Where Are My Keys I Lost My Phone

131 thoughts on Where Are My Keys I Lost My Phone

1. Thanks for this. My partner, my sister and my daughter are all very obviously ADD and it drives me nuts to hear it minimized. Meanwhile my son, and possibly myself are Aspies (“your kid’s not autistic, he’s just a brat” – oh George Carlin, how I used to love you) and I suffer from depression (a very common comorbidity with Asperger’s btw) These things are genetic, there is real evidence of different flows of blood and electricity in the brains of people with Autism and ADD and these “disorders” are related (they’re also related to epilepsy and schizophrenia – which you don’t tend to hear people claiming don’t exist.) There’s tonnes of science out there, if you care to look at it.

2. Love this post. I don’t have ADD but I do have depression, and during and some weeks after every episode I’ve ever had, my brain does this to me. It is real, and it’s annoying as hell. A great book that has helped me come up with coping strategies for this is called ADD-Friendly Ways to Organize Your Life. Not sure if it’s still in print (bought my copy in the early aughts) but it’s a great resource.

3. This is really excellent. I actually have just finished an ADHD screening form thingy for my school, so HIGHLY RELEVANT TO MY INTERESTS, this post.

   Also I was going to say something else more relevant to your actual content, but I seem to have, embarrassingly enough, forgotten what.

   Really though. Amazing post.

4. I don’t have ADD, but see some parallels with autism. That, too is sometimes thought of as overdiagnosed (esp. “high-functioning” autism) or an excuse for yuppy parents to label their non-gifted children. I was diagnosed with autism at age 20, after twenty years of being told I was somehow wrong for my difficulties. When, of course, ADD, autism and other neurological disabilities are not wrong, they are simply a reflection of the diverse ways in which brains can be wired.

5. 😀

   I know–I should as the supernannies say “use my words”–but I don’t have ’em.

   Thank you for this.

   I think, like on getting dressed in the morning, or just trying to leave the house?–To me it feels like a memory-allocation stack-vs-queue-type problem. Other people, it seems like, if they get a new thought, it goes into a queue for later, and they process it later, after the first thought, and it’s neat and orderly and very first-in first-out.

   A stack, on the other hand, works last-in first-out, like cafeteria tray dispensers. And not only that, my stack has like ONE SLOT. So when something new comes in, it doesn’t even go into the stack proper, in any kind of an orderly fashion; it just sits right on top of whatever was in that one slot, completely obscuring it–and before long I am late, and getting the frosty eye from people who believe in their bones that this is purely a problem of my not caring enough about them.

   Frankly? I am starting to not care enough about them. They’ve already demonstrated clearly how little they care about me.

6. I’ve never been/looked into being diagnosed as ADD or anything, but this is PAINFULLY how my brain feels.
   I’ve mostly learned to compensate for the being late thing, but I lose all my shit 5 seconds after putting it down.
   I have to spend at least five minutes hunting my keys down most morning. I forget what I’ve turned on the computer to do by the time it’s booted up. And I’m all for going shoeless so I kick them off as soon as I’m home and don’t even ask me where they go!
   Oh brains, aren’t you great?

   ARGH! I wanted to add something else and I’ve FORGOTTEN WHAT because I went and looked at Twitter!! >_<

7. “I’ve never been/looked into being diagnosed as ADD or anything, but this is PAINFULLY how my brain feels.”

   God, me too.

8. That sounds….freakishly like me. I’ve developed some decent coping techniques, most of which involve being lucky enough to have gotten a job where I can spend 15 minutes to an hour, most days, looking for my keys if I have to or–OR!

   Just not leaving the house when I can’t find them. Or my shoes. Ahem. Yes, this has happened. My wallet I thankfully do not lose, but I can NEVER find my phone. How people find their phones is BEYOND ME. At least my laptop is hard to miss, relatively speaking. I did leave my phone in the fridge once.

   Once I was working (writing), and I got in the shower with my clothes on. Hm. Is that ADD or its opposite?

   I also find I have to have something else to switch off to every ten minutes or so, hence my commenting frequency while doing something Important and Worky that has to sound Focused. Although honestly, TV shows I have seen before work much better than internetz.

   Never had it looked at, been diagnosed in any way. Parents were Scientologist, Ritalin use would have been anathema, like dying. Worse than dying. I wish I were kidding, I think my brother, unlike me, who never had any good coping mechanisms, really could have used some medical help.

9. Wanted to clarify–coping mechanisms purely a matter of luck and intensity of ADD, not a matter of willpower or *anything* of that sort! I lucked out with finding some life structures that help me out, that is ALL.

10. I am in love with this post. Thank you! It took me about 5 times to actually read the whole thing LOL. And yes, I laugh too. It can be funny! And laughing is how I cope with a lot of stuff.

    From what I’ve read, girls are massively UNDERdiagnosed with ADD. Because girls tend to not act the same as boys and tend to develop different coping skills. SHOCK.

    I was just talking about ADD earlier today, and how it means I don’t perceive things the same way as the average person. I see dishes in the sink, or something on the floor, and my brain does not translate that as “action item to be done.” It sees competition for the million other things I want to do, or should do. And I can’t properly weigh the priority of washing dishes vs. working in my art journal. I just can’t. I have to act as if prioritizing and time and order are real to me, but I never really GET it.

11. Once I was working (writing), and I got in the shower with my clothes on. Hm. Is that ADD or its opposite?

    I have never quite done this but I have been very close!

    And I have a very specific routine in the shower. Because in the morning before caffeine, it’s so hard to keep focused that I will forget if I just washed my hair.

12. THAAANK YOOOU. Just THANK YOU.

13. From what I’ve read, girls are massively UNDERdiagnosed with ADD. Because girls tend to not act the same as boys and tend to develop different coping skills. SHOCK.

    Shock indeed. Wow, it’s almost like girls and women put a shit ton more effort into coping than boys and men do! Because they’ve been so fucking socialized not to be a goddamn pain to everyone around them, unlike guys, who get to suffer loudly and heroically and attention-consumingly.

    This is such a pain in the ass, too, for so many different things (not just ADD.) Back when I was super depressed (and not just sort of depressed like I am now) I would still act very cheerful and smiley and all “oh, I would love to chat with you, random male peer! I’m fine, I’m fine, how are you?” It’s actually still very difficult for me to tell even a therapist I’m not feeling so hot (“how are you doing today?” and I say “I’m great! Your advice is working! Much better!”*)

    Of course, sometimes I was so ridiculously depressed that I honestly don’t *know* what kind of smiling face I put on because my entire day grayed out and I literally would get home and remember nothing… but aside from that I tried very hard not to be a bother. And it took me ages to be diagnosed — I was always told what a happy child I was so I had to keep it up as long as possible, right?

    And my friend who has ADD (and recently, clinical depression) took ages first to admit to herself that she needed any help at all (“I’m fine! I’m the cheerful one! I can cope!”) and a little while longer to convince anyone else she wasn’t perfectly fine. We actually got into a huge horrible fight about it because I was pissed off that she acted so goddamn cheerful, she kept acting cheerful, and then after we made up half a year later she was like “oh, ps, I was pretty much suicidal that entire time. Guess I should have told you, yeah?”

    Fucking feminine stiff upper lip.

    *lies

14. Erm, to inch back on topic, said friend also has tons of coping mechanisms for her ADD, which made her get a diagnosis of “barely” ADD as a kid when it should have been “a lot!”

15. I would not be living without my coping mechanisms and a slapdash amount of odd types of organization that I depend on. I live with my datebook, because while I don’t look at it often, I can remember writing something. I have stupid routines for the shower, for eating, for the morning before work. It takes me an hour longer to get ready in the morning because I have to mentally configure my brain for the day.

    And oh work. At least, despite the variety, has a nice set routine. But yesh, jobs. Don’t tell anyone you have adhd, because they’ll think you are a faker, a whiner or unable to do a job. And if you do have trouble because of ADHD — they won’t give you disability.

    And then they act amazed at a college degree, in English no less, because “how can you focus on a book, but forget to set a timer for the oven?” or being amazed when you aren’t on drugs or amazed that you choose to go on and off of them as needed.

    I wish this were an occasional thing like most people. But this is my life, and it’s exhausting. It’s exhausting having so much energy surging through me. I reach for simple living and monasticism and those sorts of things because it feels like something I can never have: quiet, stillness, mindfullness.

16. Man, I feel ya on the annoyance of people saying you’re not trying hard enough. I don’t have ADD (though I must say some of your post sounds like me), but I’m an extreme night owl (Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome), diagnosed and everything. I have been all my life. If I get to sleep before 5 AM, I’m going to bed early.

    I was finally diagnosed about 11 or so years ago, in my early 20s, and I’m still dealing with psychological fallout from being told, all through my childhood, that I just needed to try harder to get up in the mornings and have energy during the day and not fall asleep in class. I just needed to stop being so lazy and exercise more and I’d sleep better!

    And that’s sort of true. I sleep better if I exercise, but it does absolutely nothing to change the brain chemistry that controls what time I go to sleep.

    Anyway, if you want to delete this because it has nothing to do with your post on ADD, feel free. I don’t mean to threadjack or anything. I just felt compelled to say that I also hate it when people try to tell me I’m lazy for not being able to be like them.

17. Also, I’m sick of tests. The last time I went on meds (I’m off now because I can’t afford it, and drink a lot of diet soda instead) the doctor didn’t believe I could have ADHD. Because I’m female, and females don’t have ADHD. He had me go through an entire battery of tests just so he could rule out the diagnosis I’ve had since I was six, which was done by someone far more qualified than him.

    And then I had to force him to give me the only medicine that works for me anymore (which is also the most expensive, but stimulants don’t work) because he just “didn’t have any experience with Strattera” and he didn’t think it would work.

    Sorry, that was a rant mcrant.

18. For a little while I thought that I had an Internet problem, instead of an attention thing–but when the internet is off, I just get up and wander around the house doing various things for approximately the same amount of time. So…yeah.

    So the meme going around about “internet addiction” in the media? internet!=ADD, either. I mean, I don’t know how comfortable I am with claiming that label, since I have boxed it up so it doesn’t horribly affect my life. But it’s nice to be able to talk about it with other people.

    Have other people had the thing where you find that people sort of look after you a bit like a lost puppy?

19. Erm, this makes a lot of sense, and contextualizes some of my ADD-diagnosed-as-a-child husband’s behaviors… and, uh, yeah. this makes it clear that I’ve been a jerk at least a few times. Thanks.

20. When I was a kid, my mom bought me a Winnie the Pooh watch that said “When I try to remember, I forget” on the face. We used to joke about how I forget everything.

    I lost that watch. Almost immediately.

    Isabel, I feel like you are describing my life here! I have always been frustrated by the fact that it takes me 15 minutes to leave my apartment every day because I keep forgetting things and misplacing things and when I find something I misplaced I lose something else, and agghh. And how I have to write things on my hands to remember them, but I still forget!

    I lose my keys all the time (thankfully not my wallet!) and I have a spare key stashed in my purse because I got sick of having to pay the pop-a-lock guy $50 whenever I locked my keys in the car but remembered to take my purse with me (which is once a week) and I’ll start something and then get sidetracked to a billion other things and then 3 hours later I have nothing finished. This includes homework, housework, EVERYTHING. I warn my friends not to lend me anything because I will lose it or forget to give it back.

    I’ve always felt so bad because people think I am not trying hard enough to not be forgetful and that I am just lazy. So thank you for this post. It was like a fucking epiphany.

21. Thank you so much for WRITING DOWN THE INSIDE OF MY BRAIN so perfectly and hilariously and, okay, possibly a little terrifyingly as well.

22. Thank you so much for writing this! After years of being misdiagnosed with all sorts of disorders from major depression to agoraphobia to borderline personality disorder, I was finally diagnosed with ADD back in March. I found a wonderful doctor who listened to me. Doc, I can’t focus on school, I can’t organize anything in my life worth shit except for events for the women’s center and goddamn it, I’m at the end of my ropes! She listened to me and she said exactly what I thought she was going to say, that I have ADD. My partner thinks it’s a BS diagnosis and they don’t even know I’m on meds. It’s a diagnosis that rarely gets any empathy because, in my situation, I got diagnosed so late in my life and had already frustrated and fucked up so many relationships by my forgetfulness. ADD is something that gets masked as a brainless disorder, especially if you are a woman or girl. I’ve gotten told that I’m just lazy or too air-headed. I do work my ass off everyday just to accomplish 70%(but most of the time a solid 50%) of what I need to do. It’s great to hear that you’re also working with kids! I’m a teacher’s aid and am going to school for early childhood education. I’ve found it to be one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever jumped into. I work at a special needs school and at least there, I can work with children who have some of the save issues as me and I can also advocate for them. No one ever advocated for me because I was always the flake, you know? I want the little girl in my class to know it’s ok that she can’t attend to lessons 100% of the time and that it’s NOT ok for anyone to think any less of her when she has to work so much harder than other peers because of her ADD. When I reassure her, I’m also reassuring myself. I no longer listen to people who can’t be supportive of me because at this point, I set my own rules and goals. And if me being 20 minutes late to have coffee with you is such a drag and such a character flaw, I’m sorry but maybe we shouldn’t go on any more dates. : )
    Thanks so much, again, for writing this. I hope that myself and others can also open up about the myths around ADD. I know that this piece has definitely inspired me to write something!

23. i love you so much right now. i was only diagnosed with add (inattentive type) a few months ago, and finally having a NAME and a TREATMENT and a REASON has made such a difference in my life i can’t even express it. after i started adderall and told my mother how much things had improved for me, she went to the doctor and got diagnosed herself, and then figured out that the women in our family have had serious add for several generations. the reason it took so many years to get us diagnosed was that we’re smart – for years and years it was “oh, of course abby isn’t paying attention, she’s brilliant, she doesn’t need to” – and then i ended up with a bad case of ptsd too – so it was “oh, of course abby isn’t paying attention, she’s as crazy as a box of weasels.” but the antidepressants didn’t work, and the antipsychotics didn’t work, and the psychiatrist was about ready to give up on me – and then it occurred to him that maaaaaaaybe add was the secret. and it was. and now my life isn’t perfect, but it’s like i have one of the really important pieces of the puzzle that i went years and years unable to find, and now i can see what the picture is supposed to look like.

24. What is so frustrating about the whole “adult with ADD” life that I live is just what you said – getting it through people’s thick skulls that I AM trying. oh, am I trying.

    I just want to shake the label of “flaky”.

    And I am tired of laughing it off.

    I am green with envy at other students who can just sit down and read the book.

    The medicine makes me feel icky, but it helps with the more difficult tasks, so what do I do? I hate asking the doctor, because even the doctor seems to think I should just deal.

    And I write like ^ that ^ because I can’t get more than a choppy thought out (although blogging world has been the place where that is ok, and people seem to actually kind of like it. Weird. I know)

    In conclusion: Thank you. Thank you. (oh, a tater tot!) <—bad ADD joke/coping mechanism 🙂

25. This is so spot-on. I’ve been dealing with my mother’s lack of understanding for YEARS. “But why didn’t you get your stepfather a birthday card? You know how much he enjoys birthday cards. It hurts him that you didn’t take the time and effort to choose something for him.” It’s not about time and effort, mother! Grrrr.

