Adults with ADD: What do you want from the rest of us?

In My Humble Opinion
21

It’s directly related. I can read books on complicated subjects with no trouble grasping what they’re talking about, but give me a book on making something complicated, and it’s all just a roaring in my head until I start doing it, then I “get it.” By this, I mean that I can skip reading much of the book and work entirely by instinct. This comes in handy, because I have real problems with math. If I start trying to learn advanced mathematics, I get locked into a cycle of trying to figure out why a formula works the way it does, and not focused on learning the formula. This puts me in a loop that it’s difficult for me to break out of.

One of the benefits of having ADD and being a machinist is that I get what I call “flashshoulds.” If I’m trying to figure out how to do something for which there’s no blueprint, the answer will appear to me like a flashback does to someone remembering something that happened to them years ago. I’ll see the solution to the problem in an incredible level of detail. The problem with this, however, is that it becomes frustrating to me that I can’t create it in the real world as fast as I can see it in my mind. I know exactly what needs to be done, how to do it, but I can’t make it happen rapidly, since making things takes time.

This works in other jobs I’ve had as well. Quite often, I’ll end up understanding something better than the person who originally designed it. If I know the job well, in times of chaos, I’m often the only person who can keep track of what’s going on and I tend to enjoy those moments better than others.

There are downsides to this, however. Since I learn things at a different rate than most people, people often don’t believe me when I say I know what to do, or they feel threatened because I learned the job faster than they did. Presently, I’m in a bit of hot water at work, because my supervisor doesn’t believe that I know as much about the job as I do. He’s convinced that I’m taking shortcuts instead of doing my job properly and has tried to trap me into either confessing that I’m not doing my job or catch me in the act. So now, I’m facing Hobson’s choice: If I stop doing the job so well, then he’ll fire me, if I keep doing the job as well as I presently am (including learning more aspects of the job), then he’ll become more convinced that I’m cheating and expend more energy trying to catch me doing something wrong so that he can fire me. It’s such a problem that I’ve started looking for another job, as I expect to get let go any day now.

On a personal level, it’s been a real problem with relationships that I’ve had. In the beginning, my mind is rapidly working on ways to make my partner happy and show her how much I care. At some point, however, my brain goes into “auto pilot” mode when I’m around them, and I start focusing on other things instead of them. This means that I suddenly seem distant and withdrawn from them and they think that I don’t care, when that is not the case.

22

I don’t really feel like I have a choice here. This person is going to be in my life until the day I die. I can either try to understand or let it drive me bonkers.

This has probably been the hardest for me to deal with. When me and the other person are the only ones around, and I start talking, and they don’t respond I end up like :confused:. Did they think I was talking to myself? Who else but them would I be talking to?

They aren’t doing it to frustrate me, they really don’t hear me, do they?
I can understand it intellectually but on a day-to-day basis it really wears me down. The first 99,999 times, no problem. But around the 100,000 time…

23

Tuckerfan - what is your experience with Strattera? Good, bad, indifferent? Had you been on an amphetamine in the past?

24

No they really don’t hear you. If you are going to be around this person until the day you die, I’d assume [wrongly perhaps] that you love this person in some capacity. I’d read more and have a chat with them…direct them to this thread is applicable, and above all knowledge is power. Use it.

25

Who are “they”?

26

Strattera’s freakin’ great! Despite what my doctor said, I noticed an improvement within hours of taking the drug. The side effects are mostly limited to being thirstier than normal, which is easy to deal with (I simply drink more liquids). It’s by no means perfect, but it’s a definite improvement over not taking anything at all. I’ve never tried the amphetamine treatments as I don’t like stimulants of that kind (make my teeth itch).

27

The person close to me who shall remain nameless and otherwise unidentified. The subject of this thread. Or are you mocking my grammar?

Don’t worry, there has been quite a bit of talk on the subject between us and others in our circle, and book research as well. I was just trying to get some other perspectives.

28

I read through the rest of the posts, and I don’t think anyone answered this, so I’ll take a stab at it. The difference is, most people desire these in order to perform to their fullest capacity instead of doing fairly well. People with ADD/ADHD need these practices, because without them, we’re not going to be able to do much of anything with any noticeable efficiency. Give me very specific instructions (unless I’m very used to what you’re asking me to do), give me detailed deadlines, and most likely give me different things to do when I get bored with the first thing, and I’ll be able to accomplish a hell of a lot more than I would otherwise, and be in a far better mood to boot – both of which benefit everyone involved.

