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Wow, this is me, and so naturally, I am listening!
Me as in, I’m doing fine, I’ve had some successes in my life, I don’t feel myself to be at the same level of impairment as a lot of the folks I’m reading about here and in the ADD books.
On the other hand, yeah, there’s been a fair amount of craziness behind the scenes of a lot of my accomplishments. And I certainly haven’t accomplished as much as the folks around me. (Although I do have to remind myself I live an a crazy town full of hyper-achievers
) Still, I’ve no doubt that I could have accomplished much more without all the craziness.And I’ve spent a lot of time feeling like I need to legitimize my concerns about possibly having ADD. Because, like you, everyone I talk to says “No, you don’t have it, and I’m like that too.” But somehow this doesn’t reassure me, because, deep down, I can’t let go of the idea.
I wish I had some useful advice and/or answers to your questions – Again, because, well, they’re my questions, too! Only difference is that at my stage of life I’m not dealing with the stressful work situation, aside from the parenting stuff, which is, of course, by no means a small thing. And, wow, you want to talk about getting the “Oh, I do that too” answer, just wait till you’re trading parenting notes.
I think what we’re finding out is that it can be nearly impossible to have perspective about this one, especially when we’re talking about a spectrum disorder. Could it be better? Yeah. Could it be worse? Sure. Funny thing is, if it turns out we do have ADD, well, that means we lack even MORE perspective, because supposedly this is common with ADD’ers.
BUT – what we lack in perspective, we make up for in experience. As in, nobody has seen more of your life than you, your own self. Maybe you can’t interpret the picture, but at least you see the WHOLE picture.
So the question is, Do you have ADD, but really, the *immediate* question is, Can you handle things? and from the sound of your post, I think the answer is, not right now, without help. The fact that you managed for 27 years doesn’t change what’s going on right now, this second. And the fact is that there’s something keeping you from getting the job done. The other people in your office are getting the job done. They’re stressed, but they’re getting it done. You are not getting it done, despite trying very hard. To me, that is a hugely legitimate reason to consider that an illness might be a factor.
Is it ADD? Maybe. What if it isn’t ADD? Does that mean you’re just not cut out for the “fast pace of modern life?” (A worry for all of us here in the land of the not-yet-diagnosed).
Well, here’s the epiphany I had last night: there’s SOMETHING going on, something that is worrisome, something that is nagging at you and me. It could be ADD, it could be depression. Or anxiety. In short, it could be something that is treatable, fixable. Something that could be helped by a professional.
We owe it to ourselves to make an appointment and get it checked out.
REPORT ABUSEThanks! It’s actually a stage show called “Now What?” done by the guys who are featured on this web site, and I’m hoping it’ll be big fun! But it is probably going to seem like a convention of sorts, and the mind boggles at a theater full of ADDers – I’m just waiting for the seating of the latecomers, because it will probably double the number of folks in the hall!
Actually, Delivered from Distraction was the book that started me on this wandering, wondering path. I saw it in the library and the title kind of jumped out at me: “Distraction? Boy, is that ever MY problem!” Naturally I skipped right to the big yes-or-no checklist and was quite amused to find “Did you skip right to this quiz?” to be one of the questions!
I like the idea of having family members try out the virtual quiz; might have to try that soon!
REPORT ABUSEThanks! Now I just have to get to the theater without getting lost!
Kind of amazing that nobody’s agreed with you when you already have a diagnosed family member; guess that shows you how little people know about this. What’s funny is I’m seeing ADD in all sorts of people now that I’ve been reading about it. As in, thinking about this or that old friend and saying to myself, “Yeah, he probably has it…”
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So true, the way the ideas seem to evaporate! Although these days I find that things go out of my head when I sit down – especially at the computer –
REPORT ABUSE – and then when something forces me up out of the chair (“Hey, it’s lunchtime already!”), I’ll take about three steps and then have all kind of a-HA! moments (“Oh, I had that phone call I was going to make!”). Something about the moving feet gets my mind moving. And, yep, I’m a night owl too. Hubby’s always telling me “just go to bed earlier.” If ONLY! Never ever works, and when it does, I end up sleeping even later, as if my body’s saying “Hey, sleep – I remember that; let’s have a whole lot of it!”
