Can anyone relate to this childhood symptom

[mbendezu]

I suspect I might have ADD I have problems following conversations and at work I can have such a hard time focusing on what should be a simple task that it seems so impossible I just want to give because I feel like can’t deal with it…frustration.  What I remeber as a child was the feeling of being totally lost at times like I had no idea what was going on, it was a sad feeling.  Anyway has anybody here had that experience as a child?

 

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[wiredonjava]

Yes mbendezu, that is exactly what it feels like when you have adhd. I keep waiting for my spaceship to pick me up and take me back to whatever planet I came from. I usually spend time in groups just nodding and smiling to hide my inability to keep up which likely makes others think I am a very agreeable individual, however I am missing out on real communication, I know this. I prefer speaking one on one with people as a result. Humour helps a lot!

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[mbendezu]

Thank you Wiredonjava…thank you…your response and confirmation means so much to me I can’t tell you!

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[mbendezu]

Yes Wiredonjava I have a very difficult time in groups of people also like a fish out of water I much perfer one on one communicating also and yes I totally agree with you on the humor point.  Thank you again for your response…. I felt so alone with that memory until your response.  : )

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[lindsey3]

As a child I don’t think that I talked with anyone for more than a few minutes at a time – I was always either playing intense games by myself, running, daydreaming or fidgeting and wandering off. I know now that my mother and one brother also have ADHD, so you can imagine not a lot of listening or listening expectation happened! As I grew into my teens I learned that when I blurted out my random train of thoughts, ideas and jokes, this wasn’t somehow conversation, so started to hide my thoughts and asked other people about themselves. This has lasted all my life – unless I am in a one to one situation with someone I relate to and with, then I ask all the right social questions to get everyone to fill up the talking time – often a waiting situation until I can go home. I still make big gaffs sometimes when I blurt out a sideways thought or connection which can throw the situation, and then I feel ashamed that I have been conversationally clumsy – or just ‘too much’/too dominant.

The good news is that I have few great friends who celebrate my quirks, imagination and sometimes off beat thinking and  there are no barriers – it only takes one or two friends to ease the strain in life  – I’m so grateful to them.

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[mbendezu]

Yes Lindsey I understand the social akwardness you feel.. Me too.  I also did a lot of daydreaming as a child couldnt concentrate in school to save my life I remember just feeling discontented from everybody else just kind of lost not a good feeling.  Thank you very much for sharing with me it’s nice to know I’m not alone with this.  I go next thursday to a psychologist to get diagnosed.

Mike

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[lindsey3]

Yes – feeling disconnected and a bit lost, isn’t a good feeling at all either as a child or an adult. I have/had the hyperactivity too and as a girl the presentation of this is a bit different from boys. One thing that does distinguish my childhood, is that because there so much dysfunction within the family, and despite feeling close to one sibling, I felt very lonely and sort of burdened. Life was something you ploughed through essentially on your own. For me it was a confusion of unresolved feelings and trying to make sense of the outside world and my inner world.

I am recently diagnosed with ADHD and the relief is immeasurable. I wish you all the best for your diagnosis , follow up medication and hopefully talking therapy.

x

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[hum4n]

yes I had this a lot growing up. Well, even today.. all my life. But for sure, when growing up too… I used to play piano or draw when I got into that place… sometimes when other kids were doing other things, outside playing. I also used to sneak out at night from a young age… and just walk around empty streets in the dark (with friends I encouraged to join me lol… I was also terrified of the dark when on my own)…. when I was outside at night, I didn’t feel lost anymore… I felt alive….. also walking around forests…… when other kids did sport, I went out into forests and walked around. It was frustrating for my teachers also, because without training I still competed at national level in swimming, javelin, discuss… and played rugby and did other things which teachers were desperate for me to understand how much potential I had. Also in art and music…….. and generally… that “lost” way I behaved… teachers hated me for it… it made them so angry.. to the point of rage. I didn’t hurt or harm anything or anyone…. but the way I behaved was so beyond them… beyond my peers, teachers, everyone around me…. that it just seemed to them to be the most horrible arrogance or something……. I remember all their faces bright red with anger, some litterally throttling me around the neck with their hands… screaming in my face, “You have ruined the end of my 15 year career!!!!”….. or “You are an evil spider that spins a web and pulls everyone around you into it!!!!”…. “you are a worm!!”….

Also… when I get lost and disconnected from everything… people can take me for being slow. When I’m really just not on the same planet at that moment… and not “slow” at all in how they think.

Feeling lost and like I have no idea what is going on… describes most of my life…. it describes how I feel when I wake up in the morning. When I visualise where I feel I am…… It’s like I’m not on earth really… like I’m in a desert place with signs of what used to be life submerged in the sand.. and there’s a peacefulness to it… but also an emptiness…. but not an emptiness that has any desperation for anything else… or  like I’m orbiting earth and just not on planet earth……. I sometimes think I will actually be in that position some day… just in a pod… looking at earth and floating away into an abyss of the cosmos.

Wow ! baahahah… that was fucking depressing rofl…. well… what’s good, is that with a diagnosis, seeing a doc, getting treatment… and taking really taking those steps to find the best treatment available…. there’s massive progress to make….. and over the last year, I feel a lot of progress has been made. And recently, I have identified what things in my life bring overwhelming distraction and chaos to my mind…. and I’m making big changes…. and simplifying my life… and getting stuck into treatment…… and step by step, come back to planet earth.. and be here. Who I am, more 🙂

Hope that’s less depressing at the end… lol

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[hum4n]

I played this today… decided to hit record before I played… as I always play and then say, “wish I recorded that!”….. anyways… I didn’t know what to call it… but after reading the original post here.. I’m calling it lost…. because I feel like what you described has the same frequencies I am communicating in this music……. also with the constant changing of chord progressions… like the constant modulating attention of ADHD…

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[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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[adventroverted]

Wow Rick, that is so spot on it’s not even funny. I’m 35 now and I always wonder how the heck I got to this point in my life and still have nothing. It’s like time doesn’t exist.

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