Reply To: Diagnosed 9 mos ago, still in denial, scared about meds, studying problems… :(

[haraldbenz]

I’d like to put in my 2 cents here.
I struggle with many of the same problems as you all do and yes, I wish i could turn finally my life around. I hear you guys and understand your pain because I’m dealing with the same sh!t.

Yet, there’s something i’d like to share with you that gives ADD/ADHD a very positive spin. A huge advantage over other, ‘regular’ people. I’d like you to be aware of the positives as well, not just the negative stuff. There is light at the end of the tunnel. And it’s not necessarily a speeding train. 🙂
The first is a simple realization that we can make work for us.

Only very smart people have ADD/ADHD. – No matter how many obstacles we have to deal with, take comfort in knowing we all have something going for us where we excel big time.
We just need to find this strength. It might not solve all the other problems (well, that’s what meds are for) but it’s a huge confidence boost knowing you are really (!!!) good at something. Something that makes you special. Keep in mind, that something might not be just one thing.

The other thing i’d like to share is an experience I made in my live that’s perfect proof to the above. Funny thing is it took me ages to realize it.
I’m not going to tell you this story to pad my own shoulder but to give you hope there’s more to ADD/ADHD than just the negative stuff.

• When I was in school (way back in Germany) I pretty much was only interested in art. I sucked badly at everything else. No matter what if it didn’t interest me I sucked at it.

Having Latin as first ‘foreign’ language was just one big disaster for me. It’s a dead language, unless one is interested in a career at the Vatican.
The other language on the itinerary (only for a year or two, compared to six years of Latin) was English. I was so hopeless my English teacher told me to my face that I would never learn it. Period.

Flash forward gazillian years. A friend who lives in Montreal, Canada invited me to visit him. He had immigrated with his parents to Canada years ago.
The words ‘yes, no and thank you’ pretty much encompassed my entire English vocabulary at that time. Hence I wasn’t really keen on traveling to an English speaking country.
At some point I just couldn’t say no anymore to my friend. So, off I went on my first flight straight into the unknown. The only comfort was that I could speak German with my friend.

Then something strange happened. Within the first few days of my visit a weird feeling grew stronger inside of me that I never experienced before. Maybe because I grew up at a boarding school and the fact that my parents moved while I was away at that school which meant the loss of all my friends at home, or that I later studied in a different city, or that I always have been a loner and found it hard to make friends (I always was the odd ball out) … I don’t know … but for whatever reason and for the very first time in my live, I felt shortly after my arrival in Canada strangely ‘at home’.
So much in fact I made the decision to wanting to live in Canada rather impulsively (after 3 days to be precise).
After explaining myself to my friend and his mother  (who strangely didn’t think I was completely nuts) I asked them first for permission to stay a ‘little’ longer than planned and secondly, i picked up the phone and called my soon to be employer (an ad agency in Frankfurt, I was between jobs) to tell them sorry, I won’t be coming.

To make a long story short, I extended my first visit to 10 weeks. In this time I learned with the help of my friend English. In the last of those 10 weeks I had my first few interviews in ad agencies in Montreal.
I knew full well that my final destination would be Toronto (didn’t want to do french advertising) but I wanted to see whether I had a chance as soon as possible. Little did I know that this turned into a huge confidence boost because I realized quickly I spoke already better English (after 10 weeks!) then the people who interviewed me. – Montreal is more French than English but they all are bilingual.

At that time I didn’t know I had ADD – got diagnosed only 5/6 years ago – but in hindsight I give full credit to my ADD for proofing my former English teacher in Germany so wrong, so quickly. Frankly, without ADD I don’t think for a minute that I could have pulled this one off.

 

PS: I’m living in Toronto for over 16 years now. Not that it applies to all the impulsive decision I made but I haven’t regretted this one for one second yet.

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