Repeat a mantra in your head. The mantra could be anything really. You do not need imagery to meditate. Another trick is to look at your hand and try to feel/sense the inside of your hand, focus on that.

I am on the other end of the phantasia spectrum; I have hyperphantasia. This causes problems with meditation because my ADHD gives me intrusive imagery.

The key with meditation is to just keep trying. Mediation is an incredibly useful tool but it is something you have to constantly practice. It is harder for people with ADHD to accomplish consistently but it is entirely possible to learn to do it well. If you practice enough you may learn how to live most of your life while meditating.

Learning how to meditate was the turning point to gaining control of my life and start on the road to a functional life. I am not saying medication (I’m on Vyvanse) and therapy (once a week for me) aren’t equally important or weren’t major contributors to better understanding and living with my condition but learning how to meditate and doing it consistently was when things started to click for me.

I believe Dr. Russell Barkley, a leading ADHD researcher over the last 4-5 decades who is now mostly retired, has a statistic that if you have undiagnosed ADHD and are over the age of 30 then you have an almost 100% chance of developing an anxiety disorder as a comorbidity to your ADHD.

I was diagnosed at a young age with depression and battled that my entire life, prescribed depression meds off and on for 30 years until I decided to explore my ADHD/Autism/synesthesia suspicions and a few other sensory things. When I was diagnosed with ADHD and went on meds for that it completely eliminated my need for depression meds. Turns out the issue wasn’t a chemical imbalance in my brain causing depression but it was my internal negative self messaging that was causing me to be depressed. Who knew that struggling with AdHD and autism my whole life that caused me to try really hard to the point I would burn myself out and fail, a symptom of ADHD, was causing a negative self image of me being a failure. The ADHD meds helped me overcome my executive dysfunction issues and the therapy helped me unwind that negative self image I had, which took care of the depression.

I can honestly say I am now living my best life and I am the most happy/joyous/content I have ever been. It took a lot of work over the last 5 years and YMMV as it is not an easy road to address these issues later in life but the journey is worth it. You owe it to your current and future self to explore ADHD/Autism suspicions.

I realized I could never be happy without first finding out who I am and how my brain works because I couldn’t play this game of life without knowing my strengths, weaknesses or pitfalls to avoid until I learned who I was and how I worked. Once I learned that info I started building my life routines around those symptoms in a healthy and structured way and I feel more real as a person. Not a shell trying to pretend to be normal. Once I was able to unmask and be openly honest with the people and world around me so much of the anxiety, doubt and pain just evaporated. I was using way too many brain processing cycles masking that it was draining the life out of me.

Explore who you are and you may find peace and balance.

Good luck, I’m rooting for you!

There are many different types of synesthesia, misophonia being just one of them. Another is called mirror-touch, which has some symptoms related to seeing something, either IRL or on tv etc, and feeling the effects even though you shouldn’t be feeling them. Getting the effect of misophonia from just observing the use of something or an action could be an indication that you may have some form of mirror touch synesthesia as well.

Interesting about sand paper is one of your triggers. I have misophonia too, some sounds more severe than others. I have a lot of sensory triggers but sand paper is not one of them. Hearing someone chew on food makes me want to instantly punch a wall or throw a chair through a window. I go into fight mode instantly. Also that squeaking noise that happens when you crush a cotton ball in your fingers and rub it against itself… ugh just thinking about it…

When the symptoms developed in my early teens there wasn’t even a word for the condition and it wasn’t u til the early-mid aughts that I found out what the name was and had an idea of what I was experiencing. Definitely made me feel less alone that at least one of my conditions had some info. It was very lonely before that since my sensory issues are very much present with me at every moment and they take an extraordinary amount of willpower and determination to keep them in check and I’ve only learned those coping mechanisms in the last few years when I dove deep into therapy and trying to understand my condition.

It helps now that I can point to documentation about my sensory issues and not feel like I am sounding like a crazy person. My friends and family know, I talk about it all openly now and can explain to people how it affects me. It is amazing the level of understanding and compassion people now have around stuff like this. That understanding of course isn’t universal and there is so much further society has to go in the mental health realm but for someone in their 40s to finally get some answers over the last 10-15 years about these things that affect how I experience the world. I have only been seeking therapy for it over the past 5 years but I can honestly say I am the happiest o have ever been, I am no longer this gloomy person trying to keep my emotions in check all the time to control my conditions but I live openly with them now, redirecting and using the condition to help me. Learning how to control my mind better and thinking patterns. It feels like aikido but for thoughts and emotions.

