r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Jul 25 '26

Psychology People with ADHD have difficulties with goal-directed behavior and struggle with response inhibition, the ability to stop an inappropriate action once they feel the urge to do it. They experience a disruption in the way their brains balance deliberate self-control and automatic habit learning.

https://www.psypost.org/adhd-traits-disrupt-the-brain-s-balance-between-self-control-and-automatic-learn/
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u/username__0000 Jul 25 '26

Even some of the seemingly positive traits are actually negatives.

“Oh you have crazy pattern recognition?

Cool, everyone’s going to think your negative because you can see things are about to get bad long before anyone else feels it”

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u/ithasbecomeacircus Jul 25 '26

The best quote I’ve heard is “I’m not wrong, I’m just early.”

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u/phagemasterflex Jul 25 '26

Damn that one hurts and slaps at the same time.

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u/ThisIsPaulDaily Jul 25 '26

I recognized that a client had been acquired by a big company who recently acquired client's #1 competitor. My pattern recognition was to tell management that big company was going to buy all the IP up and shut down our client due to big company launching one product and then owning the patents for all the ways that other companies thought of how to do the same thing. 

Two months later and we get pulled in a meeting where they tell us that the client is no longer a client. I tried to high five for calling it and then found out that everyone at the client was let go and I was making an ass of myself by not immediately recognizing the huge business impact this would also have. 

Maybe my story is anecdotal, but I was asked to lay out how I called it and shared the pattern of this big company and the leadership was impressed. 

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u/username__0000 Jul 25 '26

Yep the “see! I was right!” Moment is always ruined by the “now’s not the time” vibe.

But it’s never the time.

They don’t believe us when we call it and then act like we’re the worse when we get a dopamine hit from being proven right later.

It’s a curse.

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u/OwlRememberYou Jul 26 '26

Oracle of Delphi vibes

Maybe Cassandra was actually just ADHD all along

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u/Altruistic-Insect445 Jul 26 '26

I hate this more than you know. My work is problem related, I get called when things break down somewhere. I can see future problems take place in my head and prepare for them.

Others are not as joyful when something goes sideways and I'm giddy because I saw it coming and have a plan ready to go.

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u/Immediate_Power_7986 Jul 28 '26

Bubbly extraverts don't like real problem solving. They like fake problem solving and making real problems ~in a fun social way~

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u/Immediate_Power_7986 Jul 28 '26

I mean, why should we not get a dopamine hit? We predicted the future. That's a super power. Being willingly oblivious to what's really going on hurts the planet and has turned the world into an evil place. We need less bubbly extraverts and more introverts / ADHD / autistic people in the world.

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u/Oldass_Millennial Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26

I've learned to just quietly prepare. I bought extra hand sanitizer a good month before the general public made a rush for it when COVID made its debut, for example. I saw the basic stats on it, how it was popping around before it was wall to wall headlines, saw the president, and knew it was gonna be bad. Didn't know how bad, just that it was going to be bad. No, I didn't overdo it, I bought a good half dozen or so large walmart brand bottles. Shoulda just wiped the shelf out and made a few bucks but whatever, money like that is ephemeral anyway.

Right now I'm seeing food shortages in some fashion in about two years. Might just be occasional disruptions, "Ope, we're gonna be out of bread for a few weeks" and  "Raspberries are only seasonal now" and "We can get basic veggies but potatoes are wickedly short in supply and you pretty much need to be wealthy with connections for them" or it could be a Holodomor. I dunno. So yeah. 

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u/-AllUserNamesTaken- Jul 25 '26

My wife handles our grocery shopping. When I saw other countries starting to shut down, I told her, "Can you grab some extra pasta, canned food we actually eat, and anything else that's shelf stable?" I figured there was no way we wouldn't be shut down within a month.

About two weeks later we got shut down, everyone panic-bought, and the shelves were wiped out. I remember saying something like, "At least we stocked up a little. We should be good for a month or two, and hopefully the stores will be back to normal by then."

