What is ADHD?? This stands for Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. There is also ADID which is Attention Deficit Inattentive Disorder.
I am the Hyper kind :-)ADHD is a long term that means essentially I have a chemical imbalance in the brain which makes my thinking slightly to the side of everyone else, my attention span is limited, I have hyperactive tendencies (never sitting still, fidgeting, always moving and an internal engine that compels me forward at full speed) and can quite often have impulsive actions (I often say things before I have thought about them, or blurt out what I am feeling, and am really good at interrupting people, oh and I talk at a million miles an hour!!). What can I say- its a gift :-)
Try and picture this if you can. You are standing at the side of the road and a train comes racing past you. You look into the windows but you see nothing but a blur because the train is moving too fast, you can't focus in the one spot long enough to make sense out of what you see. I am that person - and that train is my life - and that is what life is like for me with ADHD. If I slow down or stop my life becomes blurred and I can't focus on what is happening. The only way I know I am going to be able to look through those windows on the train and be able to see what is happening is if I am travelling at the same speed as that train. So I race along beside the train at full speed, trying to do everything at once because I have no time to stop. If I stop I will lose sight of that train. It's not something I do consciously, it is like there is an internal engine that drives me, compells me to move forward, keep going, try to catch that train.
What are the symptoms of ADHD? The following is a list that I "lifted" from a website on ADHD, that describes what ADDults (Adult's who live with ADD) feel. Now not all people with ADHD behave in the same way (of course we don't, we are all individual people) so the commentary under the symptoms is my own personal experience of how they manifest in my life.
1. A sense of underachievement, of not meeting one's goals (regardless of how much one has accomplished). We put this symptom first because it is the most common reason an adult seeks help. "I just can't get my act together," is the frequent refrain. The person may be highly accomplished by objective standards, or may be floundering, stuck with a sense of being lost in a maze, unable to capitalize on innate potential.
I run my own arts and crafts store, and although things are going well, I always feel that if I could just get it together a little more, work a little harder, focus that tiny bit more, things would be better.
2. Difficulty getting organized. A major problem for most adults with ADD. Without the structure of school, without parents around to get things organized for him or her, the adult may stagger under the organizational demands of everyday life. The supposed "little things" may mount up to create huge obstacles. For the want of a proverbial nail--a missed appointment, a lost check, a forgotten deadline --their kingdom may be lost.
My husband used to do that for me, although he didn't "schedule my life" in that sense, I could run around his time clock - when he came home it was dinner time, so I cooked a meal. Now that I am on my own I have no one else's clock to live by, so meals get skipped, I have problems remembering what day of the week it is etc etc
3. Chronic procrastination or trouble getting started. Adults with ADD associate so much anxiety with beginning a task, due to their fears that they won't do it right, that they put it off, and off, which, of course, only adds to the anxiety around the task.
Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow?? Seriously though this is one of THE major problems, I just never seem to get round to "it", whatever that may be, especially legal and health issues, I kinda just hope they will go away.
4. Many projects going simultaneously; trouble with follow-through. A corollary of #3. As one task is put off, another is taken up. By the end of the day, or week, or year, countless projects have been undertaken, while few have found completion.
As I said I run an arts and crafts store, and my students think I am hiliarious. I must have at least 20 projects on the go, all at different stages of being finished.
5. Tendency to say what comes to mind without necessarily considering the timing or appropriateness of the remark. Like the child with ADD in the classroom, the adult with ADD gets carries away in enthusiasm. An idea comes and it must be spoken, tact or guile yielding to child-like exuberance.
My Toy could tell you all about this one. I get an idea in my head that excites me and before you know it I am rattling away at a million miles an hour. What he doesn't know is how many times I have bitten into my tongue REAL hard in an effort to stop myself from saying inappropriate things. Doesn't always work.
6. An ongoing search for high stimulation. The adult with ADD is always on the lookout for something novel, something in the outside world that can catch up with the whirlwind that's rushing inside.
Anyone for skydiving? Actually I am not so much into the physical thrill as the mental one, I love a good debate, I love new ideas and innovative thinkers, I love the adreniline rush that comes with being in love.
7. A tendency to be easily bored. A corollary of #6. Boredom surrounds the adult with ADD like a sinkhole, ever ready to drain off energy and leave the individual hungry for more stimulation. This can easily be misinterpreted as a lack of interest; actually it is a relative inability to sustain interest over time. As much as the person cares, his battery pack runs low quickly.
Two minutes alone in a room with myself and I am bored. Getting my computer was a godsend, it allowed me to stave the boredom and keep the mind running. This is also one of the reasons I have so many projects on the go at once, I got bored with the first so started a second ad infinitum.
8. Easy distractibility, trouble focusing attention, tendency to tune out or drift away in the middle of a page or a conversation, often coupled with an ability to hyperfocus at times. The hallmark symptom of ADD. The "tuning out" is quite involuntary. It happens when the person isn't looking, so to speak, and the next thing you know, he or she isn't there. The often extraordinary ability to hyperfocus is also usually present, emphasizing the fact that this is a syndrome not of attention deficit but of attention inconsistency.
Hyperfocused - you should have seem me when I went to buy a mobile phone. They needed a driver's licence for ID - of which I didn't have a current one - I did not rest that day until I got a new drivers licence and went back to the store for my mobile phone. I was going to get it no matter what!! It's funny when I hyperfocus, when I first started setting up this website I was so into it I forgot to eat and sleep for a while. Now I have days where I can get updates done and others where I would rather click that little button over there and see where it takes me.
