The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves)

[surreality]

@Auspice While I don't know what KQ's example is... I suspect tossing all three of our fathers down a well to keep each other company might well be the best answer here.

While there are many, many stories about my father, I'm just going to sum up with this. When I was 20, and got diagnosed formally (again), and I had a therapist weeping on me -- she literally grabbed the psychiatrist from the next office and dragged him into the room to check my records, re-eval, schedule for a formal re-eval, etc. -- I was in shock. It was in my records going back over 15 years. No one had told me.

I was in shock, and I was fucking furious. My folks had known the whole time and 'didn't want to give me an excuse to slack', per earlier records the therapist thought I knew about. She didn't realize she was the first of a long line of folks like her to actually talk to me about these things like I was an actual person or something.

When I got home, I spent about five minutes sitting in the car to calm the fuck down. When I went inside, I -- no ragrets -- dropped the, "We need to talk," on my father.

He says, "Sure, what's going on?"

I remember the following exchange verbatim, because I wrote down his response five minutes later. Somewhere, in a sketchbook, it is reproduced in floufy calligraphy with swirls all over it, with a penciled caption/note at the bottom.

"So, I have ADD. You've known since I was in kindergarten. There are things I could have learned that would have helped. There are things I could have done, that you and Mom knew about, that could have tangibly helped, and instead, you both just let me believe I was nothing but a fuckup for fifteen years?"

Dad: "Well, you still were just nothing but a fuckup, so?"

The caption at the bottom of the page in pencil is -- this is more paraphrased since it didn't, you know, burn itself into my psyche like a foiled hot stamp --

Some people are never going to understand. Remember this, and try not to take their attitudes to heart.

To this day, in my 40s, I am still trying to do that.

[Selerik]

@Auspice That is heavy. I'm so sorry you went through that. That you are STILL going through that.

[Auspice]

@Selerik said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

@Auspice That is heavy. I'm so sorry you went through that.

It's just a snapshot of shit my dad has done.

I've gone through... a lot of emotions with him. For a brief time, in my late 20s, I went through a 'Well, they were young. They had a couple kids before they were even 30 and I'd probably fuck up with kids that young.' But now in my 30s, I'm like: fuck's sake, I'd at least have compassion and do my best even if I made dumb mistakes sometimes. And he's still just a total dick about so many other things (like his treatment of my mom as referenced).

It's just an addition to the pile of why I don't interact with my family much. Of my four siblings, two of my brothers are pretty cool. I keep waiting for them to move out (both are in their early 20s) so I can maybe try to have more than a 'we text sometimes' relationship with them. Someday.

[Selerik]

@surreality Your story is also heavy. Gods, now I want to give people hugs. This is awful.

[Kanye Qwest]

My dad's not a bad guy, really. He fucked up pretty spectacularly, but who doesn't? He's quit drinking, and it has changed a lot about him.

[faraday]

Sad for all the struggles folks have gone through.

Like many adults, I didn't realize I had ADHD until my kids were diagnosed, then I realized that they were struggling with the same things I have my whole life. My parents still don't believe that I have it ("But you were such a good student!") but I'm pretty much the poster girl for adult ADD symptoms, and they've been there for as long as I can remember.

Some coping mechanisms:

• Timers. We have an alexa at home and 90% of my use is to set timers. "Remind me in 60 minutes to change the laundry." "Set a 20 minute timer" (for my kids to stop playing video games). etc.
• Fidgets. I spent my life drumming on tables and destroying straw wrappers. One year I was so bored in meetings I started practicing writing the alphabet left-handed. Nowadays though there are some really cool fidget gizmos. I keep this one in my purse.
• Background Noise. I have a hard time maintaining focus in silence. There has to be some kind of background noise for part of my brain to focus on. Music without words works best, or a movie I've seen 78 times before.
• Visual Cues. I assemble things and put them by the door the night before so I remember them. I'm the queen of post-it notes, all over the house.

Getting accommodations for kids in schools is a PITA.

[surreality]

@Selerik So, so many reasons I am glad things have changed since 20 years ago, and even more than 40 years ago. Seriously. Still miles from perfect, but goddamn.

I was 'lucky' that my mother was able to get the on-and-off-it-applies-while-we-decide-on-the-H diagnosis when I was tiny. She worked with kids as an occupational therapist and had the connections to make it happen, even if we still got jerked around for over a decade as science tried to make up its fool mind.

[Auspice]

@faraday said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

Sad for all the struggles folks have gone through.