There is so much more to learn about our senses and we have made such amazing headway during my lifetime that I am hopeful for the future.

Take care and good luck!

I can tell you are a person of refined quality and sophistication; you didn’t forget to add Gunter!

Well done!

My first thought upon seeing the picture;

“Why is Ice King not wearing his crown?”

It took me a few seconds to realize it wasn’t him… the similarity has to be intentional.

And your reply did the same for me, hope you are having a wonderful week! 🖖

I spotted it too, it is well reasoned with an excellent flow of thought. I appreciate that others see it too and commented on it.

I never looked it up but I always heard it was written in 1948 and he just reversed the last two numbers as it was an easy way to put it in the not too distant future.

Like I said though, I never had the inclination to look it up, maybe he wrote it in 1948 but it was first published in 1949.

I get your point too. Kevin Sorbo was the name that came to my head first, for some reason, and Kevin Costner followed. TBF though, Kevin Costner has won 2 Academy Awards, one for Best Director (Dances with Wolves in 1991) and has been nominated for a best actor award. He does have a long list of industry accomplishments in various roles. Kevin Sorbo doesn’t have anything close to that. I’m not a big fan of Kevin Costner but objectively speaking he is accomplished in his career.

Kevin Spacey wouldn’t have been better though, with his rapey background and all that, wouldn’t feel right putting him forward as something to aspire to.

Maybe Kevin Sorbo and Kevin Kline would have been a better comparison.

I have both and the Quest 3 is definitely not capable of the same stuff.

Kevin Sorbo and Kevin Costner are capable of the same stuff too but there is a clear difference in performance and value.

For myself and someone else to use at the same time and in conjunction with each other for work purposes. I explain it a few times in other comments I have made here.

Read some of my other comments here, I have used pretty much every headset out there and these work better for my needs, by far, than all the rest.

I cannot put into words how much I appreciate your kind reply but these will have to do, thank you!

Wise to wait a month or two, maybe, maybe not, i have a window to return them free of charge so if they didn’t work for me it would be no cost to me and I wouldn’t have to wait for them to come back in stock if they did indeed work for me, this way I don’t have to stress about it.

I agree with Marques Brownlee, they are incredible but not for everyone and they are definitely not perfect. I think the outward facing screen is ridiculous but I do get where Apple was going with it and do not fault them for trying. This type of product is a moonshot and testing different ideas to see what works in an untested product space is a risk but I am happy Apple is able to release something like this. Could it fail, most definitely, but trying new things is an important component of success.

Do not get me wrong, I am critical of this device, there are many things that either weren’t implemented in time or just do not work that well, but I also bought the first iPhone on release day too and watched as that developed into something more useable and fully featured. I expect the same with the Vision Pro and see many areas where there is room for improvement or functions that work but aren’t quite refined enough yet for the general population. This thing is incredibly niche, I do not deny that, but what gets me about the people who are overly critical of it are that they are so narrowly focused on what they want it to be and at the price they want it to be at that they are completely missing the point that this product is not for them, it is the precursor to what they are envisioning in their mind.

The price is very much what to expect with future technology, and I don’t mean it is fully realized technology of today, I mean it is high priced because it is using a lot of non-standard tech in non-standard ways. It is a prototype of what we will be seeing in 3-5 years as normal. The doubters and critics in this tread are looking at this thing as a failure because it isn’t a product for the masses right now and my point is it is a viable product but for niche markets, of which I feel I am directly targeted as the exact demographic for this and I am incredibly grateful for that.

