ADHD

One thing I'd advise looking into would be Autism as well.

I did/do experience a lot of what you are describing, and have been misdiagnosed with a few things, turns out I'm autistic. It presents very much like inattentive ADHD in me, so I was pursuing th ADHD diagnosis for a long time.

It took me a couple years to figure it out, but yeah, I'm autistic.

This video helped me quite a bit in understanding the difference.

I'm not saying you have Autism, but it's worth considering!

I am experiencing the same kind of problems right now. I'm convinced that a large part of it is depression. I got an ADHD diagnosis couple of decades ago as an adult. I'm very successful at what I do and make decent money. He felt that I had done a great job of coming up with compensations for my problem.

However lately those compensations aren't working. I look at my list of things to do, and I just can't do them. I'm in the state where the key things I need to do cause me such emotional pain that I avoid them. This to me is depression.

It appears depression magnifies the problems caused by ADHD. One has an additional layer of "what's the point of all this? It won't change anything", going through one's head. It saps the will, which is needed to overcome the initial motivation barrier.

Now, instead of having to smash through one stone wall, one has to smash through two..

I was just listening to The Hidden Brain, they talked about an experiment. Scientists bioengineered rats to have no dopamine receptors. If they put food in the rat's mouth it would eat, but if they put the food even one body length away, the rat would starve to death. I have never felt so much sympathy for a rat.

They are closely linked conditions. I do not have anxiety or depression, but my undiagnosed and then untreated ADHD was causing me both conditions.

They are separate things but they are intertwined, so much so that ADHD very frequently comes with a dual diagnosis of one or more other conditions, or is confused/commingled with eg. autism. A proper assessment can disentangle them and reach the correct diagnosis.

As someone with BP (mostly depressive) and inattentive ADHD (separately), both of the states you are talking about sound like depression.

It could be depression. It also sounds like the very common experience in ADHD I've heard of where your brain just doesn't have enough dopamine to do anything. So you might try to get yourself to do stuff, but you literally can't get yourself to do what you'd like (even though you feel like you should be able to). You might even just stare at a wall and get mad at yourself for not moving. Maybe this video might have some tips?

But I mean, it's also possible to have comorbid depression with ADHD. There are a lot of places they can overlap (low motivation, low energy). Outside of medication, you might just need to find ways that work for you and help you to feel motivated or even just happy and accepting of where you're at. It's okay to have off days too, I hope you know. People with ADHD have a lot of shame so it's important to make sure that you aren't struggling with that on top of the lack of motivation. To learn to be easier on yourself. And to learn about ways that the rest of society may have not properly taught you how to handle the unique struggles you deal with (so you can stop pressuring yourself to accomplish or act to neurotypical standards).

hungry but nothing sounds good when i think about the steps it takes to get it

This is my brain every day at noon.

Executive dysfunction and depression can present similarly but they are for inherently different reasons. Depression is mood-based while executive dysfunction is cognitive-based. Using your language, depression would include the "sads" while executive dysfunction doesn't. Hope this helps.