Dr. Umesh Jain is now exclusively responsible for TotallyADD.com and its content

Does anyone else have friends?

Does anyone else have friends?2013-08-29T16:49:54+00:00

The Forums Forums Emotional Journey Is It Just Me? Does anyone else have friends?

Viewing 0 posts
Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 34 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • #121386

    jojosephine
    Member
    Post count: 62

    I used to be fine without having a lot of friends. Now that I had been diagnosed, I feel lonely. i have just been offered free babysitting. Yay I can go out for dinner.  Oh wait I have no one to ask. 🙁

    is it weird to go out by myself?

    REPORT ABUSE
    #121387

    kc5jck
    Participant
    Post count: 845

    You’re asking the wrong person here.  I go out and eat by myself all the time and see nothing weird about it.  When I traveled with work (long ago), I would do it because I would often be working alone.  I got used to it.

    I think I tend to hyperfocus on my food, so don’t miss having company.  I can always have an interesting conversation with the chatterbox in my head.  Many people eat out alone for many different reasons.  Don’t feel weird about it.  Take the time to relax and enjoy the experience.

    If anyone says anything about it, you can always make up something like “I just escaped from the asylum for the insane and psychopathic serial killers and a quiet dinner alone was first on my list.  You have a problem with that?”

    Hopefully, your loneliness is just a temporary emotional response to your diagnosis.  Remember, you have a lot of new friends here.  Friends that understand you.  There has in the past been some interest in a chat room.  Maybe you could scare up some interest in implementing one.

    As far as friends go, I am fairly isolated by time and distance and for other reasons such as ADD.  So to answer your original question, no.  Two or three sentences is a long conversation for me.  The exception being that I talk on the phone with my daughter for sometimes maybe an hour or two a week.  I find her fairly interesting to talk to and she in turn is used to my ramblings.  And then there is my wife .  .  .  and the cats,  .  .  .  dogs don’t count.

    REPORT ABUSE
    #121389

    blackdog
    Member
    Post count: 906

    My therapist thinks I need to go out and make some friends. My “homework” one week was to Google social activities in my area. I started to and then just sat and stared at a blank screen for several minutes. I couldn’t think of one thing that I actually wanted to look up. I told him I’m fine with my online friends. I like communicating through forums and email. I find it easier when I have time to collect my thoughts. And to edit them.  Plus I can have interesting conversations like this that you wouldn’t normally have in the real world.

    So the answer to the question is yes, I have friends, but none that I have actually met face to face.

    It will feel weird going out by yourself at first. But you will get used to it. A few years ago I got sick of missing movies that I wanted to see all the time because I had no one to go with. So I started going alone.  The first time I was so self conscious I felt like everyone in the theatre was staring at me. But the second time I just relaxed and had a great time. Plus, when I’m by myself, there is no one to complain if I fidget too much or go to the washroom too many times or whatever. And the “chatterbox in my head” always agrees with my comments about the movie.

    REPORT ABUSE
    #121390

    Patte Rosebank
    Participant
    Post count: 1517

    Plus, if you go to live shows by yourself, you can get an amazing seat, often at the last minute, because there are always single seats scattered throughout the theatre—leftovers when a group of an odd number of people buys tickets.

    REPORT ABUSE
    #121392

    sar316
    Member
    Post count: 55

    I have few friends. I find it very difficult to put myself out there as most of the people I meet and befriend tend to end up flaking out on me. Friends take soooo much effort and energy! I find it hard to want to put in the effort for some thing that is now statistically likely to be unsuccessful. Not to mention I really don’t get neurotypicals. Most of the good friends I have, which isn’t many and that have bothered to stick around, are atypical. I find it really hard to relate with most neurotypicals and they don’t get my sense of humour.

    I like my dog.

    REPORT ABUSE
    #121393

    wanderquest
    Member
    Post count: 68

    Whenever I see people out doing stuff by themselves I always think that it’s crazy that they can do that. I’m truly impressed. I don’t think there is anything wrong with them I just think there’s no way I could do that and feel comfortable.

