Thing is, that doesn't actually make any difference. All I do is go back to my default confusion, and then feel bad.
So I looked it up and I swear, this list could be written by anyone who evaluates me as an employee, husband, father, or coworker.
- Symptoms, Inattentive-type Adult ADHD
- Procrastination
- Indecision, difficulty recalling and organizing details required for a task
- Poor time management, losing track of time
- Avoiding tasks or jobs that require sustained attention
- Difficulty initiating tasks
- Difficulty completing and following through on tasks
- Difficulty multitasking
- Difficulty shifting attention from one task to another (Wikipedia 22 Dec 10)
That seems odd, because I shift attention all the time. Unless I'm in one of those few tasks that really engages me -- writing something I want to write in that moment, for example, or giving sexual attention, or digging on some beautiful and complex music -- then my brain is going zing! zow! and precious few chipset errata get researched for publication in as timely a manner as my ambitions should demand, evaluations get written in ten times the expected time, and very little of what is said in work meetings makes sense to me.
Side track: It takes a lot of energy to parse spoken words outside a one on one conversation. Often I have to string the words together consciously as well as I can remember them while simultaneously recording the words still being said. If I am not in a position to ask for a reflective pause now and then, entire swaths of verbal verbiage are simply lost. There are conversational tricks for accomplishing this during meetings, such as interrupting with unnecessarily drawn out questions, but I am still an amateur at that game. I don't know if this is related.
I shift attention all the time, yet am bad at task-switching. This is because a task switch actually requires concentration focused on a specific new thing rather than just any new thing. That makes it harder, actually, than staying focused on the same old thing. Staying focused on something hard -- say discovering just the right wording with which to disclose a logic bug we are not going to bother to fix without saying bug or bother or fix -- is bad enough, but shifting focus to something also hard -- say writing the first draft of my annual self-evaluation, in which a year's worth of reactive panic has to be turned into three neat bullet points stressing "accomplishment", whatever that is -- is nigh impossible.
Yeah, it is. Why do you think I'm writing this instead? Hella easier, homes.
So. Therapy? I don't like drugs. Somehow I got that they are a cop-out. I know, at my age I need to get over that. But I have a bottle of fluoxetine (aka Prozac®) that was blithely prescribed by my doc one day because I was depressed -- I guess that's better than throwing a box of tissues at my head -- and I have taken it and I'm not sure I like it. I mean, I can feel the mood pop. I'll be all down and shit and pop one of those little green things and within half an hour I'm feeling more or less optimistic and even more focused. It's weird, and because it came from a pill, I hate it. An anti-depressant probably isn't the correct therapy for being ADHD but I'm sure it does something similar, and it just bothers me that a little chemical re-balancing could be the answer rather than years and years of impossibly difficult training and stress. Why? Because chemicals are easy, and addicting to some people, and I don't know, I don't trust 'em. My dad's a chemist, there you go. No, but seriously, and I'm not addictive. Well, maybe I am, but you'd have to ask someone who's addicted to me. I mean I'm not prone to addiction, as several attempts to get fucked up freebasing rock cocaine in my early twenties showed me, so perhaps I shouldn't worry, but even so. Drugs. Ick. Work. Ick. Multitasking and task-switching. TRIPLE ICK.
22 comments:
I'm ADD. Even ave an almost genuine diagnosis
Scene: my interview program set.
Performers: Ted, director of the North Puffin counselling and support services org, and moi, interviewer par excellence.
[lots of bounce around kind of talk]
Dick: I'm ADD, aren't I?
Ted: Well, I don't want to make a rash diagnosis , but yes, absolutely.
Nice to know.
Frankly, I don't see the downside.
What were we talking about?
Lots of energy devoted to two different sides of this and depression and other behavioral whoozits. Maybe three different sides.
I've been a fan of cognitive behavior therapy treatments that strive to help you retrain your brain, letting it do the work of changing the electro-chemical reactions cuz the pills, well, man, we just don't know enough these days.
OTOH, using a pill now and again to get you to the point where you CAN apply the cog-behave stuff might be applicable (hence the third side).
Dunno. I'm happily well balanced and usually can find my own way to solving my inner issues and the chemicals I ingest (aka "food") tend to assist in that process mostly. Although the other chemicals (caffeine, and sinus meds and pain relievers) might be doing another task entirely.
But, point is, my son is likely ADHD of some flavor. The ex is prob'ly that plus some bi-polaresque something. The son is diagnosed schizophrenic. And someone feels I might be AD(something)D myownself but I'd argue that there's a point where the descriptions can be handily bent to fit pretty much anything so I reject that diagnosis utterly.
