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July 1, 2011 at 4:17 pm in reply to: Anger due to the differences between severe and mild sufferers #105358
I wrote the following early this morning. I don’t have internet at home so I have to wait to log on. In reading through the additional posts I just want to say STOP APOLOGIZING!!!!! My husband’s best friend does not apologize for being 6’5”. The kid at McDonalds that has Down syndrome and does a wonderful job cleaning the floor does not apologize. The sun does not apologize for being bright. Now if you step on someone’s toe you should apologize for stepping on the toe not for the fact that you were distracted by the bird landing on the window sill. We should not apologize for being who we are. Pete-puma I love the blue bunnies. I see things in life that other people don’t see and it always amazes them that I saw/thought of “that”. Now on to what I wrote this morning.
Librarian_chef – I understand your frustration. After reading your post yesterday, I went to the CADDAC web site and watched Dr. Russell Berkley’s whole lecture on ADHD. I have seen bits and pieces on youtube and many have made reference to it, including yourself. There are parts of the lecture that I had not seen before but a couple of things struck me.
1. ADDers tend to underreport their symptoms and tend to have a more upbeat attitude about life. I know that before I watched the show, I thought even at 58 years old that I could still “fix” myself, I could still find that perfect job if I tried a little harder to be organized I could straighten out my life. I have lost two jobs since I was diagnosed last year but I still tend to go back to the upbeat attitude.
2. We as a group, need to stop looking at ADD as a gift. None of those successful ADDers reached their success because of ADD. Dr. Berkley says that each one of them has gifts that they were able to use in spite of their ADD. I also have gifts that I would like a chance to use, especially to make some money. I am finding gifts that I didn’t know I had because I have been trying to “fix” myself and ended up suppressing things that didn’t need suppressing. I was trying so hard to be “normal” that I overlooked parts of my personality that are, quite frankly, very interesting. In some ways I feel freer now than I have ever felt. Unfortunately that is backfiring on me because I am not holding myself accountable for anything right now and that is bad.
3. Dr. Berkley was talking about accountability. We need to have artificial and more immediate “consequences” to make up for the fact that we can’t see the delayed consequences. I had actually looked at a piece of his lecture a few days ago and started setting up a way to be held accountable to someone in my family without actually going into detail about what I am actually doing. Now I am sitting here crying because that was 4 days ago and the things on my list to do are still not done and I have not finished setting it up. I was having trouble deciding some of the details. I am doing this because I can’t afford a coach and believe me if I had the money, I would be on the phone with a coach right now. Coaching is one way to have the artificial consequences Dr. Berkley talked about.
Personally, I think what you are seeing is a struggle in some of us between trying to keep the upbeat attitude so we can at least try to move forward and a natural desire to deny that things are so bad that we need to be medicated in order to function. I know I spend a lot of time in the Land of Denial. I also think that it is natural for you to be angry about the differences. The forums are here so we can vent. So go ahead and vent. There is no need to apologize and no need for any of us reading your post to feel the need to apologize. Sorry, the subject of apologizing is a pet peeve of mine. That’s another post.
I sometimes get angry/jealous at people who have no trouble walking because I have trouble. Then I think of my husband who has no feet and who has decided that he will never walk again even with the prosthesis and feel lucky that I can still walk. It’s all a matter of degree. At least you don’t have Asperger’s!
And Trashman, there is always going to be someone smarter no matter how smart a person thinks they are. I have a nephew that has a phographic memory and his IQ is so high that they can’t measure it. My IQ is high but next to him, If I let it happen, I could feel really stupid BUT I have always taken the attitude that I can learn something from EVERYBODY I meet. Just keep learning.
REPORT ABUSE@pete-puma what is an M&A lawyer? My niece is a lawyer and is very, very hyperactive type of ADHDer. It took her two different medications to get through law school (her second degree) but she made it. She hated her law firm and finally ended up reviewing contracts and works at home. She spends most of the day on Facebook but she gets the contracts reviewed.
I don’t think any profession is out of the realm of possibility for someone with ADD it is just how the disorder has manifested for you personally. I am 58 and have still not found a profession I can stick with. The longest I ever worked for a company was 10 years but I had 5 different positions in that company and I have realized lately how often I almost lost my job there. I have a problem with denial. I have decided recently that I want to do two things. One is being an ADD councilor. I have always tried to help other people when I could and I am great at giving advice and helping to guide people. I help my daughter’s friends all the time and most of them are ADD so I have had some practice. The other is a part time business selling legal insurance. This is something I did for a while then tried something else and now I am going back to it. I really enjoyed talking to people and showing them how it can help them.