    I’ve actually given up on a teaching career for the moment, because I know I just do not have the skills to keep up with curriculum-writing and paper-grading and everything else. In a classroom? I’m dynamic and funny and engaging and insightful. But I don’t think that’s enough. I mean, I flunked out of a teaching credential program. Who the fuck can’t hack a teaching credential program? Insert endless stream of negative self-talk here!

26. Hi all! I was diagnosed as an adult (just last year – age 28) with ADHD. I went through over 10 years of near-constant major depression, which we (myself and doctors/therapists) now think was caused by “hitting the wall” in grade 11 and not being able to cope anymore (as a “gifted and talented student”, that was *so* much fun), and not knowing why I coudn’t cope. I made it into post-secondary education, and failed out of 4 schools. Before I got diagnosed and started on ritalin last summer, and actually had a successful college year (A/A+ in all classes!) my husband suggested that I start looking for work in a hospital food service department (unionized, and would have paid more than my creative and mostly fulfilling job working with kids). This:

    It sucks losing the trust of people you care about, and it really sucks knowing they’re totally justified, because no one trusts you less than you.

    really resonates with me.

    Anyway, things are on the uptick now.

27. My ADHD has almost ruined my marriage because two years ago I started my own business, for which my husband was more than happy to support me in, paying the bills and cutting back because we didn’t have two salaries anymore.

    Two years later, I hardly have anymore work than I did when I started and I’m not even going into how many fights that turned into downright ugly scenes because he’d walk in the door and say, “What did you do today?” Simple question right?

    I KNOW I DID A TON OF SHIT. I haven’t stopped since I woke up, but damned if I can show him one completed item. So naturally, I’m lazy, taking advantage of him, take-your-pick-of-accusations. It’s just so difficult to defend yourself when you KNOW IN YOUR BRAIN that you’ve been busy all day, but, but, nothing got done.

    And then there’s the funny, running joke of how many times do I have to come back in the house for something I forgot before I finally get to my car. And then there’s a 50/50 chance I’ll have to get out of the car for something. *hands*

    Huh, right now I have four tabs open that I was working on back and forth before I came here via a link on my Dreamwidth friends page. I guess I should go finish that blog entry/email/research I was doing.

    Thank you for a very heartfelt, clear message about what it’s like.

28. Thank you SO much for this post! My brother was diagnosed with ADD when he was 15 after years of me sitting in my room doing my homework quietly not understanding WHY he couldn’t just do the same – instead, every night was a battle for my parents to try to get him to just get his stuff done. I just remember how extraordinarily frustrated he and my parents would get about his grades because we all knew how intelligent he was, but just couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t getting the grades he was supposedly capable of. Once he was diagnosed, his grades skyrocketed. Now that he’s 22, I still get really frustrated with him – how hard is it to answer your phone once out of the 10 times I’ve called you today? Or answer a text message? Or check your email? – but thanks to this post I have a much better understanding of how his brain works and why its so much harder for him to accomplish those seemingly simple tasks, like calling his sister back to answer a 2 second question. I knew he had issues focusing in school related contexts, but I never really thought of it as also being an everyday battle to find his wallet (I believe he’s had to get about 5-6 new driver’s licenses in the past 6 years) or keys or phone. I will certainly be forwarding this post on to my mom because I know how frustrated she gets with him too. Hopefully this will help her understand him a little better. Thanks again!!

29. I haven’t read any of the comments, yet, but I just had to say something before I go to play rehearsal.

    This was amazing.

    This made me cry. I’ve never seriously thought of myself as having ADD. When I was in elementary school, I think that some of the people there tried to suggest that I might have ADD, and my mother’s response was to homeschool me. And, actually, I’m glad, because I like who I am and I’m glad I didn’t grow up with a label or on medication.

    .. But, sometimes the downside to not having a label is that you don’t have a place to put your feet. You don’t know where you fit. I’ve often thought: if I’m “normal,” and everyone else thinks like this, but they can just handle it better, then there must be something HORRIBLY wrong with my coping skills [and with me]. … Of course, I don’t think anyone has ever accused me of being “normal,” …

    But, yes, I have heard a million times, “If you just do ____” … My husband has an especially hard time understanding. He gets so frustrated with me. Just take two minutes to check, just make a mental list, just slow down, just …

    … be different than you are.

    I still don’t think I would want to even consider an ADD diagnosis. … but this post made me feel like there is something within the ADD community that I could seek out, that could help me in some way. I never thought about the fact that other people who deal with this could help me a lot better than people who’s lives seem so perfect and organized to me. I’ve always wanted that, and I’ve always looked to those people thinking : they’ve got it figured out. They know how to do this … But you’ve made me consider that maybe, no, they don’t. They have no idea how to deal with this, which is why my attempts to learn from them have failed and failed.

    And, tonight, I feel a lot stronger because of this post. I feel like I have some footing, some stable ground to stand on and say, “I promise, I do not do this on purpose. I promise I’m trying.” And I can believe that a little more, myself, because I think that the people closest to me know it better than I do sometimes. Tonight I feel like I can forgive myself a little more.

    Thank you. So. Much.

30. oh. my fucking god. I have never heard this articulated in this way!! I have never thought to be able to say it this way. … This thread is truly revolutionary to me.

    i am a horrible house keeper and this is why. i usually say, “i’m in the house and i feel lost … i don’t know what to do.” nobody knows what this means. i know the “right” solution is “just pick up that piece of trash” .. but it takes an amazing amount of concentration to make this happen.

31. oops … meant to quote this: I see dishes in the sink, or something on the floor, and my brain does not translate that as “action item to be done.” It sees competition for the million other things I want to do, or should do. And I can’t properly weigh the priority of washing dishes vs. working in my art journal. I just can’t. I have to act as if prioritizing and time and order are real to me, but I never really GET it.

32. “”Once I was working (writing), and I got in the shower with my clothes on. Hm. Is that ADD or its opposite?”

    I have never quite done this but I have been very close!

    And I have a very specific routine in the shower. Because in the morning before caffeine, it’s so hard to keep focused that I will forget if I just washed my hair.”

    Ditto on the almost and the routine. I tend to get so focused on what I need to do when I get out of the shower that I have a habit of leaving it before I’ve actually finished washing or rinsing.. Ergo, the routine.

33. I love you and this post so much. I was finally diagnosed with ADD as an adult- my parents were the “my kid is smart, she can’t possibly have ADD” type and yet could never seem to understand why my grades didn’t match my potential. Couldn’t have anything to do with my total lack of organization skills, inability to remember my assignments, inability to finish them when I actually did remember them and inability to remember to turn them in the next day. Sigh. I have lost my keys, wallet, bank card, money, drivers license, etc… more times than I can count and my husband gets so mad. “Just put them in the same place!” “This shouldn’t be hard!”. Right now I can’t find my wallet (it’s been lost for about two weeks) which has my license, all of my grocery rewards cards, receipts that I needed to turn in for work. It is so unbelievably frustrating and I try so hard and it never works which just makes me cry. I did take Strattera and LOVED it, but I would forget to take it, then my insurance co-pay went up and now I want to have baby and my NP told me it’s not good to get pregnant while you are taking it. I am counting down the days until I can start it again.
    I feel like the ADD really does help with kids. I just student taught for speech and I worked with a lot of kids who had attention issues. Other people would get so frustrated, but it didn’t bother me at all and we just went with what they needed. I love kids and they tend to really respond well to me, even when they don’t know me well and I think it’s because I am a lot less uptight about rules and behavior than other adults.

34. I really needed to read a post like this today. I spent 2 hours sitting in my car today crying on the phone because I’m just sooo behind. And when I look at the list of things I have to do, I feel like I’ve fallen behind in life. (For the record, I have a strange combination of ADD/anxiety. Not sure how common that is). And that at the rate I’m going, I’ll never catch up.

    I’m not sure if the anxiety creates the lack of focus or the lack of focus creates the anxiety. Thanks for reminding me (and the world) that yes, we are trying.

35. Yesyesyesyesyesyes. Also? Yes!

    I didn’t realize I had ADD until my mid-twenties, when I’d already developed some not-so-healthy coping mechanisms. The biggest one I’ve got is to procrastinate and procrastinate until the sheer terror of the deadline overwhelms the OOH SHINY of the ADD. Ugh.

    My favorite funny story about having ADD is one time when my husband turned to see me, with my laptop on my lap, staring vacantly out the window. Open on the computer was an article about ADD coping strategies.

36. @ Miss S – I have anxiety and ADD too. My Doc was worried about pumping me full of stimulants so we did a little test run with out my meds.
    It was right when I had to write a major speech to give infront of 1,000 people….
    I finally e-mailed her letting her know that I was MORE anxious because every time I sat down to work, I would get so distracted. so back on the meds I went. The anxiety got better but it never really goes away.

    It’s awful to feel so out of control, so I think that ADD and anxiety ARE related. At least based on my personal experience.

37. p.s. does anybody know a good online resource about ADD meds?

38. I have Bipolar Disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder, so I totally understand about having to regiment every.last.effing.detail of your life. I constantly have to make sure that I monitor the effects of the meds I take, particularly because one of them has crazy reactions to certain foods. I have to constantly think to myself, Okay, is this going to send me to the ER if I eat it?

    Another one of my meds, Lithium, makes it impossible for your kidneys to concentrate urine, so guess what, I pee a lot! Like a whole lot! And I have to drink 2-3 liters of water a day for my body to process it properly because it’s a salt and can only be expelled through the kidneys. I also end up getting dehydrated easily because of Lithium side effects.

    Still another one of my meds, Seroquel, makes me easily glycemic, meaning my blood sugar gets totally weird and I begin to feel like I’m floating away if I don’t watch how many carbos and sugars I eat at one sitting.

    And I’ve certainly learned with practice little tricks of the trade to manage my anxiety, but there are times when I am so skittish and self-conscious that I slur my words or I find it difficult even to talk to people with whom I am reasonably comfortable. Meds and therapy help, but I’ll always have these things to contend with.

    Often times NO ONE UNDERSTANDS YOU, but I was never content to be melodramatic and stoic. I had no stiff upper lip to speak of. The only thing that saved my life was not faking it, because I was in too much pain and too desirous of an outlet to suffer quietly. Honestly, had I kept this all to myself I would be dead.

39. Great post. I wish I could give this to everyone who’s ever told me or my family that ADD isn’t real. My father, brother and I have ADD to varying degrees; I’m fortunate to have the least severe case. I deal with the losing things by focusing on crazy specific habits to levels that approximate OCD – all clean things go here, all dirty things go there, phone/keys/wallet leave pants as soon as I walk in the door and are set in the exact same place every single day. Fortunately, I don’t require medication, but my dad and little brother do, and I’m thankful every day that they get what they need, because they’re both incredibly smart, capable people who are nearly crippled by their issues. My dad coped with it for almost 50 years, but it busted up two marriages and plunged him into depression before he got the treatment he needed. We caught it early in my brother, and the improvement between pre-meds and post-meds has been astronomical. (One more argument for universal healthcare – imagine how much improvement we might see in kids from lower income families who have ADD and haven’t been diagnosed or treated properly.) I think I’ll forward this to my mom to show it to my brother.

40. Do you find you have trouble in romantic relationships?
    My ex-boyfriend has ADD. I really wanted to me understanding and supportive, but sometimes I just needed to have a serious conversation about that lasted more than 3 minutes. But then he’d interrupt to talk about one of his hobbies, and while I know in my head that it’s not because he didn’t care about me, it really felt like it. It was just frustrating. It’s not why we broke up, but it probably contributed. Have you found any coping mechanisms for this?

41. @Honest to Christina: http://crazymeds.us/ has some ADD meds mixed in with the rest of the anti depressant types if you have a sense of what names to look for. They were a huge help for me with my SSRIs.

42. My husband and I just interrupt the f*ck out of each other, all the time. And mostly, we just forgive each other for it. We have had entire conversations that seemed entirely normal, only to turn around and have another family member staring—

    “Did you realize you were both talking *at the same time* that entire time?”

    Um, no. No, we did not.

    So as far as coping mechanisms–interrupt him right back. Just get up in his business about it and be like, HEY! YOU! ME! NOW!

    And if it is actually bad enough that during a fight or serious, truly serious conversation he truly cannot at least FAKE focusing, he needs to see someone, I would think, or at least take responsibility for the fact that he is not being sensitive to your needs.

43. Ah yes, also:

    Blurting out/thinking whatever random shit you were thinking about at, ahem, inappropriate times, no matter if you were enjoying it or not. Ya’ll know what I’m talking about, ladies. I feel this is a problem men with ADD DO NOT HAVE, although I am not certain.

44. Klonke:Most people don’t understand this, because most people don’t understand how it could be so fucking hard not to lose a wallet. Just put it in the same place every time! Simple as that!

    I’d like to blockquote it, but I fail every time. Just know that this pretty much sums up about 50% of my interactions with my mom. Who, oh, so helpfully, punched a hole in my driver’s permit AND my bus pass, thus rendering them completely useless. (My father’s had his moments too, but his is only about 30%.)

    A yes, yes and more yes to most of the posters too. The girl/ boy gap was highly noticeable in my second elementaryschool which specialized in ADD/LD kids. In my first year there, my class only had one other girl besides me. (It was K-12, so the gender skewage never got resolved.)

    Most of them mainstreamed, interestingly enough, so, Bagelsan, I think you have a great point there. Although I never really interacted (beyond the superficial) with girls until my college years, so I can’t really say why they left the school. But I’m pretty sure their families were a factor.

    I’ve lost my phone too- last Monday I left it at the library, and a while before I lost it in the depths of my laundry basket. I tend to use pockets as storage space. I’ve found that calling the phone on a landline sometimes works. But only if the phone is in the house and is charged.
    Honest to Christina: I’m sorry that I don’t know a real resource, I can only share my personal experience. I can tell you that ritalin causes headaches if you’re off it for more than a couple days, and that I got scared off the high dose of Strattera because I kept getting huge nosebleeds. (Think crime-scene worthy.)

45. orgostrich- My husband has ADD and I’ve suspected for a while that I do as well. This post pretty much perfectly describes my brain. I think our relationship works as well as it does because we’re both aware of the ways that both of us get distracted and will gently nudge the other. Like, my husband compensates for the tendency to get distracted and be late by just being a ridiculous stickler for punctuality, so he’s good at keeping me on task when we’re trying to leave. I’m better at keeping general information handy and writing stuff down (of course, it’ll just get shoved in my pocket or on some surface and then all is lost! Literally!) so I am the keeper of grocery lists and stuff we have to do this weekend. I am a big list-writer. Neither of us have things too bad because we aren’t on any meds. But life does get frustrating some times. I work in a lab with a communal office, and heaven help me if I need to do anything other than labwork. Better to just work from home. But at home is cleaning and cooking and errands and the INTERNET. I swear, the Internet was invented just to tack on an extra year to my PhD.

