Executive Dysfunction

Post Reply New Topic

It f***s up your employability and also other plans and ambitions that you might have, and that is not great when it is not easily apparent. It is a lot of work to get things done, it is constant derailment throughout your day, not simply being a bit hazy.

I'm not one to give up though. However I don't really want to get into a detailed discussion about my cognitive dysfunction right now, but suffice to say the "executive" concept is still theoretical and usually when you have ED it will be a part of you own unique cognitive problems.

People I seen have been interested only in they own agenda not problem solving. One thing they have been obsessed with is the memory side of things, even though that is the area that is the most ambiguous with me. They completely ignored detailed account of my other cognitive problem, which may actually shed some light on the memory thing also.

I finally going to someone who I have reason to believe is willing to look into my problem specifically (my GP is extremely frank with me so I have little reason to doubt her). Having looked this person up, and the research background there is a chance that she will use her initiative and actually try to help (which hasn’t been attempted by any of the professionals I’ve seen so far), however I will reserve judgment, as I have encountered many so called expert in my time.

Testing for ED, is part an parcel of the standard aptitude test that nueropsychologists do. I is a test that last at least 4 hours and tests various cognitive capabilities.

What I do in the mean time is safeguard my mental health, as best I can.

its possible that some autistics might have a few of the traits, yet one thing that convinces me that asd does not entail dysfunction across the board is that many people with asd are creative and say insightful things, while someone with severe frontal lobe damage, is not creative, because of reliance on rote behaviors and previously learned knowledge. i think this is worse than simply the disorganization that some people with asd have.

Now all you have to do is remember where you put that damned list.

I have a lot of problems with this too. I have a person who comes over every week to help me with stuff like this. Last week she helped me make up a master list of things I need to do before I move on the 1st. I get REALLY frustrated when unpacking my stuff after a move (I've never been able to fully unpack) because I get stuck then end up quiting and shoving the boxes in a corner or a closet. I'm really hoping she can help me get fully unpacked and make my new place a comfortable home.

I was telling my therapist today that I'm really starting to see the benefits of having this person come over every week. I'm getting more organized in a way that makes sense to me and am starting to be able to basic household tasks without having to really think about it much.

This is on a par with my social problems my most severe problem ever. I have severe problems with planning and organising (though if I have to, being forced by the situation I am in, I am really good at it, much better than an average person). It's just like in the case of food poisoning, when you are suffering from it, you have problems with forcing yourself to eat, you just find this experience utterly unpleasant and the same is about this.

Generally I can't describe how much time some activity is going to take me. And this is almost as if some mad scientist experimented on my brain, destroying those centers of it which are responsible for understanding the corelation between cause and effect. Of course I know that taking some steps towards something or desisting from them can result in long lasting (in more extreme cases, the whole life of mine lasting) negative consequences, making my life assume some shape I wouldn't ever wish for but even armed with this sad knowledge I may easily resign from doing this. I just passively observe the course of action.

Every time I get down to something, regardless of what it is - removing the hair from those places of my body which definitively don't need it, doing homework, cleaning my room, clipping and painting my nails, eradicating some bad habit or tic I developed, whatever - I promise it to myself that I'll start doing it in some time - in 5 minutes, in an hour, this evening, since New Years day, since the birthday of mine and so on - fully aware that when the time comes, the situation is going to repeat until finally, when there's very little time left, I'm forced to do it in a hysterical hurry to manage to do it on time.

I've never seen executive functioning issues listed in and of themselves as a specific disorder, but I see them on lots of IEPs with autistic students. Organization is such a personal thing to us and has to work in such a specific way for us to get it, that it does at times seem that there is no way around it. I've learned to use all the the little bits of technology as my friend and rely on people that I know are trustworthy for other things.
Executive functioning issues definitely impact my working life. I've lost lots of jobs because of my inability to find a filing system that works for me. I've been sitting stagnantly in others trying to get something to click, as well. Unfortuneately, so many jobs are turning into very self-motivated jobs where you have too much to do and your supervisor has too much to do, so no one notices that there's a problem until the ball gets dropped. This also translates into being blamed on us because our executive dysfunction is easy to point out.

Another aspie with executive dysfunction here!