Where was I?
Oh, yeah. Pills 'n stuff. Not a fan.
@Don: "I can be retrained. It also means I'm managing to continue to grow.
Being weak on multitasking is maybe something that you don't like but not necessarily bad. gekko is very good at multitasking partly because she's a girl and partly because she is very good. Period. We're guys. We're _supposed_ to suck at multitasking. And, truth to tell, most people do better performing tasks sequentially than rapidly switching among several tasks.
Shifting attention, OTOH, is one of those "it depends" issues. Can you do it when you want to? Can you avoid it when you don't? If you can train yourself to that standard, ADD is a blessing because ADD really helps with that.
I would take drugs to help thin or thicken my blood. I would take drugs to fix high blood pressure or an ulcer. I would take drugs to cure an infection. I would not take drugs to "cure" my ADD.
See, I _like_ the way my brain works.
I believe that the main reason we have problems is because we live in a world that isn't suited to us as human beings. We've created this artificial environment filled with havetos and shoulds and we're never allowed to just be. It's the expectations of our culture that give us shit. We grow up believing things that we have no business believing, but I have no idea how to go about changing that. The world is as it is and we have to fit into it somehow, even when our natures tell us it's all wrong for us.
And our eating habits are crap, too. That plays a big part in our mind dis-ease as well.
There are always downsides with drugs. It doesn't seem to me that you're doing so badly ... maybe give your new lifestyle some time and see how it goes. Things could end up improving at work, you never know. Your new positive mood about the choices/changes you've made could affect your mind and emotions in all sorts of unexpected ways...
Two of my kids--the girls, not the boy--have ADD. One of them tried the medications briefly and got almost psychotic on them. The other uses small doses of Adderall during the school year and that allows her to perform better without side-effects that I've noticed. So I wouldn't be quick to seek *or* refuse them. Might be worth a try. Might help, might make it worse.
I'm ADD, too. Never used to be. I blame computers and constant interruption. Mostly, though, I think it's a sign our lives are too complicated and we need to simplify in some ways.
Liking what Arleen said.
If you really have ADD, you've managed to become successful (it sounds like) after all these years, without drugs, because you created coping mechanisms -- could say you were allowed to create coping mechanisms by NOT being put on ADD medication ever -- so whatever is going on now you should relax and give it a chance to go away. Some ADD medications are in fact anti-depressants--anyway, it might be better for you if you figure out a way to chill without introducing new and different drugs into the mix, which could just turn into a big mess.
There is a lot to be said for adequate sleep and good diet, for that matter, and shouldn't be underestimated.
I never thought I had ADD, but I had severe job burnout, which had the exact same symptoms, and ADD medication sort of worked but seemed to mainly prolong the job burnout and make it much more unpleasant. But my point is if you had some real physiological dysfunction going on in your brain like some of these poor kids who really are genuinely challenged by their brain function, it would have been addressed by now.
Arleen, you are onto something there. Maybe our culture is taking people and pushing them onto that ragged edge where the creative, intelligent, sensitive people find themselves without a foothold.
I don't know about the world, but my corner of it, certainly. My employer culture was designed to keep people always on edge. I mean, one of the founder's wrote a best-selling book called Only The Paranoid Survive, for god's sake.
You are probably right that if I was really and seriously ADD it would have been addressed by now, OR I would have been less "successful". I just get so frustrated that a good ninety percent of my brain cycles are spent trying either to grasp what's going on around me or leaping about unproductively. Could be I could train myself better but instead manage to get by, and am just too lazy to really try for more than "good enough".
It was Dr. Johnny Fever on WKRP in Cincinnati who said, "If everyone's out to get you, paranoia is just plain good thinking."
However, I believe something like this is going on: you are "mildly" ADD, perhaps, but your adaptation has been to position yourself in an environment that suits that. This has worked pretty well, but general changes in circumstance, and added stress, have, in effect, stressed your "operating system" to the point where you see that things aren't working like you think they should.
Your solution is either to address the ADD, or work on modifying your coping mechanisms, in addition to trying to get rid of some stress, any way you can think of. Or some combination. BUT . . . my personal opinion will always be that ADD medication is overrated and sometimes damaging in itself.
Ironic that success in one's career often puts that person in a position that is so outside their coping mechanisms (call it "comfort zone") that they are set up for failure. That's another topic, but probably some lack in the corporate structure--what do you do with really good, creative people who need to continue climbing within the company, but who don't really have the deliberate, dogged, drone type mentality needed for middle management?
