That one is really my goal?

 

Since the early age of 7 one of my main goals was to learn how to code software and use that knowledge to create video games. My love for the japanese culture, computers and technology created in me a great devotion to that objective. Although I face so many obstacles (Not necessarily ADHD related) finally I managed to get into college at my twenties. Since 2014 I’ve been studying hard but not having a caresy grandmother that was after each one of my responsibilities, unleashed all of the consequences that ADHD could bring. 

At the beginning having problems in a course seems not so bad, after all I could say I was adapting to the college dynamics. During the second semester I started to skip my classes and take that time to meet new people, make friends and do all sorts of activities an universitary campus could offer. As expected I started to fail courses and moreover, started to justify my actions as normal. I even tried to go to the psychologist, but attending a consultory once a month wasn’t a great idea at least for me (I wonder if attending regularly to a psychologist would’ve helped me to notice ADHD).

The issue didn’t grow up beyond that but missing a course every semester left a great gap of pending studies. Today at the second semester of 2020 I’m still coursing subjects from semesters 5th and 6th (Hopefully the last ones) and I still need another semester to complete my thesis and graduate. 

On my way to learn more about ADHD I found a clue for all of this. Recent studies about ADHD show that emotional dysregulation should be considered as a core symptom of ADHD. This indication could be the cause of impairments in executive functioning which affects our ability to maintain our future goals.

So I’m destined to be a failure for the rest of my life. Well, my impairments had caused me several problems to make decisions towards my career for 6 years by now. But since I already know more about ADHD and treatment I have some methods to fight against. The first one is mindfulness, you could read more about it in this article. Just to make a summary, the method is to be mindful of our emotions in a non-judgmental way so we can understand them and take control before the emotion is bigger than our executive control (also called willpower). This is by letting our emotions be, but also trying to understand why we feel them and stop them from growing further and let them make bad choices for us.

How to overcome the videogame adiction?

In my last entry I told you about videogame addiction and why people with ADHD are more susceptible to become addicted to videogames. Many of you ask me about solutions for this problem, including some of you without adhd.

As a man of science, I began a research that could let us to overcome this modern era issue. According to the word health organization 3 to 4 percent of the gamers are addicted to them. The main symptoms of videogame addiction, according to the ICD-11 include:

1. Impaired control over gaming (e.g., onset, frequency, intensity, duration, termination, context).
2. Increasing priority given to gaming to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other life interests and daily activities.
3. Continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences.

Now that you know the idea on how to recognize if you or someone you know is addicted to videogames let's talk about the reason why someone play video games so we could build an idea on how to take the problem in a proactive way.

1. Video Games are a temporary escape: When you play video games you get yourself immersed in a different world in which you could forget your real-world responsibilities and live and dreamlike adventure. This indicator is easy to recognize, whenever you have a struggle at the school, the job, with your friends or family you start to play.
   
   
2. Unlike the reality in video games you could see a constant measurable growth: Levels, equipment, honor, points and even your own skill are clearly increasing overtime and that makes you happy. Compared with your mid or long-term goals this are very easy and achievable objectives.
   
   
3. They offer a challenge: Video games are designed to give harder and harder levels over time. But in multiplayer games the challenge skyrocket: You could play to be best on your area or even the best of the world.
   
   
4. They’re social: Especially online videogames offer you a new way to communicate and make new friends. If your social life is poor and you feel far from secure about your status it is simple to get attached to video games in which you’re only judged based on how good you’re when playing.

If you still needed to confirm if you’re addicted to videogames or not being identified with 2 or more of these reasons should be enough. Then what should you do?

First of all start by recognizing which of the reason listed above have bigger influence in your addiction, I’ll give some tips you could follow in order to start helping yourself and to decide whether to talk to a therapist or not.

1. If you’re using videogames as an escape: Try to put a limit in the number on the number of hours you play, start easy with only 1 hour less and increment that time by another hour each week. Talk with your friends and family about the problems you’re facing, even going to a psychology consult could help you to understand what kind of decisions you may take to put an end or at least an equilibrium point to your troubles. Search new hobbies and get away from other vices.
   
   
2. Be aware of the difference between virtual and real growth: Think about when the server will close, or when you’ll get bored of that game. That number of hours you just put to the game will only be saw as time lost not only by others, but also by yourself.
   
   
3. Challenge: This one is hard. If you’re feeling that you need to be better on a game first, ask to yourself:
• To be good in this game I only need to spent time repeating the same actions over and over? If the answer is yes you should consider that this kind of game doesn’t bring anything to your life besides numbers. Even in a multiplayer experience this kind of games are not considered competitive.
• It’s worth my time (in terms of fame or money) to play this game at competitive level? For those of you that feel you need to compete you should ask yourself this. If the answer is yes, the you should look for how many hours a day a professional train, if you could afford that time go for it. If not just stay as a semi-pro or quit the game, your career and relationships have more value in the long run.
• The time I’m putting of this game deteriorate my health, job or studies? Not much to say here. Just stop and start to care about yourself and your goals.
  
