How Do People with ADHD Appear to Others?

Patrick McKenna – What are some common traits of adults with ADD?

Dr. Edward Hallowell – Inaccurate self observation adults with ADHD often are not aware of how they come across with other people. Sometimes a tendency to offend people not meaning to at all.

Thom Hartmann – I’m not a particularly good internal evaluator of whether I’m doing well or not but I am a pretty good evaluator of the external feedback that I’m getting the you know if the checking account is not going up if the ratings aren’t going up if the if the employees are complaining I mean you know there’s a bunch of external indices that you can use to determine some success or failure.

What does Dr. Laura Muggli think?

Dr. Laura Muggli – I think it’s almost like an on/off switch. I think that you can be highly in tuned to people and what’s going on and then you can be so distracted and in your own world that you’re not paying attention to anything that’s going around you and you don’t even notice who walked by you.

Kate Kelly – Not a very good listener.

Patrick McKenna – Doesn’t seem to be listening and gets complaints from others about it. I would say almost daily which you think? you think? That’d be fair to say?

That’d be fair at least yeah because that’s the tattoo actually you’re not listening.

Janis McKenna –  Yeah you’re not listening to?

Janice that’s where your name comes in that’s the part that made never made sense I never Yanis who’s Yanis I thought.

Thom Hartmann –  and I’ve learned over the years probably back when I was in school you know is the teacher smiling or not? You know you learn to check these external cues as reality checks against your in.. because internally I could be what this is really great you know we’re having an audition right but no it’s you know everything’s crashing and burning all around you and that’s the USS Titanic.

What does Kate Kelly think?

Kate Kelly – I’m thinking about my dad who’s not with us anymore but he had a raging case of ADD. He really needed to control things, and it wasn’t until I understood ADD that I understood that aspect of him. I just thought you know a lot of times he was an sob, and he wasn’t. The reason he needed to control things is so he could feel safe so he could feel that if somebody derailed his train of thought he would feel very vulnerable and he grew up in an age where you you know I got to be tough I have to be you know appear to be in control.

Janis McKenna –  and speaking of control and Ireland at the same time it was interesting that Patrick thought it was really important that I Drive while we were in Ireland because the you know you drive on the opposite side of the road and that would be you cannot go home be tell your family that you drove in Ireland, It’ll be great. So I was like okay I’ll do it but not but not today honey I’m gonna wait and just let you drive for a little bit more, and every day he would say to me I really think you should try the drive I’d say yeah well no I don’t think today I think we’ll let it go today. Well you want to drive before we get in a big city why don’t you drive… So we pull over which if you know Ireland there aren’t many places there’s no shoulder of the road or anything like that. So we pull over to the side of the road and we jump around the other side of the car and I jump in how far did we get honey? Fifty feet?  maybe fifty feet and he said he’s on the opposite side and.. AHH! and his feet came right up in the dashboard and his hands went up over his face and what it could not stand not being in control being on the other side and watching all the branches come by the car door but..

Patrick McKenna – I blame the Irish. There you go. They drive on the wrong side of the road.

Janis McKenna –  Yeah but he was really great about trying to give that control and I love the fact that he wanted to he wanted to to make that step..