    Also, headnod to girls not getting diagnosed with ADD ’cause they’re conditioned to not act out in the same way. In retrospect, my parents probably should have suspected something was up, when every year my report card said “Delightful to have in class. Needs to work on organizational skills.” Alas, the elaborate folder/binder/schedule system that my parents and I cooked up and put together EVERY FREAKING SEMESTER would fall by the wayside after, like, 2 weeks. 4 folders + 4 notebooks to keep track of? NOT USEFUL. 1 notebook with sections? WAY MORE USEFUL. Loose papers are still pretty much hopeless. Anyone have a useful way for keeping track of them? I’ve started keeping journal articles organized on my computer, which is helpful to a certain extent.

    Wow, and now I’ve blabbered on for a while. Hurrah!

46. This is my son.

    Thank you for this post. I am so fucking sick of people saying “ADD is just parents and teachers wanting to medicate their kids into being perfect little zombies.” NO. Fuck that noise. Yeah, there are probably kids diagnosed with ADD when in fact they are normal energetic six-year-olds, but my fourteen year old son is a genius who just managed to fail math, social studies… and art. The homework I’d find in his binder two months after he was supposed to turn it in, the chores he doesn’t do, the class trips he never got to go on because he never gave me the permission slip to sign… This is a really awesome explanation of that shit, and it helps me to understand him. I’m going to make my husband read this post (ironically, I think my husband may be mildly ADD himself, but he was always functional enough that he was never diagnosed, and it seems like he really gets very frustrated with our son.)

    Did any of you grownups manage to find any coping mechanisms that worked in school to help you with the homework and crap like that? As my son’s gotten older, I feel like he’s gotten less and less help in the school system, and they cut him less slack and give him less assistance with what he really needs — like, you know this boy cannot remember to turn in his homework, he has an IEP, would it totally kill you to walk over to his desk and say, “Can you give me your homework from last night now?” I *made* him do it, why can’t you make him turn it in? And it would be one thing if he wanted to grow up and draw comic books or something, but my son wants to be an engineer. He *needs* the academics to fulfill his life ambitions, and I’m so worried he’ll never be able to achieve it because he just can’t handle the assembly line of life, the “do task X and then task Y” operations, and no one is giving him the help he needs with that. Did anything help any of you guys?

47. I haven’t been diagnosed with ADD or even been tested for it, but your description of trying to find your phone and get out the door sounds exactly like…more than half of my mornings. A few close friends have suggested that I go get tested, and I’m considering it. Even minor OTC meds like Tylenol fuck me up a bit sometimes, so I’m leery of potentially getting a prescription, but I really may need something for the last and most stressful year of college or eventually the workforce. I can get things done, but only if I switch back and forth between about five separate distracting activities, and even if I know I need to focus I can’t lock down on reading assignments, even emergency ones. And my thoughts hop back and forth so that I babble out long sentences like that, sorry.

    The part that really hit me was working on one paragraph in the middle of another and then skipping back; that’s how I write pretty much all e-mails, LJ posts, forum posts, papers…everything. I can’t write a whole solid paragraph without moving around to another one in the middle.

    Anyway, thanks for mentioning this; I get so angry at myself for misplacing a key or my wallet because it tends to screw up my friends’ day somehow and it feels like I could fix it if I tried harder, but this is helping me re-evaluate that. Thank you.

48. I love computers. They fix my messy handwriting, they let me organize my files and put names on them so I can find things (The computer is seriously organized. My desk? er….) And it emails me and pops up reminders for taking out the trash. It even lets me put virtual post-it notes up for the day so that I know what I need to do when, where the cats can’t knock them off.

    But going on Adderall was a miracle. I was able to remember and process the way I can when there’s a crisis. I had a level of attention between scattered and hyperfocus. And I actually got less anxious, because I wasn’t perpetually worrying about What I Have Forgotten That Is About To Bite Me In The Ass. Also I lost weight, which is not a bad thing when one has bad joints, though was a little disconcerting body-image wise, as being fat is for me a very feminist statement, and I have been fat for a lot of my life. The only real downside is that I have serious dry mouth, and so I drink a lot of water. Which is good for me anyway.

    But I got very angry after the first week. If inattentive ADD had been known in the late seventies and early eighties….I’d probably be a Ph.D. ADD sabotaged my life from kindergarten on. It’s taking some time to forgive myself and the world for not knowing, not treating. But I can see the ADD in my parents, now that I know.

    Of course, I married a man with ADHD, and have two sons; one with inattentive/obsessional ADD like mine, and one with classic hyperactive ADHD like his father. Fortunately, they have been medicated and are on their way without that hobbling them.

49. Thank-you for writing this! This is so completely how my day works. I am always running somewhere because what started out as plenty of time suddenly turned into, “you have five minutes to get there!” The folks I’ve told about the ADD think that it’s all in my head, which is really frustrating.
    I had a therapist in my early 20s who suggested that I might have been undiagnosed, and it was such a relief to finally know the reason for my behavior. I completely agree with the despair of trying so hard and still hitting the same walls (and loosing our keys, cell phones, and other time-sensitive critically important items) and racing to complete every deadline up until the last possible moment.
    I can totally relate to the ADD/anxiety deal as well. Right now I’m taking a distance course which has no deadlines. I am well and truly in a state of utter panic. My family doesn’t understand why I can’t just sit down and get the work done, which makes sense to them, because that’s how they operate. Like I should just get over this ADD thing and set myself some deadlines.
    *le sigh*
    Still, it’s nice to know that I’m not alone out there going through this stuff. Sometimes it feels like I’m all alone with these frustrations and that everyone else has their stuff together.
    Thanks again for posting this! I really appreciate it 🙂

50. I was just wondering what everyone’s experience has been with food–has anyone tried limiting /removing foods with coloring and preservatives from their diet, and has it had any effects? I read a very interesting study (of which, I cannot find atm, I will post it if I can find it) comparing what kids eat today as compared to 50 years ago, showing the limited consumption of preservatives and food color in the 1950-60s compared to today–with all of the convenience food available, preservative and food coloring are very difficult to avoid.

    I have a history of major food issues (not ADD/ADHD related) that have basically completely been solved if I eliminate food coloring and preservatives from my diet. Now I completely understand how difficult this is (and sometimes undesirable) and also expensive. But for those of you that are at your wits end and don’t know where else to turn, I would suggest doing some research on food. I know the Feingold diet is very successful and I am sure there are many other resources out there.

    My doctor told me this great story–my doctor practices conventional as well as alternative medicine–he said that when a parent complains that their child might be ADD/ADHD he prescribes a large dose of carbon followed by the instructions to limit the child’s intake of food coloring and preservatives as much as possible. He has had parents return to his office in tears, so grateful and excited about the immediate change in their kids.

51. THANK YOU SO MUCH. <3 <3 <3

    I was diagnosed with ADD pretty early on, but my parents don't believe in it so I got (get) a lot of 'you just don't care enough to do these things' and 'you manage to remember YOUR stuff' (which I don't, but whatever) and 'just remember to do it!' It's just so.. I don't even know. Hopeless and frustrating. This is a real thing, I can't just shut it off.

    /de-lurk

52. Thanks for writing this post; I feel like I might (just might) have a smidgen of a better idea of what it is like to have ADD. I know one of my high school friends was ADD, and wasn’t diagnosed until Sophomore year, and before then his grades were so bad that even getting straight-A’s in all his Honors courses (which he did, once properly treated and all the teachers knew how to help him – we were lucky enough to have teachers like that) he couldn’t get into the college he wanted. I never really thought about how much ADD effects everything you do until reading this post and remembering him.

    Thanks again for writing this. It was incredible.

53. Yes, this.

    I have totally set an alarm to remind myself of a doctor’s appointment, had it go off, thought “Need to leave in 10 minutes!” and then, three hours later, suddenly had my stomach sink in horror as I remember the appointment I was supposed to go to.

    I covered up well as a child by being compliant, quiet, sweet and well-behaved, so teachers cut me a lot of slack when I forgot my homework for the 577543467th time. My mother didn’t believe me when I told her I suspected I had ADD. “But you were such a good organized student!” Ha ha. I wonder if this is the source of my Imposter Syndrome feelings now — I really have been “covering up” for a long time, pretending that I can keep organized, making a bunch of excuses when I don’t manage it, and largely having those excuses accepted. Short leap from that to “I am really stupid and incompetent, so if anyone thinks I’m smart or good at anything, it’s because I fooled them. I already fooled them with my excuse for not getting that thing in on time, didn’t I?”

    I still haven’t found a good set of solutions. I am presently on Adderall, which helps focus but destroys my ability to sleep at night. And I still can’t stop procrastinating, even on Adderall, which may be because I am truly not happy with my work. I used to get geared up for deadlines but now I just don’t care.

    Need to see my doctor again. So thankful that I have health insurance and access to mental health care.

54. Yes, and when I’m done with that, I’ll use my remaining spoons on acupuncture and a special diet for my migraines and THEN, oh but then! I will sit in front of my UV lamp three hours a day for my SAD and eliminate all wheat and processed sugar.

    Maybe then I will not have to take any pills! Yay!

    OK, look, I’m sorry. But we’ve thought of these things, ok?

55. I’ve felt more and more ADD as I’ve gotten older. I don’t know if my brain chemistry has changed, or what. It seems like when I was just working, I didn’t forget as many things. I seem to have gotten worse since I returned to grad school. Maybe it’s just stress, I don’t know. I forgot my grandmother’s birthday last month, and I can’t explain why. I was intending to get her a gift on Sunday, and then I just forgot about it until my mother asked me a week later whether I’d sent her a card. It’s very frustrating and terrifying, because I don’t know what else I’m forgetting. The best tool I’ve found to help me with this stuff is my iPhone. I always carry it with me, and whenever I remember something I need to do, I send myself an email. I tend to check my email obsessively and I like a clean inbox, so the email reminders will bother me every time I check it because they’re taking up inbox space. Notes never worked for me, even ones on notepad apps on my phone or computer, because I would lose them, delete them, or forget about them. I’m so plugged in to email that it’s the only thing that works for me. I’ve set up reminders for things I know I need to remember regularly in my gmail calendar, and I get an email when I need to do it – like paying my rent. The problem with those things is that I actually need to remember to put them in the calendar, which I forgot to do with birthdays for 2 years after switching calendar systems, which is part of why I forgot my grandma’s birthday. You wouldn’t think you could continually forget to do something for 2 years, but I sure did. It’s tough to deal with, and if I don’t improve my work habits during this upcoming year of coursework, I’m going to look into medication, because I can’t foresee myself writing a dissertation with the way I operate.

56. I can’t tell you how much this resonates with me. I had an ADD anecdote experience just this past weekend when I drove up to see my husband, who is working a job two hours away for the summer. I left the house, I had my keys and my cell phone (I knew I had my keys because I had to lock the door, and I knew I had my cell phone because I used it to call my husband to let him know I was leaving after I locked the door). I had turned off all the lights, not that that matters as much since we live in an apartment where the utilities are worked into the rent. I had closed the patio door which again, didn’t matter much since it is surrounded on all sides by a six foot drop. I HAD done all these things, because I came home on tuesday and they were done, but I couldn’t exactly remember doing them. I was able to dismiss them because it wouldn’t matter much if I didn’t, but then. I remembered; I had been making tea that morning before I left. And I? I am the sort of ADD which means I leave the stove on sometimes.

    Suddenly, I am forty five minutes out and I am starting to have a panic attack that I left my stove on when I was leaving for four days. I have made it an absolute habit to double check if I’ve turned off the burners when I’m done with them, but as you say, it doesn’t MATTER if I make a habit of it, because whether or not I do double check, I cannot remember if I’ve done it fifteen minutes later.

    I came home and the building wasn’t burned down, but I know exactly how you feel, and how helpless you can be to the fact that your brain just doesn’t like you very much.

57. @Heather Freeman, procrastinating is a classic ADD coping mechanism. Know why? Stress produces adrenaline, and adrenaline changes an ADD person’s brain chemistry so focusing is easier. We actually do think better when we’re stressed! (I don’t have a cite for this, but I’ve had several psychiatrists explain it to me over the years. Apparently that’s also why Effexor, which I was on for some time, helps with ADD — it’s a norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor, and therefore works on adrenaline.)

58. @chava, LOL, thank you. I saw a doctor a few years ago and said, “Maybe I should try altering my diet dramatically, because I’ve heard that can help with depression and ADD.” She looked me square in the eye and said, “Are you really going to do that?” I had to laugh sheepishly and say, no, I wasn’t in a place where I could accomplish that. It just wasn’t (and isn’t) realistic for me.

59. Great great great post. It was like reading my own writing – I have ADHD, got diagnosed at age 22 and now, little over 2 years later I’ve finally managed to deal with it, mostly by being aware of all the little things I do/can/can’t/keep fucking up (and concerta medication to get the neurotransmitter sorted out). And yes, I’ve also been called a lot of things before the diagnose – lazy, careless, dumb, arrogant, no discipline, selfish etc. But I have an awesome psych who helped me so much with getting to grips with it – cognitive therapy really is such a great help – and the medications helps a lot. Right now I’m finishing my 2nd year at University and having the highest grades ever, a GPA of 4.0 which i am SO proud of — and that while nobody except my best friend expected that I would be able to do University (not even myself after having had so many issues with school in the past). And interestingly, the thing that has helped me so much? Majoring in Gender studies. It helped me understand myself, a lot of the things I struggled with and to find a way to cope with other people’s behavior – which before could enrage me to no end, like racism, misogyny etc – because I finally was at a level that education would really challenge me to THINK and investigate and say ‘hey, so the fuck what that your brain is wired differently and you want to do everything at once. You want to investigate thirty different things? GO FOR IT’. And that I wasn’t being hysterical all the time just because I’d jump from one thing to another, end up being late no matter how hard I tried to be on time, etc etc. So – okay this is a bit of a rambling comment, I just woke up, lol, but I just wanted to put my 2 cents in and say YOU ROCK for having made this post. There needs to be more discussion about it so people don’t have these messed up ideas about ADD/ADHD, and most DEFINITELY not that it is some fashion disease or that there is a ‘ritalin generation’ because fuck that. Ritalin is speed for non-ADDers, THAT is what gets abused — not actual ADDers who really need it to get the neurotransmitters sorted out in their head.

60. Wow…

    This post, and another that linked to it, has made me realise just how bad ADD is (or can be) for people.

    I will admit, that until I had read those posts, that AD(H)D would be something that, on some days, I would’ve questioned the existence of, given that it’s a diagnosis that’s given quote a lot these days.

    What really struck home to me, is that there are quite a few similarities to me (even though my neurodivergence isn’t ADD… or, at least I don’t think it is). I mean, obviously, there are some differences (the one that springs out to me is the constant losing of everything… but then, I wonder if this is just because I don’t go out as much), but the lack of differences is scarier, to me…

    So, thank you for opening my eyes.

61. Thanks for this post, and to the other commenters, too. A few quick thoughts:

    1. Alexandra mentions it, but it’s worth making it more explicit: There are two forms of ADHD: the Hyperactive form and the Inattentive form. Some people have one, some have the other, and some have some of each. Part of the reason for the simultaneous over and under diagnosis is that since most people think of the hyperactive form, the inattentive form gets overlooked. At the same time, kids who just have high energy get misdiagnosed as Hyperactive. (Alexandra also mentions Adderall. Three cheers for Adderall.)

