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January 5, 2018 at 7:49 pm in reply to: Does anyone else find the holidays more challenging? #128516
I am constantly out of sync with the rest of the world. What I do, is suspend impulse control for a little bit, and get gifts for people, when I am thinking about them. Wrap them. Announce “Merry Christmas”, “Happy Birthday”, or “Happy Anniversary”. Which ever one is closest. They know by now, chapter and verse about my affliction(s) and we all have fun with it.
Otherwise known as “Bending the world to fit you”
- This reply was modified 6 years, 3 months ago by shutterbug55.
Just one. Me.
REPORT ABUSENovember 8, 2016 at 5:56 pm in reply to: Anyone else have coexisting mental conditions besides add?? #128149I think Dr J wrote a paper or talked about coexisting mental conditions of ADD. The official term is called “Comorbidity”. Follow this LINK to an article that got me started in this subject.
Hope this helps.
REPORT ABUSEI can’t say for sure, but no. neural typical minds don’t think nearly as fast or on as many things at the same time as we do.
I tell a story: My neighbor lost his license a while ago. He rides his lawn mower to the store to get Milk, Bread, and Eggs for his wife. At two miles an hour, he gets there and back in about 3 hours. Along the way, he sees bugs, rocks, and trees. He gets back home and delivers the groceries. That is how the normal mind works.
An ADD mind is like a Ferrari with no breaks, in 6th gear, doing 240 mph. In that 3 hours, we could go from Seattle to Spokane and back. See the gorge, the wheat fields, wind turbines, and some really great mountains. After about 6 hours, we come home talking about all our cool adventures and the things we learned and saw. “What about the Groceries?” they say. “What about the cool stuff I saw!” we say. We are driven by what is interesting, because that wakes up our brains. They are driven by what is important.
This is nothing to be embarrassed over. No more than a diabetic should be embarrassed. It is how we are wired. We had no choice in the matter and there was NOTHING our parents did or did not do to make us the way we are.
The H in ADHD stands for Hyperactivity. Meaning some of us can’t sit still, or quiet our thoughts. Medication should help, but if you are experiencing side-effects that overshadow the benefits of taking meds, talk to your doctor and switch meds.
Addiction is where you take drugs against all warnings and advice from a doctor to get an effect or high AT THE COST OF YOUR HEALTH. Dependence is where you take drugs to help you live normally, under the care and advice from a doctor. A Diabetic is not addicted to insulin, they are dependent.
Our brains work the way they do because our brains do not make enough Dopamine and Norepinephrine. Our brains also have too many destructive receptors for those two endorphins. The combination makes us the way we are. The medications the doctors prescribe for us, make our brains produce these chemicals so we can function.
Read about the condition
Hope this helps.
REPORT ABUSEHello catr,
I am 60+, and I was diagnosed about 4 years ago.
If I was going to give any advise, it would be to give yourself some time to come to terms with your diagnosis. In many ways, it is like being diagnosed with terminal cancer.
WHAT?!
DID HE JUST SAY THAT?!?
yep.
The good news is nobody dies from ADD. But it has been affecting your life and you haven’t been aware of it. You have been aware, something’s wrong, or you wouldn’t have started asking questions. Now you are aware of what might be happening to you. Most people self diagnose, and get a formal diagnosis, then start on meds and counseling. So. If taking meds scares you, don’t take them, yet. Get your diagnosis, get a psychiatrist who specializes in ADD to prescribe medications.
Eventually, you will have a diagnosis and a bottle of pills. Get some counseling. They can help you get going, and deal with all of the emotional stuff going on. They can also start working on coping mechanisms. Remember the pills. Taking those will help you get some control over your brain. Recognize when your ADD symptoms are triggered, and give you time to react appropriately.
Medications that work for me, and some others here won’t necessarily work for you. Work with your psychiatrist to figure out what works for you.
Read about ADD. Become an expert. The more you know about the condition, the more you will be able to participate in your own treatment. Oh yea. BTW, there is no cure for ADD, we just work around our symptoms.
Counseling: both psycological and occupational. That will help with the feelings and coping mechanisms.
Medication: Help your brain function more normally, which will give you a chance to employ your newly learned coping mechanisms and gain some control over your life.
Read and study about ADD: Give you the knowledge to help in your treatment and work with the doctors and counselors.
I am sure there are a million things I haven’t covered, but this will get you started…
You are going to be OK
REPORT ABUSEDo you think counseling would help? A neutral third party could identify what is bothering you and give you ideas to constructively redirect your reaction patterns to something more productive. I did this almost 5 years ago, and my wife went from a roommate/PITA nag to being my best friend/wife/biggest fan.
Understanding your condition cannot be cured, but it can be treated and worked around, might help you both. Counseling, medication, and life coaching might help you too.
REPORT ABUSEHi Scattybird!
I looked up Trello and it looks like it is a software package/adaptation for Agile. This is why there are so many agile terms and processes. I have been secretly experimenting on my son, and using agile methodology on him so he can break down tasks into “bite-sized” pieces.
So far so good.
REPORT ABUSESorry I am so dense. I want to make sure I am answering the right question.
As far as the meds go, I think it is possible to see significant effects from the meds. I am working toward my first PhD, and one of the hottest selling drugs in school are ADD medications. In fact, I almost got expelled because I was taking my meds at lunch and some busy-body reported me. There is a problem at universities, where people want that edge over everyone else so people take them as a performance enhancing drug for the brain.
There are studies on people, and animals on brain chemistry and brain function who have taken ADD medications. I think I was reading the paper in Scientific American Psychology or something like that. Anyway it was hypothysizing the brain chemistry of individuals that take ADD meds, when they don’t have ADD, change their brains. Scary stuff.