Does this bear repeating or what:
what do you do with really good, creative people who need to continue climbing within the company, but who don't really have the deliberate, dogged, drone type mentality needed for middle management?
My employer has come up with some solutions, but they don't really work for me, for reasons that really are the subject of another post. That's brilliant, though, and highlights some major issues in this modern world.
@Roy & Don: "who don't really have the deliberate, dogged, drone type mentality needed for middle management"
Bears repeating more than once.
Dupont was (I think) the first to introduce parallel track promotions for engineering and other technical employees who couldn't make it (or whom Dupont didn't want) as managers. It's a good plan to make someone a senior technical fellow and give him or her the same benes and perks as a V.P. and so on down the line.
Fairly widespread now.
Back to ADHD. It brings the same quirks to inventors and designers and artists that it gives to the high level managers I mentioned earlier.
It definitely bears repeating and strikes a huge chord with me. I never even got started on any kind of company ladder because I bore so easily once I've learned all I can in a job and if I can't move into some other place quickly enough I just quit and start over again somewhere else. Not good. The longest job I've ever held was the tutoring supervisor position for 8 years, and I only made it that long because I loved my tutors so much and we worked on a training book/DVD project for a couple of years together (creative, social work that suits me), and then I needed the job to complete my projects for my master's degree. The point is, I was always challenging myself somehow when the job itself failed to do it for me, and when I finally reached a point of utter boredom doing the same thing day after day with no end in sight I quit. The other problem I have is lack of self-discipline. I NEED a job to keep me on track. I'm not good at developing my own stuff in a way that would make me a good entrepreneur, though I definitely have an entrepreneurial spirit. I need a company that could take my skills and challenge me, bringing me different, creative things to do all the time, but also keeping me on track to complete them.
Arleen, et al, it's not surprising the idea resonates so much with so many people. For some reason our culture is very biased toward a certain type of personality--one who can be "successful" in the corporate world. A lot of television ad copy seems to be aimed at that demographic, falling on ears of the probable majority who aren't like that.
I felt for you after reading your job history. My history, of jobs, places of residence, etc., had been, up until I was about 34 years old, to never do anything or live anywhere more than two years. It's no wonder when I found myself at my job for 7 years I was starting to get uncomfortable, and after marriage, hated living in the same place for so many years. I realize I forced the issue and kept our average tenancy duration to about 7 or 8 years, which, financially, was a huge mistake, but I never intellectualized it--I just started feeling panicky and unhappy.
I don't know if that's all a function of ADD or just how I came to view the world while I grew up. If they are just patterns, they are so deeply etched as to be mistaken for traits.
@Arleen: "I'm not good at developing my own stuff in a way that would make me a good entrepreneur ... I need ... keeping on track ..."
Truth be told, that's the story of most would be entrepreneurs. Inventors probably make up a third of the population. Wanna be inventors another third. That's pretty significant (and may be a good reason that the Inventors union sets the bar so high). It's not just you, Arleen, looking for that push. Most peeps don't follow through on their individual ideas. It's why companies like IBM and Intel lead the nation in patent applications filed; they challenge their employees _and_ they have the infrastructure in place to keep them on track to complete them.
@Roy: "A lot of television ad copy seems to be aimed at that demographic, falling on ears of the probable majority who aren't like that."
I think that misses the point of the ad copy. We in the probable majority expect to be, wish we were, or are led to try to be "successful" in the corporate world.
We in the probable majority expect to be, wish we were, or are led to try to be "successful" in the corporate world.
When I played poker a lot with the same bunch of people, we were always looking for people who wanted to be poker players, too.
Asbestos Dust Has Dimples? Still trying to figure out the acronym here.
ADHD=Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder which actually refers to a family of attention disorders, including the out and out hyperactive ADD, the dreamy, quiet ADD, and uhhh, another that I forgot.
Although Asbestos Dust does have cute dimples.
My son's ADHD, I'm ADHD as typified by a pathological inability to complete anything, including this comment...
@Roy: <g>
Why I don't play poker with Joe innit.
Thought about this discussion when I read an inteview with Dr. Gabor Mate. I think you'd find it interesting and get some ideas from it--even if it *IS* from a lefty site. Thinking about the causes and meaning of patterns is everybody's business.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/24/dr_gabor_mat_on_the_stress
The trouble with the abused child theory is that, while plenty of children are mistreated, stressed, or abused, fewer than all of them grow up to be drug addicts, criminals, or Congressmen. Likewise, while plenty of children are pampered, praised, and cherished, fewer than all of them grow up to be drug addicts, criminals, or Congressmen. But many do.
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