Hooray, KrazyKat! Way to go! Now get that referral and make that appointment!
Motivation is such a huge topic for me, I don’t even know where to begin, but I’ve always had difficulties getting myself to do things. There is a certain degree of truth to a statement like “you can do it if you really want to,” but for someone like me the game is “How do I make myself want to do the things that are good for me?” Sure, I really really want the RESULT – a clean house – and I want that every day, but somehow things have to get to some certain point for me to take action – it’s just gotten TOO disgusting, or there are people coming over, or whatever, because what I DON’T want is to actually go to the EFFORT of cleaning. Which leaves me wondering about the people with the clean houses – do they actually want to clean, or are they just able to see down the road to that satisfaction of a clean house clearly enough to pull out the vacuum cleaner and suck it up?
REPORT ABUSE There are those rare days when I actually want to clean, but it never lasts – so, yeah, I can clean if I really want to, but 99% of the time, I just don’t get that want-to feeling.
@ CurlyMoe, who said “In Jr and Sr Highschool I was voted the girl most likely to end up a bag lady”:
In high school I was voted “Most Quiet.” Clearly they never met me on the Internet! Course, that was before there WAS such a thing as the Internet….
But it’s true, I was, and there’s this lovely photo of me in the yearbook accompanying my title. Maybe they thought I looked pensive, but I can tell that they captured me at the height of my depression. What a beautiful memory to carry around, ah, yes.
I find all this funny because one of those ADD quiz questions is always “Do you talk a lot?” and I laugh, and I check the NO box, because in public I’m an absolute clam.
And then I get on the Internet and it’s Blah, blah, blah….
As you can all see!
I guess I’m what you’d call “circumstantially talkative.” Probably true for a lot of folks, but it can be rather dramatic in me. Get me started, and you’ll be sorry, and not just for all the effort you expended in the process!
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Quoting Steffie101:
“I can’t tell you how many people I’ve had walk through the doors at my doc’s office with LEGITIMATE MEDICAL ISSUES who talked themselves out of treatment because they are self described ‘hypochondriacs’, ‘drama queens’, ‘head cases’, etc. My doc always says “You have to give me a chance to save your life.” and I believe that for any one with any kind of issue. Even if 80% of the time, it’s ‘nothing’, that means 20% of the time, it’s SOMETHING. Go and be assessed. All that you have to lose is a copay, basically. “
Those are the words I really need to hear, and I thank you SO MUCH for saying this. I’m one of those people that HATES going to the doctor unless I can be absolutely sure I have a “reason” – and somewhere along the line I have managed to equate “reason” with “positive diagnosis”, as if I am somehow a foolish person – not to mention a horrible person, wasting the doctor’s time – to have something checked out that turns out to be nothing. Have I mentioned my million insecurities?
REPORT ABUSE Your post was extraordinarily reassuring.
Wanted to respond to Geoduck’s comment about giftedness because it’s such a good point, and at times I’ve wondered if my mind went wandering off in class because the class wasn’t challenging enough. Certainly I got by in those early years without having to do a whole lot of studying – which made it quite a shock later on where good study habits were far more essential.
So hard to tease everything apart, really: I remember I started hitting the wall in math class around sixth grade but really started struggling in 7th – was it hormonal? That whole “math anxiety” thing that supposedly plagues adolescent girls? Or was it because 7th grade is when they started splitting off the more advanced students from the rest of the class, and maybe I wasn’t entirely up to the challenge of the advanced class I was in?
Or was it something about that year’s particular curriculum? There seem to be certain categories in math that I grasped and others that left me in the dust.
Or was it just the new setting, the building…or the added distraction of sneaking peeks at boys (sure, there were boys in grade school, but boys were icky then
)….who knows?For some reason I have trouble considering myself gifted, although when cornered I’ll admit I was a pretty bright grade-school kid. I have this memory of everything suddenly getting really hard, but what’s funny about that is, for the most part, on paper, it all stays good, even during most of those years when I thought I was struggling so mightily – the grades were all still mostly honor-roll level, with the only really notable exceptions happening during my senior year, when I was emotionally going under pretty generally.