As far as diagnosis goes, there is a marked difference in how adults present with ADD and how children present. Consider for a moment the fact that you have much more experience hiding the fact you are ADD so you mask the symptoms far more than a child. When they test an adult, they are paying attention to your history and giving it more importance. They will have you give friends and family, questionnaires so they can see how your ADD affects others around you.
If you want a more accurate assessment, you should probably go to someone who has experience with adult ADD.
Hope this helps.
REPORT ABUSELet me see if I have this right. You went to a psychologist who’s practice is treating children with ADD and you got tested, but you don’t have it, despite having some of the traits. Is that right?
REPORT ABUSEFebruary 18, 2016 at 12:59 am in reply to: How young do signs of ADD begin to make themselves known? #127785You would expect the signs and symptoms of ADD/ADHD to appear before the age of seven. However, it can be difficult to distinguish between attention deficit disorder and normal “kid behavior.”
I would suggest becomming very familliar with the symptoms and watch for them. Prior to school, they will appear at home and at play. If you see these signs on a consistent basis and your child is having difficulty because of the symptoms, then you might want to talk to someone.
1yr is WAY too early to tell. Relax and enjoy the all the “firsts” that are in store for you in the next few years.
REPORT ABUSEDJ,
Some other weird thing happened today. My son, who is chronically late with all his schoolwork, finished the entire week’s work, so he could have the week off with his friends. He has all A’s this semester, and is “failing” one class. (he is getting a B-).
The road to this point was long and difficult. It got to the point, where I dreaded coming home. It’s not all rainbows and unicorns. We still have our moments, but they are fewer and further between. I also keep reminding him about his accomplishments by asking him how it feels to be caught up. How it feels to have the answers in his class connects (he is in an on-line school). How it feels to get a full night’s sleep. He is liking it all.
I’m no expert, but I have been down the road you are on. Let me know how things are going.
REPORT ABUSEDJ,
Welcome to my world. 🙂
OK remember you are dealing with a teen. ANYTHING you do that disturbs their world will be met with great resistance. In fact, they will strive to be such a PITA, that you will not attempt such a heinous thing ever again. Now to make things worse, you are dealing with a teen who is ADD. The hallmark of ADD is poor executive function (Maintaining your cool) and not liking to be derailed. As parents, getting an ADD teen to do something, we hit the triple whammy in melt-down scenarios. Yea… it is so much fun. ADD also delays our emotional maturity as well. So dealing with a 15yr old, is really like dealing with a 12yr old in a 15yr old body.
you are the parent. You are in charge.
What you are doing, while painfull to you, the kid, the pets, the neighbors and even the aliens in orbit, has to be done because you are not only getting him/her to do their work, you are teaching skills that will allow them to live productive lives.
Start small. The year is going to be a fail, so take their best class and coach them on doing better. My son likes math. He was failing. I started out by working the problems and talking him through them, with him not doing much of the work.
Why just one class? You are not only trying to get them to pass High school, you are trying to prepare them for the world.
Baby steps.
Patience.
Don’t try for perfection all at once. With me doing most of the work, I started asking him to take the chalk and continue, with me providing guidance.
Patience.
Introduce new concepts. “Lets look it up in the book” I said. He said “This class has a book?”
Patience.
Challenge him/her. At their age, they think they are smarter than you. Let them prove it by doing more of the work. Help them through the rough spots.My son has an A in Geometry, now and thinks I am from another planet, because I do square roots in my head to 6 digits of accuracy. He is wanting to start AP Algebra next year.
Was this transformation easy? NO WAY. We fought, yelled, screamed, stomped around, swore (in several languages) and sulked in opposite corners. After a while, in my best imitation of Monty Python explaining the use of the “Holy Hand Grenade”, I start to explain 3 dimensional, Euclidean Geometry. Weird. But it worked.
I hope this gets you started.
REPORT ABUSESleep for me is like unicorns. It would be nice to see some, but I doubt I ever will.
If I can sleep through the 2:30 hour, I am fine. If I wake up at 2:30, I read, watch a little TV or write. Then I go back for some more.
REPORT ABUSEAre you reading my journals? 🙂
My suggestion to you, is to write down your dreams in as much detail as you can on a journal kept by your bed. You are going to be awake anyway, why not record some of your thoughts?
If you have any aspirations of being an author, these dreams might make for a story people want to read.
REPORT ABUSEFirst you are going to have to become an expert on your own condition. You have two spectrum dissorders that share a lot of symptoms and have symptoms that are unique to each disorder.
I like “The Complete Guide to Asperger’s Syndrome” By Tony Attwood. I think it is in it’s second edition. It is dry reading, but it is probably the most comprehensive book on the subject I have read. It speaks to clinitians about the physiology, symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment of Asperger’s.
Read “A New Understanding of ADHD in Children and Adults: Executive Function Imparements” by Thomas E Brown. Another dry book, but packed full of information. Any of the books here on this site are great resources as well.
I called out these two books, because they explain the disorders to professionals. This will be a huge help, when you yourself talk to professionals about your conditions. You will speak the same language.
As far as symptoms on a certain day? I will wager that those symptoms are happening, not as a function of time, but as a function of circumstance. Meaning, you are faced with certain situations your brain is not programmed to handle, and POP! you get a symptom. Which is kind of like your computer locking up and needing a re-boot.
Read the books. Read more than I listed. Talk to people about it. Helpfull people. Get a solid diagnosis. Get treatment. Come back here often and ask more of these great questions!
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