Reply To: I'm new here and OMG all of the questions..

[Rick Green – Founder of TotallyADD]

Welcome Adventroverted!

I had to chuckle at your subject line. All of the questions indeed!

Not having taken Adderall, and not being a doctor, and knowing everyone’s experience is different I can’t get too specific about your medication questions.

but I’m currently in the middle of editing a video on questions about medication. In a couple of the key phrases come to mind. One is, “be in communication with your doctor about how you feel, about what’s changing, about what’s getting better or worse.”

You asked if you should give it time, and that’s not a bad idea unless you’re feeling real distress. It does take some adjusting but to me it sounds like you are getting a positive effect.

Another thing to remember is that there will always be side effects. There is side effects to everything. Aspirin. Coffee. Even exercise has side effects–sports injuries, joint injuries and so on.

As for that feeling that you’ve wasted your life? That is huge. I was 47 when I got diagnosed. You’ll find people on here who are in their 60s, 70s, and even their 80s before they finally figured out what was going on.

If I allow my self to go there I can still feel a wave  of energy–sucking regret about, “What might my life have been if I had known sooner?   What disasters might I have avoided? What might my career have looked like? What about all the relationships that crashed and burned, or simply withered on the vine?”

A that some point I realized I could spend the next 47 years stuck in that state. It wasn’t easy to get there but at some point I realized regret was just another state of paralysis for me and I had to focus  everything I had on getting control of my ADHD, getting it handled to the point where it was not a problem. I don’t think anyone ever gets it totally handle. And hey, even people who don’t have ADHD lose their car keys or misplace their cell phone now and then.

So you don’t want to deny the feelings of regret and anger, but our video, “Now You Tell Me? Surviving The Emotional Tornado of an ADHD Diagnosis” may help you get unstuck and moving forward.  It’s not a one time thing. As I said, I can still go back to that place.

Your other regret, about finding yourself at age 35 without accomplishing the things you want is such a common complaint.  Coach Barbara Luther talks about this being the really debilitating ‘time management’ issue that ADHD folks struggle with.  It’s one thing to miss dentist appointments.  It’s another to miss our achieving your goals in life.

Some ADHD people have very clear goals in life. Many have vague or general goals. What’s missing is any plan to get there.   we want to have a family, a house,  live on a houseboat, become a pilot, move to Hawaii to live.   But we don’t break down the steps of what it would take to actually do that. We don’t set a deadline.

if, for example you said I want to be living in Hawaii in 2 years. Then a good coach would start asking you what it would take to make that half. What would you have to do by the end of this year to be on track to move to Hawaii? That would take planning. Breaking things down into steps. And then asking what would I need to have done but 6 months from now. And to get their, what would I need to do in the next 3 months, and to accomplish that what would I need to do this week? And finally well what’s one thing I could do today? And it might be ghetto the piece of paper and start listing some of the things she would need to do to move to Hawaii. Perhaps the names of people who could support you in keeping you on track or getting specific things done. I don’t know for sure, I’m just talking off the top of my head here. But hopefully you get the idea.

Keep us posted on your progress!

 

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