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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Replace the bulbs yourself this ain't 1950[/quote]

But he took out the bulbs. He also had his disposable contact cases scattered everywhere. It's basic respect and a sign of adulthood to clean up your own messes.[/quote]

It’s clutter blindness. It’s not that he sees the contact cases and chooses not to do anything about them. His attention just doesn’t register them. In essence, he’s blind to them.

In your brain, your eyes see the contact cases and then neurotransmitters make the connection that something has to be done about them. Then you have enough executive function to be able to make decisions about, where they go (recycling or just regular trash), do it now or add it to your todo list, register that you need to order more and also add that to your todo list.

My eyes see the contact lens cases all over the place, but my brain doesn’t release the neurotransmitters necessary that alerts me that something needs to be done about it. So I’m clutter blind to them.

Let’s use noise as a way to understand this— clutter to an ADHD brain is white noise. You can’t pick up anything distinctive that says “hey pay attention to this”. But you don’t hear white noise. You hear the dog barking, the police car go by and the doorbell ring. In your mind all you can hear is that damn doorbell and are wondering why your ADHD spouse isn’t opening the door. To you it looks like they are willfully ignoring the doorbell. But to your ADHD spouse, they don’t hear it. It’s just white noise. So when you EXPLODE with anger over the damn doorbell, the ADHD spouse is surprised because until that moment they never heard the doorbell.

So how do you respond? You figure out the stuff you are willing to take on yourself (DH has given up having me notice when the trash is full. He just does it himself.) Or you can gently remind, “you probably can’t hear the doorbell, but I can. Can you please open the door.” If it’s a constant thing, create a routine.

It’s the ADHD paradox. Things need to be novel to get our attention or so routine we don’t have to think about it. My dishes were done all the time when I got into the routine of loading and running dishwasher every might and unloading in the morning vs now when I have decisions to make like when to do the dishes, when to run the dishwasher and figuring out when to unload it.  I’m smart but I have crap executive function and it’s too many decision points. [/quote]

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