increasing disorganization as we aspies age

Post Reply New Topic

as i have aged in place and grayed here and sagged there, i find i have a notably harder time staying on top of things. case in point, i just can't pick up after meself anymore, the place is a mess and i can't summon the frontal lobe energy to fix it. anybody else here in similar straits?

My home was beautiful for Christmas but it took painstaking hours / weeks / sprees of energy.
Now it looks like a bomb hit it.
This is more or less my normal state of being.

I have ADHD but I'm sure the strokes didn't help.
I can't focus on squat anymore.
I can't start, do, or finish anything without months of thinking about it.

It's a miracle I've survived such a bass-ackwards life.

^^^sounds like you still had enough gumption to get 'er done.

I seem to be.

I might as well just lost most of the usefulness of my frontal lobe since the age of 25... Despite working full time and still get things done.

... Or, is actually suppressed for some reason. I'm not giving up on it yet.
Chances are somewhere I'm sick or coping with something else that do not allow me to fully access my abilities. I feel layers of fog and subtle sense of tiredness that do cause disorganization.

There should be a treatment for this particular issue because executive functions matters in independence.

I value any sense of independence I have above else. I would hate myself if I couldn't able to keep up trying to at least take care of myself.

Gained Number Post Count (1).
Lose Time (n).

Lose more time here - Updates at least once a week.

my worry is that i'll end up in a nursing home / ruled "incompetent." that is a fate worse than anything else.

I was worse when I was younger.

All hail the expanding A-Z box file.. My saviour.

Decreasing EF (executive function that old frontal lobe energy) is part of “normal aging”. ADHD is also associated EF issues. So is Autism. I find it harder and harder to force the “distracting” thoughts out and the “focusing” thoughts into the spotlight of my working memory and EF. Caffeine can help with the “stick to it” but not the “chose the ‘it’ well”. Will power can help but sometimes I cannot find my inner willpower jar or the jar seems utterly empty.

Its a difficult question for me to answer. I seem to have less trouble with organization as I have gotten older - BUT that's not because I've learned to be better at it, its because I've lowered the bar and the expectations about what organized is.

I live alone, so there is no one else either to make a mess or to complain about one. I naturally like things reasonably tidy/organised so Its never very far off, but if there are times when I am less than usually organised, so be it.

I know in my case I was extremely rigid and needed lots of structure in my life.

Over time, I realized that this rigidity was not exactly helping my mental health. As a result I became much less of a slave to structure and learned to let things slide if I started to feel overwhelmed.

All of this happened before I knew I was on the spectrum.

Now I'm trying to find the perfect balance. At least now I understand why I am the way I am.

^^^sounds like you did it nearly as well as any professional could have done.

i collect boxes but tend to collect too many of them. my energy drinks come in flimsy boxes that i store CDRs and DVD-Rs in.