I’ve had a habit for 10+ years. One day I just forgot, and it was weeks later when I thought “didn’t I use to do something at this time?”
I never managed to get that habit back.
What was the habit?
They forgot
I actually have forgotten and it’s bothering me.
Starting habits
Well, it worked for 10+ years, that’s something, isn’t it?
Half the problem with autism and adhd both is difficulty with habit formation and maintenance.
You don’t need habits. You need routines with reliable contextual triggers. They’ll fail from time to time and you will just have to be okay with that, and try to figure out exactly what made them fail when they do so maybe you can fix it going forward. But it will still occasionally fail.
You can’t make a sieve not leak without making it not a sieve.
Triggers are the real key. Like needing to use the bathroom in the morning. Then hang a habit of taking meds right after. You have to look at the habits you already have, and connect new things to that. You can also build new habits, but if they are forced, they won’t have a high success rate. I built a habit of looking back into a space I am walking out of when not in my home. I built it on the anxiety of forgetting something. So it stuck. I try to build a habit of letting others talk, but it has no trigger, so it hasn’t stuck.
That’s why I have my meds, deodorant, shoes, hair brush, and hair ties on/near my coffee table. I make my coffee every morning, sit at the couch and (except brushing my teeth) get ready for the day. I let my brain put things where it’ll actually use them.
I just moved a few weeks ago. At my last place all of that was in my kitchen. It’s weird how moving changes where my brain wants to do stuff
I let my brain put things where it’ll actually use them.
And this is why I hated cleaning my room as a child. It’s been a consistent point of contention between my mother and me all my life, but whenever I “cleaned” the way she wanted me to, I couldn’t find a damn thing afterwards.
Certain things go on my nightstand for a reason. Certain things need to be out on a table, fully visible, near my door. Some clothes are in one spot because they were lightly used but are not soiled, and that concept eludes my mom (she would insist on just washing it.) Things are where they are for reasons. Instead of teaching me how to keep my stuff organized (which is a skill I clearly could have used instruction on), I was taught that “cleaning” means “shoving everything into a drawer or closet.” (It was “out of sight, out of mind,” for my mom.)
I’d inevitably forget what I put where, leading to long searches to find each and every important thing. As soon as I found all the important things and set them where I’d naturally be able to use/remember them, that’d be the cue to be told that my rOOm’S tOo mEsSY again.
And the cycle repeats…
I have to brush my teeth when I get up. Otherwise I never get to it.
I put a spare toothbrush and paste in the shower so I see it when I reach for the soap, otherwise it turns invisible. IT’S RIGHT THERE ON THE SINK WHY DON’T YOU SEE IT AND USE IT BRAIN
I’ve had “helpful” suggestions from so many people insisting that you just need to do something consistently for a few weeks and it magically becomes a habit, otherwise you’re just not really trying. Which translates to “Why don’t you try not having ADHD?” Yeah thanks a lot 😑
My mom used to say this type of shit to me all the time. She also refused to get me tested or anything so there’s that too.
I tried to explain to someone that our (adhd) brains are literally incapable of forming habits. They tried to remind me of all my bad habits, therefore I was wrong. And that was just too much for me to unpack and explain to them (they didn’t know me or my habits, they were just talking about the bad habits that come along with adhd, but thats a whole other story)
But when someone told me habits are something you do without thinking about it. Like, at all.
I’ve never had a habit in my life. I have to think through every step of every task, no matter how many times I’ve done them before, nothing just runs of its own volition. And I could have done something literally 10,000 times and I’ll still miss a vital step and screw it up.
That fun effect is called, executive dysfunction. Yay!
If I don’t engage with something basically every day I just forget it exists. Doesn’t matter if it’s a friend, a TV show I’m watching or working out every morning.
The one exception is when you end up on a runaway train of thought.
You go for a walk and you see a seagull, which reminds you of the last time you went to the beach, which reminds you of coconuts, which reminds you of a silly cartoon you used to watch, which reminds you of a specific day in elementary school when a kid quoted an episode, and then you start to wonder what that kid’s up to as an adult today.
And maybe you have the thought of, “I should reach out to them. I think they added me on Facebook like 15 years ago.” But then a nearby car honks. You snap out of the thought and look around. You don’t know what car honked, but you do spot a dog. It’s an uncommon breed and you can’t remember the name of it. You then spend the next minute or so either guessing the wrong breed or going down the alphabet, hoping to trigger the right name.
By the time you give up guessing and decide to look it up on your phone, you’ve completely forgotten about that kid from elementary school. The thought has vanished back into the void whence it came.
GET OUT OF MY HEAD.
