Looking Back, the Past seems haunting…Looking to the Future…write the script

[Anonymous]

Hi, I’m Bob and ADD was always part of my life since the age when I could walk. I’m 52 years old and have seen life the same way most of you have in that hyperactivity was a trait of ADD so paying attention is very hard.

When you look back at all the things we’ve all done as Attention Deficit Disorder birthright recipients, you’ll notice a pattern of hostility,confusion, forgetfulness, and many other brandings. I remember as a kid running from bullies… it wasn’t their size, or their reputation that made me run. It was their willingness to chase me. As I was a very tall kid, the F.E.A.R. internally to my very young ADD or ADHD mind instinctively led me to run. But I fixed it. One day, I didn’t run and they saw me differently.

My point is this; don’t we all have past events as children, youths, young adults, and mature adults that haunt us? I believe it’s our internal fear or as a great man once put it, “False Evidence Appearing Real” that stops us from fixing what we know is different from others. Listen… I didn’t want this disorder and I know none of you did either. But I wanted to share a couple things that might make the difference for some of you.

First off, I like many of you was a child of the 60’s and 70’s and remember that ADD wasn’t labeled. My mother and father thought I was handicapped. I was a tall kid (still am at 6 Foot 4), and couldn’t pay attention in school. My mother tried to set me back, but my aptitude tests wouldn’t allow her to because they were much higher than each grade she tried to set me back.

I remember in 4th grade, my mother had brought me out of a Catholic School environment where the Nuns and teachers would give me daily punishment for not paying attention to the teachers. When I got to my new public school, I felt more at ease, but still carried the punishments with me. My father was a guy that liked to give his kids “butch haircuts” and at the time,1967 or so, people who had those were weird.

This is where I learned to communicate with people around me as to what I was feeling about the time. A big breakthrough as I always kept things to myself until the transfer. Going through the shock of transfer, I still couldn’t learn as fast as all my other classmates. My mother tried to get me into special ed…but the teachers said I was far smarter than most of the students in my new class. So she paid a special ed teacher to teach me after school how to concentrate better.

The first lesson here to me and it should be to you, is that each task or event in our life has to be separated. Almost like separating 2 wrestlers as all of us at one time or another think of 2 or more things at a time. I still catch myself drifting off during anything I do so I had to teach myself to take the single event and to concentrate harder to “complete the event”… when I learned this …things changed.

The second lesson I learned is all of us with ADD or ADHD have abilities to “Achieve” as high or as far as we want to go… BUT we have to be willing to take the “Action” towards that certain moment or time period in our lives to do so. Listen… by now you’re probably thinking, “is this guy for real?” Let me just say that I’m probably the biggest Procrastinator there is out there, and yes somewhat passive towards my own responsibilities, but the way I achieve anything I do today is to separate the things I’ve been told weren’t pleasant or that were important. Then I simply decided that I didn’t want to be beaten and worked hard to “get it done!”

Today, I’m still learning. Everyday I’m writing a new script to better my situation. You see… if you don’t start somewhere, you don’t get anything done and what happens? You complain or forget, or worse yet… ignore what is. If I can give you anything from my past that worked because I didn’t want to be beaten… here are just a couple of things I had to separate and get it done(they were indeed hard):

– I have a Bachelors degree in Business Administration,

– I was a successful Master Chief Petty Officer in the United States Navy …now Retired

-I was a successful Stock Broker for a short time with A.G. Edwards and Sons

-Now I’m working on being a successful Internet Marketer which I really have to concentrate on because I have a long way to go!

All we all need to do is to learn what works, and apply it somehow, and in some form. It’s not easy… sometimes in the middle of trying to work, I think of 50 other things I need to do! It stinks! But I continue to plug along. I’m hoping to get alot from these forums and would love to hear your stories… I think we all could learn from each other…Let’s write the Script!

Bob

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[Anonymous]

Hi Bob, I’m Bob! I’m reading your post, and it’s pretty inspirational, and I’m glad you learned to deal with your ADD the way you did. But I have to be honest with you, I think that what worked for you never would have worked for me. I tried to go to college in the past, and all my attempts were failures, because I had trouble concentrating and I lost interest fast. I joined the Canadian Armed Forces in 1973, more out of desperation than anything else, and that lasted a total of three years – again, I lost interest. I’ve had this pattern my whole life – intense concentration, then two or three years later I lose interest. I’m 56, unemployed, hoping to find something soon, and if I do I’m looking to just put in time until retirement, a little over ten years away. Thank goodness I’ve got my music to keep me sane!

At this point in time I’m still learning about my ADD and how it has affected me in my life, for the worse. Once I’ve assimilated all this information I’ll be ready to start looking for coping solutions to help me live with it.

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