    I struggle with it for the same reasons mentioned by blackdog. Feeling like everyone is watching you. I find that bringing my iPhone to mess with makes me a little less twitchy. But inevitably when I do have to do something by myself like eating, I rush through to get the heck out and back to a comfort zone space.

    I am drawn to online friends too because of the ability to organize my responses. Especially the forced your turn/my turn aspect of it. I don’t have to (literally) bite my cheek to keep myself from blurting out whatever is in my head before the other person is done speaking.

    That right there is the #1 problem I have with ADD. It is extremely bothersome to me and I HATE that about myself. I do much better online where I can leisurely read others input without tripping over myself to spew my opinion at them out of turn.

    So no, not a lot of real world friends.

    REPORT ABUSE
    #121394

    dithl
    Participant
    Post count: 158

    Friends…another thing that involves planning, deciding, decision-making, communicating, remembering, turn-taking…it’s an ADD natural to struggle to maintain friendships. When I am doing a good job of it, I schedule time in to make contact, and have regular friend “dates”. But it is another job, on top of everything else, and easy to let slip…and to begin to feel like a hermit.

    @Blackdog — ugh. I would hate that homework assignment…staring blankly at a computer screen sounds about right. Like the Disney movie vultures — Dumbo? Or Jungle Book? “What do you want to do?” “I don’t know – what do you want to do?” There are sometimes limitless possibilities for “what to do”, but nothing to steer me in the right direction.

    @kc5jck: Cats can carry on quite a conversation.
    “What’s up?”
    “Mrew”
    “Really?”
    “Mrew”
    “With four dogs AND a hamster?”
    “Mreee-ew”.

    Dogs, not so much.

    “What’s up?”
    Blank stare.

    Or worse,
    “What’s up?”
    “WOOF! Walk? Sure, I’d love a walk!!! Let’s go, let’s go, let’s GO, GO GO!”
    “NO, I said, ‘What’s up?'”
    “Ohhh, I get it! You said COOKIE! Ya, ya, ya, I’d LOVE a cookie! NOW, NOW, NOW!!”
    …and so on….

    REPORT ABUSE
    #121398

    jojosephine
    Member
    Post count: 62

    ugggggh friends sound like so much work and time. I want to have face to face friends that have ADHD and understand what it is like to live with this. Are their support groups that people can meet people. Are there enough people in one geographic location?

    to0 funny @dithl

    REPORT ABUSE
    #121405

    blackdog
    Member
    Post count: 906

     

    Yep, friends are a lot of work. I used to have one that would complain constantly that she was always the one to call me, that I never called her. I tried to explain that I just wouldn’t remember to call her and it didn’t mean I didn’t want to be friends. She just didn’t get it.

    @dithl– Very funny. Cats are better conversationalists but dogs are better listeners.

    @jojosephine– Google “ADHD support groups (your city)” and see what you come up with. It’s how I found TADD. Unfortunately did not find any support groups in my area, except one for parents of children with ADHD. But there are groups out there and you may be able to find one near you.

    REPORT ABUSE
    #121408

    Patte Rosebank
    Participant
    Post count: 1517

    Dogs vs. Cats…

    There are a couple of books by Kathy Hoopmann, that address this:  “All Dogs Have ADHD” and “All Cats Have Asperger Syndrome”.

    REPORT ABUSE
    #121418

    blackdog
    Member
    Post count: 906

    SQUIRREL!

     

    REPORT ABUSE
    #121421

    Blue Yugo
    Member
    Post count: 62

    I had very very few friends as a kid.  I had many “false” friends who just used me in my adult life.  As I began weeding out the users, in recent years I’ve found a few new and good friends even though I feel like most of them only bother with me as a last resort.  At least one has ADHD and I get to laugh at the fact that he’s got worse ADD tendencies than I do.

