Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
@sdwa I’m really hesitant to give you parenting advice, even though I love giving advice, but every situation is so individual. For the most part though, I have found Dr. Ed Hallowell’s advice about ADD and about parenting to be pretty solid.
REPORT ABUSEJanuary 4, 2013 at 6:31 pm in reply to: Annual review and planning the year ahead, 2012 A year in the zoo #118120How was my year, indeed? One thing I learned right at the end of 2012 is that I should keep a bit of a record of what I’m doing so that I can recall what I’ve done in the past year.
This was a year of some good progress for me and my family, especially in regard to figuring out some of the finer points of ADHD and acquiring some better coping strategies. More work to be done, but still, all in all, progress!
Some setbacks in that I was so busy trying to figure out the finer points of ADHD and acquire better coping skills and just the many details of life to many of the things I actually enjoy doing. But I came to the end of the year with a renewed sense of hope and focus (using the term “focus” in an ADD sort of way).
@Robbo, how long ago were you diagnosed with ADHD? I’m just over 2 years into a diagnosis and it’s no joke about it being a process. A year ago, I think I would have said I was no better, maybe even worse off, in evaluating the year. I was very discouraged that I hadn’t managed my life better and I was having a lot of frustrations with healthcare providers for my kid and a lot of extraneous family troubles that had to be dealt with.
In the High Five section, you sounded like you were proud of some things. In my limited experience, those successes build. OMG, am I really saying, “Success breeds success”? So sorry, but some cliches are true.
I’ve really learned in this past year there will be slipups too, but the slipups don’t usually eat at me the way they once did, because I’ve proven to myself I can get back on track.
So, yeah, maybe you haven’t made much progress (although I bet you’ve made more than you think), but now you know where you stand.
The question is: Where do we go from here? What’s the next thing we want to conquer?
REPORT ABUSESDWA, good job on writing the 60,000 words AND for having a plan for moving forward on finalizing the novel. I have written many words over the years (some of them actually grouped together into sentences and paragraphs!) and getting the final version in shape is always a great challenge. After getting started, of course.
I’m working on a nonfiction ebook right now (more of a manual, really), but I am coming to the realization that my original vision is all wrong. The work I’ve put in won’t be totally wasted, but it’s a bit of a setback to have come to a point where I have a near-decent draft and have to re-boot.
Nevertheless, I count this as a high-fivable victory in that (a) I started it, (b) I kept working on it, (c) I recognize that it must be rebooted, and, last but not least, (d) I am not discouraged.
We are fabulous. 😉
Up top!
REPORT ABUSERobbo, I have had these same frustrations with the site (and life). I wish that the developers would at least put up an ongoing blog indicating what problems they’ve addressed. I sent a number of messages and they just go into the ether and then, a couple of days later, I take a stab at whatever I was frustrated with and then it works. Initially, I thought it was just my incompetence and that actually made me feel bad. Now I feel silly for not just having patience. Oh well.
I, too, am frustrated with not being sure I’m a premium member. I had a ton of trouble with the registration, but then the site seemed to greet me as a Premium so, whatever.
Robbo and whoever else has the feeling of becoming stupider, I don’t want to discount the possibility of SAD, but I felt signicantly stupider after I was diagnosed with ADHD a couple of years ago. For me, I think it was mostly a combination of seeing myself more clearly and the wild attempts to fixeverything all at once. When it finally dawned on me that it was going to take a long time to chip away at the many years of problems, I started to do better.
REPORT ABUSEDecember 26, 2012 at 6:30 pm in reply to: Diagnosed 9 mos ago, still in denial, scared about meds, studying problems… :( #117910I ditto Duffie’s comments and want to add that I have had to “educate” some of my medical providers about ADHD. Admittedly, one has to be careful with this and provide solid info, but I’m a pretty careful researcher.
Many medical providers only know what they were taught in school, perhaps some updates and what their patients may tell them in the few minutes they have with the doctor. I read a broad mixture of clinical research, books for patients as well as forums like this. Frequently I’ve made some off-hand remark about a common ADHD symptom and the doc will ask me how I know that. It’s from reading forums and books! For example, I mentioned messed up time sense and the doc had never heard of that. Really? Well, let me tell you, sir … .
