I was diagnosed with adhd as a young child, and still very often forget stuff. My short term memory can be terrible and I often immediately lose a thought or forget an idea after just a couple of seconds.
However, I’m often able to recall an idea by going back to what I was doing, which is something I never hear other people with adhd talk about. Sometimes all it takes is going back to the visual that triggered the thought or reading back a couple of sentences. This usually doesn’t take longer than ~10 seconds. Other times I have to retrace my thought process, which can occasionally take up to a minute… If it takes any longer, then the thought is likely to be lost forever and I always feel terrible when it happens. At times I randomly remember something days later, even though it had felt like the thought was truly lost forever.
Is this common among folks with adhd? I only ever hear people talking about forgetting, and never about remembering.
Oh that’s totally me.
Best way I can describe it is that my mind is the Google homepage. Give it input, and it will spit out everything it knows about that, but by default, it’s just a blank page waiting for a question.
I need triggers to jog my memory. Sticky notes are a lifesaver.
I love your analogy! I may start using it to explain my symptoms to people in the future.