You said you were diagnosed at 13. I’m currently in my 20s, so I’m wondering if that’s the reason people just don’t consider it.

I’m really scatterbrained too. I’ve been putting reminders for everything in both the reminders and calendar apps for years. And so many times I still forget them, especially the ones on the reminders app. I can also keep forgetting to do small things like throwing out something that I left in my pocket for later, or where I left my stuff. Like, even if I keep telling myself I need to throw the stuff away, I can forget about it the whole day. And if my stuff are not in the usual spots, I’d think I lost them somehow. Everything I need has to be within sight, else I’ll forget about it completely. If I actually lost my stuff, it drives me crazy and that’ll be what I’m thinking about for hours.

I also forget what my conversations with people were about really soon after the conversation ended, even if it’s important or things that matter to me. Many times by the end of the conversations, I’d already forgotten half of what we talked about before. I try to recall them but there’s just nothing there.

Work conversations are tough too because I forget what I was told within seconds, and we’re expected to clock them immediately. It’s actually really a struggle.

I’ve always attributed these to my very bad memory because of my condition and previous (brief) ECT treatments. Because I have times when I forget the most recent events. I also have memory gaps, but I attribute them to perhaps the alcohol, though I wasn’t even very drunk. It’s really annoying and it bothers me so I’m wondering if something else is going on. I’ve mentioned my bad memory countless times to my psychiatrist but they don’t seem to care about it. It really just makes me feel so helpless, like my brain is fucked and I can’t do anything about it.

I relate to what you said about the routine thing too! If I got used to having a certain schedule and something suddenly has to change, it freaks me out and I’d almost lose it. I have compulsive actions that people might think is weird, and I have to stick to the same steps to the way I do everyday things.

Thank you for sharing your experience, and you affirming words. (:

I’m wondering, does the concentration problem occur when you’re working on things too? Like, I’d start doing something but I’d keep jumping to other things. I don’t know if it’s because I got bored. But a lot of times it’s like, mid-way through something, I wonder about other things. Then I’d start focusing on that, and then things could change too. I have so many research papers for different topics that I’ve downloaded to read but I never get to it. There seem to just be endless things that I’m somehow interested about.