Like many adults, I didn't realize I had ADHD until my kids were diagnosed, then I realized that they were struggling with the same things I have my whole life. My parents still don't believe that I have it ("But you were such a good student!") but I'm pretty much the poster girl for adult ADD symptoms, and they've been there for as long as I can remember.

Some coping mechanisms:

• Timers. We have an alexa at home and 90% of my use is to set timers. "Remind me in 60 minutes to change the laundry." "Set a 20 minute timer" (for my kids to stop playing video games). etc.
• Fidgets. I spent my life drumming on tables and destroying straw wrappers. One year I was so bored in meetings I started practicing writing the alphabet left-handed. Nowadays though there are some really cool fidget gizmos. I keep this one in my purse.
• Background Noise. I have a hard time maintaining focus in silence. There has to be some kind of background noise for part of my brain to focus on. Music without words works best, or a movie I've seen 78 times before.
• Visual Cues. I assemble things and put them by the door the night before so I remember them. I'm the queen of post-it notes, all over the house.

Getting accommodations for kids in schools is a PITA.

I do so many of these, too.
I wish Google Home had tags on its timers because I've had multiple ones running before and uh... when ti goes off I don't always remember what I set it for. Oops.

But yes. Laundry. Stuff I'm cooking. Something I need to do (like, uh, leave the house on time).

I have a few fidget spinners, myself. I keep the fidget cube in my purse. I've recently gotten into cardistry and that keeps my hands occupied pretty well (with a side-effect of finally helping stretch out the scar tissue on them from carpal tunnel surgery!).

I, too, end up with post-its everywhere. I've actually considered putting up some of the whiteboard paper I have (...esp. after the cat clawed down the last one) in a vertical orientation in the hallway just so I can leave lists there. But it's not uncommon for me to have a post-it by the door of 'Remember: <list>' and I have a big alligator clip on the wall next to the door to pin things under, too.

For any trips I take, I have a pre-made, color-coded spreadsheet to fill out. It has columns for: to pack, laptop bag, what to wear, toiletries, and a to-do list.

[Macha]

My parents thought there was something wrong with me as a kid. They sent me to the psych office of my elementary school, and they told them that I was just bored, and that I needed to be in GaT. But they put me in that in the middle of the year, so I was completely at sea. My problem was hyper focus on the things that interested me, and not doing shit with things that didn't, which doesn't work with school, unfortunately. But they never diagnosed me as ADD or ADHD, and that behavior just kept on going all the way through school. They sent me to the psych in high school again, because I was 'too rebellious and defiant" and other basic shit. Hours of telling this guy my life story later, He told them that considering everything that had happened (mom dying in front of me as a kid, abusive stepmother/stepgrandmother, etc), they should be thankful I was so 'close to normal as any teenager gets'. - Still no ADD diagnosis. That didn't even come up until my senior year, taking classes in psychology, the professor suggested I might be. One headphone on and music later, everything came so much easier. The school wouldn't allow it, though, so I kept getting in trouble. But I used one earphone in college, and the music gave me enough mild distraction without too much, that I could focus on my notes and learn, even if the subject bored me.

When I told my father (who also thought I was a slacker and a fuck up) that I was diagnosed finally, he told me I was full of shit (he was an abusive drunk fuck who should join those other dads in the well, until he had a heart attack and stopped drinking. It's amazing how people change when they get sober.).

My current job, when it gets slow and I get distracted by reading or my phone, the beep in my headset scares the shit out of me because I get so focused on what I WANT to be doing. But when I'm on the call, I can talk to the provider, and pull up all the stuff, and I'm in enough windows and programs that I can stay focused.

[Auspice]

I kind of wish my dad was an alcoholic so I could give that to him as an excuse or maybe hope someday he'd, y'know, stop. Not that I wish alcoholism on anyone (my ex-husband was one and it was... misery and I am so much better off without him), it'd just be... nice to think maybe someday it'd stop.

No. He's just an egotistical, religious-driven asshole.

[Selerik]

I'm going to be heavy and share my own story of dealing with ADHD. It isn't like the ones posted so far, and I don't have a short way to tell it. Probably because so much of it is still raw for me to face, makes it hard to abbreviate it and feel honest.

My story is one I've had to learn to tell from more perspectives than my own, because my perspective was warped through the lenses of a kid who feared nothing and would do anything. I identified with all the books about kids going on adventures, and I was determined to have my own. I did, and they're the sort people don't believe me about until they hear it verified by second and third parties who lived through them with me. I'm a bit more mellow these days, but the backdrop of how and why that all happened was ADHD.

