ADHD - The best description yet

[Ghozer]

This has to be the best and most accurate description of ADHD and living with it, that I have read in a while, I can fully relate to every bit of this, and I hope it will open the eyes of a few people who do not fully understand!!

 

ADHD is about having broken filters on your perception. Normal people have a sort of mental secretary that takes the 99% of irrelevant crap that crosses their mind, and simply deletes it before they become consciously aware of it. As such, their mental workspace is like a huge clean whiteboard, ready to hold and organize useful information.

 

ADHD people... have no such luxury. Every single thing that comes in the front door gets written directly on the whiteboard in bold, underlined red letters, no matter what it is, and no matter what has to be erased in order for it to fit.

 

As such, if we're in the middle of some particularly important mental task, and our eye should happen to light upon... a doorknob, for instance, it's like someone burst into the room, clad in pink feathers and heralded by trumpets, screaming "HEY LOOK EVERYONE, IT'S A DOORKNOB! LOOK AT IT! LOOK! IT OPENS THE DOOR IF YOU TURN IT! ISN'T THAT NEAT? I WONDER HOW THAT ACTUALLY WORKS DO YOU SUPPOSE THERE'S A CAM OR WHAT? MAYBE ITS SOME KIND OF SPRING WINCH AFFAIR ALTHOUGH THAT SEEMS KIND OF UNWORKABLE."

 

It's like living in a soft rain of post-it notes. This happens every single waking moment, and we have to manually examine each thought, check for relevance, and try desperately to remember what the thing was we were thinking before it came along, if not. Most often we forget, and if we aren't caught up in the intricacies of doorknob engineering, we cast wildly about for context, trying to guess what the **** we were up to from the clues available.

 

On the other hand, we're extremely good at working out the context of random remarks, as we're effectively doing that all the time anyway. We rely heavily on routine, and 90% of the time get by on autopilot. You can't get distracted from a sufficiently ingrained habit, no matter what useless crap is going on inside your head... unless someone goes and actually disrupts your routine.

 

I've actually been distracted out of taking my lunch to work, on several occasions, by my wife reminding me to take my lunch to work. What the? Who? Oh, yeah, will do. Where was I? um... briefcase! Got it. Now keys.. okay, see you honey! Also, there's a diminishing-returns thing going on when trying to concentrate on what you might call a non-interactive task. Entering a big block of numbers into a spreadsheet, for instance

 

Keeping focused on the task takes exponentially more effort each minute, for less and less result. If you've ever held a brick out at arm's length for an extended period, you'll know the feeling. That's why the internet, for instance, is like crack to us - it's a non-stop influx of constantly-new things, no we can flick from one to the next after only seconds. It's better/worse than pistachios. The exception to this is a thing we get called hyper-focus. Occasionally, when something just clicks with us, we can get ridiculously deeply drawn into it, and NOTHING can distract us. We've locked our metaphorical office door, and we're not coming out for anything short of a tornado.

 

Medication takes the edge off. It reduces the input, it tones down the fluster, it makes it easier to ignore trivial stuff, and it increases the maximum focus-time. (Imagine steadicam for your eyes). It also happens to make my vision go a little weird and loomy occasionally, and can reduce appetite a bit. Hope this helps.

[Maz3]

Don't get me started on pistachios .......

[Ousetunes]

Maybe I suffer?

 

I'm a Beatles fan and I presumed your thread was about their film, A Hard Day's Night.

 

Or AHDN for short.

[El Cid]

Maybe I suffer?

 

I'm a Beatles fan and I presumed your thread was about their film, A Hard Day's Night.

 

Or AHDN for short.

 

Are you dyslexic

[tzijlstra]

I have a genuine problem with ADHD. My brother was diagnosed as being ADHD as a teen, because he was not willing to fit in at school, always argued and generally was the sort of teen you want to strangle.

 

Obviously we all took the doctor's word for it, he was put on Ritalin and as a consequence ended up in a dreadful dependency cycle, using Ritalin, believing he had an excuse to behave the way he did, blaming the Ritalin when he didn't behave well etc. not until he stopped taking it did he realise what was going on - he wasn't ADHD at all, just boisterous. By that time he had used the countless excuses to drop out of education, despite being a bright lad and it took him years to recover his poor sense of judgement.

 

We are far too quick to diagnose young people as ADHD and using it as an excuse to drug them. Instead we should look at their diets (sugar)' their parenting structures and so on.

 

Don't get me wrong, I don't think there is no such thing as ADHD, as described by the OP, I just think it is an easy excuse for when we fail to control and bring up our kids well.

 

As my late grandad used to say: I never was an angel, but back then they fixed that with a good smack.

 

(And no, not condoning smacking your kids either!)

[julesmarie]

Have to agree with you tzijlstra : I have never really agreed with ADHD, as I pointed out on another thread ( with I got nasty replies ) was that kids were just naughty kids, my son, was a nightmare as a young lad in 80's, but we just told to stop certain foods, even baked beans !!

 

He grow up, and stopped with his outbursts, I'm a now very proud mum of what he has achieved and he is very hard working. Nowdays kids get a lot more sugary rubbish, and a lot more want more hence the naming of ADHD.

[L00b]

I hope it will open the eyes of a few people who do not fully understand!!

I thought I understood ADHD.

 

Obviously I must have been wrong...because that write-up is eerily/ominously close to home, in some respects.

[Ghozer]

In response to julesmarie and tzijlstra, I was diagnosed at a very age (like 5/6) - and this was before it was "mainstream" and still relatively new (i'm 31 now)

 

It has had an impact on my life, and where I am now, and honestly i'm sick of getting no help or support for things, and everything I do, I have to push and fight for myself, which having ADHD, is difficult on it's own, without everything else...

 

Many of my problems and issues, some people could say are down to lazyness or "bone-idleness", but when I try and explain how that's not the case, and the reason, I can't, I just can't seem to put it into words...

 

the above only touches the surface, and is only a small part towards explaining the whole picture, and what it's like being a sufferer(?)

[SnailyBoy]

Have to agree with you tzijlstra : I have never really agreed with ADHD, as I pointed out on another thread ( with I got nasty replies ) was that kids were just naughty kids, my son who has ginger hair, was a nightmare as a young lad in 80's, but we just told to stop certain foods, even baked beans !!

 

He grow up, and stopped with his outbursts, I'm a now very proud mum of what he has achieved and he is very hard working. Nowdays kids get a lot more sugary rubbish, and a lot more want more hence the naming of ADHD.

 

What has ginger hair got to do with anything?

[julesmarie]

What has ginger hair got to do with anything?

 

Well not sure if true, but people with ginger hair always supposed to have a more fiery temper, and my son was a lot worse than my other children who had blond hair, my opinion only.