I feel validated…
I hate this. You think you’ve got a good streak going and have been doing well for weeks and weeks, then something interrupts the pattern for a day or three…and it’s like trying to start from scratch all over again.
Best part is when there isn’t anything that interrupts, but you just forget the habit
It’s so fucking hard.
Life is just a loop of scrambling to be stable, struggling to maintain it, then inevitably falling back to square one when something knocks you out of the routine.
“Making it a habit” is just a big lie to fix any problem even for NTs. I don’t have ADHD and I will drop something I’ve done consistently for 6+ months in a heartbeat if I miss a single occurrence, and then it takes conscious effort for weeks to get back to it.
Idk how it works for NTs, but unless the thing tickles my brain the right way, it’s not going to become a habit just through wishful thinking no matter how often I push myself to do it.
Even if something tickles my brain it still doesn’t become a habit. I genuinely don’t think, in my 30s, with dozens of daily systems and all things considered a damn organized life, that I have a single habit. Everything I do is painstaking. Everything is conscious thought. I do laundry every single day and I have to think through the steps. Brushing my teeth is a slog. Figuring out what to eat is so difficult I often skip it despite just eating the same things over and over. If I don’t set alarms, I will forget to feed my kid. Alarms for vitamins that I’m not allowed to dismiss until the vitamin is swallowed. I am struggling to think of a single thing that is automatic. I have to think about opening the blinds every day. I have to think about turning off the lights at night (I think about the consequences of leaving them on to decide which lights I leave on. Every night). Nothing happens out of habit.
This, 100%.
It’s funny, after I read your comment I tried to think if anything I do is purely out of habit, rather than a deliberate choice. I thought, “Falling asleep?” at first, but then remembered my insomnia. Hell, it’s 4:15am right now.
I can’t even sleep overnight “out of habit.”
Why i gotta see this now, when I’m trying to avoid forming a habit by not going and getting a membership to the gym less than a mile away from me?
Just a word of warning. If you don’t want to do it, you’re never going to. I don’t mean “I want to want to do it”, but actually desire to do it. I paid for a membership for years before I actually went consistently. That money could’ve been spent a million different ways that were better than paying for something I had no desire to use
think “i should do that”
pay money to do the thing
procrastinate doing the thing
guilt yourself into doing the thing
actually do the thing
⬇️ I AM HERE ⬇️
Be mad at yourself for not doing the thing sooner
The problem is that it takes someone else to remind you to do the thing often enough and with enough impetus to make it a habit
Which will only last until the first time you’re sick and can’t, and then that habit is gone
My phone does that for me. I use a habit tracker with undismissable notifications that take only a “Yes” or “No” answer (it’s a bit more customizable, but this is how I use it), which helps keep me accountable for my habits.
Unfortunately, it’s been almost 3 months for a habit that I’m trying to nail down and I still forget sometimes.
I’ve tried something like that.
But I’m unfortunately prone to leaving my phone in my bedroom, so it never works out
When I’m trying to habituate to something by myself, I usually do okay by setting up barriers. Can’t do X because Y is in the way, so I handle Y, and eventually I’ll usually just start doing Y as part of doing X, where X is something I want to do.
It takes a few weeks but it usually does work.
I played guitar for 3 years until I cut the tip of my finger off with a mandolin. Literally haven’t touched it since
If you haven’t heard of Tony Iommi, he was (is?) the guitarist for Black Sabbath who cut two of his fingertips off, on his fretting hand, in some kind of shop accident at work.
Despite this, he popped on a couple of thimbles and proceeded to basically invent the power chord and was a pioneer of guitar riffage.
You only lost one, so you’ve already got one-up on him!
Does mandolin have more than one meaning? I know it as type of lute instrument, but I can’t imagine someone cutting theirself on one.
3 month habit? Those are rookie numbers lol. In one 3-day stint of a hospital stay, I once completely lost a habit I had developed over more than 5 years prior.
You started pissing the bed again, didn’t you?
I mean… I’m not gonna say no, but I’m also not gonna lie
What’s habits precious?
Precious habits, yes, the rituals we does, yesss, over and over, they can hurt us, or make our lives better, precious!
That’s what the time machines are for. Gotta go back and make it a habit for your 3 year old self, so that it sticks with you more in your adult life. Basic habits like brushing your teeth before bed, washing your hands before eating, and others commonly taught to young children tend to stick better. I wonder if it’s more about the percentage of life with the habit, rather than current habit holding streak that helps keep the habit.
For hand washing, just develop a minor germ phobia from the covid pandemic. Now I wash my hands before I eat, after I get home from the outside world, and after I touch anything my mind deems “unclean”. It does of the side effects of dry hands.
That works too, with measles on the rise, maybe that’ll help more people with hand washing.