29

While I’m sure there are tons of people with ADD who are great, productive people, I gotta say there are definitely some who use it as an excuse to get out of things. As a college student, I see this all the time - people who go to the prof AFTER writing an exam, saying “I shouldn’t have gotten a C! I deserve an A, but you don’t understand how hard everything is for me!” Students who don’t study, but party and drink incessantly and blame it on their lack of concentration. Students who expect to get out of whole readings or assignments and will take the matter straight to the dean, crying discrimination.

I’m not saying that you, or even the majority of people with ADD are like this. But to argue as if ADD is never, ever used as an excuse for an ‘emotional handout’, as you say, is silly. It sure is. And I think these type of people are where people like Lust4Life get the idea that ADD must be all made up BS (an idea I don’t agree with, but can see where it arises)

30

Big time. Look at it this way: No matter what, I always have something better to do. This does not lend itself to healthy relationships. And when your partner just wants you to pay a little attention to them? That’s a minor thing to them, but it can be a big effort for you. It really kinda sucks.

Strattera really seems to be one of those YMMV meds. When I was on it, it really did help my symptoms a lot, but I didn’t care for the side effects. For example, I tended to feel a little “out of it”, and I got hyperhidrosis, which gets really old really quick. The benefits from amphetamine-based medication were similar, but the amphetamines kept me from sleeping effectively, so I had a choice between being loopy from ADD or being loopy from lack of sleep. I’m currently going without medication.

31

Do you actually know anything about psychology and mental disorders, or are you just spouting ignorant, venomous bile for your own amusement and self-aggrandizement?

Regarding the o.p.'s question, I think previous posters have already provided excellent responses, but the most important thing is to be organized and specific in what work you request. ADD people can be “self-starters”, but frequently they’ll focus on entirely the wrong thing ('cause that’s what first grabs their attention) and will word dilligently and astutelyl toward the entirely wrong goal. It’s hard enough to marshal your thoughts and focus attention when there are a thousand other things pulling away; when there is also uncertainty or a lack of direction, you tend to draw toward what feels comfortable, and in the case of someone with ADD, it is toward that which provides the greatest stimulus.

One other thing; there are a whole host of other issues that go along with having ADD that aren’t directly caused by it but come as a product of ADD behaviors; specifically, accusations of lazyness, low self-worth from underachieving, a tendency toward disorder by virtue of not having a natural knack for it and little or no outside training or enforcement to develop the requisite discipline, and a general expectation of being accused of doing everything wrong even after dilligently trying to follow instruction or delve expectations. The ideal work for someone with ADD are tasks that involve a high degree of intense concentration in spurts of half an hour or so; writing, programming, calculating, that sort of thing. Anything that involves drawn-out social interactions–meetings, “workgroups”, collaborative brainstorming, et cetera–is guaranteed to bring wandering attention and frustration, as do long periods of inactivity or repetitive but attention-requiring tasks. To a large extent, it is the obligation of an ADD afflicted-person to find work which is well-suited to their nature, and otherwise cope with the tendency to lose focus; but if you have someone who has or displayes ADD-like behaviors, it’s to your benefit to put them in roles where their deficiencies are minimized and capabilities are highlighted. It’s the same as anyone else, really–you wouldn’t have a guy in a wheelchair doing HVAC maintenance, or someone with a screechy voice and poor manners answering the phones.

Stranger

32

More like it’s quantitatively different. It’s like clinical depression. Would you say it doesn’t exist because everyone feels depressed from time to time? The difference is that with clinical depression it’s a constant, overriding facet of your personality. While others may be depressed occasionally when things are going badly, or they’re very tired and have sudden bleak thoughts, clinically depressed people just go through life with that heavy weight on their shoulders all the time.

Same with ADD. Sure, everyone feels distracted and disorganized from time to time. With ADD people, distractions are constant. Trying to focus deeply on something that isn’t currently pushing your buttons is like trying to hear a voice through a crowd. If you try really, really hard you might be able to do it for a minute or two, but invariably the voice just fades back into the din again.

