Yes, I have ADD. More accurately (since I think that, in general, the disease is overdiagnosed): I had severe behavioral problems and difficulty holding my attention on a lot of things as a child, consistent with what we usually call ADD.
a) Were you aware of “it” first as one feature of who-you-are among many such features, and then something happened and you went “oh” and all of a sudden it became definitive? <if so please share your story if you’re so inclined>
There was no “aha” moment. From what my parents tell me, the signs began to emerge long before I could pretend to have conscious memory, and by the time I was old enough to understand that I was different and in what way, I had already been experiencing some of the problems. As I grew up I gradually sharpened my understanding of the situation.
b) Did “it” become “who you are” in a big way pretty much in your own head, on your own, or did you find yourself fitting into a community of people who identified as such and you had a moment of “aha, this is who I am, this is where I belong”?
Yes, very much so. It was present in everything I did, because it affects how I think and thus how I act. It was especially present in my interactions with others. I never belonged to a group or with anyone until after I had eliminated most of the undesirable behaviors.
c) Have you ever been specifically harassed, attacked, discriminated against, subjected to violence, or otherwise mistreated SPECIFICALLY as a representative member of “it”? If so: did that event (or ongoing phenomenon) play a role in you coming to think of yourself as “it”? Auxiliary question: have you ever bee specifically harassed, etc, SPECIFICALLY as a representative of some OTHER outgroup or variant that you do NOT feel specifically describes you? Main and aux question: <please describe if you’re so inclined>
Oh, I was brutally teased as a child. My peers got to thinking of me as a “spaz,” or “that weird kid.” They would tease me because when they got a rise out of me, it was explosive. I would end up throwing books, or hitting someone, or other not good things. I set my elementary school’s record for most time in the principal’s office. It defined the relationship I had with my peers in elementary school, and therefore in junior high and high school as well. Although I had stopped losing control physically by grade school’s end, I remained very much an outcast – by my own efforts. The early years so soured the experience of relating to people my own age that I wanted nothing to do with the classmates who took such delight in my problems. As to the auxiliary question: no.
d) Over time, did you modify, elaborate on, or add other “it” factors to your sense of who you most fundamentally are? If so, were these subdivisions or subtypes, or more akin to not-specifically-related factors that ALSO tended to define you?
Over time, and with the help of my psychiatrist, I learned to appreciate aspects to my problem other than the short temper. Primary among these is how I think. The analogy I was given is that “normal” people think like a farmer, plowing a field step by step, while I think like a hunter, having to be aware of many different things simultaneously. (I feel the need to emphasize that I don’t think this makes me smarter than anyone else. I just interpret things differently. It’s better in some ways, and worse in others. In particular, it means I’m not as naturally good as math as an aspiring career physicist should be, which has caused me headaches aplenty.) Another aspect is a more benign behavioral difference: when I’m not on my medication (which I still take regularly), I tend to become … well, silly. To a lesser extent this is reflected in my sense of humor and creativity whether I’m medicated or not.
e) All in all, has identification of yourself with a unitary “it”, a unitary “I am different from ordinary/normal people in THIS way” tag, proven to be more confining than liberating, more liberating than confining, or <other, feel free to elaborate>?
It has been both liberating and confining, both a blessing and a curse. I’ll knock out a quick list of Pros and Cons:
Pro: It freed me from the normal social worries of adolescents, allowing me to focus on my academics.
Con: It required me to be constantly aware of what I was doing, lest I subject myself to further teasing.
Pro: It forced me to learn how to deal with frustration and failure.
Con: I ended up shutting myself out from people for so long that I am still playing catch up in some areas. Case in point: I don’t pick up on the more subtle facial cues or tone of voice signals in conversations. With any luck that will come with time.
One last thing I’d like to add: This difference is still with me. I still think of myself as being fundamentally different from other people. Oh sure, there are some people that I share some personality traits with, but no one I have met has been different in the same way I am. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. It allows me to step back from what’s going on around me and look at it from a fresh perspective. What happened as I grew up is that I was gradually able to stop thinking of my difference as “this problem I have where I lose control” and start thinking of it as “boy, I’m weird. Isn’t that funny?”
