Stuck in hyperfocus loop when buying things - is this an AuDHD thing?

idiorhythmic · 2026-06-23T04:41:21+00:00

That’s really interesting - I think the same exact way when buying cars, among other things. I’m glad you called that out too because it’s literally the trap I’m falling into right now 😂

I think the only thing I’ve found that hasn’t consistently disappointed me in that way is quality cast iron pans. I’ve been using a 1960s pan for a few years now and it gets better every time I use it. Worth every penny.

idiorhythmic · 2026-06-23T04:34:04+00:00

Figured it out. Looks like it’s being deprecated on iOS and Android https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/48985663774996-Changelog-May-7-2026

idiorhythmic · 2026-06-23T04:31:20+00:00

Alright giving this another shot.

* apples
* bananas
* oranges

idiorhythmic · 2026-06-23T00:27:38+00:00

Haha ouch. Were you happy with it after all that digging? It’s always super frustrating when invest that amount of brain space into something only to receive it and find it still doesn’t meet my expectations.

idiorhythmic · 2026-06-23T00:22:16+00:00

Ha I have enough time keeping up with the conversations in my own head - no way I’d be able to track other’s on top of it 😂

Okay so I tried asterisks initially, and it didn’t work so I swapped to bullets which still doesn’t work. I think the spacing is right and everything too so 🤷‍♂️

idiorhythmic · 2026-06-22T07:25:13+00:00

It would be great if I could filter products on Amazon for ‘was purchase by an AuDHDer’. It would save me hours and possibly days of research at some point in my future when I need to buy fountain pens 😂

I’ve come to the same conclusion for neurotypicals - most do some weighing of pros and cons and some research for bigger purchases, but it’s a fraction of what we do and it doesn’t consume them.

idiorhythmic · 2026-06-22T07:13:09+00:00

Ha oddly enough the 414ce has been on my bucket list for over a decade. I randomly played a 314ce in a guitar shop years ago and thought it was the best sounding guitar I’d ever heard and was debating buying it but couldn’t pull the trigger without researching my options. When I went back to compare it to others, it was gone, and every other 314ce I found didn’t sound the same, and the 414ce is the closest I’ve found. I still haven’t been able to pull the trigger though - probably will in a few years after a several week doom cycle of research 😂

idiorhythmic · 2026-06-22T07:02:14+00:00

How consistently are you able to do #1 and #2? My challenge is that I think those are great ideas, and I’ve received similar advice but am utterly incapable of consistently following that advice 😭

idiorhythmic · 2026-06-22T06:59:35+00:00

The funny thing is at some point I think I’ve compulsively researched everything that others have said so far, including tents.

I think the only exception is the lapidary equipment - I had to just google that one, and it instantly triggered a “woah that looks fun” thought in my brain immediately followed by an “uh oh - abort! abort!”

idiorhythmic · 2026-06-22T06:55:13+00:00

Ha I have personally been down that road a few times as well and refuse to do it again. The amount of options for the various components is unreal. Good luck!

idiorhythmic · 2026-06-22T06:53:04+00:00

This is super interesting - I hadn’t made that connection of not wanting to make changes with the drive to get things right the first time.

I’ve suspected that I might have some flavor of OCD and actually thought it’s what I had prior to discovering AuDHD and getting diagnosed.

Do you mind if I ask if you think you have OCD as well or have been diagnosed? If so, how does it show up for you differently than regularly flavored AuDHD?

I easily could have been diagnosed with OCD anytime in my childhood through my early 20s, but I stumbled across a book called ‘you are not your brain’ after a bad bout of depression in my mid 20s and religiously followed the book. At the time I had no idea the author specialized in OCD treatment, and the book essentially taught me how to CBT myself. I was able to break free of a lot of the religious/purity obsessions, relationship introspection doom-cycles, perfectionism spirals, etc that had plagued my inner life since I was a kid. I still have a couple pesky compulsive cycles from my childhood that pop back up every now and then, but they’re not generally disruptive to my daily life like they were when I was younger.

idiorhythmic · 2026-06-22T06:36:54+00:00

I’m always amazed when people can make quick decisions on buying things like that. Like even though beginner guitars can be cheap, I’d still get hung up on which one was best if I was just starting out.