    A lot of my friends are co-workers, and since I’m due to leave my current job in 29 days, I hope to still be in contact with them.  (If history’s any indication though, they’ll drop me like a ton of bricks once I leave.)  I try to find friends online, but it’s hard to get people to reply to me in posts and social media.  I’m the poster child of being alone in a crowd to the point I sometimes wonder if I’m the only real person in the world.

    REPORT ABUSE
    #121422

    jojosephine
    Member
    Post count: 62

    Thanks for your responses.

    So I did it. I went out for some fine Indian Cuisine by myself. I “pretended” to read a book. Now I say “pretend” because I had fully intended on reading it, but found myself distracted by the conversations around me. I really enjoyed listening to other people’s conversations on my own terms without having to pay attention to paying attention or worry about blurting out inappropriate things at the wrong time. Then I went to a coffee shop and did the same thing. It was nice.

    Last weekend my hubby threw a surprise birthday party for me. Most people would have flourished in the delight of it all. The first thing I thought of was OMG, ‘what state is the house in?’. I mean my hubby tidied up and did the floors where the guests were going to be hanging out. But the fine details that other people see, like the mirror in the bathroom, the toilet, and the layers of dust etc, etc. I usually spend days cleaning before people come over.

    Then I was petrified by fear.  I have to talk with all these people and not be distracted or impulsive? Which, I am so aware of now. I must have come across as real sketchy. My hubby put a lot of heart and soul in this. It actually stressed him out a lot and really appreciated it, but my husband doesn’t understand how hard it is to deal with this. I found I had a lot of internal checking the whole evening. I was exhausted by the end of it.

    This has made me think about my friendships throughout life. Every year I had one close friend that usually associated with a group of friends. (I always saw people with one close buddy within a group. I often cam in and out these groups, usually attached to someone if there was a solo person in the group). More often though I would break-up a ‘buddy duo’ and attached myself to the most appropriate candidate. I had this power that I could with my smarmy personality rip friendships apart and take who I wanted for my buddy, which is weird because I had/have such ridiculous low self-esteem.  My friendships with my buddy were very close, full of adventure and a lot of fun, usually “pushing the envelope”. These births and deaths of these friendships always coincided with the school year. My family would move to the family cottage for the summer and I guess I didn’t keep in touch. I don’t know if it even bothered me that these friendships ended. I welcomed the change and the excitement of getting to know someone new. Anyone out there have or had this pattern?

    Anyways, Are there no adult ADD support group cause we are “socially awkward” ? or because there just isn’t the population out there?

    REPORT ABUSE
    #121423

    blackdog
    Member
    Post count: 906

    @BlueYugo, you can put my poster up next to yours. I have been alone in a crowd since the day I was born. I’m even alone when I’m with my own family.

    My advice is don’t let history repeat itself. If there are coworkers you really want to stay friends with then keep in touch with them. Don’t wait for them to call you. And don’t stop calling them, unless you get a really negative vibe from them. Remember that they might feel the same way and think that you don’t want to hear from them.

    And if they do drop you like a ton of bricks then remember it’s their loss. They have lost a good friend and all you have lost is some people who called you as a last resort.

    REPORT ABUSE
    #121424

    moses
    Member
    Post count: 12

    i have a couple friends, i think. well one friend is a roomate, so i kinda have to be his friend too and vice versa, my other roomate is a good friend. i have one other friend from highschool but we never talk or hang out anymore, doesnt live in the same town/city place that i do anymore. idk. i like to think about anything and everything, most of it takes place in my own private conversation/dialogue, gets lonely everyday, but i mostly feel like im the only one i know that understands how i think and i hate explaining to other people what i mean when i say one thing or another,. its okay i guess cuz i make myself laugh at the stupid crap i think about at random. never a dull moment, but. well i guess it is pretty dull now that i think about it. crap.. wow i must be pretty boring to have so few friends. hut maybe its just everybody else who is boring and cant handle my energy. or randomness you know? anaanyways i think ive talked, or typed to much now so yar, keep trucking lots of people. i just became a member of this site im hoping to make some friends with the same way of being as i am, or is. or whatever. 🙂

    REPORT ABUSE
Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 34 total)