IDK if this is a normal thing for people with ADHD but do you guys find it hard to watch movies? There always super slow paced and require hours worth of your attention. I can watch movies but only if I really try and that’s a very draining experience. I only like watching movies if I’m really high.
I don’t mind watching movies, but it’s really hard for me to DECIDE to watch a movie.
If someone asks if I want to watch a movie, the time commitment makes me say no (unless it’s something I’ve REALLY wanted to see), but I’ll happily agree to watch a TV show and still end up watching 3 hours or more worth of episodes.
I came here to say the same thing. It’s especially bad with streaming services. Row and column after row and column of options is overwhelming.
My wife is in charge of the remote for exactly that reason. I trust her judgement and I don’t waste 2 hours scrolling through nothing.
Oh, a new symptom. I was wondering why I was doing that. Also watching dozens of Crunchyroll series at the same time.
This is what it’s like for me too, especially now, like @[email protected] said in their comment, that movies seem to be longer now.
I’ve got loads of movies at home or on streaming services that I want to watch, but because so many are over two hours long, and essentially have a ritual around them of getting your drinks and snacks together and doing nothing else, I don’t bother putting them on. I’ll sit there for hours and watch something short like Futurama though.
I’ve even got to the stage where if an episode of something is longer than about 45 minutes, I struggle to decide to watch that too.
Normal enough for adhd that it was even one of my assessment questions!
I have a hard time watching stuff without also doing other stuff. like posting here. watching kickass. and doing housework.
I have always had zero trouble warching engaging movies, especially if they move at a decent pace or the slowness builds up anticipation. I still have trouble keeping track of character names and sometimes forget the details, but staying engaged is often easy.
A boring movie though, I can watch for 30 minutes and not remember anything that happened because my mind wandered. Basically the movie or show version of realizing you weren’t paying attention to the last 10 pages in a book.
I use VLC and watch at double speed for most things. Honestly I just skip movies and TV mostly but the stuff I do watch is at double speed for most things, sometimes 1.5x because people look weird moving fast when they are doing action scenes.
Now podcasts and audio books on the other hand are very amenable to increased speeds. The narrator increasing the speed just increases the rate of intake, the mental simulation is still at a reasonable speed, just less time waiting.
Does anyone know why the double speed thing works? It’s very effective for me too, I usually keep video at 1.5x often will have to jump it up to 2x to be able to handle it
I can only speak for myself but if I have a fast enough input my spare resources are low, so I can’t think about something else easily. This means I don’t find something more interesting or forget what I am doing. I think neurotypical people enjoy pacing in a way I find impossible. They like the anticipation, the waiting can build the experience, whereas my internal systems just get hired and drop the boring thing rather than building anticipation.
My time limit is about two hours. Anything more than that and I start getting bored, distracted and twitchy
I’ve never had trouble staying engaged with something I actually like and want to do. I will fall asleep if I don’t have my narcolepsy meds and I’m trying to do something I’m not truly interested in, yet can binge watch something I’m truly hooked on, into the wee hours, even without the meds.
My advice, start paying more attention to the things you are interested in and stop trying to be interested in things once you realize it. There’s no such thing as superiority of any entertainment or hobby over another, yet so many people shit all over themselves because they get it in their head that their interests are somehow wrong. Not liking something that everyone else does is fine, liking something no one else does is fine. Strive to be you, if you can’t focus on any movies you’re probably not watching movies you’re interested in. Maybe you aren’t interested in any movies at all, plenty of people just don’t get poems, paintings, music, literature, beer, wine, shoe culture, car culture…
Neurotypicals have the ability to be at peace with being bored, so much so that it’s called a disorder when someone can’t sit still and suck it up when the shit being served is just not interesting (to them). You literally have to smoke weed to attain that same level of apathy.
Lots. I also feel like movies have gotten significantly longer over time. An hour and a half used to be the norm, now everything consists of two 3hr movies.
I watched “Everything Everywhere All at Once”. But I watched parts of it while doing other things over the space of 2 years.
I honestly watch about 1 or 2 movies per year.
i only watch movies, or any fiction on tv, if someone insist me to do it
Depends, usually I’m 100% fine if I’m in a cinema. At home completely fine unless I’m not feeling the movie. I don’t think I pull the trigger to watch something unless I’m absolutely into the idea which helps I think.
Sometimes I break movies up into multiple days of watching.
I’m always doing something else while watching a movie. I often rewind 30 seconds because I missed something important. But I find most movies have so much that I don’t care about… So I focus on whatever else until I realize that I’ve missed something.
The last movie I watched to completion was Star Wars Episode 5 with no less than three attempts. It’s really hard.
Keeping focus for a whole movie can be tough yeah.
it works way better if i’ve taken my meds( huge suprise, i know :D) and even better in a cinema opposed to watching on tv or phone, i guess the big screen and proper sound system are just more engaging and there is less distraction.
If i watch a movie at home i often do it by watching it in like 30 minute episodes, because otherwise i end up rewinding multiple times anyway and that’s frustrating, so i rather take a break from it if my brain won’t cooperate.
