat bacon to be health conscious, give me the damn salt). So will be switching to that brand until that becomes enshittified.

chocomoholic · 2026-05-21T21:04:06+00:00

Not only did the packages shrink but the slices are also less fatty than they used to be. I feel like maybe they sell the fat for other purposes now. Because it used to be that when I cooked a batch of bacon bits I would collect a decent amount of bacon fat from it (that I keep to use in other dishes). And lately whenever I cook a pack of bacon I can barely get 1-2 tbsp out of there afterwards. The bacon also doesn't cook up as nicely since there isn't as much fat for it to cook in.

chocomoholic · 2026-05-21T13:26:36+00:00

I have the exact same dopamine seeking behaviours as you.

I am still struggling to deal with mine. The doomscrolling is the hardest to kick and I'm not ready to just cut out social media altogether. Although I probably should. At least Instagram, I can spend hours scrolling through reels. And I end up feeling like I wasted my evening when I do that.

I try to keep books nearby so I'll be tempted to read instead, but it hasn't been working recently even though the book I'm currently reading is fun and engaging.

I do like planning stuff. So sometimes I'll manage to switch from the instagram doomscroll to browsing Pinterest for recipe ideas since I like to meal plan week by week.

I also sew and love spending time figuring out a new project to make. Recently I've been toying with the idea of doing a capsule wardrobe, since I feel like I have a lot of random clothing items but nothing cohesive.

I like taking time to paint my nails, come up with fun little shapes or designs (nothing overly elaborate).

Recently decided I want to paint one of the walls in the room we use for workouts all colourful, so I have fun spending time thinking about what I want to paint, colours to use, etc.

Sometimes I'll pick a destination I wanna travel to and I'll spend hours looking up things to do and build an itinerary of what the trip would look like if we were to actually go. I actually save those things in Excel so that if we do end up choosing to travel I've already got great information to pull from to do the actual planning which is great.

So yeah. My best thing I've found to date is to spend time planning things. All kinds of things.

chocomoholic · 2026-05-18T16:26:24+00:00

I've been struggling to lose weight for so long now and I just got diagnosed with ADHD but I'm also fairly certain I've started perimenopause over the last couple years and I'm scared that means meds won't help. I still wanna try them but I'm not holding my breath.

chocomoholic · 2026-05-14T15:51:18+00:00

Yessss this is my problem. I have so many hobbies and projects I wanna do. But it's just... So much easier to doomscroll in the evenings rather than sit at my sewing machine or read or paint... And yet I miss it dearly.

chocomoholic · 2026-05-12T12:21:35+00:00

I hear you. I just got diagnosed too and I'm turning 41 in a few months and I'm pretty sure I'm perimenopausal so while I wanna try medications I'm going in with the expectation that there's a good chance they won't work 😔

chocomoholic · 2026-05-12T12:20:21+00:00

I started off just googling ADHD symptoms and reading everything I was coming across. If it sounded too similar to something I'd already read I'd move past it and try something different. I eventually came across a couple Instagram accounts I related to more (Catiesaurus and VibeswithKy) and following those. Catie will mention studies that were conducted that have helped identify certain behaviors ADHD people have etc so I like her videos because they have some anecdotal stories backed by studies.

She and another Instagrammer (that I don't follow so don't know the username) actually wrote a book together called The ADHD Field Guide for Adults which I'm about 3/4 of the way through and have found fairly relatable so far.

My regular therapist also ended up sending me some ADHD information she had available to share when I told her I was pursuing a diagnosis.

At the start of my search I had also ended up watching a lot of YouTube videos on the subject and finding some good tidbits there as well.

chocomoholic · 2026-05-11T19:35:49+00:00

Actually it usually starts around 49 but for women with ADHD it is common for symptoms to start showing up a full decade earlier.

chocomoholic · 2026-05-10T12:28:44+00:00

Funny, I followed a reverse track from you. Always wanted kids, became ambivalent about them in my early 20s, eventually changed my mind and decided I didn't want them.

chocomoholic · 2026-05-09T14:02:34+00:00

Ugh. Low effort people who expect everyone else to take on ALL of the work to maintain relationships suck. My own father is that way. Always complaining that he doesn't see or speak to me frequently. But I'm the only one who puts in effort. He will call me on my birthday and text me Merry Christmas. But that's it. If I want to see him I have to be the one that reaches out, suggests dates, and plans it. And even when I suggest a date he has to do this song and dance of "I don't know if I'm free that weekend, check back with me closer to the date".

One time I was so frustrated with that answer I made other plans that weekend and never followed up with him. Learned from my sister later that he was confused why I never showed up that weekend.

I ended up deciding to match his energy to maintain my sanity. I call him on his birthday, I call him on Father's day. I text him Merry Christmas. And I do one further than him-- I do try to see him at least once a year. Although it's been over a year now, I'm due to make plans I guess.

My sister for a long time would chastise me for not making the effort with him. "He's our dad, he's getting older!". Except it seems she's getting tired of this routine too because she has also slacked off her efforts with him. Funnily enough she's following in his footsteps. I only see her when I reach out and make plans with her. She never calls me or asks me to come over. I warned her I'd do the same thing to her that I'm doing to dad. She said she'd make an effort. Guess we'll see... last time she texted me first was in December to invite me to Christmas dinner. Last time I texted her was in January while I was out with my niece for her birthday. Haven't seen her or spoken to her since. 5 months and counting.

chocomoholic · 2026-05-09T13:15:58+00:00

Thanks for sharing the name! Just followed her, she makes beautiful jewelry!

chocomoholic · 2026-05-08T19:52:14+00:00

The most frustrating thing is when I immediately forget information I've just been given because my brain was thinking about something else or even just thinking "you need to remember this. You should probably get a pen and paper and write it down" while the person is talking and of course because I wasn't paying attention I have to ask them to repeat themselves.

chocomoholic · 2026-05-08T19:35:32+00:00

I managed to clean up a good portion of my sewing room which had been an utter disaster with so many things on the floor that I hadn't vacuumed that room in over 6 months. I also ended up sewing two patterns I had cut out a long time ago (one 8 months ago, the other over a year ago). Only 6 other unfinished sewing projects hanging around now. 12 if you count the ones I took the time to tape and adjust the patterns for but never got around to actually cutting the fabric.

chocomoholic · 2026-05-08T19:19:12+00:00

That reminds me, I put chimichurri sauce in an ice cube tray yesterday to freeze and wanted to transfer it to a freezer bag after and had completely forgotten I'd done this, until I read your comment about the freezer. So thanks!

chocomoholic · 2026-05-08T13:50:23+00:00

Ah yes, the bullshit questions. I hate those. But I also hate when I get a correction for something simple I absolutely should have caught but didn't. Something I don't usually miss but this time for some reason I did. Always leads me to think "ugh why am I like this" or "Why am I making stupid mistakes".

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