There is a quote: 'Just because you're paranoid, that doesn't mean they're not out to get you'. Well, that is my mother in a nutshell. She was a rape survivor that nobody believed before she met my father, she was targeted by local police after she pissed one off (a sheriff's office who even today have a reputation for corruption and abuse of power), she'd had wages stolen by men who claimed they did the work she had done and was actively dismissed when she contested it and/or fired. The list goes from there. She came from a very poor family, quit college to raise me at 19, and dealt with the stigma that mental health wasn't even a thing to consider having evaluated. Doctors were for richer families and you got by how you got by, no complaining. Only, she did have mental health issues, and so did my Grandfather, and lucky me - I had them too.

Her bad experiences shaded my entire upbringing. When it finally drove a wedge between my parents, I was five. The divorce meant I had someone talking in my ear about how drugs were dangerous and can't be trusted without a voice to mediate that. Plus, since I grew up below the poverty line, I'd witnessed a lot of drug addicts up close and how much they ruined their lives. Still, the schools tried, but they sort of sabotaged it even if my mother hadn't. They were doing a full blast DARE campaign the same year I got my ADHD diagnosis. There was no way medication was going to work with me, because I would rather fake taking it than 'ruin my life' with drugs. So my parents bought drugs for me they couldn't afford while I faked taking them and spit them down the sink.

My ADHD behavior was off the charts, and it only took one bad teacher to give me an excuse. I still remember what she said: 'Stay there or I'll break your legs.' I looked her over, told her she'd have to catch me first, and ran off. They had cops looking for me all day, I showed up six hours later at my home several miles away. That was Kindergarten, and I'd only start to run away more and more after that. School didn't interest me, and as far as I was concerned? I was getting away with having my adventures. But for my mother, it wasn't so easy. Finding work was hard, keeping work while dealing with my going missing was harder. The stress destroyed her. She couldn't afford to keep me in school, but she couldn't afford me not being in school either. That meant she couldn't work if she wanted to be sure I was safe, and who would provide for us if she didn't?

I remember telling her I was hungry after we were given lunch one day, and her collapsing on the floor in a sobbing mess. She hadn't eaten anything that day, and she'd given us the last food in the house. That is the sort of memory that etches into a child, the sort of thing you feel guilty about even though you don't know what you'd done wrong. I started to go out and hang out with other people. Bum food, raid the fridge at friend's houses and at distant relative's houses. To try not to be a burden, and that made me only more of an outlier. Took me further from having anything resembling a normal upbringing. This was happening while I was still only six, and this is the compact version of everything that went on.

Every year after that, she'd struggle to find work and a way to get someone to help care for me and my siblings. Every summer the family members who'd helped her would pull out or the boyfriend would leave, and she'd lose her job because she had to be home with us. It was like that for years, the cycle of poor to dirt poor. Nobody wanted to deal with me, my ADHD made me uncontrollable, and my circumstances only cemented the perception that I was the only one who knew what was the best thing for me to do.

Then there was school. I tested well, I wasn't a slow learner or anything, but I was so disruptive that nobody else in my classes would learn. I'd routinely go throught he workbook and ignore the teacher entirely, then when it was done get up and harass the class because I was bored. I got suspended many times, then finally expelled. Then I went to a new school and it happened again. Eventually they put me in a school that was deep in the bad part of town where I was one of two white kids in the entire place, they had barbed wire on the fences, and I'd get assaulted by the older kids in if I used the restroom. I was hurt so badly that I blacked out, and that was the day my mother gave up on it and let me teach myself. For context, I was still only eight. From there until I was maybe fourteen, I just was told what to learn and left to my own devices. Sometimes I'd learn a thing, and sometimes I wouldn't, but we'd always crunch the week before the state tests and I'd be fine.

But it wasn't safe for me to do what I did. I was a kid actively putting myself in dangerous situations in New Orleans, the pasty boy who'd go for bike rides through the projects. Most people were really chill, but cover enough ground and you'll find someone who isn't. I had run-ins with gangs, I got attacked a few times, and it was the day I showed up three hours after dark breathing fast and deathly pale she decided we'd move. I'd spent half the day being chased. For sport. She cashed in money she didn't have, bought a house with a mortgage she couldn't afford, and I went from being able to visit the French Quarter to walking two miles and being rewarded with a different color cow. I didn't think about my diagnosis with ADHD at all by this point. It was a thing in the past, and I'd clearly made the right choice avoiding drugs. It made me stronger, or so I told myself.