    2. Our culture has a big problem with abelist language and ADHD. I try not to let it bother me, but I definitely find it frustrating when non-ADHD people use the ADD label as shorthand for generic forgetfulness or procrastination. When the term gets thrown around so casually it trivializes the very real difficulties that those of us who actually have it face.

    3. It’s bad enough that the media is so focused on Hyperactivity, but too much of the actual ADHD literature gives Inattention too little, ahem, attention.

    4. John Ratey’s book _Driven_to_Distraction_ is excellent.

    5. I’m going to try to get back to what I’m _supposed_ to be doing now 🙂

62. I am so fucking fuming! I posted this on my facebook and my closest friend, a women who’s the strongest feminist I know just basically shot ADD down as a fucking fraud. I’ve heard this out of her mouth once before but thought she better understood it after I told her I had it. Fuck… does anyone else ever feel like they’re incredibly marginalized when discussing ADD even with feminist friends? As far as I’m concerned she might as well have said autism or postpartum depression don’t exist, and we all know saying that shit is not cool in feminist circles.

63. Hot Tramp – Yep! That’s my major coping mechanism. It drives my husband crazy because he CAN NOT understand how I can get a metric fuckton of stuff done under some circumstances – much more than most people could accomplish in a similar time frame – yet day in and day out, seem to get about 20% as much done.

    Only part of it is the adrenaline, though. The other part is the priority clarifying aspect. When I need to sew three dresses, clean the house, grab a neighbor and move furniture, call the vet, write an article, and mail a package to my mother, all sometime this week it all turns into a big jumble and I spin in circles. When the charity pick-up is coming in an hour, and the furniture is still sitting in the living room, then it’s immediately clear that this comes first.

    So, as of right now the furniture is sitting in the yard waiting for pick up. But Mom’s package, the dresses, the vet call, and the article all remain undone, while the house is a wreck, because my brain can’t decide which gets next priority. Even though I could have finished them all about three days ago if I could just start doing them.

64. I feel like this is me…not to the same extreme as the original poster, but I especially see myself in some of the comments…

    I feel so insecure about bringing this up to anyone, though. Since getting to college, I’ve become increasingly suspicious that I might have ADD. I think I’ve always had it, but I think it’s gotten worse (or maybe the work’s just gotten heavier and harder). I am a terrible procrastinator, and can’t seem to get anything done unless it’s at the last moment before the deadline – I universally complete my assignments at the last minute, if I manage to get them done. If I try to do them early, something always sidetracks me. I have shown up for two separate finals in two separate semesters at the wrong time – although thankfully the first prof let me retake it, and the second time I showed up two days early instead of two days late. I love the internet because it breaks information up into digestible pieces and links them together in a way that allows me to wander through information. I love books, but have lost much of my patience for reading them, to my extreme dismay. I have about 50 books sitting on my shelf that I’ve only partially read, because I couldn’t maintain my focus long enough to finish them even though I was interested in the subject matter.

    I lose my keys every time I walk into the house. Seriously, every single time I try to leave I have to spend 5-10 minutes finding my keys, and at least 5 more finding two matching shoes. I lose my phone constantly (multiple times every day) simply because I can’t remember where I set it down 2 minutes ago. My wallet and credit card seem to disappear at least twice as often as some of my friends’. I never wear earrings anymore because no matter how careful I am, I can’t keep both earrings together for longer than a couple months. Basically, anything small enough to lose, I lose it.

    But I’ve always been a good student, and when I have lapses, it’s always blamed on my lack of effort. I also got those report cards with positive comments + complaints about my lack of organization. I am a compulsive doodler, and *cannot* listen for long periods of time *unless* I am doing something with my hands – which was frustrating when I was younger because my teachers always complained that I “wasn’t paying attention” when really I was paying attention the best way I knew how: by keeping my hands busy so my mind wouldn’t wander.

    I’m sure I’m going to take shit for this but hear me out…I’ve started getting ADD meds like Adderall and Vyvanse from other students. You know, buying them and taking them without a prescription when I have a deadline I just have to meet but can’t find the attention span within myself to complete on time. It helps! So much! I feel like I have a normal freaking attention span and am able to just power through and get all of my business done. But I come from a family that’s deeply skeptical of this type of mental illness. They would laugh at me if I said I thought I had ADD, because I “get good grades”. Even though I just lost my scholarship for the totally stupid reason of missing a meeting with my academic counselor. I’m still on their insurance and I feel like *everyone* in my life would think I was faking it.

    I really just want to be able to concentrate like when I’m on Adderall all the time…the ability to just *will* myself to focus and have it actually *work* makes my life so much better – because I can actually get my shit done! I don’t know if I want to take a drug like that everyday, given its a powerful amphetamine…but I kind of think I need to see a doc. The problem is I cope well enough that I’m afraid no one will take me seriously. I kind of feel like I’m making it up. But I know the feelings are real. Maybe it’s just because I grew up in a house where my parents tsk-tsked about the other, irresponsible parents who put their kids on unnecessary heavy drugs? Or maybe it’s because this is all in my head?

65. Great post! I find it really difficult to cope with people who think “condition is sometimes misdiagnosed and/or inappropriately treated” means “NOT REAL LOL”. Every medical condition is sometimes misdiagnosed and inappropriately treated, and mental illness/differences (I know not everyone considers ADD an illness) most of all.

66. thank you so much for this. the whole ‘I know I’ve fucked something up because I ALWAYS HAVE but I can’t remember what’ thing? SO MUCH YES.

    I have dyspraxia and because that messes with your ability to organise yourself add-like-stuff can be part of that but I was only actually diagnosed with add a couple of months ago, after falling to bits somewhat at university. and I only understood it in the context of being entirely incapable of sitting down for an hour and just writing the damn essay that’s due in the same day. I had no idea that all the stuff I did like have my hand on the doorhandle to go out before I realise that I’ve FORGOTTEN TO GET DRESSED first or spending two hours frantically searching the room for something cause I can’t remember where I’ve put it only to have my mother come in and find it within about 30 seconds, or setting a reminder about my meeting with the learning support coordinator and then remembering to set my alarm so I get up in time and then getting up and forgetting in the time it takes me to get dressed that it’s actually thursday today, not wednesday, and not show up to the meeting and not realise until the next day…yeah, no idea that that stuff could be more than just me being stupid.

    not sure if this comment makes any sense, and delurking is scary, but anyway, thank you!

67. This post, and this thread, either suggest I have mild ADHD or fit perfectly into my theory that the majority of what we diagnose as mental illnesses are basically the extreme end of a human spectrum of intensity in some particular brain function or group of functions rather than a switch-on/switch-off disease, because it all reads like me turned up to eleven. I’ve sorted my keys (attached to a chain, attached to my jeans as I leave the house, back on the hook right after I use them to open the door on my way home) and my phone and wallet (either in one of a very small number of bags I use or attached to the charger in the case of the phone or in sight on my desk) and that has for the past five years or so prevented the massive ridiculous panic of losing them all the time (to a point). (Although I have FINALLY figured out how to break into my own damn house on the occasions when the Method slips up with the keys.) Everything else just sort of… disappears. I have left so many waterbottles in so many random locations it’s not funny. Even when I haven’t forgotten something I waste time being paranoid because I am convinced that I have. Writing lists can help but that’s provided I remember to do so. I have painstakingly taught myself to interrupt people less. I fidget a lot. I never acted up in class as a kid, I just used to read novels under my desk. When I started school, confused after counting crows through the explanation of where we were supposed to go after recess and when that was, I hid in a doorway watching my teacher. I was so focused on going through my cunning plan to follow her until she got where I needed to be that I looked up and she was gone. I have never been able to pick up a pen and a piece of paper without ending up with a margin full of doodles – lately the doodles outnumber the notes to the point where I have given up writing stuff down in class and started just listening to it and hoping I won’t forget it (it hasn’t worked out so well for me, I may have to take another run-up at the writing notes thing). Not even going INTO the procrastination issues.

    I’ve been seeing counsellors for anxiety issues since I was fifteen, though, and nobody’s ever even mentioned ADHD as a possible diagnosis. So I have to assume that people who get diagnosed just have these things in forms a lot more extreme (which, yes, reading all this, makes sense) and I’m not sure where the line is at which point it is, you know, useful to call something ADHD instead of “being a space case.”

68. Ah yes, also:

    Blurting out/thinking whatever random shit you were thinking about at, ahem, inappropriate times, no matter if you were enjoying it or not. Ya’ll know what I’m talking about, ladies. I feel this is a problem men with ADD DO NOT HAVE, although I am not certain.
    

    I generally manage to avoid SAYING what I’m thinking, but damned if my brain doesn’t wander off to the most bizarre places anyway, from Dinosaur Comics to disney movies to house-hunting. (And then, if I remember something I need to talk to my partner about? My options are say it and have hir be all wtf, or try to REMEMBER IT until a better time. *headdesk*)

    Oh, and the only reason I can ever get into the house is because the housekey lives on a chain around my neck and only comes off when I shower and goes right back on after. (Although, surprisingly, I am managing to always have them on me with the necklace in my purse while I’m in the UK visiting my partner for a month. (They were getting in the way of comfortable snuggles.)

    And as for the education system vs people with non-standard wired brains, I dropped out of high school and then aced the GED exams on my first try all of them inside a week without any studying or prep classes. And oh my GODS how much “but you’re so smart why don’t you” I got from everyone ever. My mother’s idea of helpful accomodations to ask the school to do for me was put me in the front row of the class and have tthe teacher yell at me whenever I got distracted, because crushing humiliation TOTALLY fixes an inability to concentrate.

    Oh, and they were always like HERE YOU HAVE A PLANNER WRITE YOUR ASSIGNMENTS IN IT THEN YOU WON’T FORGET YOUR HOMEWORK. And I’d either forget to write them down or forget to look at it and POINTLESS ARGH.

    There are reasons I never want to do anything resembling school ever again.

    Incidentally: The room is a mess and there’s piles of laundry I need to do and oh I need to take the fish out of the freezer to thaw so we can have dinner tonight and guess what I’m going to forget about doing by the end of this sentence?

    Um. I wrote a novel. You’re not the only one that talks a lot, isabel!

69. One of my coping mechanisms is that I HAVE TO have a strict schedule and stick to it. I’ve got it in several written and electronic forms, pretty much everywhere that my eyes tend to go when I’m distracted, so that, when I get distracted, I have that immediate reminder of what I’m supposed to be doing. In addition to ADD, I have some physical disabilities that make it difficult for me to sit in one position for too long, so my schedule takes that into account, and I plan my day around my attention span and my pain medication and all sorts of other things.

    Unfortunately, I’m in grad school right now, and the professor who’s supervising my research is the exact opposite — he can only get things done by waiting until the last minute and then using the adrenaline to push through it all. So we keep getting into these situations where, say, I’ll write the first chapter of something that needs to be finished by the end of the month, and I’ll send it to him, and get no response. So I’ll edit and rewrite the parts that I think need to be redone, write the next few chapters, send that draft to him, no response. Finally, maybe two days before the thing needs to be submitted (and it’s now over 100 pages long), he’ll tell me that he wants to meet with me for six hours to edit the whole thing. I’ll say OK, because I don’t really have any other option, and I’ll adjust my pain meds and TENS and everything accordingly to be able to get through it, and by the end, we’ll be done with maybe 90% of it, and I’ll be near crying in pain. And then he’ll tell me to stay late and finish up the remaining 10% and send it to him before midnight, when the only thing that I can do at that point is go home and crawl into bed with a ton of Vicodin.

70. Thank you. My wonderful, bright, funny 14 year old son is extreamly ADHD. I get treated like crap by friends for the fact that he is medicated for it. But the fact is, the meds help him to function, make friends, and have a happy life. Without them, everything he does is a struggle. And to anyone who questions the existance of his ADHD, I offer to allow them to take him on an unmedicated four hour car ride!

71. You just described my days in quite eerie detail… I always forget something when I move about, to the point that I check every few minutes for everything… I also can’t be on time to save my life…

    Thanks for this post, I didn’t know what ADD looked like from the inside, I think I’ll be seeing my doctor soon…

72. This post is amazing, thank you.

    I’ve always been like this, I was an intelligent, verbal kid but my memory and organisational skills were just appalling. Sadly this led to a label of “Lazy and wilful” rather than one of “someone who needs some help”. At 21 I became ill with a neurological disorder and the shit hit the fan.

    So, here’s my thoughtstream/routine.

    Theory: Wake up, see partner off to work, take pills with the intention of going to sleep.

    Reality : Wake up, see her off, go to loo- OH LOOK A PIGEON ON THE WINDOWSILL SO CUTE, give treat to bunnies, text gf about cute pigeon, go online to check email.

    Result: Four hours later I’ve been to reddit, LJ, blogs, reddit again, cutelist, torrent sites etc. Still haven’t checked email, taken pills or eaten.

    Theory: OK, I need to take my pills and eat now. Think I’ll put Futurama on while I do it.

    Reality: While looking for the Futurama files I stumble across my ‘check bank balance on XXth’ note and go and do that, then while I’m online I check my email, which leads to buying something, checking reddit and LJ again.

    Result: My girlfriend left 8 hours ago, I haven’t eaten, I’m in agony because I need my pills, and too weak to go and get food.

    I love to read on my e-reader, but I have to limit myself to a certain number of books in it’s memory otherwise I’ll spend hours deciding what to read. if I have a few hours to kill I think “I’ll watch a film!” and then spend three miserable hours trying to pick one while being distracted by Shiny!Things!. If I’m left to my own devices for long enough I will be entirely and totally distracted out of eating, going to the loo, or doing much of anything.

    The funny and terrible thing is that my partner is exactly the same, but also has chronic short and long-term memory problems to boot (mine are merely short-term thank heaven) We’re terribly happy together, but our home is a chaotic jumble of started, half-finished, and misplaced things. Planning to go out requires military-level strategisation, which is so tiring that we then give up and stay at home watching Doctor Who. We’re attending a wedding on Saturday, the ceremony only due to her work commitments, and you’d think we were the ones getting married with the amount of effort we’ve had to put into it.

    Oh and now my lunch is cold, because this article distracted me! Just another day in the life of Distracto-woman.

73. Hot Tramp-

    This. Explains. So. Much. I always accomplish stuff in fits and starts. Like, two days of procrastinating, then pull an all-nighter. And during the all-nighter, I FOCUS. And I Get Things Done. I explained this once to a fellow grad student and she looked at me like I had two heads.

    Also, headnod to college girl. I am also a compulsive doodler and need to do stuff with my hands. Taking notes in class helped a lot, even when I never read them afterwards. Knitting something simple during long meetings is also a Godsend when I can get away with it.

    Alara- I don’t know if it will help, but can he e-mail in assignments, or do they have to be written? I find that I’m a lot less forgetful when I have the option of doing it NOW. That’s a big coping mechanism for me. It’s another reason why I love my laptop, because if I find out about something, it can go straight in my calendar. If I finish a project, it can go straight to the person it needs to. No sitting around for me to forget about in a week.

    chava- I appreciate the sentiment of your smackdown (correlation != causation, dammit!), but sitting in front of a WHOLE bunch of high wattage lights is exactly what I do to combat my SAD. Goddamn Seattle.