I am already aware of the things I have problems with and am in the process of fine tuning ways to keep myself on track. The more I find out about ADHD the better I am able to deal with it. If I do a third profession it would be something to do with plants. I love plants and one of the things I wanted to do with my life when I was young was have a plant nursery and sell flowers.
REPORT ABUSENow I understand what my friend Sean meant when he said Ritalin causes cancer! Not something I had heard about and now I know that he didn’t take the time to check that statement. Either that or he was messing with me. He had just been fired from his job when I saw him last and was on his way to get drunk. He lost his job because he is very ADHD and was making bad mistakes on forms that were costing the company a lot of money.
Maybe he should become a pirate and stop global warming! 😆
REPORT ABUSEI was wondering if anyone else was verbalizing their thoughts or “thinking out loud” as I call it. I verbalize my thoughts constantly. It helps me lock in ideas, make sure I’m not making mistakes or helps me keep on one train of thought. Of course I can only do this a lot at home. I find myself doing it in public alot and I used to get a lot of weird looks however; with the advent of cell phones and hidden hands free devices I get fewer looks when I forget where I am and start thinking out loud.
Unfortunately, I was not able to think out loud with the job I had in 2008. I made so many mistakes there that I finally got fired after only 5 months. They put extra training time in for me and everything but it didn’t help. Serious job mismatch for my ADD which I did not know about at the time. I would spend 2 to 3 hours a day double and triple checking my work and still mistakes were slipping through.
You get what you think about. If you’re thinking “I hope I don’t screw up again” then you will most likely screw up. If you relax and say to yourself that I’m going to do well then the mistakes should be fewer. We ADDers are always going to make mistakes just like everyone else in this world but we can help ourselves by relaxing, doing the best job we can with confidence (easy to say), and thanking the powers that be for word processing software with spell and grammar checkers!!!
As for double and triple checking what we do, I read my posts at least 3 times in my word processing software before I copy and paste into whatever subject I am responding to then read it one more time before I post. I always have to correct something or have something to add. Oh and did you know that you can edit something that you have already posted? I do it all the time.
REPORT ABUSECurlymoe115
The information I have is that you don’t ever outgrow it but you do manage it better if you are diagnosed early so it may APPEAR that you outgrow it. I was not diagnosed until 58 years old. I had been “managing” my life but I was miserable. It was not until all the external structure of my life evaporated that my symptoms became immobilizing.
You must have it all together having been diagnosed so long ago. Us Newbies should be asking you for advice!!!
REPORT ABUSEMemzak is the first six letters of my last name in an obscure game language that uses letter substitution. I have been using it for more than ten years. If you are using it then you must have seen it somewhere online. At one point I had thought about copyrighting the name and the longer version of my full last name to use as a business identification but “never got around to it”. How long have you been using it?
REPORT ABUSEI just thought of another funny and embarassing ADD moment this morning. I went to a business school for a year back in 1995. During orientation the instructor said something about a “Hump Day” which was the middle of a term where we would celebrate that the term was half over. It was a day of donuts and chatting and storytelling etc. A fun day. Well classes started and one of the teachers was talking about what she expected on each day of the week. Well she called Wednesday “hump day” and I immediately asked will we have donuts on that day. Threw her completely off! Giggles from my classmates and an explanation from the teacher in front of the class that no we do not have donuts each Wednesday, it’s just the middle of the week. Then she went off on how she wished someone would bring here donuts every Wednesday, she wouldn’t mind being waited on, etc. I was 34 years old at the time. I felt like I was 5 years old. It’s funny now but then I was mortified.
REPORT ABUSEWhen did you email the hiring manager? I would wait at least 2 days before contacting them again. I remember getting really angry and upset once because someone had not answered an email right away and fournd out later they had been out sick and were not checking emails at home. I felt rather foolish for complaning. The ball is in their court at the moment. We are not the most patient of people but you have to tough it out.
With a legal prescription, they can’t deny you the job based on just the drug test. I believe that is true in the US and Canada.
REPORT ABUSEFor some reason Macro focus comes to mind but I can’t be sure about that. Right now June 12th feels like a year ago. I did have an epiphany this morning about clutter and something that Dr. J demonstrated on stage. He was describing how the two classes of medications help us focus. One was bringing the foreground noise into focus and the other was making the background noise fade away.
I got to thinking about why we live in such clutter, why we lose things right in front of us like a rock dropped into a dark pool of water. The way Dr. J explained how the two classes of medications worked made something click in my head. He was holding his hand up on stage and put one finger of his other hand in front of it. Normal people see and hear the teacher (single finger) in front of the background noise (the open hand) but for an ADDer the single finger becomes part of the open hand and it all blends together.
