My biggest cause for concern are my thoughts, and specifically, the randomness of what those thoughts are. I think nonstop, to the point where I wish for just a minute my mind can be completely clear. Every minute of the day it seems, from the time I wake up to the time I go to sleep, my mind is racing continuously. Every attempt to clear my head lasts at most 10 seconds before something else pops into my head. This seems strange to me, but also potentially normal- I have no idea how other people's minds work. Even stranger to me than the nonstop thinking is what I'm thinking about. I can put about 95% of these thoughts into two distinct categories. 'Nonsense' manifests itself in my thoughts all day and I more or less forget about it, possibly due to the fact that I'm used to it. I'm constantly thinking of random patterns of drum beats, random noises, and a lot of the time thoughts that are so vague in my mind that I can't remember them. A lot of the time they reflect external stimuli; for example, about a minute ago I heard a dog barking outside, and random barks are now intruding themselves in my thoughts. It really doesn't help trying to write this while I'm thinking of barks in my head now on top of random pew pew's of lasers and random drum hits while trying to write this. It's like a broken record playing in my head of nonstop nonsense, always playing even in the background of my other thoughts. Now the other thoughts seem to change often, but not nearly as often as the 'nonsense'. Some idea comes into my mind that I can't seem to get rid of. I focus a lot on this idea and continue to come back to it, and give almost my exclusive attention to it. Or rather, this idea seems to force itself into the forefront of my thoughts and makes me think of it, and focus exclusively on it. I have almost no control over it, and I can't stop thinking about it. These kinds of thoughts come and go almost at random, and have the most serious impact on me. For example, today while I was working, the idea of writing this to seek psychiatric help stayed almost exclusively at the forefront of my mind. My entire shift I was constantly thinking of random sentences that I would say or things I could write that would better clarify what's going on in my head. I remember now almost none of those thoughts, even though all day long I was constantly thinking of them. I would forget them almost as quickly as I would think them. These thoughts constantly change, coming and going as they please, often times staying for mere hours, other times for days. Typically, they seem to derive from things I've seen or thought about recently, and are almost always irrelevant to anything. And they always seem to grab almost all of my attention. Along with how these thoughts randomly come into my head, and that I can't seem to focus on much except for them, my life in general is starting to become difficult. Half the time it seems as if I'm on auto-pilot. I can't even count the number of times today I snapped out of either my nonsensical thoughts of 'pew pew' and random dubstep drops or my thoughts of what to write about in this to find myself walking the wrong way (I work in a warehouse, by the way), putting packages in the wrong places, misplacing my scanner, or otherwise just asking myself, “Why did I just do that?” It's affecting my social life significantly as well. I can hold conversations with people when I'm with them one-on-one, but only for a while. I can't even hold conversations with my friends sometimes because my mind starts to wander. Countless times I snap to and realize that I've been nodding my head and saying “mhmm” or “yeah, I gotcha” for several minutes, while my thoughts were completely somewhere else. It's incredibly embarassing to have to tell them that I had no idea what they were saying that entire time, when I've been nodding and it seemed like I was listening to them! I catch myself snapping out of my “auto-pilot” frequently, often forgetting what I was doing prior to my thoughts wandering. I walk downstairs to get a drink, see something on the tv as I pass by it, and by the time I get to the kitchen I can't remember why I went there in the first place, and wonder why I was just constantly repeating a phrase from a geico commercial in my head.
Other than just my thoughts, I consider myself a “weird” guy. I don't have a very large circle of friends, and never have. Even in my circle of friends, I have very few that I care about deeply. I never cared much for losing a friend, even those who were so close as to consider them a brother or a sister to me. I make little attempt to rebuild broken friendships, and if a friendship fails, I simply brush it off. I'm not good at meeting new people, or being in a group environment. I can't seem to be able to jump into conversation, often times because I'm thinking of something completely irrelevant to the conversation and can't seem to focus on whatever topic others are talking about. One-on-one, though, I can easily hold a conversation, but only until another thought pops into my head that doesn't belong in conversation; at that point, I generally say little and focus on whatever just had to pop up in my head. I'm also very forgetful of things, such as when I plan to do something with someone, or remembering appointments. I tend to forget details easily, and am terrible at remembering names and faces. I am possibly the world's biggest procrastinator- the last year of high school I rarely ever did homework because I put it off until it was too late, and tend to push back things I need to do, such as pay bills and tickets, until the last possible moment, and often I forget about them completely until they are already late. My interests seem to shift all the time. One week I'm practically obsessed with motorcycles, the next week I'm positive I want to live in a van that I will convert into an RV, and 2 days later I'm engrossed in books. Although reading a book is potentially the most difficult thing for me to do. Ever since around the 7th or 8th grade I've had the tendency to auto-pilot reading, essentially reading the words but thinking of something else, and then realizing that I just read a whole paragraph and didn't know what was going on! It was never really that bad, it would happen maybe a few times in say, a chapter. But last week I picked up The Silmarillion by Tolkien after convincing myself that I wanted to start a book collection, and after picking up the book and reading through a few chapters, I promptly put it down again after realizing that I had no idea what was going on because I kept losing my focus and going into auto-pilot while reading it, and thinking about who-knows-what, even after trying to completely focus on reading it. These sudden intense interests that I have never last long, and are accompanied my impulsive decisions, obsessiveness with said interest, or both. Two days ago I suddenly decided I wanted to start dressing incredibly nice, e.g. slacks, dress shirt, and vest all the time. Along with a $280 wardrobe, I bought a $500 watch (technically on sale for $370), effectively spending almost every last bit of money that I had, that I now regret because now I just want to wear tshirts and jeans again. And before that, I had the idea that I could convert a commercial van into a mini-RV and live in it so I didn't have to pay rent anywhere. I definitely would have regretted selling my car and buying a van, which I was poised to do at the time, but thankfully my interests changed within a few days of that, and now I have almost $800 worth of spiffyness that I didn't need.
I'm hoping this sheds at least some light on whether or not I do have a psychological disorder. I posted this in the ADHD forum because the lack of focus and random thoughts sounds similar to Attention Deficit Inattentive Disorder, but I'm still not sure because I have many other symptoms not typical of ADHD. I'm planning to go to a psychiatrist soon, but as a poor student, I can't quite afford professional help just yet. I'd just like to see your thoughts on what this might be, be it ADHD or something else. I would write more, but so far it's taken me a little over 2 hours to write this, all the while with random thoughts jumping in my head that kept making me forget the sentence I was writing, or forgetting things that I had wrote so far so I'd constantly have to backtrack to remember what I just wrote
Thank you,
Robthebuilder07
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