74. Alara: In high school, I developed a strict assignment hierarchy: organizing assignments by period and deadline. For example: if I had a math assignment in first period the next day, some reading for second period, and a math sheet due at the end of the week, I’d do the due-tomorrow stuff first and then do the math sheet. I don’t know if that’d work for your son, but it might be worth a shot.

    Also, if any of you are in college, ask if there’s an office that handles accomodations. I had several note-takers in college, which really helped. (Plus, if you have a teacher with really bad hand-writing, two people have more chance of deciephering it than one alone.)

75. college girl – So what if you get good grades? Good grades =/= no problem. I always did fine in school, but if I tried to take to my peers they would get super frustrated and leave me. Because I would get distracted by everything else.

    I was lucky enough to have a close friend in college who when other people wanted to choke me for doing whatevs would say “You know she doesn’t realize she’s annoying you, right? She’s trying but she has ADD. If you think this is bad you should meet my brother, who is ten times worse.” This brother would forget to take showers because, you know, showers not top priority and then not shower for two weeks. I was so grateful to her because she could see the trying.

    I’m still struggling because I use the people around me to cue me to certain things and sometimes I remember that I NEED to do something so I want to do it RIGHT then because OMG, forgetting! And if i wait, at all, I’ll completely forget about that email or shower or what I was reading or writing that note for work. It’s begun to drive my boyfriend crazy because he thinks I never relax but he doesn’t understand relaxing will cause me to forget and not do whatever it is that is very important!!11!!

76. “chava- I appreciate the sentiment of your smackdown (correlation != causation, dammit!), but sitting in front of a WHOLE bunch of high wattage lights is exactly what I do to combat my SAD. Goddamn Seattle.”

    Ha. Actually, I do too—but I can never make myself sit in front of it for the amount of time I am “supposed” to sit, and sometimes it triggers the headaches, so I run outside w/out sunblock instead. Hello, ADD tie in: I cannot remember to turn on my SAD lamp in the morning, or the middle or the day, so I end up turning it on at 1 or 2 AM and then feeling like I’ve drunk a metric fuckton of coffee. On the plus side, coping mechanism ended up being fairly healthy and an excuse for expensive (running) shoes.

77. Wanted to ask if others paired with ADHD partners have what my husband and I do around certain things–

    NOT big decisions, NOT stressful decisions, NOT anything truly important or adrenaline inducing. But choosing a restaurant? Can cause a meltdown of epic proportions (this one or that one? I don’t know…walk away/distract for 10 minutes/way pros and cons 8 times/come back/repeat and it is TWO HOURS LATER and we are too hungrey to decide). Can also happen with things like “when will we go do errands today?” or “when do you want to have lunch?”

78. I love to read on my e-reader, but I have to limit myself to a certain number of books in it’s memory otherwise I’ll spend hours deciding what to read. if I have a few hours to kill I think “I’ll watch a film!” and then spend three miserable hours trying to pick one while being distracted by Shiny!Things!. If I’m left to my own devices for long enough I will be entirely and totally distracted out of eating, going to the loo, or doing much of anything.

    OMG yes. I do this all the time. It made me absolutely frustrated to hell and back before I had any idea why I would have this problem. What was wrong with me that I couldn’t just pick a damn movie? Now that I understand it’s still frustrating but I’m not as hard on myself about it. Or I try, anyway. Because I need to find something that will hold my attention at exactly the level I need it to be held. THIS IS HARD I finally know that my brain is trying to do all these things at once:

    1. Read the movie titles and comprehend what they are
    2. Determine my needs: If I need something on while I wash dishes, to keep me stimulated enough to actually do the dishes, then I need something good but not new that won’t completely bore me/annoy me. If I don’t want to be distracted from the movie it has to be really, really good and probably something I haven’t watched in a while but still love.
    3. Determine my level of ability to concentrate: can I watch anime with subtitles?
    3. Determine my mood: Do I need mindless action? Something to make me cry? Will Amadeus hook me or bore me?
    4. Categorize the movies in accordance with my mood and needs, as I’m glancing over them.

79. NOT big decisions, NOT stressful decisions, NOT anything truly important or adrenaline inducing. But choosing a restaurant? Can cause a meltdown of epic proportions (this one or that one? I don’t know…walk away/distract for 10 minutes/way pros and cons 8 times/come back/repeat and it is TWO HOURS LATER and we are too hungrey to decide). Can also happen with things like “when will we go do errands today?” or “when do you want to have lunch?”

    I don’t live with someone, but I’ve had meltdowns over making decisions before, and just making a decision on one’s own about what to eat, can be so hard. I can see how adding a little loss of control over the decision would lead to conflict. Could it be the “defiant” type thinking that tends to come with ADD/ADHD contributing to the fighting? I have had to work really, really hard to realize when I am asking for input or helping make a decision, and automatically rejecting someone else’s idea because it was their idea, not mine.

    Not understanding why things that seem like they should be simple turn out to be SO HARD is definitely one of the worst things about ADD for me.

80. When I was a kid, it was a running joke in my family that I was never reading fewer than five books at a time. I’d read for a while, put the book down, get up and wander for a minute or two, then sit down in a different chair and pick up whichever book I left next to that chair the last time I was sitting there. At any given moment, I’d usually have two or three books by my bed, one in my backpack, one in my school desk, and three or four scattered around the house. Sometimes there might be a few in the backseats of the cars, too. And these books would vary hugely in theme and content and reading level — I’m nearly certain that, at one point, I was reading both Roots and The Bobbsey Twins.

81. chava- I don’t use SAD lamps ’cause they’re fucking expensive. But my six-bulb octopus lamp with 100 Watt equivalent compact fluorescents works pretty well, and it goes on a timer, to go off 10 minutes before I want to get up and to be on when I come home in the winter and it’s DARK. During my senior year of college I was so unproductive until I started doing this, because SAD exhaustion + being distracted by everything = massive lack of productivity. This year I didn’t do the timer thing, and I’m pretty sure it was responsible for delaying my qualifying exam + having an existential crisis. I just could get myself up in the morning, and, once I did, I couldn’t actually get anything done. Alas.

    But! Back on track now and taking my qualifying exam in 1 week!

82. I don’t live with someone, but I’ve had meltdowns over making decisions before, and just making a decision on one’s own about what to eat, can be so hard.

    I’ve had days when I just looked at my kitchen and could see at least five different meals to make with what what there, and I absolutely could not make up my mind, so rather than put myself through trying to make that decision, I just got online, picked a friend from my IM list, and asked him or her which option sounded best. I’ve done the same thing with deciding what shirt to wear in the morning. I can end up not eating dinner for hours because I’m stuck bouncing between different dinner ideas, and then I end up so hungry and dizzy and cranky that I just say “screw it” and have some potato chips or something.

    When I’m visiting my parents and we order takeout, we usually end up with some variation of this system: Since I’m the one with the most dietary restrictions (vegan), I go through enormous stack of menus and pull out the ones that have something that I will eat. Then my mom goes through my stack and picks out the ones that she likes. Then my sister goes through what’s left and picks the ones that she’d be OK with. By then, it’s usually down to about six or eight menus, so I pick my favorite three or four out of those, and I hand those to my dad, who will inevitably choose whichever one is the least expensive. There have been a few times when everyone was so indecisive that it took several rounds of weeding out to narrow it down to one, but it works much better than arguing about it, since if there’s anything that anyone really doesn’t want, they’ll have had at least one chance to eliminate it.

83. Thank you for this article. You’ve described my husband to a “t”. I am almost the opposite; my brain works like a computer. I love that we complement one another–he brings such vivacity and creativity to our lives while I keep things running. That said, please advise:

    Do I “stay on” him about things? He says that he wants me to and then resists and becomes agitated when I press him on matters. I am very careful not to make it about HIM, but about the situation. Tell me what I could have done better here:

    We run a business out of our home. He had a meeting at 2pm. At 1 I told him he had a meeting in an hour, perhaps he should shower and dress so he wouldn’t be rushed. At 1:20 I reminded him that his meeting was in 40 minutes; if he was going to get a shower he had to do it RIGHT NOW or no shower before meeting. At 1:40 I told him he needed to gather his things for the meeting. At 1:50 I told him if he didn’t leave the house RIGHT NOW he would be late. He actually said to me, “How the hell did it get to be 1:50?” He was distracted by an email from a potential customer that was important but non-urgent. He left for the meeting unprepared and with papers swirling in his wake.

    I’ll not going to ask how to keep him on task for things like replacing the HVAC filter, changing out lightbulbs or having the dog shaved as promised but never does… Those things get done when something he has forgotten explodes in his face and he all of the sudden gets everything done he has been promising for months. Le Sigh.

    I know I am complaining a bit, but it IS annoying to live with ADD. I am also committed to working with it and I do see the good things it brings. And yes, I have asked him what helps him and he says “lists and schedules” which he routinely ignores. I don’t have any desire to patronize him or parent him – he’s a very intelligent man with a ton of ability. I’m just trying to figure out how to reach him in a manner that is effective and permits us to relate to one another as equals. Would love your insights.

84. I can end up not eating dinner for hours because I’m stuck bouncing between different dinner ideas, and then I end up so hungry and dizzy and cranky that I just say “screw it” and have some potato chips or something.

    I’m not ADD, but this happens to me all the time because my brain goes weird on low blood sugar or tiredness. I get a dip in blood sugar/energy levels right around the time I come home from work, and it makes it impossible to figure out what to make for dinner, since I have to factor in what four kids and a husband will eat as well, and if it was up to me I’d say “screw it” and eat a bagel with mozzarella cheese, but since I have to pick something for them I go around and around in circles and it might be an hour or two before I can figure something out and by then I’m in full brain melt mode and I will not come back from it, even after I eat, until I sleep.

    it’s actually the major bane of my existence. If I haven’t figured out what I’m going to eat/make for dinner before I am even *hungry*, by the time I get hungry I can no longer make the decision. But no one could make the decision for me unless they choose something really really easy (like “let’s get takeout” or “sit down on the couch and I’ll make something”, or at best “how about broiling a steak?”), because I will get combative if someone who isn’t going to do the work tells me to do work when my brain is fried like that.

85. Ruchama – Totally me, with the multiple books. I still do that as an adult – right now, I have about 4 on-the-go.

    Multiple commenters about organization – I’m quite bitter that teachers never thought that the level of disorganization in my desk/backpack signalled any kind of problem (we’re talking papers spilling out onto the floor, recesses inside cleaning, etc.). But I was Hermione Granger (I am Combined Subtype, and my impulsivity came out in “Me! Me! Me! I know the answer!), so teachers loved me. They didn’t even mark me down a lot of the time when I just didn’t hand in work (I *always* hated English/Language Studies “journals”, and now I know why – it was very unstructured “Write about what you just read”, and it took *so much* mental effort, when I’d already had to focus on must doing the reading – anyway, I didn’t hand in any journals in my Senior English, and got 92 in the course, and won the English award at high school graduation – I know this is long, but I’m almost there – teachers totally got blinded by the “halo”, and that’s not a good thing).

    Imposter syndrome – Whoever made the comment above about compensating and covering up for a lifetime – THANK YOU. I am still a compulsive cover-upper (less kind to myself = compulsive liar), even with my husband. I am really trying to work on this, and it causes me (and him) no small degree of distress. I hadn’t thought of it as a lifetime’s worth of learned behaviour (dating back to primary school – “You’re such a good student! I’d never have imagined that this would be your desk/bag/bedroom – you seem so organized!).

    On medication and academics – What I realized this year, after starting on Ritalin (and also getting a reduced course load – my program is usually 7 courses/semester, and I’m doing 3 or 4), is that I had been having to re-teach myself all of my course content before every single test/evaluation – but I hadn’t known that anything was wrong – I thought the way I was was the way everyone was! Actually *retaining* things? Only having to study for 5 hours for an exam instead of 2 days, and getting really good grades? AMAZING! And it’s a wonder that I managed to complete any courses at all, and it makes sense that it would eventually be waaaay to much, and I would get depressed, and drop out of school.

    Someone asked about a good source for medication – a really great website for all things ADHD is the site TotallyADD.com – run by some Canadian comedians (Rick Green and Patrick McKenna, of the “Red Green Show”, both of whom have ADHD and who made a really excellent documentary last year – “ADD and Loving It” – it aired in Canada *just* after I got my diagnosis, and it really helped my parents and in-laws understand what I had been dealing with, and why I have struggled so hard with my adult life). Dr. Umesh Jain (very well-regarded psychiatrist specializing in ADHD also contributes to the site – he even posts on the forums sometimes).

86. I will NOT or DO NOT WANT TO deny anyone’s experiences of what they have gone through AT ALL. People’s experiences are their own and REAL to them. Who am I to judge? I’m not.

    From my own personal experience, I had ADD-type stuff going on. Then I got sober (because I’m an alcoholic) and starting doing co-dependency recovery. Most of my ADD-type stuff went away. I have also had depression and anxiety from what could be called the symptoms of ADD and since I got sober – the stuff went away. I also had race brain and played videos all the time. Meaning, my mind was constantly going about stuff, ALL the time – I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t read, I couldn’t function, I couldn’t do much of anything because my mind was always on. Once I got sober, my race brain and the videos I played in my head started going away. Once I started recovery, I also gained tools to get out of that head space. I’ve been told to get on pills for some of the stuff, but I didn’t and again, got sober and did recovery. That recovery stuff has worked wonders for me.

87. The only two foods that I’ve ever noticed have an effect on my ADD are red food coloring and chocolate, both of which make me start bouncing off the walls. I’ve noticed that I tend to focus slightly better when I’ve been avoiding processed foods, but that’s a tiny difference and I’m not even sure if I’m imagining it or not. The red food coloring, though, pretty quickly sends me from just inattentive to really, really hyperactive.

88. @Kim – i have trouble believing it’s all about food coloring and preservatives, because my mother has always been ADD as hell, and she was born in 1954. i never met my great-grandmother, but she was ALSO ADD as hell, and if i remember correctly, she died in the 1960s.

    @Galen – totally seconding the driven to distraction recommendation. i haven’t quite finished it, but some parts were so incredibly true to my experience that i started wondering if dr. ratey was outside my window.

    @Ruchama – i do the ask-a-random-friend thing all the time! sometimes one friend and i even trade – “what do i want for dinner?” “you want bbq! what do i want?” “you want thai!”

89. Embee, I keep starting to respond and then get stuck because I start ranting. It was very difficult to read your comment. Those of us with ADD sometimes need some help, but that help is not parenting any more than it would be parenting to help someone open jars or killing bugs for someone with a phobia. That we are less capable of some things does not make us like children.

    The first thing you can do is to understand that someone with ADD literally does not understand time. Seriously. This isn not just poor time management skills or a lack of care. Our brains cannot comprehend the flow of time. I recommend this post as a starting point if you want to do some reading.

    When you tell someone with ADD that it’s X time and you should do Y, that person may or may not actually process that as an action item, i.e. something that they actually need to get up and do right now because they will not have time to do it later. To our brains there is always time to do something later. It takes effort to constantly remember that this is not so.

