oh goodness ive never seen my childhood so vaguely yet succinctly described this hit me so hard that i assuming anyone will read this would like to expand on its long-term effects at least in accordance with my experience  x200b  tldr i accidentally summarized my life story in a tangent where i meant to say that this is serious and the long-term effects of pressure-driven performance of adhd individuals may subconsciously form habits that recreate those adverse conditions seemingly because such conditions have become the only dependable state in which an adhder can work or something pre-med  backstoryi 21 have been diagnosed with adhd combined variant please hmu if you are curious about the natures of the variations i have a whole spiel haha since i was 6 or 7 my family is very big on discipline and hard work which i am truthfully very thankful for but our cultural background can cause these values to manifest in a way that is very hard to deal with as a student in america given this my home life was constantly under pressure to perform in the things that i was involved withand that i should involve myself in many things in order to be successful in life as im sure many of you can understand adhd was my double-edged sword in this battle i was energetic and curious about everything anyway but my outbursts and distractedness got me punished very often through elementary school i could easily skate through classes with top grades without studying and at home i was getting ahead on things anyway because that was the only way that my mind would remain stimulated from the day-to-day since i was always working anyway my parents never considered that my behavioral outbursts could be connected to my ability to learn since on the surface it looked like i loved school so much that i gave myself more of it and at the time i thought that was true as well what i didnt know at the time was that i was simply growing in the things that interested in when middle school came around i was miles ahead of my classmates so i just kept steam-rolling but this time getting involved in even more extracurriculars too this was the first time that i really learned the idea of hard work for myself because i was attempting to just skate through these additions to my life as well it wasnt until my science teacher sat me down and sternly told me x you might be the smartest in this room including me but that doesnt mean a darn thing if youre not going to put in work we saved a spot for you on this team because we thought you could be something special but do you know how many of your classmates we turned down just because we were waiting on your answer you better earn it i want you to think seriously about this because if this continues then id like to ask you to quit and stop wasting the teams time ill never forget that so my parents started driving me to school an hour early for me to study and i stayed before and after wrestling practice even longer to make sure i put more hours in than anyone else on the team my parents thought that this proved that i knew how to prioritize and that my passion was in my work while i did absolutely loved this time in my life and the things i did no one at home considered how constantly i was pressured about my academics and little else up to this point i still found all of my classes some degree of interesting so i didnt have many problems doing work for them but something i only know now by looking back was that i was starting to procrastinate on work i loved math so i was putting math homework first checking answers more than i needed to trying to work problems that werent even in the homework just so that i wouldnt have to write my english homework just yet no one expected that to be the case though because i was a bookworm  x200b  where things got bad  when i finally got to high school all hell broke loose i loaded my schedule with the heaviest course load that i could i worked a part-time tutoring job where i was also a student i wrestled varsity and heck i even did drama and student council what looked like a student prodigy was actually a kid desperately trying to find satisfaction and fulfillment from overstimulation but he wanted to do it in a way that made his family proud my family had all sorts of issues and i suppose i figured the yelling and disappointment would get better would decrease if i poured myself into my work like they wanted me too while trying to convince myself that its what i wanted for my life my sophomore year i saw my first b by my junior year it felt like the only thing that kept me above cs were the sob-stories i pleaded to my teachers while sleep-deprived no matter how hard i tried i couldnt get away from my parents asking what happened to you where was that happy bright kid that could do anything youve changed youre not you is this how we raised you if i were to really get into the details i could tell you about how badly i sought to be understood and tried to pour myself into my relationships but how i failed them and how sometimes i was traumatized by them but adhd and relationships is an essay all its own  the long-termcircling back to my original point lmaoi was so pressed for time and low on fulfillment in high school that my norm was not having time for writing up a schedule self-care time and task management i developed a very different kind of learned-helplessness whether i set aside time and ignore other things to study properly or cram on everything ive procrastinated on doesnt matter the grades are no different i took this as far as i could resolving that at best i could put something off as long as i needed as long as i was working on something im being productive and no matter what i can just cram for it anyway ill sleep when im dead - a joke i made too often ive made a lot of improvements but these habits have not disappeared i still procrastinate i still sometimes elect to cram a weeks worth of an essay into an hour before the submission time and i dont even get too stressed about it any more in fact the scary part is the more hopeless and against the wall i am the more familiar i feel and the adrenaline from risk drives me through my task honestly ive noticed that the more i hate myself the more upset i am the more pissed i get at my workthe more fervent i am to actually do it ive actually found myself vibing of all things to my edm playlist flashing lights two days without sleep at 5am studying for half a semesters worth of thermodynamics for an exam worth 30 of my grade coming up in 10 hours  my pointim not sure but i did felt very moved to share this i might edit this into an actual post in this thread because i suppose i wanted to lay as much as i could out so someone could see this and think so im not the only one because god knows ive thought that no truer a statement have i made about myself that i have no idea who or what i am so i never expect anyone to understand my whole life ive wanted to be a neurosurgeon and i still want that but ive realized that my passion is in studying the brain and helping those neurotypical or otherwise with the struggle that is owning a human mind if there is anything i will never lose passion for in my studies it is adhd i suppose my dream is to shed light on what our condition really is how we are in some ways enabled but in others disabled but in no way less able     now time to get back to studying thermodynamics im retaking the course lol