The Forums › Forums › Emotional Journey › My Story › The Distracted Violist: How ADHD has affected my Weight, Self Esteem, and Dreams › Re: The Distracted Violist: How ADHD has affected my Weight, Self Esteem, and Dreams
Wow. All the support you guys, I’m feeling the <3. Let try me respond systematically.
Fabulous: lol The tone of your post lifted my spirits! So it was nice to hear from you too. I can definitely identify with the relapses. For me, it’s this defeated apathy I feel after I experience a weight-loss failure. And then eventually I gain so much weight that I get fed up with myself and try to diet again. I use Caloriecount.com. I think it’s pretty simple because their food database is pretty extensive and the website tells you (on a very general basis) if the food is good for you.
Pookie: First off, I love your screen name. Secondly, yes I just started Vyvanse 60 mg on Sunday. As far as the effects, I have noted a curbed appetite and a MUCH greater will power to resist impulses. This is only the end of the third day of being on the medication. I have gotten 8 hours of sleep since I started it and I pretty much feel like a crack head. But my body is still getting used to it. That and I am trying to establish a good bedtime routine that will calm me down enough so that when I take my xanax I fall asleep and stay asleep. I started logging my foods on Caloriecount again on Sunday and it is truly my hope that the medication + behavioral control strategies will result in me actually losing the weight and making a positive change. As far as everything else you mentioned in your post, I second all of it. Except for the fact that I am 23 years old. It’s like almost creepy to see how much I have in common with everyone else on this website and many of you are much older than me and on the surface live completely different lives from me!
Shutter: Awww I’m touched that I moved you. I don’t usually open myself up raw like that on the internet but it seems like a good supporting community on here. Whenever I was on a diet I used to get so angry at my mom for buying donuts and cookies and leaving them on the counter. And then she would get all defensive like: Well if you can’t resist it then you’ll never lose weight anyway! She never got that for me, it’s a little bit easier to resist enticing foods away from home because you usually have to pay for them, but at home I was defenseless against that box of Entemenn’s crumb topped donuts! >.> Anywho, thank you for your warm welcome, and thank you for the hugs! *Hugs back!*
Allan: I think you kind of missed some what I was saying. The atmosphere at my college is very competitive. It’s very hard to do well there. I quite sure that my University is on the list of the top 10 schools that have the most depressed and suicidal students. And we’re high up too, somewhere near Stanford.
Me personally, I am not really concerned with competition with a specific individual – it’s more like a competition between yourself and everyone else. When the tests are graded and the averages are determined, where do you lie? In most of the classes your grade depends on how well or poorly everyone else did. So like, no – I am not trying to one up my friends or classmates. That’s petty high school drama that I left behind in 2007 when I graduated!
As far as compensation … like IDK. I’m smart? I’m talented? I’m genuinely and intrinsically passionate about learning. I’m driven, and I have ridiculously high standards that NOBODY can tell me that I shouldn’t live up to. Before the past 6 months, I HAD NO IDEA I had any kind of disability or disorder or anything. I thought that I was “normal” yet defective in my own right. Like, idk I can’t really tell you how I compensated for something that I didn’t know existed. I was able to get by only using a fraction of my potential until these past few years in University. You ask anybody who goes to my school – could you be successful working two jobs and being a full time student pursuing two majors and a masters on top of that – BUT you can only use about 30% of your full potential. People would laugh. It’s impossible. There was a breaking point. After I couldn’t handle the recurring pattern of mediocracy, mid semester crisis, and the occasional failure I had to seek help. It’s like a switch went off in my head: Ok, something is wrong with me. There is something else here I know I’m capable of more why am I doing so poorly?
WARNING: Tangent Alert
Last year one of my students moved on to a new teacher (always with my blessing) but I had been teaching her for the previous 5 years before that. She has ADHD. It’s really her who I owe credit to figuring out what was holding me back my whole life. I always see myself in my pupils, but I slowly began to notice specific patterns of behavior, personality, self esteem, downfall, and success in her that were identical to me. That and over the course of 5 years I had plenty of experience with medicated Kimmy, and unmedicated Kimmy. Though she was clearly hyperactive and I’m inattentive, Kimmy’s behavior, habits, and personality was the most similar to mine when she was unmedicated. Days when she forgot to take her meds or perhaps the prescription had run out. Interestingly enough I usually preferred her with out meds. I never said anything because it wasn’t my place. Sure she was harder to redirect, made more silly mistakes, and would sometimes overwhelm me with chatter and noodling – but she was her happy, bubbly, bouncy, fun, adorable, creative, and most importantly passionate self. A child grows the most as an artist when they have this passion. This fire to to learn and do and conquer – like many ADDers have! When she was on her meds, she would often be sad, seem depressed, had low self esteem, tired, non responsive and oddly detached. Yes we were more productive and got more things done and she made less mistakes when she was on her meds, but idk looking back I definitely think she either needed a dose adjustment or to try a different drug. I also want to add that she was one of my most (if not the most) talented students – truly a rising star. (That’s kind of an overlooked trait of ADD I think.) That’s why she eventually left me fore her junior and senior years of high school for someone with more experience. I actually tried to convince her parents to take her to a prep academy like the ones I went to years before but they refused to leave because they and she loved me and she was doing well under my instruction.
The whole point of that tangent was that teaching Kimmy, and seeing at least one form of ADHD up close and personal (and having the rare opportunity to study it treated and with out medication) planted the seed in my head. I was far from really taking the possibility seriously at the time but I could never shake the fact that Kimmy and I had so much in common when she hadn’t taken that pill in the morning. Fast forward a few years and here I am today.
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