90. The biggest help I’ve had in remember to eat is having a type 1 diabetic husband. Making regular food life or death does wonders for planning meals.

    But going out to eat? Please don’t ask me. I’ll take two hours to decide. And remembering all those little steps after cooking (my flaw: rinising dishes, opening tupperware. I’ve been lectured so many times. There is no coping strategy, there is only suck) escape me. I can look at a messy room and not see a problem.

    On the other hand, my mom told me a story. We were coming back from a girl scout camping trip, and I apparently was a little terror. She finally pulled over and realized I hadn’t taken my meds that morning, gave them to me. Immediate change. By the time we got back, I had apologised for my behavior to my mom, the other leaders and the rest of the girls. One of the leaders was a sped teacher, but this was still really early in the ADHD world. She told my mother that she will never EVER doubt the difference meds can make.

91. it makes it impossible to figure out what to make for dinner, since I have to factor in what four kids and a husband will eat as well

    Oh man, I’m a total get-home-and-eat-a-bagel-because-fuck-it kinda person myself (especially living on my own, now.) But when I was living at home my family would plan out meals every Saturday and tack the meal schedule onto the fridge. So then we could just go look and see “Monday = stew” and “Tuesday = leftover stew” and “Wednesday = stir fry” etc. And no one could whinge about what was for dinner ’cause it was available for viewing days in advance. And then we’d keep all of those old meal lists in a pile so we could go back when uninspired and be like “oh, it’s been a couple weeks since we had spaghetti, let’s put that for Friday ’cause it’s easy…”

    Obvs I don’t know if this would work for you guys, but we found it quite helpful — a lot less pressure on whoever is in charge of food. (I make no promises about the whinging level, depending on the ages of your kids, however. :p)

92. Astraea thank you for your perspective.

    I must have worded my post inartfully because I meant exactly the opposite of what offended you: I do not want to treat nor do I feel the situation warrants my treating a very intelligent and capable man like a child. I seek an alternative approach that is respectful of him and preserves our relationship as equals.

    This: “To our brains there is always time to do something later” perfectly illustrates what has become a real frustration. I hope to understand it better and will look at the post you recommended to do so.

    Thank you.

93. Thank you. I am almost in tears reading this which is not good as I really have to go to work any min. Thank you.

    Most my life it has felt like I was trying to run up a greased slide while everyone else got to walk causally up the stairs. It SUCKS working so much harder then non-adhd people just to stay caught up and be thought of as lazy and not trying at all. It sucks to grow up with people trying to fix you but all the while denying the existence of the real issue. No ADHD does not exist but something is wrong with you and we will find a way to make you like everyone else without resorting to this silly ADHD notion.

    It sucks to spend years in behavioral therapy learning how to behave to the point you over analyze everything you do only to still fail and be miserable because “your trying too hard” and the real world does not follow the rules and if you do things deliberately with forethought you are seen as manipulative.

    It sucks when people become your friend and then turn on you for the very things they became your friend for when your intensity becomes too much for them.

    It sucks knowing the harder you try and the more you want something the less likely it is to happen as the part of your brain that is suppose to become active when your working works backwards.

    It sucks having great ideas and projects and things you want to do but knowing you are not reliable enough on your own to accomplish them.

    If only I could afford a house keeper and a personal assistant I could take over the world! Well until something shiny came along and distracted me.

94. Ruchama: Seconded on the book thing. I think I have five at least lurking under my bed.
    To all: I find it easy to organize time rather than space- IF I have something to organize my day around. If not, I’ll just screw around until midnight. And I was the arrives everywhere early kinda girl, because I came from a family that set clocks five minutes fast, and I continue that habit.

95. Oh my gosh, wow this response is really overwhelming – I am so, so glad some people were able to find something of value in this post, and I really cannot thank you all enough for sharing your stories and experiences. Because ADD is so often ignored or treated like something made-up I think that kind of story-sharing is so important, and it’s so awesome that so much of it is going on here.

    Thanks also to Mandolin, Lauren, cxcvi and anyone else who read this post and applied it to someone else in their lives & feels they have a better understanding of that person now – that is seriously like an ideal outcome of this post for me, lol, and it means a lot that you’d choose to share that with me.

    I haven’t read Driven to Distraction, but the first book I picked up when I was officially diagnosed (…for the second time… because the first time I… totally failed to do any follow through… yup) was the authors’ follow-up Delivered From Distraction, which I have not in my last somewhat mental-health-challenged several months actually read but which frankly even the introduction of which was hugely beneficial to read. It’s kind of a book of tips for people with ADD (written by people with ADD!), helpfully organized into 3-page-or-so chapters that do not need to be read in sequence (yay!). I also like that it suggests thinking of ADD as a different way of being that requires a fair amount of managing but also comes with its own set of advantages, because… I relate. heh.

    One quick comment re: boys/girls over/underdiagnosed (sort of tacked on to what Galen said) – in addition to girls being forced to cope more, I think it’s worth mentioning that ADD tends to present in girls with the hyperactivity that’s associated with it less often than with boys – so, the “model” of ADD most people have includes hyperactivity, because the “model” is based off male manifestations of ADD, whereas girls who don’t show the same set of symptoms/signs/attributes/traits/etc. don’t get looked at for it.

    @ Carrie & anyone else with Impostor Syndrome tendencies (including ME, ME, OH MY GOD ME) – in addition to the regular act of covering up your own tracks, one thing I’ve read about people with ADD is that they tend also to be the kind of people who will solve a problem and not be able to tell you how they solved it, which I feel like a) describes me SO STRONGLY that it was the thing in researching that made me go from “hmmm this sounds like me” to “BRB SEEKING DIAGNOSTIC ASSESSMENT RIGHT THE FUCK NOW) and b) might contribute – and in my case, I think has – to those Impostor Syndrome tendencies. Taking my own example: I have written a lot of papers in my life. Some of them were very good! Most of them I did rather well on! I went to a prep school, and a “schmancy” college before I dropped out twice for about a thousand different reasons, and at both of those I succeeded at writing papers! But to this day, I do not feel as though I “know” how to write a paper. My strategy for my less successful papers has always been, pull random related-seeming shit together and try to make complete sentences long enough to fill the page minimum. My strategy for more successful papers has been – follow a weird hunch, meditate on it for a while, wait for that magical WAIT SHIT BRILLIANT IDEA ALERT moment, spend 4-7 hours in a frenzy of writing where I feel more like I’m discovering a paper than actually involving my own creative faculties, and then turn it in dazed and confused as to how this happened, because it’s not like I TRIED to make it happen; it just… appeared in my head at the whispering of some muse.

    So. Don’t know if that applies to any of y’all. But it is, apparently, not uncommon.

    Oh – and of course this is all happening the night before the paper is due, despite my numerous genuine efforts to start writing earlier in the week. THAT GOES WITHOUT SAYING, AMIRITE

    @college girl & other compulsive doodlers/fidgeters – yes, the doodling! this is another thing I go easy on kids about, or – if I think doodling IS distracting a kid, I ask them to stop, but if not and it’s not distracting anyone else, I let them go for it, because: it is SO HARD FOR ME TO PAY ATTENTION WHEN I AM SITTING STILL. The days my notes for classes were good, they were pretty amazing, because I was just writing nonstop because it was that or lose the thread entirely; doodling (or writing out song lyrics I know really well) helps a lot. I also obsessively play with my hair. Knitting helps when I can do it but I haven’t started anything anything in months because AHHH SO MANY CHOICES, PICK A PATTERN AND A YARN TYPE AND A COLOR AND CHECK THE GAUGE AND TOO OVERWHELMING.

    One tip I knew from someone, I’m not sure if he was ADD or just very much a kinetic learner, but he got one of those little mini tubs of play-doh and would fidget with it under the table at meetings. Less conspicuous than doodling or knitting, but might help!

    And as for your specific issues, college girl – lol if I judged people for illicit drug usage I would have lost a lot of friends by now, and none of them were doing it to cope with ADD, so no shit from me, at least. But that said, I would recommend seeing a doc – if you don’t feel like you might be someone who’s functional enough that they can get through their day without meds just fine but needs them for activities that require a lot of focus at once (I take Adderall sometimes, and in my experience it’s very easy as an “as-needed” drug; I don’t get like withdrawal the way I do with, say, caffeine). And even just talking about this to someone on purpose might help. If your college has a mental health type service I would definitely recommend trying to use it.

    @Maggie:

    This post, and this thread, either suggest I have mild ADHD or fit perfectly into my theory that the majority of what we diagnose as mental illnesses are basically the extreme end of a human spectrum of intensity in some particular brain function or group of functions rather than a switch-on/switch-off disease, because it all reads like me turned up to eleven.

    Mm, yeah definitely with AD(H)D I feel like this is very likely the case – to me I sort of think of ADD as being a “kind of brain” to have, rather than a thing that a specific brain has, if that makes sense. The divide, I think, for ADD & other things, is that when it starts impeding your daily functioning & requiring some kind of active management, that’s ADD – but that doesn’t mean that people who aren’t that extreme, but might still fall a little closer to that end of the spectrum than most, can’t learn from ADD strategies, etc. So: maybe you are not “far enough” to be technically ADD, but if you have these sorts of problems it might help you to do some research on how ADD people manage them. Or maybe your counselors are also falling prey to the girls-don’t-have-ADD (or mostly-functional-people-don’t-have-ADD) stereotype – have you brought it up with them? Either way, I wish you luck in figuring out your needs!

    @Shiyiya:

    I generally manage to avoid SAYING what I’m thinking, but damned if my brain doesn’t wander off to the most bizarre places anyway, from Dinosaur Comics to disney movies to house-hunting. (And then, if I remember something I need to talk to my partner about? My options are say it and have hir be all wtf, or try to REMEMBER IT until a better time. *headdesk*)

    Aaaahaha yes this meeeee. I mean, you can really see this in my “blogging” “style,” where everything winds up eight times longer than it “needs” to be because I feel compelled to talk about four dozen other things along the way too. On the WHOLE, for me personally, this balances out I think to roughly being one of the pluses of ADD – it confuses people or takes them off guard sometimes, but my friends, I think, probably also find it entertaining on some level (and so do I, lol). Not to mention, most of the best papers I’ve written have sort of fallen into this category of a very unexpected connection being made – which to me once I’ve made it seems totally obvious (DUH, Hamlet can easily be read as a story of the fall of man, WHY HASN’T ANYONE ELSE WRITTEN ABOUT THIS, GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER ACADEMIA)!

    @Corbin (& people in general) – I know, right? People get so pissy about people taking medications that make their lives better! Easy for them to say.

    @Alara – I second Politicalguineapig’s recommendation of sorting assignments by due date; obviously it won’t solve all the problems that ADD gives one with gittin’ ‘er dun, but having a schedule to always fall back on has helped me in the past, & hey it’s free so what’s the loss? More broadly with your son, if you are able to afford it I’d recommend seeing some kind of ADD/organizational counselor – he sounds like he’s more severe than I am so I’m not sure how much my personal experience can help, and anyway they might have a set of strategies to use via trial & error. If not, I would recommend ADD sites, forums, & once again Delivered from Distraction (and, I am assuming despite not having read it, Driven to Distraction). & don’t lose hope – one anecdote in Delivered from Distraction told of a patient the author had seen who finished his first semester of college with a 0.00 GPA, and managed to graduate with a 3.0 overall after getting treatment.

    @Embee – I can see what you are going for asking around here, and I do recommend doing some research on ADD on your own, but in order to figure out what your husband needs, I suggest you ask him. I’d recommend talking to him when this is NOT currently an issue, and you can both be chill about it. Does he identify as ADD/has he been diagnosed? If so, has he researched it? Like, that blog post Astraea linked – that ADD-people-do-not-“get”-time thing was such a revelation for ME to read, because it identified a MAJOR DIFFERENCE between me and most of the world that no one had thought to identify as the source of some of my problems. Since then, I’m still working on internalizing all the implications of that, and it takes practice to make things habitual, but my punctuality issues have been slowly but steadily decreasing. So – if you don’t know that this is how your husband processes time, maybe he doesn’t either; and maybe putting that into words would be a good way to start figuring out how to compensate for that tendency of his, because when you can name a tendency it becomes easier to start working with/around.

    Again – thank you so much, everyone; these conversations are, I really think, so valuable, and I’m so glad we’ve managed to bring one here.

96. Embee, I’m sorry I misread. The post I linked to is great, and if you follow the links there to Jeff’s ADD blog he has some great perspective on time and how people with ADD tend to think of every day as a do-over, a chance to finally get things right. He mentions the movie Groundhog’s Day, and it is a lot like living as if we are able to have all the time in the world to get things right except that the rest of the world is actually advancing in linear time.

    It’s hard to give advice about how to help someone with ADD, because honestly, what works for one person doesn’t work for another and what works one week might not work the next.

    Routines and structure help a lot, as long as they aren’t too restrictive. Lists are always suggested and often times they can be helpful, but remembering to look at the list, and comprehending that yes, really, this actually does need to be done now is just not always going to happen.

97. My strategy for my less successful papers has always been, pull random related-seeming shit together and try to make complete sentences long enough to fill the page minimum. My strategy for more successful papers has been – follow a weird hunch, meditate on it for a while, wait for that magical WAIT SHIT BRILLIANT IDEA ALERT moment, spend 4-7 hours in a frenzy of writing where I feel more like I’m discovering a paper than actually involving my own creative faculties, and then turn it in dazed and confused as to how this happened, because it’s not like I TRIED to make it happen; it just… appeared in my head at the whispering of some muse.

    That is so me. I do this at work and it has saved my ass when I probably would have been fired for missing deadlines so much. I have read that one thing that people with ADD are often good at is processing tons of information and coming to conclusions about it, and when you’re also able to communicate that to others it’s a very valuable skill. The problem is that it’s because that’s how our brain works ALL THE TIME. We can’t turn it off. So sitting down to actually create a finished product on one topic – a paper, presentation, or in my case a legal memo – is the challenge.

98. Thank you so much for this post. My brother has ADHD (diagnosed at age 8, now 24), and reading this post was like having a conversation with him, only about things that he’s hinted at but would *never* speak candidly about. Our mother tries to support him, but all too often she falls into the patterns of denial and simple Not Getting It that you talked about (no, Mom, another screaming match won’t actually help him remember to set his alarm/deposit that paycheck/go to that dentist appointment next week). I was particularly affected by your comments on how the disorder feeds into self-esteem problems; I’ve long suspected that the ADD contributes at least in part to my brother’s depression, but I don’t know what to do with this.

    What are your thoughts on medication as a management strategy? He’s had a lot of success with stimulant medications, but as he gets older it’s harder to find both doctors to perscribe it and insurance plans to cover it.

99. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant, Isabel.

    While I’ve never been identified as having ADD, I do see some of the similar traits in myself. I can’t ever leave my house without making 2 or 3 extra trips in because I forgot my keys, I lost my phone, I left that important paper, whatever. And as far as deadlines and writing papers… write there with you (and EVERYONE else =) ). I was identified as ‘gifted and talented’ when I was younger, and maybe the ADD-like aspects of my life are what led me to that identification. Sure, I have a creative streak, but I can’t be on time for anything. I see it as a way of balancing the things I’m good at with the less-than-spectacular things.

