I was diagnosed in 2019; late in life, mid 30s. One of the biggest issues I’ve been struggling with lately are these huge cyclical mood swings that can last weeks. I’ll be up and active, optimistic, and productive for a week or so, and feel like there’s nothing I can’t do. I’m excited about everything and often make a lot of overly-aggressive plans. Then the wave of depression comes, and I’ll spend a week in bed, crying, and then a week or two basically just disassociating and actively avoiding any responsibilities. The down is always longer than the up, and I feel like I’m slowly losing ground to the depression. I’m not sure if I’ve always had these issues or if they’ve just gotten worse lately. My ability to look into the past, especially in regards to my own emotional state, is limited.
My doc says that “cyclothymia” or mood cycles are not uncommon with ADHD, though they are not technically related I guess. That said, I don’t see too many people talking about it. Anyone else dealing with this sort of thing?
Memory loss is something I deal with as well. It fucking sucks to have the emotional echoes but very few distinct memories from more than a few years back and conversations with my mother often go “Do you remember that time you asked Suzie Q to the dance and then wore that vest we’d gotten for you?” And I’ll smile and nod as I just try and ignore how much of my memories are just lost to that fog… for me, at least, I still have a lot of the emotional resonance so even if my first kiss is no longer a firm memory I can still get some feelies out of knowing it happened and the person it happened with.
Oh yeah I remember very little, and what I do remember is a story I’ve been telling or have heard told enough that I know the story but have no real memory of the event. Whenever I’m in my home town I’m constantly getting people telling me we went to high school together and I always feel bad telling them I don’t remember them. I also don’t really have the ability to conjure or remember visual things, everything is sort of a nebulous mix of vague emotional memory and useless encyclopedic fact-lists. I can rattle off every phone number I’ve ever had, but I can’t remember what my grandmother looked like. I’ve been told most people do not have this issue, lol.
The grandmother memory loss absolutely hits with me. I don’t want to psychobabble and misattribute things but relationships with me tend to suffer that short object permanence effect - if I don’t see a friend for a few months they’ll often just fall off my radar entirely… until I see them again and the memories will rush back. I have a good friend with ADHD and we meet up maybe once a year - they are an extremely close friend even if that doesn’t seem to make sense… but when I walk into a coffee shop and sit down with them we’ll talk for hours and usually end up getting kicked out when they close.
This hurts (kind of, it’s guilt driven hurt) when it comes to grandparents or other people who have passed away… if they come up in conversation or because of some related strong association I’ll think of them and have a little bundle of memories that have weathered the years. But, like, my father passed away only two years ago or so and I rarely think of him - so then I feel guilty for not thinking about him more often and cry (as I am now) but give me an hour or two and he’ll completely fly from active memory again.
I have no idea if neurotypical people are being genuine or performative when they say “Not a day goes by when I don’t think about them” but that’s absolutely not my experience.
I’ve lost a lot of friends, and messed up at least one serious relationship, because of this phenomenon. If someone isn’t around, I just don’t think about them. When they are around, I’m fully invested, but that’s not enough for some people.