conversations

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

I’m looking for tips regarding the following issues:

1. I often don’t realize/hear people are talking to me.

2. When asked to repeat what just has been said, I’m often unable to do so accurately (enough).

3. I forget large fractions of the conversations I had. And people get annoyed they have to tell me the same thing again.

4. I jump from topic to topic, often without realizing.

Any help is appreciated.

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[Patte Rosebank]

Sounds like you may have the inattentive subtype of ADD. Take the “Virtual Doctor” diagnostic test on this website. Then take the results with you when you go to see your doctor to discuss it, and ask for a referral to a psychiatrist WHO SPECIALIZES IN ADD. This is very important. If you just ask for a referral to a psychiatrist, you run the risk of being sent to a psychiatrist who doesn’t believe in ADD. Unfortunately, there are a lot of those around, as we can find out here: http://totallyadd.com/forum/topic.php?id=181

As one specialist says in the film “ADD…and Loving It”, so much more is known about ADD today, that what they were teaching about it in medical schools even 10 years ago, would today be considered malpractice. When you think of how many doctors who graduated medical school back then, are practising now and may not have updated their knowledge on the subject, you can see why you need to request an ADD specialist.

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[Rick Green – Founder of TotallyADD]

You would think that listening or paying attention to one thing would be easy, right? But it’s actually one of the most complex tasks for the brain because it means shutting out the thousands of irrelevant and extraneous bits of information that are streaming into your brian from your five senses.

So we are not good at filtering out the noise. Which is why we can be creative, we combine things in interesting ways.

But often, as you say, it’s frustrating.

In the documentary Kate Kelly, (co-author of You Mean I’m Not Stupid, Lazy or Crazy) said that the first time she took medication she went to dinner and her son noticed, “You didn’t bite the waiter’s head off.” And she realized that for the first time she could hear his voice clearly despite all the background noise in the restaurant. For ADHD people the sound often get’s mushed up. Hard to distinguish stuff.

This may seem silly, but listening is actually a skill you can develop. Just like memory skills. The more you practice, the better you’ll get.

Just practice repeating what they say in short chunks. Repeat back the gist of what they say. Every time they make a new point, repeat what you’ve heard, and try not to add anything or interpret it or clarify what you think they meant. You know who is a master of this? Oprah.

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[wolfshades]

Yet it’s so exciting when you meet someone who loves jumping from topic to topic as you do. Man, I have to tell you it’s invigorating and it kind of makes up for all of those times when you’re with “normal” people who want to stay with a particular topic until it’s exhausted before moving on to another one. Nothing wrong with either flavour, I think. I just happen to like the former one.

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[Anonymous]

You know, I’ve just realized something this past Friday. I manage a group, and have one-on-one meetings weekly or so. I am able to concentrate fully for 30 minutes or so with them, because I find talking with them and learning about their ongoing work and personal lives to be fascinating. I’ve had some training as a counsellor so I spend a lot of time ‘squinting’ with my ears as I listen to their problems, work issues, and role efforts within a matrix organization.

But when I sit in a large meeting – like the weekly management meeting – I find it next to impossible to maintain focus. I wonder if I need to spend time envisioning the large meetings as simply a series of one-on-one meetings, and consider that when each person is speaking, I give them my full attention. It is striking though – I get so distracted and bored and want to play with my BlackBerry or day dream, or think about my shoes etc…

Anyone experienced this sort of thing?

Mungo

http://MungosADHD.com

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[wolfshades]

I do better with one-on-one situations like yours, Mungo – where I *have* to pay attention or it comes across as the greatest disrespect. In other social situations where there is no employer-employee situation, it’s different and my mind wanders. I can’t stand phone calls for just that reason. (Well, except for a couple of people who I love to pieces. There again though – these are relatives who actually have the same flighty conversational method that I have)

Totally lost when it comes to big management meetings or conferences. I went to a Microsoft conference recently and it was all I could do NOT to run out of there.