Have you ever been reading a book and then halfway down the page realize your mind was somewhere else and you don’t know what the first half of the page said, so you have to go back and re-read it? With ADD people, life can be like that all the time. You’ll be listening intently to someone, and suddenly realize that you’ve been thinking about something completely different and have no recollection of what they just said. Not an intentional, “this person is boring - I’m going to let them talk and think of something else”, but a sudden realization that your brain went off somewhere else and you didn’t even realize it.

Imagine this happening to you constantly, not just once in a while. Imagine this happening while you’re trying to pay bills, or hold a conversation on a date, or complete your work tasks before lunch, or organize the voluminous piles of stuff that tend to collect around you.

The flip side of this for some ADD people is ‘hyperfocus’, when their brains glom onto something and just won’t let go. Lacking the control over what they focus on, they just have to ride it out. No matter how hard you try, your brain just keeps scratching at that one subject. Let’s say suddenly you’re fascinated with telescopes. You might not even know why - maybe you read an article about a famous astronomer, and it triggered your brain into wanting to know more. So you look some stuff up on the web, and get more interested. Before you know it, you’re walking, talking, and reading about nothing other than astronomy. You can’t stop. You drive people nuts around you because you keep talking about it. You go to work and try to put it out of your mind, but it always creeps back. You just have to know more! It’s like an itch you can’t scratch.

Then it fades away, and suddenly you don’t really care any more. ADD people tend to start a lot of hobbies and abandon them. When their obsessions happen to align with what they’re supposed to be doing, they can be wildly productive. When they don’t, it’s a struggle just to keep up. Sometimes ADD can look almost like a bipolar disorder - ADD people can be almost manic when hyperfocusing on something, then depressed when the ‘focus high’ is gone and they’re struggling with the bills and the report due by the end of the week.
Proper medications smooth the humps, or provide the brain with the missing ingredient needed to allow a person to control his focus.

33

We can’t all be considered [highly intelligent] and as an instructor and as someone who advocates for those who have it I’ll say there are some who use it as a crutch, though I have not met too many adults who do this, more younger folk and students. I do know there are some who use the diagnosis as a crutch…They do not fit the intelligence model.

34

Tuckerfan **Elysium, ** & Sam Stone, between the three of you have said so well what I wanted to say here.

Relationships, the ‘delay’ realizing someone’s been talking to me because it’s WORK to focus on something, so when I do focus, if you interrupt me, I’m almost resentful. It comes off as arrogant - what Tuckerfan mentioned at the end of that post about relationships is so dead on, it felt like someone was watching me.

Strattera helped me immensely, but I’ve worked myself off of it in the last few months. I’m working very hard, with some counseling at alternatives. My ADD isn’t as severe as Tuckerfan’s sounds like, and I found the drug to almost ‘level’ me too much. I felt less capable of feeling strong emotion one way or the other, which honestly I missed.

Every day is a list, and a constant focus on what, when and where I need to be, and what I should be doing. Still, i bounce from task to task, thankfully I’m in a job that calls for the ability to handle a series of complimentary tasks all at once. Set a job down, get something done, and have that first thing sitting there. It gets done, the deadlines get met but I don’t have to sit and drone at one thing all day.

35

To echo what Tuckerfan and others have said, do you really think you know more that the thousands of psychiatrists and other MDs who have evaluated all of the scientific evidence on the condition? Have you inspected the actual data on the subject? If I just said that I had a condition where portions of my brain don’t chemically function in a normal way, would you believe me then? The fact that that condition is called ADD shouldn’t make it any less of a real thing.

36

What Sam, Tuckerfan, and Mr. Bus Guy said.

The best thing you can do for your friend is to be understanding. If they don’t seem to be listening to you, it’s not because they don’t care about what you have to say - it’s that it can be extraordinarily difficult to concentrate on a conversation when they’re distracted by something else.

My wife still has trouble understanding this, even after almost eight years together. We’ll be sitting in front of the TV, and she’ll start talking about something. I do my damndest to pay attention, but the bright lights and noises from the magic box keep drawing my eyes. Sometimes, it gets so bad that I have to block the TV from my line of sight with my hand. Other times, I’ll tell her that if she really needs me to listen, she needs to turn the television off.

37

What do I want from the rest of the human race? sex and diet mountain dew. That and patience and some understanding. Due to the way my mind works I may ask questions that are seemingly unrelated to the matter at hand. Due to the speed at which my thoughts sometimes hit me, I may interrupt you. It doesn’t mean that I’m not listening or that I don’t value what you have to say.

Mostly, I want people not to tell me that ADD does not exist.

