[Mike]

I LIKE THAT.
Its kind of like mindfulness meditation but since I forget what I noticed, writing it down will help me figure out where my mind goes.

REPORT ABUSE

[Mike]

The hard thing is to know you’ve had relationships go south, jobs fall apart, opportunities vanish… and not get disheartened. It seems so monumental. What I have found is that I have bursts of energy, so I can move things forward, and when I run out of steam, I’ve learned to just admit, “I’ve run out of steam.” Are we all this hard on ourselves? Maybe not. Maybe the ones who aren’t this hard on themselves settle, or find a different way.

REPORT ABUSE

[Mike]

Here’s the thing to consider about whether you are a failure. Are you kind? Honest? Do you love your wife? Do you care about the world? Do you help others? Do you have friends? (You must, you say you do.) Have you kept trying even when you failed? Are you insightful? Empathetic?

Talk to those friends you have, and ask them what they like about you, or what strengths they see in you, that you may not see.

I’ve done this and people have been so much nicer and more supportive than I ever imagined. Yeah, a couple of them had stuff to get off their chests first. And no wonder. I’d screwed up a lot. (I didn’t use the ADHD as an excuse. I found they didn’t much care. They were just pissed.)

I used to feel so beaten. And yet I had friends too. And people I cared about. And goals… dreams…

My only suggestion, and this is the perfect website for this, don’t take everything so seriously or believe every thought you have about yourself. One of the suggestions I like is to play at life. Like we did when we were kids. We didn’t care if we won or lost, we just played. Every day. Again and again.

I’m learning, slowly, to play again. I hope you do too.

REPORT ABUSE

[Mike]

You know what’s a great activity for kids? Magic. I have ADHD and I love magic. It takes patience and when I get practicing it really absorbs me. It also seems to do a lot for calming me, for increasing patience… and I think it actually gives me a bit of a feeling of power or having an advantage or something… I feel like I finally know something that no one else does. And most of my life it was the other way around, always feeling like I was missing out on something everyone else knew!

REPORT ABUSE

[Mike]

I have a friend who went on a heavy fish diet and ended up with all this mercury in her body. So you have to watch where you get your fish oils. But everywhere I look, they’re saying those Omega 3’s are good. By the way, what is a fatty acid? Sounds weird.

REPORT ABUSE

[Mike]

My advice? Try everything. One thing I read is that ADHD people can actually do well at very simple, methodical jobs. No-brainers. Cause it allows us to tune out and just dream. When I was a student I had a job sorting different kinds of mailing containers at a government health lab. (Weird, I know.) And I could do it by feel and weight. There were like about six kinds, and I could tell by touch and a glance and the colour which bin they went into. I got so that I could do the job and actually read a book at the same time.

Dunno if that helps. But with everyone saying get a high stimulation job I thought it was interesting that we could also do something, pardon the expression, but mindless.

Maybe that’s why I like mowing the lawn and shoveling the driveway in winter.

REPORT ABUSE

[Mike]

Dr. John Fleming on Eglinton Avenue was very good. He actually did one of the webinars on this site, I think. But he’s a psychologist. And you have to pay. On the plus side, he has ADHD so he knows of what he speaks.

REPORT ABUSE

[Mike]

The fact is, you can’t set boundaries for your fiance. You can only set them for you. That said, you can set boundaries around your father-in-law, for example saying you will not tolerate homophobia, racism, etc.. And don’t.

I’ve just been reading Gina Pera’s book about relationships, “Is It You, Me, or the ADD?” and she has all kinds of great advice. But it seems to me a lot of it comes under the heading of communication. And standing up for yourself and what you believe in.

You can’t set your fiances boundaries with his toxic father, but you can set yours.

I was at an event 20 years ago, in as mall town, and a guy started telling racist jokes. And I said nothing. But my friend else called him on it and said he didn’t think it was funny and so on. The joke teller was stunned, then came up a few minutes later and apologized and thanked my friend. I was shocked.

Maybe people want to be called to more than they are.

Dunno.

It may backfire. In which case you won’t have to deal with him! Ha ha!

I just know what when I don’t stand up for myself I feel terrible afterwards. Now I always think, what would I want my kids to do? What would make me proud of them? And then I do that.

REPORT ABUSE

[Mike]

I like the phrase analysis paralysis.