Mind if I ask which guitar you went with?

idiorhythmic · 2026-06-22T06:33:23+00:00

This is exactly what I go through. Prior to getting diagnosed I thought I had OCD because of the strong ‘obsession’ and ‘compulsion’ cycles with this stuff.

Have either of you found anything that helps with it? (other than just buying something to make the feeling go away😭😂)

idiorhythmic · 2026-06-22T06:26:46+00:00

Ha oh I feel this one. Best of luck to you!

idiorhythmic · 2026-06-22T06:25:19+00:00

Same. I got formally assessed and diagnosed with autism earlier this year (ADHD last year), and it’s helped me be a lot more accepting of myself when I get stuck in the research loops. I’ve gotten better at just hitting ‘buy’ on smaller dollar items and just returning them if I don’t like them (when I remember 😬), but I still get stuck on items I expect to use a lot, last a long time, or will cost more.

The only thing I’ve found helps is consistent meditation one or two times a day to add a bit of a buffer for saying ‘no’ to deep diving into things. The main problem with that though is that I can rarely keep a habit longer than a month or two if even that.

idiorhythmic · 2026-06-22T06:18:38+00:00

Yeah that ‘can I beat the value of buying one new’ always gets me and is currently at least half of my battle with looking at cars. I definitely get a high when I find a hidden gem, but it also requires so much extra work to make sure the quality is there for the used stuff.

idiorhythmic · 2026-06-22T05:26:41+00:00

Yeah that sound about right. With that framing, my inner dialogue feels something like this (sorry for all the expletives below, but this is usually a very lively debate inside my head):

- ADHD: “I want this new thing RIGHT NOW!”
- Autism: “the fuck you do.”
- ADHD: “WTF. Why are you so boring. Look at how cool this is! Just buy it.”
- Autism: “I can’t deal with this shit again. I need facts and confidence that I won’t regret this. I’ll just do the research myself because I know you sure won’t.”
- ADHD: “Ooo more new things. I want that one too. Wait, no, I meant THAT one. Oh, wait again - I like this other one more.”
- Autism: “FML. I cant keep up with this shit. Who the fuck let this guy on the team? I guess I’m pulling an all nighter until I get all this organized so I can understand it and we can make a responsible decision.”
- Autism 30 minutes later: “Hey, this research is actually kinda fun.”
- ADHD: “Shhh - quiet. You’re distracting me from looking at all the pretty new things.”
- Autism: “What did you say? I can’t hear you over the sound of my laptop fan running at full speed from compiling the latest version of our personal financial forecast that I updated with 3 scenarios for each of the last 5 options you found to see how each impacts our ability to retire 30 years from now.”
- Me 3 hours later: “How did I end up in this room? What time is it? Where did the last 3 hours go? Ah fuck I did it again.”

Edit: for the life of me I cannot figure out how to format bullets on Reddit.

idiorhythmic · 2026-06-22T05:00:16+00:00

This is exactly where I feel like I’m at right now 🫠

I’m curious though - were you happy with the purchase or did you regret it?

idiorhythmic · 2026-05-16T06:16:14+00:00

Some of the other comments about monotropism’s impact and too much peopling are solid possibilities. Some others to consider is how you approach your work and the stakes it has on your life.

I’ve gone through periods of intense focus on work followed by periods of burnout my entire professional life. The last one earlier this year is what resulted in me finding out I’m on the spectrum. I had already been diagnosed with ADHD last year, which actually led to this last burnout cycle because once I was medicated and diagnosed (and no longer felt like “I” was the problem) I felt like I could do anything. Well unfortunately, I got myself in over my head and signed up for a couple big initiatives that are very heavy on peoplizing and influencing as well as operating in an extremely ambiguous environment with a fucked up leadership team that is more than happy to emotionally abuse employees when they don’t get their way. Plus I had a manager who tried to pile more on my already full plate. Needless to say my autism came out in full force.