I do not think it is silly to say it isn’t a viable product, which is what many of the naysayers in this thread who I have been discussing this with are saying, my point is that it is not a viable product for them. Apple had roughly 80,000 Vision Pro’s available for purchase on release day and I am willing to bet that of the target market that is a good mount to out out there. And if you are manufacturing something with this amount of cutting edge tech at that low of a product run then yeah, $3,500 is not a startling amount. The comments are expensive and so is the tooling and manufacturing, licensing and etc is all very expensive to get this thing to market. I am not surprised, that is just the price of niche hardware. Look at RED cameras or professional camera drones or any high tech/low volume device, it is in line and not unexpected to hit a price point in that range. What I find frustrating in all this is how little people understand the costs of what goes into making something like this and the assumption that anyone buying it is getting ripped off. It happens often with Apple products, especially their more high end lines. Sometimes the cost is way out of whack with comparable products, like those way overpriced and outdated Mac Pros, but that is because there are viable alternatives where you do not have to pay the Apple tax to get a similarly spec’s computer. The Vision Pro is a different beast because there really isn’t anything else like it.

I am well aware not everyone can afford a Vision Pro and not everyone has a use for them, but that should not be a criticism for the product, it says more about the person making the criticism than anything else. If it isn’t what you want or is too expensive for you then don’t buy it, no one is forcing this thing on anyone. I am not gloating or bragging about being able to afford buying 2. I am tired of people judging those who bought it and saying they are idiots for wasting their money. I am not an idiot and I did not waste my money on it, I very much feel I got the better end of this deal. I don’t see why I need to accept being maligned for that. Heck dude, there are a lot of people, probably many in this very thread, who have spent more than $5,000 on their gaming computer setup (monitor, computer, gfxcard, keyboard, mouse, etc) and that is more or less just for a hobby. As a business expense that will save me tons of time to review footage and watch cuts in a virtual space with interested parties from across the globe in real time, the price I paid is well worth and much more value than that money other spent on their gaming setup. As a life expense, being able to tune out the myriad distractions and sensory issues I face at every moment, to turn on noise cancellation on my AirPods and tune out the world around me in the Vision Pro so that I can focus on work tasks or just mediating, listening to music or watching a tv show, all things I find difficult to do regularly, this thing is a godsend and that too is well worth the money spent. My issue is when others tell me that I wasted my money on it. Who are they to decide how I should spend it and what I should spend it on and what value it should have to me. That is what is infuriating about some of these vehemently negative comments on here. So immature and clearly biased by other things than just the price of the Vision Pro

There will be competition that will copy parts of the Vision Pro and they will make cheaper variations of the headset and that is ok. That is what competition is all about and how the tech industry works. Products like this are what push that boundary forward faster and if it isn’t a perfect fit for everyone right now, well, that is normal for things like that and is just how these types of products develop over time.

Hey though, Mr_Dr_Oink, I just want to say, in the sea of thoughtless replies and snarky, immature discussion around this I do want to say that I appreciate your well reasoned response to me. Thank you.

Oh yeah, that is a problem…

Well, SatansMaggotyCumFart, I think you spent $15,000 on three pretty awesome cameras actually. Just use a mirror and take a screenshot!

Actually I would argue it is VR first and AR second because in its dormant, non-powered state your view is completely blocked whereas if it were AR first you would just be looking through transparent glass lenses in its dormant, non-powered state.

Apple’s final destination with this product is AR and they are using it as AR but it is a VR headset replicating an AR experience because we do not have the technology yet to make something like this being AR dominant.

Seems like an interesting setup, got any pictures to share?

It is pretty hilarious seeing people hate on this thing so much, like you can’t think beyond your own circumstances to allow for the idea that this may be an incredibly useful tool for a certain segment of people and that segment of people may have the the money to spend on tools for their trade and the money I spent on it has an ROI of months based on time saved at my rate of pay.

I am truly truly sorry for you that you think it is a good use of your time to rip on a product that you have never used, is not made for you and has no baring on your life what so ever. I am perfectly happy with my purchase. I have already logged a lot of hours these past few days putting it through its paces and figuring out my workflow with it and my team. We are excited to have this tool available to us and I am also ecstatic to have something that helps with all my sensory issues due to my autism and adhd. This device is exceptional in helping me maintain my focus and dampen any distractions and interruptions.

I am sorry you can’t accept that others have different needs than you. Keep on shaming the handicapped buddy, I am sure it will pay off for you eventually and everyone will see you as that hero of truth in your product reviews for things you’ve never tried before. I am sure spreading your special brand of negativity out into the world will eventually get you all those positive vibes you crave.

Good luck to you, I very much mean that and I am rooting for you.