Thanks to the wonders of hyperfocus, when I try a new med, for example, I will keep notes (messy notes, but still …) of my reaction to it and I don’t hesitate to bring those in. Nor do I ever hesitate to print out an article or study for a doctor and I have been thanked for that (usually sincere).
I am careful not to tell the doctor what to do or make demands, but I try to provide them with data to consider as they make decisions regarding my care.
REPORT ABUSEWell. Allen, despite your devotion to nonconformity (even when unintentional), your story is no doubt a familiar one to most of us here, myself included.
Thanks to Scattybird for re-posting the link to Chris Guillebeau’s site. There is a lot there of value, much of it free. I like his year-end evaluation, too, but I haven’t kept good notes and can’t do a good one this year. I believe I finally have in place a system that will allow me to keep better records and I look forward to doing a year-end review next year.
When writing my last post, I actually wrote a fair amount about my efforts to sort out my ADHD problems, then deleted it to focus more on career-y things. Then that deletion gnawed at me, so I’m glad of your response.
You are obviously a smart guy, but I can tell you’re plagued by the most common attribute of ADHD, which I call “I’m a loser” syndrome. Everybody here who hasn’t felt that, please raise your hand. No hands raised. That’s what I thought.
Everything is hard, because you have ADHD. (That’s what she said! Ahem. Sorry.). I whine about things being hard 5 times a day on good days.
It took me a while to realize this, but I have really found that, for me, I have had to put most of my efforts into making my life work before trying to figure out what my life’s work will be. It’s a real process of trial and error, but now, almost 3 years into my diagnosis, I feel like I’ve got hold of a few things that work for me, including meds, with the hope that I can build on that.
So, I would say, if you’re really feeling you’re “not good at anything,” then throw yourself into becoming better at your day-to-day life. That’s not going to make all the pieces fall magically into place (I wish!), but it’s going to make it easier to move forward.
I hate to always refer to books, because I know it can be a pain in the ass to read sometimes, but I also strongly recommend Dr. Ed Hallowell’s, Driven to Distraction and the follow-up with good life-improvement suggestions, Delivered from Distraction. These are pretty easy for ADDers to read because they have short sections you can dip in and out of. He has written other useful books, but these 2 really cut to the chase. YouTube has a lot of videos of Dr. Hallowell as well. And there is a lot of good stuff on his website. He also has an app for ADDers, but I don’t know if it’s useful because I don’t use a smartphone (too much overwhelm!).
I’m droning on, but I must suggest one kind of off-the-wall place for guidance. There is a blogger named James Altucher who, while he doesn’t self-identify as ADD he almost certainly is, who uses a system he calls The Daily Practice. He explains this very well, and he seems to have happened upon this method rather inadvertently, although I see various versions of this idea in a lot of ADD literature. I use the Daily Practice myself in a less structured way, but even at that, it does help.
Also, I had trouble getting a picture into the profile, but, after days of trying, once again I went to Edit Profile and kept poking around on things, including clicking on the that sad blank person-shaped avatar and, at long last, voila! It let me insert a picture. So I picked the lame one you see here. (I did file complain bitterly, I mean, file a bug report on that, so presumably they fixed it and it wasn’t just my incompetence.)
MRMcKay, apologies to you for taking over your forum thread!
REPORT ABUSESo, Allen, you’re involved in a lengthy process of elimination in regard to jobs. Now you have a 100 things you know you don’t like. That’s a start. From what you’ve said, you remind me a lot of people who work at Renaissance Fairs and the like. If you like blowing things up, maybe the fireworks trade would be for you (although you have to exercise a lot of caution).
Not sure exactly what you mean when you talk about causing a riot in a buddhist temple, but if that means you’re good at getting people stirred up and excited about stuff, if you’re good with making events fun, a lot of events planners and marketing companies hire people like that to liven up dull parties and come up with good event ideas.
For a lot of jobs, it requires doing some manual labor to get your foot in the door into fields like that, but if you’re already doing manual labor, it’s at least labor with a goal in mind.
Demolition on a small or large scale (large scale–there’s the explosives again) is a good field for taking things apart without having to put them back together.