9. Often creative, intuitive, highly intelligent. Not a symptom, but a trait deserving of mention. Adults with ADD often have unusually creative minds. In the midst of their disorganization and distractibility, they show flashes of brilliance. Capturing this "special something" is one of the goals of treatment.
What can I say?? It's a gift :-)
10. Trouble going through established channels, following proper procedure. Contrary to what one might think, this is not due to some unresolved problem with authority figures. Rather it is a manifestation of boredom and frustration: boredom with routine ways of doing things and excitement around novel approaches, and frustration with being unable to do things the way they're supposed to be done.
Ummmm...won't go too into depth on that one save to say I drove without a licence for quite a while (yes I know slap me on the hand, but between the procrastination of doing the test, and the fear of failure and getting bored with it all.....ummm am I copping out now....I think so!!)
11. Impatient; low tolerance for frustration. Frustration of any sort reminds the adult with ADD of all the failures in the past. "Oh no," he thinks, "here we go again." So he gets angry or withdraws. The impatience has to do with the need for stimulation and can lead others to think of the individual as immature or insatiable.
I am a very impatient person, but I have become so good at hiding the more negative traits ADHD from others that only those people closest to me would know it. This means that impatience gets internalized and becomes frustration.
12. Impulsive, either verbally or in action, as in impulsive spending of money, changing plans, enacting new schemes or career plans, and the like. This is one of the more dangerous of the adult symptoms, or, depending on the impulse, one of the more advantageous.
I mentioned the mobile phone didn't I?? Just got it in my head one day that I needed a new mobile phone, and I HAD to have it.
13. tendency to worry needlessly, endlessly; tendency to scan the horizon looking for something to worry about alternating with inattention to or disregard for actual dangers. Worry becomes what attention turns into when it isn't focused on some task.
I describe my mind like a radio that is tuned into all the stations at once. One is tuned into typing this page, another is listening to the heater whirring, another is thinking about my kids, about my Toy etc etc - and then there is the ever present worry channel. Now if I take the stimulus away from one of the stations (ie I turn the heater off and there is no noise) it has nothing to focus on so it tunes into the worry channel. If I am devoid of enough stimulus all channels tune into the worry channel and I become obsessive.
14. Sense of impending doom, insecurity, alternating with high-risk-taking. This symptom is related to both the tendency to worry needlessly and the tendency to be impulsive.
I worry that I am going to make a mistake, what if I do it wrong, what will happen if I make the wrong choice etc etc
15. Mood swings, depression, especially when disengaged from a person or a project. Adults with ADD, more than children, are given to unstable moods. Much of this is due to their experience of frustration and/or failure, while some of it is due to the biology of the disorder.
Another one that, unfortunately, my Toy is intimately acquainted with. Because I am not able to be with him at present this leads to swings between periods of acceptance and believing I can be patient - to downright depression where I miss him so bad it ends up hurting us both. It was different when I was married, because I was with my partner everyday mood swings weren't as severe.
16. Restlessness. One usually does not see, in an adult, the full-blown hyperactivity one may see in a child. Instead one sees what looks like "nervous energy": pacing, drumming of fingers, shifting position while sitting, leaving a table or room frequently, feeling edgy while at rest.
Another one Toy would recognize. When we are out for dinner I fidget and move in my seat, play with the cutlery, twiddle my glass etc. The number of times he has asked "Are you OK?" because until recently he has not known what the problem was.
17.Tendency toward addicitive behavior. The addiction may be to a substance such as alcohol or cocaine, or to an activity, such as gambling, or shopping, or eating, or overwork.
Without going into detail I will just put my hand up and admit to this.
18. Chronic problems with self-esteem. These are the direct and unhappy result of years of conditioning: years of being told one is a klutz, a spaceshot, an underachiever, lazy, weird, different, out of it, and the like. Years of frustration, failure, or of just not getting it right to do lead to problems with self-esteem. What is impressive is how resilient most adults are, despite all the setbacks.
I thought I was crazy, for years I really thought I was loony tunes - and no one ever knew I thought this way about myself. I would joke about it - tell others I was nuts, but no one ever knew how much I doubted my own sanity until I discovered I was an ADDult - and then finally the monster in my head had a name, and I knew I wasn't crazy.
19. Inaccurate self-observation. People with ADD are poor self-observers. They do not accurately gauge the impact they have on other people. This can often lead to big misunderstandings and deeply hurt feelings.
It is hard for me to comment on this one as I truly have no concept of the importance or irrelevance (as the case may be) of myself in the lives of others. you would have to ask them I guess. I do know that I constantly challenge Toy about his feelings for me, which is unfair on him, but it goes back to the self esteem thing too.
WANT to learn more about ADHD?? Well rather than put a really big list of links here I will only put one - to Jeffrey's ADHD page, at the bottom of his list there is over 130 links to different sites that deal with ADHD - and to his credit he looks at both sides, there are also sites there that challenge the validity of ADHD, and there are other sites like mine, personal insights as to what it is like to live with ADHD.
Click here to visit Jeffrey's Page
Liz was the artist who designed the ADD logo, and she also runs a page dedicated to those of us who are members of the ADDult List - a support forum for those of us blessed with ADD or those lucky enough to live with us. You can visit her site for more information.
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