38

“ADD” gets tossed about as casually as “depressed” and “addicted” and “phobia” do, and I think that shows the problem of people not understanding the extent to which people who have these conditions are affected. Just as you can’t tell a genuinely depressed person to just cheer up, or an addict to just stop indulging, or a phobic to get over his fear, you can’t order an ADD person focus or listen or pay attention. If it were that easy to treat those conditions, they wouldn’t be the problems they clearly are.

As someone without ADD, I know that what I experience as “inability to focus” and “forgetful” is different from how my SO experiences those same things. For me, they are mild, temporary, and unusual; for him, they aren’t.

I studied ADD in college, but I never had a personal connection to it until my SO told me he had it. He’ll be moving in with me in a few weeks, and I’m (nervously!) looking forward to seeing his symptoms manifest and adjusting to living with him. I appreciate the reminders to be patient and understanding.

39

To reiterate what many others have said, ADD is real, it can be profound, and it is a lifelong issue.

I was diagnosed with adult ADD just about a year ago. I’d made a series of very self-destructive decisions, knew it, hated it, hated the consequences, and so I went back into therapy. I lucked out and found an excellent therapist. On my third session with her, she asked me if anyone had ever asked me about ADD. My familiarity with it, up to that point, was as a teacher, working with ADD/ADHD kids. She read off the list of criteria from the psychiatric disorders manual, and I nailed about 85% of them.

I went to my doctor a week later, discussed it with her, and tried Adderal for the first time.

I could not believe the difference.

When I’ve been asked, the best way I can describe it is that I have time. Finally. At last. That list of six things I’ve needed to get done, that should take only a couple of hours to do, and on any regular day would take me five or six? Now it only takes a couple of hours.

I can clean and organize my room without getting sucked into a book I happened to pick up. I can do the monthly paperwork in half an hour instead of three because instead of following the five different things that occurred to me (did I leave the oven on? Oh, I should get some laundry started. Oh, wait, I never called my mom back. I have to go to the grocery store, because I need some stuff for tomorrow. No, wait. What did I need? Why didn’t I write a list down?)

Another thing I noticed: It used to be if it was a really intensive job, I could last an hour and a half. That was my limit. Period. And then I needed an extended break. If I came back before a couple of hours passed, I was useless. I thought it was because I lacked physical stamina. I thought I was tired from using my muscles all the time. Once I started on Adderall, I realized that it wasn’t physical stamina, it was mental stamina. I had the physical energy to do all these things, but an hour and a half was the longest I could focus my brain on something.

Daniel Amen has a fantastic book out on dealing with ADD, and one of the points he makes is that ADD is a real, physiological phenomenon taking place in the brain. He took SPECT scans of the brains of people diagnosed with ADD. During a task that requires concentration, parts of the neocortex and frontal lobes actually shut down during concentration. Concentrating on something is physically more demanding, and in some cases, nearly impossible for someone with ADD. That’s why stimulants work. They case those parts of the brain to stay engaged during concentration.

As a result of dealing with my ADD, my financial situation has finally stabilized. I stand a very good chance of being debt free within a couple of years. My problems with impulsivity and disorganization made it almost impossible to cope with things like paying bills on time and having money left over at the end of the month.

What do I want from the rest of you?

Believe me when I tell you what my limitations are. If you’re my friend, cut me some slack when I’m getting overwhelmed. Understand that the symptoms of ADD have been with me my whole life, and there are some pretty deep consequences that go along with it - like low self esteem, depression, and habitual procrastination.

If you want my undivided attention, make sure there’s nothing competing for it. Turn off the TV and the radio and the computer monitor, ask the kids to go play in the backyard. Get to the point immediately, and then let me ask questions. Don’t be afraid to pull me back on topic, because I probably will wander.

Use email, because I can read it, reread it, file it, print it, read it again, copy it, respond to it, and read it one last time. Don’t count on voicemail. I cannot cope with voicemail. I hate voicemail.

Don’t tease me for being a ditz, “blonde”, a scatterbrain, or the proverbial absent-minded professor. I got enough of that shit when I was a kid, and even if I have been out in the Van Allen belts, I will take it the wrong way if you bring it up.

That’s really about it.

40

I don’t expect anyone to organize the way I do, as an employer I’d expect the employee to get the job done. And very often, effective or not, an employer has a specific way they want that job done, can you blame them?