Reply To: Can anyone relate to this childhood symptom

[Rick Green – Founder of TotallyADD]

Like @hum4n and others, I’ve had that feeling of being lost as an adult. Simple stuff, like moving from room to room and forgetting what I came for. Or, and I guess this isn’t so bad, doing 9 things, but not the thing I came for. At least I got 9 things done.

Then there’s the deeper sense of being lost. I think this has to do with something Coach Barbara Luther said something that we included in our video on Coaching: “But for me the most serious time problem and none of the medications help with time, okay. The most serious one is that we don’t feel ourselves in the future. So intellectually I know I’m going to get older, okay. But I don’t feel her, I don’t think about her, I don’t care about her. So what am I going to do in the future because she doesn’t exist for me, I don’t care about her. So I can’t act in the future to take care of her. That’s the most debilitating part for me of our time insensitivity.

Because we can’t act today for our future selves. I had a young client recently, she’s in her 20’s, and I said what are your goals in life? I have no goals. What do you expect to have by the time you’re 40. She popped off several things. What are you doing to be sure you’re going to get those things? I’ve never thought of that. You mean I can plan? She was dead serious, dead serious about it. That was a novel concept to her that she was going to be 40 and would want certain things and cared about them at that time. So I was trying to get her to connect to that 40 year old and want to care of her and help her have the things she wants.

So we have to help her do that and then we’ve got to help her keep staying in touch with that future self, because we’re going to lose sight of her, and then we won’t do anything in the present for her. I think that’s the most debilitating part, that’s why so many ADDers are you know. I have a lot of ADDers who call me and say I thought I’d have a house, I thought I’d have a husband by now, I thought I would have a career well in place. I don’t have any of those things and I don’t understand why, everybody else does.

It’s because they didn’t ever feel that 30 year old and begin to want to work toward him or her. I think that’s far more debilitating than can they get to class on time. But that’s what most people are focused on around the time insensitivity.”

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