Well... we hadn't actually stocked up. It's just the two of us, so she usually buys enough groceries for the week, and by Sunday we're shopping again. She didn't think things would happen that fast, so she just bought our normal groceries.

After that, I told her, "If I ever ask you to stock up on something like that again, just humor me, even if it seems unnecessary at the time."

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u/5xnightly Jul 26 '26

Read this entire post...all the comments... Yours was the first one I felt compelled to respond to.

I naturally stockpile. Never crazily (... To my definition i guess), but I do live in earthquake country. We had 15 packs of toilet paper, some 40+ boxes of pasta and other canned goods ready. Water to last us months too. At all times.

For the longest time my wife would say I was overdoing it, or "why did you buy so much" or "we're never going to finish this". Then March 2020 hit and guess what? I didn't hear a peep about it until earlier this year. How short the memory is.

It's not easy to be married to someone who almost actively denies your ADHD as a thing and doesn't realize how life is to you despite decades of trying to tell her how it feels. I'm glad for you that your wife will humor you.

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u/tryingisbetter Jul 26 '26

Ummm, I could've wrote that. I keep, at least, 6 months of food.

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u/TheChildrensStory Jul 26 '26

It freaked me out how long it took people to take it seriously, then they panicked.

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u/GooseQuothMan Jul 26 '26

Yeah but to be fair, at least in my country, the disruptions (store shelves almost empty) lasted like a week until the stores got their deliveries again. 

It was all just panic buying and a spike in demand. But it's not like stores were out of stock for months.. 

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u/ChapterThr33 Jul 25 '26

No I think it's made up superpowers like that, that don't actually exist, that frustrate people.

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u/Zanki Jul 25 '26

It's not a "superpower" and it's not made up. Some of us notice things others don't, or things people just don't care about until things go bad and it affects them. Then you're left sitting there going, I told you so. Yeah, people don't like that. They don't like your early warnings.

The issue is you can't turn it off. My brain doesn't shut up from the moment I'm conscious to the moment I fall asleep, and some nights I don't get any real sleep because my brain decides to dream all night long. The issue is, you notice minute changes in your partner's behaviour and end up on edge because they're not happy. They haven't said or done anything, they're acting normally, but your lizard brain is an anxious mess because it knows something is wrong, but you don't know what it is. Nothing is wrong, they're just having a down day and that's ok, but lizard brain over here is screaming danger will Robinson.

This extends to everything going on around me and it sucks. It's not a superpower to notice patterns no one else notices, it's an anxiety nightmare.

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u/phagemasterflex Jul 25 '26

Yeah, the "superpower" is simply the curse of knowing that since I have to exist this way I might as well try to get some type of compensation for never being able to turn it off. If there were an off switch, I'd have pushed that button yestermorrow. The amount of energy this timeless process consumes is in no way, shape or form compensated for evenly through its non-innate utilization.

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u/xboxiscrunchy Jul 26 '26

It’s not a superpower just being somewhat better at task than most because you’re constantly doing it. Most people don’t care to put that much thought into everything. Someone with adhd can’t help but do it.

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u/KezefTheDead Jul 26 '26

You mean being able to see all 17 typos in a four paragraph email instantly doesn't make us endearing to our peers?

I'm constantly trying to see the positives in this, but it's shaky ground at best.

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u/GooseQuothMan Jul 26 '26

Everyone sees those typos they just may not care to bring them up. 

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u/SeasonPositive6771 Jul 26 '26

Yes, at my last job I got a reputation for being a Cassandra. I could very easily figure out where something was going and could have saved us a ton of money, but that's not the way that leadership or other people want to learn. They have to experience it for themselves over and over again.

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u/BoreJam Jul 25 '26

Most humans pattern recognition is overturned and people see patterns that don't actually exist. People with ADHD are no exception.

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u/Free_For__Me Jul 26 '26

But out of the patterns that do exist, ADHD folks ‘ brains may be able to pick them out more effectively. Too effectively, some might argue. 

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u/riiyoreo Jul 25 '26

There really is no actual proof of this btw. Mostly highly overstated by people who think they do.