    As a secondary education major, I’ve done a lot of looking into ADD and there are millions and millions of debates around testing and diagnoses and the likes. It needs to be addressed and is seriously something you have to accommodate for in a classroom, but the good thing about that is, regardless of how long the attention span of your student with ADD/ADHD is, you should be breaking up your classes into smaller segments… if not just for them, for the good of the ENTIRE class (because even in upper-high school classes, you have a window of 10-15 minutes before most students will drift off).

    The problem I have with ADD, however, is the tendency for people to a) claim they have ADD when they just enjoy screwing around and/or multitasking or not paying attention; and b) the world of internet diagnostics and people thinking they need to be drugged because of it.

    Part A – Claiming to have ADD.
    I have two roommates who say they have ADD because they get distracted when watching television (such an engaging pasttime) because the fan is spinning and throwing light around the room. Okay, no, that is not a way to diagnose it. They are both very, very responsible people who are never late to anything, never miss deadlines, etc etc. And they claimed they were more “ADD” than me… I just despise it when someone uses ADD in that manner (think 13y/o kids online… OMG I’m soooo ADD!! teehee).

    Part B – Misdiagnoses
    Not long ago, when my brother failed out of college due to grades, he got online and did an ONLINE (*ding ding* duhthisthingisn’tforrreal) test that ‘diagnosed’ him as having ADD. I took it as well.. it was a score out of 100, and the closer you were to 100, the more ADD you must be. I got a 90-something. He called my parents and convinced them that he needed to go see a doctor and get medication. Before you get all mad at me because I’m going to say he wasn’t trying… he wasn’t. 19 years old, he was out late drinking with his friends every night or so, and worked WAYYYY too many hours in his job. These things contribute to not passing classes; I know that firsthand. But anyway, there are SOOOO many people that think the internet will tell them how ADD they are and it’s highly annoying.

    ADD is NOT something to be joked around with. Yep, sometimes it’s funny/ironic, but it really does affect lives and make some of the most seemingly mundane tasks really awful. I think it needs to be taken much, much more seriously than those who don’t really understand it do.

100. Brennan: Really? Harder to find ins coverage for stimulants? Complete opposite for me. It’s easy to find stimulant coverage, I think even wallmart does cheap generics. Trying to convince doctors that I do not respond well to most stimulants has been harder and produces so much anxiety, because I do not stand up for myself well.

     Medication is good if it works for you. If it doesn’t work for you, then it is not so good. I rely on caffiene and coping strategies right now, but that’s only because when I’m on meds, I can implement them easier.

101. I don’t have ADD, and I don’t know anyone that does (I don’t think, anyway.) I appreciate this post a lot, though, because I’ve never read something that is from the perspective of someone who actually has ADD. Most of what I hear is either “ADD is made up, it’s a scam by the pharmaceutical companies, just eat less sugar” etc, or “Yes ADD so is true, cause I’m a doctor and I say it’s true.” Thank you for giving me a perspective from someone who actually has ADD, not just someone who thinks they know about it.

102. O.M.G.

     you recorded the inside of my brain!

     I immediately shared this post with my partner with strict instructions for her to read it and read the comments. She’s very organized and Type A and structured and absolutely fabulously linear. I am, well, not. I saw a clinical psych some time ago and together, we looked at the DSM IV at ADD and found that one of the criteria (one of the important ones actually) was that these symptoms were to interfere with school/work activities, which clearly, as a grad student with 4.0, this did not apply and we went on from it, brushing aside my “ADD-like symptoms.” Never thinking that other than school/work is important too, that other than work/school can be interfered with as well, etc… So years later, my partner and I have had a few, if not arguments, then moments of hurt, and I feel sad when you say that, followed by if I’m such a jerk why are you with me? then awkwardness and needing to mend and what were we fighting about? and I read this post and went AHA! those moments, those times of not being in sync in the moment, they can be strung together and all are the same thing! I do something (or fail to do something) and it baffles her and then her reaction hurts my feelings. I’m not dumb. I was listening. I’m not trying to be lazy. I’m sorry. So she read the post, she read some of the comments and we talked and I cried a little and remembered that office visit from forever ago and re-remembered how much ADD fit me but not enough, not enough for the stamp of approval, for the serious talk on how to cope, on how much I’ve already been coping… anyhoo: thank you. My partner and I are good now, on the same page and everything, so thank you.

103. college girl, my psychiatrist works with a lot of people in college and grad school who have been illegally acquiring stimulants. He says a fairly large proportion of them actually have undiagnosed AD(H)D and are self-medicating — they’re mostly taking the drugs to study and function, rather than taking them at parties to get high. I am not a doctor, but it sounds to me like you might be in that boat.

     I can recommend Dr. Hallowell’s series of books Driven to Distraction, Delivered from Distraction, and Answers to Distraction. I also like Out of the Fog, by Kevin Murphy and Suzanne Levert. I also like You Mean I’m Not Lazy, Stupid, or Crazy?! by Kate Kelly (though if I remember correctly, that one has an anti-meds bias that made me uncomfortable).

     These books are helpful for understanding that ADHD isn’t a matter of morality or willpower or self-discipline. It is not your fault. It is just how your brain is. When I can keep that thought in mind, it makes coping easier, because I don’t have to deal with the extra load of guilt and anger at myself on top of dealing with the actual situation at hand. I don’t have to waste time and energy saying “I SHOULD be able to do this!!”, but can just move directly to the way I know I can cope. Note: I am not always good at this.

     It is sometimes hard to see myself in the case studies in books about ADD. I’ve had a lot of academic success in spite of my utter inability to keep organized, which I guess is not typical — most of the case studies highlight people who have struggled with school, flunked out, been fired from jobs repeatedly. This hasn’t been my experience with ADHD (though I know it’s been many people’s). But my doctor did tell me that some (many) people with ADHD can compensate in certain environments, but decompensate in others. I’m able to compensate in a structured academic environment, like classes with structured assignments and due dates. But I am struggling with the total lack of structure in my Ph.D program, really really badly. Really badly. Like barely functioning academically badly. It makes me terrified about my ability to get a job when I get out, since I haven’t actually accomplished very much.

104. It is such a comfort to me to read all of these stories. The self-esteem stuff is the worst, because there’s always that voice in the back of your head saying, “well, if you’d just try HARDER you’d be able to do x y z.” I so relate to everyone who’s talked about getting assignments done at the last minute- it’s completely how I cope with school and why my current school’s no-deadlines thing is killing me. I literally plan out critical moments in order to get stuff done. For instance, if I need to clean my apartment, I invite people over for dinner, thus giving me a reason and a time-imperative one at that for getting it done.
     I recently left a job because I had a boss who not only didn’t understand the whole concept of the brain on ADD, but actively tried to get me to work in a more “normal” manner. When I’d take notes on assignments she’d get upset with me for not paying close enough attention, and she’d look at my time sheets and be irritated that I would stop mid-task to answer important emails or research requests that came up. It started to really affect my self-esteem and I felt like a failure because I couldn’t do the job in the way that she wanted. Even so, before she arrived I did a perfectly good job running things solo under my own system.
     Sometimes I love that my brain runs at five thousand miles an hour and that there are always interesting ideas or stories leaping about there. I just wish I could manage to read one book at a time, or have a standard concept of time. If left to my own devices I’d lose hours at a time and not know what happened. Even now, I am trying to work on an assignment while reading several articles online and while watching a movie – there is no doing one thing at a time in my world- it’s everything at once, or nothing.
     Thanks so much to everyone for sharing their stories! I find it so lonely trying to work everything out for myself, and not being able to talk about it with anyone without inviting great skepticism on audience’s part who think that I’m just wasting time and making excuses because of laziness. Which then doubles my anxiety and sometimes makes whole mountains out of whatever task I was trying to accomplish.

105. I wasn’t diagnosed until I was 26. I had been very active for my whole childhood all the way through college, but slacked off in grad school. That’s when I started showing the symptoms more forcefully. I’ve taken up mountain biking and, I have to say, the symptoms are fading again…not that they’re not there — they always will be. But I’m more focused again. Turns out, there’s a reason for it (something to do with the effects of biking working like a bit of ritalin and a bit of prozac: see this article>).

     I feel a lot better knowing there’s a reason exercise is good for me other than the normal reasons.

     Also, as Carrie said, You Mean I’m Not Lazy, Stupid, or Crazy?! by Kate Kelly helped me some, too.

106. RE: the doodling thing…

     I remember reading about a study that seemed to indicate that doodling actually helped people remember talks/lectures better than if they sat there doing nothing.

     I can’t seem to find it again…

107. Oh. Huh.

     …huh.

     I empathize with… just about everything in this post and in the comments, though not always entirely the same level of life-interfering. (Partly out of the kindness of others – I have had teachers like me enough to accept papers a month late.) And I was talking to friends about this post and commenting on how familiar this all is but saying “oh, but I get very lock-on focused when something interests me, so I can’t be ADD” and then read a comment about hyperfocus, looked it up, and saw that it matched.

     So… thank you for this post.

     (Er, want to assure you I’m not so much self-diagnosing as thinking “maybe I should look at some resources on ADD coping mechanisms to see if they’ll help” kind of thing. Anyway.)

108. YESYESYESYESYES

     Thank you all for helping me come to terms with this. I just recently have started approaching some of this with my wonderful therapist. It’s so hard not to fall back into “i’m lazy” or “i’m stupid.”

     Thank you – this is so powerful for me.

109. Isabel: Thanks for the shout out. I only suggested the sorting because, well, it worked for me. Other people’s milage may vary. And for anyone who’s in/considering college: It is definitely worth it to check out the accomodations that they offer, even if you don’t plan to use them.
     I’d also like to point that, as far as I know, campus health organizations are bound by a confidentiality oath. So if anyone needs to see them for mental health reasons, they will not be informing the folks back home.

110. Isabel: Thanks for the shout out. I only suggested the sorting because, well, it worked for me. Other people’s milage may vary. And for anyone who’s in/considering college: It is definitely worth it to check out the accomodations that they offer, even if you don’t plan to use them.
     I’d also like to point that, as far as I know, campus health organizations are bound by a confidentiality oath. So if anyone needs to see them for mental health reasons, they will not be informing the folks back home.

111. An Incomplete List of Important Things I Have Permanently Lost:
     7 or 8 wallets (including driver’s license, credit cards, insurance cards etc.)
     4 purses (containing some of the above wallets plus other useful things)
     2 pairs of glasses
     1 additional driver’s license left on a plane last month
     1 wedding ring (I expected that, it wasn’t expensive)
     1 cell phone
     2 cell phone chargers
     2 laptop power supplies
     as an undergraduate, a near infinite number of University ID cards
     ? sets of keys

     As an aside, several people have touched on the fact that girls are less frequently diagnosed with ADD in part because they often manifest it differently than boys, but the flip side for me was that I have absolutely classic ADHD symptoms – I was the kid getting up in the middle of class to pace or to interrupt the teacher mid-lesson with whatever question had just now popped into my head, at least when I wasn’t wandering out of the classroom without permission – and I was just not trying hard enough to behave, because everyone knows girls aren’t hyperactive.

     So ya, thanks for this post.

112. I… I love this post.  I am in hearts with this post.

     Another sucky thing I’ve found: When I am off my meds and thus am pure unadulterated ADDing, and someone interrupts me for the fifth time (or it’s the fifth interruption), and I nearly take their head off.

     “Why don’t you just go back to what you were doing?  I don’t understand why you’re snapping at me for interrupting!”

     AUGHDSFKDSFLJLKR *claws at own face*

     One of my days.

     I manage not to actually lose my wallet, because I have drilled into my head this mantra: keys, wallet, phone, bus pass, chapstick.  The order isn’t important, but any time I leave a place, I run through that.  And that has taken me years to acquire, as a mantra.  Before that, I’d remember haphazardly, and while I have never lost-lost my keys, the number of times I’ve locked them into places… yeah.

     (And that mantra doesn’t prevent me from putting them down somewhere in the room and god help me.  It just keeps me from leaving without them.  Hopefully.)

     Another coping strategy is Twitter, oddly enough.  If it’s super-important I remember something, I post it to Twitter.  I can then look it up later.  If I could focus long enough to find a sort of web-based SMS-able tasks list, or something, I would be all over it.

     Or god, school.  I distinctly remember starting out with all this excitement, and then winding up barely turning in my homework.  “But you’re so smart!”  Rrrr.

     And yeah, I’m convinced my anxiety is largely due to my ADD.  When I am on my meds, my anxiety goes way way down, because suddenly, I don’t have to spend a million cycles worrying that I’m forgetting something.  Or the constant low-grade anxiety that people are judging me for being so scattered, for example.

     …

     I am unsurprised that this comment is scattered.

     But yeah, I am definitely reposting this to wherever I can.  Bless you a thousand thousand times for writing this.

113. …that was way longer than I thought it was.  Apologies!

114. Oh hi their my whole life. (yes I have adhd, and a whole lot of other neurologically interesting as well)

     thankyou for sharing

115. OH

     HELL

     YES

     is all this particular ADHD person has to say.

     Yes, I’m trying.

     (obviously no it isn’t all)

     Seriously what is this I don’t even wait I was supposed to oh right HEY LOOK THING anyway I was oh dude time for lunch hey e-mail wait where was I THIS IS MY LIFE.

     But I tend to be on time for things, but this is because I always have, like, hours of leeway built into my schedule and I start getting ready for stuff like two hours before I’m supposed to go and that way I can generally manage to arrive out of breath but usually, just, on time, at least for Australia, where “a bit late” is basically “on time”.

116. How the hell did nobody figure out I have ADHD til I was 18? OK fine, one person figured it out–my best friend in first grade who also has ADHD and who I constantly thought of as normal when off medicine and oddly quiet when on medicine. Yeah, one day when I was 18, I called her and said “my friend thinks I have ADD or ADHD. He’s full of it right?” and she laughed and said “I’ve known you had ADD as long as I’ve known you.” “Um, that’s since we were 6…” “Yeah, it’s really obvious.” “AND YOU NEVER TOLD ME?!”

     But criminey! You described me to a T! I don’t think I ever consciously linked my ADHD with my always-late or my always-interrupting or my can’t-shut-up. OK fine I did link with the interrupting, because if I don’t say it right now I won’t remember it when it is my turn to speak.

     Also! Also! Your “true story” about out-of-order typing such long things? Yes, completely! I don’t think I’ve ever written a paper or article or blog post or whatever in the order it ended up being done, unless it was under 10 sentences. And even then, probably not.

     Also, I tend to say “also” a lot. Because like hell I’m going to think of everything I want to say first. Or not go off on tangents. You’d think I’d be better at math with all these tangents (ba-dum cha!).

     Oh, and GRRRR at the “excuse for parents of not-gifted children” crap. I was in my school’s gifted program. The overclocked brain is very good at quickly doing the logic puzzles necessary on IQ tests to get in the gifted program. Hence, “overclocked.” I’ve actually learned to do things extra fast (like speak! I speak way too fast for most people to hear) in the small hope that I will complete whatever it is I’m doing before I context switch. So, my brain, being all full of ADD is already overclocked, and my way of coping is to overclock even more. The trick is to try to keep the rate of context switching from changing.