I find I could spend the rest of my life analyzing what my friend meant by what he said or what a date meant when she said this or that. And I think of what I should have said. Or could have said. Which is totally negating whatever I did do.

I’ve been reading one of Thomas Brown’s books on ADHD and he talks about the fact that we can really get stuck on emotions, like worry or sadness or whatever, and not be able to move on. I don’t hear that much in other books about ADHD but it sure rang true with me.

Sometimes I just want to smack myself and go, ‘Get over it!’ Like I wasted a year of my life in ‘mourning’ after I broke up with my first girlfriend. I only went out with her for about 3 months, and then I spent the next 12 months fixated and obsessing on what happened. Four times longer! God help me if I get married and then divorced after 10 years. I’ll spend the next 40 analyzing what went wrong and what I should have said to ‘show her.’

REPORT ABUSE

[Mike]

I like the suggestion from the Now What workshop they did at the Science Centre a while back:

If someone makes fun of you, go even further and make fun of yourself.

I used to get pissed at people who made fun of me. I was really touchy. I still am, I guess.

Anyways, what happened was a ‘friend’ made fun of my memory when a bunch of us were out at a restaurant. He said it as a joke, “Man, you would forget your own funeral! You are so spaced out sometimes.” And everyone laughed, but it sure felt like there was an edge to what he said. Like he was taking a shot at me.

But on the way to the restaurant (and yes I was late) I decided I would try the ‘laughing at myself’ idea.

So when he took his shot at me, I forced a smile and then said, “This is nothing. One time I was giving a presentation to a client at an airport hotel, with a special room booked, and I showed up on the wrong day. A week ahead! I sat there for like an hour, waiting, getting cheesed at these people for not showing up!”

Everyone laughed.

So I told another story about my memory. And everyone laughed. But it was a different kind of laugh. It was like a laugh you would want from your friends.

I have done this a couple of times since, but it’s hard, cause my first reaction is always a nasty, Screw off, which I never say, I just think, and I shut down. Which is kind of dumb, cause I’m letting someone ruin my evening or whatever.

REPORT ABUSE

[Mike]

By the way, you don’t have to be with someone who has ADHD. As long as they understand it, appreciate it, and allow for it.

Even better, if they are supportive! Also, it’s interesting how dismissive and nasty people can be about ADHD. The question to ask is, “Why?” Why, with all the stuff that’s going on in the world, do you get so steamed about this? Like asking, why do Televanglists rail against sin or homosexuals… And whaddya know, a year later they’re caught in a washroom with a Teamster.

REPORT ABUSE

[Mike]

I’m a guy. I live with a woman. So I will find these posts useful/interesting/helpful. Keep us updated.

I mean, it’s not like I’m gonna go through it, but I’m definitely affected by it.

REPORT ABUSE

[Mike]

You have bought into the belief that you have to have a career and only do one thing. Sure that’s the way the world wants you to be. It makes it easier to market to you and it’s cheaper for big corporations if people are willing to be drones and climb into cubicles until they go postal.

Think of all the people lack your talents… scratch that, all the people who don’t believe they have a lot of talents because they’ve never tried a lot of stuff, or more often, just gave up the first few times they messed up.

(Imagine if we didn’t learn to walk until we were thirty. People would take a step, fall, like a baby does, maybe try it a few more times, maybe even try for a whole hour, and then go, “Clearly, I’m not good at this.” Babies don’t care how they look or if they fail. They just want to walk.)

Sorry, I diverged!

Think of all the people who would envy your set of skills.

Why make a single career? Why do one thing?

Or even better, combine a bunch of things you like a create a whole new career path. Someone took High School year books and computers and created Facebook.

REPORT ABUSE

[Mike]

My suggestion would be that it’s fine to be your own boss, but have someone you have to report to. Best if it’s not your spouse.

Maybe find someone in a similar but not competing business and be there for each other, calling once in the morning, at lunch and at the end of the day to report in.

You cannot believe the difference it makes to have someone to report to. It forces you to assess what went right and what went wrong in the day, what worked and what didn’t. And if you get someone good they can help you see thepositives in a day that migh totherwise seem like a bad one.

REPORT ABUSE

[Mike]

All the scientific studies done so far have shown no value in Neuro-feedback. Beyond the placebo effect and the effect of sitting quietly.

Too bad.

REPORT ABUSE

[Author]

Posts