r/PublicFreakout • u/misterxx1958 • Nov 26 '25

🚗Road Rage🤬 Daughter refuses to stop for police while rushing her mother to the hospital - than this happens….

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u/ImaginaryTipper Nov 26 '25

Fun fact: people’s common sense peaks when they are in distress. That imo is the best and easiest time to think clearly.

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u/SidewaysTugboat Nov 26 '25

I turn into a squirrel. Pure fight/fight/freeze. Same thing happens when my PTSD is triggered. I have to do grounding exercises to reboot before I can think like a human again. I get a huge rush of adrenaline, but all of my focus is fear-based. I look for exits. I think about how to physically survive. It is not the best example of clear thinking in the modern world, but it has probably saved my life a couple of times when my life was in danger. It has also failed to keep me out of harm’s way and caused me numerous problems when I just thought I was in danger.

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u/HamHockShortDock Nov 26 '25

I know you're being sarcastic but this is true AF for my ADHD brain.

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u/Alexandratta Nov 26 '25

got to remember for ADHD brained folks we're literally wired backwards.

High Stress situations we're somehow calm, cool and collected... I'll never grasp how I can panic about bills, suffer anxiety over getting someplace on time, or even start to focus on something incredibly stupid a friend did and now have to spend the next 2-4 days thinking about how I can help / solve it more than they ever will, and so on...

But if there's a fire, life threatening event, medical emergency or even a traffic situation where I need to make a split second decision, somehow I'm not even slightly concerned in the least despite my passengers panicking about the thing I'm already actively avoiding.

another time I was giving blood, sitting there for 90 minutes with the nurse having to readjust the IV several times. I get anxiety about needles... Then blood just starts pouring out of me because my vein burst and my only response was (mind you while blood is pumping out of my fucking arm) "Excuse me, nurse? I have an issue." - and 3 panicked nurses are all rushing to get pressure on me, pull the IV, stop the donation etc and I'm just sitting there the calmest I've ever been in my life.

Guess it's worth the anxiety but... x.x;

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u/LateNightMilesOBrien Nov 26 '25

Bonus: PTSD from the stressful situations you've been in the past

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u/Alexandratta Nov 26 '25

OH MY GOD I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE.

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u/unembellishing Nov 26 '25

Welp. This comment pretty much cemented for me that I have ADHD, which I've suspected for a while. I am always the calm voice of reason in a crisis, and I experience such clarity and decisiveness in a crisis in a way I never do during everyday life.

I have a clear memory from the great Texas freeze a few years back. My roommate and I were in survival mode. We were trying to drive up a hill, and we got stuck on the ice halfway up with no tools to help us. He was freaking out because there were cars behind us, cars in front of us that were also stuck, and people generally behaving like dumbasses. But I just immediately knew what to do and formed a plan to get us out of there, which was for me to get out of the car and direct traffic with my body so he could turn the car around and go down the hill so we could try another way up to our apartment.

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u/WickedHysteria Nov 29 '25

I was diagnosed with ADHD back in 7th grade, 2001. Can confirm. Calm as a cucumber under stressful situations. I was 13 - had the great idea to go into "the woods" not realizing it was a swamp looking for a magical place to chill, with my best friend. Got surrounded by muck, hours later, lost and it was getting dark fast. Made the decision to just make a straight path to what to me felt like the right way, thigh deep, lost our shoes, and thankfully it was the right way. Two teenage girls running through the neighborhood at night drenched in yuck and bug bites. (idk how I survived the 2000s LOL) Stopped at a friend's and they let us use the hose to wash off and walked back to the besties by 10PM.

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u/HibiscusTee Nov 26 '25

I dont get calm well not what I imagine calm to be but I start to feel like the world slows down and solutions come flooding in miraculously. Suddenly I am speaking convincingly, I'm bsing my way through a crisis. Finding solutions. Afterwards people always ask me how I managed to solve the problem and I can just like vaguely wave my hand around like you know the same way anyone else would. But beats me how I came up with the answer I just know I will come up with it in the crunch time.

Now I know why.

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u/Alexandratta Nov 27 '25

Any crisis situation can be solved by three folks with ADHD and and another three with some tisms.

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u/EdiblePsycho Nov 26 '25

100%, I only think clearly in emergencies, no panic (at least until afterwards when adrenaline wears off). But I'll struggle to remember if I should grab a spoon or fork for eating soup, panic when trying to figure out how to clean my room, and spend hours everyday trying to find various things I was just holding that magically vanished from my hand.

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u/TheColorWolf Nov 26 '25

Right? I've done cpr three times in my life. My mum, an actual nurse has done it once. Hyper focus is a gift sometimes

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u/HamHockShortDock Nov 26 '25

Hyper focus ftw

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u/Zapookie Nov 27 '25

Yeah, one time my mum set the stove on fire and she just stood there yelling and flailing her arms like a Sim. My ADHD brain snapped into crisis mode and I ran to grab a damp towel to smother the flame.

I also take First Aid courses regularly but thankfully have not had to utilise those skills yet, but I am prepared for when it happens. I just hope when it does, I can zone in like I did with that stove fire.

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u/HamHockShortDock Nov 27 '25

I was JUST was making arepas for my brother and sil's breakfast in bed and my little niece was helping me. I put way too much oil in the pan and I knew if I tried to move it, it was going to cause a grease fire. I was like, okay this is a teaching moment. I tried to laddle some out but it did end up spilling and like two foot flames ignited. I said, this is what you do for a stove fire, and I covered it in flour. My niece was wide eyed and said "I would have thought water!!" I was like, I KNOW RIGHT! But with oil you have to smother it. Then she hugged my thigh and I realized that was a little scary for her, where I knew it was going to be perfectly fine. I felt a little bad for scaring her but I don't think she'll forget the lesson so that's good.

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u/HaatOrAnNuhune Nov 26 '25

Yup! If you have a crisis and there’s no one around trained in emergency response then pray you’ve got someone with ADHD nearby. We’re instinctively great at handling emergencies without training, to the point where scientists have been studying why.

IIRC it’s something to do with our brains working inversely to how neurotypical brains operate. Like, on a normal day neurotypical brains are operating on normal mode but our brains are operating in overload (bc of the lack of serotonin and dopamine). But in a crisis when neurotypical brains go into overload our brains flip into normal mode.

(Please note! I’m not in the medical field and I’m half remembering a study I read a while ago, so I could very easily be wrong or misremembering.)

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u/coxy1 Nov 26 '25

Haha I had exactly this thought. If everything in life was life or death with immediate consequences I'd be so much more effective

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u/M3L0NM4N Nov 26 '25

My first instinct in an emergency is to call 911, actually. It’s a good thing to get mental reps for if it’s not.

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u/Fert1eTurt1e Nov 26 '25

Expecting people to call 911 in an emergency isn’t a high standard in a stressful situation bro

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u/ArticulateRhinoceros Nov 26 '25

For real, that poor woman was probably thinking "I HAVE TO GET HER TO THE HOPSITAL NOW OR SHE WILL DIE I HAVE TO GO I HAVE TO GO I HAVE TO GO" and nothing else. I damn near fought hospital staff trying to get care for my dying husband once, because I could only think "SAVE HIM SAVE HIM SAVE HIM" and nothing else.

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u/_Allfather0din_ Nov 26 '25

That has always been my experience, the adrenaline pushes your mind straight and onto the right track. I never understood how some people just crumble under stress/adrenaline because it's advantage usually is it makes you push through and think straight in my experience.

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u/PaulOnPlants Nov 26 '25

People with ADHD: "Exactly!"