A regular career in research sort of demands that you specialize in a particular field and these days, employers tend to demand a certain level of education, but if that’s something that interests you, you could start, ahem, researching a couple of areas of expertise that catch your eye. I find that a lot of people are curious about certain things in their lives, especially medical issues, but all kinds of things, but don’t know how to go about digging out answers. I often research things for people and I think there is a demand for doing this for a fee that could start casually and be built up.
Nothing is going to be completely easy. That’s the hard part.
REPORT ABUSEDaydreaming can be a job, sort of. Of course, I guess one still has to do things (darn it!), but I channel much of daydreaming into writing of various sorts and I love to research things. Jobs like futurist (that’s a real thing!) can be a good thing for some daydreamers.
AllenWallace, if you still like circuitry and/or figuring things out, there are plenty of ways that could go, depending on what you’re good at now or what you might be able to get training for, bearing in mind what you aren’t well suited for (just as important, in my view!)
I’m very keen on the book, “The $100 Startup” by Chris Guillebeau who has a great website as well, can help to get the entrepreneurial juices flowing.
Of course, one doesn’t need to start a business to read that book. Chris does a nice job of gently steering people into looking at things from different angles. Chris urges us to look around–what are unmet needs in your life, in the lives other people. Can you fill this need by doing something you are good at?
His previous book, “The Art of Nonconformity” has some nice inspiration as well.
REPORT ABUSEThisguy, as it hard as it is, as painful, just make it through the minute, the hour, day. In your darkest moments, call a suicide hotline. Get a number from http://www.suicide.org/international-suicide-hotlines.html.
Please talk to someone at one of these hotlines–really talk. Don’t just post online–that is your backup.
REPORT ABUSESdwa, I go through life feeling like a 15 much of the time, too. And I’m ancient in chronological terms. Nevertheless, I’ve had a lot of trouble with chaos too, although I am fortunate in that certain habits, like putting my keys and purse in the same place, have stuck with me through many years.
I’ve had a lot of trouble with reminders and that sort of thing. What’s worked best for me has been to try to really ingrain one habit at a time. This is hard, because everything feels like it’s falling apart, I want to fix it all, right now! But it’s going to fall apart anyway, so I try to get that one thing integrated into my life before I tackle the next.
Have you ever read, “ADD-Friendly Ways to Organize Your Life” by Judith Kolberg & Kathleen Ladeau? The most important thing I got out of that book is that you have to do what works for you, even if it doesn’t look all Martha Stewart-y. That was very freeing, because I dream of everything looking perfect (as if).
It’s really a process of trial and error. But most importantly, one small change at a time.
REPORT ABUSEMRMcKay, I’ve taken MBTI a couple times over the years and to me, while nice to have my suspicions about myself confirmed, I didn’t find it helpful in regard to careers. The best career advice I got was from full-on career advice and assessment testing administered through a reputable college. There was a cost associated with it, but it was quite accurate.
As a person with undiagnosed ADD, I of course did not take that advice. But that’s another story.
Was there anything you liked doing as a kid, something that really fascinated you, that you learned a lot about and did? <self-love joke deleted>
REPORT ABUSEDown Under isn’t so different from Texas. In fact, I have an Aussie brother-in-law, although he’s become far too American to suit my taste. B
It’s only been a couple of years since I got The Diagnosis, but it’s clear to see the symptoms as far back as I can remember (which is quite a long time ago, I assure you, well before ADHD was a common diagnosis). Daydreaming, messiness, late with assignments–if done at all– ignored by most teachers and frustrating to the ones who cared. A little bullying, a lot of feeling lost (both literally and figuratively).
And, yep, I’ve passed it on to my son. But, as is so often noted, there are good aspects to ADHD.
The frustration and pain of being passed over for promotions is very hard. I have spent hours, days and probably months of my life wondering why and how could I do better. Since I’ve been diagnosed and medicated, I think I have a clearer understanding of the impression I’m making and am better able to strategize. But it’s still more uphill than down at times.
I’m really affirming what Rick and others have said, that medication is tool and you still have to do the work. Drat!
It’s good to be able to hash out some of these problems, which this site is providing.
So let the wild meandering begin!
REPORT ABUSEYes. We are surrounded by idiots. Except for us, of course! 😉
REPORT ABUSE -
AuthorPosts