#add adhd adultadd attentiondeficitdisorder awareness distraction diagnosis psychology

[zerotoahundredrealquick]

I am starting to get some answers...

I started reading this book that I found at my friend’s while I was house sitting with my boyfriend and the pups. Go figure, he wanted to watch TV and I can’t seem to just sit and watch TV without doing something else at the same time. I had left my kindle back at home, so decided to look around for a good book to start (and probably never finish) so that we could still both be physically on the couch with each other, but both doing separate things that we enjoy. After a quick search, one book stood out to me immediately and I grabbed it without even looking at all the other options (I had maybe seen 3 other book titles before landing upon this one.) The book is called Delivered from Distraction: Getting the Most Out of Life with Attention Deficit Disorder. I was in awe and remember being like, “Babe look! This book is meant for me!” I say “meant for me” lightly, because I actually had no idea that I have actual ADD. It’s one of those phrases that everyone throws around lightly, typically as an excuse for not paying attention or getting distracted easily. I’ve said it plenty of times to people lightly, not actually believing I have ADD, but wanting an out in certain situations. Little did I know, this wasn’t actually an excuse but rather an actuality-- an actuality that I have been living with for quite some time now. The first time I was introduced to ADD was in high school at my first job as a receptionist at the hair salon my mom belonged to. Often times, receptionists become underpaid babysitters in the sense that adults would come into the salon and bring their small children after picking them up from school and let them kind of just roam free about the waiting area. This one dad and son came in, the boy I would say was maybe 6 years old. I don’t think I’ve met a wilder 6 year old boy. The kid was all over the map, wanting to run everywhere and play with everything and get into everything I was doing. And I remember the dad brushed it off as the kid having ADHD. Here’s where I painted a mental picture of what ADHD was in my head and knew I didn’t ever want to be diagnosed with it. My idea of ADHD included: being obnoxious, not listening to your parents, bothering everyone around you, being louder to get attention, and not having remorse for being a complete pain in the ass. The thought of me having ADD wouldn’t cross my mind until very recently because that little boy and I were nothing alike in behavior so there was no way I had ADD, right?  Wrong. From a young age, I always did well in school. I was in accelerated classes, was on the honor roll and Dean’s list, achieved academic awards (along with athletic), and would go on to graduating Magna cum Laude from college. I was never disruptive and wouldn’t act out in class, but did this mean I didn’t have ADD or that I had amazing parents that wouldn’t let me be a little asshole in public? And define good student? By good student, I mean that I got nearly all As, some Bs, and rarely a C-- never Ds or Fs. From the sounds of it, it sounds like a girl like me wouldn’t have ADD, right? Keep reading. After my mom would call out to wake up my brother and I for school at LEAST 5 times, I would finally roll out of bed and scrounge to get my life in order. Breakfast was NEVER eaten at the table before school. Breakfast was inhaled in the 7 minutes it took to get to grade school in the car, while simultaneously tying my shoes, fixing my hair, and tucking in my uniform shirt. As we pulled up to school, I don’t think my mom’s car stopped moving before we rushed out of the door and sprinted to our respective classes so that we wouldn’t be late. To this day, I’ve gotten more late slips than parking tickets while living in San Francisco for college (and that list was extensive.) Running late was my brother and my jobs and no matter how many times my mom would get mad at us for it, nothing ever changed. I’m 32 years old now and without fail, I always show up to work exactly 1 minute late. My mom even got a speeding ticket on the way to taking us to our grandma’s so she could go to work, and I still haven’t figured out how to be on time for any thing. My dad is my dentist for crying out loud and I still show up 1 minute late to my appointments at his office. So maybe I am an asshole in public, just not the obnoxious type. Being late to anything and everything isn’t my only downfall though (let’s come back to this word “downfall”.) My best friends in high school envied the shit out of me because as they would start studying for our Statistics test 3 days in advance, I would break out my notes at lunch right before the test, memorize everything in my little photographic memory brain I had, and still receive A’s-- meanwhile they would get B’s and C’s. Not sure that having a great short-term memory is an indicator of having ADD, but I have now learned that procrastinating is a HUGE one. I could never figure out why I would wait so long to complete anything and everything in my life. To this day, I still wait until the last minute and every time this happens, I say to myself, “I won’t wait this long again.” And then I wait until last minute again. Interestingly enough, I actually don’t procrastinate with everything-- just things that don’t interest me. There definitely are things that I’m stoked to start, and I start them right away, but then the opposite effect happens-- often times I start right away on something that I seem passionate about, but quickly, the excitement and thrill fades, and I end up not actually completing probably 98% of the things I start. So either I do things last minute, or I don’t complete at all if there is no deadline. WHY. AM. I. LIKE. THIS. Oh, because I have self-diagnosed ADD. As I’m writing this, I’m getting over it so I’m going to stop writing now so that I don’t end up hating typing altogether. The point of this is to say, I finally found an answer to something in my life, and I hope to God that I do something with this information. I’m tired of the self-shame for always being late, always procrastinating, losing interest easily, not being able to pay attention for too long, and not being able to enjoy relaxation/down-time. I’m ready to use my ADD superpower for good. I’m ready to see these “downfalls” as advantages. I’m ready to recognize my strengths and pour into them, while finally understanding why I do certain things the way that I do. More to come. I hope. Or this could be my first and only blog post about this. Which is likely to happen. And if it happens, cool. At least I wrote ONE piece about it.  Your fellow adult with ADD, Nay Nay

#add adhd adultadd attentiondeficitdisorder awareness distraction diagnosis psychology