After we moved, I did a brief stint in junior high that went terribly as I learned just how different country culture was from New Orleans culture, and just how incredibly racist the people in that region were against blacks in other parts of Louisiana. Ever been called a N-lover for telling someone not to say a racist joke? Well, let me tell you how MY first day in the country went. There were fist-fights, the suspensions started up again for an entirely different reason. I broke my hand in one of them with a kid named Jenkins. I'd been learning jazz piano until that happened, and I was getting pretty good. Had to give up on it. My hand still doesn't work quite right. The Internet was pretty much my only escape after that. I couldn't walk somewhere to do something, I couldn't socialize with the local kids because they were either bigots or related to bigots (which I hated them for). So the internet was where I would retreat and stay. We'd set up a computer room in the barn-like guest house, and it became my new home. At least my mother could hold a job down now.

In a sort of quirk of fate, spending that time online nearly killed me, and did kill my high energy. Not because it was the internet or because I just 'slowed down' as I got older. Because a pesticide company had used our property as a dumping ground for a chemical called Dursban before we bought the place.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dursban-banned/

This was the year Dursban was announced to be getting phased out, and the pesticide company wanted to get rid of it before they'd have to dispose of it at high cost. We were the lucky lottery winners that got several thousand times the recommended quantity pumped into the pilings. Not only did it kill bugs, it made everyone in my family horribly sick. Myself and my brother (The two gamers who spent time near the exposed pilings) got the sickest, and we've permanent health issues because of it. It was a whole thing, but the sum of it is: Because I wasn't HYPER anymore, we decided I didn't have ADHD anymore. I'd 'beat it' through willpower, nevermind the rest of what was going on. There was a lawsuit where my mother tried to get justice. They stonewalled us. We lost money we didn't have trying to get that justice, and failed. My mother was, again, justified in her outlook on life and became more drastic in her views about chemicals. I got a new diagnosis as a survivor of chemical poisoning, a chronic one I'll have until the day I die.

Fast forward. I got my GED, went to a cheap local college, and failed my first semester. Channeling the rules lawyer in me, I found a way to contest my grades, got ADA accomodations because of my condition, and went on to have a successful college career where attendance didn't matter. I changed majors a half dozen times (haha college loans), survived a hurricane, fell in love, got married, went to a better college for more degrees, got a job, bought a house (haha more debt), and finally had some kids of my own. All this time I was still convinced ADHD was a thing of my past that would never come back to haunt me, and wasn't at all interfering with my life or my relationships. Spoilers: I was fucking wrong.

It took having a son just like me to be my wake up call. Before he was even in school there were behaviors that raised red flags, but they were rationalized away. Yet when we put him in daycare there were issues. He got into fights with other children, he wouldn't follow directions, he did whatever he wanted. We changed daycares, it happened again. We argued for intervention, and they flubbed it. Worse, we found out a teacher was so conditioned not to talk to parents about the truth of these things that she had been blatantly lying to cover up his misbehavior. It just cemented that the bad behavior was okay for him, and each year things got worse. Each year we tried interventions, only to have IEPs that listed symptoms he didn't have and care that didn't work.

Until this year. When I finally got a diagnosis for what he is really going through because my wife and I poured our souls into helping him and took years off our life in stress. After my wife had been pushed to the point of asking if she should give up on a career to care for him, the way my mother had for me. He finally got medication, the RIGHT medication, and now?

He is doing amazing. He is a star student, he does well in class, he is making new friends, he does well at home. Getting him the help me needed and seeing the difference in the trajectory of his life from my own made me realize that all of his troubles were my troubles. Only our circumstances were different. That he is like me, and I didn't get better. I just got too sick and used to hiding it for people to recognize what it was. Even me, especially me.

I'm not angry with my parents for my experiences. They've made me who I am, and I still believe those struggles did help to make me a better person. Better isn't the same as healthy, and now that I've been rediagnosed I'm going to see what ADHD treatment means for my life. I have to go through three months of state-mandated counseling before they'll start me on meds, so... Perhaps this time next year I'll be unrecognizable from the person typing this. I don't know, but I feel a lot of empathy for everyone else's struggles. I had parents who loved and supported me, even though they didn't know how and ended up making things harder in the process. So yeah, there is my ADHD origin story.

[surreality]

...not enough hugs for everyone in this thread. Nowhere near.

[Rinel]

jesus

[Ganymede]

@Selerik

Bravo.

That's all that can be said.

But, man, did I ever get triggered when I read the bit about not having food in the house.

Not that I have personal trauma, but because the fact that 1 in 4 kids go hungry where I live makes my blood boil hot.