Just like sounds become part of the background noise, objects become part of the visual background “noise”. We literally don’t see what is in front of our faces because it has “dropped out of site” into the background clutter. Oh dear, a de’ja vu moment. Why do I feel like I have actually heard this before and forgot and am now rediscovering this? Would not be the first time that has happened.
Maybe if we all stop and notice what is around us than maybe we won’t live in such a cluttered environment? It could happen. Kind of like Rick’s game of noticing.
REPORT ABUSEJune 17, 2011 at 1:54 am in reply to: Is modern life and work just too complex to keep up with? #104966@sugargremlin, I found when i took the test on this site that I had been in denial about the hyperactive part. It is very hard to be objective about yourself. Ask people around you that you trust. My daughter was very eager to tell me how “busy” I am even when i am sitting “still”. I had to watch the show three time before I could admit that maybe this was me, even though each time I watched it I was having “aha” moments. If you think about it and talk to other people you may be scoring higher than you are without the feedback.
REPORT ABUSEWelcome! You have come to the right place.
Someone gave me some advice once. He said “do something, even if it’s the wrong thing, just do something”. Up until now I have actually ignored this advice, even forgotten about it for a while but in the last few days it keeps popping into my head. Your post reminded me of it again. Just doing something can help feelings of inadequacy. Never mind that it wasn’t what you really needed to do. I suppose eventually one would run out of “wrong” things to do and actually get around to doing the “right” things.
I have to warn you that I have been feeling really good the last couple of days. I have actually followed this advice without thinking about it and have accomplished several things on my list without realizing it. I just did them. I had a few minutes here and there when I was waiting for my daughter and did stuff.
Quick history, I have been “working” on myself for 40 years, trying to “fix” the problems that my ADD has been causing me. It’s been close to a year since my diagnosis and all that work plus some things that have happened in the last 6 months I think have taken me over the hump. In just the last few days, since Sunday actually (I was able to go to the show where I met Dr. J) I have been in the best mood and my mood gets better every day. I may be missing a few of the pieces of the puzzle still but I’m going to really enjoy finding them!
Hang in there. Knowing is half the battle, what you do about it can win the war.
REPORT ABUSEThank you KrazyKat that makes more sense. I still have trouble thinking of this as linear though. I believe there are other factors affecting how ADD/ADHD presents itself. I started out as a bubbly, active little girl that was always getting into trouble and ended up totally intraverted, inhibited, “squashed” and very unhappy. I’m still doing research on this so I will wait to say more.
REPORT ABUSENo I don’t have dyscalculia but I still suck at math. About ½ way through algebra I I would get lost. My sister is a math whiz and really good at helping the math challenged and ever she could not help me. I can do basic math in my head if it’s not too much but mostly I need paper or calculator because my memory sucks. Women have more trouble estimating distances; about 75% of us can’t do it well. I don’t remember where I saw that but I believe it had something to do with gender difference in estimating space, distance, and remembering right and left. If anyone can find the reference I would appreciate it.
I was in accounting for several years and my problem was more along the lines of transposing numbers and letters. If a number was 255 I would put it in the computer as 225, etc. After learning that I’m ADD I have been looking for a new career.
REPORT ABUSEUNBELIEVABLE! The misinformation in the article was bad enough but the comments were making me sick.
The fact that a professional does not believe actually does not surprise me that much. I had already been diagnosed and was send to a different psychiatrist for maintenance who immediately said I didn’t have it even though I had already been diagnosed. I will stick to this website where we will all know the truth and we must all spread the word. If we each educated two people who each educated two more people and we did that every day it would not be long before we could wipe out the ignorance. Well I can dream can’t I?
REPORT ABUSEWelcome! You have come to the right place.
At least you knew something about it before you were diagnosed. All I knew about ADHD when I first watched the program is that kids got it and my niece had it. I watched the show solely to understand my hyperactive, 30 year old, social butterfly niece. I watched the show 3 times before I accepted that I am ADHD and then only after I had my daughter watch it and tell me the yes ma you are definitely ADHD (we usually just say ADD). A year later and many hours of study and dealing with depression and doctors and losing 2 more jobs I feel just in the last few days that I a finally getting a handle on things thanks, in a major way, to this website and all the people involved on all levels.
My husband and I did a lot of fighting while my daughter was growing up. She will be 25 in August. She is most definitely NOT ADD which I feel very grateful for because she is helping me get my life back on track. Back on track? Make that starting my life over again. I won’t go into detail here; you may not be ready to read a post that long.
The place to begin is to educate yourself on how ADD/ADHD affects adults. It is different than children. Watch the videos and read as much as you can stand every day. Someone will post something that you can relate to. there are a multitude of good books on the subject like “You mean I.m not Lazy, Stupid, or Crazy?”, and “Delivered from DIstraction” among them. It will be a bumpy ride but it will be well worth it.
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