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After ten months of lockdown and perpetual stress I’m pretty sure my baseline focus problems have exacerbated into full on ADD.
Several people saying "if it's noticeable then you already had it" which is both true and untrue.
In a sense everyone already "has" ADD because everyone experiences the neural quirks of ADD from time to time and everyone, under the right stressors, can make those more extreme and frequent, if not persistent. Everyone's brain is already primed.
Similarly everyone's brain is already structured to experience depression in response to extreme stresses, and under prolonged stress can develop a depressive disorder where subsequent depression is triggered by nothing in particular.
This is a process I've already experienced in my life. I've had an anxiety disorder since I was a kid, but in my 20s, following a catastrophic breakup, it got worse to the point that the idea I might have a panic attack in public would make me pre-emptively panic. Agoraphobia.
PTSD is perhaps the clearest demonstration of this neural plasticity: anyone under extreme or prolonged stress conditions can develop persistent, unmotivated stress responses long after the source of the stress is removed.
So, I dunno, I disagree with the framing of ADD, PTSD, OCD, as dormant viruses that you already "have" and then suddenly notice or activate. These are conditions that develop, extreme aggravations of "normal" processes, and can get more or less extreme.
But seriously, losing track of a conversation that you are an active and immediate participant in and wandering off to make eggs is a problem.