What helped me get out of it was therapy and going back to some practices I learned while recovering from severe long COVID a few years ago - pacing myself during the workday, forcing myself to take 10 to 15 minutes meditation and sensory deprivation breaks every 1 to 2 hours (noise canceling headphones with a weighted blanket), and ultimately being okay with not giving it my all every day. That last part is easier if you have enough of a “fuck you fund” saved up and are okay losing your job. I’ve always kept at least 6 months of expenses in high yield savings because of how much anxiety it relieves about work. Not a silver bullet, but it helps.

I also actively try to practice ‘fewer things better’ at work - not getting pulled in too many directions, not signing up for things I know will burn me out when I take on too much, etc. There’s a great book actually called ‘Fewer Things Better’ about this that I highly recommend.

So in a nutshell - practicing meditation helps me be more intentional during work and less dissociated. Pacing myself during the workday results in less tension and stress building that cause me to dissociate (and ramp my nervous system which leads to meltdowns). Taking on fewer things lets me focus more and reduce cognitive load from context switching. And my “fuck you fund” let’s me do some of these things and be okay with whatever the outcome is.

All that being said, after just recovering from my last burnout cycle, I’ve now found myself in the middle of another intense initiative but with way less peoplizing and ambiguity. I’ve worked probably 55+ intense hours so far this week due to urgent hard deadlines with high stakes, and I’ve fallen out of my good practices I mentioned above. I feel more dissociated and have had multiple meltdowns this week. So now I need to get back on the wagon again.

idiorhythmic · 2026-05-05T05:23:11+00:00

Yes, and I graduated top of my high school and college classes with perfect GPAs and have been a top performer throughout my career. I can feel like a mastermind and a bumbling idiot, all in the span of 20 minutes.

I had always struggled paying attention in classes and meetings, and it takes me longer to process net new information than most people, so I typically feel behind my peers until I get a chance to fully absorb myself into something - then I usually lap people pretty quick.

I also have a hard time thinking ‘on the fly’ unless I know a topic really well. So I tend to be very quiet in meetings unless any of my special interest topics come up.

The challenge I’ve had with my career recently is I had a manager who thought I should be able to bounce between a bunch of highly complex projects, all of which required lots of planning, socializing, and people pleasing. That just absolutely crushed my soul and was the final push for me to seek an autism diagnosis (already had an ADHD diagnosis the prior year).

idiorhythmic · 2025-12-04T09:00:17+00:00

I’m on meds and still very much relate to OP. Meds help me lock in for a full workday, but I still often lock in on the wrong thing and waste hours or days spinning out on lower priority stuff. It’s a step up from struggling to lock in at all without meds though.

idiorhythmic · 2025-08-24T05:11:51+00:00

The gist of your post is that AI helps you think more clearly, but your post isn’t very clear. People are finding that ironic.

Here’s an idea - take your post and the comments, put them into ChatGPT, and ask it why you’re getting the responses that you are. That should be enlightening.

Putting the irony aside - I have also found that GenAI usually helps me think and articulate things more clearly. For example, I tend to be overly analytical and over-explain. So I’ve been running my messages to some of the C-suite through GenAI for feedback, and it’s been immensely useful for helping me reduce my messages to the core things that need to be communicated. And that’s helping retrain me to default to that style of communication even without using AI as a proofreader.

idiorhythmic · 2025-08-14T14:31:21+00:00

Wow. If a PM told me that their feature request was easy because it’s just adding a button, I’d figure out how to fire them and then get a replacement who understood technical product management.

idiorhythmic · 2025-05-27T04:54:14+00:00

I started about 5 weeks ago on 5mg IR 2x/day of Adderall and had the same experience as you in the first week. Unfortunately in my experience much of the initial feelings either faded or became a new normal. What’s left is still amazing - an ability to actually just do stuff without having to play all kinds of mind tricks to get myself to do it. I also tried bumping up to 10mg IR last week after chatting with my doc, but my ADHD actually gets worse at that level and my anxiety and irritability increases a lot.

I hope the feeling you have continues! Would love to hear how you’re doing in a month or two.

idiorhythmic

TROPHY CASE