People who are lazy typically don't make an effort to complete tasks at work, school, or home. ADD/ADHD people, however, may try really, really hard but still can't tackle what they want to accomplish. This can lead to frustration, low self-esteem, and feeling bad about your abilities.
ADHD & Laziness Are Not the Same
After all, it's a hyperactivity disorder. If people are hyper, how are they lazy? The truth is that people with ADHD often come across as lazy because their minds move too fast. Before getting an ADHD diagnosis, people with this problem have trouble focusing.
Yes, everyone procrastinates sometimes. But ADHD procrastination is different. Its different, first, because its more extreme. For people with ADHD, procrastination is often something that occurs over and over, causing real problems at work, at school, at home, or in personal relationships.
ADHD burnout is a state of physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion that can be caused by long-term, unmanaged ADHD symptoms and stressors. It is often characterized by feelings of overwhelming fatigue, reduced productivity, and a sense of hopelessness or despair.
Differences in brain chemistry
A study using mice suggests certain neurotransmitters — notably dopamine — may play a role in motivation for people living with ADHD. Lower levels of this neurotransmitter can affect reward centers in the brain, causing a lack of enthusiasm for starting or completing tasks.
Symptoms of Mood Swings in ADHD
Switching from excited one moment to sad, angry, or anxious the next. Fluctuating between having trouble paying attention and hyperfocusing on an activity. Having bursts of energy and fatigue through the day. Feeling emotions intensely and having difficulty regulating them.
Studies have shown that symptoms of bipolar disorder often overlap with those of ADHD, making it hard to diagnose both of these disorders. Bipolar disorder is marked by mood swings between periods of intense emotional highs and lows.
Some studies have found that one of the main reasons college students take prescription stimulants—such as Adderall, a drug often prescribed for ADHD—is to reduce procrastination.
Yet, we know one of the hallmark challenges for ADHD adults is self-regulation, which involves multiple executive functions, including, yes, internalized self-talk.
One step of the process involves having a medical exam, including hearing and vision tests, to rule out other problems with symptoms like ADHD. Another part of the process may include a checklist for rating ADHD symptoms and taking a history of the child from parents, teachers, and sometimes, the child.
If you're feeling lazy you typically procrastinate on important tasks, feel tired frequently, feel a lack of self-worth, and are distracted easily.
What causes laziness? Deeming behavior lazy is a matter of opinion, so it doesn't necessarily have a specific cause. There is research that suggests things like age, habitual behavior, environment, energy, willpower, personality, and level of distraction can make someone more likely to procrastinate or not.
With ADHD, a child or teen may have rapid or impulsive speech, physical restlessness, trouble focusing, irritability, and, sometimes, defiant or oppositional behavior.
There's no simple test to determine whether you or your child has ADHD, but your specialist can make an accurate diagnosis after a detailed assessment. The assessment may include: a physical examination, which can help rule out other possible causes for the symptoms.
Similar to the hyperactive symptoms, impulsive symptoms are typically seen by the time a child is four years old and increase during the next three to four years to peak in severity when the child is seven to eight years of age.
Executive functions have other roles which affect how someone thinks. In people with ADHD, these executive dysfunctions impact thinking in numerous ways. People with ADHD don't really think faster than people without it, but it can sometimes seem like they do. People with ADHD do think differently though, in a sense.
Lack of executive functioning skills. For people with ADHD, time management isn't the only difficulty. Other executive functioning skills can be challenging too, making it hard to manage the details of your life. A person with ADHD will find it difficult to organize their thoughts and manage their schedule.
In adults, the main features of ADHD may include difficulty paying attention, impulsiveness and restlessness. Symptoms can range from mild to severe. Many adults with ADHD aren't aware they have it — they just know that everyday tasks can be a challenge.
In one study, researchers found that people with self-reported ADHD symptoms earned lower scores for affective empathy compared to other participants. However, they were still within the range of what's considered typical for empathy levels overall.
They keep their things fairly organized and try to avoid making a mess. But many kids and adults with ADHD are the opposite — they're messy most of the time. And it can cause problems at home, school, and work. For example, kids might miss a field trip because the permission slip got lost in their overflowing backpack.