But I’m almost 50 years old I have been this way my whole life. I need a keeper. Someone telling me: “Behave like this!” one hour or two a week is, frankly, worsre than useless.
Help. What worked for you? Not what new way did you find to make another list, but when you were trapped in a day when you started 12 things and forgot what half of them were 15 minutes into it, over and over, and meanwhile you were stressing out completely without having clear idea why except you just KNEW something desperately important needed to be done, and you had to pull yourself together…what worked? What broke through the noise?
I do not have ADD but a couple of my good friends do. I hope I can still be of a little help …
One friend decided to go completely medication-free and has managed to work it. It seems to me his two main factors of success are:
He eats no refined sugar at all (and avoids high-sugar fruits), because it has acute effects on the rest of his body. There are probably other foods he avoids as well.
He makes careful and extensive use of a low-tech information management system he designed for himself.
To get to this point he went through an enormous amount of introspection and he has a great deal of self knowledge and awareness. It sounds like your therapist is not helping you design management techniques that work for you; perhaps you could shop around?
Another friend has also had some success with dietary modifications to stabilize her moods and concentration (in particular, she finds magnesium helps a lot - I am not a doctor!). She always goes back on her meds despite her efforts not to; her management technique at this point seems to be to manage her life around her ADD (i.e. find jobs and activities that work to her strengths of hyper-focussed energy) rather than the other way around. I recognize that most of us don’t have this luxury!
I am sorry I can’t be more help. Please PM me if you want more details, I don’t want to spread details about my friends’ lives on the internets but am happy to help however I can.
An Adult with ADD checking in. cowgirl in your #2 you are talking about making lists are you not? This is invaluable to me. I make lists about everything and anything. I use my outlook calendar to help when I know I need to do something, because the little reminder screen pops up no matter what I am doing, to alert me to get onto doing what I am supposed to do.
I was medicated for a long while, I am a psychologist by trade [not the clinical variety] and have done extensive research onto the pros and cons of medication. There are a lot of meds out there now that are not stimulant based. Strattera, Focalin to name a couple. I have not tried any of these and I am trying to do the right thing with diet and exercise, but having ADD can throw a wrench into that quite quickly.
My wife has learned to deal with it, because I do not make excuses for my behaviours if I forget to do something, I never blame it on my ADD, I blame it on my lack of making a good list. I know what I need to do to make life easier, but sometimes laziness and outside forces get in the way. I never loose track that I am a human being and I will make mistakes, this does not exempt me from doing what I know to be right most of the time.
There are not too many specialists out there who deal with Adult ADD and fewer still who are doing long term studies on those who take stimulants and non-stimulant meds. I would like to see those peer reviewed studies before I get on a med again.
I am doing just fine without them, but sometimes my frustration get’s be better of me and I wig out, but usually that just entails driving fast and taking my frustrations out n the road…or my garden…which is healthier.
I also use my Outlook calendar at work for assigned tasks. I know that I will get my reminders and make sure that things are done that way. My life is dominated by lists and reminders. Post-it notes are my friends. I have automatic bill payments wherever possible and electronic payment reminder e-mails for the others so no bills get “forgotten”. There were times when I drove around with the bill envelopes stuck in my car visor and kept saying to myself, “I gotta stop at the post office,” only to forget.
Schedules rule me. On weekends I make a list, with my wife’s help, of what needs to be done. I always sort the list so it will be easier to remember and progresses in a logical manner. The list stays in my pocket with a pen so I can cross each item off.
When I am trying to bring my mind back on track I found that music helps me. Before I was diagnosed at 22, I discovered that playing the stereo low seemed to make my thoughts focus, sort of like the music pushed into my ears and squeezed my thoughts in a clamp. I still do that at work.
The meds definitely help but they are not a cure, merely a helper. I used to self medicate with cigarettes but have quit for 6 months. I still self medicate with caffeine (too many triple shot venti mochas and cans of Mountain Dew). They help when the regular meds wear off towards the end of the day.
The first time anyone even suggested I might have it was 7 years ago when I quit smoking. I was 2-3 packs a day from pretty much the day I started to smoke, obviously my brain liked it. I used to sit in the morning and read for hours and chain smoke. The day I stopped smoking was the day I stopped being able to sit for 20 minutes and read, forget hours. And my then-therapist said that it sounded like ADD, but I brushed it off at the time.
I make lists all the time. Too many, that are too large, and too scattered. Then I can’t find them, I don’t follow them. Unfortunately I live alone and work for myself, so I have no outside controls on my time and behavior, which is why I think I seem to be getting worse rather than better sometimes.
Buy a Palm Pilot or some kind of electronic organizer. Even the calendar function on your cell phone can be used to keep you on schedule. At my old job I worked from home a couple days a week. I put a poster board on the wall with a list of my responsibilities plus I had a white board that I updated every morning. I had to make myself a creature of habit so I could survive.
I wake up at the same time every day, get out the door at the same time, catch the same train, walk the same route to the office. When I get to my desk, I open my programs on my computer in the same order, check my messages and then make up my list of daily duties. If you put yourself into a pattern it eventually becomes ingrained (OK, it’s a rut) and things move smoother. Plus, if an unexpected event occurs, you can shift to the new thing and get back to wear you left off because you can see on the list what the last completed obligation was.
I was diagnosed in August 2006, and my therapist said that I’d already built up a number of coping skills.
However, in working within the strictures of my ADD, with a low doseage of Adderal XR, I still find that I need those coping skills. The biggest difference is making a daily list of what needs to get done, and not getting too ambitious with it.
Some days, I start writing my list, and there are twelve things on there. That’s just too much. The list has to be six or fewer items, and then I can get it done. Any more than that, and it’s not going to get done, and I’ll feel guilty and stupid for not accomplishing it.
He constantly carries around a binder that is full of blank pages. Some of the pages are printed out Outlook sheets that act as a calendar.
Every thought that enters his head (ideas, appointments, tasks, commitments, plans, etc) is written on its own small yellow post-it note (or notes, as necessary) that he sticks in the appropriate place in his binder. I don’t know how he determines the appropriate place, but the stickies are often moved about as he thinks through things. It’s almost like a physical Outlook calendar that never leaves his side. Or a more robust, multidimensional list.
The system itself isn’t as important as the commitment to keep using it. I myself am terrible at checking calendars and to-do lists; fortunately I am able to manage this pretty well due to my more fortunate brain chemistry.
It is actually really interesting (and often hilarious) for me to see my two ADD friends interact with each other. I agree that an important management technique is to let the people around you know how they can most effectively support you (e.g. my habit of interjecting tangential comments is VERY bad for them; I often carry reading material so I don’t get bored and frustrated when they ignore me in favour of some other task; I have learned to not feel bad about interrupting them if they’re getting off topic; etc)