     I was explaining to someone last week that my way of keeping track of conversations is that I now keep a stack in my head. I’m a programmer, so this makes sense to me. I push topics onto the stack. When they complete, I pop them off to return to what-the-hell-were-we-talking-about-before?

     Oh, that bit about gifted whatnot? So, now that I’m in college my ADHD is actually problematic. When I was younger, the H part would translate to Hyperfocus and I’d read dictionaries/encyclopedias and get through school on the prior knowledge those provided (because paying attention to a teacher? hahahaha). So, I have these Adderalls here that I was prescribed, and given my grades I’m sure my mum wishes I would take them some more, but they make my brain feel completely wrong. I was 18 when I was given the pills for the first time. That is just too late to adjust to a brain that feels completely full of fog with only one thread running and reachable in the middle and everything else… I’m aware the thoughts are there but it’s like trying to see them through a wall of fog and it’s horribly uncomfortable. If I take the not-extended-release lower dose ones it’s not so awful, just effective enough to sit down in front of a paper I need to finish and Just Do It.

     Um…you mentioned people with AD(H)D talk a lot right? Uh, sorry about the length.

117. Hot Tramp:
     Gah! Right! Cards! It’s um… Saturday morning the weekend after Fathers’ Day, and the Fathers’ Day cards I bought are on the kitchen counter waiting to be signed and mailed. Right. Should do that now.

118. Thanks for this. I’ve had relatives and friends with ADD and dyslexia and have had people just dismiss it or tell them they’re just lazy, stupid, or not trying hard enough.
     thanks for explaining it in a way that I can understand (or at least try to understand) as someone without ADD. I didn’t consider all the coping mechanisms that people need to develop.

     I have tactile integration dysfunctions… again, just a different way the brain and nervous system are wired. I don’t have any tolerance for pain. I can’t just “block it out” or “ignore it” or “suck it up” because… if something is touching me the wrong way (clothing, other people… etc) or it’s too hot/cold, or I’m in pain (headache, toothache, anything)…. that’s ALL MY BODY CAN FOCUS ON. It’s at the forefront and center, refusing to be diminished. don’t get me started on cramps!
     So, I’ve been labeled a “whiner” and a “cry baby” and a “faker” and all kinds of other fun names. I’ve been called lazy, emotional, and all kinds of other stuff simply because I can’t deal with pain the way others do.

     Anyway… thanks again!

119. Thank you. Just — thank you.

120. Thank you for posting this. I’m currently living with my boyfriend who has ADD and this is a good reminder to that I need to be more active in not allowing myself to become frustrated or angry with him. I am ashamed how easily I forget that he doesn’t mean to do the things that he does. He doesn’t purposefully forget things I tell him or promises he’s made and his reticence to make plans with me doesn’t mean he just isn’t that into me (curse that book for ever being published). He’s worried he’ll forget and look like a jerk and I’ll be mad and yadda yadda.

     Sometimes, it’s easy to get wrapped up in your own shit (I deal with bipolar type 2 and PMDD – we make an awesome couple). It’s good to have it put into perspective every once in a while.

121. I’m trying to get diagnosed with ADD, but it’s hard. I’ve received two referrals to a psychiatrist so far. Once a year ago, once a month ago. I couldn’t afford to go to the one a year ago. And I’ve, (guess what?!) lost the referral I just got a month ago.

     I finally realised just how bad things were last September. I had an operation and was put under general anesthetic, and I swear it was the quietest I can every remember my brain being. I woke up and was like, Awwww.

     And I’m so sick of telling people about things I do, that I can directly attribute to ADD, and having them go, Oh I’ve done that too!

     And I’m like, well do you do it all the time? Does it define your life? Well then stop minimising something that is actually quite a big problem for me!

     It took me two months to get my library card from the living room to my wallet. I don’t live in a big house. I try to watch tv, and it can take me 2 hours or so to watch one episode of a 48 minute show.

     I cannot escape my brain and it is frustrating and not fun, quite a lot of the time. I shouldn’t have to be knocked the fuck out to be able to have a quiet brain!

122. Wow, this piece really says… just about everything i feel about ADD and am angry about. Thank you so much! (I had to stop at some point while reading it, wondering if I’d written it myself and since forgotten. I’m sure it wouldn’t have been as good that way, though!)

     Yeah, I’m tired of people telling me ADD is made up by the evil pharmaceutical industry. (Attention: the pharmaceutical industry is not evil for selling me what I need to deal with my brain and be a productive human being, the pharmaceutical industry is evil for claiming a new patent on and charging a three-digit markup for the same drug but with an extended-release mechanism to make it practical. Fuck you, whoever makes my ADD meds, and fuck you US Patent Office for allowing this, and fuck you Congress for endorsing this with your fucking Bayh-Dole Act of fuckwittery.) My ADD diagnosis was one of the best things that ever happened to me, and the ironic part is that it’s what allowed me to reorient my education around my individual needs. ADD denialists, meanwhile, are the ones trying to shove me in the same box as everybody else.

123. Um. Maybe you won’t even end up reading this comment or anything but thank you so much for that post. I’m not diagnosed or anything but I’ve suspected for a while and this post… I relate so much to what you said that I feel, just so relieved and somehow vindicated. I KNOW THAT FEELING and I get it all the time. I’ve somehow made it 25 years through life though with a reputation as a perpetually late screwup and your post made me cry.

124. I know I’m late to the party on this post, but I just wanted to chime in with the chorus of “thanks for writing this.” I found it very educational.

     I’ve been tested for ADD several times over the course of my life–I don’t have it, and the specialists I’ve been sent to said as much, but my parents always assumed I did because of things like the fact that during soccer games as a kid I’d be the weirdo standing nowhere near the ball, staring up at the trees or the sky and singing to herself. I suppose the fact that soccer just didn’t interest me never actually occurred to them. 😉

     And of course, there is a pretty significant discrepancy between my ability to remember academic minutiae and my ability to remember WHERE THE FUCK I LEFT MY KEYS, but it’s nothing close to what you’ve described here.

125. I’ve been meaning to say this is a really good post. I’m really grateful for it.

     I would have said sooner, but I got a bit distracted.

126. True Story: It took me 2 days to read this post because of my ADD. Coupled with OCD, it’s not healthy at all. I start reading a paragraph, phone makes a noise. Check e-mail. Check Facebook. Check Twitter. Text boyfriend. Get distracted by Facebook for two hours. Remember that I have this post up and read another paragraph. Repeat ad nauseum until I finally finish.

127. Even though I’m several days late on this, I would just like to say THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for this.

     I don’t have ADD. I needed this insight quite a bit. Real eye-opener for me, as a non-ADD person.

128. Pingback: Psych notes, and dolphins « by Erin Ptah

129. I am a male. I am sorry if this isn’t feminist friendly I don’t think I over step myself but then I have ADHD and part of my issue is recognizing those kinds of boundaries according to many. I got here by link from a forum on ADHD. Just for disclosure. I suppose I tend to get a bit verbose so all that being said you can ignore this if you want I am pretty well used to it. LOL.

     Sorry just skip to the end too much here and maybe I should delete it, but maybe it is relevant.

     I guess I could say I was one of the ignorant. I believed there was such a thing but that it wasn’t nearly as big a deal as it was made out. When I got my diagnosis I had a hard time buying it because I didn’t fit my understanding of ADHD. The more I learned the more I fit. I actually know very few people who aren’t impacted by one disorder or another. I do actually know a few people that it would shock me if they were diagnosed with something but they make 10% of the people in my circles. I digress.

     I think of ADHD as being a single, most probably (whatever is between probably and definitely) neurological disorder. The different manifestations and most especially the difference between males and females has to do with the different ways in which brains develop. Boys lean towards the impulsive and hyper anyway its part of that high octane energy that is supposed to make boys into men, not men of the new world but men of the frontier. Girls mature faster parts of their brains actually develop earlier and over their whole lives that in boys comes in spurts and usually most noticeably in the mid 20’s. Girls tend to run on the lower octane nesting type intuitively. Women tend to be less interested in the juvenile pursuits of their more primitive counter parts. So I think that as the brain develops the girls who both have to fit into a girly mold and who naturally mature and develop differently get a more mature ADHD.

     For a long time ADHD wasn’t recognized in females nor in adults, the reason being the hyperactivity was the primary diagnosable symptom. Most girls exhibit the hyperactivity as over active thought processes. The same part of the brain is working here but the difference in action is a difference in brain structure. Jumping up out of your seat screaming and carrying on isn’t as appealing the impulsivity manifests in other impulsive behaviors or in Anxiety. It was thought that boys grow out of ADHD for the same reason. The same brain structure development catches up to a certain extent later on for males and it changes the way that overly active part of the brain manifests.

     I think the same is true with general ADHD. I am called Primarily Inattentive, however, just try to catch me when something isn’t fidgiting. Yeah I am inattentive, I lose track of stuff, embarrass myself on a near weakly basis by having to go back to some restaurant or store to pick up my wallet or finding my car won’t start when I get back in it and finally finding that it is because I left it in drive when I shut it off. We all have different things that fit under larger symptoms and at times different symptoms that fall together in larger categories. I think that what is going on is a neurological issue that causes certain parts of our brain to operate inefficiently along with a chemical imbalance that limits the communication of certain synapses. Just like with a computer certain parts do certain things but depending on what kind of computer and what kind of parts and how it was built the same component issue may cause two completely different problems on different computers. By logic it should be the same but it isn’t because they don’t process information the same.

     For instance we each have natural interests and one observable difference is that some of us function better with Grammar and Language skills while others function better in mathematics and Scientific applications, while still others function primarily in an artistic fashion. That is true of all people but it is exaggerated in ADHD because we function very well if what we are doing stimulates us (natural stimulants) but perform poorly with dull tasks. What is stimulating to some is dull to others etc. Another is some peoples’ minds race while others can’t sit still (a little of both for most of us but some are more one than the other). Some of us gush emotions some of us shut them off.

     I think if you look at the statistics you see at least from a few years ago covering the last few decades you see some oddities. More than twice as many boys diagnosed as girls in childhood. Some of those boys “grow out of it” in adulthood. The numbers of diagnosis is far more balanced between boys and girls in adulthood. I think the explanation of that is multifaceted. First I think some boys are diagnosed with it that don’t have it. They may have something else or may just be hard to handle. It does happen and the fact that it does happen doesn’t negate ADHD. Girls are under diagnosed as children, because they tend to be more concerned with school work do develop faster, do have more expected of them, and do have certain social pressures that boys don’t have as much or in the same way that forces them to learn to make things work earlier than boys really are expected to.

     CLIFF’S NOTES VERSION
     I lost track of where I was and realized I wrote a book here so for those who skipped I hope you look here.

     My personal belief is that the basic issue of ADHD is a collection of brain development abnormalities. The extent that these abnormalities affects each of us, and to a certain extent the degree of abnormality, is affected by development. Brains develop differently in everyone which is why a brain scan can’t diagnose it there isn’t a baseline to compare it to. I think the main reason it looks so much different in Adults and females than it does in young boys has to do with certain regions of the brain that for whatever reason develop at a different rate in girls and boys. Boys don’t really catch up until later in life and some would argue never really do. Another factor is how we cope with and develop our mental process around the abnormal development. Some are less effected because of excellent adaptation.

     New thought sorry
     Couple of thoughts, a diagnosis of ADHD doesn’t mean someone isn’t lazy it is perfectly possible to be both. People who don’t know they have ADHD may be trying harder and failing at somethings but may also not be putting extra effort into most things and wondering why it is so much easier for everyone else.

     Some people put habitual things and long time activities into an auto control mode and people with ADHD don’t function well in that mode. Perhaps it is best to think that we can only put so much in that cue of the brain where others’ capacity for that is much higher. It’s one of the things most people take for granted and probably what frustrates most non ADHD partners of people with ADHD.

     The corner of my eye is where my attention will be pulled to nothing but it is also the place where a non ADHD person will register the table or box or whatever in the floor where I won’t process it especially if my brain is trying to not break whatever delicate object I am carrying (why am I carrying the delicate object again please explain that one to me?).

     I don’t usually think about it when I break into random songs. I guess there is a part of me that realizes it is inappropriate at times and in some places but if I am nervous I go there and it never seems to have offended anyone yet. Whistling in other countries though apparently not a good idea so best I broke that for singing really.

     My ability to make decisions whether permanent or not is impaired and it is a challenge to get me to just make a decision and go with it because of two things first what if it is a bad decision and I won’t be able to change it or I find myself set way back because of it. Or if it is about my future what if my vapid interests change before I finish it again. A career?!?!?!?!? Aren’t those like long term, what if I train for one and get bored with it after a couple of years or less then I am stuck right. Ugh. man I wish I had more money.

130. Also just hopped over here from ADD forums. Many people here had questions about medications, and I wanted to let them know that the ADD forums include ones on each type of medication, plus discussions on the most common comorbid conditons with ADHD. There is also a forum for partners of people with ADHD, so they can learn and get support from each other and from people with ADHD–or just vent, if that’s what they need.

     Also, there are stimulant and non-stimulant medications for ADHD; and, like SSRI’s, people respond differently to each flavor of stimulant or non-stimulant. So even if one doesn’t work well for you, then a different one might. I felt bad for the poster who felt she was in a fog when on medication, that means she should try a different one, not just stick with one that sorta works but has bad side effects.

     Good grades/being intelligent are perfectly possible for people with ADHD. It doesn’t affect your ability to reason, just your ability to control your attention; either you can’t concentrate when you want to, or you concentrate too hard on something without being able to decide that’s what you wanted to do (hyperfocus).

     I only started learning about ADHD when my DD, who has the classic symptoms was diagnosed (very hyperactive, even for ADHD kids). Now her older brother is diagnosed as the Primarily Inattentive. It doesn’t always break down neatly along gender lines.

     One thing typical of ADHD, which makes it harder in a way, is that many people with ADHD can have wildly varying levels of difficulty from one day to another. For kids for instance, one day they’ll get an A and turn everything in, another day they won’t be able to find their way to the cafeteria. So people around them will say, “You did this yesterday! So I know you can, why won’t you today?!” I’m sure this happens for adults also, but I’m not thinking something up easily for them.

     Another poster had a question about when normal forgetfulness shades into ADHD, always a good question with spectrums. When does orange turn red? The diagnostic answer is that the difficulties must be severe enough to interfere with normal life activities in two spheres. The usual ones are “home”, “school”, “work”, and “social”. And ADHD does affect ones whole life, not just school, not just work.

131. Thank you for writing this article. I totally relate and I have been feeling so overwhelmed lately because of my ADD. Its just become too much. Its hard when you feel like your ability to function as an adult is slowly slowly slipping away.

     I know, as someone with ADD that if I am getting dressed and something pops into my mind I need to do it RIGHT AWAY because if I finished getting dressed whatever I had thought of that I needed to do is now gone. I won’t think of it again until it is too late (oh shit, I was supposed to look up directions for how to get home, now what do I do? Call my mom or friend who are so fucking sick of me calling and asking them to do things before I forgot). OR it will just pop into my brain again at some other inconvenient time and distract me from what I am doing at that moment. Its a lose lose situation.

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