  
4. Having your friends or at least the major part of them in video games is another exigent situation. You’ll need to start going out and meet need people, but his kind of changes need to be slow. Start to talk more with your family at home, with your classmates and colleagues. Start to accept invitations even if you feel that you’ll be going to home sooner. Look for new activities, clubs, sports any kind of event you feel comfortable is ok.

Take a 2-week challenge using this advice and if you fail it’s sure you’ll be needing professional help. (This applies too, if just by reading these tips you feel conflict in your insides).

That’s everything for now, it’s a very long entry I know but I hope you could help yourself or someone you love with it. See you next week.

Sources:

https://www.who.int/news-room/q-a-detail/gaming-disorder

https://gamequitters.com/how-to-quit-playing-video-games/

The videogame trap

Last weeks I’d fallen in a deep videogame hyper-focus phase and that’s not healthy. But before continue I could imagine that there are some readers that never faced the term “hyper-focus” before, so let me define it: Hyper-focus is a mind state in which you could put all your attention into a task and hardly get distracted or deviate from it. Sounds perfect right? If you could hyper-focus deliberately, that would mean that even boring task like doing homework or build large projects would be easy to complete. But it’s not that easy.

People with ADHD could be able to hyperfocus in things, but this “ability” depends on how much feedback you get from the activity theyre doing. For example it’s easier to attach a child with ADHD to math if everytime he or she does well in it you praise then for it. Videogames are master in feedback mostly because the work with a feedback loop. Each time the player make a action feedback is shown as points or a reward afterwards the player is invited to keep doing actions to get more points or better rewards. However not just by adding positive feedback someone would be likely to hyper-focus on something, the feedback must be accurate. No matter how many gold coins you give to a player. If there are not challenge neither would be attachment.

Indeed there is a higher chance to get hyper-focused over things like video games, but this not kill the possibility on get in that state on other activities. In you find something that combines positive feedback and challenge there is a big chance you will immerse yourself onto it, and the feedback could come from your own satisfaction. For me this conditions are met when in programming: To solve problems is very satisfying.

My personal conclusion after my investigation is that I need to be away from video games especially the more additive ones. Not installing game on my phone and only buy or download a game each 2 or 3 months made a bigger difference in my life and my schedule is thankful for it.

Sorry for being away for so many time. You know the song ♪♪ Isolation is not good for me ♪♪. I’ll be posting more entries during the next week, so stay tune.

Frustration

How many times had you lose an opportunity because of a little mistake or a chain of little mistakes? How many times had you a group work in danger just for being careless? How many times had you lost friends just for being impatient? How many times you had find yourself asking why didn't you pay attention to that class/advice/lecture? How many times had you passed a bad time just for a small distraction?

How many times.....

Theres is a time in adult life when you start to consider that you're not going anywhere if you kept to doing things the same way you always do. Einstein once said that mad people are the ones that think that something can change if they do the same thing each day. Then: Why do we keep repeating the same actions? It's some kind of spell or something? The answer is more common on these days: It's our comfort zone. 

But, don't miss understand me, this is not another couching website, self help book or anything like that. Modern life has given us several ways to ease our life. Living in such easy environment makes our needs of effort near to zero.  Food, ceiling and even sex it's undemanding this era. The wish of becoming successful is only limited by the society, at the same time we ignore society while being in our smartphones. Surely the chances of an ADHD patient back in stone era was very low compared with nowadays. Information era is intoxicating our minds with data we don't have to know, events we don't have to attend, people we don't have to know, food we don't have to eat, images we don't have too see and audio we don't have to hear. Unnecessary information tracks with itself a lot things that are wasting our time. Life is for now a limited resource and  is better to earn something from it. 

If you don't believe me try the QualityTime App. This app will track how much time are you spending in your phone. Luckily if you have no problems focusing you it'll count 3 or four hours only in social media. If you sum 3 hours per day during a month it's 90 hours, 1080 hours per year. Maybe you are thinking: "But it's my way to rest" or "I communicate with my friends using that apps". Don't my mind me if you think different, but social media is not for rest, your mind is occupied reading or watching photos or videos, commenting, reacting, uploading. Is your communication more effective using these apps that speaking directly? You feel more connected with your friends or family? Things are the same when you're face to face?. If you're not longer and edgy teen, the answer is probably yes.

This is an invitation to invest your time in something productive. Aside publicity and networking social media and entertainment could be blocking your path. I'm sure you could change the word with your work and you could be more effective if you get rid of superfluous information. For me in now concentrated in learn new technologies, work in my leadership skill, be fluent English,  and finish the university. 

Never forget, step by step. Success is not the happiness, happiness it's in the road to success.

Living the covid-19 with ADHD

The actual world's outbreak Covid-19 is propagating at an exponential rate and taking measures is necessary at personal level to elude a possible infection.

