Primary thought (secondary supporting thought [tertiary supporting thought {fucking quaternary supporting thought, we have long since forgotten the primary thought}])
this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2025
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DAE start their parenthetical thought and end up writing full and multiple sentences inside it before returning to the original point?
I try to catch myself and just make a new paragraph when that happens but I'm not always successful.
Guilty, but now I'm considering switching to footnotes¹. They let you express a related thought without disrupting the flow².
¹I blame House of Leaves. Lotta footnotes in there, and they can go a long way before they really get out of hand.
² Sure there are cons, like the fact that the reader has to go to the bottom for context, but there's also no real length limit.
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yes, but as far as I'm aware I don't necessarily have ADHD? I do have autism, and there's the suspicion I have ADHD, but I don't have a paradoxical reaction to caffeine and also I've not been tested so who the fuck knows anything. My psychiatrist certainly doesn't think testing is necessary.
Don't forget [Option A | Option B].
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Parentheses are the push() and pop() of my thought stack.
Learning push/pop in the context of a stack provided me with a lifelong justification for being what others call "flighty". This is super evident while doing chores and I jump from washing dishes to wiping counters to washing floors to putting laundry in the washer. To someone at that point it looks like I've started a bunch of things that I didn't finish.
In fact, I paused on the dishes so I could clear a spot on the counter for them, realized I swept a bunch of crumbs on the floor that I needed to clean up, but before I could finish the floor I had to do something with that dirty pile of laundry that was in the way. Keep watching and you'd see me "pop" each of those tasks back off the stack in turn, eventually getting back to the dishes where I started.
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Is it fair to say people with ADHD add thoughts onto a stack while the rest of the population adds thoughts to a queue?
More like the thoughts are added automatically to the stack with little to no control.
You pop one off the stack but in doing so it opens up and a dozen springy toy snake thoughts burst out.
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I suspect it's non-ADHD is linear, while ADHD is multi-dimensional mesh.
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ADHD person here. Been making an effort lately to use less parenthesis. A thing I quickly found is that many of them can be replaced with a comma just fine. Or, just like, taking the extra two seconds to turn one run-on sentence into two. (But then again turning my comments into puzzles is fun).
Half the time I realize the parenthesis works better as a separate sentence, preceding the original sentence, because I'd gone "Thought (context)." instead of "Context; thought."
But then I start writing "thought (context1; small tangent; context2 (sub-context)). Follow-up thought (..." and it's a damn Chinese puzzle trying to put back flat and in the right-order.
That's when someone just quotes one sentence out of context and I am heartbroken.
"I am heartbroken."
Omg what happened, why are you heartbroken?
are you heartbroken?
Yeah, they just said they were!
Scientist: Scientific findings are meaningless when taken out of context.
Journalist: Scientist says scientific findings are meaningless!
Discovered the same thing about a year ago, it works amazingly well !
Of course, it often then becomes a comma splice; in that case, a period or semicolon works (but I use comma splices constantly anyway).
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Since one email with {[()]} in it,I really force myself to cut back on that... Now it takes me three times as long to type a bloody answer to anything ...
…i apologise for the long letter; i didn’t have time to write a shorter one…
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Lol, I did that too!
But people bitched abut it & about me being weird so now I just ((())) if it's really needed (or if my brainhole just can't/refuses to rephrase the text ... or I ran out of fucks).
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Adding and removing parenthetical clauses from my email until they all suddenly resolve, collapsing to nothing and I am left with an empty email. "Brilliant!" I think, and close Outlook, having solved my own problem.
Wait, that's an ADHD thing?
It isn't unique to ADHD, but it is very common with ADHD. Pretty much everything that defines ADHD is something everyone does but dialed up to the point that it is a disorder.
—me, every time I read a post in this community
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I started using double dashes -- like these right here -- because then it feels more like an intentional pause with some neat stylistic touch.
Mostly, I just write like I talk.
That's basically just em dashes, which these days will get you accused of being an LLM.
Only if you use a — instead of --, if they know what they’re talking about anyway.
My phone autocorrects them to — so that’s fun, lol.
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Parenthesis is singular, parentheses is plural. One parenthesis, two parentheses. Like crisis/crises, axis/axes.
but, parentheses always comes in pairs.
if not someone needs to be executed
They sure do, unless you missed a parenthesis and somebody wants to point that out ;)
Smileys? :)? Unpaired?
Unless you specifically meant the side thought use
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Jokes on you I nest those things too (sometimes sentances need some extra extra (like this one))
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If I'd let my brain do its thing we'd be 3 levels of nesting deep on the regular.
You'll love German speakers then. In my experience they love bonus content thoughs as well as math equations in their thoughts like "=" for reframing a thought or "=>" for concluding a thought.
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Fuck me running (because I do that all the damn time)
ADHD life in a nutshell (because bonus thoughts are always worth it).
That's the point where I go back and edit the first parenthesized block to be separated by a comma, semicolon, or dash, make it a separate sentence, or convert the inner parenthesis to a footnote.
You know i like to think I have it under control. No outbursts control over irritants etc and I think in doing pretty good. Then someone posts some shit like this and I'm all "get out of my head" . Nice to know I'm not the only one giving the brackets a work out.
- I’m in this picture and I don’t like it
This is false (but sometimes true [unless it isn’t– and that’s possible (sometimes)])
I feel like a semicolon or colon would be better here than parentheses
Why not all of the above?
I find that semicolon connotes "Concept B follows from, but is distinct from, Concept A", while parens connote "Concept B follows from, and is intertwined with, Concept A".
Because all thoughts are intertwined.
My mrs wires entirely in parentheses - it’s subclauses all the way down. She’s not ADHD though, likely OCD.
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