But, truthfully, I can’t see myself as gifted. To me a gifted kid is someone who pursues interests far more passionately than I ever did. I look at people like my husband and my kids and I would call them gifted, but somehow, for me, I just can’t consider that I might have ever worn that badge. Truth, or insecurity issues? Or both?
REPORT ABUSEHoly cow! Where have I been?!? All these great replies, and I’ve been off…well, the usual here, there, everywhere.
I suppose the first thing I should do is give an update on the diagnosis attempt: To date, I haven’t been seen or managed to get an appointment. Initially I was quite fired up to get seen…Well, maybe fired up doesn’t have it exactly right. Maybe “anxious” is a better word, as in, I nervously called my primary-care doctor’s office asking for a list of psychiatrists who specialized in adult ADHD, and I could barely get the words out without choking up.
Got a list of several names and numbers, and started making calls…and leaving a lot of messages. I was amazed how rare it was to have my call returned the same day. Once I did hear back, I learned that two were not seeing new patients. One would see me, but doesn’t take my insurance, so I opted not to go to him. One had openings….in August. One had a non-working phone number. Actually, that one’s kind of funny. I dialed the number twice and got “We’re sorry; the number you have dialed is not in service.” Checked the number on the web site: Oh, dopey me! I wrote one of the digits wrong – no WONDER! I will now dial the correct number….We’re sorry; the number you have dialed is not in service.”
I think that was the point that I kind of lost my nerve on the whole deal. After all…why am I jumping through all these hoops when maybe I don’t really have this?….
On the evening of the non-working number call, I did a little frustrated venting to my husband, which resulted in an interesting conversation with my husband. His conclusion was, “Why do you need an ‘official’ diagnosis? Why can’t you just say you have it, and just….drink coffee?” I’m oversimplifying his point, and obviously he’s oversimplifying, but his basic question was, unless you want to go on meds, why see a doctor? And since I wasn’t sure I really needed to be on meds at the time of that chat, I didn’t have a better answer than, “Well, it would make me feel like everything wasn’t all my fault.”
And then he swept me up in his arms and exclaimed, “Imperfections?!? My darling, whatever are you talking about???”
OK, maybe that last part is a bit of fiction.
I think, unlike the rest of my family, he can at least see and understand that I flake out a little more than is convenient, and perhaps slightly more than is average. But he didn’t seem to get on board with the basic idea that there is anything inherently different about having a professional decide whether my space-cadet tendencies have a name, versus me deciding by my own self that I could call it ADD, employ some ADD-style strategies to my life, and, sure, drink more coffee on those days when I have to focus more.So I mulled on that for a while. Still mulling on it, actually, and that’s a whole separate posting, the mulling. Stay tuned.
REPORT ABUSEJim – Welcome, and I love the way you write! Very evocative; I felt like I was watching the whole scene right along with you.
Don’t hide; if for no other reason, don’t hide because your story is too intriguing.
Like you, I’m in my mid-forties and only just now connecting the dots….unlike you, they don’t yet form a clear picture of “Do-I-have-this?” All the same, I feel for you arriving at this place at this time in life; it’s a bit bewildering, to say the least.
Glad to hear you’ve already got a therapist and can get some answers soon!
REPORT ABUSESomewhere at home in my old bedroom my parent’s house is a drawer which contains a half-finished cross-stitch kit, a half-finished embroidery sampler kit, a half-finished woven potholder, a half-finished macrame bracelet, etc, etc. The one thing I *might* have finished was a knitted mitten, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t….and I’m most definitely sure I didn’t ever make the other mitten to complete the set.
As one who is still in the “do I have it?” category of ADD, I find this all knitting chat sort of interesting. Before reading this thread I would have pointed to that drawer as an obvious clue: Look! I never finished anything!…
Now I have to wonder if it just means I didn’t like crafts so much.
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