Due to my ADHD condition forgetting the security recommendation such as put a cover if you are going the street, clean my hands, and not touching my face, eyes or nose could be easily forgotten. The best strategy to follow in this case is using a strategy I like to call reaction function.

Reaction function uses the formal definition of function for mathematics to creates new habbits or remove bad ones. The concept is very simple: Given an action you perform daily, do another action you want to make an habbit after finishing it. In example, every time you brush your teeth, do a push-up. Although the instructions are very simple, in the practice it's a bit complex.

First of all you need to recognize what kind of things you do daily and then write them in a peace of paper. Them you could select a new habbit for each one, but I suggest you to start with no more than two new task at the same time until the are attached to your everyday. Write each one at the side of one of your daily practices. Now it's time to program your gray matter: close your eyes and imagine yourself doing the daily custom you've selected. Remember how it feels, remember the individual actions you follow to make it. For the teeth brush case, i.e. watch yourself entering the bathroom, taking your brush from the cupboard, applying toothpaste, putting the brush in your mouth. Visualize your hand moving, the feeling of the bristles on your teeth, the way you change the brushing spot, etc. After that imagine yourself making the new action. Repeat the process 2 or three times. If the programming works, you'll remember the new habit immediately once you are making the daily one. Putting context to your memory is a great cheat to memorize things. Similar techniques are used in the cognitive behavioral therapy. 

Apply this for the security health care recommendations and you will be finding yourself abiding them, or at least the major part of the time. 

Probably all the lazy or careless people you know are ADHDers

If you've been following this blog you may know that I discovered my ADD problem only five months ago (December 2019) and since that point my live has change drastically. Before this finding I couldn't find anything that helps me to concentrate on my personal projects. I'd tried everything from self-help books to advanced strategies to avoid procrastination: Pomodoro technique, self-restraint, calendar applications, meditation, yoga, etc. Now after studying a lot about ADHD and the implications in the limbic system, symptoms, strategies, medication and so on I could say that a lot people out there are currently suffering it.

Medicine as other sciences follows a pattern-based criteria to determine whether given some symptoms someone is showing signs to a certain illness. If you a are fully capable of distinguish symptoms in an individual according to a criteria obtained from a reliable source them you could be sure you're right in a diagnostic. For ADHD in particular, traits manifest as identifiable behaviors (Look a basic symptom descripton here). Between my circle (Which is mainly composed of people that I'd known for many years) I have already found four people that have a high chance of bear the malady, my best friend and my twin brother and my crush are part of them (curious that the closest people around me are the same).

Yes, there is a big probability that I'd chosen people based of the similarities we share, but it stills means that there are four more not diagnosed individuals. My theory is that at least 10% of the world population suffers ADHD but they look so similar compared to people with neuro-typical brains that it's very onerous to discover this kind of decease in a society thats put so much pressure on working hard. All the effort of neuro-typical ones will qualify this conduct as lazy or careless instead of looking after other explanations. 

 If you're reading this and want to empathize with other people with ADHD you could put your bets on discovering another patients. Anyone that looks lazy, careless or clumsy is a possible case, don't blame them and guide them to a professional.

A certain problem with emotions

ADD driven emotions can modify the patient feelings drastically from time to time. Again speaking from my experience there are a lot changes I could show during a day when I'm taking decisions that are related to feelings. 

As you may know ADHD produces impaired activity in the Limbic systems which regulates emotions and attention. If you want more specific data you could check this video and its description for papers a more articles.

Being impulsive causes me a lot of trouble when I was younger. Don't miss understand me: There is a lot of impulsivity in my daily basics, but usually I control my reactions. One of my most recurrent problems tied with impulsivity was fighting whit my friends, specially my female friends. I was used to demand a lot of attention, when I did not get it, I started to feel frustrated. Frustration droves me into a spiral of positive feedback in where my only actions were asking for more attention and feeling more awkward and frustrated. Finally I was beginning to say things like "You don't love me" or "I don't mean nothing for you" or more intense things until the other person was getting tired and then blow me up. 

My self-soothing was very similar to Jessica in the video. The way I started to note this was when I got my first senior developer job. When I was feeling sad or lone my response was going for a cafe in Starbucks, or buying a subway, an expensive breakfast, etc. Another wrong self-soothing was playing videogames all day. Nothing healthy at all. 

For the final point (because we aren't either going to speak about refocusing our attention) and my bigger problem with ADD is not taking actions in line with my goals. This is like my everything until I was diagnosed. So much to say in here: During my first college year I started to study in an institute called Intenalco. The goal was to keep my grades high so I could get a scholarship but I did not put enough effort in studying at all I lose the scolarship and then forced to chage to another school. The next two years my main focus would be to finish without loosing any course. I ended up engaging in a relation ship an them leaving the institute just to enter into the university. My first university year was like the first year in intenalco, wanting a scholarship and not fighting for it. During that time I used to spent my time with friends and not going to classes: A nightmare.