I tell my kids every day: if someone in your class doesn't have food for lunch, you share yours; if you share your food and come home hungry, you get double dessert to make up for your sacrifice; and if think someone in your class isn't getting enough food, you invite them over every damn day if you want to because no child should ever go hungry.

I don't know why the thought of hungry kids makes my eyes wet and my hands ball into fists. I've never gone hungry.

But I've known kids who did, and that shit shouldn't happen.

[Alamias]

Your stories of AD(H)D are so much worse than mine ever was. I mean, I was told I was an underachiever, that I was lazy and all that comes with ADHD from teachers all the time, but I at least had a supporting family.

They may not have known what was going on, and acted upon the information that the teachers gave, but they never belittled me or anything nearly as traumatic as the stories on here. They just pushed me to try and do better.

I feel for all of you.

[Wretched]

Imma write a bigger post later, but I just wanted to say I'm all choked up. I see so many echos of my own life and struggles here among all of you and it's just... a little overwhelming okay?

[Selerik]

@Wretched

[surreality]

@Wretched said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

Imma write a bigger post later, but I just wanted to say I'm all choked up. I see so many echos of my own life and struggles here among all of you and it's just... a little overwhelming okay?

Am kinda here, too. Been keeping most of it quiet since I already have a bad habit of oversharing but, uh. Yeah. This actually would be a proper place for it, so when I find where I left the rest of my spine... yeah.

Also extra hugs to Gany 'cause reminder of 'swear it's not like this now' still makes me wary because I don't wanna cause needless worry.

[Sparks]

Those parental stories horrify me. All the sympathy.

I am lucky inasmuch as my parents are loving and supportive and have always been so. Unfortunately, I was unlucky inasmuch as I was misdiagnosed as a kid, and was literally only diagnosed as having ADHD in the past seven months.

As a kid, I had a tendency to find something that interested me and just ignore everything else—including, sometimes, sleep—to do that thing. Reading, writing, coding, tinkering with electronics, etc. This would happen instead of my chores, sometimes instead of actually coming to dinner, etc. Meanwhile, things like chores or homework were really hard for me to get started (yay executive dysfunction!) until the eleventh hour, at which point I would work in a panic-induced state of intense focus.

When I started to suffer some fairly severe depression as a teenager, my parents found me a psychiatrist. Psychiatrist went "Well, depression and hyperactivity? The hyperactivity has got to be hypomania, so clearly this is a case of bipolar disorder!" So I got treated for that, medicated for it, but the medication never seemed to work that well; I kept wrestling with depression, and eventually I got taken off the medication because if you stay on depakote long-term it has Bad Effects.

Flash forward to now. Last year I suffered a massive streak of depression and went back to a psychiatrist again. The psychiatrist talked to me about the previous diagnosis and went, "Really? I don't think that sounds quite right for bipolar. That intense focus sounds a lot more like ADHD hyperfocus to me. Have you ever been tested for ADHD?" When I said I had not, he gave me a worksheet to fill out and made me take the excruciating QbTest (which checks concentration, head/eye movement, etc.). When we got my results for the QbTest back, he said the results were borderline ADHD. So he diagnosed me as mild ADHD (and having developed coping mechanisms), along with clinical depression.

The psychiatrist told me I should probably try a couple informational organizational systems to manage things, but he didn't think it was severe enough to need medication. (He did medicate the depression, which was desperately needed.)

About three or four months later we were talking about something else, and he went, "You know, let's talk about that ADHD diagnosis again. Because having worked with you for a while now and given this executive dysfunction situation we're talking about, I'm beginning to think I may have misdiagnosed the severity in that first session. You mentioned you used a few coping tricks to focus during the QbTest; can you tell me exactly what you did?"

I noted that I'd been jostling my foot to keep myself from fidgeting, that I'd dug my fingernails into the palm of my hand (because when I do that, I find it makes it harder to have my thoughts wander; I do this during meetings), and I had tensed my shoulders to keep myself from looking around and letting my mind wander, and after about a minute I had devised a mental trick to let me remember the color/shape combinations so as to not miss many.

Psychiatrist goes, "Yeah... in light of that, I think I'm changing my diagnosis: you are just flat-out ADHD and have developed a number of coping mechanisms. Let's start discussing medication."

So... now I'm doing medication trials to figure out what medication works best for me! Whee?

[Ninjakitten]

@Sparks said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

after about a minute I had devised a mental trick to let me remember the color/shape combinations so as to not miss many

Is this an ADD thing? I wasn't diagnosed until grad school, but I've always done this for all sorts of things and it never occurred to me until this moment that it might not just be 'normal'. >_>