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[Anonymous]

I have one word for this problem MEDICATION! When I first started taking Concerta, at first I thought it wasn’t working but then I suddenly realized that I had just listened to a complete conversation that my sons were having at the kitchen table while I was making their lunches for school. I almost cried, I couldn’t remember the last time that I had heard a complete conversation from start to finish AND I didn’t have an overwhelming urge to interject my 2 cents worth. The difference for me on meds and off is huge. It makes an enormous difference in home, work and social situations, and I am sure it makes me much more enjoyable at parties as I can actually be a participant in conversations and not the dominator. I also have to say that having a partner who is also ADHD makes life much easier. I was with my ex husband for 20 years, and I felt like 18 of those years was used waiting for him to catch up with my thoughts. I spent a lot of time being frustrated while I waited for him to “get it”. With my current ADHD partner, we are usually on the same page and have no problems following each others 8 track tape minds. It is blissful.

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[wolfshades]

“8 track tape minds”. Love it! I’ve struggled for a term to describe that dynamic, and you’ve nailed it kimberlia. It is SO MUCH FUN when you have a partner who can dive and swoop in those same conversational flight paths isn’t it? I really treasure that part of the whole ADHD deal.

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[Anonymous]

I laughed at the “8-track” joke too, but then I realized how old you have to be to get it. Soon we won’t be able to use the “sounds like a broken record” expression either. Or has that day already come?

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[Patte Rosebank]

Hey, kids! Let’s go off on a tangent!

I love obsolete technology!

I write with fountain pens and have a collection of bottled inks (including a couple of 50+ year-old bottles of rare and long-ago-discontinued Skrip Melon Red) that I fill them with.

I have a manual typewriter that I sometimes use, because I like the clicky sound of it. It reminds me of learning to type in high school, on big manual Olivettis. And I have a pack of onionskin paper and sheets of carbon paper (for you youngsters out there, that’s how people used to make file copies), to go with that manual typewriter.

In my parents’ basement, there’s an old Singing Machine—one of the earliest models of karaoke machines. The backing tracks are on 8-track cartridges, and the lyrics are printed on songsheets that you keep in a small binder. I’d saved up money from my first-ever summer job (1984) to buy that beast when it was state-of-the-art, and it cost a whopping $500. It’s the very same model of machine & model of rack o’ 8-tracks that Ranger Gord (on “The Red Green Show”) had up in his treehouse in the early seasons. Since “Red Green” was shot at CHCH then, I suspect that the machine & rack were the same ones used in the Singing Machine commercials that Billy Van did at CHCH in the 1980s.

Also in my parents’ basement is a 1914-model player piano, the kind with foot pedals that you have to pump, to make it work. With it are boxes of modern piano rolls (QRS in Buffalo still makes them), and antique piano rolls (that I’d found in flea markets and an old, long-gone shop in the Byward Market that was like a time capsule). I used to play those rolls for hours, wondering who had first played the antique ones. Since I moved away, nobody plays that piano, so the mice have eaten the leather bellows. My parents’ cat is useless.

I have my grandmother’s old sewing machine. It’s one of the best that Singer ever made, and it’s practically an industrial machine. All-metal construction, gear-driven, and it does all sorts of fancy stitches, depending on which pattern wheel you drop into it and which code you set the levers to. Today, all that would be handled by computer chips and a touch-screen.

I love the clicking sound of a record being played. There’s also a warmth to the sound that you don’t get in digital music files.

My dad still has an old tube radio he got in the early 1960s, and the Commodore 64 he bought us in the 1980s. Both still work.

And somewhere, I still have the first cassette-player Walkman clone I ever bought, purchased from Consumers Distributing (which went belly-up in about 1993, I think). I miss Consumers Distributing. And Sam the Record Man on Yonge Street. And Eaton’s. And penny candy that actually cost a penny. And chocolate bars that only cost a quarter. And especially the old red subway cars on the TTC.

(Okay, now I feel old…)

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[ADD boy]

It all brings a tear to my eye. Jump-man rules! Yehaw

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[Patte Rosebank]

Hey, I was amazing at Jump-man! I killed several joysticks while playing it. In fact, it’s the only video game I ever really got into. Though I sort of liked Frogger (the splats on the highway were hilarious), and of course Lemonade Stand (played on a PET at school).

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[Anonymous]

Thanks a lot for the tips!

Meds make a difference but more so in other areas …

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[Author]

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